Okay, I'd better put this up, so I have incentive to get going on the next chapter. Hopefully, you're finding it enjoyable/a distraction/not too confusing. Thank you all for the lovely reviews and encouragement, I've really needed them. This is not a fandom I feel I know well enough to write in yet, but Naoe/Takatora are just too awesome to resist.

Mirage of Blaze belongs to the brilliant and brain-hurting Kuwabara Mizuna. I know nothing but my limited understanding of it. (Note to self: must work on kanji today.)

Note: This story is largely anime-verse. It does incorporate some elements of the novels, but not so much that you need to have read them. And while I don't think this can be classified AU, I am changing quite a lot. You're warned!

Also, spring is here at last! Happy Ostara to all who know what that word means!

PENDULUM
Chapter 3 - No Happy Medium

Our first meeting was not the stuff of dramas and destiny.

In fact, I hardly realized anything had happened to me, or was going to. I was merely one in a line of less important lords that Kenshin guided you past, so many introductions that I was sure you'd remember none of our names. The rest were staring at you, the way everyone stared, but my mind was on the campaign we'd just finished and the next we were to begin. It wasn't until we had exchanged automatic pleasantries and you were turning away that it occurred to me - numbly and coldly as everything did then - that you were the single most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

Between that day and the next time we met, I tried to forget you. The other lords, used to my silences, didn't wonder why I didn't join in their discussions of you, their thinly-disguised want. I remained aloof, going among Kagekatsu's men to avoid yours, not joining in the speculation of why Kenshin had become so fond of you so quickly. Some days I managed not to think of you at all. Then the memory would rise up without warning, prompted by a glimmer of light on water or the colors of sunset on a cherry tree. I never looked at or sought out beautiful things before. You had changed me already, with no effort you had imposed your will on my soul, and there began the anger in me that has persisted ever since.

Even if I was capable of such a feeling in that life, I was not in love with you. You were not a living, breathing, flawed thing like me to whom any part of me could reach out. Every step, every breath, every movement of your hands, every brilliant suggestion you offered at strategy meetings was a testament to your perfection and my inadequacy. I became more a miser than ever before, sneaking glimpses of you when I needed to and hoarding them like gold that enriched and poisoned me at the same time. Even when I didn't think of you, I could feel your very existence eating away at me. I did not value my life and sanity until you came along and threatened them both.

Had you been someone else, someone beneath me, I could have taken you and hoped that would end this madness. I could have made you into something I could desire without wounding my stubborn pride. I wanted to, I wanted to throw you onto the ground and see if there was something human beneath your exquisite shell, and I wonder now if I refrained because of my devotion to Lord Kenshin, as I thought then. Or if it was the sadness in your strange eyes that kept me back. Or because you frightened me, even then.

I died without touching you as I wanted to, and I have lived for four centuries the same way. When Lord Kenshin called upon me and I recovered the self buried by an onryou, I accepted his charge without question or hesitation. I thought I had repressed you deep enough beneath guilt and betrayal and death to void your power over me forever. I thought it was only your physical perfection that had snared me. Then I went to you to swear my allegiance, and I realized nothing had changed. Even with your new body as a cloak, I could see only you, your soul blazing brightly, the one lovely thing in an ugly world. Through my growing obsession, my desire tangled with fury, I only wanted to be near you. I lived in the shadow of a light that daily blinded me.

The pleasant, distant, sad young man I'd barely known was gone. Over time I felt his loss as though I'd put the sword to your throat myself, which I might as well have done. For years, you showed me no feeling but the duty of a lord to his subordinates, and a growing, slowly growing, trust. If you needed time to believe that I stopped being your enemy, I understand that. As time went on, you began to let your walls slip down every now and then, only to me. When I was harsh with you in response, you shut me out and pressed on with our work. When I tried to touch you, to comfort, save for a few precious occasions, you pushed me away and looked at me to ask how I, a lesser being, could dare to think you would be sullied by me.

There was no right thing to do, no forgiveness, no way to heal or open your heart. But most of the time you tolerated me, and occasionally you showed appreciation, even kindness. I learned not to trust these moments of feigned humanity, to believe you only ever drew my chain closer to hit me with it. Yet somehow, I remained mesmerized by your beauty and strength. I loved and love you enough to not only accept the pain but to desire it.

I asked for these chains. I wanted to be bound. I would rather suffer than be away from you, than let anyone else be as close to you. For so long, I at least could tell myself that I knew you better than any other, that you showed your weakness only to me, even if you hated me for seeing it. Then she came, a being innocent of our world and its darkness, kind-hearted as I was jealous, gentle as I couldn't be if I was going to keep you strong. I hated her. I hated that you put her safety above your own. I hate what my anger led me to do, and that I wonder at times if you knew beforehand what would happen. If you were punishing me again.

Then I lost you. I became Tachibana Yoshiaki. I forced myself to exist without you. The scars on my wrists remain as evidence of how unwilling I was, for a long time. As I grew up, the people around me thought I must have let go of whatever I had grieved for. Only Irobe, at the end of his life previous to the current, saw the truth - that I still hoped I would find you again. I could not exist any other way. I did my work and longed for you every day, and then suddenly, there you were. Unmistakably you, but so different. I wonder if Takaya is what Kagetora would have been if your first life had not caused you so much grief.

I love you. I love you more in one day than I could hate you in four hundred years. I love your cold true self and I love the insecure boy your amnesia has placed in my care. I will hold on to you no matter how much you push me away. I will remind you of my sins or you'll remember, and while you hate me, I will love you still. And when you give me those anxious looks, when you wonder who or what is causing me pain, I will try to be only reassuring, to remember that you don't know our terrible truths.

You are the one who is hurting me. I would have it no other way.

mobmobmobmob

"You realize school starts the day after tomorrow, right? How long do you plan on keeping me hostage in this sight-seeing adventure?"

Takaya's voice was light, a vocal smirk, he was seemingly unaware that Naoe would like to keep him forever, exclusively. The elder gave him a smile that hid the impulse.

"I'll take you back to Matsumoto tomorrow. Until then, I believe our time would be well spent patrolling for signs of trouble."

"You're expecting to find some?" Naoe had mentioned something about this, Takaya remembered, but it had been hours ago, too early to sink in properly.

"The recent activity of the Yami Sengoku has caused disruptions all over. Spirits that were at rest are rising up and becoming a threat. We should always eliminate them as quickly as possible, before they have a chance to grow strong or fall under the control of one of our enemies."

The car windows were half-down, the air rushing in cool for the season, the dying summer. The vacationing crowds had thinned and left the beaches and tourist spots mostly empty, leaving the locals to get back into their usual routine. As he looked out the window and saw the car pass by these people, Takaya wondered what it would be like to be one of them. Strange, now, to think how he had taken normality for granted.

"And if Kousaka's information is correct, as it usually is, we must be wary of Ikkoushuu as well."

"The religious fanatics, right?"

"Yes. They were wiped out by the Oda, and it is their hatred for Nobunaga that led them to become onryou."

"If we're both enemies of Nobunaga, why do they have a problem with us?"

It was a question Kagetora would never need to ask; the innocence of it stung Naoe's soul with warmth. "Whether we have foes in common or not, we - you, especially - remain the greatest threat to all the warlords vying for dominance."

"You're really sure about me being Kagetora?"

"Very sure."

"Great," Takaya said softly to his reflection.

"You will never need to fight alone, Kagetora-sama," Naoe said, trying to look straight ahead at the road. Though I know you would. "I will always be at your side."

"Did Kagetora thank you for that?"

"Yes...not often in words, but yes." You are Kagetora-sama.

Takaya shifted in the comfortable leather seat, dug his fingers into his legs through the jeans, and glanced quickly at him several times. The boy seemed to be working up to looking at him, and Naoe gave him as much attention as he could without crashing the car. He didn't feel the approach of Kagetora's cool contempt, only Takaya's nervousness. It was still strange - Kagetora had been uneasy whenever Naoe had the upper hand or witnessed him in weakness, whereas Takaya seemed content to let Naoe lead. Perhaps he was only nervous because all of this was still new to him, or he was still perceptive enough to sense the chaos in Naoe's heart.

"Thank you, Naoe."

Kagetora's voice, Kagetora's rare kindness, drawn out by Takaya's vulnerability. Naoe's hands gripped the wheel tighter to keep them from shaking. I want to hold him, I want to touch him, I don't want to scare him or make him remember his hatred.

"Takaya-san - "

Before the voice had a chance to choose between confession and consolation, Takaya suddenly sat straight up and jerked to face the window. They were passing a park, an idyllic late afternoon scene of children playing and parents watching. Nothing could possibly look more innocent and peaceful, but Takaya was Kagetora, and Naoe trusted Kagetora's senses. He stopped the car and watched him with concern, and spoke gently to the boy's agitation.

"What is it?"

"I don't know. It feels like..." Takaya looked back at Naoe over his shoulder. "Like the onryou we exorcised at the castle. Do you feel it?"

He did, now. "One of them may have wandered into this vicinity. But there's more to the energy...more than one."

"More than one of them?"

"No, the other energy is fainter. The warrior onryou must have encountered another. This is dangerous, the second spirit may have been induced to join the first, or merely to cause mischief among the living. Either way..." Naoe turned off the engine. "We must get rid of them both, or the people here will be at risk."

"Will they even show themselves now, with people around?"

"We'll wait for nightfall. It will give us a chance to survey the area."

It was jarring to walk out of a conversation about ghosts and exorcism into a playground full of sun and laughter; easy to forget either of these worlds existed while immersed in the other. There were four or five kids, a girl and the rest boys, dashing energetically from the spiral slide to the sandbox to the jungle gym and back again, enacting a game that seemed to have no fixed rules. The young flock of mothers on the other side of the play area observed the strange man and teenager suspiciously for a few moments, then seemed to be satisfied, returning to their chatter and periodic warnings to their children.

Naoe smiled at the woman who stared at him the longest, and she blushed and quickly pretended to look for something in her purse. Takaya rolled his eyes, plopped onto the middle of a set of three swings and gestured to the one on his right. Naoe needed a few awkward seconds to get comfortable on the unfamiliar seat, then found Takaya smirking at him.

Mocking. He chose this spot on purpose to make me feel inferior. Even as he thought it, Naoe knew that was unfair. Even Kagetora had rarely been as cruel as Naoe's paranoia had made him in his mind, and this was Takaya. Takaya didn't remember his reasons for wanting to hurt Naoe, and besides, he was smiling now, secretively but not in an unkind way.

"Been awhile, huh?"

Naoe couldn't help but smile. "I think I was in one of these once, when I was very small."

"Just once?"

"This life is the first I entered as an infant in a long time."

"But just once, in this whole life?"

Takaya sounded amazed, as though he could not conceive of an existence that didn't include at least a few happy years of innocence, in which life and death were unconsidered, abstract things, only words, and all that mattered were days like this one, how many hours of play could be fit into them. Kanshousha didn't have that relief; even as babies, they remembered. Takaya's amnesia was further proof of Kagetora's uniqueness, and where Naoe would usually feel bitter about his own perceived inferiority, he instead felt older, wiser, indulgent. He had loved Kagetora's hidden naiveté, and loved that Takaya couldn't hide it anymore.

"I was not a happy child. Not what anyone would call normal."

"Oh, right. You never forgot all this Yami Sengoku stuff." Takaya looked down at the sand he was dragging his heels through. "Was that when...you know?" he asked, gesturing to his wrists.

"Yes. It began when I was seven. Eventually, my father removed me from school and decided I would begin training to become a monk."

"And that...helped?"

No. "So it would seem. Also, I never entirely gave up hope that I might find you again."

"What if you hadn't? What would you have done?" It might have been his imagination, but he thought Takaya sounded slightly sulky.

"Lived as long as I could bear to. Tried to fulfill the mission Lord Kenshin gave us." Naoe smiled, tightly and bitterly, at the sun just beginning to set. "Becoming a monk didn't help. Existence with attachment is suffering. I knew that so well already."

"Naoe," Takaya said quietly, confused but trying to understand. Naoe didn't want to enlighten him and he didn't want pity, he wanted to wound Kagetora for wounding him, push back when pushed, as had always been their way, their war of subtlety. For Takaya's sake, he softened the blow, made his words hurt instead of hurting.

"It was attachment that kept me bound to this life. This attachment I'll never be free of."

"Yoshiaki, I know you won't tell me what it is you're grieving for enough to want to hurt yourself, and I won't make you. But please, if you can't live for my sake, for your mother's and your brothers', live for the hope that someday you'll find the person you're missing. If your bond is that strong, you'll find them again, but for that chance, you must live."

"It's such a cruelty, I think, that life doesn't end, just keeps repeating itself. When I was Naoe Nobutsuna, I didn't entirely believe in reincarnation, I didn't want to after seeing so much war and suffering. When you accept that death doesn't end your existence, you lose the comforting thought that death ends all cares. All attachments."

What attachment? Takaya didn't say it, but his confusion was heavy in the air between them. "You're still Naoe, aren't you?"

To his relief, Naoe smiled, albeit strangely. "And you are still you, still with me. I apologize, Takaya-san. I should be watching for the onryou, not rambling thoughts that make little sense even to me."

"It's okay. It's worth it to see you sitting in a swing." The boy smirked. "Would you believe I lied about sensing something here, I just wanted a reason to make you sit there?"

Naoe laughed, feeling forgiven - just for the moment, but he could hardly hope for more than that. "How very juvenile, Takaya-san. Perhaps this setting is making you nostalgic?"

"How can you feel nostalgic if you've never been happy?"

The voice was Takaya's, but so melancholy that it might have been Kagetora's. It was growing slowly darker, the shadows stretching ominously. The mothers were calling their children, gathering them up to go home. Naoe noticed this absently, his attention on Takaya, on not allowing himself to struggle off this wobbly seat and hug and kiss him until they both stopped hurting.

"I mean, my family used to be happy, but I don't know. I always felt like something was..." Missing. "...wrong."

"Takaya-san..."

"I feel something like nostalgia, though, when I'm with you guys. And at the castle, when I saw the thirteen generals. Like I was close to remembering, but..."

Naoe broke in quickly, before either of them could dwell on the hospital room, the trance blocked by Kagetora's wall. "They bothered you, didn't they?"

"We should exorcise them and let them go on, all the spirits working for us," Takaya said shortly. "It's unfair. The war they fought is long over...or should be, at least."

Still feeling others' pain so acutely. Don't you have enough of your own? Haven't you always, more than you would ever confide in me?

"They were charged to remain in this world, as we were, true. But I believe they do wish to help. Otherwise they could have asked you for release long ago."

"And I could let them go, if they did?"

"Yes. You did so for Haruie, two centuries ago." Naoe nodded at Takaya's surprise. "That was her first life as a female. She fell in love with a young man, and wanted to stay with him. He died shortly thereafter, and ever since, Haruie has not been as carefree as before."

"That's hard to believe," Takaya said with a frown. Ayako seemed plenty carefree to him, too much so at times.

"Even though we are still the same people, it has been four hundred years. Some change is inevitable, for you, for me..."

"What was he like?" Takaya asked quietly.

"Kagetora?"

"No...Naoe. What were you like before I made you this way?"

"Takaya-san...you didn't - "

The street lamps surrounding the playground blinked off in unison, and at the same time the air went so cold that every exhaled breath emerged as a cloud of mist. The light of stars and waxing moon above was just enough for them to be able to see each other as they leaped up, and the broad black figure in the distance. Armed, unafraid, approaching. As onryou did, it had fed on the power of the others it encountered, both strengthened and strengthening by this.

"Takaya-san."

"I'm ready."

A blast of light large enough to target them both burst toward them; Naoe quickly shielded them with a goshinheki barrier while Takaya fired back. The onryou vanished to dodge the blow, but rematerialized closer. It was angry and powerful, engorged by the negative energy it had absorbed in its wanderings, and eager to fight them. It shot another blast that shook the wispy golden threads of the protective shield, almost enough to blow them apart. Naoe reinforced it and gestured for Takaya to get down, but the boy stepped closer and put his hands together. The aura around him blazed like a blue inferno; even in his current state, Kagetora was more powerful than Naoe could ever hope to be.

"BAI!"

The warrior howled in protest but froze. Naoe quickly got to his feet and synchronized his voice with Kagetora's in the chant so familiar to both of them. Bishamonten's presence descended behind them, closer to Kagetora as always, dark and almost frightening even as an ally, even after all these years. The war god's sword materialized in Kagetora's hand, and in moments, it was over.

Naoe tensed, about to run to his lord in case the fight had taken too much out of him; Takaya was still learning, after all, how to control how much power he expended. A mischievous, echoing giggle sounded all around them, halting both possessors as they reacted, Takaya with shock, Naoe with a surge of quiet panic. A child. Nothing else could laugh like that.

The sword had disappeared, Takaya stood like a statue with hands curled around nothing, showing no sign that he was about to take on a new opponent. Naoe quickly sensed where the spirit's energy was strongest and put himself between Takaya and that spot. "It's all right," he whispered, and got no answer.

Wispy threads of matter gathered and clung to the onryou, forming the deceptively short stature of a child, a little boy who had lived ten years at the most. He was a fairly new ghost, judging by his modern clothes, but his energy was similar to the other's. They must have spent enough time together to amplify each other's power and rage, and when the child opened his mouth to scream, he confirmed this.

"You killed my friend!" The voice couldn't be heard by any normal humans, but it was enough to make the Yashashuu wince and the tree branches rattle wildly. "You killed my friend like the bad people killed me!"

Naoe knew from experience that while sad onryou could sometimes be persuaded to pass on, the angry ones could not - feelings of vengeance were too strong an anchor to this world. All that could be done for these creatures was exorcism, forcing them to the place where they could undergo spiritual cleansing and have their earthly attachments wiped away.

What I would have welcomed when I was an onryou myself, if not for him. As he shielded them, as he began the chant, Naoe felt Takaya fall to his knees behind him. Kagetora had not reacted this strongly to the exorcism of a child since their first, was this another of his protective walls Takaya had broken down? Naoe resisted the impulse to hold him and focused on the onryou, who for all its strength had little control or knowledge of how to fight.

"Nomaku Samanda Bodanan Baishiramandaya Sowaka..."

"I want my mommy and daddy!" the wispy thing shrieked, uprooting a large chunk of earth and hurling it over their heads. Naoe could hear Takaya's heavy, panicked breathing.

"Then be still and I'll send you to them. Namu Tobatsu Bishamonten, demons be gone! Lend us thy power!"

"NO! WAAAAAAH!" The ghost wept or appeared to, and stamped his little spectral feet. "Don't let him, make him stop!"

Takaya let out an anguished moan, one that sounded more like Kagetora. He had lost control, his power was bleeding into the air.

"Choubuku!"

The force of the exorcism pushed the child off the ground, and against the darkening sky he began to fade, first screaming in protest, then whimpering softly. As soon as he was sure the onryou was finished, Naoe whipped around and dropped to a crouch, put his arms around Takaya who was shivering from the warm energy escaping him. Naoe tried to enclose him in a tight hug, thinking he could either stop the rapid loss of strength or at least calm the boy. But Takaya had strength left, enough to shove the surprised monk off of him.

"Don't touch me. Don't. Touch. Me." He was leaning forward, palms braced against the cool grass, staring at the place the onryou had been with wild eyes, as though he were still seeing something there.

"Kagetora-sama..." It was Kagetora, not Takaya. They were the same in every way that mattered, but only Kagetora remembered his first reason for hating Naoe, the one Naoe had thought they resolved. Only Kagetora would know why the sight of a dead child would upset him so much. "Kagetora-sama, I had no part in your son's death, I swear."

"Shut up, shut up..." The voice was furious but pained, groaning as though in agony. The boy's fingers gripped the grass hard enough to tear it, he couldn't move them even when Naoe touched him again.

"Kagetora-sama, please believe me. When you sent your son away to safety, I had no idea, and my men who killed him were acting without my knowledge. Had they come back to me alive, I would have slain them myself for their cruelty! Please - "

"Stop touching me."

"Kagetora-sama - "

"It's an order!" the boy bellowed. The glow of his tiger eyes and the hot energy burning his hands made Naoe edge back. "You - "

"Please calm down, at this rate you'll lose consciousness."

"I will never..." Kagetora's snarling face went cold and serious, a perfect marble mask that defied his growing weakness. "You alone I will never forgive."

"I'm sorry," Naoe whispered. "For everything."

"...Naoe?" Confusion and vulnerability, the signs of Takaya that Kagetora had been loathe to show. Kagetora was retreating or being buried beneath amnesia again, and Takaya didn't understand why he was shaking with rage and cold. "Why - "

"Takaya-san..."

The boy slumped down onto the ground and went still. Naoe pulled off his jacket, lifted Takaya up to wrap it around him, and reminded himself that this was nothing that had not happened before, he merely had to keep Kagetora warm and let him rest and he would be fine. Hadn't he once appreciated such times, after all? Only then had he been able to hold him without protest, only then was his control pushed to its absolute limit.

Takaya-san is different, Takaya-san is innocent of Kagetora's cruelty. He's the same, but so different. I can't fight him the same way. I don't want to fight him. I want this to end, before I lose more of my sanity to this longing. Before I hurt him any more.

He would carry Kagetora to the car and drive back to the hotel, care for him until he woke with what looked like devotion, what was really an obsession that centuries had taught him to cloak and cover. Naoe would do this because he had a duty to Kenshin and to his own selfish heart, but first he allowed himself an indulgence, a minute of clasping Takaya to his chest and pushing his own body heat into the pallid white skin. This time he didn't think of the hospital and attempt at meditation, but an evening thirty years earlier, cradling a cold body before forcing Kagetora into another and proving every moment of his distrust valid.

Four hundred years of memory, each moment one kind of pain or another. Naoe embraced Kagetora with desperation and abandon, as he had once the razor blade his small hand guided to a vein.

To be continued.