Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/261565.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Choose_Not_To_Use_Archive_Warnings, Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Rape/
      Non-Con, Underage
  Category:
      F/M
  Fandom:
      Rurouni_Kenshin
  Relationship:
      Shinomori_Aoshi/Makimachi_Misao, Original_Male_Character/Makimachi_Misao_
      (non-con)
  Character:
      Hannya, Shikijou, Original_Female_Character, Makimachi_Misao, Shinomori
      Aoshi
  Additional Tags:
      Rape_Aftermath
  Series:
      Part 2 of Hard_Times
  Stats:
      Published: 2010-10-18 Completed: 2013-03-20 Chapters: 7/7 Words: 24411
****** These Cuts Of Mine ******
by nagia
Summary
     Some secrets don't stay hidden, and now Aoshi knows Misao's. A story
     of regret, retribution, and out-and-out vengeance. Companion piece
     and sequel to "Hard Times."
  This work was inspired by
      Daughter_Figure by Western Ink
***** though her voice would be merry *****
Chapter Notes
     See end notes for warnings.
See the end of the chapter for more notes
i.
Not all the memories of the time they spent raising Misao are good. Even years
later, Aoshi shies away from a few. He's buried this one under other unpleasant
memories, but recent events have him re-examining it:
When Misao was seven, she cried in her sleep. It happened sometimes; he recalls
his stomach clenching at the sight, but he doesn't recall being surprised.
She woke shaking and gasping.
Though she turned to Hannya for comfort, it was Shikijou who gave her answers.
He took her a little away from the rest of them. It gave at least the illusion
of privacy, though they could all still hear the conversation.
"It's been years," she said. "I thought it was over!"
"It's never over."
"But it ended years ago!"
"That doesn't make it over."
Aoshi remembers drifting silently, then, flitting between trees until he could
see her. If he couldn't bear being the one to teach her this, he would at least
see it done. Or so he told himself.
He watched Shikijou stretch to pluck a leaf from a short tree. The leaf was
bright green with spring. In a few months's time, she would be eight.
Shikijou passed the leaf to her. She accepted it with both hands, her head
tilted, her brows furrowed in a confused pout.
Shikijou waited a few moments. For all his muscles, for all his weight, he
struck fast. Just seconds after she'd accepted the odd gift, he painstakingly
ripped a piece of the leaf away.
Misao blinked. She looked down to the ragged scrap of green left in her hand,
then back up at Shikijou's closed fist.
"Why did you do that?"
Shikijou held his fist at an angle. After a moment, he opened his fingers, let
the leaf fall. Rather than flutter to the ground, the leaf sailed away on a
breeze.
"When you see things, like what you saw with your parents, it takes a piece of
you."
"And you can't ever get the piece back, so it's never over?"
Looking back, Aoshi sees that moment as a touchstone for all the others. It's
the moment she first began to understand.
In the moment, though, in the moment that reassures him of what he protects,
and torments him for what he failed, he only wanted to turn back time.
He still wants to turn back time.
===============================================================================
ii.
This soon after sunset, when long shadows obscure the city and vermin -- human
or otherwise -- skulk about, the streets look empty. He turns a corner
cautiously, approaching the Shirobeko from the opposite direction of the
shrine, and sees a scrap of purple and blue.
He shifts his gaze in that direction, automatically seeking the color of the
Oniwabanshuu. He catches only the darting flicker of a long, long braid.
He follows without a second thought.
She traces her way through Kyoto unerringly, with neither delays nor side-
trips. She keeps her pace steady; soon enough, she pauses in front of the Aoi-
ya.
Aoshi stops a few paces behind.
She stands still a while with her head tilted back. Even from his distance, he
can tell that she's drinking in the sight of the Aoi-ya.
Seconds pass by, lengthen into minutes. And then she moves forward. He watches
her spider-crawl the Aoi-ya walls, her motions certain and economical.
He wants to ask what she's doing, why she's doing it. But he's not sure she
could explain. He's not sure he would understand if she did.
So he watches her pull a broken shingle from the roof. He traces her path with
his eyes as she descends. A mixture of regret, of sorrow, of pride tightens the
inside of his chest as he follows her back to the Shirobeko.
It's not difficult to slide her door open without her hearing.
She wraps the tile in a length of stained, tattered cloth. It's barely more
than a bundle of rags.
But Aoshi's seen too much, been Oniwabanshuu too long, not to recognize a
blood-stained uniform.
He closes her door in the same instant she closes the chest. He has trespassed.
Whatever his intentions, this was a betrayal of trust.
He cycles through the possible meanings, the possible origins, of that ruined
uniform on the way back to his room. He doesn't like anything he comes up with.
===============================================================================
iii.
The dissatisfaction at invading Misao's privacy lingers sour. He contemplates
apologizing, but cannot convince himself to acknowledge the possibilities
circling in his head. And he knows: if he apologizes, he'll ask. If he asks,
she'll tell him -- whether or not she's ready.
He will not hurt her in that way. He doesn't ask. He doesn't apologize.
But still, the worries and the regrets stay with him.
They only worsen when she brings him bedding for his futon. She squeaks,
blushes, as he takes what will be his bed from her hand. It would amuse him,
would warm him low and smooth, if he wasn't simultaneously seeing her wrap a
broken shingle in a ruined uniform and collapse to her knees after he nearly
killed Okina.
She turns to go and he lets her.
Almost.
He says her name, softly. But she immediately snaps into a half-turn, looks up
at him with a fragile expression; he's suddenly struck by the image of jerking
a dog's leash.
"Aoshi-sama?"
"The roof tile. Why keep it?"
It's not until she smiles at him, open and free as she's always been, that the
worry rests.
"I learned things and met people worth remembering."
The stone knot of new sins eases.
===============================================================================
iv.
Aoshi knows something is wrong when she's so tired she's all but stumbling and
tries to tell him that she can keep going. Misao trembles as they enter the
town's only inn, and his certainty only grows. Dread writhes in his stomach.
He isn't sure what to expect, so he stops trying to plan for possibilities and
just starts planning contingencies. The gruffly well-intended condescension of
the innkeep manages to startle him nonetheless.
"Good for you, travelling with a bit more protection these days."
She needed it? Of course she needed it; she's young, she's female, she was
unaccompanied. But the way the old woman says it --
He writes it off as an old woman's bitterness at her children.
Until, in the midst of her chatter, she adds, "My only girl wasn't quite so
lucky as yours here."
His breath freezes in his lungs for an instant. He wants to demand she explain
herself. Instead he only turns to watch her closely.
"She died three years ago. And then I met yours about a year after that. Nice
child. It's always the nice ones, really."
Aoshi begins fitting pieces together: Misao hates this town. Misao was here two
years ago. Misao is lucky to be alive. Misao has a bloodstained tatter of a
uniform hidden away in her room.
He doesn't like where those pieces lead him. The old woman warns Misao to stay
off the streets and that's just another piece, clicking into awful place inside
his head. He clenches his hands into fists, then relaxes when Misao turns to
look at him.
His anger is not for her. He will not frighten her with it.
He never wants her to be afraid again.
===============================================================================
v.
Even with his heart still in his chest and every muscle aching to destroy
whatever has left Misao so afraid of this place, he doesn't ask. If he asks,
she'll tell him.
If his suspicions are right, she needs privacy. She needs space.
He'll give it to her.
Through the night, they fight over the shutter, though they never exchange
words about it. It's a hot, sticky night. He wants the shutter open to let the
breeze in, to better hear the town's traffic. For some reason, she wants it
closed.
She closes it once he's laid out the futons, then picks her way through perfect
darkness across the room. She must be navigating by ear; she never brushes
against him, never missteps.
He opens it a crack after her breathing has evened into sleep.
He wakes, covered in a layer of sweat. He frowns as he rises from bed. His
yukata sticks to his skin; he has to shrug his shoulders more than once to
dislodge it.
He cracks the window again. In the hazy moonlight, the town looks peaceful.
Just a sleepy, foggy village in summer. Nothing threatening here.
Misao stirs in her sleep. The sound of her movement draws his attention. She
whimpers low in her throat and he's all but riveted. She never was a neat
sleeper, and tonight's no exception. At some point, she cast aside her
blankets, and now tosses and turns on a sparse futon.
She kicks out in her sleep. It's a harsh, fast jerk of her right leg. It's
clearly not a normal aimless sleep-motion; her kick has purpose, even if that
purpose only exists in her dream.
Despite whatever purpose it served her, it parts her yukata. Fabric slides
along her legs with a whispering sound.
Aoshi's eyes trace the line of her ankle, the curve and swell of her calf, the
smooth expanse of her thigh. When she moves again, he tries to tear his gaze
away. He should return to bed. He should stop stealing glances of --
Is that a shadow, or is that...?
A scar, he realizes. A blade scar: one medium-long, mostly straight line, thick
at one end but gradually thinning. It starts on the very inside of her right
thigh and stops halfway down.
Someone stuck a knife in her thigh and dragged it down. He's seen too much not
to know.
He crosses the room, sorts through her blankets until he finds the thinnest.
She stirs without waking as he spreads the sheet over her.
Before he returns to bed, he closes the shutter.
===============================================================================
v.
Aoshi wakes early, even by his usual standards. Fragments of last night's
nightmares rattle around his thoughts, shifting like ice floes, crashing
against each other. Each fragmented image is uniquely horrifying.
He forces himself to breathe slowly, deeply. His lungs ache for more air, even
though he knows he's getting plenty. It's a strangling feeling inside his
chest.
So he closes his eyes and examines each image, as dispassionately as he can, to
determine what disturbs him and set it aside. Omasu, gagged, with candlewax
dripping along her legs, eyes wide and face pale from the pain. Shikijou, his
arms bearing so many cuts from the battle that the skin hangs like ribbons.
Shiro and Kuro, each bent to one knee, each bound to the decapitated and
maggoty corpse of an informant.
Hyottoko retching into a barrel after a mishap with an oil refil, his eyes wide
in fear and horror and, yes, the burning.
Hannya, pale and cold and still, but clearly satisfied with his death.
Okon, eyes glazed, face battered, blood dripping between her thighs, breathing
hitched from broken ribs, found with her legs forced apart.
Disturbing as each is, the nightmares aren't new. He's been dreaming horrors
for years.
He opens his eyes again, rolls enough to nudge the window shutter with his
foot. It opens easily. Pre-dawn light begins to seep into the room.
He rolls back, half-heartedly re-adjusts his blankets as he turns to face
Misao. Her sleep has finally eased. She rests peacefully, her breathing smooth
and even, her face relaxed.
Tonight was her debut in the theater of his nightmares. He closes his eyes,
tries to examine the fragments objectively. But the conjectures his mind
created are torturous. He cannot think of her writhing to escape some faceless
captor's grasp without his stomach churning. The image of a knife plunging into
her thigh, dragging along her skin while blood wells to follow, leaves him
light-headed with despair, lights fury in his chest, makes his hands shake with
the desire to kill.
He opens his eyes to watch her sleep. A smile begins to curl along her lips,
curving teasingly, and he wonders what she sees. He focuses on her smile, times
his breaths to match hers.
The tightness in his chest, the ache of strangulation, finally subsides.
He watches her wake, too. Her eyes drift open, blink a few times. She yawns,
lifting a hand to half-cover her mouth.
He halfway mourns the loss of her sleeping smile, but she smiles when she sees
him, and it's a full one. Beshimi once remarked that Misao could pour a year's
worth of joy into a second's curve of her mouth.
Aoshi fully agrees.
Now that she's awake, he should start the day. He sits up, shakes his head as
if that will cast aside the remains of the night.
He can pinpoint the exact instant she realizes he's awake: her eyes widen, her
smile disappears as her lips part in surprise. She begins to blush.
"Were you... waiting for me to wake up?" Her voice is tentative, almost shy.
"No," he tells her. He looks at her a moment, considers telling her that he
enjoys watching her sleep. He discards the thought quickly. If she blushes any
fiercer than she is now, she'll pass out.
She turns her back to him without saying anything else.
He blinks at the abruptness of it, then realizes what she was expecting. He
can't help but wonder if she's turning because she thinks he wants her to, or
because she doesn't want to see.
He weighs possibilities, reads the taut line of her body. She's tense, stiff,
but not trembling, not giving any of her usual fear tells.
It's the absence of fear that decides him.
He wants to tell her that there's no shame in attraction, that whatever has
happened leaves no sin on her shoulders. But he can't find the right words -
- if there even are right words -- and it's not his to speak of. Not until
she's comfortable enough to tell him.
He steps around her, shrugs into his undershirt, then the outer gi of his
uniform.
He turns his head just barely enough to see her in the corner of his eye as he
gathers their bags. Her eyes are wide, her lips parted, a faint blush creeping
over her cheeks.
He shuts the shoji door, leans his back against the wall beside it, and waits.
She emerges quickly, in uniform and with her yukata folded in neat corners. A
moment passes as she packs it away, and then they descend the stairs.
Now that she's closer to him, is awake and moving, she seems more relaxed.
"You must have been up early, Aoshi-sama. Did you not sleep well?"
"Well enough," he says.
She looks up at him for a moment. Her eyes are sorrowful, but the gentle curve
to her lips makes the expression tender rather than pitying. "The usual
nightmares, huh?"
"Aa," he says. No need to inform her that she's the newest addition.
She seems sad a moment. Almost wistful. But then a mischievous smile lights her
face. "Well, it's morning now. I'm sure the sunlight will chase all that away."
He almost says 'for a while,' but thinks better of it. Instead, he pauses on
the stairs, cycling through variant phrasings. At least he settles on, "Misao,
are you taking ill?"
She stares at him. "Uhm, no, Aoshi-sama?"
"Ah. I'd assumed, when you kept closing the shutter..." He let the sentence
trail off.
She flushes, waves two hands in front of her face. "No, no, it's nothing like
that! I just never sleep with the shutter open. I don't even do it at home."
The knot of unease returns, distinct like the gap where a roof ends and the
twenty-foot leap begins. Or at least distinct as the difference between tile
and nothingness, after that first fatal misstep off the roof has been taken.
That knot only grows when they enter the main courtyard. They stop on the
engawa to pull on their shoes, and all the while Misao's eyes flick first from
the doctor speaking with the okami to a young man speaking with a middle-aged
woman. He notes a mild physical resemblance in their faces and a stronger one
in the way both men stand.
A doctor and his son? He recalls the size of the scar on her leg, the length,
and the knot tightens, burns cold dread in the pit of his stomach. He thinks of
the same hands that wounded her stitching her back together and he's not cold
anymore. Fury boils a fever through his veins.
The doctor must catch sight of her. He breaks away from his conversation with
the okami and moves toward them. His mouth curls into something like a smile,
but the smile is edged. It's not a greeting; it's a threat.
"Misao-chan," he says.
She stiffens at the sound of his voice. Aoshi's gaze flicks down briefly, and
he suppresses a frown when he realizes that she's looking past the doctor at
his son.
The doctor laughs. The jovial sound seems calculated to show good humor while
allowing him to take up more space. "I must say I didn't expect to see you back
in this town, Misao-chan."
More pieces click together: an intimidation tactic. The unfrinedly smile, the
laugh, the use of the diminutive -- it's all an act performed to frighten
Misao.
Whether Misao has been assaulted or not, whether it was the doctor or his son,
the doctor knows. Knows, and is using it to --
Combat reflexes make him tense nearly invisibly, ready to attack without
telegraphing intent. Anger spurs him to make the tension visible, to bristle as
he places himself between Misao and the doctor.
"Just passing through, Tanaka-sensei," she tells him without looking up.
The very idea of Misao becoming meek is like being plunged into icy water: so
cold that he burns inside, and outside, and every breath shudders. But the
actual sight of Misao unable to meet someone's eyes unbalances him, unhinges
him, makes his fists ache with desires he doesn't want to name.
===============================================================================
Though her voice would be merry, 'tis sighing all the day,
Oh, hard times, come again no more.
--Stephen C. Foster, "Hard Times, Come Again No More"
Chapter End Notes
     WARNING: While they won't appear until chapter three, this fic will
     feature the specifics of the sexual assault that makes up the
     backdrop of "Hard Times."
***** never looked so down *****
i.
Aoshi uses the time he spends awake to examine further memories, but he's not
sure what he seeks in them. The less recent past can tell him nothing more
about absolution, and he knows enough of it, now, that he can stop his search
for it. He shies away from the puzzle he'd been thinking about before, the
puzzle he hopes he hasn't solved -- now, with her here beside him and his own
offer made, thinking about it feels like an invasion of privacy.
When she wants him to know, she'll tell him.
He corrects his thoughts: if she wants him to know. Though it's all but certain
-- or is it? She's never mentioned it, never alluded to it at all. Perhaps she
simply hasn't seen a reason to, perhaps she's never seen an appropriate moment.
Or perhaps she doesn't want him to know.
But if she doesn't... he can't simply forget it. He can let it rest, can let it
wait, can even let it go, if she needs him to -- but he can't take back the
knowing. Would that satisfy her?
He never comes to a conclusion: she begins to stir in her sleep again. At
first, her movements look like mere restless tossing and turning, but he knows
her better than that. She only sleeps that restlessly in the height of summer,
but it's a coool day and she's curled herself into the shadiest space in their
car.
She begins to murmur after that. She's sleep-slurred and quiet enough that he
barely hears her over the rattling of the train. He only makes out a few words,
but they're enough to chill him regardless of his unwillingness to analyze: no,
stop, but I'm not.
At last, she says in scarcely a whisper, scarcely a breath: please.
He's heard that tone too many times before not to recognize it. He's heard it
from the women bought by men of Edo Castle, from the "amusements" the yakuza
sometimes gave out to its lesser enforcers, from the boys kept by high-ranking
army officers. And he's heard it from far, far too many Oniwaban agents.
He says her name in an attempt to wake her.
But the only response he hears is the sound of a sleeping body, turning over.
He has a hard time focusing on any one topic, after that. Thoughts of Shikijou
and Hyottoko give rise to thoughts of Sagara and Saitou. Memories of training
alongside Okon and Omasu somehow blur into long hours spent watching sunlight
play over four gravestones.
Her first new whisper jolts him out of his thoughts. He stands, crosses the
rocking train only a touch unsteadily, and seats himself beside her. He draws
the curtain aside and watches her.
It's almost like half a bunraku play, though admittedly a sick one. Just as
before, she begins to murmur denials. Not just "Stop," but "That's not true,"
and "But I'm not!" Her murmurs only grow quieter when she begins to tremble.
She kicks her right leg once, then goes still.
And then she begs again: "Please."
He reaches out to touch her shoulder, grasping as gently as he can. He nudges
her lightly, unwilling to shake her. "Misao."
This time, she wakes. He watches her sit up, moving so quickly he almost
wonders if she has springs instead of joints. She scoots back along the train's
bed until she's pressed up against the wall.
"Aoshi-sama," she says. But for some reason, the blush that covers her face
doesn't strike him as endearing. "Uhm, I, sorry, didn't mean to bother you --"
"Aa," he says, because leading questions crowd his thoughts and he refuses to
do that to her.
She produces a tangle of sound, then, that he can only blink at. She flushes
red, then looks away, and says, just a hair slower, "It wasn't my parents."
"The nightmare?"
"Yeah. It wasn't my parents, Aoshi-sama."
He nods once. He wants to offer to listen, but it's too close to asking. And to
ask would steal any element of choice from her telling him.
After a moment of silence, he says, "I thought not."
She blinks up at him.
He should tell her that he has invaded the privacy not only of her sleep but of
her past. He should tell her that he has spent too many early morning hours
watching her sleep on this trip. He should tell her -- but he can't bring
himself to.
"You behaved differently when you were dreaming of your parents," he says.
She stares up at him. Her mouth rests in a mild pout, as if she's a bit
confused by him, but her eyes are wide, troubled. "What do you mean? Did I do
something... weird?"
"You spoke this time," he says.
There's no missing the panic that crosses her face. He wants to reach out, to
touch her, to hold her as Hannya held her when she was a child.
Once again, he wants to turn back time.
===============================================================================
ii.
He sees the city on the horizon half an hour before the train groans to a halt.
Aoshi murmurs a request into the ear of a nondescript youth standing in the
train station. Misao turns to watch him, but he doesn't allow himself to look
at her until the brief conversation ends. Kyoto ia a city of people who know
people -- even more so than Tokyo -- and for now, the news of the Aoi-ya's
"newest employee" leaving town with the owner's "granddaughter" while carrying
a no-dachi, a few burlap sacks, and a shovel should stay quiet.
Their walk back to the Aoi-ya is mostly quiet. Every now and then, Misao calls
out to a vendor, trading greetings and news. She turns her head to look at him
just before or after each exchange, as if she wonders if he minds.
At last, a block away from the Aoi-ya, she finally asks: "What was I saying?
When I was asleep on the train?"
"I didn't understand much," he tells her.
Panic and relief war on her face. She shakes her head as if to clear it and
then smiles. "So who were you talking to in the station?"
"A supplier."
Her smile grows even wider, even happier. It's almost blinding.
Her pure, unfettered joy stills his breath in his chest for a moment. How could
anyone hurt such a person? No. More than that... How could anyone want to harm
Misao?
Okina awaits them at the Aoi-ya's front door. He pretends to be busy splashing
water over the entrance to clean it, but the faint line of tension in his
shoulders tells Aoshi that the older onmitsu is on alert.
"You're back, I see," he says, sweeping Misao into a hug.
Once he's set her back down and she's caught her breath, Okina looks over to
Aoshi.
He inclines his head but says nothing. Misao will tell their story far better
than he.
"I take it Himura did need help?"
"It was a pretty serious bind," Misao agrees. She looks to Aoshi, as if
requesting permission to tell the story. He nods. "Come on, Jiya, I'll tell you
all about it inside."
He hears their voices retreat, listens until the city sounds swallow Misao's
words.
In the end, they spend the rest of the day in Kyoto, and sleep in the Aoi-ya
that night. It feels strange to sleep with Misao somewhere else. He's spent
weeeks sharing a room with her.
He misses the sound.
===============================================================================
iii.
During their trip to the grave site, he's the only one to wake with nightmares.
Sometimes he recalls them in every horrifying detail. More often, he doesn't.
He wakes with only snatches of images or vague impressions of memories to
explain why he's hyperventilating.
It takes them three days to cover the distance. That final night, Aoshi
contemplates his mental map as he builds a fire. If he were given to nostalgia
-- if it were possible to be nostalgic about this trip -- he'd find comfort in
the familiarity of tallying distances while he places twigs. He rises from his
crouch by the fire pit, satisfied more with his calculations than the small
fire. They'll arrive at the grave by mid-morning if they leave at sun-up.
Misao only lays out one ground blanket. He looks down at it, then looks to her.
He raises an eyebrow in a question he doesn't trust himself to voice.
She flushes prettily, stammers half an answer, stops, and finally says, "Aoshi-
sama, it's getting too cold, and the fire won't last all night."
"Aa," he says. But her offer confounds him.
Is she... ready? To spend a night close to him, even without intimacy? He can't
even ask. To ask would impugn her privacy.
"I don't need much sleep," he says.
"Aoshi-sama." Her voice is gentle, but he sees a hint of steel in her gaze.
"Aoshi-sama. You haven't been getting much sleep lately."
So she's noticed. He shouldn't be surprised; given the opportunity, Misao can
read him well. She always has.
In the end, he slips out of his boots, unties his obi so he can slide onto the
blanket beside her. He keeps his back turned to her. She's small and warm
against him; he can feel her even through his gi. He wants to roll over; he
wants to hold her in his arms, as if his touch could keep her nightmares and
memories at bay -– or maybe her touch would ward him from his own.
That night, he sleeps dreamlessly. Though he wakes at measured intervals, he
never hears her cry out or senses her kicking.
They both wake in the gray hour just before dawn. He doesn't know which of them
woke first. With his back turned, it's impossible to be sure.
She's silent for a while. He stays quiet, too, content to listen to her even
breathing. The light shifts from gray to a weak, watery gold and the air warms,
degree by degree.
At last, she shifts underneath the blanket. Her bare foot brushes against his
calf; the sudden rush of heat through his veins, pooling low in stomach, makes
him glad his back is to her. The blanket whispers as she moves yet more. Her
knee brushes against him for an instant, there and gone again, and his body
flushes in response.
He rolls onto his back, stretches his arms above his head to make his propped
knee look more natural, then breathes out and relaxes. He turns his head to
meet her eyes. She's rolled onto her stomach, with her arms crossed and her
chin resting against her hands. She's looking at him out of the corners of her
eyes.
“Aoshi-sama... Will you tell me?"
“Tell you?"
"What happened in Tokyo, I mean."
"I accepted a job from trash. In his grudge against me, he killed the others."
She's quiet for a while. At last, she lets out a little sigh. "That's not all,
is it, Aoshi-sama?"
He makes no reply. Of course there's more to the story, and of course she knows
it, but he'll lance this wound when it's time.
She sits up to look at him, then.
"There's more," he tells her.
She nods. Her expression is patient, as if she's waiting, but after a few
moments, she closes her eyes. She relaxes, her breaths slow, but then her
breath hitches and she sits straight up. She turns her head to look at him,
opens her mouth to speak --
"The rest can wait."
He watches her cycle through expressions: surprise, curiosity, irritation, back
to curiosity, and finally settling on determination. She nods at him, but her
then her mouth curves as she says, "Will you tell me... when we get there?"
He sits up as well, reaches for the obi. He wraps and ties it off without
looking, turning to face her only once he's fully dressed.
"I will."
===============================================================================
iv.
The grave site hasn't changed much since he was here last -- strange to think
it's been so long. He sees more leaves on the ground, taller grass. That's all
that's changed.
Misao stops short as they reach the clearing. Her eyes are wide, a little wet.
One hand flits to cover her mouth, and she turns to look at Aoshi.
She's not asking if they've arrived at the grave. He nods at her silent
question.
She takes a step forward, toward the graves. She stops abruptly, her head
jerking up as she speaks: "Aoshi-sama?"
"Yes?"
She turns to look at him. One foot pivots, causing the knee to pivot inward in
a stance that's shy, almost unaccountably so. "Aoshi-sama.... who's where?"
He's silent a moment, then moves to follow her. He makes sure his steps are
audible. Rather than side-step when he reaches her, he simply keeps moving
forward. His arm brushes against hers.
She follows him, just as he knew she would.
He stops before the graves, then tilts his head to indicate that she should
move a little closer. He turns his body to face the left-most stone. "Hannya,"
he tells her, then turns to face the next stone, "Shikijou." A pause as he
turns, "Beshimi. Hyottoko on the far side."
Misao looks up at him then. Her lips curl into something he hesitates to call a
smile. It's not joyous; it's not even happy -- but her lips have curved up,
rather than down.
Aoshi looks back down at her, makes eye contact for a brief moment.
She kneels before the graves without saying anything. He watches her fingers
touch the stone markers, brushing tenderly against them.
When she bows her head, he turns away. Steps far enough away to give her
privacy, if she's quiet.
If she speaks to them, he doesn't hear it.
After several minutes, he sees her drifting amongst the trees. He steps out
from behind a tall, thick pine and she moves straight toward him. She stops a
little closer to him than she usually stands, looks up as she places a hand on
his upper arm.
Her eyes are still wet, but not red-rimmed.
"Aoshi-sama," she says, taking her hand from his arm. "Do you... want a little
time with them?"
"Aa," he says.
She offers him a small smile. "Then I'll wait for you here."
"Aa." He takes a few steps past her, then pauses. He looks back once, meets her
eyes again.
She smiles for him, and vanishes into the trees.
Alone with them, he surveys the graves. Their stones bear no names. He saw no
need to mark the stones when he buried them; he knew where each was. He had
refused to memorialize them permanently with anything but a title and his own
death.
He stays silent. There's little enough to say now: Misao will have told them -
- or will tell them soon enough -- all that's happened.
"You'll have flowers soon," he says instead.
He's given them -- he's given himself -- the only answer he can. It doesn't
quite feel like enough. Maybe it never will.
He stares at the stones, at the mounds of earth. At the green that's grown, and
the leaves that have fallen. They're all healing from something, he thinks. The
forest heals from the wound of his shovel. He heals from the loss of his men.
Yes, he thinks. It's time.
He looks back when he leaves the clearing to search for Misao.
In the end, he tells her the full story while he's digging. It spares him the
torment of having to watch her reactions, of having to see her tears in
addition to hearing them fall. He hears every hitch of her breath and that's
hard enough. He nearly stops in his telling each time, but she always draws him
back with a leading question.
He knows, intellectually, that speaking of the memories can ease the pain of
holding them. It's never struck him as true. He can think of a thousand
tortures more pleasant than this, than speaking of this.
Than speaking of it to Misao, whom he never wanted to learn this sort of pain.
But who more than he should tell her? And when should he tell her, if not now?
At the end, he collapses by the fourth grave, with Hyottoko's head wrapped away
in more than one bag. Physically, he's not fatigued, but he's mentally and
emotionally drained. The tiredness in his chest seems to weigh him down.
===============================================================================
v.
The trip back to the Aoi-ya passes almost without incident. She sleeps at his
side for most of the trip, only retreating to a more appropriate distance on
their final night. They're in sight of the main road into Kyoto from this
direction, which means they're half a day's walk from Kyoto, at best.
That's the night the worst nightmare he's seen yet strikes her. Later, when
there's time to process beyond the simmer of fury and fragnented, kaleidoscopic
impressions of the night around them, Aoshi will wonder what might have
summoned it. Later, he'll examine every detail of that night -- and the
peaceful nights before it -- and try to find a touchstone or a sign.
But the events resist interpretation.
Everything seems normal: he settles on their campsite and digs a shallow
firepit. She hums as she heats rice -- pulled from a tiny bag he didn't realize
she was carrying, but when he turns to look at her, she only smiles at him. He
sees a gleam of mischief in her eyes and decides not to ask directly.
They eat. They lay out ground blankets. He'll look back on and wonder about the
way Misao chews on her lip for a moment, her thicker blanket still rolled under
one arm. She peers around the camp, shifting her weight uneasily, for another
minute or so before she finally makes her bed a short pace from his.
Whether or not she's comfortable so far from him, she falls asleep quickly.
Aoshi stays awake just long enough to ascertain -- again -- that their campsite
is safe. Everything he sees and hears lulls him into a sense of peace: the moon
rises crystal clear in a dark sky, a sea storm still a few days from land
scents the breezes with salt, the wind rattles too loud through dying grass for
them to be anything but alone.
His dreams are a weak, shadowy blur. They don't make sense, even while he's
dreaming them, and at first he thinks he woke out of irritation at his own
sleeping mind.
Then he hears -- something. He's heard her toss and turn at night before, but
this noise gives him pause. He listens closely, trying to determine just what's
wrong with the sound.
It takes him a moment to recognize it. Her movements are strange. Nonsensical.
She isn't tossing or turning, isn't kicking; instead she seems to be lying
mostly quietly. Lying still. But every now and then, he hears her heartbeat
speed up, and he hears the thud of a limb striking the ground.
Aoshi sits up. At first, between the sea fog hazing over the night sky and the
dull embers of their fire, he can barely make out what she's doing, nevermind
her face. But he doesn't need much light. His eyes adjust.
The sound that accompanies her increased heartrate is her arm, he realizes. For
some reason, she's moved one arm above her head, and when her heartbeat speeds
up, she lifts it, then lets it fall.
"Misao," he says, dropping into a crouch as far from her as he can while still
able to reach. He presses his hand against her shoulder. But he can't bring
himself to shake her, can't even tighten his grip. He nudges her, gently, and
keeps nudging when she doesn't respond.
It takes a few repetitions of her name for her to finally hear him and wake.
Her eyes snap open, perfect blue even when seen with so little light.
The innocence of her expression clashes with the blood that drips from her
lower lip. He watches a drop fall, stares at the ragged shred she's torn her
lip to, and recalls the wicked, mischievous smile of earlier that night. The
contrast makes him feel ill.
A shudder rolls through her. She bows her head. Flyaway locks hide her mouth
and most of an eye from him, but there's no mistaking the way her hands tremble
when she brings them to her face. She shakes her head, after that, shakes her
head while she digs the heels of her hands into her eyes.
There's no shaking away nightmares like this one. No shaking away memories like
tonight's.
He doesn't tell her so. Instead, he releases her shoulder and settles in a
little closer to her. Her body heat travels the gap between them, carried by
the way she shivers, even now.
Gradually, her hands stop trembling. The shivers slow and then cease
altogether.
"I'm better now," she says.
He only looks down at her, still faintly unnerved by her mouth.
She looks back up at him, and for an instant, she gives him a smile. But the
smile vanishes as she looks away.
For a few moments, the only sound is of the wind through the grass. For reasons
of her own, she doesn't say anything. And he doesn't trust himself to speak.
The questions crowd his mouth; some leading, some direct.
"You're not asking what it was about," she says, at last. "You've never asked
what they were about."
She seems to be waiting for some sort of reply. He almost can't find one, but
he eventually settles on, "I haven't."
"It's so obvious by now," she says. "You have to... have to have guessed. But
you've never said anything about it. You and Okon. You've never said anything
at all!"
He looks down at her again. This time, when she looks back up at him, she seems
more herself. Obviously tired and with a flaring temper, but still Misao.
"Why?"
The word comes out ragged, as if she's forced it out of her throat. She's not
just asking why he's never said anything, but why she has to remember it. Why
it happened at all.
He can only answer one of those 'whys.' "Forcing you to explain would only have
hurt you."
Misao nods. Her expression is faintly distant, a little troubled; she's still
processing what he meant. "Like when that old woman at the inn...?"
"Aa."
She's quiet a long moment. Aoshi uses that moment to listen for changes in the
night around them, but the only thing new is the too-quick beat of her heart.
"Aoshi-sama, does talking about it really make things any easier?"
He has no immediate answer for that. It helps some. It's never helped all. He's
listened to the stories of more than a few Oniwaban agents. Some walked away a
little lighter. Others didn't. Okon in particular seemed to draw her strength
from not talking about it.
"It varies," he tells Misao, and hates that he's saying this, hates that he's
said it to others. Hates that he's saying it to Misao, who should never have
learned any of this.
"So sometimes it does, and sometimes it doesn't?" At his nod, she looks away a
moment, chewing on her lip again. "Can you ever tell? Whether it will help or
not?"
"Nothing certain." He pauses. "Misao. When you do, start slowly. Keep an exit."
She nods. "Give myself time to see if I need to stop?"
"Aa."
Despite how close he's crouching, the night seems to stretch out between them.
Wind wispers through the grass. Somewhere a creek burbles. The sea breeze plays
with Misao's blankets.
She looks up at him, still chewing on her lip. He wants to tell her to stop.
She's already torn it enough for one night.
"I've never told anyone what happened. Not even Omasu or Okon, and they both --
" She stops, shakes her head.
"They both?"
"I went home right after. He'd cut me so badly that I needed a week just to be
able to leave. When I got home, I was still limping."
"Omasu and Okon noticed?"
Misao nods again. She swallows, looks away. "They knew. I mean, it's pretty
obvious, I guess. They just didn't ask, and I never said it, and -- and I'm so
tired of hiding from it. I've been trying so hard to act like it never
happened, but."
He doesn't say anything. Even now, he can't ask. Can't instruct her to tell
him. It all has to go at her pace. So rather than reply, he reaches for her. He
keeps his movements slow, visible, watching for a flinch, for any sign of fear,
of further distress.
But she lets him touch her. She puts a small hand over his own and rests that
way.
"Aoshi-sama, can you hear it? I don't want --" She stops, looking up at him a
little confusedly, then looks down. "It's not that I don't think you -- I --"
"I can hear it."
She closes her eyes. "I was fourteen."
The words fall from her mouth, hang tonelessly in the air. The hearing is like
knives, regarldess. From the innkeep's comments, he had guessed that much.
Despite his suppositions, how long he's been making them, the confirmation
burns as much as conjecture did.
"And pretty stupid, I guess. Maybe if i'd been more on guard, or left
sooner..." She stops, laughing at herself. It's not a happy laugh. "I know
Omasu and Okon would say it wasn't my fault, but if I hadn't been there at all-
-!"
How many times has he heard that regret? If I just hadn't been there. He says
nothing. What is there to say, but what she already knows?
"I met him in the minshuku. He had dinner with the rest of us guests." She
pauses for another long moment. "The doctor's son. Tanaka Tadashi."
He'd already wanted to kill that doctor. Now, though, he takes the doctor's
attempt at subtle threats, combines it with the news that it was his son, and
he wants them both dead so badly that his hands ache.
He relaxes his other hand from the fist it had curled into, ignores the sting
of half-moon cuts in the meat of his hand and the red that follows after. He
shifts his gaze from the blood that's dried on the edge of her mouth, the
ragged tangle she's chewed her lip to.
She looks up at him, uncertain.
Between the pressing need to murder two men and his own prohibition on asking,
once more, he can say nothing. Instead, he tugs his hand away, gently, then
moves to rest it against her shoulder.
She leans into his touch, waits a moment, and then begins to speak again.
Aoshi listens, forcing himself to say nothing. But every word that leaves her
bloodied lips only leaves him aching more and more for murder.
===============================================================================
I watched you walkin' home from school
Your friends on the old playgrounds
You never looked so down
--The Wallflowers, "Josephine"
***** but where at last the sea's line is the sky's *****
Chapter Notes
     WARNING: Explicit, graphic depiction of the rape of a fourteen year
     old minor, accompanied by period-appropriate misogyny.
His name is Tanaka Tadashi.
He's heavy-set, not outright fat, exactly. He looks more like he builds muscle
every now and then, but then lets himself go. Taller than she is, too, but lots
of people are taller than she is.
She notices both details, not that they matter. What matters is the way he
follows her around the room without ever leaving his seat. What matters is the
questions: what's your name? Where are you going? How old are you? Surely your
family sent someone to welcome you? Why are you travelling alone?
So what matters is that for tonight, for here, she's visiting her very busy,
very protective elder brother in Tokyo. She smiles away any questions that dig
deeper; no-one needs to know that the man she seeks is an onmitsu, is probably
keeping his ears to the ground.
The fourth time he asks how old she is, Misao huffs a little and snaps, "You
keep asking that. I'm starting to feel about ninety-three!"
That pulls startled, indulgent laughter from the okami.
But rather than laugh a little and then back off, as etiquette would require,
Tanaka's eyes narrow. He watches her a moment, suddenly and silently angry, and
then turns his gaze on one of the other travellers, a heavily pregant woman who
shrinks into her husband's shadow at Tanaka's regard.
Misao sighs in relief, thinking he's lost interest.
But once she starts talking to the okami about the state of the road into
Tokyo, he cuts in. It's not even a smooth cut.
"There's a garden on this side of town," he says, and his face is the kind of
mask people wear when they try to hide their anger — badly.
She pretends she doesn't hear him. The okami looks nervously to him a few
times, but Misao staunchly refuses to respond to that kind of stupidity.
"Would you like to see it?"
She looks over at him, having nearly forgotten he even said anything.
He seems to realize she'd been ignoring him, so he prompts her: "The garden?"
"No." She can't keep the Now will you leave me alone? out of her voice. She
almost feels sorry for him, when he recoils, clearly startled at being rejected
so plainly.
 
===============================================================================
"I thought, for a while, that he might have been different, later, if I hadn't
been rude."
Aoshi doesn't voice his doubt of that fact. He's seen very little that could
sway such men from their chosen courses.
"I found out later, from the midwife, that he really is different if you're
nice to him at first." She laughs mirthlessly. "She says he's worse. I couldn't
imagine how, but she says the women who... agreed with him usually just ended
up dying."
 
===============================================================================
For a civilian, he's good at knots. She has to fight down panic, salty in the
back of her throat, when she realizes that she can't seem to unknot her obi
from around her wrists. Not from this angle.
What kind of ninja is she, that she's stuck here?
Tanaka's hands begin to tug on her shorts. All thoughts of how to stay alive
fly right out of her head. Somewhere inside her, beneath the fire in her skull,
she's recoiling. She's only barely aware that he's still talking.
That's when she begins to argue with him: That's not true. But I'm not. I don't
know what you're talking about. Let me go.
His fingers press against one of her thighs to make her move that leg. She can
feel his skin against hers. Her entire body jerks: she kicks out, trying to
push him back, even while she tries to lift herself off the ground without
using her hands. But he forces her legs open anyway, knees apart, and the crack
of her shoulder dislocating itself echoes through the garden.
She only has a moment to register cold metal against her leg before the knife
plunges down. It's quick, at least. There's no transition; one moment, the
knife presses against her skin. The next, she can feel the steel in the meat of
her thigh.
"You think you can fight back?" He spits in her face, then grips the handle of
her knife.
He drags it down. Slowly.
She can't stop the scream.
The world above her goes blurry from trying not to cry. Her eyes sting, but
that's nothing compared to the fire of her leg. The cut hurts so badly that she
feels dizzy and wants to throw up again.
He tosses the knife away like it's trash, then loosens the wrappings on her
other leg. He uses another of her knives to stake it down and that makes her
want to cry just as much as everything else tonight has.
"I knew you'd cooperate eventually," he says. "You all do."
This isn't cooperating, she wants to tell him. This is surviving.
 
===============================================================================
"He stopped moving for a while, once he had my bindings off. He was judging me.
Only he wouldn't shut up," Misao says. Her voice has gone hoarse.
The wetness in her eyes leaves him reeling. He almost cannot think past the
need to fix this somehow, but he knows too well that there is no fixing it. He
would turn back time if he only could.
Aoshi doesn't ask what Tanaka said. If she wants him to know, if she even
remembers any details, she'll tell him.
 
===============================================================================
The fog wanders through the garden, slinking low and silvery in the minutes or
hours that crawl by. She looks up at it, dimly aware that she's so close she
could reach after it; it leaves droplets of moisture on her skin, makes her
feel clammy.
Or is that his sweat? She's not sure.
The rocking tide in her head recedes just enough for her to think. The ache
between her legs dims to a dull throb. She can ignore it if she focuses on
something else, like the burning pulse of blood from her thigh.
She has to concentrate in order to roll onto her side. And once she's moved
that much, she has to lie still and think very hard about her breathing. She
can't breathe too fast, or she'll strangle herself. She can't breathe too slow,
or she'll pass out. She has to breathe at just the right tempo to keep the pain
manageable.
She presses her palms to the ground and pushes herself to her feet. It's
agonizingly slow. The muscles in her legs scream in protest, while the burn of
the shoulder she dislocated makes her dizzy. She almost loses her balance as
she tries to stand. Even when she's up, she nearly falls right back down.
She has to move forward now, while she still can. If she stays still too long
she'll pass out. If she falls, she knows she'll never be able to make herself
get back up.
The gate doesn't make a sound as she pushes her good shoulder against it. It
doesn't even click when she closes it.
She looks back exactly once. Her blood leaves bright spots, turned from red to
gray by the darkness.
 
===============================================================================
His hand presses between her thighs. She twitches, trying to dodge his touch
but too weighted to move, and with nowhere to move to. He slides her open,
forces one of his fingers into her.
Her breath hisses through her teeth. Misao bites down hard on her lip to keep
from crying out again. She can't let him have anything else. Can't.
He slides a second finger inside her. Her entire body tenses in response. Too
much else hurts for the pain of it to stand out, but his presence inside her
feels like a balancing act.
The cloud cover lifts, moonlight breaking through the fog for just a few
moments. He watches her, dark-eyed and intense, still talking about how much
she must have longed for this. She watches the garden above them and thinks: I
bet he's never wanted anything in his life.
He moves his hand inside her. He leaves his thumb outside, though, presses it
up against what must be a bundle of nerves. It's a soft touch that hits her so
hard a shudder rolls down her spine. The shiver feels the way trees must when a
strong wind blows them back and forth.
Misao tries to jerk away again. She goes nowhere. She can't get the leverage to
move her hips or even her shoulders. The effort leaves her stinging and dizzy.
She feels blood drip down her thigh, tastes something salt-copper in her mouth.
His hand is almost gentle compared to the knife or the way he kept hitting her.
His thumb never stops circling. But every time she thinks she's figured it out,
gotten numb to it, he finds some new way to move his fingers.
Something hot starts twining itself through every muscle. It's worse low in the
pit of her stomach. Tight, but sinuous. And then the warmth crawls up through
her belly and toward her throat.
He moves one hand to press her down, closer to the ground. Her shoulder pops
again as the joint dislocates even further. She only hears it distantly. Almost
doesn't feel it.
Her stomach flops around. The heat builds. Her throat stings.
This isn't his, wasn't ever meant for him to see. She can't give this to him.
Inside, she tenses around his fingers and the heat breaks in a fever, in a fire
that burns all through her. It's awful, it feels good underneath her skin and
in her bones and that makes her sick to her stomach. Like her blood is boiling
except it doesn't hurt. If it wasn't so wrong, if she didn't hate it and him so
much, if he was someone else, she'd almost —
But she does hate him and she does hate it and she turns her head to gag again.
Her empty stomach squeezes but she barely notices it over the throb of her
thigh, the slow fiery drip of her blood down her skin.
His fingers leave her when the spasms end. She's a little glad of that, at
least.
Then she hears cloth rustle, watches his belt fall to the ground. She has
seconds to think and say no no no but he ignores it. Ignores her. That she
doesn't want it doesn't matter.
"You were so slick," he says, gasping for breath. "You're greedy for it."
"That's not true!"
It's like being stabbed all over again.
Something hot and wet slides down her cheek. She tastes salt. Maybe it's sweat;
she hopes it's sweat.
But he swipes his thumb along her skin, under her eye. His mouth twists. He
jerks his hand, scratching a line down her face where the wetness was.
"You were so eager for it before. What makes you think you can cry now?"
"I'm not crying," she says, and believes it until he scratches her again.
 
===============================================================================
Fog keeps wreathing the streets below. The world is half-hidden from her sight.
The sound of her breathing carries in the mist, echoes strange and hollow.
Everyone is asleep. Nobody heard her scream. This town might as well be empty.
Misao looks down from atop a roof and can't quite remember how she got there.
The throbbing in her head makes it hard to focus. And her shoulder hurts, too,
with the kind of pain that just doesn't shut up no matter how she adjusts the
bad arm with her good one.
She looks at the open window to her room and both her arm and leg flare sharp.
Her mouth tastes tangy and sour and for a moment she's dizzy. It would be
easier to beg the okami to open the minshuku's doors, but if nobody heard her
before —
And she doesn't think she wants anyone to hear. Not anymore.
The world goes gray when she climbs off the roof. She grabs the ledge of her
window with one arm. The fingers of her good hand are the ones to grasp it, but
her body slams into the side of the building, jarring her shoulder. Her head
thumps against the wall and the world rings like a temple bell, dim and hazy.
She makes it three steps into the room from the window.
And then she collapses to her futon. She curls up, winds a blanket between her
legs. She feels blood begin to wet the sheet, feels it and everything else ebb
out.
She shivers as she watches the shadows lengthen, suddenly freezing cold on a
balmy night. But she doesn't have the strength to find another blanket, or even
to lift one if she could look.
The world is still silent, with only her uneven breath to make any noise. The
quiet buzzes around in her head and she feels dizzy again.
 
===============================================================================
The doctor looks down at her. His lips curl into a sort of well-meaning
condescension; his face looks familiar, painfully familiar, and she doesn't
even have the strength to tell him to leave. She's too tired from all the
bleeding — and afraid, too, so afraid that her throat clams up.
"Misao, yes?"
Her 'yes' comes out as a soft whisper.
"An unfortunate name, considering," he says, and she feels her hands clench
into fists. Before she can try to ask him what the hell that's supposed to
mean, he adds, "I'm sure that what you've been through is difficult, but the
leg should make a full recovery. Have you spoken to Atsumi-san about... your
future?"
Her future? She can only stare numbly at him. Part of her is dully surprised to
hear she even has one, that Tanaka's father isn't going to just kill her here,
when she can't move, can't fight back.
"I'm sure if she knows anything definite, she'll be sure to tell you. Now, as
for your recovery. You'll need to rest maybe four more days, and then I'm sure
you'll be ready to be on your way. Really, another week after that could only
help, but I doubt you'll want to stay here much longer."
She nods agreement. She doesn't want to be in this awful town a minute longer
than she has to. She thinks about burning it down when she leaves, but that'd
only kill a lot of people who haven't done anything to her.
"I really do suggest you leave as soon as possible, then." He smiles at her.
Her stomach tries to crawl up her throat. "And I wouldn't bother trying to go
to the police. Woman like you, they'll only think you're lying — about whether
or not you wanted it, if nothing else. And I wouldn't suggest trying to argue
you didn't egg him on."
She tastes bile and the thin soup the midwife helped her sit up to drink. Her
stomach and throat have started to rebel against the soreness that soaked into
the rest of her.
She hadn't planned on going to the police. Now, more than ever, she plans on
killing him the minute she can walk and hold a knife at the same time.
Tanaka-sensei must see that in her face. He goes stiff, looks down at her with
something between alarm and disdain, before he adds, "And if anything should
happen to my son while you're here, I'll tell the police you killed him in an
argument."
Misao opens her mouth to reply. She has no idea what she can even say to that,
except maybe Please I just want to leave or Get out, but she never gets a
chance to say either of those, regardless.
Tanaka-sensei's voice turns soft as he tells her, "You know they'll believe the
town doctor over some insolent whelp who can't even keep her legs covered, much
less closed."
There's no keeping her last meal in her stomach now. It's in her mouth, all of
it, and she gags, nearly choking herself as she starts to throw up before she
can lift herself off her back.
"Have a good afternoon, and I do hope that salve helps the swelling." He smiles
again, steps carefully around her as he leaves.
 
===============================================================================
"I thought about killing them both. Killing the doctor first, so he couldn't —
" She cuts herself off. "I thought really hard about it for days, you know? But
I couldn't. I wanted them dead so badly, and I couldn't kill them."
Calculated murder is not in her nature. Perhaps murder by impulse, killing in
the heat of defending herself or someone else, but no, Aoshi cannot picture her
planning a man's death.
Not the way he is.
Misao seems to sense that he's tensing again. She stops, looking at him. He
relaxes from his crouch and settles in to sit beside her. Once he's settled in,
he forces the rest of himself to relax as well.
That's when she touches him. It's a feather-light brush of her fingers against
his forearm. The touch whispers up, until at last her hand rests on his bicep.
He places his hand over hers, just as she did with him earlier.
"Are you... angry with me?"
"No," he says. He's careful not to say it too quickly, too firmly. He could not
withstand the sight of her wincing away from his voice. Not tonight.
Not ever.
Once again that sensation of wanting her never to fear anything again returns.
 
===============================================================================
For an instant, she thinks she's passed through a torii gate and didn't notice.
Fog drifts through the garden, hiding a flower here, a shrub there, only to
lift at random moments when the wind pushes it.
She paces a right angle along the wall, crouching, watching. Just watching the
fog roll by is mesmerising.
Misao closes her eyes when the wind carries the scent of lilies up to her. They
smell so clean —
She climbs down from the wall and moves through the garden. The high walls and
closed gate make it seem like someone hid it away just for her.
Gravel crunches.
Misao goes stiff, steps into shadow and fog, but it's too late.
"Come to apologize?"
She goes even stiffer at that voice. "Not really," she says.
"But you did come looking for me," he says. "You're all the same."
"I wasn't looking for anybody," she tells him.
He talks right over her. "Even the ones who say no at first always come to see
me. They're all filthy like that."
That leaves her confused. What is he talking about? Is he even talking to her,
anyway?
Misao takes a step away from him. She looks around, a little frantic for an
exit, but the fog's rolled back in. The only way out she can see clearly is the
shut gate.
The shut gate on the other side of him.
And he's still ranting. "...for any man who asks. For any man who shows
interest. Disgusting, wanton creatures..."
She tries to ignore him. Trapped in a small garden with a talkative crazy
person; not anybody's idea of fun. She's got to get out of here before she goes
crazy too.
But the fog has wreathed the walls, hidden away the handholds. She could jump,
but if she can't see and if the fog messes with the way sound carries, she
could hurt herself pretty badly.
"That's, uh, kind of you to say," she tells him because she hasn't been hearing
a word he said, "but I need to go now. Um, really. Now. Early start tomorrow."
That stops him short. He stares at her for a few seconds, like she's the crazy
one. She'd like to remind him that he's the one who spent a minute and a half
ranting to absolutely nobody, but his eyes glint with something she's never
seen before.
Rather than give him a piece of her mind, she shuts her mouth and takes another
step away.
"You weren't listening," he says. He stresses the word listening and she almost
squeaks.
She tries to hide it behind anger. "Of course I wasn't! You were foaming off at
the mouth like a crazy person."
"Can't even pay attention to the things that concern you. Were you thinking
about it? Longing for it? Is that it?"
That only leaves her more confused and more ready to leave. She takes a step to
the side, edging away from him. Can she get past him to get to the gate? After
all, he's clearly crazy. No telling what he'd do if she had to get within reach
of him.
He steps toward her. "You really are all the same. We give you every chance,
but you're never any different."
"Hey, quit lumping me in with people I don't know!"
She takes another step sideways. If she can just put enough distance between
the two of them, she can make it to the gate. She'll just have to move low and
fast, and hope he can't intercept.
The fog behind him lifts; she looks up, checking light and distance, trying to
guess how long it will take. But moonlight and starlight bounce off the fog,
wrap her garden and him in haloes that make everything meaningless.
"Please," she says.
His lip curls.
The next is a blur. He moves quickly for a man so heavy-set. She sees his hand,
fingers splayed and arm outstretched.
Then she sees it a lot closer, when his palm covers one of her eyes.
She brings her hands up to lock around his wrist, but he's thrown weight behind
his push. She realizes that there's no time to slip his grip. The ground and
the fog and the sky stream past; she has to stumble backwards to keep from
falling.
Then the wall hits. The fog flares white for an instant; the stars she can see
in the sky flare into pinpricks of light that dizzy her.
He pulls his hand back.
She's still dizzy, trying to find the breath and balance to move aside, when he
grabs her face in one hand and knocks her head against the wall again.
The world flares; her head throbs so hard her ears ring. The pain makes her
sick to her stomach.
She can't see to breathe, can't breathe to think. Her world narrows to the hand
on her face and the throb of her head —
He shoves again, just as hard as the first two times, and the back of her head
hits the wall.
She gags.
He laughs at her. His humor stops when she bends a little forward and throws up
on his feet.
That makes him backhand her. She feels a knuckle strike her cheek; she turns
with the slap, trying to roll with the strike so she can gain momentum for one
of her own. But she stumbles to the side, ends up on one knee.
She looks up. It's the most she can do; her head hurts too much to let her
stand.
He presses his palms to her shoulders. Pushes, and she falls back.
"Stop," she says, but the word is thick in her mouth, burbles with the gall
from her stomach she's still got in her cheek.
He ignores her. First he takes her gloves. He sees the practice scars — Okon
says there's no way to handle blades without a few cuts to the hand, until you
learn better. She knows he sees them because he traces one finger along a few.
She tries to push his hand away, but he just starts to rant again. Then he
takes her knives. Even once he has them, he doesn't shut up.
He talks too fast for her to keep up with all of it and the way everything
spins, too. But she catches a few words: filthy tease, he says while he unknots
her obi.
"You wanted this," he tells her once he has the obi in one fist.
He hits her in the face with the other fist. It's not even a punch. He just
grabs her forehead and slams her already throbbing head into the ground again.
"You asked me for this with how you dress," he says, pushing her wrists
together, above her head, and knots the obi there. "With the way you talk."
That's when her eyes start to burn. She doesn't want to cry, doesn't want to
give him that much. But she knows what he wants. And she's beginning to think
she's not going to get out of it.
He uses one of her knives to cut away the bandages around her chest. He cuts
them off strap by strap. He's taking his time, taking the time to tug on each
bandage he cuts, unravelling the bindings.
He digs his fingers into the fabric and pulls. She looks up at him, catches the
hint of satisfaction as he does so. He tosses the fabric away like it doesn't
matter, now that he's torn it to shreds.
Distantly, above the hum and whine of the throb in her head, she wonders what
he'll do when he's torn her to shreds. Once he has everything he wants, she
won't matter. How will he get rid of the body?
===============================================================================
But where at last the sea's line is the sky's
And truth and hope one sunlight in your eyes
—Algernon C. Swinburne, "In The Bay"
***** disconnected my heart *****
i.
It takes Aoshi a few moments to put the fragments of the story she has told him
— very little of it chronological, all of it sequenced in a way that makes
little sense to him but is perfectly Misao — into some semblance of order. He
does not take his hands from her shoulder while he does so; to retreat, he
suspects, would be a mistake.
He almost wishes he had been willing to ask questions during her telling. But
that would have served only to hurt her or slow her thinking. Better that he
have to piece it all together now.
She says nothing while he thinks. She even keeps her breaths quiet; the
Oniwaban train for silence first. Eventually, she begins to tremble. At first
he thinks it might be a reaction to what she's had to relive, but she locks her
jaw and looks down.
"Misao," he says, quietly, as gently as as he can without sounding false. Her
head jerks up in response. Once again he thinks of a dog having its leash
tugged. He banishes the image; he can't afford that thought just now. "You were
not at fault for this."
At that, she relaxes into him. Not by much, but enough for him to know she's
more at ease. The way she relaxes unsettles him. She had to have known it
wasn't her fault. Had she been unable to believe it until someone else agreed?
Did she need to hear him admit it? Or had she somehow not known? He hates that
third possibility and isn't sure what he thinks of the other two.
He lets her lean against him, and says nothing further. He's tempted to smooth
a hand along her braid, tempted to touch her, but he's still not sure she won't
find it intrusive or frightening. He doesn't know how to ask.
That realization spurs another, and another. Stray thoughts and fragments of
knowledge weave themselves together. It all crystallizes into the beginning of
a plan. A set of actions, to be carried out on as swift a schedule as he can
manage.
Tanaka Tadashi cannot be allowed to live. His father needs to die first, in
order to prevent police involvement. Tokyo has plenty of places to dispose of
bodies. Someone in the town will have access to a wagon; it would be a simple
matter to acquire it for his own use.
What wages Takeda Kanryuu paid him are still in an Oniwaban look-out just
outside Tokyo. The money would help fund a reformation of the Oniwabanshuu. A
serviceable pretext for the return, should Okina ask. Should Misao ask, he'll
simply tell her as much of the truth as she'll want to hear.
He needs to return to that village.
Stray dogs. Such a place must have plenty of stray dogs; he might not even need
to bother with a wagon.
"Aoshi-sama?"
His gaze sharpens on Misao.
"You're planning something," she says.
Rather than deny it, he replies, "Aa."
She's quiet a moment. He lets the silence stretch between them. The sea breezes
ruffle her mussed hair again. A few dark strands have flown away from her
braid, tickle her lower lip. Her mouth has suffered enough abuse for the night;
he has to resist the temptation to push them away.
And then she looks up at him. She unclasps her braid, then gathers the fly away
strands and begins to re-braid her hair in efficient little tugs.
"I want to help."
Aoshi can only watch her closely. If she can read him well enough to know that
he's planning, can she guess what he plans? Could she object to the notion of
killing Tanaka?
"Misao. I intend to kill him," he says. Best to make sure she knows what he
intends. If she cannot bear to see Tanaka die, then she will not have to watch.
Misao looks back up at him. She's calmer now, since telling her story. She's
still upset, a little shaky from living it again, but she's not as tense.
"I know," she says, and Aoshi has found another ten thousand reasons to hate
Tanaka Tadashi.
===============================================================================
 
ii.
The night slides by. He watches it go. They enter Kyoto the next morning.
Days pass.
He buries his men again, this time properly, in another almost-abandoned
outpost. Shiro and Kuro place headstones and Okina traces their names with
charcoal. Moments later, Omasu follows Okina's painstaking, angular characters
with a pick and a chisel.
Misao and Okon leave flowers and incense.
Omasu and Kuro tell stories. Not long ones — they cannot afford to linger — but
quick, poignant remembrances of the men they've lost. How Hannya had always
been a point of calm wherever he was, and Hyottoko had an infectious laugh.
Shikijou had an entirely new perspective on knots; Beshimi absentmindedly
picked up sharp things wherever he went, never really noticing who owned them.
Aoshi watches it all, and says nothing. He burns every instant into his memory,
so he can revisit it later. But he's buried them once; burying them again is
not really for his sake.
He's not burying them to sublimate his own grief or guilt.
When it's done, before they go, he runs his thumb along the faces of the
stones. They have flowers now. It's time to let them rest.
===============================================================================
 
iii.
That night he sleeps alone in his room. He feels better, more at peace with the
deaths that weighed so heavily on him. They will always be a weight; his men
will always be something missing. But he can move, he can breathe, he can live
with pieces missing.
He has nightmares regardless.
Misao was a regular fixture in them even before she shared her story. Hearing
the details only increases the level of detail in the dreams. He sees a garden,
a man of particular build, her own knife flashing bright against her skin.
He wakes seeing her blood, dimmed by fogged-over light, and hearing her scream
as Tanaka jerks her arm out of joint. He gasps for breath, then forces a few
meditative techniques to calm himself.
When he can breathe freely, he rolls out of bed and crosses to his desk. There,
he pens a few letters. Nothing incriminating. Just calling in favors owed to
him or Takeda, offering a few non-monetary bribes where favors won't suffice.
He addresses each letter, then sets them all in a stack.
===============================================================================
 
iv.
The next morning, he hands each thin strand of paper to Kuro to post. Kuro
accepts the stack with both hands. He smiles, but says nothing.
He turns to see Misao standing on the stairs. She's wearing her civilian
clothes. Her gaze flicks from the letters in Kuro's hand to his face.
He can see in her eyes, in the way she parts her lips, that she knows. Or she's
guessed. He draws in a breath, then nods to Kuro and heads outside. If she
asks, he'll tell her. But best if she doesn't ask here.
Misao follows. She shadows him as he crosses the street, steps into an alley to
face him. A passing jinrikisha provides cover for their conversation, its
wheels and runner loud in the street.
"Were those about…?"
"Aa. Preparation."
She tilts her head, studying him, or perhaps trying to figure out what he
means. It reminds him again that she has never killed a man.
So he explains. "It will prevent unwanted attention."
Misao nods.
===============================================================================
 
v.
That night he packs his bag again. He leaves Okina a coded message — four words
on thin rice paper, left in the Aoi-ya's business office — and knocks once on
Misao's door.
"Yes?"
"Misao."
He watches her gaze drift to the bag in his hand, the kodachi over his
shoulder. She smiles, then scurries back into her room. She closes the door; he
hears the soft rustle of fabric as she packs.
She emerges carrying a thick cloak and a bag of her own. Misao smiles at him in
the moonlight and he spares a moment to hate himself as well as Tanaka.
Whose fault is it that she wants to help him kill? Tanaka's, who hurt her badly
enough that it seems an appropriate response?
Or his, since he's the one providing the opportunity?
Once they've left the Aoi-ya, she doesn't leave him much time for guilt.
Instead, Misao's smile widens.
"So where are we headed first?"
"Yokohama."
At his reply, she pulls the hood of the cloak down over her face. It's blue and
white, hides her figure while the edge pattern draws the eye to the angle of
her cheekbones and delicate jaw. Eye-catching. Fortunately, stealth is not high
on his list of concerns.
Only once they've reached the harbor behind does Aoshi say, "All replies will
go to a Tokyo outpost."
"Then why not go by — oh, you're giving the post time to deliver the letters?"
"No." He does not explain himself. She'll see soon enough.
===============================================================================
 
vi.
There's a boat ride, quick and essentially painless. In daylight hours, they
stray to the upper decks. Misao watches the water glide smoothly past, waves
and wake a riot of black and blue and green, sunlight sparkling white amid the
wave caps. Aoshi watches Misao and the other travelers — many of whom are
foreign, finally allowed outside of the Kannai in Yokohama — and retreads his
plans.
At night, Misao sleeps peacefully. When he wakes, he sees no sign that she has
returned to the fitful sleep of the summer and fall.
His nightmares have not vanished. He knows they never will. But they're easier
to forget in the morning sun, chased away by his own sense of purpose and
Misao's easy smile.
===============================================================================
 
vii.
The train from Yokohama does not arrive in Tokyo until after the sun has set.
They wend their way from the docks to Rakuninmura, and from there to the
outpost. Aoshi shifts his grip on the no-dachi sheath, readying himself for
trouble. Misao picks up on the unspoken cue and stays near him, her arms
loosely crossed and her hands on her wrists.
But even the most desperate of human vermin must see that they will not be easy
victims -- will not be victims at all. They leave the city and make their way
to the overlook, the outpost, without encountering anyone.
Misao pokes around the shack. For all he can tell, she's quietly noting the
differences between what had been a combat-ready outpost and the inactive ones
she's likely encountered. She could just be curious about her surroundings. He
remembers Hannya and Beshimi having to coax or haul her out of crawlspaces and
bolt-holes when she was younger. Her habit of exploring new places, reachable
only to children and short people, and deciding to stay there at inopportune
times had amused Hannya and exasperated Beshimi.
He heads outside, to the pigeon coops. A low-level member of the local yakuza
tends the pigeons for a stipend; he hasn't been slacking, but Aoshi makes a
mental note to relocate and retrain the birds and burn the outpost to the
ground when they've finished.
He hears the door open and Misao steps through. Her movements are quick and
darting. She steps neatly over a tripwire and tilts her head at him. Her bangs
flutter beneath her cloak's hood.
"When this is all over, will we be going back the way we came, or just walk?"
Aoshi raises an eyebrow. "You want to stop in Tokyo?"
"And see Kaoru-san? Sure, why not?" Her mouth curves before she adds, a little
uncertainly, "If it's not too much trouble."
Himura will know, he doesn't say. Himura will see it somehow — in the way he
carries his no-dachi, in Misao's eyes or his, in the way they walk. Will see
and know that he's killed again, and feels no guilt. And Aoshi will have to
endure the weight of an uncomfortable friendship and Himura's judging gaze.
On the other hand, where better to lie low after a murder than the dilapidated
dojo of a woman known locally for honorable dealing and whose school is known
for non-lethality?
"If you wish," he says.
===============================================================================
 
viii.
Aoshi doesn't read the waiting messages until Misao has curled into a corner to
sleep. Wary of waking her, he lights a single candle to do so. He's never
needed much light, not even to read.
He burns two of the letters. The last, he crumples in his fist before burning.
He replies to none.
While she sleeps, he leaves the overlook and heads into Tokyo. On the ragged
edge of town, near Rakuninmura, he ducks into a gambling hall. The marks ignore
him, too absorbed in trying to escape their debts using the same tool that got
them into debt. The dice-rollers, enforcers, pushers all stare after him
warily. Aoshi shifts the weight of his kodachi on his shoulder and ignores them
all.
The marks are utterly irrelevant. He might pity them, if they were worth even
that much notice. The Yakuza thugs are a consideration, but a minor one.
"Move," he tells two guards standing on either side of a curtain.
They don't argue. They simply stand aside.
The curtain hides a short passage to a back room, where the local boss sits
with a few of his more direct underlings. Aoshi notes a pair of women with eyes
dulled by exhaustion and a boy who looks like he's had any hope of dignity
beaten thoroughly out of him.
How many faces like that will he see if he returns to the village where Misao
was assaulted and actually looks for the signs? (That she herself could have
worn such an expression is inconceivable... until he recalls the sudden
meekness when confronted by the town doctor.)
"Shinomori," the local boss says, inclining his head.
Aoshi nods.
Rather than invite him to sit — not that Aoshi would if asked — the boss says,
"Can't see what you want from us since Takeda went down. Not sure what you have
to offer, either."
So he still has the stature in Tokyo's cess pit shadow-world to scare the dumb
muscle, but not enough to win some courtesy from their boss? Interesting.
"Invent a debt," he says.
"I'll get right on that." The boss raises an eyebrow. His nose is thick,
bulbous, and yet squashed from being broken five too many times. This one rose
to power from the street. "As soon as you tell me what you have to trade for
it. Is the infamous Oniwabanshuu going to owe the Yakuza a favor?"
"You'll get my forbearance."
The eyebrow climbs higher. "Your forbearance?"
"Invent the debt or I dismantle your operation." He looks around the room, at
the thugs and under-bosses, and adds, "Piece by piece."
Apparently his activities after Takeda's arrest and the deaths of his men have
been remarked upon, have made their way into the mix of rumor, hearsay, and
baldfaced lie that makes up the underworld's information pool. The boss goes
pale. It doesn't take a trained spy to see the thoughts flickering through his
head: this one is crazy enough to do it.
As little as he likes using that reputation, he doesn't correct the impression.
So long as the Yakuza cooperates, he has no reason to care what they think of
him. The results are what matter. He now has a failsafe, in case he should be
discovered or Misao threatened.
===============================================================================
 
ix.
They time their arrival in the tiny farming town until after sundown and the
dinner hour. Aoshi watches from the shadows as Misao slips inside the little
minshuku, waits until she flings open a window and leans out. She takes a deep
breath of the freezing night air, but otherwise betrays no surprise when he
makes his way to the ledge.
Instead, she smiles.
Once within, he lays out his plan: remove the doctor first. Permit the
opportunity for any living victim to press charges against Tanaka Tadashi. When
that inevitably fails, eliminate Tanaka.
"You're... sure the police won't pay any attention?"
"Aa."
"But there are police like Saitou and that sword-hunter guy. The police might
care, right? And won't it look suspicious if some guy I bring a complaint
against dies?"
That takes him aback. Had she expected to be the one to press charges?
"Misao. Do you... not seek his death?"
She curls her knees to her chest and looks at him in silence for a long moment.
At last, she says, "I don't know. He... he'll never stop unless someone makes
him. So he deserves to die, right? Or at least go to prison for a long time."
Aoshi does not say how unlikely it is that Tanaka will be imprisoned But she
must read it in his expression, because she closes her eyes.
"Stupid, isn't it? To hope that maybe the police will do their jobs and you
won't have to --" She opens her eyes, looks up at him. "It shouldn't be you. I
know you're planning on being the one, but I'm the one who -- it shouldn't be
you."
"It should," he tells her. He would kill again, kill a thousand times without
remorse, so long as it meant she was not betrayed by a justice she trusted and
left with only one option.
"Why?"
Who better than he, to kill on behalf of the Oniwabanshuu?
Aoshi says nothing. But he looks at his hands for a moment. When he looks back
at her, he sees the beginning of understanding.
===============================================================================
I've disconnected my heart
And cut myself on the wires
—The Wallflowers, "Josephine"
***** won't you come and help me with these cuts of mine *****
i.
After that, Misao does not question that it should be him. They discuss other
matters — or, rather, Misao mentions other things, small, useful details about
the townsfolk and the town's current disposition interspersed with the
scattered, sunlit recollections and impulses that comprise her thinking.
When she finally sleeps, Aoshi makes his way to the window to take in the
town's full layout. He has to stop moving several times and stand completely
still, once holding his breath, to keep from waking her. He closes the window
shutter in silence and waits, but doesn't hear her stir.
It's not a large town. Its buildings all cluster close together, making his
attempt to navigate it from above easier. He stops, briefly, on the wall
sheltering what appears to be a dormant garden. He sees a gate and a myriad of
brown plants, and though he does not know, he can guess. He moves on,
identifying landmarks, bolt holes, assets.
He catalogs locations. Long, long after moon-rise — when just a few scant hours
of night remain — he returns to the minshuku. It's an easy climb, would be even
for someone of Misao's height, even if she had been injured. In fact, he finds
it entirely unsurprising that she would have chosen the climb in response to
her injuries. Though the Edo Castle cell never taught her paranoia, onmitsu
reflexes ingrain far easier.
She wakes when he slides open the shutter. He watches her reach for her weapons
in a long, smooth movement, but then she tilts her head and listens.
"Aoshi-sama?"
"Aa."
"I hate it here," she says, as if that explains everything. Perhaps it does.
"Aa."
She looks up to give him a sleepy smile — in the dim light, he receives a faint
impression of heavy-lidded eyes and a sweet, gentle curve of her mouth — and
says, softly, "Come to bed."
Come to bed. Not Will you sleep?, not a suggestion that he retire to his own
bed, not a comment on how late it is. An invitation? Or simply a symptom of
exhaustion?
"Misao?"
"It's easier when I'm not alone." She pauses to yawn, then adds, "You have
nightmares when you're alone."
He does. He knows he does. Aoshi nods his understanding, but she doesn't seem
to see it, or is perhaps too tired to read him the way she usually does.
"Please," she says, and shifts on the futon, turning her back to him but
leaving a space. And then she's asleep again, breath deep and even, heartbeat
slow.
She probably won't remember asking in the morning. Or she might. Aoshi unlaces
his boots, shrugs out of his gi but leaves the under shirt on, and crawls into
bed.
Beside him, Misao stirs once, then sighs and goes still.
===============================================================================
ii.
Aoshi wakes just before dawn to realize he has turned over in his sleep, nearly
encircling Misao in his arms. She still has her back to him. He doesn't
remember moving, doesn't recall if he woke in the night or not.
The same instinct that has him watching crowds, looking into shadows, avoiding
alcohol and opium and the beds of others whispers that he has slept too
heavily. He slept like an idiot, like a dead man.
Slowly, he disentangles himself from her. Despite the care he takes, Misao
startles awake immediately. She flushes when she sees him, but she doesn't seem
scared or displeased. Her mouth curls into a sleepy, contented smile.
"You stayed by me."
He arches a brow, then smooths away the expression and says, "You hate it
here."
She knows him well enough to know he is neither merely quoting her words back
to her nor expressing solely his own sentiments. Her eyes widen in
understanding.
Aoshi rises, shrugging into his gi and re-tying his obi. They'll speak of this
later. For now, he has Tanaka Tadashi and his doctor father to take care of.
He'll spend today and tomorrow shadowing them. He knows the town's potential
bolt holes. Now to learn where these particular rats will run.
"I'll return by sundown," he tells her. "Move about the town as you wish."
"Where will you be?"
"Working," he says.
Misao looks away. He goes, and if she looks back to him, he does not see it
before he closes the window shutter.
===============================================================================
iii.
The town seems no more lively during the day than it had the night before, and
even more dead than it had on his last visit. The dusty streets had been golden
brown in summer's lazy sunlight. Today, under a sky that threatens snow, the
town looks gray. Bleak and worn, every building ramshackle and every face tired
or old.
Only a few people trade goods in the streets. Aoshi notes that certain women –
a greater number than he'd expected; does Tanaka Tadashi see this town as some
private hunting ground? – seem reluctant to stir far from their homes and do
not do so alone. Even a few of the women who do wander more than a few houses
away look constantly over their shoulders.
Knowing what happened to Misao is like having the key to a cipher. The town's
sleepy, watchful air makes sense now.
Aoshi wanders until mid-day, watching and listening. At mid-day he searches out
the town's physicians.
And finds that Tanaka Ichiro, yes, the father of Tanaka Tadashi, such a nice
boy – said without feeling, as if by rote – is the only doctor. There's a
midwife, Atsumi-san.
He takes his leave, caring only distantly that Tanaka-sensei has been pushing
to be the one to deliver the town's next births, few as those will be. He'll
kill Tanaka Tadashi, but he's not doing it to protect some tiny farming village
two days walk from Tokyo. He's correcting a man who harmed Misao, who will only
continue to harm others, in the only way he can.
In the end, this place is lucky he doesn't burn every house to the ground. Two
years ago, someone heard Misao scream and chose not to act. Condemned a
fourteen year old girl to –
He unclenches his fist and ducks into an alley. He takes several deep, slow
breaths. It helps the tightness in his chest.
Until he notices the other man. His build is as Misao described: heavy-set, but
with the random blend of fat and muscle that hints at intermittent labor. His
jawline and brow look like Tanaka Ichiro's, but the resemblance is stronger in
the way he stands.
"Tanaka Tadashi," he says.
The Tanaka boy smirks at him. The expression makes him look older, as if he's
in his early twenties, perhaps Takani Megumi's age. "I've seen you around
here."
Aoshi says nothing.
"With that slut from out of town. The short, skinny one. You know who I'm
talking about."
Every muscle in his body tenses. His hands curl into fists again, so tight his
nails dig into his gloves. But Aoshi forces himself not to move. If he rises to
the Tanaka boy's bait, the fool will only escalate matters. And Aoshi knows
what he will do if that happens.
He tries to keep his tone neutral. "Slut?"
"Oh, did she tell you she was a virgin? She's about the size to pass for one,
isn't she?" A pause and an evaluating glance. "Well that's a grim look,
stranger. Be reasonable."
"Reasonable?"
Tanaka's tone is jovial, as if this is a perfectly normal conversation. That
may be the most unsettling part of this encounter. "You've seen what she wears.
I understand you're fond of her, but it's not like she has any honor left to
defend."
And whose fault is that? No. Remember the plan. Keep to the plan. Do not strike
out, no matter how much he needs a broken jaw. Aoshi imagines the hit
nonetheless, in such detail it could be a fantasy: moving forward too quickly
to be predicted, his fist whistling through the air, impact, the feeling of
Tanaka's jaw shattering at his touch.
"You're using how she dresses as a defense?"
"You know, I don't think I like how this is going." Tanaka makes an odd,
furtive motion with his right hand. "Try and see things from my side, huh? She
came to me. I might have been a little rough, but just because she regretted it
in the morning, she told you I assaulted her or who knows what."
A knife. That furtive motion was him reaching for a knife.
Aoshi shakes his head. "No."
The knife glints in the air as Tanaka charges. Aoshi hears the words She wanted
it, but he's already in motion. It's simple, easy, instinctive to dodge the
blade and catch Tanaka by the arm, at hand and elbow. He grinds the bones of
the other man's wrist against each other and plucks the knife from the air as
it falls.
It is possible to perform the Kaiten Kenbu with a tanto, but Aoshi doesn't
bother. He simply whirls in place, letting momentum carry his knife-hand toward
Tanaka's throat. The point slides in easily, burying two inches of folded steel
into the soft meat of Tanaka's neck. After a moment, Aoshi jerks it out.
Tanaka slumps, eyes wide. He wheezes, trying to force air into or out of his
lungs. It whistles past the hole the dagger made.
Aoshi shifts his grip on the tanto. He plants it in Tanaka's throat again, this
time uses it to make shallow cuts. He's only dimly aware of what he's doing,
cognizant mostly of the need for all noise coming from Tanaka Tadashi's mouth
to stop. He peels flaps of skin back, exposing the filthy windpipe that won't
stop trying to supply air. He cuts the skin away, tosses it somewhere into the
alley.
The knife flashes down. Once. Twice. Again. Aoshi digs his fingers into the
windpipe, removes it in chunks that he drops in the dust. Bloody gobbets of
skin and fat cling to his fingers, burrow under his nails.
When Tanaka's throat looks like a flayed ruin shredded by wild dogs – skin
splayed and the spokes of his spine visible – and he does not hear the drip of
blood from the corpse, Aoshi stops. He realizes his hands are shaking.
Then he closes his eyes. He'd had a plan. It had been a good one. Now he has to
deal with a body and he isn't certain of where Tanaka Ichiro lives.
===============================================================================
iv.
In the end, he stores Tanaka Tadashi's body in one of the bolt holes he found
last night. The sky's steel gray hue has hardened, has sharpened, and Aoshi
tastes stinging, burning cold just a few seconds before the first flake falls.
He watches the white flurries for a few moments, considering. Then he empties
his canteen over the largest of the bloodstains on the ground, swirls the mud
around with his boot. It's poor camouflage, but the air all but hisses a
promise of ice. Snow will cover the rest; he'll simply have to make sure Misao
is out of sight before it melts.
He pauses in the minshuku's bathhouse to scrub the evidence from his face and
hands. His fingerless gloves got so thoroughly soaked in blood that he has to
peel them away. They leave rust-brown streaks on his arms and palms; he still
has scraps of flesh under his fingernails.
Aoshi closes his eyes once more. He feels no guilt at the murder; he has long
come to terms with the idea of killing again. But to do so by reflex and follow
it up with some unthinking fit of passion?
It feels uncomfortably like backsliding.
He has just reached their floor when he realizes Misao isn't in their room. He
turns around in the staircase and heads back downstairs, stopping at each floor
to listen for Misao's heartbeat. When he doesn't hear her, he listens for
hearts in distress, but doesn't hear that, either.
At last he finds her in the kitchen. There's a faint, dry rasping sound – a
knife against... something. Vegetables? The last of autumn's fruit? – and the
scent of rice boiling until it's sticky.
She turns toward him as he steps into the kitchen. There's a tray of chopped
vegetables in front of her and a huge pot of rice on the boil.
Misao's mouth curves up. And then her nostrils flare, nose wrinkling and eyes
widening. "A-Aoshi-sama? Is any of that yours? There's no way any of that's
yours, is there?"
He looks down at himself, realizing that he must still stink of blood. "No."
She smiles again. Wider, this time. "Good. I didn't think it was, but..."
"It's Tanaka's," he says. "Tadashi's."
Misao's grip on the knife tightens for an instant when she hears the name, but
then she relaxes. "He's dead, then?"
"Aa."
Misao closes her eyes and sets the knife down entirely. When she opens her eyes
again and looks at him, her expression is a jumble of emotion. He sees guilt
and relief flicker across her face. The rest passes too quickly to identify.
"Thank you," she says.
He merely shakes his head once. Later, if she asks, he will explain that
killing Tadashi was a reflex, however richly he deserved it. And there is no
need to burden her with the way this will interfere with his plans.
"Misao."
She hadn't returned to her task – Misao could never care about such things with
him present – but she jerks toward him nonetheless. "Yes, Aoshi-sama?"
"Remain out of sight for a few days."
"Yes, Aoshi-sama." She nods, then shifts her weight on the balls of her feet.
It's a shy, uncertain gesture.
"Yes?"
"Was it, I don't know, difficult? To kill again, I mean."
"No," he says. He does not tell her how easy it was.
===============================================================================
v.
Aoshi skips dinner. Instead, he scrubs the rest of the blood from his skin – it
soaked through his uniform and now sticks to his shoulders, stinking of iron
and salt – and finds that his bangs have tangled and matted together with it.
He closes his eyes to keep out any mixture of blood, water, and soap, then
dunks his head in a bucket of lukewarm water.
No wonder Misao worried.
Aoshi pushes the thought away and keeps scrubbing, until his skin pinkens and
turns raw from the friction. He carves the skin and meat from beneath his
fingernails and then washes his hair again.
When he finally steps, half-dry and almost clean, into the changing room, his
uniform has been swapped by some silent, efficient soul for a yukata.
She really is getting better. He hadn't heard her enter.
He steps into their shared room to find Misao sitting next to a lidded bucket,
carefully taking a small knife to the seams of his uniform. Apparently she's
decided that an intense wash will remove the blood. The bucket, he suspects, is
to soak the worst of it away before she washes.
At the sound of his heartbeat, Misao looks up from knife and fabric. "I brought
up some dinner for you," she says. "Uhm. If you're hungry at all. If you can't,
it's no big deal, I'll just –"
"Thank you."
He watches her a moment. She's pinned her braid up and tucked her hair behind
her ears. She does not return her attention to his uniform. Instead, she stares
at him just as intently as he does her.
He wonders if his actions, his choices, have driven some sort of wedge between
them. Perhaps it is simply the same gap there has always been – the one between
the Okashira and his lieutenant's ward, between the killer and the spottily-
trained kunoichi – and she is merely seeing it for the first time.
No, he thinks. Surely, if she can forgive his invasion of her privacy, if she
can forgive his madness after the deaths of his men, she can forgive this.
"You haven't asked," he says.
Misao looks confused for a moment. She sets the uniform down entirely and says,
quietly, "I wasn't sure you wanted me to."
"What?"
She smiles, but the mirth is tempered by something. "I just… well, I wasn't
sure. You killed a man for me, and I'm glad he's dead, and it's my fault we're
even here."
Aoshi suspects he knows where she's going with this. "He attacked me," he says,
wondering just what she thinks happened. She knows he would not deviate from
his original plan without good reason. Doesn't she?
"I'm sure he did, Aoshi-sama." Her tone doesn't quite convince him that she
believes him. Perhaps he doesn't entirely believe himself. He could have
brushed past, could have walked away. "But it's still my fault we're here. And
I thought it might be a little blood thirsty to ask."
But she wanted to know. Didn't she? He's never truly had this much trouble
reading her, not even when she had first entered Hannya's care, and no small
part of him finds it frustrating.
Her says her name. His tone is sharp, demanding full attention.
Just as always, she seems to jerk back to focus. Considering that she was
already focused on him, it makes her seem hyper-aware.
"Aoshi-sama?"
"Do you regret accompanying me on this?"
She looks down. Her eyes drift closed, lashes dark against pale cheeks framed
by dark hair. Her mouth opens just a little as she takes in a deep breath.
He knows what she she's going to say. And it hurts.
She looks up at him, locks gazes, and says, "No."
And she isn't lying. He can't read her, doesn't see anything he can interpret
in her face, but her heartbeat is calm and her breaths are even. She isn't
lying.
The tightness in his chest eases. He settles himself at the low table provided
in the room, not far from her.
"Then...?"
"I'm worried about you." Misao smiles for him, but it's still not her usual
smile. "And I don't want to be the reason you start killing again."
Has he stopped, really? Shishio is dead – though that was a pre-existing
medical issue; he, Saitou, Himura, even Sagara merely exacerbated it – Gein is
dead. He did not kill the man with Wu Hei Shin, but that was out of respect for
Himura's principles.
He does not voice this doubt.
He hopes Misao does not see it.
===============================================================================
vi.
Misao sleeps beside him again that night. Some part of him is immensely
gratified that she isn't turning away from him. The rest of him is unsettled.
She knows he killed a man tonight, with such force and savagery that he'd
nearly ruined a uniform, had been picking blood out of his fingernails for
hours.
And yet she still wishes to be near him. Still worries about him.
He hears her breathing and heartbeat slow. Somehow, being curled up against him
– even back to back as they are – is relaxing for her. His touch really does
ward away nightmares.
But then she stirs, in what he'd assumed to be her last lazy moments before
sleep, and asks, "So what happened?"
He tells her. Her reaction is indignant at first, that Tanaka would dare try to
blame his own actions on her. As he explains the details, he hears her draw in
a breath.
Aoshi is tempted, so tempted, to turn to face her. He doesn't. He can't.
Instead, Misao rolls over. He hears her move, then suddenly feels her breath
warm against his shoulder. He hears her reach for him and forces himself to
relax into her feather-light touch against his knuckles.
"You're angry with yourself," she says, quietly.
"I had a plan."
"You did what was right."
No. No he didn't. His stomach clenches at the wrongness of Misao telling him
that in this context. But he dismisses the feeling as irrational. If any human
being alive has the right to wish Tanakda Tadashi dead, it's Misao. He has no
right to say she shouldn't wish it, shouldn't express satisfaction at having
that wish granted.
It is not blood-thirst. It's human nature.
"Carving out his windpipe so he would be quiet?"
Misao is silent. He hears her plea for an explanation even without her saying a
word.
"He kept trying to talk," he says. It's not much of an explanation, but it
should suffice.
He expects her to express horror. He expects her to back away from him, to
stumble to the cabinet and prepare a second futon. As little as she seems to
enjoy sleeping alone, surely it's preferable to sleeping beside a murderer.
But all Misao says is, "You know, he never shut up when he was with me. I'm
sorry you had to listen to him, too."
For a moment, he can say nothing. Eventually, he finds words enough to tell
her, "You won't have justice. Only vengeance."
Misao's reply is slurred with sleep. "It's still good he's gone."
Then she falls asleep. She's next to him, warm against the small of his back.
He isn't alone. And yet he is: alone with the darkness in the room and the
thing inside him that demanded Tanaka Tadashi's blood.
The worst of it is he thinks he could live like this. This is a bad night, but
tomorrow night will be better. And the night after that?
===============================================================================
You never looked so down
Won't you come and help me with these cuts of mine?
—The Wallflowers, "Josephine"
***** i know you've been sad *****
i.
Aoshi waits until Misao has fallen asleep before he disentangles himself from
her and dresses in a spare uniform.  He makes his way out the window and
carefully up to the roof.  The snow is loose, powdery, nearly tripping him; the
air hasn't yet cooled enough to permit the kind of snow that works to an
onmitsu's advantage at night.
At least he doesn't have to contend with ice he can't see.
Finding the gambling hall is as simple as roving the rooftops and finding the
one business still open.  In a town this small, he suspects it caters to all
vices, from alcohol to whores.
The Yakuza have embraced this so-called peaceful new era and prospered.  Surely
the Oniwabanshuu can do the same.  But that's a thought for later.
He makes his way through the tiny establishment, half-heartedly disguised as a
tea house.  After the chill of the snowy air, the tea house seems too hot.  He
almost starts to sweat.  He quashes the discomfort and raises an eyebrow at the
thugs who protect the establishment's boss; they move aside without a word from
him.
In his office, the boss pauses in lighting a particularly large opium pipe.
 His nose is crooked, as if frequently broken, just like the boss Aoshi met
with in Tokyo; Aoshi wonders if he's related to Miura or simply ran in the same
street gang in their youth.  His hands tremble, but he doesn't seem in the
least intimidated.  Withdrawal, then.  
"You've received Miura's message?"
"Just this morning," the boss grunts.  He nods to a brazier piled with ash.  
It's the only sign of clutter or mess in the entire office; everything else
seems to have a proper place.  This is the first neat opium addict Aoshi has
ever seen.  He's certainly never heard of the Yakuza tolerating its employees
dipping their hands into the product.
Perhaps Nishimura simply wants others to think he's an addict.   They'll assume
it gives them leverage, when it doesn't.  Though that theory assumes a
surprising amount of craft for a man assigned to a farming town that doesn't
even have a proper name.
"I'm calling in the marker."
Nishimura casts a longing look at the pipe before nodding.  "Right.  You want
us to go now?"
"No.  Tomorrow.  Sundown."
The other man seems to relax a little, some of the tension visibly draining
away at the realization that he has tonight to get his fix.  The trembling in
his hands is pronounced.  In the light, his eyes look fevered.  Sweat beads on
his forehead.  "Right.  Okay.  Who is it and what are we blackmailing him
with?"
A vicious little thrill runs through Aoshi, its teeth like tiny needles along
his spine, as he says, eununciating every word, "Tanaka Ichiro.  The murder of
his son."
===============================================================================
ii.

There are questions from there: how the boss is to know of the so-called
murder, which house is Tanaka Ichiro's.  Aoshi insists that he and an associate
be permitted to witness the blackmailing. He is not sure Misao will wish to
attend, but he will ensure that she is able to if she does.

After that,  he takes the roofs to the bolt hole in which he stashed Tanaka
Tadashi's body.  The snow camouflages his movements above the town, but he's
not fool enough to run rooftops carrying a corpse.

That, he walks the streets with.  Between the town's shabby lack of lanterns
and the falling snow, anyone who sees them will see one drunk helping another,
less conscious fool find his way home.  He has to suppress several shivers on
the way there.  Tanaka Tadashi's skin is clammy and stiff, chilled by the early
winter air, and that chill seems to be spreading to Aoshi.

The doctor's home is attached the garden he saw on his first night here.  Now,
more than ever, he is certain that Misao was assaulted in that garden.

He leans the body against the gate, then vaults the walls and opens it.  The
garden is gated off from the main house as a sop to disguising its ownership.
 The wall between home and garden is tall, sturdy wood; its gate is closed and
locked from the house's side.

Perfect.  Aoshi leaves the garden to grab the corpse, leaves it sprawling
amidst dead flowers and fallen leaves. Some part of him wonders which
collection of dried leaves and withered stems was once the patch of lilies that
drew Misao down from the roof.

He ignores it, closing and locking the gate, then vaulting the wall again.
 From there, he takes the roofs back to the inn.
===============================================================================
iii.

Aoshi considers just crawling into bed next to Misao, smothering his mind's
constant workings by basking in warmth after the chill he's been working in all
night.  But the very idea of Misao sleeping beside him while he stinks of a
gambling house and a dead man is... wrong.

So he stops by the bath house again.  Once again, he draws water for a quick
scrub.  He doesn't bother heating it; he'll soon be warm, regardless.  Like
before, he simply scrubs down and rinses off as quickly and thoroughly as he
can without even trying for a real bath.  Earlier, he merely wanted the blood
off; now he wants to escape the smell.

He realizes, as he heads to the stair, that he's been doing a lot of bathing
recently.  Were Misao not here, he would have no qualms about simply collapsing
into bed.  Exhaustion and need for warmth would lull him into a near-dreamless
sleep.

Misao has moved since he left.  She's asleep still, but now she has curled up
near the window.

She noticed his absence.  Guilt squirms, obscure and irrational, through his
stomach.  He quashes both sensation and sentiment, then kneels near Misao to
wake her.

He has to rest his hand against her shoulder and say her name twice to wake
her.  She wakes with an immediate jerk for her knives, eyes wide.  She gasps
for breath and presses a hand to her chest when he moves backward.

"Aoshi-sama," she says, very quietly.  "I wasn't sure where you'd gone."

Worried for him again.  Or worried for the rest of this town?

"I had a failsafe."  Slowly, carefully, he places his left hand on her other
shoulder.  She tips her head back to look up at him.  "Tanaka Ichiro will
live."

Will live beneath blackmail, burdened with the same vile lies he made his son's
victims live beneath.  Buried beneath and desperate to conceal a lie as vile as
his words to Misao.  Not legal justice, but fitting enough.

"You're letting him live?  But won't he tell the police?"

"He won't.  Tomorrow night, if you'd like to watch it done...?"

"I'll be there," she says.  Then she casts a troubled glance at his hands.

Aoshi lifts his hands from her shoulders, suddenly reminded of the size
difference between them.  Not even kneeling can really mitigate it.

Misao reaches for him.  He goes still, lets her catch him by one wrist.  She
presses the back of her hand against his fingers and  then his palm.

"You're freezing," she says, voice soft and eyes bright in the dark room.

He hadn't felt it until then.
===============================================================================
iv.

The next morning, they pack.  Misao scours the room, leaving it as if no one
has been there.  She then heads down to speak to the okami.  Aoshi has the
money to bribe silence from her, but Misao claims to have some sort of
leverage.

Just a few moments later, Misao returns from her chat with a smile curling
along her face.

"Ogata-san hasn't seen us since summer.  Or any other strangers in town."
 Misao pauses for a moment, expression turning briefly sad.  "She told me what
happened to Tanaka Tadashi's sister."

"His first victim?"

Misao nods.

Useful.  She has no idea, but she's just handed him a missing piece of his lie:
Tanaka Ichiro's motive for killing his own son and leaving his corpse in that
garden.  Aoshi had planned to use a simple argumen.  This will make a certain
amount of terrible sense to the town.

Only Ogata will know any different.  The mericless arithmatic of onmitsu work
means Ogata should have some sort of accident following their departure from
this town.  And yet Aoshi cannot truly imagine himself killing the woman.  He
adds and subtracts in his head, finally content to let Ogata know, and live,
and keep her silence.

She has as much reason as Misao to want Tanaka Tadashi dead.

After that, the day passes slowly.  They drift through the town unseen, finally
wending their way to the tea shop just before sundown.

Misao's nose wrinkles at the sight of the place.  So Aoshi chooses not to go
inside; they'll wait for the boss out here.

He emerges exactly at sundown, scans the rooftops for a moment before
concluding that there's no way he'd spot Aoshi there.  He cups his hands around
his mouth and lights a cigarette.  Aoshi considers the size of the pipe he saw
last night and realizes that the man is addicted to tobacco, not opium.

"Nishimura."  Aoshi steps out from the hidden shelter of a building.  After a
moment, Misao follows him, wide-eyed.

The boss turns to look at them.  His eyes narrow as he sees Misao, but then he
gives a half shrug.  Aoshi looks to Misao, wondering what it's about, but she
doesn't seem to have any particular grudge in return.

Interesting, but if Nishimura isn't going to cause problems, then it can wait.
 On the way to Tanaka's home, Aoshi apprises Nishimura of Tanaka's supposed
motivation for killing his son and the body's location.
===============================================================================
v.

Two thugs open the door of Tanaka's home.  Nishimura, Aoshi, and Misao follow
them.  Misao peers at Tanaka's furnishings.  He sees her eye a few trinkets
before, for some reason, apparently deciding to leave them alone.

They find Tanaka in his office.  He's looking at a map of the town and
surrounding area, tracing his fingers over lines, muttering to himself.  If
Aoshi truly cared to listen, he could do so easily, but he lets the words blur
into meaningless sounds.

"Tanaka-sensei," Nishimura says.

Tanaka jerks around.  His eyes dart wildly at the sight of Aoshi and Misao,
gaze moving so  frantically between -- first to Misao, then back to Aoshi, then
back to Misao, where it rests heavily for almost all of a second -- that he
doesn't seem to see the Yakuza.

"It's come to our attention that you've experienced a personal tragedy,"
Nishimura continues, voice smooth and sincere.  "You have our deepest
condolences.  Unfortunately, in this new era, the police might not prove so
understanding."

Tanaka stares at them blankly for a moment.  Then he looks at Misao.  Color
rises in his cheeks, then darkens as blood begins to pool in his face.

"You've killed him," he hisses at Misao.  "I told you if anything happened to
him I'd --"

Time to cut in.  Aoshi moves so that Misao is left standing slightly behind
him.  "The police will not help you."

"I'm the town doctor!"

"You murdered your own son," Nishimura says.  He spreads his hands.  "Perfectly
understandable, really, considering what you must have felt when you found out
about your daughter.  But the law doesn't understand human considerations like
that."

"I haven't seen him since the day before yesterday!"

"You mean you haven't checked your own winter garden in two days?  You expect
the police to believe that?"  Nishimura's mouth hardens into a thin smile.
 "I'll remind you, we own the police."

Aoshi watches the blood drain from Tanaka's face.  His gaze flicks to Misao.
 Her eyes are still wide, though she doesn't seem particularly startled or
horrified.  Slowly, slowly, her head tilts to one side, as if there's an
invisible weight hanging from it.  Her lips begin to curve up.

Tanaka looks at Aoshi again, then back to Misao.  "You promised you'd stay
quiet.  Why did you have to tell anyone?"

Misao stiffens again.  When she says nothing, Tanaka adds, bitterly, "I should
have poisoned you when I had the chance."

The room goes quiet.  Nishimura swivels his head to look askance at Aoshi
before turning to face Tanaka again.

"You've poisoned your son's victims?"  Aoshi's voice sounds strange in the
sudden quiet, ringing softly through the room.

"You killed my boy because you want a piece of that filthy little thing.  You
think I'd hesitate for my own flesh and blood?"

Aoshi raises an eyebrow, saying nothing.  Instead, he merely looks at Tanaka
for a long moment, not bothering to hide what he sees.

Nishimura clears his throat.  "In any case --"

"No.  Before you blackmail me, I want to hear from him."  Tanaka points at
Aoshi. "What have you done with Tadashi?"

"Nothing."

Aoshi watches the word strike home.  Just as before,  a thrill runs sharp nails
up and down along his spine at the way Tanaka begins to break.

"Where is my boy?" He pleads of Nishimura.  "Please. What have you done with
him?"

"A concerned citizen heard the two of you arguing.  Now, as I said, I can see
the reason for what you've done.  Terrible thing to lose a daughter that way.
 So I'm offering --"

"You've got nothing to offer me without my son's body.  I'll... I'll go
straight to the police."

"Who won't believe you," Nishimura says flatly.

"I don't care."

Nishimura sucks in a breath and finally shrugs.  "Well, if you'd really like a
reminder of where you stored your son's corpse..."

With that, the Yakuza thugs begin to escort Tanaka from the room.  Aoshi is
content to stay, to wait, but Misao follows them.  So he follows her.

They catch up with the group just before Tanaka, trembling, withdraws a key
from his sleeve.  He unlocks the garden gate and slowly pulls the wooden doors
open.  He takes a few steps into the garden.  At the sight of Tadashi, he falls
to his knees.  He reaches out to touch one of Tadashi's visible vertebrae,
hands trembling.

"My boy," he sobs.  "My boy, my boy, my boy."

Neither Aoshi nor Misao says anything.  Misao looks to Aoshi.  He looks back
for only a moment before returning his attention to Tanaka.

Tanaka cradles the monster he raised and begins to rock back and forth.

After a few moments, Aoshi reaches out to place his hand on Misao's shoulder.
 She's watching Tanaka intently and doesn't move away, but betrays no surprise
at his touch.  He squeezes, gently, and tilts his head to indicate that they
should most likely go.

Misao follows him a few paces away.  "That was where it happened," she says,
softly.

"Aa."

"You dumped him right where tossed my sarashi."

Aoshi says nothing to that.  That, at least, had been unintentional.

Nishimura begins to murmur.  "You work for us now, Tanaka-sensei.  That's in
addition to some monetary compensation.  You understand, of course.  Otherwise
the police will have to know what your son did to your daughter, and what you
did to your son."

Tanaka mumbles an incoherent affirmative.

And it's over.  Tanaka Tadashi is dead. Tanaka Ichiro will live out the rest of
his life beneath blackmail, constantly in fear.

What justice there is in this so-called new era, Misao has received.
===============================================================================
vi.
They leave town immediately after.
Misao turns around to look, just before the town vanishes into the horizon
behind them.  He can see on her face the knowledge that they won't be back.
===============================================================================
I know you've been sad
I know I've been bad
But if you'd let me
I'd make you ribbons from a paper bag.
—The Wallflowers, "Josephine"
***** and I know it ain't easy *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
i.
Between the snow and the darkness, the road seems to blur as they travel. Aoshi
knows they won't get far, but they need to put at least some distance between
themselves and this pathetic little town.
Misao does not have his endurance. The chill saps her strength sooner than his.
Eventually, she stumbles to a halt and places her palms against her knees,
trying to force air into lungs too frozen to cooperate.
"I can't," she gasps.
Alone, he could push another few miles. Tonight, he stops. He's the one to
erect a windscreen. It will keep the snow off, at least. Misao curls up in his
arms, pillows her head on his chest. He allows himself to rest a hand on her
back before he tugs thick blankets over them.
Sometime that night, while he slips hazily in and out of sleep to check their
surroundings, Misao begins to shake. Her skin is warm against him, so she isn't
shivering from cold.
He says her name.
She looks up at him, eyes red-rimmed and not tired in the least. And he begins
to realize that though he has drowsed, she has remained awake and surprisingly
still this entire time.
He places his hand on her back again, to make sure she realizes she is not
alone. She does not have to bear this alone, whatever it is that burdens her.
"I didn't expect monsters like Tanaka-sensei to cry," Misao whispers against
his chest. "But now that I know... I'm glad I saw it. I'm glad I saw all of it.
I needed to and I'm not sure why. It's just it finally feels over."
Shikijou whispers in his memory — fresh as if it were happening now, even
across all these years — It's never over.
"I want to ask you if that's wrong, but you'll tell me it's not. I don't think
you'll ever believe I could be really awful."
That last statement reminds Aoshi of all that she has forgiven him. There is
too much history behind any reply he could make to it. It would be irrelevant,
in the face of her greater worry.
"Misao. There is no wrong reaction."
She smiles for a moment, quick and fleeting. He misses it when it's gone. She
settles in more closely against him, and within moments, he allows himself to
drowse again.
===============================================================================
ii.
The walk to Tokyo should have been two days. With the snow and cold sapping
their progress, it takes four. They reach Tokyo's ragged edge just after the
noon hour.
By that point, sheer stubbornness is the only thing keeping Misao walking.
Class is in session when they arrive, so it 's Himura who shows them to the
guest room. He watches Aoshi closely, but then Himura has always been more
watchful than his blithe manner would suggest.
Misao doesn't seem to notice. She flings her bag down and collapses wearily on
top of it. She chatters near-incoherently about being glad to be indoors at
last.
And Himura smiles gently at her. "I am sure Kaoru-dono will be happy to see
you, that I am. And you are always welcome here, Aoshi, though I wonder why you
did not write first."
That's a sharp-edged question. So Aoshi does not pause. "We were in the area.
Misao wished to see Kamiya when our errand was done."
Himura raises a brow for an instant, but then he seems to decide he doesn't
wish to pry. He turns his attention back to Misao, tells her that Kamiya should
finish classes by late afternoon. Assuming her afternoon students even attend.
Misao nods along. Then her mouth curls into a mischievous smile.
"Would she mind if I watched? Just watched, I promise."
"I see no harm, that I do not," Himura says. And with that Misao heads out of
the room, bobbing a quick bow to Aoshi and leaving Himura with a jaunty wave.
Himura turns to Aoshi. He waits to speak until they both hear the door close as
Misao ventures out to the dojo.
"What errand could you have to run near Tokyo that would keep you from
writing?"
Aoshi hesitates. Himura knows full well that Aoshi has always intended to keep
Misao free of the Oniwabanshuu's activities, so he would not bring her here on
any matter related to the Oniwabanshuu. But a full explanation is not his to
make; he will not violate Misao's trust or privacy.
At length, he replies with a question: "Has Misao mentioned a farming village
two days from Rakuninmura?"
"She has not."
"A matter there required her attention." He falls silent, knowing that Himura
will hear his refusal to explain further.
Himura nods. But throughout the afternoon, until Misao and Kamiya return from
the dojo, Himura's gaze drops every so often to Aoshi's hands. And Aoshi knows
that he knows, but has decided not to judge. For now, at least.
===============================================================================
iii.
Dinner is a noisy affair.
Kamiya and Misao team up against Myoujin regarding his apparent affection for
one of the employees of the Akabeko. Myoujin, in turn, teases them both —
referring to Misao as a weasel, an epithet Aoshi has never entirely understood
— while Himura simply watches, apparently content not to become involved.
Ordinarily, Aoshi would let the name slide. He spent his time in Tokyo after
the Yukishiro incident doing precisely that. Misao certainly seems no more
bothered by it than anything else Myoujin does.
But he is uncertain of its associations. Now seems as good a time as any to
ask. So he does.
Myoujin and Misao stare at him, startled. Myoujin's eyebrows rise in curiosity.
He shrugs. "I don't know, Saitou and Sano call her that. It just fits."
"Saitou started it," Misao grumbles at the same time. "Don't ask me why, he
just started doing it."
Myoujin rests his the back of his head against his hands, elbows up. "It could
always be worse. I remember when Megumi was calling Kaoru here a sweaty kendo
girl."
"We'd just met. Megumi was pretty attached to Kenshin back then," Kamiya says,
tone mild.
"Ouch," Misao replies. She winces theatrically, then stands and stretches.
"Ugh, I've been cold for four days."
"You've been outside for four days?" Kamiya's eyes widen. "What have you two
been up to?"
"We had our reasons for coming up this way." Misao says it chirpily, easily, as
if they've been up to something mischievous rather than illegal.
Kamiya raises an eyebrow, looking between the two of them before accepting the
answer. "I'd have had the bath ready if I'd known you were coming. If you want,
we can heat it up now?"
"That'd be fantastic." Misao pauses, then looks at him. "Aoshi-sama, why don't
you go before me?"
He says nothing. If she wishes to cede the first bath, he won't gainsay her.
Misao flashes a smile in Kamiya's direction. "Besides, I kind of wanted to talk
to you."
===============================================================================
iv.
The truth of the matter is that Aoshi finds the weight of the debt he owes
Himura uncomfortable. How does one repay the return of one's own mind and will
to live? His involvement in the Yukishiro affair could not even begin to repay
what Himura has done for him, for the Oniwabanshuu.
Himura would claim that friendship is its own reward. But friendship to those
outside the Oniwabanshuu is no easier for Aoshi than obligation.
Aoshi upends a bucket over his head to rinse away the last of the suds, then
ducks into the scalding hot bath. It's his first soak in over a week. The heat
melts away some of the tension accumulating in his back — though not all; never
all.
He emerges from the bath house to find Myoujin losing a spar with Kamiya, while
Himura and Misao watch. Misao is smiling. Her eyes sparkle with her mirth,
turned a darker shade of blue by the last light of early evening.
"Hey, watch your feet!" She calls to Myoujin, and smiles wider when Aoshi steps
more fully into the room. He allows his expression to soften for a moment as he
recalls the number of times Hannya told her to watch her footwork. From her
expression, she must be remembering it too.
At length, Kamiya taps Myoujin on knee and shoulder with her bokken. She's
gentle, but the strikes get her point across.
"You've definitely got room to improve on the strikes. The blade catch is
useful, but you don't want to fall into the trap of using the same technique in
every situation."
"I know, I know. Or else you end up like Henya." Myoujin rolls his shoulders,
apparently sore from the advanced practice. Then he grins. "I call first bath,
ugly."
"Brat," Kamiya replies, but there's no heat in her tone. She sinks onto the
floor beside Misao, smiling. "You ready for that bath after Yahiko?"
===============================================================================
v.
Misao drags Kamiya away, most likely to grab yukata and haori, the first
instant Myoujin leaves the bath. They laugh about something as they go, but
Aoshi is listening for subtle signs of distress from either of them, not to
their conversation. He watches Misao disappear into the house, then turns his
attention to Himura.
Himura takes a long, slow sip of tea. "I take it the weather slowed your trip
from the village Misao needed to visit, that I do."
"Aa."
"I can't imagine you would kill near Misao-dono without need, that I cannot.
Does either of you need help?"
If he were given to such expression, he might almost laugh. He has essentially
murdered one man and condemned another to a life of terror and lies. And here
Himura — who must never touch a blade again — offers him help? It's almost too
ridiculous. Distantly, he's aware that his hands have begun to ache.
"Only a place to rest quietly for a while," he says, softly. "Misao needs time.
And I should not be seen."
"You planned someone's death." Himura says it in a flat tone. It reminds Aoshi
for a chilling moment of the tone Himura had once used with Takeda Kanryuu: Are
you coming down, or am I coming up?
Aoshi does not say that the situation is more complicated than Himura makes it
sound. The situation is complicated, but it condenses quite easily into
Himura's version. So he says nothing at all.
After the silence stretches, Himura says: "You would not murder a man in cold
blood with Misao-dono beside you, that you would not."
But flat and certain though the words may be, the tone asks for confirmation.
"No," he says, and is almost startled at the force of his own voice.
Himura seems to relax at his reaction. "Then you're yourself, that you are, and
I can believe that whatever you have done, you did so for good reasons."
"You were worried I...?"
The former Battousai shakes his head. "Worried for anything but your and Misao-
dono's saftey? No." A crook of a haunted smile. "But it never hurts to be very
sure, that it certainly doesn't."
Aoshi spends a lot of time understanding Himura all too well, but there are
moments in their uncomfortable friendship that Aoshi could swear he will never
understand Himura so long as he lives. This is one of them.
===============================================================================
vi.
Misao does not rejoin them immediately after her bath, though Kamiya seeks them
out. A crease appears between Kamiya's eyebrows when she first sees him, but as
she sits next to Himura — who seems completely at peace in Aoshi's company —
she relaxes.
Misao told her.
Aoshi excuses himself to look for her. He pads silently through Kamiya's home,
listening for the quick beat of Misao's heart. He finds her in their shared
room, already laying out blankets for a bed. He shuts the door and watches her.
She looks to him when she finishes. After a moment, he joins her. He doesn't
say anything; something is bothering her. But she doesn't talk about it.
Instead she shares a few pieces of gossip she's picked up from Kamiya. He
listens, cataloguing details, though he knows they're just a means for Misao to
fill the silence,
They lie down, He rests a hand on her back again, allows her to settle so that
her head is pillowed on his chest. She shifts as she settles, trying to find a
place for her arm she thinks he will allow; the thought amuses him a little.
They take several minutes to find some way to fit together that satisfies his
need to be able to get to his weapons and won't leave either of them stiff-
jointed when they wake. It is not until they have finally found a comfortable
position that she speaks of what bothers her.
The words come out abruptly, her voice faintly drowsy: "Kaoru-san didn't
understand."
He goes still. After a moment, he asks, "What did she say?"
Misao sighs against his chest. He fights the temptation to place his hand on
the back of her head. "It's not that she said anything. She wasn't cruel about
it. She just... didn't understand."
"Aa," he says. Despite the flat tone, it can act as a leading question for
Misao.
Undaunted as usual by his preference for monosyllables, Misao adds, "She didn't
even tell me that killing someone for revenge is wrong. She just seemed a
little confused." Misao pauses a moment, corrects herself to: "Or maybe unsure.
Like part of her was saying that it's never okay to kill, and the rest of her
thought she understood why he needed killing."
"You think she did not?"
"I think she was startled by how intense the feelings were." Misao falls slient
here. He can imagine her half-rueful, half-amused smile. As if she's quietly
saying: Since when have my feelings not been intense? "Did you know, she's a
year older than me and she's never even really been harassed?"
He's silent. That it seems so impossible to Misao that a woman could live her
life in peace... Is this Oniwabanshuu training? Kunoichi cynicism finally
taking hold? Or have her own experiences led her to believe a life without male
harrassment is some kind of myth?
His hands begin to ache again.
"She's been attacked, of course. But it's been because she's connected to
Himura or because she owns property that other people want. It's all been...
differerent for her." Misao is quiet for a long, long time before she finally
asks in a near-whisper: "Why couldn't it have been different for me?"
He has no answer for her. He moves his hand from her back to the back of her
head.
Part of him wonders if Himura is having a similar conversation with Kamiya.
"I just wanted to know if I'd made the right choice." Misao says. "Poor Kaoru-
san. Everything she teaches means she should tell us we were wrong, but she
can't make herself do that. Because she thinks we might have been right."
Of course. As the assistant master and only living instructor of the Kamiya-
Kasshin style, Kamiya would be expected to exemplify the values and philosophy
of her school. Misao has placed her in a position that makes both the
obligations of a friend and the obligations of the dojo master mutually
exclusive.
He says nothing of the matter, only gently brushes his knuckles along the back
of her head.
They're quiet a while before Misao speaks again.
"If I had asked you not to kill him — and I'm not saying I didn't want you to
kill him; I did — but if I'd asked you to quietly take me home without hurting
anyone, would you have?"
The impossible question. He freezes, half convinced he'd have an easier time
smiling and meaning it. Would he have abandoned the justice Tanaka Ichiro and
Tanaka Tadashi so richly, richly deserved, if Misao had asked it of him?
But would he have permitted Misao to travel home alone? Would he have abandoned
her in Kyoto, breaking one obligation to uphold a lesser and hurting them both
in the bargain?
"Aa," he says, softly. She relaxes against him. He waits a moment before
adding, "But I would have killed him eventually."
"What? Why?"
"He lived two days from Tokyo, in a dying farming town. He would have ventured
here."
Misao is silent a moment. He can practically hear the pieces clicking into
place in her mind. The women of that restaurant Kamiya favors and other
civilians in Himura's circle of protection might have been at risk. With Himura
unable to fight, the task would have fallen to Aoshi regardless.
"Oh. Then... good, I guess." She gives a soft, sleepy sigh. "I know I've told
you, but even if Kaoru-san or Himura didn't approve... I think it was the right
thing."
"Aa," he says.
A few moments later, she is gone. Merely a warm weight on his chest, un-blooded
hands curled against his sides.
===============================================================================
vii.
A day later, while Kamiya is away sparring at another dojo — apparently trying
to drum up students or support for her own — Misao drags out the uniform he'd
worn when he killed Tanaka Tadashi.
She washes it again. The earlier soak helped, but above the basin, the water
dyes her skin a rusty yellow. The stain goes all the way up to her elbows. He
almost shudders at the sight of her hands dripping second-hand blood.
He almost stops her. But he doesn't. If Misao does not want these events — her
assault, his own actions — to follow them home, then so far as he is able, he
will make sure they don't. In that case, better that he or Misao do it here,
amongst those who are aware of what he has done, than that they give the lie
away in Kyoto.
The day is cold but sunny. The pieces of dark fabric dry before Kamiya returns.
But surely she can guess why Misao might be stitching pieces of an Oniwaban
uniform not her own back together.
It casts a pall over what might have been a lazy, friendly evening.
===============================================================================
viii.
In the end, they stay in Tokyo only long enough for him to buy train tickets.
Misao and Kamiya are pleasant to each other, but Misao's glances flicker toward
him and Himura, as if wondering why she and Kamiya must be so distant when he
and Himura are unchanged. Himura is placid as ever, apparently untroubled by
the invisible shoals that have suddenly separated Misao from the ideals he's
comfortable with.
Himura has always understood that there are a multitude of paths to absolution.
A multitude of ways to be ethical.
But there's a divide between Misao and Kamiya, thrown into sharp relief at the
difference in lived experience. They'll cross it, he's sure of that. He still
cannot help but watch their pleasantries with a sense of unease.
It should not be like this.
How can it be otherwise?
===============================================================================
ix.
The change unsettles him, Worse, Misao seems to have stumbled upon an issue he
can offer no aid in.
It isn't his place to intervene — nor does he have the words to do so even if
it were his place — so he holds his tongue while Misao and Kamiya part. He bows
to Himura and Kamiya, then steps aboard the train. He doesn't speak until they
reach their car, though he listens to Misao's chatter with a distant sense of
amusement.
When she pauses, trying to find something — perhaps anything — else to focus
on, he places a hand on her shoulder. He's still careful with the touch,
gentle. He suspects he always will be; the last thing he wants is for her to
fear him, even for a moment.
She places her hand on top of his.
"It still troubles you?"
"I think a little bit of it always will. But it's easier now." She half turns,
looking up to catch his eyes, and smiles. He receives the sudden impression
that this little glimpse of joy is for his benefit — intended to be seen and
known, intended to reassure.
He frowns. He wants honesty of her, not reassurances.
She sees his frown, and her smiles slips for a bare instant before warmth
touches her eyes, making them glint with a sliver of humor. "I hear time helps,
if you let it. And things have been getting better for a while now."
===============================================================================
x.
There are questions both of them could ask but don't. How he knows what he
knows — whether he's suffered as she and so many others have suffered — why she
finds his touch comforting, why she sleeps easiest in his arms.
Neither mentions what they must do now. The Aoi-ya cell will be curious about
where they could have gone, what they could have done. And surely this new
habit of sleeping beside each other cannot escape the notice of the others.
Let them notice. Let them wonder. He will not compromise on this matter: he has
found absolution and peace, has laid his ghosts to rest — even if they will
never rest truly quietly — and Misao has found a way to move on, a way to
silence her own ghosts.
Misao smiles when Kyoto comes into view. She rests a hand on his arm, which he
allows.
He tenses his hands into fists, then relaxes them. They don't ache.
There is no use in turning back time.
===============================================================================
Josephine
You're so good to me
And I know
It ain't easy
—The Wallflowers, "Josephine"
Chapter End Notes
     That's it for these two and this adventure, at least for now. Where
     Aoshi and Misao go from here is up to them, I think.
     A thousand thanks to Leviathanmirror for holding my hand and
     correcting my characterization where necessary. She's been my
     touchstone for sanity with this project. The unsung not-quite-beta
     reader.
     And thanks to everyone who read this far. I can't say I've given you
     a joyful or pleasant story, but it was important to me, and I'm glad
     we shared it.
Please drop_by_the_archive_and_comment to let the author know if you enjoyed
their work!