(For anyone who is re-reading this, I edited the last bit. Turns out the old chapter, which I'd lost a year back, survived on a friend's hard disk, which he discovered a few weeks after I'd re-written this one. So I may be editting this chapter on and off, but nothing significantly changes (except the caliber of the writing, which was much better a year back... takes time to get into the groove, oy!))
Chapter Twenty-Six
Ame Ame Fure Fure
It was, he thought, the difference between being dragged into the arena to face a battle to the death and walking into the arena with your head held high. Some people, perhaps, would say that there was little to choose between the two ways, but Dumbledore knew - and so do I, thought Harry, with a rush of fierce pride, and so did my parents - that there was all the difference in the world.
~ Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince ~
Taka awoke with a start, and sat up rubbing his head which really did feel like it had been thwacked by an amphora. He couldn't really put his finger on why he was so sure that it was an amphora and not an anvil or a soup bowl or Tasuki's tessen that he imagined had hit him, especially because there was no sign of any of those objects (except Tasuki's tessen, which gleamed almost innocously in the moonlight next to the snoring bandit) at all. It was just one of those things you Knew, like how he had Known that if he leapt with great force towards the Shi Jin Ten Chi Sho, it would swallow him whole, or how he Knew that it was better to not tell Miaka about the many instances that he'd hidden empty packets of chips in the couch and blamed it on Hikari.
He did not question it. At a point in his life, instinctive knowledge had blended with absurd reality and he had realised that it was quite possible that he was not really in charge of his "destiny and what not". He was something along the lines of a player in a elaborate and mysterious game (Author's Note: Apologies! Could not resist!) where the actual players acted out of cleverness and cunning and occasionally just plain old boredom. You learned, after realising that you were in fact the reincarnated version of a ancient Chinese warrior destined to be with the Miko who just happened to be a particularly bubbly High School junior, that everything happened for a reason. So why there was an amphora, how he had been hit with it without really being hit with it... these were not questions he asked.
Instead, he resigned himself to the sleeplessnessthat had plagued him since Tokaki had passed away and, with a brief scowl at Tasuki's regular grunty snores, rose quietly from his bed and let himself out of the room. He closed the door quietly behind him and turned to let out a not terribly manly squeal of horror at Subaru's looming form.
A brief moment later, he was rubbing his head and looking extremely relaxed. "Ahem, I mean," he said, in a deep voice, "what are you doing up so late, Subaru?"
"A little tea for your nerves, maybe," said the old Seishi, not unkindly, and moved past him. Taka spent a dignified moment considering making a fuss, but it was really quite late and you never said "no" to a kind offer of a cup of tea at this hour.
He followed her through peaceful corridors of the doujo. A sort of gentle quietness had fallen on the house after Tokaki's death, after Taka and Tasuki's original rather loud and raucous grieving. There was now a strong aura of kindness and acceptance in the house that was almost soothing, and it did not take too much dwelling on Taka's part to work out that this came from Subaru. He could not understand, though he imagined age had something to do with it. In a particularly foul moment, he had tried to imagine what he would have felt like if Miaka had died and he was the one left behind. To him, the silence of her wake seemed frightful and incomprehensible. And yet there was this gentleness about how Subaru grieved, that he really valued.
As he accepted the tea, he offered her a small wry smile, and she smiled back.
"So why aren't you sleeping?" she asked him, kindly, as one might a small child.
Taka grinned and then shrugged, allowing the sombre emotion he was experiencing to come to the surface. "I have a weird feeling," he said. "It's not the plan. Though the plan is also pretty weird," he added, as Subaru wiggled her expressive grey eyebrows. "It's just... I'm not sure what's happening."
They stood now in the balcony with the railing that had always been weak (despite repairs). There were so many conflicting memories and Taka found that his head was buzzing with images, of Tokaki shoving him into the river, many hours of practicing with his teacher... and then eventually defying the same teacher with his determination to be with Miaka. It was odd. It wasn't poignant or beautiful to think about this at all, there was really no poetry about the sorrow and how it reared up. Rather, there was something almost mundane and blunt about what he felt, something defiantly real and strange, a sort of finality about having lost someone who had known him through, it felt like, all his lives. And there was this awkward knowledge that maybe he hadn't really been lost at all - since Seishi were reborn. With the cumulative weight of the Plan and the lack of sleep, all of this presented itself to Taka like a jumble.
"Yes, there is a lot that is unknown," said Subaru, gently. She spoke with a lot of solidness, a kind of sureness. "I am worried, Taka. Not about your plan, because I think that will work. Don't look surprised," she added, mildly, not looking at him. "It's not a genius plan or very elaborate, but I think that's the beauty of it. But there the unknown quantity."
"The missing letters?"
"And the memories," she said, nodding. "I don't know which to fear more. The letters can be traced to the Empress of Kounan, and that could be very bad. The memories..."
Taka cut her off. They had gone over it a number of times, and no one could really agree on what had happened. It was easier to believe Tasuki's strong assertion that Subaru was just an old bat who'd forgotten. At the age of a hundred and twenty four, it wasn't a wild stretch of the imagination either. But Subaru seemed quite sure of what she did know, to the point that what she did not know was like a wide, black spot. "You said it was impossible for him to be alive," he pointed out. "You said you would have felt it."
"I don't know what to make of it," Subaru admitted, without any malice. "It may not be what I think it is... but I can't think of anything else... anyone else who could do this. It just worries me. But I suppose we can't always live with the benefit of a prophecy."
Taka nodded. "Yeah," he said, thinking of Japan and the ease of a life with no prophecy looming over their heads. There were times in one's life when the unknown was enough and exciting, and full of hope. And then there were times like this, when many unknown quantities came to plague you through the nights and you spent hours trying to work out the pieces of the puzzle. It was difficult especially because they had always had some sort of structure to their adventures in this world before. But at this point he knew nothing. And it scared the living hell out of him.
Subaru's worries were not baseless. Even he could admit that, even if he did not entirely understand her fears and where they came from. A small part of him believed that she was being silly. There had been no attack - no one had arrested her for treason, though with those letters, they would have had enough reason to. Even if those letters really had been stolen, maybe it was a good thing to have them out of the house. Maybe whatever had happened to her hadn't been an attack at all!
Subaru seemd lost now, though. The clouds parted in the sky, and the almost full moon shone down on them. "This place is beautiful in the moonlight," she said, and, in a moment of uncharacteristic affection, placed her arm on Taka's and falling silent for a long while thereafter.
It transpired that Eian was a morning person.
A ray of sunlight crept through the shady canopy of the forest, falling on his face and waking him. He blinked, and his amber eyes glittered in the sun, as his hair shone altogether too brightly for any hair attached the head of a person who had been coursing through the countryside in rain, muck and war. He stretched out looking with something that Hikari recognised, with no small measure of aggression, as Wonder With The Early Morning Light And How Glorious The World Looked. Eventually, he seemed to remember where they were, what had happened, who he was with and of course, most significantly, What This Meant. At which point he did something that set Hikari's frame of mind firmly against him for a long time to come.
He turned and smiled at at her, a brilliant smile that altered his face entirely. Eian did not have a face that was meant for lying, particularly since, Hikari decided sourly, he had a brain that probably thought honesty was honourable and other such wondrous things. His face change dramatically with the gesture, the exhaustion that had inhabited his eyes the previous night gone with the initial fury with which he had greeted Hikari. Now he was almost... almost bloody radiant.
In contrast, Hikari, who had failed to sleep all night, thanks to Tomo's ghostly sinuses, was bedraggled and unwashed. She was vividly conscious of her own decidedly less than radiant disposition, the rather urgent need for a bath and the fact that her hair was somewhat matted with dirt. She reached up subconsciously and found her suspicions confirmed when she pulled a twig out of her hair. She frowned, and then raised an eyebrow, though at whom she could not have said - at Eian and his stupid glow, at Reishun, who had probably seen all this a million times, or the fact that both Tomo and Soi were now hovering rather impolitely over Eian's head. She decided, quickly, that it was entirely Eian and his stupid hair.
"What, do you comb it everyday?" she demanded, glaring.
His expression altered to one of confusion. "What? I do not underst-"
"Your hair. Do you comb it everyday?"
"Wha-"
"When do you find the time?"
"I-"
"And why do you look so happy?" she demanded, almost growling with frustration.
"Well," he interjected, politely, but firmly. "I must apologise. I have, for the first time in what feels like days, slept dreamlessly and calmly. I certainly did not intend to anger you, but-" He fell silent, considering.
Hikari squinted at him suspiciously. "But?" she prompted, not remotely mollified by his calm and rather well-mannered words.
Eian lowered his head. "I did not intend to sleep at all, as it were. I apologise for that. But I have been haunted by nightmares for many days now, since I left the palace," he confessed, with bluntness and openness that Hikari hardly expected from an almost complete stranger, "and you, it seems, have chased them away."
Hikari glared suspiciously, more because she was at a loss for words, but also partly because Tomo was now hanging upside down next to Eian and grinning in a manner that could leave no doubt as to who had caused these nightmares. "Damn it," muttered Hikari.
"Pardon?"
There was a polite way to respond to this, she was sure, not only because it eluded her completely but also because he spoke in a manner that indicated structure. His politeness was the kind that was, in some ways, part of a game - a game of manners. Hikari almost cast about for her own manners, prompted by his display of chivalry and kindness, but caught herself just in time. Her grumpy mood was pretty much the only thing she had any control over at this point, and she was absolutely determined to cling to that. "How the hell have I done that?"
"Well," he said, in the tone of a polite suggestion, "you found me-"
"I did NOT!" Hikari exploded. After what felt like a lifetime of considering Nyan Nyan's crazy words and their implication, interjected with Soi's suggestions about her supposed fricking powers, Eian had hit upon exactly the worst thing to say. "I DO NOT FIND THINGS. I WAS GUIDED HERE."
If her yelling distressed Eian, he did little to indicate this. "I see," he said gravely, wih two ghosts hovering a little bit above his head.
"No, you don't! You don't see! You don't even see these stupid-" But she remembered Soi's request and held back. "ARGH. YOU DON'T SEE!" she concluded.
Eian tilted his head. "Alright..."
"ALRIGHT?!" Hikari felt flustered and somehow absurdly outnumbered. She was tired. She wanted to sleep and she wanted to go home. Neither of these things seemed likely to happen for a very, very long time, she decided, so enormous was the pain in her head and the pain in her arms. Someone would have to knock her out. Damn it. Damn it all to hell and beyond. And there was Eian, nodding along like this made perfect sense. "What do you mean "alright"?!"
"I accept that I do not know what I do not see," said Eian, so gravely that she couldn't possibly tell if he was mocking her. "Nonetheless, here you are and your coming seems to have stopped my nightmares."
Hikari opened her mouth. "And you know what you could do with your damne-"
"Don't you think," said Soi, from her position next to Eian, "that perhaps you should find your useless pestilent friends?"
Hikari closed her mouth, and cleared her throat. "Perhaps," she said, in an extremely strained voice, "we should find my usele- damn it. We should find Reishun and Amefuri now that you've rested and emerged with shiny... damned shiny hair," she almost sobbed.
To his credit, Eian did not respond to her with anything more than a grave nod. If he thought of her behaviour as odd, he did little to betray this. This did nothing to soothe Hikari, who was offended by his hair and his manners and his radiance. Stupid boy, Hikari decided. And that was the problem of course.
As she stood, dusting off her rather mucky garb, she found that her predicament was a lot more precarious than previously thought. The fact was, and this was indisputable, that Eian, shiny hair and all, was a boy. This was a marked difference from all her previous travelling companions (except the brief interlude with Chichiri), who had all been, well, girls. Hikari, as grumpy as she was, was still only thirteen and despite her tendencies to hit various male classmates when they broke Hanako's heart, she was somewhat shy about some more significant bodily needs. As her bladder readjusted to the sudden greater pull of gravity, thus, Hikari found herself frowning, at a bit of a loss.
"Is everything alright?" asked Eian, politely.
Hikari glared at him and then nodded. "Yes, let's go," she said.
Even the thick cover of the forest could not keep the sun's rays out once it had travelled to the center of the sky. Hikari was grateful. There was a chill in the air here, in Kutou, which Kounan had not really been afflicted with. The night had been chilly despite the fire that Eian had built for them. With the sun's rays warming her arms now, Hikari felt somewhat better.
Eian had proved to be a gentleman, and placed her on the horse. When she had promptly fallen off, having no experience whatsoever with horses, he tightened the stirrups and walked with one hand on her back, much to her chagrin, until he was convinced that she would not fall off. Soi and Tomo brought up the rear of their party, looking strange, ethereal and somehow quite disconcerting.
Hikari hadn't brought up the subject of ghosts again. Eian had not believed her when she had mentioned them before and she really did not need the Suzaku seishi to believe she was completely nuts. Soi's recounting of the rivalry between Suzaku and Seiryuu had also made her reconsider. One didn't want any more drama than was strictly necessary, really, and she somehow sensed that the two Seiryuu seishi would be a lot less helpful (not that they were being particularly useful, presently bickering about the merits and demerits of something that sounded like "Nakago", which she had wisely elected not to ask them about) if she told Eian about them. He would put two and two together eventually, she knew; even under bright and shiny hair like his was some manner of a brain. And he would know that they had caused his nightmares. Nyan Nyan could keep them in check, and Eian was probably best off not knowing.
If there was any part of her that had scruples about this, it took a backseat to her very pressing need to pee, and thus all was well. Hikari had learned that Eian, of all people, had been the Emperor in his previous life. She had no desire whatsoever to share with a former Emperor, who spoke in a deep baritone and had shiny hair, the state of her bladder.
Thus, by the time they stopped, Hikari was on the verge of crying.
Eian raised his hand to shush her as she opened her mouth to ask 'what', and she paused, raising an eyebrow. She knew that gesture. In all old adventure movies, it was the gesture universally used by heroes when they were about to do something heroic and wanted their respective damsels to silence themselves. She grumped.
Sure enough, a moment later, Eian drew his sword. "Stay here," he instructed. "I'll be right back. And you," he glared at Nyan Nyan, "watch her."
"Hai Hotohori-sama!"
"Wait, wha-"
But Eian was gone, leaving behind silence in his wake. What he had heard, Hikari could not, though there was a certain rustling in the trees that made the forest seem somewhat restless. "Damn it."
"SHH!" said Nyan Nyan, loudly.
"There is a battle," said Soi, calmly, as though commenting on the weather. "Perhaps your friends are involved."
"Then go help them!" demanded Hikari, though an instant later she found herself somewhat abashed. These were, after all, the ghosts of warriors much greater and definitively much older than herself. She couldn't command them anymore than she could find things. Soi looked at her narrowly for a moment, as though about to say the same thing. Then, much to Hikari's surprise, she turned and dragged Tomo off with her.
The forest was quiet in their wake. It was several moments before Hikari could close her mouth and look around somewhat abashed. "I didn't do that."
"Kowaiineechan did!" affirmed Nyan Nyan, like a self-help book. "Well done!"
Hikari glared at her. "I am still not talking to you," she said, flatly, and ignored the huge watery eyes that looked at her like a lost puppy.
The wind rustled through the trees, and now, perhaps because she knew there was a battle, she could feel the tension in the air. This, she decided, was her chance. No battle was so short as to not allow a bystander to go behind the bushes. Determined, she swung her leg over and rolled off with a total lack of grace. "Damned horse!" she glowered, though the horse was unaffected. She made to get up but a large pink watery-eyed thing slammed into her nose and bowled her over.
"KOWAIINEECHAN GO NOWHERE!"
"But I must," protested Hikari.
"NO!" said Nyan Nyan, popping into her full sized girl form and sitting on Hikari with great determination. This did not help.
"NYAN NYAN!"
"NO!"
"I'm not going to the battle! I just need to p-" she cut herself off. Nyan Nyan was looking at her with such determination that Hikari was convinced this was a lost cause.
Unbelievably, she drifted off. It had certainly been about a day since she'd slept, but with all that was going on, sleep had seemed very far away. Without Tomo's locomotive-esque snoring, though, she found she could snooze quite comfortably. A snug warm darkness reached for her from the earth and swallowed her into a cocoon of respite, not dreamless but quite restful. It felt a little like falling, she would later realise, as she had fallen when Nyan Nyan had dragged her under to make her SEE, though she was not unwilling. This was a more restful place than the thorny shrubbery she had crashed into before, full of walking rocks. The rocks here did not move, though a few of them glowed faintly green. The trees were much greener, and here, in this state of consciousness, she became a lot more aware of the tree that she was sleeping her, a huge banyan with a sense of ancient calm and wisdom.
A part of her wanted to snooze against its trunk and tell it all her woes.
Voices became somewhat distinct after a while, cutting into her very clear dream, and though she didn't want to leave this space of very brief rest, she found that she was being pulled back by awareness. The voices were very familiar, and drew her attention away from Nyan Nyan's weight very close to her bladder.
"..can't believe it's you!" said one voice, bright and hopeful and awed. "How did you find us?!"
"I heard a ruckus in the woods," said a deeper voice, sounding somewhat awkward.
"And it's so lucky that you did. Who knows what would have happened if you hadn't come along, Eian. Isn't that right Amef- Wu Ming?"
Somewhere in the vicinity, the thunder grumbled like an upset stomach, and Hikari opened her eyes. Reishun!
Reishun, seemingly completely oblivious to this sudden and ominous change in the weather, pressed on. "I'm so glad you're here. I just know that everything will be alright now. You saved us!"
The thunder growled more decisively, but fortunately Reishun had spotted Hikari.
"HIKARI!"
Hikari managed to straighten up in time to be bowled over by a very enthusiastic Reishun, who forgot how strong she was and hugged Hikari so hard that the thirteen year old could almost feel her bones grinding against one another. For once, though, she did not complain, hugging back with just as much enthusiasm, albeit without the natural ability to squeeze the life out of Reishun. "I was so worried!" Reishun said, clinging.
"Nggghshfrrlkghgh!" said Hikari, and Reishun, understanding immediately (this wasn't a new situation for her, after all; she did have a tendency to hug people very tightly), loosened her grip. "I was so worried too! It's all Nyan Nyan's fault, stupid little idiot-"
"No, no, she was totally right to take you away! We met a group of bandits!"
"She plonked me into the thorniest part of the forest!"
"We had to fight our way out and Amefuri started to faint all over the place!"
At this point of time, thunder rolled noisily, furiously overhead and Reishun looked up nervously.
Hikari had more pressing news. "I met a walking rock!"
"We worked out that the nine-headed snake can actually turn into a thousand little snakes and that's how he was controlling all the bandits!"
"I saw two ghosts!"
"I... collected Donghai?"
"What?"
They both paused and looked towards the rest of the party. Hikari wondered what Reishun saw, and if it was even remotely as ridiculous as what she saw. Nyan Nyan was hovering over Eian's head, crying, looking much like her mother had when little puppies were born, her face all scrumped up and her eyes enormous. Eian did not seem to know what to do, but shivered dismally every two seconds, as Tomo tickled his ear with a feather. Soi, standing next to them, looked bored. Amefuri looked like she was about to burst into a thunderstorm, and an exceptionally rotund individual, who could only be Donghai, stood looking as awkward as a bandit could.
"I really have to pee," said Hikari, solemnly.
Reishun turned back to look at her.
A moment passed, and then, against all logic, they burst out laughing.
Despite the numerous people in the woods out to kill them, Reishun decided that she was quite elated. Hikari was safe (though grumpy and, admittedly, in pain from her healing injuries), no one had died, Amefuri had eaten almost two whole meals through the day, Donghai was helping her with the cooking and they had found Eian. Or, well, Eian had found them, which was somehow better and more fitting.
There was a certain aura that one associated with heroes, an aura that was congruous with shiny hair, big swords, chivalrous behaviour that inspired one to be stupid enough to offer a certain Byakko Seishi help. Eian embodied all of these things. He wouldn't leap into a fight without some kind of plan. Even his impromptu "rescue" had entailed a quality of order and organisation and Wise Plans. He had saved them, Reishun decided happily. It was poetic and perfect, or ... something - anyway, the point was, Eian was here and they were going to have this adventure together and no one was dead, damn it! She tossed a fiercly cheerful grin at Hikari, who looked at her suspiciously and scowled. Never mind! Happy she was. Grr.
They sat around in a circle, and had spent the last hour or so sharing stories, a process through which Amefuri studied the ground and Hikari studied the space to Eian's left. Eian, it appeared, had been travelling through the country with the Shinzaho just as Empress Houki had told them. He had heard, while spying on one of the gangs of bandits in the forests, of the Book being destroyed in many parts of the land, and rumours that there were some copies in a land to the East of Kutou. "That's where I was heading before I felt your presence in this country, Hikari-ch-erm-sama," he finished.
At which point, Hikari visibly started and blinked away from the space to his left, looking at him somewhat guiltily. "What? I mean, wait, yes. I mean I know. You said that. I know. Right."
Reishun raised her eyebrows, watching the girl. There was something off about Hikari, something more frazzled with the state of the world than normal, and Reishun couldn't quite put a finger on it. She had mentioned walking rocks and ghosts, but not cared to elaborate thereafter, particularly in Eian's presence. Reishun had a sense that something was up - clearly - and that, much like the troubles of her bladder, it wasn't something she wanted to discuss with Eian. So she left it at that, for the time being, and instead focused on Eian. Happy, right? Issues that plagued her relationship with him had paled in significance - she no longer wanted to ask him why he hadn't written back, or think about his affiliation to Houki. These thoughts niggled vaguely at the back of her mind, but it was easy to ignore this niggling.
"Yes," agreed Eian, gravely, as though this wasn't completely weird. "So I think I should continue to head East on my quest and you should hide, all of you, until I return."
There was a brief silence, in which Hikari, still sort of distracted by the space to the left of Eian's head, said nothing, and Reishun found herself struggling with contrary urges - to accept Eian's plan and to argue for her wanting to be with him, nearer him. The niggling at the back of her head grew stronger, and she shook her head.
Before she could speak though, Amefuri looked up. "That's ridiculous," she said, flatly.
"Yeah, we can't let you go off on your own like that," agreed Reishun, more concerned.
"What if you fail?"
"Wh- nono," Reishun shook her head, cringing.
"Who's going to get the Book back then? And aren't you already charged with the task of protecting the Shinzaho?"
"I assure you, I am quite competent with my sword-"
"Yes, you are," said Reishun, placatingly. "Of course you are, but we just-"
The thunder rumbled a little as Amefuri raised an eyebrow. "That is irrelevant. There will be one of you and several hundreds of them. This is too important to risk on the basis of your competence."
"Amefu- Wu Ming," said Reishun, amending herself a little too late.
The woman's eyes flashed. "Don't be blind," she said, callously. "You're only looking at what you want to see. Everybody can fall and he's not immortal or incorruptible."
Somehow this made sense. Logically, of course, it made sense. Reishun still had the strongest desire to poke Amefuri with a stick however. "I really don't think you need to be so ... crude," she pointed out, fumbling a little. "He is quite competent, you know, we were outnumbered in the woods and he-"
"He DIDN'T save us, for god's sake!" Amefuri exploded. "We had it covered!"
"That's not-"
But Amefuri was on her feet by now. The sky was overcast, and no one, looking at her, could really doubt that she had anything to do with it. So much for being discreet. "I am going to chop some wood," she snapped, at no one in particular.
"But your shoulder!" protested Reishun.
"I thought we couldn't have a fire," offered Donghai, with remarkably bad timing.
"Please, let me," said Eian, but before he could get to his feet, Amefuri had shot them all a look sour enough to curdle milk, and stalked off muttering something about 'bloody Suzaku warriors'.
Reishun watched her go, oddly uncomfortable. It took her a moment to realise that she was, for no reason, on the verge of tears. The Byakko seishi was impossible, damn it! There was something severely stupid about ... bloody Wu Ming and her stupid fake names. Then she remembered what she had seen the day before, and reminded herself that Amefuri had very good reason for her fake name and exaggerated defiance. She stared at the retreating shape with an odd twist in her stomach.
The problem with wanting to look at the positive side of things, Reishun reflected, was that sometimes you were just inventing stuff and it could become very exhausting after a while. This uncharacteristically depressing thought had the Suzaku Seishi frowning and rubbing her face.
"I think I want to chop some wood too," said Hikari, presently, looking almost relieved at the proposition. She got up and left, with Nyan Nyan trailing after her in a blaze of pink, singing, "Kowaiineeeeeechaaaaan..."
Donghai stared after them, and then cleared his throat, drawing everyone's attention to him. "Well, this is awkward," he announced, tactlessly. "I'm going to go do something irrelevant as well!"
It took him a moment to get to his feet, but he waddled off, cauldron in hand. What he intended to do with it, Reishun did not know, but she was almost sorry to see him go. For all her long-term planning and strong desire to be alone with Eian and talk to him, she had very little to say presently. You could go looking for the love of your life all you wanted, but that did not equip you to talk to them properly when you found them. Suddenly everything she had to say was either too monumental or too trivial to articulate. And there was a deep wound of confusion and something like resentment that she didn't even want to poke at. Eian, for his part, said nothing. He looked troubled, and quite obviously awkward, but didn't seem particularly talkative.
Reishun cleared her throat. "They're not always like that," she said.
Eian nodded.
"I mean, they are kind of... insane, but-"
Eian looked at her. She swallowed.
"I mean," she pressed on, "Donghai I don't really know that well, but he's quite a nice person. He seems very intuitive too, though Am- Wu Ming will tell you otherwise. Which makes sense perhaps - he is a bandit and his band did try to kill us, which... well. But they didn't!" she pointed out, the cheer in her voice sounding strained. "I... yeah. And don't worry about Wu Ming. She's not... she isn't really-" But something in her wouldn't let her make excuses for the Seishi. Somehow, she knew the woman wouldn't appreciate it.
"She seems well-versed in the martial arts," said Eian, after a long moment of contemplative silence, "for a woman."
Reishun raised both eyebrows, suddenly aware of a completely unknown desire. It would be several days before she would recognise it as a deep, unquestionable desire to poke Eian between the eyebrows. "Er."
"I wonder who trained her. Few women are capable of gaining such competency-"
"She is a Byakko Seishi," pointed out Reishun, raising an eyebrow.
"Well, exactly," he said, sounding detached and clinical in how he sort of diagnosed Amefuri, and, in some ways, women in general. Reishun frowned, as she realised that that hadn't been the point at all. It was sort of like saying women without the benefit of being a Seishi couldn't be martial artists, which was not what she had intended to say at all. "Tokaki must have trained her."
"I think he did," said Reishun, beginning to feel something she had never felt in the context of Eian. Or in the context of Amefuri, really. A burst of protectiveness, which also inspired her to say very little else in the context of Tokaki. The Byakko seishi she had never known - in either life, as it happened - had died a day or so before Amefuri had come upon them in the woods. It had rained for days, poured down in a cacophonous outpouring of all the grief that the woman pigheadedly refused to display at all. There were reasons for that guardedness, Reishun now knew. The sky itself opened up for her grief, alluding to how deep the wound ran. Reishun said nothing; she didn't somehow want to discuss Amefuri with Eian.
Feeling irrationally annoyed with herself, she rubbed her head. "Well, at least we have all the Shinzaho now," she said, changing the subject pointedly. "The Empress must really trust you."
Eian said nothing, and Reishun inwardly sighed. She hadn't meant anything by that! ...or, okay, she had, but it was a Very Small Something, damn it, no need to make a Very Big Silent Elephant out of it. Now there was an elephant sitting on a wall, surrounded by a moat with a nine-headed serpent floating around in it, between them. To add to this, an awkward silence descended on them, swelling up with characteristic relish as she resisted the urge to bang her head on the nearest rock.
"May I see them?" she asked, finally, though she had no huge desire to look at the Shinzaho. Something about the idea of seeking out a Shinzaho put a sense of peril and revulsion in the pit of her stomach, and for some reason reminded her of wolves.
"Yes," said Eian, sounding almost relieved by this, except that it wouldn't have been particularly gentlemanly to sound relieved at this conjuncture.
He reached for his bag and emptied its contexts. The first thing that fell out was a beautiful, if elegantly simple, comb.
"That's lovely!" said Reishun, reaching for it. "Is that-?"
But Eian pressed an ornate round mirror into her hand. "The Shinzaho of Byakko," he announced, as the comb disappeared into his bag. A small slightly luminiscent blue earring followed this. "And Seiryuu."
The objects gleamed in her hands even without the benefit of the sun shining down on them (the sky had been cloudy since Eian had joined them), as though lit up by their own power. They didn't feel remarkably different in her hands, though her stomach jumped a little bit when he put them in her hands. Whether this was because of the objects, or the buildup, or the fact that it had been Eian who had put them into her hands, she did not know.
She looked up at Eian, expectantly, waiting for him to hand her the Shinzaho of Genbu. Then, she frowned.
The expression on his face was one of alarm and horror, as he felt about the bag frantically. There were things you did not want to see on the face of the man entrusted with guarding the Shinzaho, and that particular expression of wide-eyed alarm was one of them.
"You've-"
"I haven't!" said Eian, his voice wobbling off the even plain it had danced on all day. "I couldn't have!"
"-lost the Shinzaho of Genbu?!" finished Reishun.
Amefuri was chopping wood with fury that scared Hikari. There was quite a lot about the woman that was a little unsettling, but the fact that she could weild an axe with a hole in her shoulder was one of them. As she chopped, she muttered, and Hikari caught words like "idiot" and "man" and "Suzaku's fools" as she came closer to where the Byakko seishi was, leaving Reishun and Eian to their conversation and Soi and Tomo to torture Donghai.
A vague part of her, the socially conscious part (a small portion, really), was aware of the fact that she had been somewhat rude to Eian. This bothered her to no huge extent. There was something about his lack of questions about Reishun, his total lack of awareness (or perhaps his conscious disregard) of how she treated him that was frustrating to Hikari. Perhaps not as frustrating as Reishun herself, of course, whose behaviour was so reminiscent of Hanako's at the cusp of a romantic meltdown that Hikari wanted to find a seventh grade mathematics textbook to hit her on the head with (the one time Hanako had experienced such a meltdown was also the one time the textbook had been useful at all).
Hikari stepped on a leaf, at which Amefuri whisked around, wielding the axe dangerously over her head, inspiring the thirteen-year-old to throw herself bodily on the ground and yell something that sounded very much like "ARP!"
"What?!" demanded Amefuri, growling.
"Don't kill me!" Hikari squeaked, quite alarmed.
Amefuri stared at her incredulously for a moment, and then lowered the axe. "I'm not going to kill you!" she snapped, furiously. "I spent days protecting you, which I did well, and I NEVER needed rescuing while doing it, damn it, so why would I kill you!?"
Nyan Nyan floated between them, a relaxed kind of pink.
Hikari raised an eyebrow. "Are you upset about Reishun and Eian?" she ventured, but this seemed like a bad idea too. Conversing with Amefuri was like having a symphony of really bad ideas, with disastrous and explosive consequences.
"Who the hell cares!? I don't care. I don't care if they go prancing around naked in the woods with colours of melody springing out of their arses!" yelled Amefuri, incomprehensibly.
Hikari blinked. "What?"
"I don't care," said the woman, clearing her throat, glowering.
Hikari blinked again, trying to find something intelligent and non-disastrous to say. This, she thought, might be an opportune moment to tell someone other than Soi that the earring was talking to her. But the moment passed by rather swiftly. Before she could do anything at all, Amefuri had turned away sharply from her to face the wood. She hacked at it, though for all the wildness in her movements, the wood chopped up into neat little slices. There was a method about Amefuri, after all, for all her anger. The anger in itself seemed to have its own intelligence, it's own logic. In the few days that Hikari had known Amefuri, she had watched her fight soldiers, civillians and innocuous objects like bags and pieces of wood with exactly the same kind of intensity. That intensity seemed to give her a a method, as though she could look at anything at all and assess the best way to go about destroying it neatly. Of course, Hikari had no way of knowing how close she had come to losing control in the woods when fighting Donghai's gang, and so her sense of the Byakko Seishi remained unaltered.
"You do know it was you who said we can't have fire, right?" she asked, presently, only to be ignored solidly. Chop. Chop. Chop. And the bits of wood fell on either side of the log. "I sort of see what you mean. Eian is a ponce and Reishun can't really see it. Do you know how much time he spends on his hair?" She sniffed. "I don't know, I mean. But it must be a lot to have such wonderful and shiny hair in the middle of the forest like this. We all look disastrous. Even Reishun, though she manages to look disastrous in that elegant sort of way, you know?"
She turned to look at Reishun speculatively, and thus missed that Amefuri did the same, with an altogether different expression on her face.
"I mean, how does she do it? How do any of them do it? Reishun and my mom and Hanako- who's my friend from back home."
But speaking about Hanako was painful, and so Hikari stopped. Nyan Nyan came and settled on her shoulder and they sat their in silence, as the chop-chop-chopping of Amefuri's axe formed a sort of rhythm. Hikari thought of home, though she said nothing. She thought of her mother, who was so far away, and her father, who was in this world but nowhere to be found. How long had it been since she had dropped into the book? She had lost track, really, but it felt like a million years; not because she had fundamentally changed (Hikari didn't think people could change completely without losing some part of themselves), but because so much had happened, irreconciliable and frustrating and traumatising things, which a thirteen-year-old needed time to deal with.
Something about the rhythm of the axe meeting the wood and thoughts of home triggered a memory. A song she had heard a long time ago, though the words eluded her. She couldn't quite put a finger on what it was, but it niggled at her brain, like A Thought That Must Be Thunk. And so she began to hum.
"La la la la, dum ti dum dum, laaa laaa laaaaa,
Janome de omukai ureshii naa..
Pichi pichi, chappu chappu, ra ra raaaaa!
Ame ame fure fure kaasa- oh."
Hikari stopped, staring steadily at the ground, as she became steadily aware of hostile energy burrowing into her head. The chopping of the axe had stopped, and it was with great trepidation that Hikari looked up, with her best sheepish expression in place, to meet the thunderous look on Amefuri's. "It's a song in my world, we... sing it sometimes, I... didn't realise I was... sorry," she finished, cringing.
Amefuri opened her mouth to say something but stopped. Rather suddenly, she cocked her head to the side, looking like one of her mother's daycare doggies post-sneeze. It would have been comical if not for the fact that, in the next instant, Hikari heard it too.
The arrow whizzed through the air and landed by her feet.
Amefuri grabbed her by the arm and yanked her up.
"Run," she said, and they ran.
"Miaka..."
A very round object swam dangerously close to her face and then faded away as she grunted.
"Miaka?"
Yes, she thought, surprisingly lucid given that she'd just been bumped on the head with a gigantic amphora. That was her name indeed, and there was really no reason for Chichiri to say it repeatedly, with varying degrees of alarm and worry in his tone. She was listening to him. She wasn't really up to opening her eyes yet, but she was listening.
"Miaka?"
With great, concentrated effort, she cranked open an eye and glared at the monk. The one-eyed glare was something she'd learned from her daughter, who had mastered it at an early age. An effective tactic, when you wanted to convey that you were NOT awake but QUITE annoyed. Chichiri stared at her with such bewilderment that she found her alarm fading somewhat. "What?" she demanded, not remotely sounding likethe embodiment of sweetness and light that most people would have remembered her for. As Chichiri's face altered to one of greater bewilderment, she found herself somewhat remorseful. "Sorry," she offered. "It's just that an amphora just hit me on the head."
"An amphora?" asked Chichiri, as though this was a new concept.
"Well, I imagine someone was wielding it, but the sum total is that an amphora collided with my head and why," she paused to take a breath, raising an eyebrow at Chichiri, who had never really looked quite as perplexed as he did presently, "are you looking at me like that?"
Chichiri cleared his throat, looking somewhat embarrassed as he registered that he was ogling. "I'm sorry," he said. "But are you really here this time or is this another strange dream?"
Miaka blinked, raising the other eyebrow. What was he talking about? Of course she was here - she'd been whacked on the head with an amphora and then... She blinked again. And then what? It took effort of the kind she didn't wish to exert at the moment, but she pulled herself up to look around. They were sitting by the lake near the Palace in Eiyou, the sun beating down on them. "I think I'm here?" she offered, finally, a little perplexed herself. Really, it was pretty simple - she was either there or she wasn't, and for the most of it, she couldn't imagine where else she could be. Then, because Chichiri had asked such an odd question to begin with, she tilted her head and looked at him. "Are you dreaming?"
"Ah, I- I honestly don't know," said Chichiri, in a manner that was uncharacteristically unlike Chichiri as far as Miaka could make out.
"You said "another strange dream"," she prompted him, concerned.
"Yes, well, those were strange dreams."
"What happened in those dreams?" asked Miaka, tilting her head.
"I... you said weird things."
"That's very vague," pointed out Miaka, helpfully. "And not really a way to distinguish dream from reality."
"I know, but you said very weird things, which made no sense."
"And that's not really a way either..."
Chichiri half smiled, a strained sort of smile, and then looked at her seriously. "So you're really here?"
"I suspect as much," said Miaka, much more gently. A conversation with Chichiri that didn't make you want to shake the "no da"s out of him once and for all was unheard of. "How did I wander into your dream, though?"
But this made him look almost embarrassed. "I don't have much of an idea about directions lately.. I'm sorry Miaka."
He sounded so defeated that Miaka breeched the normally distinctive personal space boundaries she maintained with Chichiri and put a hand on his shoulder. Then she frowned, as it occured to her that there was no 'normally' - she hadn't seen Chichiri in over thirteen years. And now here she was, in a place that she was almost sure wasn't real, talking to him in his dream. It felt uniquely generic, though that perhaps was enough of a sign that there was nothing normal about it.
"Sorry about what?" she asked, deeply bothered by his attitude.
"I've failed you. I couldn't help your daughter - and I've lost my way. I can't find Taiitsukun."
Miaka patted his shoulder. "Reishun - Nuriko - found Hikari. And Nyan Nyan is with them. They should be alright," she said, with more certainty than she honestly felt. "And I'm sure you'll find your way back, Chichiri. You're the most perceptive of us all-"
"That's just it," said the monk, looking stressed. "I think I'm a prisoner somewhere. And you-" He stopped and looked at her hand on his shoulder. Then, he looked at her inquiring face and took a deep breath. "In my dreams, you keep telling me to do what you ask. But you've not asked me to do anything... or have you, and have I forgotten-?"
"I haven't," said Miaka, blinkling. "I would remember. Or would I?" she added, a little unhelpfully.
"So why do you keep saying it?"
Miaka shook her head. "I don't know," she said, apologetically. "Maybe I'll tell you when I know myself." Then, before this could get more confusing, she pressed on, "Where are you, Chichiri? We can come and get you..." It was absurd, but Miaka was used to making absurd things happen. You couldn't live life with the assumption that things COULDN'T be done, after all. Miaka, of course, had a lot of experience with starting out with nothing but a broad agenda, such as "rescue Yui!" or "make sure Tamahome's okay!" or "find cheeseburger!". "Rescue Chichiri!" in her head functioned in much the same way.
Chichiri did not quite see it in the same way. "No, you need to help Hikari-chan. I will find my own way back," he said, and it was clear he spoke with more surety and firmness than he felt. Compelled by his vulnerability - and moved, because it was technically a dream, even if it wasn't her own dream - Miaka did something she'd never done and put her arms around the monk. He went still for a second and then, in the manner of a very old, very true friend, rested his head on her shoulder. "Even if I have to break out of prison to do it."
Miaka nodded. "That sounds like a plan," she said, somehow convinced. Something tugged at her mind, and she frowned. "I think I must go soon," she said, but as Chichiri looked troubled, she reached out for him. Alarmingly, her hand went right through him - or perhaps his arm went right through hers, and despite this, the strangely non-corporeal experience was highly tangible. Miaka had a sneaky suspicion they were really here, and this wasn't one of Chichiri's dreams, or even one of hers (which was notable because neither Hikari nor food, or the absence or presence thereof, was hugely a factor).
Miaka! the distant voice called, agitated, and she shook herself, and Chichiri was gone.
"Miaka!"
"Wha-what?!" she asked, disoriented by the sudden slap of gravel and coldness, of tangibility. She felt a bit weird, like she'd just been dosed strongly with reality and yet somehow she knew it was all rather immaterial. She had had, she recognised with some distance, something of a spiritual experience. Those were always a bit sobering and awkward to come back from. She remembered returning from the book a changed woman, a woman with a lack of desire for worldly affairs, for about a week until Keisuke brought her a cheeseburger.
Oooh. Yum.
"Are you snickering? Are you crazy? Do you know where you are?!"
She sat up with considerable difficulty and looked around. It was quite dark, but her eyes adjusted to the small slivers of light that crept through the dungeon and the shadows cast across the floor of her prison cell. "Oh, bloody hell," she muttered.
"Yes, hello!" snapped Rokou, supremely stressed. "We're in prison! How did you get here? I've been trying to wake you for hours! But you just kept mumbling and grinning - have you sort of lost it?"
"That's quite possible," she said, cringing and rubbing her head. But Miaka, drowsy as she was, was beginning to register the severity of the situation. How the hell had she managed to get to prison!? The last thing she remembered before her conversation with Chichiri was the bloody amphora. And- "Rokou?" she asked, a little stupidly.
"Yes," said Rokou, through gritted teeth. "Do you realise what's going on!?"
The glow of her meeting receded sharply, leaving her in the dark grey cell. "I- the soldiers..."
"The soldiers brought me here," said Rokou, speaking quite fast. "You were already here when I came, but I think we're being charged with the same crime, of treason. Against the crown."
A disoriented sort of horror fell on Miaka. Somehow, though she'd known people were generally trying to kill her, she had not expected them to rope Rokou into the affair. And if he was here, clearly they were trying to aim for Houki. A stab of worry ached through her chest. "I- oh, Rokou-san... I'm so sorry, I didn't-"
"Don't bloody apologise," he snapped again. "It's not your fault obviously. I mean I do think you could have worked out a nicer way to leave my house but you know I'd stand with you lot no matter what happened. I wouldn't betray my brother's memory, for god's sake!"
Miaka finally understood what he was on about. She knelt up swiftly and edged to the bars of her cell. She could hardly see Rokou in the other cell across the corridor. He was only a silhouette, not terribly distinct from the shadows surrounding him. "Rokou-san," she said, biting her lip. "Of course not. I know you wouldn't do that."
"I don't think anyone else believes it. They wouldn't have brought me here, would they, if they believed I wouldn't cave?" he demanded, though not of her, his voice shaking with bitterness and sorrow. "I'm not important enough for that. They think I'm going to cave and let them take her. They think I'm going to betray her," his voice cracked a little now. "I wouldn't. Don't you see?"
"I do see," she said, hurriedly, wanting to somehow offer assurances. "Oh, Rokou, I-"
"I wasn't brave," he said, and now she knew he was speaking through tears. "I wasn't brave then, and I know that. But it was a different kind of bravery, you know? It takes a different kind of bravery to live through two siblings dying and not cave in. It's ordinary, but it's not ... I'm not a coward now, Miaka."
"I know," she said, helpless. Why was he saying all this to her? Why were they not making some sort of crazy plan to get out of this place? Yet, it seemed important now to listen.
"So they will fail. They won't get to her through me. And I know no one knows... Ryuuen never knew, Kourin- she couldn't have known. But I'm not a coward."
"Rokou-"
"I'm not. And there's something-"
"Rokou!" said Miaka, panicking now. "Okay, look, we've got to get out, okay? We need to find a way to get out of this prison and we're-"
A loud bang interrupted her. The light flooded in now; judging by its intensity, it was about midday. Miaka despaired, suddenly and swiftly. She was suddenly overwhelmed by a pure horror, an infinite helplessness and her mind, her soul, the being she had been, refused to accept what was happening. The soldiers came marching in, their shoes crunching heavily on the cold, cold floor.
"Rokou-" she turned to find him looking at her urgently.
"I am not a coward," he repeated, though he was shaking.
She nodded, not quite sure what else to do, but the soldiers were upon their cells.
"I-"
"Silence, Miko," snarled the commander. "We'll come back for you. You!" he barked at Rokou. "On your feet."
They shoved him out of the prison cell so viciously that Miaka yelled in protest.
"Quiet!" the commander barked at her.
"I will bow to her!" yelled Rokou, even louder. "I am owed the right to pay homage... to the cause I serve."
There was a round of bewildered silence and one small nervous snicker. The commander growled a little, but acceded. "Go on then, traitor. Kneel. It's good practice anyway." This time there was a round of laughter, and Miaka was utterly befuddled. But Rokou, heedless, knelt by her and beckoned to her.
"Please, Miko," he said, with a strange solemness. "Please, take my hand, and bless me."
"Wh-"
"Please," he said, now urgently.
Completely thrown, she did, not knowing where this absurd loyalty was coming from. She had in her time come across people who believed in her in the way you believe in a god. Chou Rokou knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, she was no god. She was the idiot who'd crash-landed in his living room and hit him on the head with a large amphora. And now here he was, marching to his trial for treason - mostly because of her - asking her to bless him!? She took his hands in his, and looked at him. And then she knew.
As he let her hands go, she felt her tears start to flow. With folded hands, she knelt and wept, as they yanked him away. Something was very wrong. Something was so beyond unbelievably wrong, and she had no idea how to stop it. In the moment that Rokou rose and walked, head held high, with the soldiers out of the dungeon, Miaka was the child she'd been when she'd first arrived in Kounan. It mattered little that she had grown and that life had taught her much. In this moment, she was helpless and humbled.
The doors closed and in the small slivers of light that remained, she unfolded her hands and looked at the large rusty key to her cell - Rokou's parting gift.
Author's Notes: So I'm back... that only took TWO years *ahem, looks innocuous*. So I have some stuff to say/some excuses to make, and I shall do it in points! :D
1. Obviously a lot of stuff has changed in the last two years, including my laptop (which died, poor bugger, a couple of times) and my clarity about the FY universe and what was going in my head. So... as a warning, in the next few chapters, there are likely to be inconsistencies. Reading this chapter itself - the beginning bit - seemed a little inconsistent with Taka, Tasuki and Subaru's conversation about the missing letters before. Also, I am not very sure if Soi did ask Hikari to keep her and Tomo's presence a secret, but I know I intended for her to... *hides* But these small blobs of forgetfulness aside, I'm pretty clear about what's going to happen next.
2. I intend to come back to the whole story and do something along the lines of a Grand Edit Of Doom, but I'm scared of getting sucked into the cycle of editing-over-writing, and not moving forward... and I don't trust myself to not lose interest. So... this may take a while.
3. I would like to acknowledge that it is a lot of this chapter is totally weird, and in most cases there is a reason for it. However, in some cases, like Hikari falling asleep in the middle of everyone else fighting, there is no reason for it. There may be other such weirdness, but to be fair, it's FY - weirdness is the M.O.
4. Just like this chapter, I was a bit lost also and am being sort of slowly found. The last two years have been crazy, and difficult, and awkward, and weird. There was about a year in there where I couldn't write at ALL, which was scary. BUT I'm getting back together. I have been writing poems and some other stuff (link in bio, in case you're intrigued) and now I finally seem to have found my voice again in terms of writing. Just want to say that I still completely intend to finish this story, and if you're still reading, thank you, thank you, thank you.
5. Thanks to Nile 1283, Ayumi Tsukunami and Flashyfirebird... and also a HUGE shoutout to MercuryMoon for keeping me connected. *beams and showers with love and cookies*
Standard Disclaimer (see earlier chapters) applies.
