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Notes: Overshot the one hour mark by about five minutes. Apologies. Rushed, frantic typing, hopefully not too many errors. A take on what might have happened at the end of Gaiden. For tm challenge: entrapment. Comments and criticism welcome.

Departure

There was no respite from the pain, the inexorable relentless pain that pounded its way through his veins and coursed through every fibre of his frame.

The dull murmur of distant voices had long ceased; all that remained was a deathly hush that embodied within it the silence and dampness of the grave. He had known already that the end was coming near, and there would come the one moment where eternity would vanish and the rickety façade that was his existence would crumble in a heap of rubble.

Tenpou turned around, hearing the clanking of chains following his movement. Searing pain shot down the length of his body. By the sheer perversity of his nature he turned round again, closing his eyes and mentally bracing himself for the crippling, numbing pain the followed.

The rage that he had felt earlier had ebbed away, leaving in its absence a certain lucidity. A deadly lassitude had overtaken him and sapped him of what energy remained. From the impermeable and unmoving stone around him rose the stench of copper and rancid sweat, reeking of putrid death and decay.

At the periphery of his fast fading vision Tenpou saw the flowing rivulets of crimson stark against the grimy rock, etching their way through the cracks and nooks in the stone. Lighting was minimal, and what pitiful amount which he did receive filtered in through the iron bars, dappled patches of faded amber superimposed on the dingy darkness.

He had no need to strain his ears, for in his current state of heightened acuity in the faculties of touch and hearing that comes when vision is impaired, the distinctive sound that a whip made while it cut swiftly through air could be heard. It was by no means unfamiliar, him having spent the better part of the day being the recipient of its cruel blows, and as he lay in the half-light the whistling sound took on a staccato rhythm, and the imploring cries that followed were but an accompaniment to the savage melody.

His spectacles lay shattered in the far corner, metal bent and twisted beyond recognition while the fragments of glass lay faintly glimmering in the shadows. Stripped down to nothing but his pants, the chill had permeated the very core of his bones and the heavenly wind that caressed his face seemed to herald the kiss of death.

Tenpou saw, or sought to see in the nebulous dimness, the past and the future, craning his mind back to where he was certain a better had been in existence, and where heaven was something more than a travesty of perfection. The past was darkened and almost blotted out, shrouded by year of repression and conscious suppression; the future a series of brightly-lit tableaux, unintelligible and blindingly white, yet to be inscribed but already in the midst of being formed. Tenpou could see the half-completed images, faintly coloured as they were, depicting with startling clarity to his eyes the ignoble death to which he would, in all finality succumb to.

His mind toyed with the idea of death, the statement of which he both repudiated and accepted as the unwavering truth. Caught and trapped, ensnared by the intricate web of which there was no escape.

Heaven, with its cult of purity, of righteousness and of goodness, was nothing but a sham concealing decadence and iniquity. He had lived well enough, picking his way through the bureaucratic nightmare, until he lost the battle to vanish forever in the labyrinthine world of deceit.

The door clanged open, swinging on its hinges. A figure, illuminated from the back by a blinding light, was thrust callously into the cell in which Tenpou resided. With a slam, the door was shut, and the heavy footsteps of the guard clattered down the long hallway. Tenpou remained still, partly out of the desire to conceal his presence, partly to ascertain the identity of the newcomer before he made his move.

Litouten, while not being famed for his intelligence, was nonetheless underhand and scheming, and it was not beneath him to use an assassin to surreptiously do away with his greatest enemy.

Tenpou waited, straining his eyes and seeking to peer through the haziness that clouded his vision.

"Marshal, you there?" The voice came out of the darkness. A conspicuous shuffling could be heard as the figure, guided by the faint light, moved softly over to where Tenpou lay.

"Oi, Tenpou. You're not dead, are you?"

"…"

"Pity, I though you were."

Tenpou tensed, barely trusting his ears and all the more mistrustful of the words that were forming at the tip of his tongue. "General Kenren?"

"Yessir,"

"I order to you to leave immediately. This instant."

"No can do, Marshal. Got myself caught good."

"This is an order. If you persist in staying, General, I swear there will be hell to pay—"

"Not possible, Tenpou. Gate, lock," —here there came a furious rattling as the gate was shaken violently—"and I'm sure the walls are pretty solid as well. Looks like I'm trapped, aren't I?"

"Kenren."

"Yeah?"

"What have you done?"

"Let's see. I've upset the Celestial court, been blatantly disrespectful to Kami-sama himself, disrupted the judiciary proceedings, made myself the second greatest enemy of Litouten, but there might be a little bit of competition there from Konzen and the chibi— shall I go on?"

"…Kenren."

With that, Tenpou flung his arms out in a desperate lunge, drawing Kenren into a passionate embrace. His body screamed in vehement protest, muscles straining and throbbing with an unrelenting ache.

It was a possessive union, driven by the nights of pent-up lust and desire that deluged his body. It was a heady intoxication of the most potent elements, a blinding, fiery inferno that well up inside him and threatened to over flow in a lethal explosion.

Tenpou seized Kenren's lips in his own, giving way to his primal instincts and savouring with relish the contact of Kenren's warm body on his own.

It was then that the stench of the stockade seemed to alleviate and the dampness and dreariness seemed a little less; for in their place a scent so complete and a warmth so alluring radiated from Kenren's body. It was then that his death sentence seemed to have been lifted; perhaps it was only there when he imaged it so.

They both drowned in a raging surfeit of pleasure, believing, in their minds, in the momentary reality, banishing their hopelessness into the unconscious, living for the moment, living for each other.

Both of them knew—in a way it was never fully out of their minds—that what was theirs then would not be their forever. The pleasure they felt was but temporal, a fleeting illusion they chose to believe in.

There were times when the fact of impending death seemed as palpable as the filthy cell they were in, and they would cling together in a sort of despairing sensuality, like a damned soul grasping at his last morsel of pleasure when the clock was within five minutes of striking.

And Tenpou understood, in that brief moment, that this was the end; the end that nothing would change, that was inevitable, but if Heaven, impervious as it was, would grant him a last wish, it was that he would wake up someday to the cries of his friends, amidst the company of those he truly trusted.

In the waning, dying scarlet light that emanated from every crevice in the wall and seemed to give the cell an unearthly lustre, the lucent, brilliant truth shone before him, and Tenpou willed himself to die then, in the comfortingly cold arms of the man he knew had just left for the future beyond.

The End

18/04/2004