He held his breath, the air in the room suddenly turning stagnant and cold.
Well, he'd known it would come to this someday, hadn't he? Only a fool would have deluded himself into thinking that a princess could stay a princess forever.
He waited for the finishing blow, when she finally told him that his promise was done with and that she would be going into the protection of someone else. Maybe, a dark part of his mind said, if that person were to suffer an unfortunate accident, there wouldn't be a wedding...
He shoved the thought away quickly before turning his attentions back to the matters at hand.
Tomoyo looked at him very seriously and frowned.
"Well, who do you think it is?"
Kurogane laughed, a dry, mirthless bark. Would she really do this to him? She could play mean tricks on him, but he didn't think she'd be so cruel as to make him go through the pain of actually saying it. But, if she wanted him to guess, then it wasn't like he could disobey.
"Taro. That Nagashima guy."
And, thankfully, she rolled her eyes. "No, of course not. We interrogated the prisoner more thoroughly and found that he was actually sent by through a chain of families-- either disgruntled, former landholders or people that Fubai and Hoshou had displaced when they expanded their territories a few years ago."
Kurogane had the most peculiar expression on his face: relief, anger, disbelief, and a variety of other emotions had all swept across his countenance at once, making it impossible to read, a collision of feelings. When the sentiment sank through that she wasn't getting married after all (at least not this second) he sank more heavily against the wall.
Tomoyo, meanwhile, dissolved into laughter.
"Ohoho, you don't know how hard it was to keep a straight face through that!"
Kurogane grimaced. Seeing the future was so not fair. There was no way for him to win: not when she could see his actions beforehand and plan accordingly. At least she couldn't read his mind, he consoled himself, not yet, and that was something to be thankful for.
"Alright, then, fine," he said, when he was sure that she was quite done with her laughter, "so do we have a name for these guys? You want to dispatch me to the borders to take them out?"
She shook her head, and a trace of that sad expression from before came back, as though haunting her smiles. Kurogane wondered what it could be. When you could see things that hadn't happened yet, it was bound to come with a good deal of things you didn't want to see, futures that you had to prevent, or wanted to but didn't have the power. Sometimes he thought it would have driven him insane.
But whatever it was, she had cast the thought aside for now (Kurogane knew it would come back later, that she would be troubled when he was away--that's how it was), she gave him the go-ahead to go about his nightly duties without interruption. The culprits, by this time, probably would be close to the palace if they intended on carrying out any more of their plans.
"Oh, and Kurogane," she called, a last remark before he headed off, "please try not to kill anyone more than necessary."
He hmphed and let the doors close behind him.
It wouldn't strike him until it was too late just how important that one admonition would be.
He certainly wouldn't take it to heart. Not on a night when the air was fresh, crisp, and singing with the anticipation of a battle. Tsh. Besides, it wasn't like they didn't have anywhere to put the bodies--the gardener's shed was only a last resort.
Asking him not to kill his opponents was a waste of breath. You haven't really defeated someone until he's not breathing, Kurogane thought proudly. After all, he certainly wouldn't give up until the very end. He was giving his enemies the same honor, holding them to the same standards. That's just what you signed on for when you became a ninja.
So, when he came back, half-way through his roof-crawl, bathing the tiles of Shirasaki red, Princess Tomoyo was not pleased.
He was used to this. She didn't like him plowing through mountains of assassins, or having him kill them on the spot. He was of a different opinion: they'd had their chance to get away, they knew that a ninja lived at Shirasaki that brooked no trespassing, and they came anyway. You didn't need to make it any clearer to him that that whether they deserved what they got or not.
Her lips had a slight downturn to them, and her eyes held something of a sadness he didn't often find there. Typically, she'd reprimand him, usually angrily, and tell him that lives could have been spared by his capturing his foes. He wouldn't listen, and the cycle would start afresh.
This time seemed different.
"I asked you not to kill all those people, did I not?" She inquired, voice tinged with that faraway sadness. No matter. It was still the same argument.
He was just so relieved. So relieved that she hadn't said what he had thought she would, and while thinking over on the roof what that afternoon's events had inspired in him, he happened to cut down everything in his path. Same old, same old.
"Tsh, they were attacking. They should have known that this was what they'd get for trying to seige Shirasaki." He replied nonchalantly.
She shook her head. "But surely you didn't have to kill all of them?"
He shrugged. It wasn't a really special shrug, but in the time to follow after that, it might have just been the thing that sealed his fate: his absolute unconcern.
"I'm sorry, but you leave me no choice."
Then there was a curse, and he shouted something, but the winds tore it from him as they swept him away. He saw the shapes of Tomoyo and the palace growing less distinct, and eventually it the gusts got so fierce that he closed his eyes, wondering what on earth had happened.
It was a windy day in Tokyo when he opened his eyes.
Swept off his feet and swept into another dimension, all at the hands of the same princess. Kurogane looked around at the strangely-clad people surrounding him. He had to hand it to her, she was pretty good.
Author's Note:
It's still going to continue, but I'm going to skip over chunks of the story we already know. This is going basically in the same direction as I had planned, with a few minor alterations here and there. Out of all these, I think my favorites thus far are Destroyer's Ball and the first chapter, which was the original Promise Me This. Anybody have any chapters they like most?
Just curious. (lol)
--cy.
