Notes: Wow, and it only took me half a year, too! Time sure flies when you don't have any of it!

Chapter Warnings: None

Chapter Summary: Finally, something Usagi can relate to.

THE NORTHERN KINGDOM:
USAGI YOJIMBO

CHAPTER EIGHT

The scent of tea leaves wafts through the room, stirred up by a breeze from the open window. Papers rustle softly, the black ink at the bottom glistening where it is still wet. Miyamoto Usagi is a slow reader, Raphael thinks, but he does have neat handwriting.

"Do you think this was wise?" he asks quietly.

His brother does not answer right away. He is sitting on the windowsill, looking out at the small balcony with unseeing eyes. The day is warming up now that the morning has passed, but the air is still crisp, and maybe that is why he shivers.

The truth is, Donatello does not know why he has done as he did. Because Splinter told him to, mainly, and because most of his brothers already seem to get along with this strange long-eared samurai. It was an easy option. But that is not why he hesitates to reply. Rather, Donatello is not used to honest questions anymore. He has come to expect exclamations, explanations, statements. (From Raphael, shouts.) The sudden shift catches Donatello off guard.

"I don't know," he admits at last, when the silence has gone on for too long. He turns to look at the paper again and catches Raphael's eyes across the table. This is not pleading, he tells himself. "What do you think?"

"He was asking a lot of questions," Raphael says.

"With my permission."

"Still. All of this business about our defenses and upcoming repairs and his payment…" He shrugs.

Donatello finds himself mimicking the gesture. "I suppose it is vital to know these things for someone in his position," he says.

"None of the others ever asked so many questions." Raphael sniffs. "They were more than happy to snoop by themselves. Oh, I know how it all ended up, but still. They may have been crooks, but at least they had the decency not to be open about it."

"You think I shouldn't have allowed the questions?"

"I didn't say that."

"You think I shouldn't have hired him," Donatello mutters. "But Splinter…"

"I didn't say that, either," Raphael interrupts. "I don't mind you hiring him."

Donatello finds himself gaping at his brother. This is very different from anything else Raphael has had to say about their visitor so far. "I thought you didn't like him?"

Raphael clicks his tongue in irritation. "I don't," he says. Like that explains anything.

It is all rather infuriating, Donatello thinks vaguely. He can't help but feel like he is having two conversations at once, one in words and one that is very decidedly not being said out loud. Raphael certainly seems to be. But whatever it is that his brother is trying to make him understand, all Donatello gets out of it is the beginnings of a headache. The worst part is that he knows he would have been able to keep up just fine a few months ago. He used to be good at this sort of thing.

He thinks about inquiring further, but if he is entirely honest with himself, he is already losing interest. Raphael will do what he deems is right, or he won't. This is exhausting. Thinking is exhausting, and he is so tired already.

"Right," he says. "Fascinating. I'm going to – I'm going to clean up in here. File these away. Call for me if you need anything."

"Yeah," Raphael says. "Sure."

Donatello doesn't hear him leave. But when he next looks around, the room is empty and he is alone with the drying ink.

*N*K*A*U*

With a sigh, Usagi plunges his hands back into the wash basin and scrubs them for the third time. The black stains at his fingertips give no sign to disappear any time soon.

"No money to repair the wall but somehow came up with waterproof ink," he mutters darkly, increasing his efforts.

Behind him, where she is doing her best to clean up the water- and dust stains from the walls and floor, Akemi gives a soft laugh. "With the upper castle in this state, resilient ink is all the more important, I suppose." She glances at him, opens her mouth, then closes it again and turns away. But Usagi has seen her expression.

"I am not usually that clumsy, you know," he says, careful to keep his playful tone. "There is just something about the quill…" He trails off, waving his hands somewhat helplessly.

Akemi follows his movements with her eyes, and her face lights up. "Actually, you might not be half wrong there. Look." She holds up her own hands, palms towards him. Usagi hesitates, not sure what she is getting at. Then it clicks.

"Hm," he says. "That is… hm."

He holds up his own hands to mirror hers, their palms almost touching. To say that hers are bigger than his is a bit of an understatement. And she has only three fingers where he has five. It is only natural that kame writing equipment would be adapted to match. Akemi clicks her tongue at him. "You mammals," she sighs, "so frail, so dainty…"

Usagi has half a mind to flick some water at her. Instead he laughs, his insecurities gone just like that. This is fun, this easy banter, the conversation flowing as if they had known each other for months instead of hours. Adding another reason to the list titled 'Why I Stayed', and at the same time distracting him from the reality in which he signed a contract that binds him to a castle where he may well be required to bring his own pens.

And it is a good list. He wouldn't have stayed otherwise. Akemi's laugh is on it. So is Michelangelo's. So are Donatello's slumped shoulders. Raphael's anger. Leonardo. The desire to help. The temptation of an unsolved riddle. He never could resist a good challenge.

"Are you ready for the tour? We can start by getting your uniform," Akemi says.

He has already shown himself around, but he would be foolish to assume that he has seen all there is to this castle just by wandering for half a day. So he follows her out of the room that is now, irrefutably, his. To his left, the dim corridor goes on and on, winding around corners and in on itself. He knows there are dozens of other wooden doors just like this one, each and every one leading to an empty room. Donatello so graciously permitted him to ask questions, voice his concerns, and now the conversation is replaying in his head.

Any other guards? No, only him. Plans to hire any, then? Maybe. (That means no.) What about the disrepair? What disrepair? (Raphael, who had been standing as still as a statue for the duration of their conversation, had shifted at that, just enough for Usagi to catch it.)

He is glad to be back in the open air, where he watches as Akemi fumbles with the lock of a small shed that is nestled against the remains of the outer wall. The sunlight reveals rows and rows of shelves, tightly packed with bundles and boxes. Some of them are clothes. Many of them are not.

"This is just temporary, you understand," Akemi explains. He holds the door open for her as she runs her fingers along the faded inscriptions on the shelves. "It is getting a bit crowded downstairs."

There is something nagging at him. Something about what she had said earlier, as well. "Downstairs? Are there basements underneath the castle?"

She pauses in the process of pulling something off the shelf. "I suppose there could be, if you go all the way down? I am not sure they quite count as basements anymore. Anyway, this should do it. Let's leave before we suffocate in all this dust."

She thrusts the clothes she is holding at him and locks up behind them. The dusty bundle turns out to be a uniform made of black and orange silk. The colors are slightly faded but stainless and without holes. It occurs to Usagi, not for the first time, how tattered he must look.

Changing is a matter of moments. The overall length of the uniform is fine – Akemi has a good eye – and the hakama are unusually cut but don't give him much trouble. There is an excess overhang of orange cloth in his back, however, and it takes him a minute to figure out that he is supposed to fit a shell in there. This might require some work with thread and needle. For now, it will have to do.

Akemi leads him back to the front entrance of the castle. Usagi lets her take the lead. After all, he has seen very little of the actual interior, although looking at it from the outside it looks so strangely small: there are the guards' quarters on the left, with the mess hall at the back, and the Pavilion all by itself on the right, and the two towers looming overhead like thorns. In the main hall, two staircases lead up the walls and disappear into the gloom. Most of the rooms he has seen are empty excepting cobwebs and dust.

And yet, they tell him Donatello-tono is not the lord of this castle, and he has yet to see a woman that is not a servant.

Akemi walks straight ahead without any hesitation. She turns away from the stairs at the last moment, but only to circle around them, where a passageway leads further into the interior of the castle. Except this is where she stops, and turns towards him, and says "excuse me, please?"

He doesn't understand at first. Only when he steps aside he notices the two brass rings that are set into the pedestal that supports the stairs. It looks like a big entrance to a very small cupboard. He is about to say so when he sees the strange smile on Akemi's face.

In one fluid motion she reaches for the handles and throws open the doors.

*N*K*A*U*

"…and this is where it all started," Akemi explains. Her voice is echoing off the rough stone walls, smoothed and hewn only to a point. All around them in the dark, glittery pinpoints reflect the light of her lamp where specks of mineral are encased in the rock that surrounds them on all sides. "From what I understand, they left it mostly unchanged out of respect for the history of this place… Ah, here we go…"

They have reached another door. Usagi can see the glint of metal in the semi-dark, but another tell-tale sign is, quite unbelievably, the draught. His head is spinning a bit. It isn't that he minds being under the ground, it is just that when he followed Akemi down the stone steps into the bowels of the castle he never would have expected… this.

It would be incorrect to say that the castle has big basements. No, it is nothing like that at all. Usagi is slowly beginning to understand that what he has seen on the surface, what is known to all of Japan as the Green Lotus Spiral Castle, is merely the decoration on top of the actual thing. The castle itself, the sleeping chambers, meeting halls, dining rooms and broom closets, all of it is somehow, impossibly down here. And everywhere, at every door, in every corridor, a draught.

"Are you cold?" Akemi asks, casting him a worried glance. He realizes that he has not responded in a while, and quickly smiles at her. She merely raises her eye ridges. "If being underground makes you uncomfortable, we can leave."

"Not at all," Usagi hastens to reassure her. He likes being underground. It's part of who he is, gods be damned. "I just – where did you say the air was coming from again?"

"It's a ventilation system," she repeats patiently. "The air is transported into channels from the outside, stretching as far as the cliffs, and cycle through the tunnels. It's safe," she adds, reading his expression more accurately than he would like. "I don't know exactly how it all works, but it has done it just fine for centuries."

"Right," he says weakly. "And behind this door…"

Akemi smiles at him and waves the oil lamp in a theatrical. "The bathhouse! You see, the ancestors first found this cave and it had hot water in it when there are no hot springs anywhere in the area and so they said, hey, this is a good hill, we could build our castle here. And they did! And so…"

"And over time, it grew inwards and outwards and into what we see before us today."

Every hair on Usagi's body is suddenly standing on end. He can see Akemi's eyes widen, her mouth forming a perfect O, just before she drops the lamp.

Splinter catches its ring with his walking stick just as it is about to hit the ground. "Please, young lady," he says calmly as he hands it back to her. "I did not mean to startle you. I was merely looking for my colleague."

To her credit, Akemi's hands barely shake when she accepts the lamp back from the old man. "Splinter-sensei," she whispers. "I did not hear you coming…"

"Neither did I," Usagi says. He doesn't mean for it to come out as a growl. Thankfully, Akemi appears to be too preoccupied to take notice.

"My apologies," Splinter says gracefully. Usagi can't help but feel that the old man is not apologizing for his own stealth but rather for their lack of attention. It sets him on edge worse than these endless tunnels have. "However, I am afraid time is of the essence. If you would follow me, Miyamoto-san."

Akemi takes a breath. "I was just about to…"

"Yes. Thank you. That will be all."

Usagi nearly flinches when the girl makes one last attempt. "Would you like to take the lamp…"

"That will not be necessary," Splinter says, though not without kindness. "Please, this way, Miyamoto-san."

Usagi knows that he has no choice. With a last apologetic glance and shrug in Akemi's direction, he follows the rat into the gloom, leaving the lamp's flame as a shrinking pinpoint of light behind them.

They walk in silence for a while. At first Usagi is disconcerted; the corridor stretches on in a straight line for a distance, but eventually they are bound to hit a corner, and then what? As darkness engulfs them, all he can hear is the clack-clack-clack of Splinter's walking stick and their sandals hitting the ground in an uneven rhythm. But he didn't hear anything when the old man arrived. It gives him the chills. To walk in absolute silence in the dark of the bowels of the earth…

But the longer they walk, the more Usagi realizes that he can actually see. Not much, not in the real sense of seeing. But between the sounds and the scents coming from the dry rock and the polished wood that once again lines the walls, he can just about make out the shape of Splinter in front of him. They reach a corner. They turn it, Usagi not more than a step behind. This is interesting.

"Very good," Splinter says. "Please, hold on…"

Usagi flinches back at the sudden flare of a match. Moments later, a torch is catching fire between them, orange and yellow flames too bright after the darkness. Splinter is watching him, and Usagi realizes with a burst of anger that this was a test. Another test, just like the scene in Oma had to have been, because nobody that moves like this would run into trouble with mere merchants. It is maddening. He never agreed to this, to being tested, probed, tried.

"What a nice trick," he manages, though gritted teeth.

Splinter regards him impassively, dark eyes unfathomable. "You would do better to memorize the path from here," he says at last. "After all, if you are to look after Michelangelo, you need to know where he sleeps."

And these are the sleeping quarters. All the riches that Usagi has been missing in the castle above ground seem to have accumulated here, with screen doors painted in gold and ebony inlays and silver picture frames glinting as they walk. There is a door that is polished to gleam and has oil lamps made of colored glass hanging around it. These are the women's quarters, Splinter explains in clipped tones, and Usagi is not to enter under threat of capital punishment. Here is the main meeting hall. And here… Behind another door, just as polished, with just as many lamps, the men's rooms.

Michelangelo's is the third room on the left, after what has to be closets of some kind from what Usagi can see. Splinter stops here, the torch long discarded now that the corridors are lit with lamps and small candles in gilded holders.

From behind the richly decorated screen door, Usagi can hear muffled laughter. He steps forward, following the unspoken cues from Splinter. Just as he is about to raise his hand and knock, the door flies open and something small and fast careens into him at the height of his knees.

He does not go down, but it is a near thing. Instead he stumbles back, thrusts out a hand and is able to catch the small body that so violently connected with his before it falls. There is an angry shriek, the flash of white teeth in the dark, and Usagi suddenly finds himself confronted with the angriest child he has ever seen in his life.

She is tiny, and he is no stranger to children. Grey fur is sticking out of her colorful kimono in tufts. Usagi is impressed to see her bare her teeth at him again, like she is Raphael's rage compressed into a body too small to hold it all in. "Who are you?" she demands, her voice high-pitched and shaking. "What are you doing in Mikey's room?!"

"I just," Usagi tries, not even sure where he is going with this sentence. He is interrupted, however, when Splinter says, "Calm yourself, Miwa. Please."

He sounds tired, but in the same way that Mariko sounds tired when Jotaro won't eat his dinner. That's the final clue, after all the others have piled up high enough for Usagi to realize what he is seeing. The girl has instantly sagged upon hearing the rat's voice, turned around, and flung herself at Splinter.

"Dad!" she says, and this time she is smiling. "Are you done working? Who did you bring?"

Between them, a green head carefully inches around the doorframe and glances out into the corridor. Blue eyes stare up at Usagi in a mixture of fear and defiance, replaced by relief the instant he is recognized. Michelangelo. "Oh! Usagi-san! Did you come to play with us?"

"That is your Usagi-person?" Miwa sniffs, in a tone that Usagi frankly objects to. "I thought he'd be… taller. More green. He doesn't look very dangerous."

"You don't either," Michelangelo points out, "and I wouldn't want to fight you." This sentiment is one that Usagi can at least agree to share.

Miwa lets go of her father, who is watching the exchange with the first earnest smile that Usagi has seen on him, and puffs out her chest. "Damn straight," she says. "And don't you forget it."

"Language," Splinter says, but he does it half-heartedly. The children have already stopped paying attention to both of them, going back to their fast-paced chitchat as if nothing had happened at all; when Usagi next glances into the room, they are stretched out side by side on the large bed, with pictures strewn across the sheets between them. Splinter is watching them, too. At last here is something Usagi can recognize and relate to. This is the face of a parent, he thinks, and one who is scared and not hiding it well enough.

"Right," Usagi says, if only to break this strange new air of intimacy that has so suddenly come over them. "I assume this is my post, then. Will there be anything else, Splinter-san?"

"No," Splinter murmurs, only slowly tearing his eyes away from the two children. "No. That will be all. Although I will, of course, stay in the area, just in case…"

Usagi understands the unspoken in case you do something you will regret without it being said. This time, he understands. It has taken him long enough. "I will call you if we need anything," he says.

"Very well," Splinter replies.

They exchange a smile, fleeting, insecure, honest. The Splinter turns away, softly closes the screen door on the children, and walks down the corridor. The clack-clack-clack of his walking stick is audible for a while after he turns a corner, and then stops.

Usagi takes up position next to the door, straightens his spine, and keeps watch.