Disclaimer: Samurai Deeper Kyo belongs to the worthy Akimine Kamijyo-san, who created it. The Narrator only uses it for the telling of a tale...

Intermezzo: Prelude

'To choose sorrow...or whatever comes...' Winter wind worried his travel-torn mantle as he turned into it. He closed his eyes and bent his head, perhaps in prayer. 'Whatever her fate, I only hope she has the strength to meet it.'

He had no further part to play in this tale. His footprints were erased even as he passed...

She had run blindly through the sudden storm, heedless of the cold, shrieking wind or the stinging of snow and ice on her unprotected skin. The leaden weight of dread, of what she would see when she finally stopped running, and the smallest warm flicker of hope were all that mattered now. Brave words had been spoken when her way had been barred; now that she was free to embrace her choice, did she truly have the courage?

The latter question would have preyed upon the mind of one more given to self-reflection. In her case, analytical introspection was tossed to the wayside as her heart quailed at the thought of being too late...

...but too late for what?

At the heart of the storm, the twin, conflicting tachikaze blasted trees to mere splinters, throwing up clouds of settled snow that whirled about them in screaming vortexes of white.

It had come to this. Only one of them would continue to walk the mortal plane, while the other would have to content himself with whatever awaited him on the far side of oblivion.

With such weight on the scales, their smiles would have been somewhat surreal to a casual observer. But there were none. At least, not yet.

He raised his head slightly, his attention wavering fractionally from his opponent. "She is coming," he murmured, brief sadness and regret flickering in his kind eyes, "Let us finish before she sees this."

The other made no sign that he had heard. A mocking snarl twisted his lips as he took a step backward – not in retreat, but for the final attack.

Now...

She had reached the top of the slope after a seemingly-unending awkward scramble that had nearly pitched her on her face several times. The thinning forest had finally cleared and now she stood, completely unshielded against the elements. Anxious eyes scanned the near-featureless gray and swirling white expanse stretching out before her. She would have shouted their names into it, if she thought they would hear her. Instead, she listened, vainly trying to calm her thudding heart so she could detect that slightest sound that would tell her...

There. Right in front of her, as though layers of translucent curtains were being drawn aside: two dark silhouettes, frozen in eerie tableau. Her breath caught in her lungs, and her heart very nearly did stop as one of the figures (oh, so close as though she could reach out and touch him!) crumbled like a puppet cut from its strings.

The winds stilled abruptly, extinguished like a lantern.

"She is waiting for you," he had said, in the split second before his body was cleaved nearly in two. The other had not hesitated, but followed through with his killing stroke.

It was over. A lifetime of living unaware, of stumbling in the shadows, had been cut away by his sword. His past form lay behind him on the crimson-seeping snow, nothing more than a stiffening husk, now that the soul that had animated it had fled.

The way ahead was clear... and as blank as the snow that greeted his eyes.

"She is waiting for you."

He blinked, lowering his sword. This voice should have been stilled forever...

"She is waiting for you."

A snort of derision. No one was so foolish.

"She is here."

He whirled in disbelief, almost expecting his fallen self to be standing there, as he had been so many times before.

There was nothing, of course. The past was dead, left to him to bury. And then...

Her presence touched upon his awareness, familiar and soothing in a way he had always denied to himself. He tore his attention away from the corpse and regarded her with naked surprise on his face as she stepped toward him. Not fear, loathing, nor condemnation could he see or sense. Rather, she was smiling, gently, her eyes meeting his and holding them as she came ever nearer.

The steam of her exhaled breath billowed against his armored chest before she halted, having neither spoken nor released him from her gaze. To have her so close...the desire to take her in his arms, to claim her as he could freely do only now clashed with the impulse to thrust her away, for he could not bear to see her expression change, as it undoubtedly would, to hatred of him for what he had done.

Her small hand reached up, hesitated, and then her fingertips trailed with lightest touch over his left temple and down his cheek. A frown creased her brow and he almost flinched.

"Kyo..."

His movement backward was brought to a standstill as her other hand clasped his, almost making him drop his katana.

She drew her hand away from his face and showed him fingers stained red with his blood. "I have some medicine and bandages back at the house. Come on, let's go and get you cleaned up before this gets any worse."

He could have sworn he heard someone laughing, even as his arms swept her up in an embrace that almost knocked the wind out of her.

"Why?" he whispered into her snow-damp hair, scented with the memory of pine forests and wood-smoke.

"If you haven't figured that out by now, you're more hopeless than I thought!" was her reply, tears sparking her eyes as she clung to him, the fear of losing him only just now slowly releasing its chill grip on her heart. The pain of loss and the pain of happiness despite it cut at her like a two-edged blade, but she tried to ignore it, wanting only that he not let her go, not yet...

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She hesitated before the shoji, debating the possible outcomes of her opening it. Kyo had sat in that room for two days now, as still and silent as a stone effigy...

After they had returned to the cold and empty Muramasa house, he had let her tend his wounds, which, though numerous, were not as serious as Yuya had expected. When the last bandage had been tied in place, Kyo, devoid of armor, got to his feet and went out into the snow. Yuya had followed him as far as the porch, when one look over his shoulder told her that this was one path she could not follow, no matter her willingness or his need.

It is a solemn and lonely task for any man to bury his past.

'Kyoshiro is really gone...like Onii-sama. He won't be coming back.' Her hand, which had been about to rap on the shoji frame, stilled of its own accord. 'He's the only one left to me now.' In her heart of hearts, Yuya knew there was still a lingering doubt: had she the strength to stand by him? And what of Kyo? Except for that one, endless, too-short span of time when he had embraced her in the death-calm of that snow-filled clearing, he had not since acknowledged her in any way that she could interpret as mutual feeling.

As a matter of fact, his total lack of response to anything made her wonder if the great Onime no Kyo had finally snapped.

'What if...?' Yuya grit her teeth and clenched her eyes shut, sagging forward as she rest her forehead against the black lacquer. She would rather face down a resurrected Junishinsho with the forces of Jigoku's sixteen Hells behind them than the answer to her feelings for one, single man.

"Argh..." This was insane. 'Since when did I become such a wuss?' That thought sparked an instant angry, reaction. Yuya straightened and glared at the shoji, as if it had been the source of the harsh assessment. She jerked it open without so much as a moment's hesitation and strode into the cold, twilit room.

Kyo had not moved of course. Only the barest trace of white fog from his mouth showed that he still indeed breathed. His sheathed Muramasa blade leant up against one shoulder, his back against the wall, his profile unmoving as she paced toward him...nothing had changed.

Only this time, Yuya was too harried and at the end of her rope to care how he reacted, as long as he did something.

"Kyo." She crouched down in front of him, trying to meet his gaze.

Garnet eyes, so familiarly blazing with fierce fire, were distant, unseeing. Before her was neither demonic warlord nor mindless, heartless murderer. Before her was a man who had finally seen Death face-to-face in a way that he could no longer disregard.

"Kyo..." The rebuke she had intended, the bravado she always counted on to manifest itself in battle, was not there. Her voice was soft, warm, a gentle call meant to reach him in whatever personal hell he descended to. Without thought, she reached for him...

The numbness had set in so gradually, he had not even noticed it until it had practically overwhelmed him. The digging of the grave, of hewing a hole in the frozen earth wide and deep enough to contain the body and protect (Protect? Why should he care if Kyoshiro's corpse was ravaged by carrion animals?) it from the elements, had exhausted him. Indeed, what should have been a simple task drained him more thoroughly than any of his battles. A small voice in the back of his mind, which of late had become louder as he sat there, kept asking, did he not envy Kyoshiro? Kyoshiro, his lesser half, who had taken the easy way out, had embraced Death...but it had been a death of his choosing. He was now in the land of Yomi, heedless of the matters of the living.

And what was living, after all? the voice continued. For all of his short, unnatural life, Kyo had lived with the one goal of killing the man he had been created from, the infamous Mibu Kyoshiro, Slayer of a Thousand. He had defeated the strongest, had defeated himself. What, the voice prodded, did he have else to live for?

Do you not, in the end, seek the same worthy death Kyoshiro found? You have reached your limit with his death. How long will you wait for yours?

Kyo found it was hard to ignore the voice's logic, even as he instinctively rebelled against the implication he had no higher level to attain. The level he was at now, certainly, was a lonely one, seemingly infinitely removed from the rest of humanity. In his mind's eye, Kyo looked out across a vast, dark wasteland, littered by the dry husks of those he had slain, seeing nothing, feeling nothing...

'She is here.'

Another voice, sudden, strong, certain, cutting through grey and numbness. Gently calling, a warm touch...

Kyo opened his eyes.

It was like seeing a lantern's wick flare to life. Yuya started slightly, her hand recoiling as Kyo suddenly shifted. He blinked and stared at her, as if seeing her for the first time. The familiar intensity of his gaze had returned as if it had never left, but now there was a tinge of bitterness there, too.

"Why are you here?" he asked her.

"Because..." Yuya looked at him helplessly. Did he truly not know or understand? Perhaps he would never be able to. "You were starting to worry me," she finally said, the taste of ash in her mouth as she bowed her head.

It was too painful to meet his eyes and see nothing there for her.

"You should never concern yourself for my sake," Kyo said lowly, watching her, memorizing every line, every detail of her in the wan, watery light of the moon streaming through the shoji.

Yuya felt another flare of hot anger at this. "I can worry about you if that's what I want to do, Onime no Kyo!" she declared, raising her face, beryl eyes flashing, "Who do you think you are, to dictate to me what me feelings are?!" He was so frustrating!

Moonlight suited her, but even more so, the sun. Her beauty was not of quiet serenity, but of warmth, of unhidden emotion, of a burning flame's purity, he decided. Best to wound her now, when the mark could easily fade away. "Why are you here?" he repeated, his customary harshness returning, "Your business with me is finished. You've found out what happened to your brother." Kyo sneered at the shock on her face, praying that he would not make a fatal error now.

'Remain cruel, for her sake,' he told himself. "I killed the bastard for you," he continued on in the same vein, "You should have left with Benitora and his groupies." Yes, she should have left with Tokugawa's son and heir...he could ensure she would be happy.

"But..." Yuya's confusion was nakedly apparent. No more than a child, this girl-woman who looked at him with hurt and bewilderment, the moonlight soft upon her like an ethereal, sacred glow.

Never should she be stained by his touch.

"Leave," he interrupted her brusquely, "Don't argue with me, little girl. Gather up your things and leave, and don't look back." She was not his, could never...should never be his; why did she not understand? In the end, she would only be destroyed by sorrow.

'How could he? Is it so easily done, to order me away?' Yuya felt a stabbing pain in her heart; Kyo's face was set as stone, his garnet eyes reflecting the harsh mocking of his voice. "No," she answered, clenching her fists and glaring, "No. I made my choice and nothing you can do or say can turn me away. Kyo, can't you see that I..."

"And what if I said I can never love you?" Kyo interrupted her again. He was grabbing at straws now, flinging them at her in desperation. And this one, he saw, struck with the effectiveness of an arrow to her heart.

Yuya gasped and Kyo almost wavered, almost reached out for her, almost begged her not to have heard the words that had taken all his strength to say.

She felt the sting of tears in her eyes and willed them not to fall. "Is that it, then?" she asked, keeping her voice sure, steady, though she wanted no more than to scream and rail and run away, "You want me to leave...and never come back?"

"Yes. I don't need...I don't want..." Why was it so difficult to say this lie? Probably because he had never made a practice of it – lying was for the weak, after all. But now he wished he had the talent, so that he could at least save her. "You are not...important to me," he finally managed, and with that, he looked away, a deliberate gesture of dismissal.

'He's lying.' The truth was as clear to Yuya as though she had been watching the scene between them as a disinterested party. Kyo had never...could never lie. That he had looked away was the most telling action. Yuya almost had to laugh; she had seen bad actors in her day, but Kyo was certainly the worst. 'And even now, he's stumbling about like a Noh actor who's dropped his mask and is trying to distract the audience with threatening gestures.'

"Kyo, look at me," she said gently. 'You almost had me fooled. But now I know.'

Kyo did not move.

Yuya sighed and shook her head, feeling as though she was dealing with a recalcitrant, stubborn child who was determined not to confess to wrongdoing. 'Too bad Kyo; you're about to meet your match.'

Kyo heard Yuya get to her feet and steeled himself against the impulse to leap up and prevent her from leaving. The soft sound of cloth sliding over cloth, instead of the harsh gliding whisper of a shoji being opened, reached his ears, and he turned to look in spite of himself.

Yuya let her obi drop to the floor before she started working at the knot of her kimono tie, deliberately keeping all of her attention focused on it. At last it came free, and she shrugged the now-loose garment off her shoulders, sliding first her left arm, then her right from the voluminous sleeves. The kimono joined the obi at her feet.

Now clad only in her white juban and koshimaki, Yuya looked down at Kyo. He was staring at her in unconcealed surprise, and again Yuya had to suppress a laugh. The corners of her lips did quirk up slightly as she reached back slowly for her hair ribbon, Kyo's eyes following the path of her hands as though mesmerized. The silken strip of cloth came away with one fluid pull, and her hair fell about her shoulders in a soft, wheat-gold curtain.

Wordlessly, Yuya paced toward Kyo. It seemed that as long as she held his gaze, he could neither move nor look away. Since when had she had that power over him? Kyo started slightly as her hand reached out, her fingers gliding over his cheek, a gentle caress as she lowered herself to the floor in front of him. Kneeling, the hem of her koshimaki brushing over his legs, she leaned into him till he could feel as well as hear her breath. Her eyes still held his and he could do nothing to break free...not that he desired to.

"Kyo," Yuya whispered, her thumb lightly stroking over his cheekbone, "you are perhaps one of the most arrogant, insufferable men I've had the misfortune of meeting. But..." She leaned in and touched her lips to his, a butterfly wing's touch lasting only moments, "you are also one of the most honorable and honest. You suck at lying."

Kyo blinked. "What are you..." he growled. Yuya grinned triumphantly and smothered the rest of his words with a true kiss, sealing his lips with all the ardor she had up till then kept contained.

"I will not leave you, of my own free will," she said when she released him to take a breath, "Nothing you can say or do will...mnfph!"

Kyo was a firm believer in retribution, it seemed.

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The white vapor of her breath billowed over his bare chest in the slow, steady rhythm of sleep. If he had been so inclined, he would have taken her to a warmer room of his late master's house. But that would risk waking her, and for now, he simply did not have the heart. To do so would destroy the first moment of serenity he had ever shared with another not encompassed by the grasping, leaden hand of Death.

Instead, Kyo reached for his discarded kimono and drew it over them both.

Yuya stirred against him, and Kyo paused, staring down at her intently. She mumbled inaudibly, her warm lips again his skin forming indecipherable words in the midst of some dream. Delicate fingers twined themselves more securely in a lock of his crimson hair, as though he was her anchor to the waking world.

'You are a fool.' Kyo did not know exactly to whom he referred. 'You should have left when you had the chance, before you knew...' His hand smoothed up the ridge of her spine, his fingers disappearing into the silken fall of her hair.

In his lifetime, he had known anger, hatred, betrayal, and the unquenchable lust for blood and power. Here now, in this too-short eternity, was something he had never been aware of; the unfamiliarity and rightness of it shook him to the core.

'You have come too close – if I let you escape now, I will never understand why you, why your smile, why your tears can make me feel things I was told were beyond my grasp. Your life is mine and no one shall take you from me.'

"You and you alone..." he whispered to her, knowing that she could not hear him. Kyo closed his eyes, but did not sleep. The moments were too precious to waste on oblivion, after all.

The moonlight waned as snowflakes began to fall, a soft and silent shroud over the cold iron ground. The world was still... for the time being . All too soon, even they two would be caught up in the coming tide.

Music:

Vivaldi's Four Season's, L'Inverno

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Intermezzo: Author's Notes

Narrator here. Intermezzo is a tale that attempts to narrate the "what happened" in the ten-year span of time between the "end" of the SDK anime series and the proposed Battle of Edo Castle. Not the most original fanfic idea, I know, but it is one that I have wanted to take a crack at ever since I finished the series (and went ballistic, because there was absolutely NO closure whatsoever!). This will actually be the first installment in a planned trilogy – yep, you are in for the long haul if you find yourself liking this story! I will do my utmost to keep everyone in character, but as the story spans a decade, do not be surprised by subtle (or even overt) changes in attitudes and/or character interactions.

Just to warn you, I HATE writing angst/drama/serious romance, which is exactly what this story is. So if there are long gaps between updates, you will know that Narrator has had yet another creative meltdown that she is trying to overcome by eating cookies and listening to Mozart's Requiem on eternal repeat. Also note that this fic is to be considered separate from any of my other SDK fics, which were written purely as an exercise in fluff and squidgy warm feelings.

Salute!

The Narrator