Many Suns

By linay

Author’s Notes: So I know I should be working on Complete Me, but this idea popped into my head so I wrote it – Hey better than not writing at all, yeah?

Summary: AU History is doomed to repeat itself and Kaoru is caught in the never-ending cycle. But one dark night, she meets a man who will challenge her to walk a dangerous path – one that would never have taken in a hundred years.

-- - - -

Kaoru stopped for a moment, her foot still hovering over the wet pavement as the downtown crowd swirled past her. She was carefully still, the rush of traffic and patter of rain against her umbrella fading from her mind as the faint strand of power tugged at the edges of her consciousness. She let her head drop, her thin, tinted glasses slipping down the bridge of her nose as she tried to follow the familiar thread through the crowd with her senses.

Slowly, Kaoru began to walk again, her steps hesitant. Her senses grasped the line of power and her steps quickened as she traced its path. Soon she was weaving through the crowd with quick, determined steps. She heard nothing, saw nothing, felt nothing but the shining cord that pulled at her, unseen by the milling people around her.

And then, suddenly, it was gone. She stopped abruptly, jerking as she felt the line snap and disappear. She frowned. It has been so long.

With a sigh, she pushed the narrow glasses back up the bridge of her nose and turned to consider where her city chase had landed her. When her eyes took in the familiar grey stone and towering steel gates, she raised a delicate black eyebrow. Somehow, in her distracted state, she had still managed to arrive at work on time. She shook her head and stepped out of the flow of hurrying students and businessmen, making her way up the concrete path leading to the Art History building.

She skipped up the concrete steps, which were a welcome change from the rickety wooden stairs that had been ripped out as part of a renovation project funded by the Alumni Association just a few months before. The Art History Building was one of buildings on campus that was considered to be an artifact; it, along with a few others, had been part of the original structures of the settlement in the 1800s. The university had been built around these structures of stone and mortar, as the wooden houses and storefronts that had existed in the preceding centuries had burnt down long before.

And how fitting, she thought with a wry smile as she turned to shake the water from her black umbrella that the Art History department was located in a refurbished cathedral – the very place where their first samples of this city’s art had been found – in the colors of the stained glass and the carvings in the wooden furnishings.

Kaoru paused for a moment as she pulled the heavy oak doors open, letting the first draft of air waft over her pale face. In that moment, if she closed her eyes, she could feel the history of a hundred years wash through her in that stale smell.

“Kaoru!”

And then she opened her eyes, jolted back to the present by the calling of her name. She smiled, stepped forward and let the doors swing shut behind her. Two young women were walking briskly toward her; one of them was waving.

“Yes?”

“It’s about the conference in Toronto next month,” a tall, willowy student said, “Could you look over my presentation?”

“Of course,” Kaoru said, flipping open the flap of the satchel at her hip and shoving her still wet umbrella inside, “Come by my office later.”

“Thanks!” The girl’s face lit up with a brilliant smile.

Kaoru nodded, smiling, and turned to walk down the hall toward her office.

“That’s your teacher?” She heard the other girl squeak. “I thought she was a student!”

“She’s neither really,” said with a flippant tone, “She’s my master’s thesis supervisor.”

“What?” It was a quick, sharp sound of disbelief.

Kaoru smiled to herself and turned the corner. A long white marble hall extended in front of her and she walked quickly, grimacing slightly at the loud clacking of her heels. Although no one could mistake the building for anything but a cathedral from the outside, it was an entirely different matter when one was inside. The ancient church had been entirely gutted and new flooring, walls, and an academic structure of amphitheatres, classrooms and offices had been imposed to suit its new use. That they could fit an entire department in the building, truly spoke to its original size and grandeur. Only the occasional stained glass window was visible from some of the larger classrooms and various wood carvings and religious relics were displayed in glass cases with descriptions in tiny, engraved plaques.

One such work of art was displayed right beside the door to her office and she stared at it as she blindly fished for her keys in her bag. It was a simple piece; an almost crude stone carving. In actual fact, the curators had been surprised to find it buried among the other salvaged relics since it was more reminiscent of ancient Mesopotamian art than Renaissance Christian art. But Kaoru had specifically asked for the piece, and since no one else wanted it, the building manager had displayed it by her door.

Her fingers finally found the cool metal of her keys and she pushed it into the lock, rattling it. She glanced to the side and smirked at the angel carving behind glass; perhaps they would ‘renovate’ the doors next.

The lock finally clicked open and the door swung inward. Kaoru surveyed her messy office before stepping in and kicking the door closed behind her. Books and papers and file folders littered every horizontal space possible. She let her shoulder bag slide to the floor with a loud thud and shrugged off her raincoat, throwing it over a chair. Without bothering to turn on the lights, she began to shuffle through the papers on her desk, looking for the course outline for Art History 101. Through the yellow light provided by the lamp on the other side of a fake, frosted window, she squinted at the papers that she was absently pushing around the desk with the tips of her fingers.

With a triumphant snort, she pulled up a slightly crumpled set of papers. She glanced at her watch. There were only five minutes to the start of class and she still needed to have 100 copies made. The course outline in hand, she pulled a random pen from a cup on her desk and dashed out the door, not bothering to lock it after her. She never got any more organized, no matter how often she taught the course.

-- - - -

A good fifteen minutes later, Kaoru hauled herself into the amphitheatre, panting and sweating slightly. She wrinkled her nose – there was nothing worse than sweating on a rainy day. She looked up at the students, who were all shifting impatiently in their seats, their hushed conversations nothing but incoherent sounds to her ears. She clutched the copies to her chest and straightened, walking crisply across the front of the auditorium toward the unnecessarily large table at the front. She slowly adjusted the acetate version of the syllabus on the overhead projector and then carefully clipped the cordless microphone onto the material of her sweater. Pressing her lips together tightly, she marched up to the person at the end of the first row and handed her the stack of freshly made copies.

“Take one and pass them on,” she said quietly as the student stared at her blankly.

She raised an eyebrow as the student finally took the papers and began to pass them on. Kaoru already knew what the student was thinking – where was the teacher? Well, Kaoru thought to herself as she strode confidently to the front and switched on the overhead projector, she was the teacher – even if she didn’t look old enough to have graduated from high school.

Kaoru was petite, both in size and bone structure, and her delicate features were framed by thick black bangs. It probably didn’t help that she wore her hip-length hair up in a pony-tail and that she was dressed in an outfit that could pass for workout clothing. The only accessory that might have made her look older, were the set of narrow, grey-tinted glasses that were perched atop her fine nose.

She spun around to face the new group of students after she made sure that the projected image was clearly illuminated on the screen high above.

“Good morning,” she said, her voice clear and confident, effectively cutting through the conversations, “This is Art History 101.”

A few hands went up immediately.

“Yes?” Kaoru pointed at one boy near the centre.

“Are you the TA?”

Kaoru smiled, and there was almost a cruel glint to her gaze as she looked at him from over the rims of her glasses. “No,” she said, her voice carrying to every corner of the room, “I am the professor, Dr. Kaoru Kamiya.”

She nearly rolled her eyes as 100 sets eyebrows went up simultaneously.

“And no,” she said, a teasing note in her tone, “I am not fourteen years old.”

-- - - -

Kaoru exhaled loudly and stretched backward so that the back of her cheap office chair bent backward with her. She had been pouring over her art history books since the class had ended over four hours ago. It had been a good lecture, she thought to herself. After the initial shock regarding her supposed age had worn off, the students had begun madly scribbling notes. Art history had always intrigued and fascinated her and she had launched into an animated lecture without having to refer to her old notes, as she knew the subject so well.

Afterward, she had retreated to her office in order to study the pictures and write an article for a research journal. But in all honesty, she had just been reading and scanning the journals for new information – not that any of it would have been a surprise.

She glanced contemptuously at the false windows and at the yellowing bulb behind the patterned glass. It was such a poor imitation of the sun that she almost wished it wasn’t even there. But even though her office did not have access to real light, she knew that night had fallen. By now, she thought as she stood to don her coat and bag, darkness had coated the streets and frosh activities had moved to indoor venues.

Indeed, when she stepped out into the crisp autumn air, cool with the past rain, the campus had fallen silent except for the distant sounds of music and laughter coming from the freshman dormitories. She veered away from the concrete path toward her home and chose the winding, scenic cobblestone route through the campus gardens. It was pitch black and the wind rustled the leaves of the tall trees, but Kaoru made her way through the gardens without stumbling. She took deep breaths, relishing the smell of the rain on the grass.

Suddenly, she snapped to attention, all of her senses kicking into overdrive. There it was again: that familiar tug. The line pulled at her again and, without a second thought, Kaoru was running to follow it.

The string of energy would have been near impossible for Kaoru to describe, had she been asked to. It was invisible and yet unmistakably present, its force resonating in her very soul, like a beloved tune of music or a familiar scent.

It was stronger this time, unlike in the morning when she had to follow its trail haltingly, like a hound after the old trail of its prey. This time it was thick and shining and she wondered what could have caused it to thrum so loudly in her.

Slowly, however, Kaoru began to notice that it grew fainter and she struggled to keep up with the tail end of the thread. She cast her bag away and ran faster, cutting corners and leaping over short garden fences until she skidded to an abrupt halt at the edge of a circular courtyard.

At the centre of the paved court, a large round fountain rose with streams of water spilling from the trumpet of a stone angel whose wide wings case strange shadows over the water in the fountain’s basin. And sprawled face down over the edge of the basin was a man. One arm was floating lifelessly in the water and the hand of the other lay against the cold stone of the fountain wall. His rust-colored hair was long, and the ends drifted back and forth with the force of the stream above.

But Kaoru’s eyes were fixed on the surface of the water. The moonlight shone bright but water was not clear, nor did it reflect the sliver of the silver moon.

She immediately recognized the dark patterns spreading quickly through the water. The smell was sickly sweet and metallic.

It was blood.