Title: Hanafubuki
Part 10: Spring Snow
AN: I admit that this fic has taken a darker turn... perhaps I've
been watching too much Lain lately? shrugs I can't quite
believe I've made it to part 10 already. Thanks to MKasshoku
who motivates me with her questions and plot predictions and
to everyone who's reviewed this piece at
--
Beyond the twilight
Embraced by the winds of spring
The spirit endures
--
Part 10
"You're the perfect bait, Himura-san." Junzou crouched beside me, one hand resting casually by my head on the stained futon and the other caressing the hilt of his sword. "You're the perfect bait because that girl clearly cares for you but also assumes you're capable of taking care of yourself." He stared out the open window, eyes following the movement of something beyond my field of vision.
"Still, I expect she's smarter than she looks." The corner of his mouth twitched as he spoke, and his lip curled upward in the barest hint of a smile. "Ah yes Himura-san, the events begin to unfold, and I suspect you'll prove more interesting than any challenge I've had in years. You know, it's difficult to break a man, to tear down layer after layer of self-defense until all that's left is an empty shell of insanity and raw emotion -- but there's nothing in this world like the feeling afterwards."
The hitokiri's fingers tightly curled around the futon's frayed edge, and his shoulders tensed as he inhaled deeply. I held my tongue as he sat beside me in silence and could think of nothing to say to diffuse the tension, nothing to divert the driven mind of the madman at my side.
He leaned forward, and his pungent breath was warm and moist by my face. "She'll already be looking for you." Slowly, he raised his hand into the air, fingers unclenching one by one as they brushed past my ear. "Last night, alone, in the dark..." I turned away from his touch, shivering at the sudden coldness against my skin. "...she'll have thought of you, would have stared at the ceiling all alone in the dark." Two fingers, like shards of ice traced down my left cheek deliberately from eye to chin. "What do you suppose she'll give me in exchange for a promise of your safety?" His nails dug into my skin.
I strained against the ropes binding my arms and legs and ground my teeth together in outright frustration. "Leave her alone. You've no reason to touch her." I didn't want to look at him, didn't want to see the smug expression creeping across his face, but reluctantly my gaze met his, and once our eyes locked, it was impossible to look away.
"I've no reason?" He nodded slowly, the corner of his mouth twitching again. "But it's so much better when the women are involved, isn't it? And of course I've reason enough." His voice, the lightest of whispers, trailed off into silence, but the words left unsaid between us flashed vividly in my mind. 'How many people have you killed, Battousai? Men, women, children, grandparents, warrior, wife, deserving, innocent? How many lives have you cut short with only the pale moon and unfeeling stars for witnesses? You'll always be a killer; even now you reek of blood.'
The refrain was one I'd heard countless times over the past decade. It ran in circles around my mind, droning onward like the monotonous hum of late summer cicadas. 'She sees beyond appearances, learns from the past but looks to the future, judges not on words but on actions...' I wanted to shout in her defense, but Junzou breathed not a word, and I too held my tongue.
"You're familiar with the feeling of steel against flesh," he muttered more as of a statement than a question as he finally pulled his hand away. "Do you remember how it feels when your blade slices though your enemy without resistance?" He drew a small dagger from his sleeve as he spoke and pressed it lightly against his left thumb. "You remember the smell of blood? The intoxicating, maddening scent that overwhelms any semblance of reason..." Unable to pull my gaze away, I watched the bright red droplets ooze down his palm. "It stains the soul indelibly."
Again I turned away from his touch, closing my eyes as his thumb brushed across my cheek, down my nose, over my eyelids. "Junzou..." the sound, a low growl, slipped from my lips, and I forced my hands to unclench and reminded myself to breathe.
We both felt his entrance. Sumire. And without glancing up I knew he was standing in the doorway -- downcast eyes veiled by the hair that fell across his face. He pulled his hands into his sleeves and shifted restlessly from foot to foot. And for a passing moment we were three actors walking out our roles onstage, three men holding masts before our faces and staring blankly at an invisible audience.
"So you've finally come to see our guest." Junzou rose gracefully to his feet, ignoring the blood that still dripped from his palm. "I assume you've met before... No?" He smiled, a dark parody of the usual expression. "Then allow me to do the introductions."
"We've met." The interjection sliced through the artificial levity like a knife through water, but Sumire lingered in the doorway as if afraid to venture closer. Despite the surrealism of the situation, the awkwardness of looking up at him from the floor though lashes matted with another's blood, I nodded in greeting -- and wondered what role he was to play in the developing course of events. 'He's very much like Yahiko in some ways... but his pride and drive for revenge have landed him in deeper waters than he anticipated.'
"Well then, now that we've had our little reunion--" Junzou turned to Sumire with a glare that shouted, 'come with me' as clearly as if he'd snarled the command aloud. "Don't go anywhere Battousai…" It was a joke of course; if I could have left I would have done so long ago. "...we've only just began to get to know each other." He walked away without looking back, his shadow fading seamlessly into the disappearing sunlight. The breeze that swept in though the open window smelled vaguely of sakura blossoms, and the discordant mingling of the flowers' sweet perfume and the lingering scent of blood filled the air and inundated my senses
My head fell back limply against the floor as the footsteps retreated, and I listened to my gasping breath with clinical detachment. Blurred by drug-induced lethargy, time passed in fragmented incidents, broken shards of reality imprinted vividly on my mind. Weak sunlight fell upon my eyelids, but I had no memory of whether it was morning or evening. And although I mouthed words of hope and encouragement soundlessly to myself in the semi-darkness, one can only survive so long on intangible promises of salvation.
- - - - - - - - - -
"They are looking for him. The street fighter and the girl walked together last night, but the boy was alone." His voice floated through the darkness like bubbles up through murky water. The sun had sunk into night, and it hardly mattered whether my eyes were open or closed as the room was smothered by thick shadows. Thick wooden shutters covered the window, and there were no candles to cast warm yellow pools of reassuring light.
"I followed them through half the city, but they weren't coming this direction, so I returned directly." Although he was in the adjacent room, I could almost see Sumire shrug in my mind's eye -- that innocent lifting of the shoulders and slight tilting of the head -- for him, a sure gesture of nervousness.
Cunning and insightful, Junzou was not a man easily fooled, especially by a boy less than half his age. "Are you certain that was all you saw?" There was a slight rustle of fabric as he closed the distance to Sumire, but the tatami were quiet beneath his feet. "There was nothing more?"
Again, I tugged wearily at the binding ropes and rubbed my nose roughly against the futon in an attempt to clean off the encrusted blood. Both endeavors proved futile. How had I allowed myself to be caught in such a situation? What had gone so horribly wrong? I strained my ears, listening for any clue that might reveal our location. Outside, the night was still, and not even the sound of footsteps echoing on a deserted road gave evidence of nearby civilization. I had no doubt that I was still in Tokyo, though. The distinctive smell of the city penetrated the walls and saturated the air. I could taste the city with every breath I took.
"...all right. Go to bed then." Having missed the middle segment of the conversation, I caught the trailing end of Junzou's promise. "Yes, tomorrow you'll have your revenge." A panel was slid aside, then closed again, but I could still hear the shuffling of Sumire's pacing nearby -- Junzou had left him to his thoughts in the adjacent room.
I closed my eyes for what I thought to be just a moment, but when I awoke again to darkness, the boy was at my side. Beside him on the floor burned the short nub of a candle consumed almost down to its base, and the thin flame traced across his pale features and reflected in his eyes.
"You're finally awake..." He sat with legs crossed and eyes trained studiously on his lap. "...do you understand what the daylight will bring for you?" His tone was far from the bold taunts thrown at Yahiko across the polished floor of the Makita Dojo and just as far from the cold words uttered underneath the grey skies by the river's bank only days ago. "He'll stop at nothing--" A brief flicker of... anger, indignation... seeped into his words. But he quickly grew distracted, and his voice faded into nothing more than a whisper "--damn madman."
I couldn't know for sure what the hitokiri had planned, but I'd witnessed enough scenes in Kyoto to satisfy my imagination. I wasn't afraid of torture, or even death for that matter, but I couldn't let him hurt Kaoru, Yahiko, and the others. "Sumire-kun, please, I ask of you--"
"I have no reason to help you." Still with eyes downcast he unsheathed a small dagger and held it before him so that the polished metal caught the dancing candlelight and reflected it into the darkened corners of the room. "You've murdered my father... and countless others." His knuckles were white as he clenched the handle, and his shoulders trembled as he ground his teeth together. "You've no right to be happy while others are suffering..."
But contrary to the cold message of his words, his tone itself spoke not of anger but of sympathy. Every movement, every gesture betrayed his nervousness, and each time he opened his mouth I grew more convinced of the conflict within him -- the infinite tension between light and darkness that haunts us all.
"...you've no right..." he continued to mutter quietly to himself as if he'd forgotten my presence beside him. And as dawn, the gentle herald of the morning, steadily approached through the thinning remnants of night, the solitary candle burning alone on the floor marked the undeniable passage of time. "...and yet--" When he reopened his eyes they shone with redefined clarity and resolution, and with a long exhalation, his distant, haunted expression hardened into one of determination. For a passing moment it seemed as though the father, not the son, was seated before me.
"You don't deserve her love." His back straightened, and he lifted a hand to smooth the wrinkles creased into his gi. "You don't deserve their friendship, their loyalty..." I listened to his rising tirade, biting back retorts as they formed on my tongue. "...why?" His gaze brushed past mine, and for a fleeting moment we stared down into the depths of each other's soul. He turned away, trembling. "Why are you happy, and why is my father dead?"
And as the thin, pale hint of dawn -- that faint pink glimmer that caresses the overarching skies with loving tenderness -- crept through the wooden shutters, tears began to stain his clothes and hands. The dagger fell to the floor and rocked back and forth as he brushed the dampness from his eyes. "Do you even care about the lives you've ruined?" He swallowed hard, his voice cracking with emotion. Hands pressed against the floor, he knelt with his head hanging limply downward between his arms. "Father..."
The soft utterance, half-sob half-plea, settled upon the room like snow falling on snow, blurring but not erasing the deep tracks carved across the landscape of his soul. I began to reach for him then remembered belatedly the ropes that bound me fast.
"Please, Sumire-kun..." I could do nothing to alter the events of the past -- that much I understood and, with reluctance, accepted -- but the present and the future were at mine to direct, mine to change. Repentance means nothing in word alone; one must act and take responsibility for ones actions. I had known this once, had first learned the truth while half-buried in snow with the scent of white-plum fading around me and blood diffusing across the pristine whiteness like ink across parchment. Tree branches bent low underneath the weight of the storm that surrounded me, and somewhere in the tragedy of the moment a weak hint of light emerged. Over the long years it had been buried away under layer upon layer of guilt and regret until it had all but been forgotten, but in a small room somewhere in Tokyo, it found rebirth in the breaking of dawn. "...please."
I don't remember exactly how the events unfolded, but the ropes fell away in pieces upon the futon as he stood over me, knife in hand. The hesitancy in his movements had been replaced by assurance, the nervousness in his stance replaced by resolution.
" Can you stand?" Belatedly he offered me his hand as I struggled to my feet. Although my movements were clumsy from the lingering effects of Junzou's drug, and my head ached from dehydration, it felt good to be vertical again. He watched impassively as I spit into my hand and wiped the blood from my eyes and cheek.
"Where are we?" Rolling my shoulders back to ease the stiffness, I winced at the stab of pain from stitches torn in the previous day's skirmish. Besides the re-aggravated injury to my left shoulder, I appeared to be all in one piece, bruised but thankfully intact.
He said nothing in reply but swept the shutters aside, and light streamed in through the open window and pooled on the floor. Down in the streets below dust rose from the empty road, only to settle again without sound or ceremony. The stillness reminded me of the early mornings I had spent deep in the countryside without a village or farmhouse for miles around -- only the clear sky above my head and the damp grass beneath my feet. "We should go soon..."
He was surprised by the plural pronoun, although the only evidence of his reaction was the slight twitching of fingers hanging limply at his sides. He had meant to stay, had resolved himself to death by Junzou's hand, but my conscience wouldn't allow me to leave him behind -- to do so would have been the same as taking the dagger from his hand and slitting his throat myself.
But he shook his head and pointed to the far corner of the room where the sakabatou rested against the wall. "Just leave... go," he whispered flatly, refusing to meet my gaze. His muscles tensed when I didn't move, and his cheeks flushed red as he lifted his head toward mine. "Why are you still here?" There was a sharp edge to the deliverance of the question, and his eyes narrowed in renewed annoyance.
"Come with me. I promise to protect you..." I winced mentally as soon as the words left my mouth. The last thing he probably wanted was protection -- especially from his father's murderer, of all ironic possibilities. But despite the tactlessness of the invitation, he did come, slowly, hesitantly, step-by-step. His expression was one of anger and mistrust, but his feet moved, and before he could bolt I reached out and touched his arm.
Muscles tensed beneath rough cloth, and together we froze, a tableau washed in sunlight. I could hardly guess what thoughts were spinning through his mind, but he clearly sensed the same thing I did. There was no mistaking the approaching ki. It was he -- the master of the house, the man holding the keys and guarding the door. He took in the scene with a long, sweeping gaze and said nothing, just stood in the doorway. Junzou, hitokiri of the Meiji Era, smiled in satisfaction. Everyone, everything was in place.
end of part 10
This has taken my quite a while to write, and I wasn't exactly certain how
to describe the transition within Sumire... until I actually sat down and
wrote it . I didn't want to be melodramatic, but I wanted to make the
point that this chapter brings about at least partial resolution to the
conflict that has been tearing him apart inside. You see, he's really a decent
person at heart -- who has been though some really tough times. Oh, and
about the ending to this chapter... well, I haven't had a good cliffhanger
for quite some time, so I thought... ducks --Mir (04.12.2002)
Note 2: Actually, very few changes in the revision of this chapter. I was
definitely a better writer in 2002 than I am now. How depressing. I've
almost finished the first new chapter but am still contemplating how to
weave Kaoru, Sano, Yahiko, and Saito back into the timeline...
-- Mir (08.04.2008)