Fandom: Prince of Tennis
Tittle: Nameless
Genre: AU
Rating: PG
Characters: Niou & Yagyuu
Notes/summary: Niou POV. This ficlet is based off of the AU RP Kuromaku, set in feudal Japan. In this story, Yagyuu is a high ranking samurai with a wife and two children. His wife had been seeking a shamisen instructor, and upon the referral of a colleague, Yagyuu hired Niou as their live-in help and music teacher. What he did not know is that Niou is working undercover for the enemy's ninja clan, infiltrating Yagyuu's home to collect enemy secrets. Yagyuu based on athena's Yagyuu. Her Yagyuu POV of the same fic here: http://community.livejournal/platinumpair/8014 . ♥

Mizuki utilizes his own unique Hanakotoba or Language of Flowers in his communications. This code is known only to the people he trusts. Although inspired by actual Hanakotoba, this code is specific to Mizuki and his confidantes.. When Niou worked for him his code name was Ran, orchid. They call Yagyuu the black lily and Mizuki himself is iris.

Nameless

I will remember your name from the first time I hear it. It's burned in my memory with letters that not yet have any personality, only my hatred to make them real. 'Message was received this morning. Your sister is dead. Killed by the daimyo's right hand man, Yagyuu Hiroshi.' I've turned your name in my mind thousands of times, until it became just a murmur of incoherent syllables on my tongue. I've whispered it like a secret to the night air, moaned it like a lover's prayer, spit it out like a curse from my venomous tongue. For three years I breathed the very air that would make me able to get close to you, watched, listened, gathered information. I pictured your face in the million ways of possible before I saw you first time in the Kikyo teahouse two years back.

Three years ago, I became Niou, a nomadic shamisen player looking for a work to feed himself. I never thought I'd stay alive through the mission, and while that was not the main agenda, I just wanted you dead.

I wanted you to know my name just the way I knew yours, intimately, exclusively. The day you took me to your house, to be your wife's teacher, to play with your children, I knew how the gamble would play out. There was no other me anymore, just Niou who would sing for your children, patiently teach your wife, surprise you with an ikebana one morning and lull you to sleep with my song in the misty garden just outside your window at night.

I would tell the stories my father told me when I was a kid, of lands beyond my reach for I had been a ninja in my clan for all my life and never saw those countries I talked about. I would play a game of shougi with you after your wife and children went to bed and sing you a song my father composed to me as something I wrote to your son, because nothing would be sacred anymore. I would wait for you to come back from a battle just like your wife did, worrying, knowing your life belonged to my hands. I would put a smile to her lips with a gentle flirt when there was no word of you for days. I would take your daughter to the garden and teach her how to make the weeds to whistle. We'd name all the three frogs we saw and last of them was just like you, king of it's own hill. I would secretly teach your son how to sing and gamble while he was supposed to be practicing his sword techniques. And we would lay on the grass and watch the cranes fly past the clear sky.

I breathed the same air with you. Wanted us to be one. Until the only truth you'd know would be my name, just the way yours became mine. And then I'd wrap my fingers around your throat and squeeze the life out of you.

Like two hearts in my chest, throbbing in different rhythms, dreams of your scent and face haunting my nights, desire growing stronger and stronger, closer and closer.

-- + --

Thin fingers combing through my hair, the airy scent of night flowers around him, my mistress, my iris, he listens to me breath with my eyes closed, head resting in his lap. I know he won't ask but still wants to know. When we first met he was timid and elusive, he still is, but now he knows I can see through him.

"Hajime," I murmur his name with a smirk I know he hates, "Just ask already. I know you want to."

"Don't be stupid. I already know. How could I not when you look like you do?" I can hear the worry in his voice but have no words to comfort him.

Mizuki is the owner of the teahouse Kikyo and governs his own garden of wild flowers, years back I was one of them too.

"Do you have any news for me?" I ask even if I know it annoys him.

"Is that all you want from me?" He snorts but still whispers the secrets only his garden hears into my waiting ears. It seems like tomorrow is already painted in flames, threads growing behind every corner and just waiting to spread their wings and flare wild fire over the world. But I do not care. The only fire for me is in the amber sun of my own addiction.

"You've been swallowed by the black lily," Mizuki breaths into my ear when the moon is ripe and pouring onto his tatami floors, painting his blue eyes with silver that never fails to fascinate me.

Arguing would be pointless and I pretend I didn't hear him. The sadness my actions cause would break my heart if it weren't already in pieces.

-- + --

The morning you come back home from the Daimyo's castle with the dawn, carrying the scent of another man on you, something in the balance between us changes. Your lips should only know my name, the name I created for you.

I take your hand and pull you to the fields within the morning mist. Your lips taste like addiction, bittersweet and warm. Your hand is warm on my back, your breath hot within me, bringing into life a whole new world of desires and futile hopes.

"I hate the mist," I whisper into our shared air, "It can't be trusted."

"Do you always distrust in what you cannot touch?" you answer me readily, and only the throb of my heart will reply to you. I would press your palm against the beat of it, but I fear you'll hear all my secrets from the erratic rhythm of my two hearts and instead take your hand to my cheek, maybe that's close enough.

-- + --

When did you take both of my hearts into your palm, Hiroshi? I wonder which one of us was the ninja here, sneaking in voicelessly and cutting in deep. When your sword is pressed against my throat, your voice breaking around the name I created for you, I realize there's only one heart throbbing within me, beating in time with yours.

Did you know I would only end up recreating myself into your picture, Hiroshi?

If you kill me by your blade, maybe you'll become Niou and both of us will carry through our desires. The revenge tastes bitter on my tongue. My hatred for you is still there, deep within me. Now fueled with something stronger, spiced with perfection.

Do it! I encourage you with my eyes. There is no happy ending for you and me, my twisted addiction, my mission, your dedication, your life against mine. Kill me, and kill yourself in order to live.

You ask me who I am, who was I when our lips met the first time, hand touched, eyes met. Who was I when I sang to your wife and hold your children close. Who was I when I arched under you just few days ago, every inch of my body breathing in time with yours.

There is no answer, I am who I am. Names do not matter, not anymore. Hiroshi, Masaharu.

I press against the blade on my throat, pleading. Be stronger than I am. End this charade like I told you I would.

Let me be your Niou to the very end.

-- + --