A/N: As with my two most recent one-shots and as with most if not all one-shots to follow in the future for at least a little while, this here is another product of mhmartini's LiveJournal writing meme; my first time writing a crossover; as well as my first yuri fic; so here's to crossing boundaries! As it is, our protagonists are two characters canonically positioned on diametric sides of a certain boundary, i.e. death, so I can't think of a more appropriate pairing from the meme to cross those aforementioned boundaries with.
Title: Peony
Summary: Reapers pick up where doctors leave off.
Main Characters: Botan from Yu Yu Hakusho and Megumi from Rurouni Kenshin.
Warnings: Death, mild gore, sex.
Disclaimer: The story and characters of Yu Yu Hakusho and of Rurouni Kenshin belong to Yoshihiro Togashi and his associates and to Nobuhiro Watsuki and his associates, respectively, and not to me; and so they, not I, have the money to show for it.
Peony
26 July 2009
The patient had stopped breathing.
Megumi Takani put down the washcloth, paying no attention while wispsof pink bled out of it into the tub of hot water. Literally, bled.
Poor girl.
Some of the patient's kimono was still pink, where the attack hadn't left the cloth torn and stained a much deeper red. There was a peony tucked up in her black hair.
Nothing made her an obvious target for theft. Perhaps it was the discovery that she had nothing that prompted the brutes that tried robbing her to get something out of the stint, and take it out on her flesh.
Really, she shouldn't have lived this long, even. Innards hanging half-out, and more blood pooled beneath her than struggling to circulate in her, if she hadn't died before Kenshin found her, she should have on the way to the clinic. This was no surprise.
Still.
What an awful way to go! She'd been so scared, and in pain, with no defense of her own, no fighting chance. It was unforgivable what those monsters did to her!
Megumi bit her lip until it bled, and set about cleaning the patient up. She began with removing the peony, setting it aside in a bowl of wash water, now useless for sterilizing a patient's wounds, only useful now for preparing a cadaver.
The first thing that struck Botan when she regained consciousness was the peony, and that it wasn't in her hair.
Secondly, the peony was on a table, and she saw it from an aerial view.
Thirdly, laid out on a pallet beside the table, was—
"Botan Enshutsu."
She jumped—or tried. Rather, she started, fell over, changing directions by an approximate 180 degrees, and now had a fantastic view of the ceiling.
The realization that she was in midair was nowhere near as spectacular as the realization that hovering above her was a woman in a black kimono.
Straddling an oar, also midair.
"Botan Enshutsu," the woman repeated.
She replied with the first thought that came to mind, that could be blamed on a book of fairy tales her father had given her from the West. She'd been unable to read the language of crisp, symmetrical letters, but this was made up for with an abundance of illustrations.
"ARE YOU A WITCH?!" she shrieked, then clapped her hands over her mouth, as however they were floating, there was someone on the ground, who would definitely be startled by the sight of two women in midair, more so if one of them was yelling.
The woman astride the oar merely shook her head, and in a low sober voice said, "I am a ferry driver of the river."
"What river?" Botan asked, and then wondered that she wondered more about the river than she did about this entire exchange, in midair.
"The one that separates this land from the one of judgment."
She blinked. "What?"
"Look down, Botan Enshutsu."
She did. She looked down, to see…
Botan Enshutsu.
"WHAT THE—?!"
In the same sober voice: "At your clothes, Botan Enshutsu."
Which Botan Enshutsu?! First she looked, took a good look, at the one on the ground.
A good look, but a swift look. Then she looked down at herself. Her clothes were unbloodied and intact. Nothing out of the ordinary.
Except that her kimono now fastened right over left, not left over right. "Miss—?" she began.
"Ayame," the women supplied.
"Miss Ayame," she said. "Am I—dead?"
A matter-of-fact nod. "Killed by thieves, if you recall."
She didn't. She did. Sort of. And between the thieves and the actual … dying, the arms of a man with a sword—but he didn't wear an officer's uniform, but he didn't bring her to harm, either; he brought her to—.
That person on the ground, who was neither the dead Botan Enshutsu, nor the dead Botan Enshutsu. "Miss Ayame, who is that?"
"She is the doctor that tried to save you. She is now your undertaker, or preparing you for one."
"A lady doctor?"
"There is a lady swordsman on the premises as well."
Had that man that brought her here been a woman? No, she remembered, thought she remembered, resting her head against a flat chest. Someone else, then. Too bad she hadn't lived a little while, here where there were lady doctors and lady swordsmen.
Too bad she hadn't lived. "What happens now?" she asked Ayame.
"I will take you to the Spirit World," answered the woman, sober as ever. "There you will be judged, and assigned your place in the Land of the Dead."
What a grim set of affairs. No wonder Ayame sounded so—Well, no wonder, she was the Grim Reaper! Or a Grim Reaper; Ayame had said that she was a ferry driver…
There was a noise. Down there, on the ground. The lady doctor, she was crying. "Will she be okay?"
"She is only grieving."
But the lady doctor hadn't even known her. "My family…"
"I will not take you right away. You will have time to see them before you go."
Well that was a comfort, perhaps. She looked down at the lady doctor. "Why do we float?"
"We are not tied to this plane of existence. Foreign matter doesn't have to adhere to its laws of gravity."
The lady doctor was doing something with her hair. Her hair, a sooty black, not a lustrous black like Ayame's, or a blue-black like the lady doctor's. How she would have loved blue-black hair!
She thought a moment. "We don't have to adhere to any physical rules?"
"Not in these forms."
Botan thought, longer, harder. She didn't have to settle for just blue-black hair, she could go all the way…
Beside her, Ayame knotted her brows. "Why did you do that?"
Running her fingers through strands of baby blue in wonder and what was growing to be delight, she said, "Blue's always been my favorite color."
Apparently Ayame didn't get it. "It looks unnatural, or like you're a demon."
Now-blue brows shot up. "Demons are real? Will I meet any?" Ayame made an uncertain gesture. Botan looked back down at the lady doctor.
"Can I see her, before I go to my family?"
"Don't you see her now?"
"No, I mean…" She gave Ayame an intense look. "Ghost stories can't all be made up, right? Isn't there a way for the dead and the living to communicate?"
Ayame inclined her head in a thoughtful manner. "Yes. But she isn't a psychic, so you'll have to wait until she's asleep. People are less skeptical when they're unconscious, and people of her profession are usually especially skeptical."
Wait until she's asleep. Botan supposed she had plenty of time now.
Megumi didn't go to bed until late that night, or early that morning. Kaoru had helped her finish cleaning the body, while Kenshin and Sanosuke attempted to locate the girl's family. If they could find someone, to put a name on the grave…
Usually when she went to sleep after a night like this, it was a deep sleep, a furling fathomless black shroud that she imagined death to be a lot like.
Tonight, though, she dreamed.
The girl was there. That wasn't unheard of, on nights when the shroud unfurled and revealed nightmares, that she imagined hell to be a lot like.
But the girl wasn't wriggling with maggots and other decomposers, like the Queen of Hell, Izanami(1). The girl wasn't even cut and bloodied, like before Kaoru and she cleaned the body up.
The girl did have blue hair. That was a new thing for her dreams to do. "What are you doing here?" she wondered aloud.
Botan blinked. "Do you know who I am…"—A word came from the lady doctor's subconscious—"Kaoru?"
"I—am not Kaoru." Though she'd been thinking that, coloring aside, the girl did sort of look like Miss Kaoru. "I'm Megumi."
Oops. "Do you know who I am, Megumi?"
"Your form is of the girl that died tonight, but your hair's—blue."
"Oh, don't you like it?!" Botan gushed, momentarily forgetting that she was dead and communicating with the lady doctor's, Megumi's, subconscious. "Call me Botan, by the way. I don't know if you ever knew it, my name. Botan Enshutsu."
Megumi furrowed her brow. "Botan Enshutsu?" Enshutsu was the family name of—
"And you're Megumi?" Botan asked, to be sure she didn't mess up again. Megumi nodded. "I wanted to thank you, Megumi."
The doctor frowned. "For what? I didn't save you."
"You tried. You … cried."
Megumi pursed her lips. "The Enshutsu family takes care of an old cemetery not far outside of the city limits. It's not a rich family. Those robbers—butchers—had nothing to gain from what they did to you—" She broke off. Could people cry in dreams?
Botan stepped forward and took Megumi in her arms. "You tried fixing me."
"Doctors are thought to be—supposed to be—clinical," Megumi said bitterly. "But there is a thing known as a bedside manner—we are not monsters, we are not supposed to be…"
She went quiet, having little other option.
Botan had kissed her.
Why Botan had kissed her, Botan didn't know. But pulling back, she told Megumi a thought that struck her: "I just realized—I died a virgin."
The Enshutsu family was traditional, and being a respectable girl Botan never had the experience that belongs to wives and concubines, or those women who are sold or sell themselves, either to pay off a relative's debt or just from a lack of personal scruples.
But while she couldn't read the language of the Western fairy book, she could read the works of her own language, and so she'd read about the experiences men and women had together. And men and men, like Hikaru Genji had with Utsusemi'sbrother Kogimi, in the story by Lady Murasaki that was so popular again(2).
And if men and men like Hikaru Genji and Kogimi could have experiences together, couldn't women and women, like her and the lady doctor Megumi, have them too?
Thoughtfully Botan looked at Megumi, and reached out and felt her breasts.
Megumi started, and, she supposed because it was her dream and not the physical world (she was conversing with her dead patient), she was naked.
This sudden change did not defer Botan, who continued examining the lady doctor's breasts, squeezed them, watched the fat of either mound rise up between her fingers. Each one's end had pointed, and tickled the palms of her hands. Botan uncovered them so that she could see the nipples, the pointy, rosy tips, and closed fingers and thumbs over each, moving both a little and watching the corresponding mounds jiggle in reaction.
Megumi made a little noise. Curious, Botan tightened her grip on each tip, pinching them while the fat of the mounds jiggled side to side. Megumi made a bigger noise. Still curious, Botna looked up from the mounds to Megumi's face, flushed the color of a cherry blossom, a color that spread from her face down to her breasts. Botan looked down from the mounds, to belly, hips, thighs.
Still curious, Botan undid her kimono, fumbling with it—right over left, now, not left over right—and discarded it, so that she stood naked before the naked lady doctor.
She was younger than Megumi, a grown woman. She died with flat belly and narrower hips, while maturity had given Megumi a rounded belly and a woman's curves. Botan sank a finger into the softness of the woman's belly, cupped her hands over the slope of her hips, down to her thighs. Between said thighs was another mound unlike the two northward, blanketed with black hair not unlike that which adorned her own mound (she had not been thinking of that when she decided how nice it would be to have blue hair!), though in more abundance.
The now (mostly) blue-haired girl brushed her finger over the hair, parted the hair, probed her finger in deeper.
Megumi gasped, and tensed her thighs as Botan felt around inside.
Pulling her finger out, Botan looked at the end. Everything above the knuckle glistened slightly with moisture. She held it up, sniffed it. Like a musk perfume, sort of.
She stuck her tongue out and licked it. Then she laid her hands on Megumi's hips, and dropped to her knees.
The doctor grabbed her hands, and also knelt.
Even crouched, Botan had slender thighs. Megumi slid her hands up, felt the outerlips, felt the inner lips, felt the hood, found the nub.
Botan gasped, and shivered. Megumi kept fondling the labiaand clitoris with one hand, and moved the other up along the girl's hip, along the girl's waist, cupped the girl's breast, massaged the area around her areola. The flesh on the tip of the breast rapidly perked and plumped, and Megumi's hands were full with fondling the nub above and the nub below.
Under Megumi's touch Botan's body twisted this way and wriggled that way, and her hands wandered along to find a grip on Megumi's hips. One of the lady doctor's fingers below slid down, its way made easier by the fluids that acted sort of like sweat, but weren't. It slid all the way down, made Botan cry out and roll her hips forward. It slid in, and Botan dug her fingers into the flesh of Megumi's buttocks and her thumbs into the curve of Megumi's stomach. She leaned forward, grasping the lady doctor's hips while her own rolled back and forth.
"Oh, oh, oh, Megumi…" Botan leaned closer against the woman until the doctor practically supported her. Megumi's hand shifted, playing with the other breast. Megumi's hand shifted, thumb grazing the very tip of the clitoris.
Botan squealed into a silky curtain of blue-black. "AH!"
Megumi wrapped one arm round the tensed, arched back of the girl, whom in reality—as she had not forgotten that this was a dream—she'd been unable to save. Her hand between the girl's thighs was wet. Botan's breasts brushed against hers, not unpleasantly if the perked response on her part was anything to go by.
When Botan ceased shuddering and her body—her metabody? This being dead matter was still something to fathom—relaxed, she sat back away from Megumi, and then reached fowrad and grasped the mounds of her chest again, and then edging closer, brought her mouth to one. The chest beneath expanded as the lady doctor inhaled, which suited Botan just fine, as this action brought said chest's adornments closer to her. While she licked and sucked the one in her mouth, she brought a hand to the other, and mimicking Megumi massaged the warm, fleshy mound. With her other hand, she also mimicked Megumi, and reached down.
The lady doctor moaned in her ear. Botan teased the flesh in her mouth to a fine, distinct point, and after gnawing it a little, acted similarly on the other mound. When she had finished both and her hand below was very wet, she decided that perhaps she would do something of her own, that perhaps she had not finished with her mouth…
"O—OH!" Megumi yowled, drawing up her thighs to surround Botan's face in a pleasantly fleshly embrace. The blue-haired girl ran her tongue along the inner curve of one as she brought her tongue back into her mouth.
Dream as it was, Megumi felt the heat of her "body", felt the urge for air, to be very real, and so was panting and was, she was sure, some color competing with that of Botan's kimono, when that girl was again eye-level with her.
Said girl was herself rather pink all over, too. Giving Megumi an appropriately dreamy look, she murmured, "I fell … airy."
In reply Megumi said, "I feel warm. Like sunlight on my face."
Botan's expression altered. "Remember that you did everything you could for me. Thank you for that, Me—"
"—gumi," a man's voice said.
The doctor opened her ryes, widened her eyes.
So did the man standing over her, when she bolted upright and slapped him across the face. "OUT!"
"Shit!" Sanosuke hissed, stumbling away and rubbing his cheek, while looking back reproachfully at the flushed woman, colored so, he assumed, with rage. For what?! "What the hell's with you, acting like the Missy? You'd think I'd walked in on you naked or something!"
It took Megumi several breaths to realize that, in Sano's defense, she was in fact clothed, in the clothes she'd changed into before falling asleep last night. "What do you want, Sanosuke?" she managed tersely.
Straightening up and looking at her no less reproachfully, he said, "That dead girl's family's coming for her. I figure they want you and Kenshin there, since you were both with her…" He shrugged, rubbed his face again, and stalking away left her alone again.
Yes, the girl and her family. Megumi quickly set to making herself presentable to receive the next of kin.
Kenshin was already on the verandah when she emerged. "Good morning, Miss Megumi," he said, not as jovial as usual. "We found the girl's family. They're—"
"The Enshutsu family?" she guessed. "That tends a cemetery?"
Amethyst eyes blinked. "Yes they are," he confirmed. "Did Sano tell you?"
Botan and Ayame observed the meeting between the Enshutsu family and the swordsman and doctor who were with their lost daughter while she died. The Megumi speaking with the mourners was much more composed than the Megumi from last night (pre-bed): matter-of-fact, but sympathetic and comforting too.
"I believe that's called a bedside manner," Ayame said when Botan commented on it.
Not keen on studying the newly-bereaved Enshutsu's too intensely, Botan allowed her gaze to wander to some flowers planted near the verandah. Her eyes settled on a peony bush.
"Doctors are sort of like the farmers," she mused. "Tending people, helping them grow strong…
"Until the reaper comes for harvest."
Ayame said nothing.
Looking back at the living people, Botan said, "Are Reapers bor—dead? Or are they made?"
In reply, Ayame stated, "I was alive once."
"So I could be a reaper?"
Noncommittally: "Someday, maybe."
Botan kept that in mind, and decided that, if given the position, she would be a compassionate reaper, a reaper not unlike the doctor Megumi must be with her patients, and would do everything she could for her charges, even if the path for them then was much narrower. Reapers, after all, picked up where doctors left off.
A/N: For the non-über-nerds:
1. Izanami – a Shinto goddess of creation and of death. When she died giving birth to gods of fire, her husband Izanagi went to Yomi (one of the lands of hell, not the YYH character) to retrieve her, but by then she was already decayed and swarming with maggots, and chased him out of the underworld.
2. Hikaru Genji … Lady Murasaki – The Tale of Genji, one of the oldest if not the first novel in the world, written circa 1008-1021. Hikaru Genji was the outstanding and amorous bastard son of the emperor, who has designs on the woman Utsusemi in the third chapter of the tale, but after she reluctantly rejects him, spends the night with her brother instead. The Genji is sort of like the Japanese equivalent of Shakespeare's works in the west, and during the Edo period (which closed shortly before the timeline of the show Rurouni Kenshin) surged in popularity as part of a "classical revival"; it was considered desirable especially for girls to learn it as a sign of polish.
Wow, that was really nerdy; and let me say that the fact that I too have read that book, makes me no more polished in the least!
Obviously I had to completely make up Botan's familial background. I don't really know anything about the caretaking of Meiji Era (or any other era) cemeteries, so call that creative liberty. The word "Enshutsu" means direction, which I don't think is an inappropriate name for someone with Botan's position.
Comments and criticism are most welcome! Remember that this is my first crossover as well as my first yuri, so tell me how I did, whether you loved it or if it sucked!