Untitled (revised) by saki-enshou
Disclaimer: Houshin Engi and its characters do not belong to me.
Notes: BunchuuxDakki, or DakkixBunchuu. Revised, because I was horrified. Volume 6 spoilers. Same warnings: sex, cheap psychologizing, plotholes, probable confused facts and names, more-than-probable OOC-ness. Comments, criticism, suggestions and flames most welcome.
ThebigW: I'm sorry, but this fic is, and will always be, a one-shot. I know I was stupid enough to forget to say so last time, so you're entitled to hit me. But you're welcome to create a sequel or novel version or what-have-you, of course. I'll be delighted to read it.
Summary: Sometime before Dakki is kicked out by Bunchuu and the Shisei in the first of her empress incarnations, Bunchuu assaults her. And fails.
He thrusts roughly and fiercely into her, he withdraws and rams in again and again, like he's following a rhythm, except that he's actually not. Or maybe he does, but that's not the point. All he knows is that he hates her, plain and simple, and whether or not he is in the wrong to do so is not an issue. He sees everything in black and white, everything rooted into time and place, and he sees her on the other side. It is as simple as that, or he would like it to be as simple as that.
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But he does know about the frenzied thoughts flying about his head, questions of what and how and why, and as much as he would like answers he knows she will not oblige him. Maybe it is not hers to give, maybe it is not his to know, and although he would prefer to think otherwise (it is only human, after all), he has no choice but to leave them.
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He wants his own peace. He does not want interference of any sort. He only wants to live the rest of his immortality in service to his superior. It is not too much to ask.
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Oh, yes, the Empress Shu is his superior, the last of the true one's he's known. Though he does not reject their authority, every emperor who came after had been under his wing, all of them moving in an unending cycle of birth and life and death, he remaining unchanging in the changing times—a watcher eternal, a detached witness, as all sendou are supposed to be. He would not interfere if it weren't for her.
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She is not his rival. Shushi had ceased to exist once she had donned the robes of royalty. It is an order, not a promise.
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There is grief, of course. It is heartless not to remember the bygone days they had spent as equals. But he has to maintain the relationship of master and vassal, and that does not permit the grief of the more intimate—not that they ever were.
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She was his rival. She is his master. That is enough for him.
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It slips in and out of his thoughts, but he does not like to think of the In as his child. Any association between them that is beyond what is appropriate would attach dishonor to both of them, her more so. But it is an amusing metaphor: she the mother whose womb bore the fruit and died for it, he the father who supervises her children; father and child maintaining the In as a grand monument for the Great Mother, a tomb truly befitting her station. Maybe someday he would come to properly accept it, but now is not the time.
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He is proud of himself. He has done so much, he could even say he has transcended the order—and he would have, save that orders are from superiors and so are not to be transcended. To transcend the order is to transcend the one who gave it. He is a loyal servant. That is all he wants to be.
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Into this scenario waltzed she, vixen now, acquaintance and fellow member of the Sankyou when she was still tied with Kingou. They had not been close, he knew little about her, perhaps even less than what everyone else did know, but there had always been a silent agreement between them to be each other's passer-by. Then she had come, and that had severed everything.
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The fox is a mystery, then and now.
But she is in the foreground now. That makes all the difference.
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He did not hate her then, that he could swear. When she had first stepped in, there was only objectivity: she was an enemy and so must be destroyed. He only felt the first stirrings of anger after his first failed attempt. Of course he knew a battle of wits would not be enough to throw her out—she was a sly one, and unquestionably strong; he did not doubt that she had enough energy to flatten the capital and he dared not engage in an actual battle until he knew how strong, and how smart, she was. He was simply cautious.
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Maybe he was naïve, but he had to try. And so he had come and forced himself into her—but whether he succeeded or not was a different story. He had expected to meet some form of resistance, and with that, gauge her strength. He knew there was no danger to that; he knew she would not use all her energies with something like this, for such wasn't her nature. She was as cautious as he was.
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Maybe it is all simple anger and the need to get it off his system for a while. Maybe he just wants her to know how much his defeat had offended him to the point that he would do the unthinkable.
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In any case, it is a way to release himself.
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It is all in service to the Empress, nothing more. A servant with something other than cold logic will not be able to do his job well.
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Ah, but it is—amusing? vindictive?—to see her, the fox who sneers at him openly with the seemingly carefree smile, the grand sadist who looks on the suffering of the people with an expression akin to lust, is reduced to a body writing underneath him—breasts that, prejudice aside, feel so soft beneath his hands and tongue and teeth and a hole so sinfully snug and hot for which any man would move mountains just to insert himself even once. She is beautiful, but that is testosterone talking.
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He was surprised that she had not made any move against him when he made his. She hadn't a single paopei in her hand when he barged into the chamber; in fact, she had dressed herself in an elegant silk robe that looked sweetly erotic because of the way it hid figure and skin, and he knew she had just taken a bath because he smelled the sweet scents lingering on her person.
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She was enjoying it. Picturing her even the least bit appalled had been half the pleasure, and he had anticipated to see some semblance of it when he actually went about the deed.
Which did not happen. Of course.
He was an idiot to think that she would let down her guard that easily. That she had been hiding her horror expertly was in itself consolation—misery was misery, after all—but even that had not been given to him.
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He had decided somewhere along the way that he was going to count on the release of that anger to spur him on. But even then, he had lost again. And then there was hate.
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With a groan, he ejaculates inside her, and he feels her shudder beneath him. Her eyes are glazed, but not vulnerable. He pulls out of her and, with nothing left to do, rearranges his garments and moves to leave.
"Ara, Bunchuu-chan, leaving so soon?" He notes more than a hint of weariness. He ignores her, silently seething.
She was quick to fan the flames. "You do know bedding the Emperor's wife is grounds for severe punishment, right?" A pause. Punctuation with relish. "But since you were wonderful, I'll let that pass. I'll even take you as a consort—what do you say to that?"
That did it. He whirls around to see her still flat on her back, not caring to fix her shredded robes, legs still spread impiously like a whore to show the world the blood oozing from between her legs that told more than enough about what happened between them, mocking eyes back from where they had disappeared during that bout of—mating, he supposed, characteristic smirk active again despite the lines of exhaustion. She drags herself to sit up and meets his eyes squarely, derisively.
With a sudden flicker of hope that maybe, just maybe-
He attacks her with the Kinben, which she, inhumanly, was able to dodge.
"Ah, don't worry, you really tired me out, but I've lots of reserved energy, for other purposes…" She winks mischievously.
He turns away. The he hears, with a hint of malice, "Whatever you do, you will never be able to defeat me, Bunchuu-chan."
"You'll have your day, fox. I grant you that." He leaves. Because he knows it is over.
And he, annoyed, knows that he is intimidated, that one thing he had never wanted to admit until now.
End
Reworked post-fic notes: While entertaining the more-than-possibility that Bunchuu might have...a rival complex of sorts towards Shushi, I decided to explore a slightly different road. I would have liked to include some bit about the present In as a monument also for the In they grew up in, but, I don't know, that didn't seem to fit with the flow of thought, or that may be reserved for a better writer to tackle.
Other notes: Not quite what I had in mind, but it's tolearble enough compared to the other version.