Chapter Forty-Three – Full Circle

We stayed several weeks with Toshiie, which, among other things, allowed my brother and I to celebrate our birthday together. But once the weather changed from Autumn to almost-winter, we took our leave, with hugs and good wishes from Hana, one last 'Uki' piggyback ride for Nao, and promises to Toshiie that I would return as soon as I was able.

I gave Toshiie directions to Kasugayama as well as Aki's house on the mountain in case he needed to get in touch with me. "Where will you be – I mean… which place? I don't want to lose track of you now that we've found each other again."

"I'll let you know." I couldn't make any decisions or plans until after the wormhole opened at Togakushi. "There's also a bookseller in Azuchi where you can always leave a message that will find me." I gave him the location of that as well. That would be the most convenient for him since Azuchi was so much closer to Ikuno than the other two locations.

One last bro-slap between Yuki and Tosh, and one last long hug between my brother and I, then we were off. "See you soon!" he yelled after us. Tosh still hates saying goodbye.

As we made our way out of the town, Yuki gave me one of his suspicious side-eye glares.

"What?" I hoped he wasn't going to question all the sly glances and eyebrow raises Toshiie had been unsubtly deploying. If he did, I was going to ruthlessly shit talk my twin and claim it was a tic.

"Bookseller. Azuchi. I knew I'd met you before. You were the old man who spied on me." He punched my shoulder. "What the hell were you doing there?"

"I wasn't spying on you… or anyone… exactly. It's a long story." Although I supposed we had plenty of time.

The journey to Togakushi took a week – which was faster than I had anticipated – as I had been worried we would be delayed by early winter storms when we got into the mountains. We had so much extra time that Yuki suggested we spend the night in his castle, which was less than a day's ride from the shrine.

"I didn't know you had a castle." I tried and failed to picture Yuki as a Kenshin-like lord of a castle. "Of course, you should visit it."

"Thanks. Except I shouldn't thank you – I bet there's a pile of tasks waiting for me," Yuki said, and further explained that he hadn't been there in months.

We turned our horses in the direction of what one day would become Nagano. The landscape was both familiar and unfamiliar in a way that felt jarring. Like a puzzle piece that looked like it would fit, until you tried to place it. "I grew up in this area. It still weirds me out, seeing this part of the country without a big city in the middle of it."

"How big?" We were riding along the banks of the Chikuma River, and I looked around, feeling the displacement in time more vividly than before, especially since this was close to where I had gone to high school… years that I definitely had not enjoyed (hence the truancy to go snowboarding whenever I could get away with it).

"Um, I guess something like three hundred and seventy-five thousand people? So not huge, but bigger than a village." I shrugged. "It seemed like a lot of people when I was growing up, but the first time I visited Tokyo, I realized it wasn't that much, comparatively."

Yukimura paused and looked out at the mountains in the distance, and the war damaged land in between. "I don't know whether to be glad that the area came back from this, but that many people is kind of… well, it's a lot… And this… Tokyo is bigger?"

"A hundred times bigger, I think. Tokyo – well in this era, it's Edo, but in my time, it's one of the biggest cities in the world. Maybe the biggest? I'm not sure." The few times I had visited, it had seemed too big to me. But I had always been one to prefer outdoor spaces. "Maybe I shouldn't be giving you all this information about the future."

"Eh, I don't know what I'd do with it anyway. It won't change the way I live." He turned his horse northward, and I got a good look at the building on the hill overlooking the river.

"Ueda Castle? Your castle is Ueda castle?" Had I known that? I should have known that. Not only should I have paid attention in school, I should have paid attention to it. Or, technically, I guess I hadn't connected the Yuki I knew with the Sanada clan of Ueda castle.

"Yeah… why? Is it still there in your time?" He grinned at me. "I like the idea of it lasting that long."

"Parts of it have been reconstructed… but yes, it's still there. It's a school now. It's where I went to school." I laughed suddenly. "I should leave a note for my bratty fifteen-year-old self to find."

"A school? That's really great. I mean, if it was no longer needed for defense… yeah… a school." Yukimura smiled, then pointed to the castle gates. "Race you!"

Yuki was mobbed when he made his unexpected appearance, not only by vassals with issues he needed to solve! Right! That! Instant!, but also from people who were plain old happy to see him. I felt guilty that he'd had to spend so much time escorting me across the country, but when I tried to apologize, he'd gotten all bristly. "Stop that. I wouldn't have been here either. I'd have stayed in Kasugayama."

As soon as he crossed the threshold, he was borne off to his main audience room to deal with those urgent issues, so I followed a maid to the guest quarters, then used the bathhouse to clean the week's travel off me.

After I cleaned up, I took some time to wander through the castle's garden. Over the past couple of months, I'd had very little alone time, both a blessing and a curse. No time alone meant no time for dwelling on what I was going to say to Shingen when (not if) we were reunited. My time with Toshiie had given me some perspective on my feelings and behavior, but the dreaded worries were returning and I needed to be away from other people to drop the masks I'd been wearing during all of my interactions.

The garden in Ueda Castle allowed me that time and space. I spent an hour or so with my eyes closed and my face turned up to the sun. How do you apologize for something you would do again? I was sorry for how things had played out, but if modern medicine cured him, I would be happy. If it didn't… then I'd robbed myself of time spent with him. But until I knew the result, I couldn't regret. I could only hope.

Beyond the apprehension though, I simply missed him. Everything about him: his wicked smile, easy confidence, vast intelligence, and that way he could walk into any situation and know what to do. I missed the way he'd always had of making me feel smart and valued and cherished.

In a day – presuming Sasuke's theories of time travel were correct – that wicked, smart, confident man would be back. What I didn't know was whether he would still want to make me feel cherished or whether he would never want to talk to me again.

But… if he was alive, and healthy, it would have been worth it.

I stayed in the gardens until the wind became bitter, the sky became dark and my stomach became hangry. No one had come to look for me (possibly no one remembered that I was there), which likely meant that Yukimura was still trapped doing business with his vassals.

After a few wrong turns, I located a kitchen and begged a tray of food, which I then brought to Yuki's audience chamber. The poor guy was huddled over a stack of reports. And yup… hair was standing in all directions – I imagined he had raked his hands through it multiple times over the day.

"As much as you've yelled at Shingen to not push himself, you're just as bad." I carried the tray into the room. "Eat."

He laughed suddenly, sounding half-amused, half-something else I was not able to determine. "You're always feeding me."

"I am?" I thought back. Yeah, I had shoved a bowl of rice or a cup of tea at him on more than one occasion. "Huh. Well, maybe that's a sign you need to pay more attention to mealtime." I set the tray down at his elbow. "Anyway, you look busy, so I'll leave you to it, but… eat."

He nodded and set the paper he was reading aside. In the process, he knocked the chopsticks off the tray. Both of us jumped to catch them before they hit the floor, our hands touching in the process.

Yuki yanked his hand away as if it had been burned, and he resolutely stared at his reports… but not before I had gotten a look at his face.

Shit.

Toshiie had been right.

I set the chopsticks back on the tray. "Eat," I repeated one last time before leaving the room. There was absolutely nothing I could say that would not make things worse.

Yuki was my friend – and I loved him like a brother. All I could offer him was, as Toshiie had put it, a steady affection. I could imagine what a life with him would be like… and it was not unpleasant… but it was not what I wanted for myself. It was not what I wanted for Yukimura either.

Even if I could envision a life on a different path than the one I had set myself on, a life that even offered a contentment, a life similar to what Toshiie had with Hana, I knew that I would never take a step on that path. I was not my brother, and Yukimura deserved better than to become someone's Plan B.

The late Autumn blizzard began that night. It was probably heralding the arrival of the wormhole, which obviously enjoyed creeping around in storms. At least the weather gave Yuki and I something to focus on. I didn't think that Yuki was aware that I had discovered his feelings, and I certainly didn't want to embarrass him (or me, for that matter) by calling attention to them.

"Damn Fume and her weather forecasting knees." Ice pelted my face like little stinging arrows. Besides the snow and sleet, it was even thundering.

"Is that another one of your modern expressions?" Yukimura asked. There were icicles hanging off his hat. He broke off one and tossed it away.

"Sadly, no." I pointed to another mountain off in the distance. "Before I came to Kasugayama, I was based over there. Fume is the chatelaine and claims she can tell months in advance when we're about to have a bad winter by how much her joints ache. She started foretelling a bad winter as soon as last winter ended." Actually, she was always claiming we were going to have a bad winter. And we always had a bad winter. I do not think the two were casually related.

"Oh yeah. One of my vassals is the same way." He paused and glanced over at the mountain. "You didn't want to visit her?"

"No. First because if we make it up there, there's no guarantee of getting down again until Spring." The path to Aki's manor wasn't exactly vertical, but it sometimes felt that way. "Also. She hates me."

"Maybe she's grumpy because her knees hurt," Yuki offered.

"No, she actually hates me. She calls me 'that- ". I pulled Moonlight to a halt, catching sight of what was ahead of us. "Son of a bitch."

"You're right. That is mean—Son of a bitch!" Yuki had belatedly seen what was ahead of us.

Right about where Sasuke had predicted the wormhole would open, a group of armed bandits was camped out. Most were carrying swords, but at least two of them had muskets within reach. Maybe more than that… it was hard to tell with the snow slapping me in the face.

"I think this is where I came in." Bandits armed with muskets – just like the ones who had attacked Shingen, Yukimura and Sasuke this summer.

"Why here?" Yuki asked quietly. "There's nothing out here but the shrine, and it would be stupid to attack anyone going there."

"Fate." Shingen had once said that we can't fight fate. Was that what this was then? Had I saved him from that first sniper, sent him to the future to be cured, only to put him in the path of another bullet? Because if the wormhole opened up and dumped Shingen and Sasuke here, they would not be expecting an attack.

"I don't believe in fate. We make our own futures." Yuki eyed the bandits. "Something else is going on."

We observed the group for a little while – were they simply camping here coincidentally? Why would you camp on the side of a mountain in a blizzard? Then the apparent leader of the bandits stood up and stretched, twisting to give us a full view of his face.

Iekane.

Of course, it was Iekane.

"Son of a bitch," I said again. While I otherwise would have welcomed the opportunity to capture him, the timing… sucked. And we needed to get him and the others away from here before the wormhole opened. The sound of thundersnow in the distance was a warning that we didn't have much time.

Yuki and I retreated a few paces to be sure our voices didn't carry. "What do you think he's doing here? Do you think he's after you?"

"From what he said at Kasugayama, it's Akihira he has some sort of grudge against, not me. Although I'm sure if he had the opportunity to hurt me, he wouldn't turn it down." There was only one path to get to Aki's home and we were on it. Iekane could be lying in wait for Aki to either come or go. Or potentially, I supposed they could be on their way to attack his manor. It wasn't all that well defended, as its location in the mountain terrain made it an unattractive prospect. You'd have to be extremely motivated to attack it. For whatever reason, Iekane was extremely motivated, although I never understood why. "Besides, how would he know I'm here?"

It didn't matter why they were here. They were here, and they were in the way.

Yuki peered through the trees. "There's not that many of them." He indicated the cover of trees surrounding the bandits. He nodded at my bow. "How many can you shoot before they take cover?"

"Three. Maybe four if they're slow." Obviously, I'd want to take out the ones with the muskets first. "The storm is going to add to the confusion on both sides."

"Three's enough." Yuki said drew his sword. "If I outflank them from the left, I should be able to take care of the rest. I'll give a signal when I'm in place."

He sounded confident – and if those were run of the mill bandits, then I'd have the same confidence. But Iekane had trained with Aki, and then for an unknown amount of time with Kenshin, so he was a higher-than-average threat. Still. Yukimura was the commander of the Akazonae. He knew what he was doing. I wasn't about to insult him by telling him to be careful. "Sounds like a plan."

Good luck.

We peeled off in opposite directions. As soon as I was able, I climbed into a tree and made my way to the best possible blind. The tree limbs were icy, and twice I nearly slipped off – but Shingen's often repeated claim aside, I've never fallen out of a tree, and I don't intend to start now. Eventually, I settled against the trunk of a beech tree that overlooked the bandit's campsite and readied my bow.

The storm intensified, with fat flakes of snow whirling from all directions, making it impossible to see whether Yukimura was in position. While I waited for his signal, I kept my arrow aimed at Iekane.

Unfortunately, with the worst timing known to mankind, one of the bandits decided it was time to take a leak - at least that was my assumption given he had untied his hakama and was already rooting around in there as he headed off to the same shelter of trees where Yuki was hiding.

One bandit wouldn't have been a problem for Yuki. And he wasn't. But everyone in the camp was able to hear, "Hey! Who are-" before the words were cut off with a gurgling cry.

Iekane leaped to his feet, just as I sent my first arrow winging his way.

Dammit.

He dove behind a boulder, sending up snow flying in his wake.

As fast as I could, I shot the two gunmen, then aimed at where Iekane was hiding. He'd have to come out sooner or later, to either face me or Yukimura, who came charging out of the trees, sword swinging. While the other bandits converged on Yuki, Iekane grabbed the musket abandoned by his fallen comrade and aimed it at where I was hiding. The storm winds were whipping the tree limbs, alternately revealing, then concealing my position on the branch.

"Kaya! I know you're up there." He clamped the fuse on the gun. "Didn't anyone ever tell you not to bring an arrow to a gunfight?"

"That's knife, you dipshit," I said to myself as I shot two arrows in succession. Once bounced off his armor and he ducked out of the way of the second.

As I reached for another arrow, Iekane pulled the trigger. The shot was low. It missed me, but it hit the branch I was perched upon, weakening it enough for it to break underneath me.

Good thing I know how to safely exit a tree (I've had enough practice these days). I tumbled into a snowbank and scrambled to my feet.

Iekane frantically tried to reload and light the fuse, but the snow was coming down hard enough to make that task more difficult than normal.

My bow sadly had not fared so well in the untimely exit from the tree, so I grabbed my sword – this was one time that I had ample motivation to attack. Shingen would be proud of me.

Above us, the clouds were swirling and churning – the wormhole was materializing.

Seeing my weapon, Iekane gave up on the musket and drew his own sword. "You never were very good at this, Kaya."

"I've gotten better." Kenshin had been killing me all summer. I could now last several minutes against him – and Iekane was not nearly the swordsman Kenshin was. "And my name isn't Kaya."

"Katsuhira. You're the only one he gave his name to." Iekane advanced on me, sword swinging randomly. I spun and tumbled under several wild lunges, but the strikes that did connect nearly disarmed me. Rage may have lessened his accuracy, but it also increased his strength. He followed up one vicious strike with a spinning kick, that I was barely able to block with my shoulder. Forget rules of combat. I grabbed a handful of icy snow, and hurled it at his face, hoping to temporarily blind him.

"What are you talking about?" I gripped my sword in both hands, hoping to hang on until Iekane tired himself into a mistake that I could take advantage of.

"Iekane. Okitane. Takauji – he named us. I came here with him, and he never treated me like anything more than a student." He chopped down at me, but I spun out of the way in time.

Behind him, that bank of fog crept closer, a wall of writhing grey, as the wormhole began to form.

I jumped backward a few paces – anything to keep Iekane away from Sasuke and Shingen when they came through.

"So what? He ran out of names. Or he couldn't bother to get creative when he got to me." It was getting harder to see, as the wormhole's fog churned around us. Behind me, I could hear the clanking swords, telling me that Yuki was still holding his own against the remaining number of Iekane's men.

"Why you? A stupid useless girl, and he treated you like you were his son." Clearly Iekane had missed out on the conversation where Aki slut shamed me, but… details.

If Sasuke and Shingen were coming… shouldn't I be able to see or hear them by now? I wasted a valuable second of attention to look for them, just as Iekane whirled out of my blind spot and almost hit the sword out of my hand, slashing my arm in the process.

I felt a sting of pain across my forearm, but I'd learned my lesson and didn't take my attention off Iekane, even to check myself for serious damage.

He charged again. I repositioned myself and whirled away, finishing that up with a kick right into his stomach. He grunted, nearly doubling over, and I advanced on him—

-sword swinging—

- pushing forward –

and then in my ears, a worried shout from Yukimura-

"Katsu, dammit, be carefu-"

…as momentum carried Iekane and me into the center of the wormhole.

Grey.

Iekane's fingers dug into my shoulder. His voice rasped in my ear. "You are indeed stupid, putting me right where I wanted to be."

Then he flung me away—

Far-

Past the center of the wormhole.

This… this isn't what I remember… at all.

My world filled with the numbing grey.

Was… I… dissolving?