Author's Note: The title is taken from Peter S. Beagle's novella, as a tribute and with my deepest respect. As with the other chapters, this story was written for the fic battle on the saiunkoku_fic community. The prompt was as follows: "Bara Hime/Ryuki -Barahime wakes up in Shuurei's body and pretends to be Shuurei to get closer to Ryuuki." But, well, me being me, I can never do exactly what one might expect with a prompt. My muse is the spirit of perversity, after all. And so!


She opened her eyes to lines of blurry print; when she lifted her head they resolved into columns of neat characters that detailed an obscure point in the national tax system. She raised a hand to her forehead-- a smaller hand than she remembered, the fingers shorter-- and not for the first time cursed the particulars of her own existence, the rules that bound her to life time and time again. This above all things she had never wanted.

She left the room and found herself in the familiar corridors of the main Kou residence. Her memories of it were many, and full of joy, but now the sight flooded her with aching despair. She had never expected to see them again, and yet here she was. Instinct guided her steps as she looked for Shouka.

She found him in the offices of the clan head, dressed more splendidly than she had ever seen him, save once on the day of their wedding. His face had lines now that it had never possessed before, crows' feet around his eyes, strands of silver in the midnight of his hair. But though time was leaving its mark on him it hadn't dulled his senses; his head jerked up instinctively at her presence in the doorway, and his intense, blood-red eyes went wide and defenseless and terrified.

She knew exactly how he felt; opening her eyes had broken her heart in two. "Hello, my love," she said.

He stood slowly, gasped raggedly. "Shoukun."

She nodded and spared him the need to attempt moving by pulling a chair up to the desk across from him. He collapsed back into his, slumping over the surface of the table. After a moment she took his hands in hers, trying not to notice the contrast between them where once they had matched the span from fingertip to fingertip. His eyes squeezed shut, and he raised her fingers to his lips.

"I never wanted to cause you this pain," she said, "not again, at least."

"All those times I prayed to have you back," he whispered, "but I didn't know-- like this, I didn't know . . ."

"You couldn't have known," she said gently, in the voice that was not hers.

"I missed you so much," he said to her hands, "so very much. I never stopped loving you."

"I left you my heart," she murmured. "You've taken good care of her."

He flinched as if she had struck him. "Is she-- is Shuurei--"

"Gone," she said, and tightened her hands around his trembling ones. The skin was drier than she remembered, the webwork of cracks finer. "But not dead. Not dead, love, not yet. There might be a chance."

He had always been far too brave; he faced the twin hopes that were also twin despairs squarely as they tore him in two. "What do you mean?"

"That man," she said, remembering. "The blond one, with his father's eyes."

"Ryuuki," Shouka said with a thick voice.

"Is that his name?" she shook her head. "Is he worthy of her?"

"He is already a son of my heart," the ex-archivist said.

"Does she love him?"

Shouka paused. "She hasn't said."

"Ah," Shoukun said, "ah." Gently she set her husband's hands down on the wooden desk; they lay there helpless and limp, like broken birds. "There is a chance."

He stared at them as if they were not his, and raised bleeding eyes to her face. "I want-- I don't want--" She touched the tears streaming down his hollow cheeks. "How can I lose you again?" he whispered.

"We challenged fate, you and I," she told him, cupping his face in too-small hands. "This is the price."

He was still as a stone under her touch. "I could never choose between you."

She smiled at him, and it was terrible. "Let us be glad, then, that it has never been your choice to make."

His eyes were closed, his face drawn tight with pain.

She kissed him, only once. "You must take me to him," she commanded; and he obeyed.

************************************

He set her down in the gardens of the palace. "You'll find him here, probably," Shouka said, "he has trouble sleeping at night, and he loves the gardens."

She nodded and stepped free of the circle of his strong arms. "That, at least, is good to hear," she said gravely. "I can approve of a man who can love a garden."

He reached after her, then let his hand drop again without touching her. "I love you," he said simply; just that.

She nodded, and walked towards the cherry trees, pale as ghosts in the moonlight. Beneath their gilded branches she found the one whom she sought, a robe of purple laid across his shoulders, his blond hair leeched of color. The son of a tyrant, the unwanted Prince, the reluctant Emperor. The man who loved her daughter.

He had been looking up into the luminous blossoms, but he turned sharply when she approached on silent feet, that imperious gaze sweeping the shadows that concealed her. "Who's there?" he demanded.

She stepped forward-- not too far-- and watched his face change, the swift chase of emotion across it. "Shuurei?" he said, bewildered, not quite believing, his eyes and his heart in conflict. "What are you doing here? What's wrong?"

He knew instinctively to ask that question, and her heart tore a little more. "I came to see you," she said; it was not a lie.

"I'm here," he said, stepping closer, frowning. "Of course I'm here. Did something happen?"

She let her head fall forward, let her fists clench, felt her shoulders bow with pressure. He paused only a moment and then he was there, gathering her in, not forcing her: offering. War and blood was the legacy left to him, but he had learned gentleness somehow, and a great love lived inside him. She only hoped it would be enough. "Whatever it is, you can tell me," he said, his hands soft on her back, curving over the hard ridges of her shoulder blades. "Shuurei, how--"

"Hold me," she whispered to him, "tighter." And when he hesitated again, nuzzled her face into the front of his robe. He smelled of linen and soap, ink and paper and the incense that had been used to scent his clothes-- and under that another scent, faintly and distinctly male. It reminded her of Shouka-- but she must not, must not think about him, must think only of this man who held her now with a man's strength, whose fingers had become harder with what must be worry. She could hear his heart, a steady beat under her ear.

"Of course," he said, comforting, "of course," but what he didn't know was that it wasn't enough. She slowly tightened her fist on the collar of the sleeping robe, pulling him closer until they were body to body, breast to breast, and she was drawing herself up on her toes. His eyes went wide as she found the side of his face, moved his head to the proper angle.

"Shuurei--" was all he had time for, and then she was kissing him.

He responded; he couldn't not, and she kissed the corner of his mouth, his jaw. "I don't understand," he said.

"You don't need to," she said, frantic and reckless, and had them both staggering back against the tree trunk, had cold hands against his warm chest, making him gasp. His hands were down her back, over the dip in her spine and then the curve of her rear, and she was taken by surprise by the wave of desire that swamped her, want for an essential act of life that would also be her dissolution. For her they had always been one and the same.

His hands were low and intimate though cloth still stood between them. A shift of her leg behind his knee and they were closer still, and then they were sliding together down the trunk of the tree to the thick coolness of the grass beneath. She was pressing his head back against the wood, pulling from him another kiss, one that left both their mouths bruised.

That he wanted her, desperately, was obvious, but still he hesitated. "Shuurei," he said, and she used his chest to push herself up to her knees above him; he was looking up into her face, intently, and she didn't know what he saw there. All she remembered of her daughter was a frail child with huge brown eyes. "Tell me what you want from me," he pleaded.

She freed the sash from her waist and let it drop, watched his eyes go wide as she opened her robe. The spring night was still cool, and she shivered to feel it again on unaccustomed skin. "Call my heart to you," she told him, and took his hands and guided them to her breasts.

He followed them with his mouth pressed to the underside, and she made herself forget that the proportions were all wrong, and made herself forget whose mouth it wasn't, that the name he moaned against her skin wasn't actually hers. "Again," she told him, and he whispered the name to her sternum, her clavicle, rolled her over in the grass and found it in the curve of her waist, sent it ghosting between her legs.

"I love you," he said, and she moaned, unmoored by his touch, feeling the heart inside her kindle. "Please, Shuurei, please, come back to me--"

She guided him inside her even as she felt her perception slide, he was as close as he could be, closer; she was crushed against his chest with desperate strength-- "Again," she commanded, with her last breath, "again!"

He arched backward in the moonlight-- "Shuurei!" and she blazed up like a fire, and was consumed.

************************************

Shuurei opened her eyes slowly, blinking at the silver layers of blossoms floating pale against the sky. Warmth suffused her-- a familiar body held her close, pressed in all its long length against her, and soft feather-light hair tickled her belly, her neck.

"Ryuuki," she whispered, and trailed her hands down his back. He felt real in her arms, so good and warm and alive, and she could feel. Something in her chest hurt, raw and aching.

"Shuurei?" He reared up on his elbows above her, not quite believing, and she reached up and touched the wetness of tears on his face. "Oh, thank the heavens-- you're you, you're you again-- I was so afraid-- Shuurei, Shuurei you're crying--"

"So are you," she said, and laughed and sobbed and held him close, "so are you."