The Porch
Author's note: Set during the six fighters' training under Genkai. This was actually just a writing exercise I did to get past the massive writer's block I had about my YYH OTP, but I kind of like the way it turned out, so here it is. (I actually like the concept enough that I'm working on a redone version that includes things like dialog.)
Prompt: POV - inanimate object * A Homeless person * scars (From panthermoon .com.)
Pairings: Yukina/Touya
Continuity: English Anime
The porch had stood there silently through many generations of temple keepers and visitors. It had played silent witness to fights both violent and verbal, to tearful confessions and peace offerings, and to the full silences of close friends.
So it wouldn't have been surprised, if it could be surprised, by the next generation of people interacting on its wood surface.
There were the carefree ones running along its surface, and the careworn ones taking a moment's solace there, the conversations and arguments and banter that had always been there. The fact that most of the new ones were demons didn't change that in the slightest.
There was the young woman who often came there as twilight turned to dusk. She would sit there and watch the stars come out, often brushing absently at the marks on her arms as she did.
Her arms were covered in scars, both the puckered red of burn marks and the deep bite of blades. Usually her sleeves carefully covered them, but alone in the deepening dark, she let them show.
When she left the porch each night, she left behind her a gentle coolness, so unlike the warmth left by the others.
Well, by most of the others. There was one other like her.
He often came out at night too, later, after all motion within the temple had ceased.
But while the woman sat nearly motionless in the dusk, he wandered. He would pace slowly along the porch or wander the yard, pausing frequently, but never really seeming to find a home.
The air he left behind was even colder than hers, brushing across the porch's wooden surface like the breath of winter, even on the warmest of summer's nights.
So the porch stayed, silent witness to the young ones' slowly forming habits, silent and steady as it had ever been.
Nor did it make any comment when those habits were broken.
There was the one night when the woman with the cool air fell asleep while watching the skies, and lay there peacefully while the stars turned.
She stayed there well into the cold man's usual time for wandering the courtyard.
So used to solitude was he that he didn't notice her until he was nearly to the porch.
But when he did see her, his eyes were drawn to her forearm, sleeve pulled almost to the elbow, and to the marks that marred her cool skin.
After a moment, she awoke, unused to the sensation of being watched.
The man turned away, offering an apology.
Still, curiosity overcame courtesy, and he turned back to ask her a question, gesturing to her arm.
She pulled her sleeve down in sudden self-consciousness, but turned aside his second apology.
The wood and plaster of the porch proved a less than receptive audience for her story, briefly and softly told, but the man it was meant for listened silently until it was done.
When it was, the woman with the scars stood and turned to go, explaining that she hadn't meant to fall asleep. The man inclined his head in acceptance, offering a comment on her strength of character. With a halfhearted denial, she slipped in the door, leaving him watching the door.
After standing motionless for a few more moments, the icy man resumed his nightly wandering.
The porch might have assumed, if it could assume anything at all, that that was that, and things would return to normal.
It might not have guessed that the man would return a little earlier the next night, nor that he might find the woman staying a little later.
The man greeted her cordially, standing near her spot on the porch to watch the stars with her for a few minutes before stepping away to wander the courtyard.
When he worked his way around again, pausing near the woman's still form, she worked up the courage to ask him a question of her own.
He answered, telling her how his nomadic life with the shinobi left him unused to staying in one place all the time.
Offering her thanks to the man, the woman once again left him to his own devices.
Perhaps by this point the porch would have seen enough to guess how this story would continue, comparing, if it could, others of the thousands of conversations it had hosted.
The man came earlier still, and the woman stayed yet later. He asked her about the homeland of the ice maidens, and she, in turn, asked about life among the shinobi. Their answers this time were a little more detailed and willing.
The next night, and the next, followed the same pattern. Each would take it in turn to ask a question, and the other would answer it. The man even sometimes sat near the woman's spot on the porch, and she might join his pacing.
In those dark hours, they slowly shared other things, too. She confided in him her long search for her missing brother, and her hope and fear about who it might be. In turn, he offered her the story of his own search for an escape from the oppressive darkness that characterized life in the shinobi clan. She told him of her own experience with restriction of thought and belief among the ice maidens, and how she had finally been forced to risk everything to escape it. He understood all too well that impossible choice, and told her how he had lost his own gamble, had begged for death rather than a return to that intolerable double bind.
When he told her about that, the woman clenched her hands around the wood of the floorboards, trying not to shake, and a single tear escaped her eyelashes and fell with a soft sound to the ground.
At the man's questioning, she went back to his first question, and expanded on the story of the captivity that had given her the scars.
She told him how she had, for the only time in her life, wished for death.
That was the first time he touched her, gently laying a hand on her clenched fist.
Her hand uncurled and met his, drawing comfort from the connection with another soul who understood.
There they stayed, silent as the heavens turned above them, mirrored in the shining gem at their feet.
When the woman finally had to leave, she stooped to pick up the pearl-like tear, offering it wordlessly to the man, who accepted the precious gift with equal silence.
The porch had stood there silently through many generations of temple keepers and visitors. It had played silent witness to countless bared hearts and shared sorrows, to many quietly forged bonds of mutual understanding. So perhaps to it, this night would have been nothing special—but such things can never be properly seen from the outside.
To those involved, such moments mean the world.