Chapter Forty- Two – In The Weeds

It had been seven years. The last time I had seen my brother, he'd been a skinny nursing student with short dark hair and glasses. I'd kept a drawing of him in my pack, a drawing that was creased and bent from showing it around every port city I'd visited. The long-haired muscular man didn't initially match the memory of Toshiie I carried in my heart. For one thing, Toshiie would never have owned a gun, let alone point it at someone. But… this man was my brother, and I knew him.

Yuki moved to block me from gunfire, but I pushed him aside. I jumped off my horse and releasing my hair from where it was tied behind my back. "Did you get the drone fixed?"

Toshiie dropped the gun, cleared the yard in seconds, then pulled me into his arms. "Katsuko. Oh my God. You're not a ghost. You're not dead. They told me you were dead."

Who told him?

"No. I was never dead. I thought you were on a ship somewhere, so I kept looking for you in ports." I stepped back to look at him. The previously noted longer hair and increased bulk. There was a tiny scar in his eyebrow. But otherwise, he was Toshiie.

At the same time, Toshiie examined my hair, my face, my hands. We took in how the years had altered each other, and yet, not altered our essence, that connection. "I was on a ship," Toshiie made a face and I immediately knew that had been a miserable experience for him. "For about a year. But I saved the life of the Captain, and as a reward, he allowed me to leave him… leave the ship."

Ah.

In that pause was a hint that leaving the Captain might have been a wrench on a personal level. Apparently both Toshiie and I had – issues – with workplace romance. Toshiie continued. "But it worked out for the best." He looked over at where Yukimura was standing back with our horses. "Katsuko, is that your husband?"

Eeek. I hoped Yuki hadn't heard that. I took a quick look at him, noting the flush that started from his neck and crept upward until even the tips of his ears were bright red.

He heard.

"No. Yukimura is my friend." I gestured for Yuki to come over and I performed the introductions.

"If you've helped Katsuko in any way, then I am happy to know you," Toshiie bowed to Yuki. Then he turned toward the house, where the woman was hovering nervously by the door. "Hana come meet my sister. Bring Nao."

Hana disappeared inside the house, then reappeared holding the hand of a small child. Toshie left my side for a moment to lead them to me. "Katsuko, this is my wife, Hana. And your nephew – Naomasa."

"Who told you I was dead?" I mean, sure it was a logical conclusion given this was a war-torn country and I had had no useful survival skills – aside from running – when I got here. But since I hadn't been close to death the last time he had seen me, I wondered why he believed that I had died.

Toshiie and I were relaxing after dinner. Both Han and Yuki had offered convenient excuses (her to put Nao to bed, him to feed the horses) to allow my brother and I some alone time. "The bandit who carried you off – when he didn't come back, his brother went to look for him. They found him bleeding in the snow with a broken leg. He said he was attacked by a bear. He said it dragged you away."

Exit, pursued by a bear.

"A bear ate me? How unoriginal. There was never any bear. That bandit likely didn't want to admit he was bested by an old man." I rolled my eyes.

"Is that what really happened?" Toshiie got up and brought a bottle of sake back to the table. I shook my head. I'd explain about the panic attacks later.

"Um, he wasn't as old as he appears, but otherwise, yes." I gave Tosh a quick summary of my life – how Aki had rescued me, then trained me as I worked my way up from housemaid to courier. And how I had ended up at Kasugayama. "And there's so much more, but it's another story for another day." My throat was sore from talking all this time and my nerves were still too raw to begin telling a story to the person who would see through all the things I did not say. "Tell me how you ended up here."

"It's not nearly that complicated. When I left the ship in Sakai, I had some money and the gun the Captain gifted me." He paused, glancing at the musket that was now safely stowed high up on the wall, away from Nao's reach.

I looked at it as well. "I'm surprised you know how to shoot it. You were such a pacifist."

He shrugged. "I don't know. But the people I point it at don't know that either."

I could, and would, show him later, I decided. It wasn't terribly smart of Tosh to point something he had no idea how to work, especially given how clumsy he could be.

"Anyway, I decided to head Northwest, on the advice of one of the sailors who had come from this area. I was looking for a town with a doctor who would be willing to take on an apprentice." Both of these things were extremely Toshiie things to do, and I ought to have thought of it myself. I took another sip of tea to avoid saying that out loud, but Toshiie noticed my hesitation. "What is it?"

I mimed a face/palm. "Feeling stupid for focusing on ports for such a long time. I might have found you sooner if I hadn't been envisioning you on a ship." And hadn't credited him with enough resourcefulness to find his way out of that. Then again, at least I hadn't thought he'd been eaten by a bear.

"If you had found me sooner, there wouldn't be a Hana and a Nao, so it worked out for the best, wouldn't you say?" He took my hands and smiled. "This might not be the life I planned, or expected, and while there are certain aspects of modern life I miss, I'm content here."

I looked around the modest house. It was cozy, and he and Hana had clearly nested here. Yes, I could see why he was content here. Still, I would have to inform him that I had discovered a way to get home. I had a feeling he wouldn't be interested in going, but who knows… maybe he'd prefer to raise Nao in the relative safety of modern Japan.

The days took on a relatively predictable pattern. Yukimura stuck around, stating that it wouldn't be worth travelling all the way back to Kasugayama, then turning around and coming back here in time to go to Togakushi with me. I wondered if he was as apprehensive as I was about how Shingen would react to us when he came back through the wormhole. If. No. When.

In the meantime, Yukimura and I held informal training sessions every morning – being killed by Kenshin every day had instilled good habits in both of us. Our sparring sessions soon grew to include a reluctant Toshiie, a far less reluctant Hana, and several enthusiastic boys from neighboring households. As always, Yuki had a Pied Piper effect on children. No matter where he went, there was a trail of them marching after him, and at the end of the trail, toddled Nao, yelling, "Uki! Look! Uki! Wait! Uki! Up!"

In the afternoon, while Toshiie made some "house calls" to his frailest patients in his role as local healer, I would practice archery behind the house, or sometimes join Yukimura in exploring the area – less of a sightseeing excursion, and more scouting out what Nobunaga was doing. So far, it seemed he was more concerned with the silver mine than anything else. Yukimura even spent an afternoon secretly touring the silver mine, but even though I was somewhat curious about the process, nothing would have gotten me to go underground.

At night, the four of us would eat dinner together, then Yuki and Hana would take off on separate errands, knowing that Tosh and I still had a lot of catching up to do.

On one hand, it all felt like I was in limbo, waiting to pick up the strands of my life – whether I would end up returning to the road as a courier, or whatever it was I had been on my way to becoming as I worked with Shingen. On the other, it was a glimpse of a type of normalcy – that there were people living and working who were not at all connected to the warring clans. I wonder if I had ever had a chance at this kind of peaceful existence. If I had been satisfied living as a housemaid, would I have eventually ended up like Hana? Her father had been this area's healer, and I knew she was trained in medicine. Yet, she was happy to let Toshiie take the lead.

I liked Hana. I really did. But I struggled to find things to talk about with her, and I knew she didn't approve of my life as a courier. She understood why I had dressed as a boy and learned to fight – but she didn't understand why I enjoyed it. We'd found a common ground by exchanging stories about Toshiie's past and present life though, which got us past the awkward silences.

"Need any help?" I knelt next to Toshiie, who was puttering around in his medicinal herb garden. Hana had taken herself into the kitchen to prepare dinner, and Yukimura was galloping around the front garden with Nao riding on his back, chubby fists gripping Yuki's hair.

Toshiie laughed at me. "You? Garden? Didn't you once kill a cactus?"

"I never touched it. It fell over on its own." I looked at his neat plots of fragrant herbs. "I'll have you know that I stripped a lot of willow bark in my time at Aki's manor." And… more recently than that. Another memory land mine. To push that away, I eyed where Yuki was patiently giving my nephew another piggyback ride. "Poor Yuki's going to be bald by the time we leave."

"You could do a lot worse," Toshiie said.

"I promise, I won't pull anything out of the ground without checking with you first." Weeds were the ones that didn't smell like herbs, right?

"No." Toshiie shook his head. "I meant… why aren't you and Yukimura together?"

"We're just friends." I yanked out what I hoped was a weed. "He would say the same."

"I'm sure he would. But would he mean it?" Toshiie rushed to stop me from pulling up another – apparently not a weed - thingummy.

"Yes. I'm involved with someone else." At least, I hoped I still was.

"Why isn't your someone else here?" He handed me a plain cloth and some of the herbs he'd collected. "Here. Spread these out to dry."

"He's not here because I…" The explanation lodged in my throat.

"Oh, Katsuko. What did you do?" Tosh was still good at reading me. Or, I guess in some ways, I hadn't changed as much as I had thought. Hoped.

I wasn't sure where to start. Tosh was likely to have very strong views on medical ethics.

"That bad?" Toshiie asked after the silence stretched out too long.

"He's sick. A lung disease of some kind. Something they haven't been able to cure now, but maybe modern medicine could help. And so – that is where he is – in the future – getting medical treatment." I'd previously informed Tosh that I'd discovered a way home, but as I'd surmised, he was not interested in going back.

"Alright. Why do I have the feeling that there's more to it than that?" He dusted his hands on his kimono and fixed me with a 'big brother' look.

"He didn't exactly choose to go for treatment. Yuki, and I and a couple of others ambushed him, and sent him into the future anyway." Ugh. It sounded even worse when I explained it like that.

Toshiie closed his eyes. It was a look I was familiar with; and, had been the recipient of many times in the past. The look that said, 'I'm disappointed in you, but I don't want you to see that. "Oh."

I dropped my forehead to my knees. "I know. But I couldn't let him just – die – when there might be a cure."

I felt his hand on top of my hair, and that light touch said, 'I love you anyway.' Because no one can love me without a qualifier. "I understand why you did it. It was the lightbulb thing."

Toshiie always had been capable of mysterious leaps in logic. Usually, I could follow him, but not this time. "Lightbulb?"

"Whenever mom was having a difficult time of things." This was Toshiie's way of describing those weeks when she would rarely leave her bed, and if she did, she'd make it as far as the couch where she would sit in the dark. "She let all the light bulbs burn out, one by one, because it wasn't worth the effort to change them."

Oh. That. I had not realized he'd noticed.

"You replaced them and turned all the lights on and do everything that she wouldn't do for herself. Cook. Clean. Brush her hair." Now Toshiie was the one who couldn't look at me. I tried to remember what it was that he had been doing while that was going on, but nothing came to mind. I'm sure he had been helping too.

"That's not how I remember it." I shook my head. Some things only needed to be experienced once, not stored and dissected over and over. "What does that have to do with Shingen?"

Toshiie's jaw dropped. "That's your someone else? Your boss?!"

I gave him a 'you should talk, Mr. I-hooked-up-with-the-ship-captain' look.

He sighed. "Anyway. You wanted to save him because you couldn't save her. I get it. I wouldn't expect you to do anything else – right or wrong as that might have been."

"I didn't try to save her." As soon as I had been old enough to live on my own, I had moved out. So had Toshiie. "If she didn't think we were worth sticking around for, then so be it."

"You are worth sticking around for," Toshie said. "I have no idea what was in your Shingen's head. I never met the man. Hopefully, I will meet him someday to determine whether he is worthy of you."

I don't know how I would have responded to that, as our conversation came to an end when Yuki plopped down next to Tosh and passed a now half-asleep toddler over to him. "Here. I think I wore him out for you. I know he wore me out." He grabbed the nearby bucket of water that Toshiie had been using on his plants and poured a little bit over his head.

Still apparently determined to either play protective big brother (as if those fifteen minutes really counted in making him older!), or to cheerlead for a man who likely didn't even realize he'd been penciled in as little-sister's-perfect-boyfriend, Toshiie turned to Yuki and asked, "What is Lord Shingen like?"

Uggh! I punched Toshiie's shoulder and let out a shriek. "Tosh! Yuki. Ignore him. He is just being weird."

He covered my mouth with his hand. "No! I really want to know. This is my only sister."

Lucky for me Yuki missed the subtext. "He's one of the best men I know."

See! I glared at Tosh.

"He's like a father to me, in fact, he practically raised me," Yuki continued… way further than he needed to in my opinion.

Toshiie mouthed Daddy issues at me, before asking, "How old is this man anyway?"

"Shut it, Tosh. He's not much more than, um, eight or nine years older than we are." Or ten. Twelve, tops. "You've just kept me in your mind a perpetual teenager."

Finally beginning to catch on that he'd landed in the middle of a sibling kerfluffle, Yuki hurried to add, "Lord Shingen is brilliant, he's strong, he'll protect her with every fiber of his being."

"Not that she needs protecting," I muttered.

"If you had a sister then, you would be happy to see her with him?" Toshiie persisted.

There was just the tiniest hesitation before Yuki answered. "Yes, of course."

"You paused there." Tosh was not going to give up, was he?

"Tosh." I gave him my best glare of death, then turned to Yuki. "You don't need to answer any more of his questions."

"It's fine, Katsu." Great. Yuki had decided that Toshi could be part of his bro code. "Lord Shingen can be a flirt and has a reputation as a womanizer."

I felt a little pang in my stomach, hearing in Yuki's words the same thing that others had said about Shingen. He doesn't do commitment.

Then Yuki turned to me and smiled. "However, he's serious about Katsuko."

"Thanks Yuki," I whispered.

"I need to wash up." Yuki then fled before Tosh could interrogate him further.

After a long moment, Tosh said, "Obviously your mind has long been made up, but passion doesn't last. Steady affection," he looked down at his sleeping son, "that's the way to contentment."

Whoa. Well. That answered a question about Hana that I never would have had the bravery to ask.

"We'll have to agree to disagree, especially as you're making statements about a man you have never met." Two could play at this interfere in siblings' love life game… well not interfere. Tosh had clearly built something here with Hana, something good. But he obviously was hurting about something else, and I wanted to let him know he could talk about it. "Tosh, what's wrong? What's really wrong?"

"The Captain. He'd didn't 'allow' me to go. He told me to. I would have stayed for him." Tosh's voice was quieter. I was sure he didn't want to hurt Hana with his words.

"But he didn't ask?"

"I offered."

There wasn't much I could say to that. I could imagine rationalizations or possible selflessness on the part of the unknown captain who may have realized how miserable Tosh was at sea. I could equally imagine that Toshiie was right, and their passion had run its course. I didn't know this captain any more than Tosh knew Shingen. So, I did the only thing I could do and hugged Tosh to me and let him rest his eyes on my shoulder.

Toshiie loved his wife, his family, the things he had built here in Ikuno. That was evident in everything he did. That didn't mean he didn't have regrets. Nor did it mean that he would ever get over his captain. Maybe we're not meant to get over people. Maybe we're meant to take with us the things we learned, the joyful memories, and use the pain to become kinder versions of ourselves.