Disclaimer: Peacemaker Kurogane belongs to Nanae Chrono.
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Whole
Upon first glance, it is hard for people to believe he is a murderer.
He never asks, but still they tell.
His slender fingers could not have felt the heaviness of a katana, a candy seller insists. His smiling lips could not have whispered the end of a man's life, a mother utters as she takes the sweets he offers to her child.
Sometimes, as he walks the streets in his blue haori, swords hanging by his side, he feele their heaviness weighing him down, and the candy seller's words echo in his mind.
Sometimes, as he pins a man to a wall, declaring that he is a traitor and thus will die, he can hear the mother's words just as he slices the man's throat. But in his duty he neither falters nor pauses, and when he staggers back to Shinsengumi headquarters, there is no remorse in his eyes.
"I found him and killed him, Hijikata-san," he states, with an air of solemnity. "He will no longer trouble us."
But there are many hes, and the more he kills, the more they appear. And the Fukuchou will not state what is already known, but can not meet his gaze.
"Well done."
And Souji senses a world of emotion in those simple words. Relief. Wonder. Regret. Horror. Shame. Horror. Could Toshizo Hijikata have really spawned such a monster? Souji reads these thoughts and keeps them to himself. And in the still of night, he lets them out and wonders.
Can he really be two people in the same body?
One, the ever smiling man, the other a bloodthirsty killer?
With his hands, he gives sweets to children. With the same hands, in the same day, he takes the lives of men.
He remembers what it was like, being Soujiro. He remembers the joy in small things; a top spinning on the table, a sparrow perched on his finger. Watching in admiration, and sometimes fear, as men practised swordplay in the hall. Never even suspecting, for one moment, that he too, might become like them. His memory is strong, and there is nothing he's forgotten. Yet, at the same time, something puzzles him, like a persistent thorn in his finger. It is small, but it will not leave him be.
For he can't remember at what moment he had ceased to be the boy Soujiro, and had become the swordsman Souji.
Was it when he had first picked up a sword, and gazed in awe at his own face reflected in the gleaming blade? Or was it when the same sword first tasted blood, and he had felt the warmth splatter his cheeks and stared down at the lifeless body at his feet?
Maybe there had never been a moment. Maybe the swordsman Souji had always resided in him as his other half, his hidden half. And maybe, his picking up a sword had simply awakened him. And maybe, at the same time, he had never stopped being Soujiro.
For if these two halves co-existed, then neither half can disappear.
There is comfort in the thought that Soujiro has not been lost, and he can see it in Hijikata's eyes when he steals his haiku book, and refuses to give it back. He can see it in Kondou's eyes when he begs for money to buy sweets. He can see it in Sannan's eyes when he askes him to help find his pet Saizo, because he is worried.
But it is the irony that keeps him awake at night.
Two halves make a whole.
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