Title: Heartbeat
Author: AnitaB
Author's note: Did anyone else notice that every character in "Ninja Assassin" with a "Special Heart" survived being stabbed in the chest? The Kiriko in my head noticed and decided that she was a third time's a charm situation. Now that Father is dead, it's safe to go home. Kiriko/Raizo romance to follow.
Rating: k+ for violence, I guess. May change to something more graphic later.
Heartbeat
By AnitaB
Chapter one: Pain
In her life, she had known pain. From her earliest memories and in all its wide variety of flavors. She had felt the purely physical ache of old and new injuries mingling. She had felt the burn of her own blood boiling in her veins. She had felt the sudden crack of her own bones breaking and the ragged tearing of her own skin. More painful still, she had felt the sharp, deep stab of losing yet another little piece of her soul.
But nothing, nothing at all in her entire life with Father or before him had prepared her for this moment. Nothing compared to the pain she felt at the realization that Raizo was going to be forced to watch her die. Nothing in the whole world or hell itself could match the pain she could see in his eyes. From the first day she'd seen him, Kiriko had tried to help him, to ease the pain that Father brought to all his children.
Today she would be the cause of his pain instead of his shelter. That knowledge hurt more than the ropes biting into her skin, more than the bruises, cuts, and broken bones of the fight that had brought her down to be carried back. It hurt more than anything Father had ever done to her, than anything he was about to do to her. Kiriko was certain of it.
Like she had told Raizo over the bonsai tree in its wired cage, Father could never touch her heart. But Raizo could. He had touched her heart with his concern, acceptance, and the dark, uncertain heat in his eyes. Raizo could break her heart with the gentle touch of his lips and the sound of her name. Right now he was doing exactly that with only the helpless tightening of his muscles and the tight lock of his eyes to her face. //Raizo,\\
She knew who Father was going to give the honor of her execution to before he called him forward. Takeshi would enjoy her death, enjoy causing pain to Raizo. He had always hated them both, her for her defiance and Raizo for beating him out in Father's eyes. His heart was cruel and always had been. Takeshi would not miss. He would not hesitate. He would not regret spilling even a drop of her blood. He would watch his enemy's face as he killed her, just to feel even more of their combined pain.
As the tip of the sword buried itself in her chest, Kiriko heard her own scream and felt Raizo's pain as if he were screaming out loud with her. She fell into the pain, hearing her heart race and then slow, feeling the ropes bite into her slumping body, tasting the copper of her own blood in the back of her throat. As the darkness closed over her head, Kiriko clung to the sight of his face, the memory of his kiss, and the sound of his heart beating strong.
She hated leaving him alone like this, but there wasn't anything she could do about it.
000
He could hear her heart. He almost always could. Anytime that Kiriko was within his sight, and the entirety of his year spent blindfolded, he was always listening to the rhythmic thump-thump of her heart. The sound was normally his shelter, his safety and his home. Right now the rush and beat of her heart in his ears was panicked, running as fast and unevenly as his own. //Kiriko,\\
Father had found her, hurt her, and brought her home to die. Raizo could still feel the soft warmth of her lips against his own, could still taste the rain on his tongue from the night she had climbed the compound wall and fled. Now, Father had ordered her tied standing to the pillar in the courtyard. The beautiful girl, whose hands, face, and voice were the only soft thing in his world, who had stood strong and defiant in the box, was broken. She slumped into the hard grip of the ropes around her, her eyes missing the spark that had warmed him for years.
He should have gone with her. Maybe together they could have truly escaped, could have made themselves a life outside these walls.
But he didn't. He had been more afraid of what was beyond that wall than of failing Father. This life of combat and training were all he knew. The pain was familiar, something he could survive and control. And now he couldn't move a muscle, couldn't get the body he controlled utterly to act at all.
He knew what was coming. Father was always very clear about the rules. //Weakness compels strength. Betrayal begets blood.\\ But Kiriko wasn't weak. She was stronger than all of them. It was her edge of compassion, of heart, that made her so much stronger. She hadn't betrayed them, she'd been true to herself. The heart he could always hear beating knew how she was supposed to grow.
This wasn't it. Takeshi strode forward eagerly to take the sword from Father's hand. He looked at Raizo with a dark joy in his eyes and plunged the blade into her chest.
Raizo heard that heart race in panic and stutter. And stop. His ears rang with the sound of her helpless cry followed by the most horrible silence he'd ever heard. //Kiriko,\\
It felt like his heart stopped in his chest. He only hoped it would.
000