Name: Sephy Email: sephyelysian@gmail.com Messenger (AIM, GTalk, MSN, or Yahoo!): la reine blanc (AIM) Character Name: Sumeragi Subaru Series Taken From:X/1999 Point Taken from Canon: Pre-Rainbow Bridge so mid volume 15 or so? Before he's summoned to see Hinto at any rate. Character Age: 25
Special Abilities: Onmyoudo, the ability to raise a kekkai.
Background:
Subaru is the 13th head of the Sumeragi, a clan of onmyouji whose power and influence date back centuries. He spent much of his childhood sequestered with his twin sister, Hokuto, in the family compound after the death of his father at the hands of the Sumeragi's traditional enemy, the Sakurazukamori, learning the family art. As a child, Subaru has an encounter with the Sakurazukamori that's blocked from his memory and he can only see fragments of it in dreams. It is during this meeting that Subaru makes a "bet" with the Sakurazukamori and is marked by him with an inverted pentacle on the back of each hand, something his Grandmother tries to seal by forcing him to wear gloves.
When Tokyo Babylon begins Subaru is living with his sister in Tokyo rather than in Kyoto. It's not entirely clear how the twins ended up there but it is clear that the decision for them to move is not one that the family entirely agrees with. Trying to juggle going to school and plying his trade as an onmyoujitsu, Subaru and Hokuto meet and befriend a local vet, Sakurazuka Seishirou. Charming, perverse, and claiming to be totally in love with Subaru, Seishirou quickly integrates himself into their lives, never outwardly giving any hints that he's more than what he says. He is, in fact, the legendary Sakurazukamori and that he's come to collect on the bet he made with Subaru as a child.
Over the course of the year despite Subaru's protestations, he and Seishirou do draw closer and closer something that is watched with approval and some worry by Hokuto. When Seishirou's right eye is destroyed defending Subaru, he's forced to finally admit that he's in love with Seishirou, something that the older man had been waiting on. As soon as Subaru realizes and admits his love for Seishirou to himself, Seishirou reveals his true colors, torturing him with the knowledge that he is the Sakurazukamori and that he cares nothing for Subaru, meaning that he lost their bet. Leaving him broken and bleeding, Seishirou disappears while Subaru enters something of a catatonic state. Hokuto confronts Seishirou dressed as Subaru and using what little powers she has, works a spell on Seishirou as he kills her so that if he attempts to use the same spell on Subaru later, it will backfire and take his life instead. It is only Hokuto's death at the hands of the Sakurazukamori that rouses Subaru from this state but it's clear that the boy who went into the catatonia is a very different from the man who emerges.
After Hokuto's death, Subaru drifts, pushed by both a need to avenge Hokuto's death and some darker need until he shows up in X/1999 as one of the Seven Seals. Initially, he seems reluctant to take part in the war between the Dragons of Heaven and Earth, too intent on chasing down Seishirou when he's drawn in by Shirou Kamui's condition after the violent death of his childhood friend, Monou Kotori. Seeing in Kamui's situation (of losing a girl he loved and being betrayed by the other person closest to him), rather than wandering off again, Subaru makes it a point to stay with the Seals, or rather near Kamui, watching over him.
Intervening in a battle between Kamui and Fuuma, Subaru loses an eye, something he claims was his own wish and clearly ties back to what happened with the Sakurazukamori. In spite of this and the guilt that Kamui feels over it, the two of them form a bond, growing closer and closer (creating an interesting reversed parallel to Subaru's own relationship with Seishirou) and over time it becomes clear that there's an understanding between them. However, for Subaru there is still the unfinished business between between himself and Seishirou which overshadows all else...