This was originally going to do a lot more with the game, with Magoichi and everything, but then it...didn't happen? I was going to put Megohime in it anyways, but still. I like how this turned out though. The original draft with Magoichi wasn't thought out well enough, so this was a good save, since I didn't just want to throw the dream sequence away.
This is rated T, but the dream sequence is rather violent and gory, so, squeamish, beware.
Half of a Visionary
Do it.
The knife was poised over his face but he couldn't see it, not properly anyways. All he saw was a gray haze. And pain. He could see the cruel twists of pain thumping, thudding, throbbing in the mists on what used to be the other side of the world, the other side of his vision. The pain was there. It had ebbed for the moment but he knew it was going to spread. The pain was there. And it was going to get worse.
This will make you a warrior. This is your rite of passage. Do it. Become a man.
His eyelid quivered in protest as the sharp tip lifted it up. He couldn't feel the steel on his skin, but the dance of pain that he could see intensified in defiance, in a final, struggling will to live. Just like the wars his father fought in, the wars in which he tagged along; corner your enemy and he will fight with emblazoned spirits knowing that it would be their last stand. This was pain taking its last stand, and he was going to impale pain's head on a spear for all to see. This is Masamune Date, this is the conqueror of pain, the Lord of Oshu, the carp that swam up the river, the dragon.
Plunge the knife. Do it. Take the leap.
The figments of pain rattled and clacked and crumpled to the sound of hissing water. Hazes of gray exploded into hazes of red, and suddenly his right knee was warm and wet. Teeth seething quietly, he dug the knife in farther, worming the steel into the far depths of his eye. More squelching, more spurting noises, almost sounding like the squeals of piglets as they're taken from their mother. The dancers of pain start to fade from his sight, as the red darkens to black, and the black is cracked with flaring bolts of lightning spiderwebbing across both his eyes now. He bites his lip, perhaps drawing coppery blood he cannot taste, and wriggles the steel around.
Something pops and his lower eyelid sags and he gropes and he can feel it but it cannot feel him, he can't feel his fingers touch it. The pain dancers still lingered somewhere in the blackness, but they were on his lap now, struggling to breathe and live. That was it. That was everything. He was done.
His fingers closed around the eye and he pulled tenderly. Whatever wretched cord still attached to it still pumped lifeless blood and still lived, and when he pulled it roared in agony. Catching a scream in his throat, he let go of the eye but the pain remained, beating with his heart, making his head swim with confusion and drowsiness.
No! You will not under any circumstances be defeated!
He pointed the steel down, and, by feeling and feeling alone, severed the eye's umbilical cord. Something slimy rolled down his cheek like a massive tear and plopped into his lap, staining his clothes with blood and god knows what else. Gasping as the blood from the cord flowed freely, easing the pain as it went, he looked down at the unholy victory in his lap.
The eye was gray, pink in most places and parchment-colored in other. The pupil was glassy and the iris held no color or life than of a soulless black. It was swollen and engorged with blood and pus, and it stared up at him, his first conquest, his first defeat, his first marking tribute on the pages of history.
Something seemed to reflect in the dead of his eye, the figure of a woman, and when he looked up he saw his mother and she was screaming, not in horror but in sheer anger, in rage and hate, and the more she screamed the more her hands stretched towards him past their normal boundaries. He stared, mortified, into her face as it began to shift and change, her teeth growing to tusks, her eyes glowing red, her tongue lolling out to change the screams to roars, and in her long fingers was a vial full of brutal poison strong enough to fell a tiger. Perhaps even to fell a dragon. He was fighting her off but something was wrong with his vision, he could not judge where she was and before he knew it the vial had plunged into his mouth just in the same way he had plunged the knife into his eye, and the vile liquid was sliding down his throat, burning as it went. The pain dancers returned as he shut his healthy eye and tried to scream.
–
Sometimes he felt as though he should change the family seal. He should hire some artist to fashion it after his nickname, the One-Eyed Dragon. And make sure that the dragon that would subsequently become his new family symbol would always, always have one eye poked out with a needle, just as he had done with the bird.
Even with his new trademark of the pinhole through the eye left his stomach weakened, though. Every time he saw the two birds inches away from kissing each other, wrapped in a wreath of vines embroidered onto a flag or forged onto steel his mouth went dry and whatever vision he had left went blurry. He was getting better at it. He really was.
But he still saw the Date seal flash in the harsh light as his father struggled against his captor, heard his father's words at a distance calling for Masamune to pull the triggers, to kill the Hatakeyama at the cost of spilling his blood. He still felt his father's heavy, heavy body bending his weak trembling arms until he could bear it no longer and left the corpse in the water, the red veins of blood snaking with the current to its final resting place, the sea.
And he still heard his mother screaming in inexplicable rage at the sight of his missing eye, still felt the coldness of her glare and her abandonment, still felt the food turn to ash in his mouth as his head grew faint and the poison she had put in his dinner cackle at him as the blood ran soft in his arms and the sweat grow thicker on his forehead.
And he still saw his brother, dead, because of their mother, because of him, because his dreams were going to be ruined for the infinite time in his life, and he wasn't going to stand to lose the right to live, to thrive. Sometimes he dreamed that his brother walked with him down the pathways of the gardens, and they talked as men, as brothers would, and his brother would forgive him for everything. Everything. Even their own mother. And in these dreams Masamune was not known as the One-Eyed Dragon, but simply the Dragon; and his brother, the Phoenix.
Other times he would dream that his brother was screaming in hate and sorrow at his act, pleading their mother to poison him again, and again, and again until his body laid cold and crooked on his bedroom floor, until both his eyes bled from the trauma and he was truly blind and could not see or fight his phantoms. It was then they would descend on him, tearing his flesh as he had torn the flesh of the Hatakeyama in revenge.
And other times he dreamed of his father. Weeping. Crying at him for following orders, cursing his dishonor, reaching forward to pluck his other eye out, once again rendering him blind. Blind as he truly was in personality, after all. Nights like these Masamune awoke swimming in his perspiration, and it was nights like these where he slept no more and simply left to breathe the calm air of the gardens, alone.
Such a night did not grace him tonight. The Tokugawa were staying as regal guests in the Date household, and he could not risk being spotted with a sheen of sweat filming his skin, slowly disappearing with the cool night breeze. Instead of turning right, to the gardens, he turned left, deeper into the castle, and, sliding silently on the wood floor without sandals, he passed through a heavy curtain, then a windowless door, until he was in a library.
It was a small library, but a library all the same. The characters were strange and foreign, without the familiar curves and swooshes of hiragana or picturesque, complicated kanji. Striking a light until a small, lonely flame burned on the tabletop, Masamune's single eye scanned the bookshelves with a distant wonder. Fingering the fine leather bindings, he selected a volume and slid it out from the shelf, opening it in the middle and flipping until he found a page where a chapter started. It mattered not where he began, for it was some sort of encyclopedia of isles and countries he had never seen but had always, distantly dreamed of sailing to. The candle slowly let his sweat evaporate as he soon became lost in his loose understanding of such a strange, beautiful language, leafing through the pages until he lost track of time. There were no windows in this room to keep it as secret as possible from the isolationist Tokugawa, and somehow, Masamune liked it that way. Here he forgot the world, his past, his lost destiny, his gained destiny, his other lost destiny, and the destiny he finally started to walk down.
As he turned the page to start yet another chapter in the encyclopedia, a voice startled him.
"What is it this time?"
Masamune's head jerked away from the fantastical interest of the book, the film of sweat quickly returning to his skin. If they had found out, if a Tokugawa had seen him, he was ruined, finished, without a dream to actually blossom into reality.
But all he saw was his wife, with tired eyes and tussled bedclothes. Masamune's breath whistled out slowly in relief and he slouched back, letting his heart steadily regain its senses. Megohime approached, her fingers brushing the page as she neared him, her eyes steadily reading the words as best she could.
"I do not understand," she finally said, giving in. Masamune gently held her arm as his heart rate finally found its place again.
"It is not phonetic. It is...very strange. But, I think I know most of it." He pulled her one step closer and rested his head in the crook of her smooth arm. Under scrutinizing, expecting eyes he was not so mild with her, but here, in the dark, candlelit safety of the Latin and European library he kept he was free to release himself to someone who was steadily growing closer to him in secrets and confessions.
After a while of letting the candle on the desktop burn, Megohime spoke again, softly so as to not set her husband's temper alight at such a quiet time, "You were not there when I awoke."
"It is not the first time," he retorted, mumbling into the fabric of her sleeve.
"This was different," she spoke, pulling something from the folds of her clothes, "You forgot this."
Masamune lazily opened his eye, then widened it in fierce shock as he recognized the small band and patch of embroidered leather in her hand. He moved to snatch it but she closed her fingers over it, and it retreated back into the depths of her clothes.
"Ah, ah, ah," she chided, "That's no way to thank your wife for being concerned over your...safety." Pride was a better word, and ego was even moreso. But she held back, for his sake. It didn't matter, for he could see right through her veil, and he knew what she wanted to say. The hand that had been outstretched to take it from her grasped her waist so tightly that it almost hurt, and he buried his face into her stomach.
"Megohime...," he growled, unhappy. She waited patiently for his frustration to churn over in his throat, feeling his fingers knead and curl over her skin. Once the controlled ferocity of his temper had simmered, she placed her hand on the back of his head, weaving her fingers in his hair before she pulled down and forced him to look up.
His eye was red—he had been silently crying, she realized. Though a pang of guilt crossed her heart it was more of pity than anything, and she began to stroke and comb through his hair. He was watching her closely, watching her eyes drink in his face, and he knew when she was staring at him fully—or just staring at one particular part of him.
The eye had not healed well, nor had it healed poorly. Most of the eyelids were simply dead flesh and some of it had fallen away, leaving nothing but a tattered ruin of sunken skin where there should've been sight and emotion. Some parts of the eyelids had little white slits on them, from when Masamune himself had dug his own eye out with a knife. Others would have found it hideous, disgusting. Blasphemous, even, in the terms of his exiled mother. Others, yes. Megohime, no.
Her soft fingers, fingers that had never felt a day of physical hardship and turmoil, moved to his face. Using her thumb she closed his eye, and gently rubbed the eyelids of both sides, her cool palms becoming sticky with the sweat and tears on his cheeks.
"Tell me what you saw," she asked quietly. He tried to jolt away from her but she held him gently, cupping his jaw ever so lovingly. Making a point to keep him with his eyes closed, Megohime listened as Masamune's lips trembled as he relayed the nightmare that had shaken him back to his one true haven. When he finished she remained quiet, and as he shivered and pulled away from her she let him, watching as he shifted his position until he was once again facing the open book.
"My lord," she whispered, for once without a drop of spite or sarcasm. His breath was shaky but he did not look up at her. Circling until she stood behind him, she quietly took his sacred eye-patch out from the folds across her bosom. He had stifled a flinch as she cupped his chin and tilted his head backwards, and he waited patiently with closed eyes as the familiar leather straps crossed his forehead. As she tied the leather bands comfortably tight on the back of his head, she spoke in soft, kind tones.
"This is not your disability. You would not be you without yourself. We would not be us. You have such remarkable power for embracing differences in this world that is bigger than what the seeing can see; you who understand more of suffering first-hand than most in war; you who stand now for the peasants; you who harbor grand dreams that stretch farther than what the Tokugawa can imagine. It is they who are blind, my lord, holing their people here, isolating them from the world of wonder. Their cruelty lies in their fear, your greatness lies in your wanderlust, your dreams. It is the Tokugawa who are blind, it is you who sees farther than anyone else can ever hope to see."
She placed her fingers on his eye-patch to emphasize her point. He breathed deeply, almost fragile as she finished her words. When she drew back he caught her, pressing her fingers harder against the eye-patch as though she were some rarely used but sorely needed security blanket. In turn she wrapped her arm around his neck, leaning down to press her lips against his forehead.
"Dawn is breaking soon, my lord," she whispered, "It would be wise to return."
"Stop calling me 'my lord'," he scoffed, "It is insulting, and no one expects it of you."
Megohime smiled as he snuffed out the candle and left into the lavender light.
–
Masamune's eyes shone as he watched the ship rock up and down, anchored at the harbor. It was of foreign design, meticulously built and beautifully fierce in the water. The masts towered into the sky, holding great sails of white. How the rising sun had graced the sea today, with this majesty ready to make way for its voyage around the world, to the far reaches where the Pope awaited their arrival due to Masamune's carefully crafted letter. How the mighty will rise forth, if only for a brief moment of glory!
How he wished to sail with them!
How he wished to be younger, how he suddenly, jerkingly wished to be less important to the people and land of Oshu, how he wished he was one of the many men loading barrels and crates onto the ship, saying good-byes and singing fisherman's songs as the ship was ready to make sail for the exciting, unruly unknown.
Dressed in his full armor, Masamune stood overlooking the commotion from afar. The great crescent on his helmet cast a golden glow in his vision, making the day seem that much more magnificent as the work of many months past floated now on its maiden voyage. The Tokugawa may have suspected, but let them suspect. They were days away in the capital, having left Masamune alone for a long time since their last visit.
The galleon gleamed in the sunlight, and his wife's words flowed back to him from hundreds of nights before, her calm words of faith and love that wrapped his nightmares in fears into a package, a package he imagined as a crate boarding the ship. Yes, no more could they haunt him, no more could dishonor blot his name in the middle of the night where phantoms shrieked at him and blood ran cold on the floor. Here they were sailing away, far away from him to transform into a name, reason and purpose he knew he was meant to bring.
This was it. This was something Masamune was sure he'd be known for, this was what he was going to be remembered for, this...this...
Megohime appeared beside him, smiling down at the hard, diligent work of her husband.
"Your second eye, Masamune," she spoke.
"In public, dear wife, I am your lord, not Masamune," he shot back, though he too was smiling.
The Date Maru pushed away from harbor to the cheers and song of the sailors and crowds that had gathered, singing in praise of the Dragon.