Witness Tree ~ Prologue
Disclaimer: I didn't own Sagara and Aoshi then, and I don't own them now.
Rating: PG-13.
Notes: A huge heartfelt thanks to everyone who read and/or reviewed For War is Kind. This is the sequel to that. If you haven't read it, I strongly suggest you do. Stuff happened in that story that was important. But if you're not feeling up to it, I did my best to summarize it here in the prologue.
This picks up nine years after the last fic ended. For those of you keeping score at home, that's shortly after the beginning of the series. Where did Aoshi go after he was wounded during the fall of the Oniwaban?
Outside of Tokyo, night fell in slow, determined black brushstrokes. Blood reds and overripe yellows fanned from the western horizon, and in the east the sky faded to the color of a plum. On a moonless night, the starless blackness could swim up on you, and wherever you were when it happened, you wouldn't be going far until dawn.
It was quiet out here, and a little lonely sometimes. Sagara couldn't have been happier with the arrangement. On a cloudless night, when the sky went on forever, he wondered if a more complex man would be able to survive in such close proximity with eternity. But he didn't mind knowing that he was insignificant. It would be nine years that winter since a single night had made him realize how bereft of meaning his life truly was, how inglorious his death - when the time for it came - would seem to the rest of the world.
And so it was on this small plot of farmland, half a day's walk from the new capital, that Sagara found himself. He kept a garden, and there was a small nashi grove behind the house. As long as he looked after them, they produced enough to live on. He had a little money saved. It was enough to get by, and that was all that was important.
Sagara knelt at the edge of the garden, tying up the sleeves of his dark shirt to keep them clean. Some of the daikon had been showing promise lately, and he had always liked the bitter, earthy taste. With one hand, he brushed the fallen leaves out of the way and began his work.
Every year around the beginning of the spring, he would remember how, many years back, he had sworn he would never return here. His life since that point had been a series of concentric circles, a whirlpool pulling him back, inevitably, to this place.
This land had belonged to his father, and to his brother. Though they were gone, it still held their memories like restless spirits. His blood had been spilled here, but not as much as had been spilled in places far away. Cut hands and scraped knees were minor hurts compared to what Sagara had found past the edge of this field.
Life was simpler now, and painless except for the old ache that sometimes flared in his left shoulder on chilly mornings. But even that was bearable because he had long ago stopped associating it with the pale scar a bullet had etched there, beneath his collarbone.
Slanting across his right thigh were two more scars - two more long-healed bullet wounds. In the bend of his right elbow was a fourth, and a fifth grazing over his left hipbone. But he wasn't the same man anymore as the one who had stared down a row of rifles, had watched fifty men whom he had considered his comrades and his friends become the last casualties of an old régime. He remembered their names and their faces, but only in the way he might have remembered particularly vivid characters from a book.
He had been one man then and he was another now, and he didn't regret that. There was no place for regret.
At first, it hadn't been easy. The truth was, Sagara should have died as well, on that night nine years ago when the Sekihoutai had been betrayed, but somewhere between luck and tenacity he had been spared. A shinobi - young, barely more than a boy, but already leader of the Oniwaban Ninja - had dragged him out of snowy woods where the slaughter had taken place. He had tended to Sagara's wounds, hidden him, protected him, seen that he was cared for until he could walk again.
Many times, Sagara thought he had forgotten the name of the young man. He had been a ghost, an enigma, the type of person who was named only to have that name forgotten. But Sagara would never be able to forget him…
Shinomori Aoshi.
In the months that had followed the fall of the Sekihoutai, Sagara had been searching. He hadn't been quite certain for what, but the desire had been urgent all the same. Ultimately, need and aimlessness had proved to be a volatile combination. Sagara had felt a vague and compulsory need, a tug in the pit of his stomach. It had been an aching that was different from grief and regret, as if there was a hollow place left behind by his betrayed ideals and his dead comrades. Just missing them wasn't enough; there had to be something to fill the gap.
And Aoshi had been there.
The five years' difference between them had seemed significant. Aoshi was little more than a child, and Sagara had never intended to allow himself to be so completely captivated by him. But one morning after his wounds had healed, Sagara had awakened to find he was not alone in his bed.
In his sleep, Aoshi would curl against him, hide his face in Sagara's shoulder. He would snore softly, and sometimes mutter a few unintelligible words. All the demons inside at rest…
It had given him foolish hope, but everything Sagara had ever hoped for had been revealed as equally foolish, so he hadn't minded. Perhaps, back then, Aoshi was searching for something, too.
But in three months, Aoshi had never spoken to him. Not really. He had tolerated Sagara's teasing, and Sagara his pride. But the arrangement had been that they not say anything of where they had been or where they were going. The understanding had been that, one day, Aoshi would drift out of his life with the same carelessness that he had drifted in.
In the end, Sagara had surprised them both by being the one who pulled away. He had dedicated himself so completely to the unlikely peace they cultivated within each other that he had forgotten Aoshi's loyalty was first and unconditionally to the Oniwaban. And when the man had reached with bloodstained hands to touch him… Sagara had pulled away.
He had left the Aoi-Ya that night. The past - all his shame - had caught up to him and he had fled, returned here to this pillar of a life he had once wanted only to escape. Here, the past lingered only on the fringes of his perception, a distant sound or a flash of something bright out of the corner of his eye. He had buried it in the smell of earth and the burn of hard work.
And on evening's like this, when his thoughts strayed uncomfortably close to the ugly memories of things that had happened away from his home, Sagara needed only glance up long enough to remind himself of where he was - remind himself that he was content - and his restlessness would be placated.
Sagara wiped a few beads of sweat from his eyes as he turned his gaze up from the small patch of daikon to trace the decline of the setting sun.
It was only by chance that he noticed the shadow of movement on the road bordering the western edge of his field. Everything slanted down in that direction, and, framed by the sun, he could see clearly from this garden everyone who passed.
But he usually didn't bother to look.
If it hadn't been for his quietly wandering mind tonight, he probably wouldn't have raised his eyes at that moment, wouldn't have noticed the dark cutout of a person stumble and collapse.
Sagara's expression tightened, and he was still a moment, watching the place where the figure had disappeared. Whoever it was… he wasn't getting up. Slowly, with his eyes still fixed on the spot where the man had slid to the ground and out of sight, Sagara rose and shrugged his coarse shirt on.
As he dew closer to the road, dodging amongst rows of vegetables, he could smell something metallic in the air. He recognized it immediately as blood. Sagara's breath hitched in his chest, and he quickened his pace.
The stranger wore indigo, and a white coat streaked in crimson. He had landed on his stomach when he fell, but there was a ring of displaced dust around him from struggling to get his feet under himself once more. As Sagara approached, he lay very still.
"Oh, God…" Sagara murmured as he knelt at the man's side. All this blood… his eyes snapped to the three bullet holes in the man's coat. It hadn't been an accident. One hand moved uncertainly down the stranger's back. "Can you hear me? Don't try to move. I'm going to help you…"
"Just get me on my feet. I don't want your help."
At the sound of that voice, Sagara froze. All the years leading up to this moment flashed before him, and with a sharp gasp Sagara's hand tightened around the back of a white coat, turning the man onto his back.
The ground seemed to drop out from under him, leaving him with a long way to fall. His voice was breathless, dry. The cruel hiss of a blow to the chest, driving all the air from his lungs. The name had been on his lips all this time, only looking for an excuse to be free.
"Aoshi?"
