Notes: For Megan.
Yuya picked up the lead outside Edo. She confirmed the information twice just to be sure. Crushed hopes did that to you, made you more cautious than you would have been otherwise. But a year and a half was a long time to go without any word, and Shiina Yuya was not one to sit around and wait. Other women did that, but never her.
So she followed the lead to Edo, retraced the trail supposedly left by a crimson-eyed samurai who carried a long katana.
Unfortunately, all the caution and preparation in the world couldn't prevent liars and swindlers hoping to make a quick dollar on what they perceived to be a desperate woman's search. Oh, the trail led her to a samurai all right but there was nothing special about the katana he wielded, his hair—while wild—was unruly from lack of washing and no doubt infested with lice, and while he was tall, his body had grown soft and heavy over the years, the glory days of his youth long behind him.
And if his eyes were crimson, it was due to bloodshot veins from too much sake, not because of any Mibu breeding program.
Yuya clenched her fists in anger, kept them clear of the tri-barrel gun in case she was tempted to do something she'd regret later. Her fury was directed at the wrong man. It wasn't his fault less scrupulous men had intended to use him as a means to tricking her out of money. So instead, she turned away and left the man to his fifth bottle of sake, and returned to the men who'd given her the information in the first place.
It took her two days by foot to reach them but they hadn't left. No, they'd wanted to enjoy their ill-gotten money first. Not to mention that they hadn't expected her to travel to Edo and return so quickly when she found out their lie.
Apparently they hadn't realized who they were messing with.
No matter. That was an oversight easily remedied. They hadn't known who she was when she told them her name. Something of a surprise since there weren't many who didn't these days. After all, a woman had to make a living when she was purposely not waiting around for an idiot.
If only she had a clue about Kyo's whereabouts.
"Yuya, this is your sixth bounty in a week. Don't you think you should rest?"
"I'm not tired." She brushed off Kyoshiro's concern with a shrug. "Besides, I like being busy." Being busy meant she had something to occupy her thoughts. And if she didn't have time to think, then that meant she didn't need to—
Yuya stopped that line of thought before it could even form in her mind. She turned to Sakuya who was busy righting another table she'd knocked over. "What did you make for lunch?"
Sakuya started. "You want to eat lunch?"
"It's time."
"I suppose…"
Yuya met the other woman's eyes steadily, trying her best not to waver. It was a hard thing, meeting the all-seeing gaze of a seer like Sakuya. Sometimes the desire to ask her about Kyo's whereabouts was overwhelming. Some days Yuya didn't know which was worse. Sakuya knowing Kyo's current location and not telling, or Sakuya knowing of Yuya's unvoiced desire to know his location and not telling.
After a moment, Sakuya blinked, breaking the impromptu staring contest and turned away. "I'll prepare for lunch. It'll be out shortly."
Yuya watched her leave with something like frustration before glancing at Kyoshiro. She looked away from him before not too long.
She didn't want to think he looked at her with something like pity.
Yuya chase the man down an alleyway, tri-barrel gun loaded and braced, ready to be fired. Wanted dead or alive, the bounty notice had said. This man had stolen a noble's daughter and sold her off before the daimyo's retainers had been able to track him down. To add insult to injury, after it became apparent that the girl had been used terribly and then cast aside, prompting her to commit suicide, the man responsible for the whole fiasco had escaped. Probably bribed his jailors.
She grimaced. So many corrupt men in this world. Then again, without corrupt men, there wouldn't be a need for bounty hunters, or women who became bounty hunters.
She turned a corner and checked quickly, shifting her weight back as her bounty hurled some poor barrel-maker's goods at her. But her time travelling with Kyo and the others had trained her in ways that no one could have expected or noticed, not with the way their abilities often eclipsed hers. She dodged the barrels. A leap, a quick sidestep—it was all so easy.
Or maybe it was just easy for her because she'd spent so much running away or escaping those who wanted to use her for leverage against Kyo.
No more. No more.
She lifted her gun, took a steadying breath, and fired.
Sakuya watched as Yuya counted the reward from her latest bounty. "Was it worth it?"
"What do you mean?" Yuya glanced up before noting down the amounts in her register. "Money's money. And I love money."
"But don't you love other things more?"
Yuya pressed her lips together and ignored the question. Some people had it easier when they were with the ones they loved.
"Maybe if you just wait—?"
"Why should I wait?"
Yuya hadn't been sitting around, waiting for someone to find her brother's killer when she first met Kyo. And Yuya hadn't sat around, waiting for someone to find a cure for Shinrei's water dragon curse. No, she had looked for her brother's killer herself, and no, she had gone with the others when they set off to find a way to stop the water dragons from constricting around her heart.
Why in the world anyone would think she'd wait around for Kyo to come back to her? The thought was ridiculous.
Yuya shut the money register with a firm—final—thud and stood. The look on her face must have been terrible because Sakuya blanched. In retrospect, Yuya regretted that. It wasn't her nature to scare others, not when they didn't deserve it, not when they hadn't done anything to deserve her wrath. Sakuya and Kyoshiro were worried. That was all.
But why couldn't they understand she did enough worrying on her own that she didn't need others to worry along with her?
Yuya scanned the scroll the man had placed before her. The information was familiar. After all, she'd answered this bounty no more than a month before. Of course, they'd turned her away. Her reputation had done much to alleviate the worries many clients had about taking on a lady bounty hunter, but some men couldn't be swayed. To them, she'd be nothing more than a pair of breasts and a baby-making vessel, no matter how many bounties she chased down, no matter how many heads she brought.
"I was under the impression that you were not in need of my services."
It wasn't a lie. In fact, it was nothing less than the truth. The reward was a lot of money. Bounty hunters from all over Japan had come to answer it. Success meant a person could live easy for a few months, more if they lived frugally. Yuya wasn't one to rest on her laurels for long; she had too much energy for that. But she would have liked to get that money nonetheless. Just like the more bounties she collected, the more high rewards she gained, the greater her reputation.
She was more than a crimson-eyed samurai's girl. She was herself. No more. No less.
The man sitting across from her cleared his throat uneasily. He had a hard time meeting her eyes, she noticed. She liked to think it was because he was embarrassed at having turned her away before, when the other candidates deemed more worthy had so obviously failed, but Yuya knew the truth.
It was her eyes. She knew they were unnerving in their own way. Foreigner eyes, strange eyes, eyes that reminded you of a cat. When she was younger, she used to duck her head at the stares—pale eyes, pale hair, this was a demon child, they said. Her brother's love had gone a long way to smoothing over any hurt feelings those whispers and stares might have engendered, but Yuya would be lying if she said the memory didn't lurk in the dark recesses of her heart.
Her silence unnerved her soon-to-be employer. Some men were like that. Most men were like that, to be honest. They expected women to fill the silence, with soothing words, dulcet tones, nonsense words to calm their agitated nerves. But no matter what the others had said during their travels all those years ago, Yuya knew when to be quiet.
Truthfully, she had no reason not to be these days. It was something that bothered both Kyoshiro and Sakuya, she knew, but somewhere over the years since Kyo sent her away to live a happy life without him, they'd forgotten how to speak to her. Or she'd forgotten how to listen to them. Yuya wasn't sure.
But all she knew was that she couldn't wait.
The man finally bowed his head low to her. "I apologize for my presumption during our previous meaning. It was wrong of me to assume you lacked the abilities to—"
His kowtowing nauseated her. Yuya had grown to hate it over the years. The longer soon-to-be employers spent time assuaging imagined slights and their own wounded pride, the more time she spent tracking down her quarry. "Enough," she said quietly. "Tell me all you know."
The bounty didn't go well.
Oh, she succeeded in all the ways that mattered. She captured the criminal alive. Just like the writ requested so she got the full reward. Her employer was ecstatic and made no secret of the fact that he intended to recommend her to all his friends. It was contacts like these that Yuya couldn't buy, that in fact she cherished because it meant a larger network, more avenues for funds. Those things were important to a bounty hunter.
But so were other things.
Like the family who'd died because she hadn't moved fast enough—because she'd wanted to bring the criminal back alive so she could get the full reward instead of shooting him dead like she should have and earn nothing.
"I want to pay my respects," she whispered.
The widow, bereft now of her husband and five children, merely slid the door closed in her face.
It was strange but in all the times she'd spent traveling with Kyo and his friends, in all the times she'd spent hunting down bounties, in all the times she'd visited dens both respectable and not, Yuya had never, not once, ever gotten drunk.
After the widow turned her away from the funeral, she did.
Waking up the next morning with a raging headache, aching fists, and bloodied knuckles, she bitterly regretted it.
And when she met the silently accusing eyes of Kyoshiro, then gazed upon the wreckage of a room beyond him where men she'd brawled with had destroyed tables and dinnerware, she felt shame.
It was not a good feeling.
It was, in fact, the first time, in a very long time that she had ever felt something like that emotion at all.
Or any emotion at all, for that matter.
Yuya made a show of combing her hair before arranging it into the elaborate hairstyle of an oiran. She was aware of Sakuya's silent disapproval behind her. "You don't need to do this," she said.
"Yes," Yuya said, meeting her own gaze in the polished metal that served as her mirror. "Yes, I do."
Can't stop to breathe. Can't stop to think. Must keep moving. Must keeping doing.
"Are you even looking for Kyo anymore?" Sakuya asked, angry now, the emotion coloring her voice. Yuya wasn't sure she'd ever heard the other woman get angry. It was a novel feeling. In another life, she would have felt guilty. Now she relished that she was able to incite such a reaction.
A part of her, however, knew that was wrong but Yuya just couldn't help herself.
After all, Shiina Yuya didn't wait for anyone.
Yuya stood panting over the crumpled bodies, blood dribbling from the holes in their flesh onto the floor, staining wrinkled silk and flowing toward her bare feet. The smoke still drifted from her tri-barrel gun. Its heat warmed her chilled fingers.
Why was she so cold?
She looked down once more at the entwined bodies, lovers in life and lovers in death since the boy hadn't wanted his girl to go alone to meet Enma.
Stupid, she thought numbly. How stupid. Why would anyone think it was a good idea to die for the one you loved? Why would anyone think it was a good idea to kill yourself for the one you loved?
Because make no mistake, that was what the boy had done. The girl had made her choice, tried to kill Yuya with a hidden kunai. The bounty hadn't cared either way if she was alive or dead. The parents of the murdered girl had wanted vengeance. If Yuya hadn't killed her, another person would and judging by the banked rage in the parents' eyes, it wouldn't have been as quick or kind as a bullet through the heart.
But after the girl had fallen, her lover had jumped at Yuya in some mistaken quest for vengeance.
He hadn't even been armed.
Yuya had pulled the trigger without thinking.
And so she stood, in a ruined kimono, her blond hair a pale shadow of the intricate glory in which Sakuya had arranged it, tri-barrel gun at her side, and wondered what exactly she was doing.
Wondering what, exactly, she had become.
Sakuya took one look at her face before turning to Kyoshiro and banishing him with a single gesture. He started to protest. Of course he would. How could he not? Yuya stood there, bedraggled, hair in disarray, kimono torn and baring her shoulders in an unseemly fashion, and blood streaking nearly everything.
Even the pouch of money she held clenched in a fist. Even the gun hanging limply from her other hand.
Sakuya glanced at it. "Did you walk here all the way like this?"
Yes. Yes. In some part of her mind, Yuya knew what she'd been doing was wrong, that it was somehow...improper.
But for the life of her, she couldn't exactly remember why.
It took her a moment to realize she'd never answered Sakuya's question. She opened her mouth to answer, she truly did intend to answer, but strangely enough, not a sound came out. It was if her tongue had forgotten how to make the sounds.
So instead, Sakuya sighed, a soft little gust of air that, had Yuya more energy, would have prickled her temper. As it was, she let the other woman lead her inside the house as if she were a child.
And for once, Sakuya didn't trip over a single thing, not her feet, not the tatami mat, not the tattered hems of Yuya's shambled kimono.
Sakuya dunked another tub's worth of steaming water over Yuya's head. After what seemed like hours, the chill was finally being chased away. Tomorrow, maybe even tonight, Yuya would think about the amount of water wasted in this silly exercise, as Sakuya dumped tub after tub over her shivering body.
But for now, she appreciated the gesture and the brief respite in which she could pretend to be a child again.
But then, because Sakuya was Sakuya, she spoke the words Yuya was dreading.
"You can't keep doing this to yourself. Kyo wouldn't want you to live like this."
Yuya bristled. Where she found the energy, she wasn't sure. But she found the energy nonetheless. "This isn't about Kyo."
"No," Sakuya replied evenly, placing soft hands on her shoulders. Yuya's hands would never be like these. The years hunting and wielding her gun had hardened them, leaving calluses other women would have tried to smooth away. Yuya wore them like badges of honor.
"No," Sakuya repeated. "This isn't about Kyo. This is about you."
But Yuya bowed her head and closed her eyes.
Sometimes men stopped by their house. Sometimes they were clients, both former and prospective. Sometimes they were fellow bounty hunters, who wanted to inspect this lady bounty hunter they'd heard so much about.
Sometimes Yuya wondered what her reputation said about her. When she came out to greet them, to a man they wore poleaxed expressions. They'd known it wasn't Sakuya—such a clumsy woman couldn't possibly be the woman who could shoot a man at a hundred paces.
But they hadn't expected the purported green-eyed, sun-haired female monster to be a fresh-faced young woman, both slim and fair.
Sometimes the clients and the fellow bounty hunters came back, to talk to her, to get to know her. Yuya hadn't known what they were about until one day, Kyoshiro glowered at a former client who just refused to leave and snapped, "Why would she want a shriveled up old pervert like you? Get out."
Yuya had gaped at him but the client had turned red and slunk out, shoulders turned inwards as if warding off a blow. She had rounded on Kyoshiro, ready to chastise him for being so rude—after all, that was a possible contact he'd just destroyed—but then she'd seen the pitying look on Sakuya's face.
"You have no idea what these men see in you, do you?"
It wasn't in Shiina Yuya's nature to wait.
Yes, it was true that she filled her days with bounties, to the point that she no longer had time to breathe.
But it was also true that these bounties lead her all over Japan.
Which let her look.
"Kyoshiro, I want you to come with me."
"You want me to help you find Kyo? Really? Is that a good idea?"
"I promise not to tie you up this time."
Kyoshiro spluttered. "You haven't done that since the old days!"
Sakuya mused. "I wish I'd been there. That would have been funny to see." She turned knowing eyes towards Yuya. "Funnier still to see you do it to Kyo."
"I never did it to Kyo." Not that she hadn't been tempted some days. But still, it would have been near impossible for her to accomplish such a feat.
"Are you positive?" she asked, as if she'd heard Yuya's thoughts. And perhaps she had.
Yuya shrugged, even as Kyoshiro laughed. "Maybe you'll get to see it one day then."
Sakuya smiled. "Maybe I will."
And the expression in the seer's eyes told Yuya that one day, perhaps, she would do exactly just that.