Sometimes I write a chapter, and it's hard, but sometimes parts of it just come rather easily.
Welp. Here ya go!
Disclaimer: Sorachi. No words needed.
Eyes of Wolves
- 36 -
.: AUGUST, PRESENT :.
"Yer a pain," was all she managed to splutter when he waited patiently for the rest of his answer.
"I'm sorry, did you say that I was a prince? Because I am. The Prince of Planet Pheromones." He was tempted to steal her coffee and sip pretentiously from it, but held his sudden, strange notions in check. Inwardly, he was almost appalled at his atypical talkativeness and boldly familiar tone.
"That's not even the same word," Tsukuyo spat.
"Question nineteen, Ms. Tsukuyo," he prompted.
"I told you," she enunciated through gritted teeth. "I just want you to—"
She cut herself off with a strangled, incomprehensible jumble of mutterings, looking abashed. The expression erased itself within moments, and Tsukuyo reverted to her disconcerted glare. Amused, Zenshi folded his hands on the table.
"You want me to…?"
"Tell me why ya disappeared, and what's in the suitcase," she completed.
"Yer talkin' in circles," he countered, with brazen effrontery. The flush on her face reappeared when she recognized the accent, so terribly inconsistent with his demeanor and appearance.
"Ya shouldn't be talkin' like that," she said. "It's not, um, proper."
"I'm sorry, were you addressing yourself?" He enjoyed the exchange through her difficultness.
"Rude," she snorted presumptuously.
"Hardly."
"Very."
"Very what?"
"Rude."
"You mean you are?"
"No, I'm—" Tsukuyo sighed dramatically, rocking backward in her chair. Blowing air through her lips exasperatedly, the blonde rearranged her glare into a dour pout.
No, not a pout, but a cynical frown laced with subtle misanthropy.
"Question nineteen," Zenshi repeated. And waited.
"What's in the suitcase?" she demanded. "And the letters. Don't try and hide'em. What's in those?"
"What's in your letter?"
He smiled then, knowingly. It had the desired effect, because she was startled.
Question twenty.
.: MARCH, FIVE MONTHS AGO :.
"Do you have the key to the aft deck on deck five?"
"I don't." Tabs swallows. "Not now, please. I have to make an announcement."
Mei is exasperated because Tabs is a boy in a man's body, a man's face. He is nervous and jittery and skittish.
"Who has the key?"
"Abuto."
"Check your room, darling," whistles the vice-captain nonchalantly. Kamui is not in the room. Most of their squad is not in the room.
And all the rest of the occupants have pensively deliberate, shrewd silence sewn across their lips.
.: SEVEN YEARS AGO :.
She fingers the little umbrella, adorned with her embroidery, hanging listlessly on the wall.
"When he comes home, you'll be filled with pictures, won't you?" she inquires to no one in particular. Her son's name sits on a lonely silk panel, on one rim of the parasol. It's a tiny little tool, just as long as her arm.
The clock, which she believes reads midnight, strikes three. Startled, she is roused from her position, wandering aimlessly until she reaches the dark spot before the door where her son had lingered three hours ago.
And now, he's in the night, the moon's worshipper, the lone wolf who preys on nothing and everything, wandering neither forward or back, up or down, left or right. He has the eyes, but the rest of him melds into black like the curtain of starless nights.
"When he comes home," she tries again. But he won't, and her husband won't, and she is suddenly old and tired and alone, wondering when it was that the doting son and loving spouse had slipped from her grasp.
.: AUGUST, PRESENT :.
"How did—"
One hand instinctively flew to her waist, where the envelope was thinly concealed behind the silk belt of her kimono. Zenshi didn't answer; he'd seen the envelope only today, but had noticed her stiff approach whenever he rounded her left side.
"This's just information from Sarutobi," she hurriedly supplied, defensive.
"Oya?" he hummed. His intrigue clearly unsettled her, but she gave him little room to prod.
"About Sciuttla." An apprehensive swallow.
He didn't consider this a complete answer, so he held out his hand. Tsukuyo refused.
"It's nothin' ya don't know," she protested.
"Then there's no harm in showing me."
She wouldn't hand it over.
"It's not about Sciuttla, is it." His uncharacteristic affability was dimming, and a thin concern rippled across his expression.
"What's in the suitcases?"
"Why do you want to know?"
"What's in the suitcases?"
"What's in your letter?"
"We're gettin' nowhere," she spat acerbically, pushing away from the table and rising to her feet. The click of her heels was sharp and agitated. The blonde walked a terse circle before coming back to glare at him. Her gaze flickered down to her coffee, suddenly in distaste.
"If you're going to tell me to finish that, I won't."
"Ya never looked like a coffee person," she offered in a fume.
"Letter."
"Suitcases."
Simultaneously, as he slid one suitcase across the table, she slammed the envelope down with vehement force. They exchanged.
Tsukuyo unclipped the suitcase's buckles and flipped up the lid. Her eyes widened, and her breath caught in her throat in daunted, baffled shock. Zenshi slid his finger beneath the envelope's cover and extracted the documents slowly. Meanwhile, the courtesan scanned the contents of the luggage before quietly pushing it shut.
"Why…" she trailed off, uncertain.
But Zenshi wasn't listening.
Instead of a document, he found a news article, slightly battered but still intact with the full issue.
The front page headline:
Harusame kills Yato woman in Sciuttlan-related endeavors. The war of the ages looms over the galaxies!
And beneath the bolded text, a dark grayscale image printed in thin ink on the textured newsprint: the obituary of his aunt.
.: TWENTY YEARS AGO :.
She has always been simply "Auntie" to him. Her full name, he knows, means something along the lines of "weeping willow," but he never inquires. He's simply Auntie, the kind woman whose resemblance to his own mother is stunning. She has the same heart-shaped face and the same simple brown hair, but her eyes are a lighter shade, more hazel-chestnut, more reflective of a sea he has never seen.
"And you can do them one way," she says then, displaying to him the sutures on the patient's arm. "Or you can loop under and pull."
His aunt does the stitches with practiced ease, the lines on her face accentuating her concentration. She has a daughter who is about four years old now, but she is in the custody of the husband, the father. They are divorced, but do not carry a negative relationship. Simply speaking, Auntie could not handle the rigors of his job: a space entrepreneur, if one should accept the euphemism. His work was dangerous, and yet he kept their daughter, as if to have her succeed him. Auntie never says the word "pirates" because it's a poisonous word, a killing word.
Zenshi knows that Auntie suffers. She's constantly lonely, depressed, with a downcast expression molded onto her features. What he recalls of his cousin is brief, but she is a bright girl with the same brown hair from their maternal side. He cannot imagine being away from his own mother — he has followed his father around enough to know that both sides must face either homesickness or complex sorrow.
"In most of us, there is an important artery here." Auntie gestures to a part of the patient's shoulder. A Yato specimen is easy to demonstrate on; every now and then, a bizarre Amanto will walk in and Auntie will teach to Zenshi the different anatomical structures and the different types of wounds. From shelled creatures to incongruous blobs of life forms, Zenshi studies diligently. When he is not shadowing his father, attending the local temple school, spending quiet dinners with his mother, or running errands to the sick madam down the street, he is learning the art of medicine.
Auntie always has this forlorn expression, as if she enjoys his company yet laments the fact that she is not teaching her daughter. The village's most trusted nurse, midwife, and doctor — she is the weeping willow of remedial spirits.
"And see how this area has bruised?" she continues. She usually never mentions the fact that another Yato has done this gruesome work, never acknowledges the angry Yato blood that takes advantage of this knowledge. In this way, Auntie is truly Zenshi's aunt. His maternal family tree heralds a peaceful reputation that even his father, the rather pacifistic Linter, cannot compete with.
"What's that?" asks the boy. He points to a silver shard embedded in the unconscious Yato's flesh.
"Shrapnel," Auntie says. "Whoever brought him in was wise to leave it. If he pulled it out, this man probably would have bled to death."
"He bled a lot anyway."
"That's right. But we Yato tend to close our wounds and clot our blood must quicker than, say, humans."
"Humans? From Earth?"
"Yes. What would break their arms would leave bruises on ours."
"Are they weak?"
Auntie casts him a fond smile.
"I wouldn't say so. Just different. All races are strong in their own ways."
He falls back to the patient lying prone on the table, supine and taking shuddering breathes through an oxygen mask.
"How did he get the shrapnel in him?" In fact, there are metal fragments all over the place, sticking from his shoulder, from his torso, between his ribs. The sight is gory, and Auntie's work is elaborately slow.
"A bomb, I'd say. Bombs made with scrap shards will shoot shrapnel like this," she offers him simply. He doesn't inquire the origins of such a terroristic idea, but only considers the extent of damage.
"It looks painful," he replies. Auntie smiles at his child's mind, simple and straightforward.
"Certainly." Her methods are efficient, so much so that Zenshi can even see the man's wounds closing, the skin cells binding with slow agony between the stitches.
He watches as she cleans up the patient, wound by wound, piece by piece, inch by inch.
.: AUGUST, PRESENT :.
The date was from nearly two years ago.
A bomb, allegedly marked with the Harusame's 8th Squad's signature, detonates in a large presentation hall where equal rights advocates had begun their conference. Leading figure Shidare Chuiliu, amongst many colleages and cofounders, is among the victims. Investigators began their search beneath the rubble of the disaster…
Zenshi looked up.
"Why do you have this?" he asked, forcing the strangled despair from his voice.
"That's more than twenty questions," Tsukuyo replied. It wasn't the only thing in the envelope, but he suddenly did not want to see the rest of it.
"The money is for travel expenses to Sciuttla. Most of it will be for the evacuation of orphanages and local relief shelters to various planets, including Earth. Those are the orders, and I'm supposed to carry them out. Don't ask me who issued the order, because I don't know." He pushed the papers back to her. "Are we done?" he finished, in half a croak.
An expression of partial awe and partial concern flashed briefly across her scarred face.
"I s'ppose."
She sat back down, hands wrapped around her coffee, watching him stare at nothing except the hand that trembles against his right eye, fingering the old scars in ragged stitches, brimming with untold pain and remorse.
1. Tsukuyo and Zen are a train wreck waiting to happen, lol
2. LET'S PLAY A GAME! WHAT DID I JUST ALLUDE TO?
story question: what does the news story connect to?
series question: which character...have I tied back to Zenshi?
(hint: the story question is one you'll find in text, and the series question [[about Gintama]] is one you'll find will explain a few interactions)