Loyalty
by Jennifer A. Wand
a Gravitation fan fiction
III. The Rage Beat
"Yamamoto Jin'emon always said to his retainers, 'Go ahead and gamble and lie. A person who will not tell you seven lies within a hundred yards is useless as a man.'"
- from the pages of the HAGAKURE, the handbook of the samurai
Ichigo tasted like her name. She didn't taste of strawberries - no one truly does - but something analogous: almost painfully sweet, a little hesitant, a little comforting. Eiri let out a muffled sigh as he kissed her. This girl stirred things in him long-dormant, and he'd forgotten how to keep certain reactions under control. Granted, part of him was relieved he _could_ feel this way for this girl, but the greater part was apprehensive and blaring warnings even as it lost control.
The girl moaned, and struck with sudden heat, Eiri clasped his arms around her shoulders to pull her in. She struggled briefly at the contact, and Eiri loosened his grip, holding her delicately instead of pressing her to his chest. Drunk, he tasted her lips and tongue, dipped to her cheeks in their rosy redness, and leaned in to the neckline that had first seduced him. Her skin was clean and soapy, blushing marble.
"Yuki..." Ichigo said weakly, and Eiri heard it as an erotic mirror of a long-ago sensation... something he'd once said, too. He felt he was making love to the past through the veil of the present. Groaning a little, he slipped her kimono down over one shoulder so he could kiss along her skin. The kimono sleeve dropped abruptly, and Eiri could feel the embarrassed blush heat up Ichigo's face as she resisted. "Wait... stop -- Yuki."
Never before had the cliche of a maiden's protestations seemed more titillating to Eiri. With a wide sweep of his hand, he caught her ankles and lifted her in his arms, all the while taking long nips of her ears and jawline and murmuring "What, stop now?" Ichigo's only answer was a gasp. When he kissed some secret sensitive spot on her neck, she seized up and grabbed the back of his neck with two anxious hands. Eiri hit boiling point, and before she could protest, he threw her down on the readied futon and pulled away the folds of her kimono.
Ichigo's protest reached his ears before anything else. "No! Yuki, don't!!" The terror in her voice was real -- no more was she being coy. Eiri froze, paralyzed by her tone, and it was only after her cries stopped ringing in his ears that he saw the reason for them.
The minute he'd let go, Ichigo had scrambled to a kneeling position and was now busy rearranging the disheveled kimono over an exposed, and clearly male, chest.
Eiri stared in silence until the boy -- for he was one, just barely out of his teens and still fair-featured enough to pull off a convincing ruse -- readjusted the kimono completely. When he'd finished, he turned a reproachful eye on Eiri. "I _told_ you to stop!" he blurted, in his natural tone of voice, a good octave lower than the falsetto.
"Y.... you..." Eiri pointed a shaky finger.
"The truth's out," the youth said sharply. "My name's not Ichigo, it's Shuichi. Shindou Shuichi. And I'm not a woman. I work with the kabuki troupe that entertains at Seguchi-sama's court."
Eiri spoke only one word. Could it be that this boy was one of those kabuki actors who trained so intensively to play female roles that they spent much of their offstage life dressing and living as women, an... "Onnagata...?"
"Part-time," Shuichi answered, sitting informally on the futon in a way that hardly befitted the wearer of so splendid a kimono. "I write. But you know that much."
The situation finally sunk into Eiri's consciousness, and he was free to react to it. Rage built up inside him, and his mind raced, trying to figure out how he'd gotten into this predicament. A thought occurred to him that made his stomach lurch. "Did Seguchi put you up to this!?" he demanded.
"Seguchi-sama?" The boy blinked innocently. "How could he..."
Eiri sprang to his feet and began to pace. "This has to be his doing!" This was just like him. Tohma was constantly thinking of new ways to remind Eiri he'd never outrun his past, and this had to be the most infuriating to date. "To send you up here to tempt me..."
This time it was Shuichi who bolted upwards to stand. "To tempt you!?" he shouted, his voice a more solid version of the outraged falsetto that had been facing off against Eiri just a few minutes ago. "You're the one who ATTACKED me!!"
Logic is a funny thing. Usually it makes perfect sense, but when combined with anger, one can never predict its influence. Shuichi's statement was true. Perhaps, deep down, Eiri knew it, but now it only served to fuel the fire. "Get OUT!" he bellowed, fixing Shuichi in a heated glare. "GO!" He swayed ominously, as though his next move would be to attack Shuichi and beat him half to death. Shuichi paled, took a step back, and finally did as he was told, backing through the door hastily and closing it before dashing off down the hallway.
Eiri took a stomping step toward the door and glared at it menacingly, as though Shuichi were hiding behind it and needed to be further scared off. Finally sure he was alone, Eiri began to pace. Anger quickened his breathing and trembles wracked his body. The rage beat in his heart, pounded in his wrists, his ears. How could he? Seguchi, Shuichi, himself... how could he justify any of their actions?
"Damn!" he said aloud to the empty room, then repeated it in a lower tone. "Damn..." Despite the fact that no one had seen the interchange, Eiri felt as though he had been made a fool of. Well, if Seguchi had planned it, he was certainly laughing now. And who knows whom he, or Shuichi himself, would tell? Eiri had a sudden sickening vision of Shuichi, surrounded by a motley circle of actors, intoning, "You know that retainer that Seguchi-sama adores so? Well, he KISSED me last night!" Raucous laughter that never happened echoed in Eiri's ears, and his head began to hurt.
It was not long before fatigue took its toll on Eiri's anger. His pacing slowed, and he began to feel a throbbing in his head. Nothing seemed better to him then than sleep -- lying down to lose consciousness and forget, for a few hours, this whole confusing world. To black out his shame, his guilt... for that was the feeling that overwhelmed him as he finally collapsed onto the futon, exhausted from his travels as well as from the confusing events of the night.
It was only just before sleep that the thoughts crept, unbidden, into his head. Shuichi had spoken true. Eiri had been the one to approach him, to kiss him. His eyes had been defiant, his protests unmistakeable. He hadn't wanted this to happen. Perhaps Seguchi hadn't told him why he was sending him up there? But more important, Eiri knew, for a few strangely lucid moments, that HE had wanted it. So much it surprised him. And it had nothing to do with the gender of his companion. On the contrary, he had especially liked "Ichigo"'s awkward, unfeminine movements. It was the boy underneath the girl that Eiri had wanted - and continued to want now.
Regret came with morning. Eiri berated himself through the day for allowing himself to feel quite so much. His life had nothing to do with desires, and the more he indulged himself with thoughts of them, the weaker he felt. No, there was a deeper problem at hand. If Seguchi had planned this - and Eiri was convinced he had - the lord had a definite motive in mind. Eiri's honor was very likely on the line.
Halfway through the day, an attendant came to Eiri and bowed. "Seguchi-sama requests that you join him tonight at the Kabuki performance." All lingering doubts vanished, and Eiri's rage returned in force. This was no coincidence -- Seguchi was undoubtedly setting him up! Seguchi and Shuichi both in a room with him seemed like a recipe for disaster. Shuichi on stage, reading those horrendous poems and looking straight at him with those wide blue eyes, and Seguchi sitting beside him commenting slyly, "My, my, Eiri-san. Isn't that onnagata magnificent? Mightn't you mistake him for a _real_ woman?"
He couldn't refuse to attend. Even if this really was an invitation and not a demand - which Eiri knew it to be - there would be another invitation, and another, until Seguchi had finally set up the situation he desired. Besides, no matter how trivial, a request from a lord was not a thing to be refused.
What was Seguchi up to? Eiri couldn't divine his motives no matter how much he thought. Did he want to expose Eiri as unworthy? To have a tighter hold on him and ensure his cooperation should Seguchi have a mission for him Eiri would balk at? Surely Seguchi had engineered this incident as some sort of insurance. To make sure, once more, that he had Eiri wrapped around that cunning little finger.
And what was worse, he couldn't get out of it. A samurai whose honor was tainted had but one recourse, and that was suicide. But Seguchi had made him promise... on a dark day when the rolling winds had seemed to bring down the sky...
("I should be dead. I'm the one who should die."
"Eiri-san, I want you to swear to me you won't die without my knowledge. I won't let you go. You're too important to me."
"S... Seguchi-s..."
"Swear to me, Eiri-san! I order it!"
"I... swear..."
And arms coming around him, black snakelike arms, as a voice whispered hot and hard into his ear. "I won't let you go, Eiri-san. I can't. I need you....")
"Yuki-sama!"
Eiri started, making a little gutteral sound. The messenger was still standing before him, looking up like a frightened doe at Eiri's dark expression. "Sh... shall I tell him you won't be joining him?" he asked, his voice melting like caramel.
"No... I will attend," Eiri forced out, feeling decidedly sick as he said so. The attendant nodded briefly and scampered away as fast as his spindly doe-legs would take him. If only Eiri had the choice to run away as well!
He couldn't kill himself. He couldn't betray Seguchi even in the lightest matter. That left one final option, one that dawned on him like a new day and collapsed over him just as naturally. He could kill the boy.
As soon as he thought it, he felt a cold hand grasp his insides, and he lurched forward, clutching his stomach. No--! Something primal in him shuddered against that. All of a sudden he could not think of a world without Shuichi -- strange, strange, strange. His world had been without Shuichi until yesterday, and now it was fundamentally changed... just like that? Just with a glare, a kiss, a betrayal? For the first time, he regretted neglecting the monastic training his family had embraced for generations. A Zen-trained samurai would surely have no difficulty killing a man who could soil his honor.
Was he growing soft as a samurai? Eiri wondered suddenly. Surely in his younger days, he would have had no qualms about taking control of such a situation. But in his younger days, he was miserable, bitter and broken from what he'd been through, from losing Yuki...
Still, God, the idea that he'd end up like Seguchi -- deplorable, disgusting!
Eiri liked the life of a warrior. It was perfect for him. Morals, routines, everything was decided for him. He needed only to look to traditions and tactics for what to do, what to feel. In those prescribed emotions, there was no weakness, no flaw. No vulnerability to lead him into hurt. Moral dilemmas were a weakness in combat, so the warrior's lifestyle prohibited them. It dictated every move and every decision. Nothing was unanticipated. Except, perhaps, for weakness on the part of the warrior.
Eiri couldn't kill the boy. He couldn't reprimand his lord for the prank. What could he do but suffer?
Through his reverie, his voice sounded, softer than silk but with an edge sharp and piercing as any blade. He opened his eyes and realized it was sunset.
"Shall we, Eiri-san?" Tohma put a hand on his shoulder. "It's time for the play."
by Jennifer A. Wand
a Gravitation fan fiction
III. The Rage Beat
"Yamamoto Jin'emon always said to his retainers, 'Go ahead and gamble and lie. A person who will not tell you seven lies within a hundred yards is useless as a man.'"
- from the pages of the HAGAKURE, the handbook of the samurai
Ichigo tasted like her name. She didn't taste of strawberries - no one truly does - but something analogous: almost painfully sweet, a little hesitant, a little comforting. Eiri let out a muffled sigh as he kissed her. This girl stirred things in him long-dormant, and he'd forgotten how to keep certain reactions under control. Granted, part of him was relieved he _could_ feel this way for this girl, but the greater part was apprehensive and blaring warnings even as it lost control.
The girl moaned, and struck with sudden heat, Eiri clasped his arms around her shoulders to pull her in. She struggled briefly at the contact, and Eiri loosened his grip, holding her delicately instead of pressing her to his chest. Drunk, he tasted her lips and tongue, dipped to her cheeks in their rosy redness, and leaned in to the neckline that had first seduced him. Her skin was clean and soapy, blushing marble.
"Yuki..." Ichigo said weakly, and Eiri heard it as an erotic mirror of a long-ago sensation... something he'd once said, too. He felt he was making love to the past through the veil of the present. Groaning a little, he slipped her kimono down over one shoulder so he could kiss along her skin. The kimono sleeve dropped abruptly, and Eiri could feel the embarrassed blush heat up Ichigo's face as she resisted. "Wait... stop -- Yuki."
Never before had the cliche of a maiden's protestations seemed more titillating to Eiri. With a wide sweep of his hand, he caught her ankles and lifted her in his arms, all the while taking long nips of her ears and jawline and murmuring "What, stop now?" Ichigo's only answer was a gasp. When he kissed some secret sensitive spot on her neck, she seized up and grabbed the back of his neck with two anxious hands. Eiri hit boiling point, and before she could protest, he threw her down on the readied futon and pulled away the folds of her kimono.
Ichigo's protest reached his ears before anything else. "No! Yuki, don't!!" The terror in her voice was real -- no more was she being coy. Eiri froze, paralyzed by her tone, and it was only after her cries stopped ringing in his ears that he saw the reason for them.
The minute he'd let go, Ichigo had scrambled to a kneeling position and was now busy rearranging the disheveled kimono over an exposed, and clearly male, chest.
Eiri stared in silence until the boy -- for he was one, just barely out of his teens and still fair-featured enough to pull off a convincing ruse -- readjusted the kimono completely. When he'd finished, he turned a reproachful eye on Eiri. "I _told_ you to stop!" he blurted, in his natural tone of voice, a good octave lower than the falsetto.
"Y.... you..." Eiri pointed a shaky finger.
"The truth's out," the youth said sharply. "My name's not Ichigo, it's Shuichi. Shindou Shuichi. And I'm not a woman. I work with the kabuki troupe that entertains at Seguchi-sama's court."
Eiri spoke only one word. Could it be that this boy was one of those kabuki actors who trained so intensively to play female roles that they spent much of their offstage life dressing and living as women, an... "Onnagata...?"
"Part-time," Shuichi answered, sitting informally on the futon in a way that hardly befitted the wearer of so splendid a kimono. "I write. But you know that much."
The situation finally sunk into Eiri's consciousness, and he was free to react to it. Rage built up inside him, and his mind raced, trying to figure out how he'd gotten into this predicament. A thought occurred to him that made his stomach lurch. "Did Seguchi put you up to this!?" he demanded.
"Seguchi-sama?" The boy blinked innocently. "How could he..."
Eiri sprang to his feet and began to pace. "This has to be his doing!" This was just like him. Tohma was constantly thinking of new ways to remind Eiri he'd never outrun his past, and this had to be the most infuriating to date. "To send you up here to tempt me..."
This time it was Shuichi who bolted upwards to stand. "To tempt you!?" he shouted, his voice a more solid version of the outraged falsetto that had been facing off against Eiri just a few minutes ago. "You're the one who ATTACKED me!!"
Logic is a funny thing. Usually it makes perfect sense, but when combined with anger, one can never predict its influence. Shuichi's statement was true. Perhaps, deep down, Eiri knew it, but now it only served to fuel the fire. "Get OUT!" he bellowed, fixing Shuichi in a heated glare. "GO!" He swayed ominously, as though his next move would be to attack Shuichi and beat him half to death. Shuichi paled, took a step back, and finally did as he was told, backing through the door hastily and closing it before dashing off down the hallway.
Eiri took a stomping step toward the door and glared at it menacingly, as though Shuichi were hiding behind it and needed to be further scared off. Finally sure he was alone, Eiri began to pace. Anger quickened his breathing and trembles wracked his body. The rage beat in his heart, pounded in his wrists, his ears. How could he? Seguchi, Shuichi, himself... how could he justify any of their actions?
"Damn!" he said aloud to the empty room, then repeated it in a lower tone. "Damn..." Despite the fact that no one had seen the interchange, Eiri felt as though he had been made a fool of. Well, if Seguchi had planned it, he was certainly laughing now. And who knows whom he, or Shuichi himself, would tell? Eiri had a sudden sickening vision of Shuichi, surrounded by a motley circle of actors, intoning, "You know that retainer that Seguchi-sama adores so? Well, he KISSED me last night!" Raucous laughter that never happened echoed in Eiri's ears, and his head began to hurt.
It was not long before fatigue took its toll on Eiri's anger. His pacing slowed, and he began to feel a throbbing in his head. Nothing seemed better to him then than sleep -- lying down to lose consciousness and forget, for a few hours, this whole confusing world. To black out his shame, his guilt... for that was the feeling that overwhelmed him as he finally collapsed onto the futon, exhausted from his travels as well as from the confusing events of the night.
It was only just before sleep that the thoughts crept, unbidden, into his head. Shuichi had spoken true. Eiri had been the one to approach him, to kiss him. His eyes had been defiant, his protests unmistakeable. He hadn't wanted this to happen. Perhaps Seguchi hadn't told him why he was sending him up there? But more important, Eiri knew, for a few strangely lucid moments, that HE had wanted it. So much it surprised him. And it had nothing to do with the gender of his companion. On the contrary, he had especially liked "Ichigo"'s awkward, unfeminine movements. It was the boy underneath the girl that Eiri had wanted - and continued to want now.
Regret came with morning. Eiri berated himself through the day for allowing himself to feel quite so much. His life had nothing to do with desires, and the more he indulged himself with thoughts of them, the weaker he felt. No, there was a deeper problem at hand. If Seguchi had planned this - and Eiri was convinced he had - the lord had a definite motive in mind. Eiri's honor was very likely on the line.
Halfway through the day, an attendant came to Eiri and bowed. "Seguchi-sama requests that you join him tonight at the Kabuki performance." All lingering doubts vanished, and Eiri's rage returned in force. This was no coincidence -- Seguchi was undoubtedly setting him up! Seguchi and Shuichi both in a room with him seemed like a recipe for disaster. Shuichi on stage, reading those horrendous poems and looking straight at him with those wide blue eyes, and Seguchi sitting beside him commenting slyly, "My, my, Eiri-san. Isn't that onnagata magnificent? Mightn't you mistake him for a _real_ woman?"
He couldn't refuse to attend. Even if this really was an invitation and not a demand - which Eiri knew it to be - there would be another invitation, and another, until Seguchi had finally set up the situation he desired. Besides, no matter how trivial, a request from a lord was not a thing to be refused.
What was Seguchi up to? Eiri couldn't divine his motives no matter how much he thought. Did he want to expose Eiri as unworthy? To have a tighter hold on him and ensure his cooperation should Seguchi have a mission for him Eiri would balk at? Surely Seguchi had engineered this incident as some sort of insurance. To make sure, once more, that he had Eiri wrapped around that cunning little finger.
And what was worse, he couldn't get out of it. A samurai whose honor was tainted had but one recourse, and that was suicide. But Seguchi had made him promise... on a dark day when the rolling winds had seemed to bring down the sky...
("I should be dead. I'm the one who should die."
"Eiri-san, I want you to swear to me you won't die without my knowledge. I won't let you go. You're too important to me."
"S... Seguchi-s..."
"Swear to me, Eiri-san! I order it!"
"I... swear..."
And arms coming around him, black snakelike arms, as a voice whispered hot and hard into his ear. "I won't let you go, Eiri-san. I can't. I need you....")
"Yuki-sama!"
Eiri started, making a little gutteral sound. The messenger was still standing before him, looking up like a frightened doe at Eiri's dark expression. "Sh... shall I tell him you won't be joining him?" he asked, his voice melting like caramel.
"No... I will attend," Eiri forced out, feeling decidedly sick as he said so. The attendant nodded briefly and scampered away as fast as his spindly doe-legs would take him. If only Eiri had the choice to run away as well!
He couldn't kill himself. He couldn't betray Seguchi even in the lightest matter. That left one final option, one that dawned on him like a new day and collapsed over him just as naturally. He could kill the boy.
As soon as he thought it, he felt a cold hand grasp his insides, and he lurched forward, clutching his stomach. No--! Something primal in him shuddered against that. All of a sudden he could not think of a world without Shuichi -- strange, strange, strange. His world had been without Shuichi until yesterday, and now it was fundamentally changed... just like that? Just with a glare, a kiss, a betrayal? For the first time, he regretted neglecting the monastic training his family had embraced for generations. A Zen-trained samurai would surely have no difficulty killing a man who could soil his honor.
Was he growing soft as a samurai? Eiri wondered suddenly. Surely in his younger days, he would have had no qualms about taking control of such a situation. But in his younger days, he was miserable, bitter and broken from what he'd been through, from losing Yuki...
Still, God, the idea that he'd end up like Seguchi -- deplorable, disgusting!
Eiri liked the life of a warrior. It was perfect for him. Morals, routines, everything was decided for him. He needed only to look to traditions and tactics for what to do, what to feel. In those prescribed emotions, there was no weakness, no flaw. No vulnerability to lead him into hurt. Moral dilemmas were a weakness in combat, so the warrior's lifestyle prohibited them. It dictated every move and every decision. Nothing was unanticipated. Except, perhaps, for weakness on the part of the warrior.
Eiri couldn't kill the boy. He couldn't reprimand his lord for the prank. What could he do but suffer?
Through his reverie, his voice sounded, softer than silk but with an edge sharp and piercing as any blade. He opened his eyes and realized it was sunset.
"Shall we, Eiri-san?" Tohma put a hand on his shoulder. "It's time for the play."