disclaimer: Ronin Warriors is not mine, but they have my love.

note: I still can't decide if this matches up to Cye's state of mind in the beginning of Everything Later. I think it is a lot better than it was. So whether or not it is part of the story universe is up to you.

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Rain Over the Wood

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Last Christmas Sehkmet caught the flu.

Yes, the flu.

I about died. He was reformed, penitent, and I still felt a wonderful satisfaction that he was turning his guts inside out. I really am horrible.

It would have ended at that, but a day or two later, Cale showed up at our door to beg a favor of a demon-killing nature. Ryo answered the door, destroying any chance that we might refuse him -- Ryo who believes everyone is his responsibility, even when he can't take care of himself.

No. No, I wouldn't have said no either. Sorry.

It was a pleasant enough day and snowy. Ryo was sopping wet because we'd all just come in from rolling in the drifts, tiger included. Cale shuffled in, hunched slightly around his own bad news. He nodded in thanks when I offered him the cocoa in my hand. Cale is as strong as Kayura, so seeing him humbled like that, I was worried immediately.

Not so much about Cale, but about what had happened to make him that way.

Talpa's former elite have taken their place ruling what is left of his dynasty. It is not a stable place, not a place that seems to enjoy peace. At first everything I heard about their troubles kept me up at night, fearing battles spilling into our world. I thought the whole carnival ride was set to start all over again.

But Talpa chose his generals well. There is very little they cannot handle. And for what they cannot, they have us. That snowy day, there was a renegade out to do as much damage to the new Dynasty as he could. Who knew where'd he'd come from or what he wanted, but Sehkmet was sick and Kayura needed in the capital so Cale had no one to help him.

I'll say here, though it's not really relevant, that he neglected to mention anything about Dais. I get the idea that Dais, reformed or not, still falls under the category of "you just don't want to know."

"I can handle it," Cale promised us. "I just need someone to watch my back."

"Of course," Ryo said immediately. I sighed and went to get the rest of us. It's not really important how we arrived at this decision, but eventually we decided that Ryo and I were the ones to go. Cale finished his cocoa, and we went.




It was raining when we arrived, standing on a muddy road I didn't recognize. Cale pointed us in some direction and we started off, clad in subarmor because the full armor was bulky and awkward and took so much of our strength, a drain we would feel later.

We came across the problem crouching over four well-dressed corpses in the road. Human enough, if a little long and thin, it sorted daintily through pockets and purses with spindle fingered hands, hissing to itself. No light hit its face, even though it's black rags didn't cover its features and the sky was only beginning to darken with storm clouds. It grunted when it saw us approach and immediately launched at Ryo.

It fast by human standards I suppose, but to me it seemed nearly sloth-like.

Ryo dodged and slammed the creature into the ground, surprised not by the attack but by how easily it had been repelled. The figure fled, faster in retreat. We let it get away only because we had expected an enemy vastly more difficult and hadn't quite gotten over the shock.

Cale shrugged when Ryo stared at him. "He isn't much, is he?" the warlord said. "This shouldn't take long." I knew what he meant about only needing someone to watch his back.

As we traveled along to road, Cale told us about the outlaw. The creature wasn't human, though closer to it than many inhabitants of the dynasty. He called himself Shadow.

We followed him for hours, meeting him occasionally for a scuffle that was easily won. The Shadow was an annoyance, a thief that killed and fled. Whenever it seemed like we had him, he danced back into a shadow and vanished.

Cale was on edge because whatever the creature was, it had an honest affinity for the same darkness from which Cale drew his power. The warlord should have been able to pick our adversary out of any shadow, and it was driving him near to madness that he couldn't.

We figured out the shadow's talent for hiding that first time we chased him, after catching him robbing the bodies on the road. We were heading towards a forest of massive trees when something lashed out at me from the evening shadow of an outlying oak. Ahead of me, Cale roared in indignant shock.

The Shadow did something that looked impressive, casting shadows as he moved, and struck at my torso with a black-bladed spear. I blocked, easily. A twist of my hand disarmed him. He screamed and vanished into darkness. The spear went with him.

Cale skidded to a stop beside me, glaring dangerously at the shadows that had betrayed him. He said nothing, casting a dark glance at the forest ahead of us. Ryo caught up. I nodded at him that I was all right. Ryo was jumpy, not liking the Shadow's hit and run tactics. Then again, neither did I.

"Watch out for mudslides," Cale told us ominously, "No full armor. We'd sink and we don't need it anyway." He started moving towards the trees.

I blinked in surprise. The rain was omnipresent, soaking my hair and skittering across my armor, but it was not a heavy shower. "Surely the rain isn't that bad?"

Cale shook his head. "Over this forest, it has been raining for centuries. But the forest has been here a thousand years, it will take another thousand before the rain washes it away."

So we went on.

Not long after we entered the trees, the Shadow came at Ryo. It had never dared attack Cale, knowing better than to test which of them was better in the dark.

Ryo had paused to glare suspiciously into a shadowed clearing. Cale and I were sliding down a slope, moving towards what might have been a trail. The forest was as muddy and dangerous to a person's footing as Cale had warned. I couldn't imagine rain that lasted this long.

Ryo heard the Shadow coming and spun out of the way of the swing. The creature didn't flee this time, becoming more desperate as we kept to its tracks. It was obvious though, that it would have no better luck in this skirmish than any of the others.

Until the muddy slope gave way under Ryo's weight.

Wildfire plunged. A strike aimed to sweep out his feet bit deep his side, shattering his under-armor like a candy shell. Ryo screamed.

I did too. "Ryo!"

Cale was there in an instant, launching off a massive tree root and slamming a fist into the thing's head. This time, with its spear logded in metal and flesh, the Shadow had no chance to flee.

I didn't see Cale finish it. I was too busy flinging myself up the hill. I wasn't panicked, not yet, but Ryo was just lying there.

I fell to the ground next to him, the mud sucking at my knees. Little confetti bits of armor scattered the ground in macabre decoration. The spear was gone, following the Shadow into death. Ryo moved restlessly, trying to cope with the pain. "Cye, shit, Cye. Sorry," he said. He felt mortified that he had been struck by such an incompetent fighter.

I didn't care. Now I was starting to panic -- there was a lot of blood. Ryo wouldn't take his hand away from the wound so that I could see, but there was no way it could be anything other than very, very bad. I pulled his hands away and his fingers wrapped around my wrists like a vise.

It was very, very bad.

There was a wash of cold suddenly. Ryo flinched away from it, not making a sound. Cale stood over us in full armor, his heavy boots sinking into the mud. Ice crystals flickered across our armor when he put his hands on us, Ryo twisting as Wildfire protested, and Darkness rushed in, deeper shadows than just rain and trees could cast.

As I opened my mouth to object, we jumped across time and space. I had realized, I guess, back when he was trying to kill me, that Cale must be able teleport somehow. There was no other way for him to be so completely all over the place in a battle, but I'd never before encountered it in the practical application.

My first teleport was very odd and not at all comfortable. There was a moment of utter disorientation coupled with an interminable cold. I can't describe adequately the frost that ate into my skin, but I worried deeply about Ryo in that place, darkness slowly freezing the flame that kept him alive.

Then the jump was over, and we landed on stone, stale air and dripping echoes.  We jumped again to grass. I could see a moon overhead. Two more jumps, one in mud, the other on a highway underneath a broken street light. Then we hit the cobblestone courtyard of Talpa's palace.

Cale shouted, and people were running towards us. Maybe some of them were human, maybe they weren't. The courtyard was blanketed in the darkness of Cale's arrival. Ryo was awake, barely, and gripping my wrists tight enough to make my hands go numb. I didn't care because when I had tried to shift his grip he'd whispered, "Cye," like it was the hardest thing in the world to say. I stopped trying free my hands then.

It was starting to sink in that something irreversible had happened. I didn't quite believe it yet. I don't panic unnecessarily. Not when it's really important. But this... When I got my armor off, hours later, I'd find that he'd bruised my wrists through the sub-armor.

Then people were taking him away from me, even as I protested. Cale pulled me off the ground. "Don't worry," he said, sounding worried. "The Shadow wasn't poisonous." Which, since I hadn't thought of that, terrified me.

Cale led me after the people that were taking Ryo away, shedding the Corruption armor as we hurried behind. Lamps around the palace were lighting again after the darkness brought on by Cale's power.

Ancient's staff in hand, Kayura met us at the door, dazed as though she'd just been pulled out of bed, which she probably had.

They brought Ryo to a small bedroom somewhere near the entrance. He hardly knew what was happening to him, having only enough energy to look for me. I don't know if he saw me. Most of the servants and soldiers who'd rushed out to meet us left. Kayura raised the staff.

Cale threw out a hand. "No, don't remove the armor!"

Kayura shook her head sadly. "The armor won't be able to heal this; we cannot build a fire hot enough. We have to get at the wound."

"Sage? Maybe he could..." The two of them turned to look at me in surprise. They'd forgotten I was there. I didn't want to look at them or at Ryo. There was blood on my hands and on the bed and on the floor leading in a morbid trail back to courtyard where we'd appeared. "Sage. Healed his eyes once."

It was true. Sage had done it. Once, only that was in broad daylight, and it was poison, not a gaping wound. Kayura didn't bother pointing out any of that, just said kindly, "No, I don't think so."

Ryo's eyes drifted shut, and he was no longer gripping my hand. As I watched, his armor faded away to the clothes he'd been wearing, the white shirt beginning to turn red. His hand was very cold against mine. I think that's the point I realized that Ryo's wound was fatal. There was nothing else I could believe. No other option besides the obvious.

He was dying.

Kayura's staff burst into brilliance, its rings chiming loudly.  "Cale," she said. "The jewel."

"Yes," he agreed and rushed from the room.

She turned to me then, methodical, commanding. "Cye," she said, sounding like she was about to do something she'd regret. "Cye, I need you to find Sehkmet. He must come down. You must get him down here."

I stared at her, though it was hard to do with the staff glowing like a small sun. "I... I don't know where he is."

"Your armor will find him," she said with utter certainty. I dropped Ryo's hand, barely convincing myself to leave the bedside.

"He will not die while this light lasts," she promised, her eyes on me as I stood. I've never seen them look larger or deeper than they did in that golden light. "But... hurry."

I did.




Kayura had said that my armor would find him. I had not expected her to be right. I found him all but passed out in a small room on the second story. He smelled horrible. Like vomit and sweat. He wasn't happy to see me.

"Sekhmet!" I said. "You have to – "

"Aaaugh," he groaned, and pulled a pillow over his head. It stopped me cold.

When I said nothing, he sat up slowly, glaring at me with his inhuman yellow eyes. "I have to what?" he hissed.

I broke. He's always scared me silly, though I pretend that's not true. "Please." I moaned. "It's Ryo – " I mumbled something incoherent, I'm told. I don't remember what I meant to say.

Sekhmet watched me emotionlessly. His mortal enemy had just burst hysterically into his sick room. He had no idea what was going on. Had no reason to care.

He heaved a world weary sigh, but he followed me downstairs. I almost forgave him, in that instant, for anything he had ever done.

In Ryo's room, Kayura still knelt religiously by the bed. Her head came up as Sekhmet tottered into the room, walking like a b-movie zombie and looking it too. Relief flitted across her features and was gone. "Good," she said. "Hurry."

It occurred to me that I could think of no possible reason to bring a sickly Sekhmet to Ryo. If nothing else, the germs...

Kayura moved away, exhausted and without grace, as Sekhmet took her place. As she did, the light went out.

He will not die while this light lasts. 

I was moving suddenly, sick with betrayal. But then Kayura was there, dropping the staff to clatter against the floor. She slammed into me and my back hit the wall. We both slid to the ground, my jaw working but no sound coming out.  "He's a healer," she said to me, quiet, reassuring. Offering me a new promise to replace the extinguished light.

I stared at Sekhmet as he stood over Ryo, swaying and holding a soothing hand to his stomach. "Oh. I see," I breathed finally because she seemed to expect a response.

Then old power stirred, frightening power, and Sekhmet was towering above us, the Warlord of Venom, armor-clad and massive. He no longer look sick as he crouched, placing his hands over Ryo's side.

He stayed there frozen for a long time, I don't know how long until, abruptly, he sat back.

"Sekhmet?" Kayura asked.

Hope. The barest emotion stirring in me.

For nothing.

"He," Sekhmet said blandly, "is still dying."

It didn't feel like a blow, more a slow working poison. I understood, watching him, that this was hopeless, and I remembered when we'd put Ryo down on the bed, when his hands had gone cold and I'd known his wound was fatal.

It had taken until now, though, to know it was over. That now I could start writing my memoirs, because it was officially the past instead of the present.

Sekhmet looked at me and then towards the door. He was still unhappy I'd woken him. They had all of them done this as a favor to me and it hadn't worked and now they were done.

And that meant Ryo was dead. I wondered how long it would be before my mind understood that. Years, probably, before it really sank in.

Pain. Far off, coming closer. But that would be later. Strange to be thinking about memoirs when Ryo's body was still lying across the bed. But of course, you know the ending of this story, and he didn't die here, did he?

"You are quite late," Sekhmet said suddenly, and Cale walked in. The jewel of life dangled from his hand. He gave it to me. He looked tired and worn, but hopeful. He looked human.

"Try again," he said. And I did.

I called for my armor, my full armor. I had never called it sitting down before. For the first time, I walked right past the fanfare and called it to me because I needed it now. Only later would it occur to me that I had called it not like a Ronin, but like a Warlord.

It wasn't hard to find Wildfire. How many times had I given up my power to that armor for Inferno's sake? I gave what I could, though I was terrified that it would never reach Ryo now that his armor had vanished. I did it anyway. I felt my strength draining away. Any amount I gave, Wildfire wanted more.

I must have passed out.

Kayura was shaking me and it was light outside. Sekhmet was gone, Cale too. The jewel was strung around my neck, quiet and still. A small creature, human-like except for the short gray fur on her arms, was cleaning the blood from the floor.

My heart stopped when I realized Ryo wasn't there either. I surged up into Kayura's hand, which hurt because she's surprisingly strong. "Don't worry," she said, and she didn't sound worried.

She smiled. "This is not a good place. It is dirty and uncomfortable. We have given him a better room and washed away the blood and the dirt."

"Oh," I said, relief blocking my throat. I couldn't imagine what Sekhmet had done or how successful I had been, but it was obvious Kayura hadn't the least bit concern for Ryo anymore.

A sudden and horrible fantasy struck me that Ryo was dead and what Kayura had meant to tell me was that the body would look alright for the funeral. I knew it wasn't true, but it had a hold of me somewhere between my stomach and my spine and I could not ask how Ryo was or if he was awake or any other question at all because she might tell me my nightmare was true. I realized that if she asked me anything else I was probably going to cry.

She stood and motioned me up. I threw up a hand, since I doubted I could get up on my own. She laughed at me. I stared at my raised hand, still encased in sky blue metal. I've never forgotten my armor before, but this time it didn't feel strange or magical. It just felt like me.

I got rid of it and Kayura helped me up. She even took my arm around her shoulder when I staggered. I was so weak without the armor, but Kayura, apparently, is always strong. We stumbled along to Ryo's room.

True to Kayura's word, there was no blood anywhere. Ryo wasn't awake, but he wasn't dead either. He didn't look in pain or unconscious, he looked asleep, lying there in old, feudal costume to replace the bloody shirt. I was giddy, and found a ridiculous amount of humor in seeing Ryo dressed like an ancient samurai. He woke up when he heard me laughing.

"Cye?" he said softly.

I did cry then. Ryo was confused.

Idiot.




I spent a week in Ryo's bed. He had no strength. His wound was still there, bound, though it was no longer killing him.  Kayura tried to keep me busy, but it didn't take me long to remember that neurotic fear that it had not been real. That Ryo had not, in fact, survived.

I checked on him obsessively, especially when he was asleep and would not look at me oddly when I peered in for the fourth time in as many minutes.

After waking up with nightmares the next two nights, I started sleeping next to Ryo on the wide futon. He was too out of it to notice at first, and then as he recovered enough to be lucid, it was already too normal for him to talk about.

This is going to seem abrupt and stupid, but about half way through that week, I realized that I had the biggest crush on him. Don't – just don't – say anything, okay? I feel like an idiot. I feel contrived and like I'm doing something wrong, but that was the worst day of my life and it has done some very strange things to my head.

I don't know what to do about it. So I won't do anything.

I'm in love with Ryo Sanada. I didn't want to be once I'd realized it, and even knowing it, I don't have any – I don't know – romantic aspirations? I don't want to be in love. I don't see my life as one big rush to settle down, mostly because I don't know what I'd do. I haven't really dated before and the times I tried, it went badly. Maybe it makes sense then that I've become so knotted up around this.

I took Ryo home as soon as I could. We got there... and realized no one knew anything was wrong. They had felt nothing. I had trouble, I admit, forcing the story out of my mouth. Ryo didn't seem to remember much of it, even the bits before he'd taken the hit.

And even then, it was still Christmas vacation! Rowen was visiting his mother. Kento was gone but would be stopping by after a family dinner. It took days for everyone to know, for them to feel their own version of my shock, and for Ryo to be flocked with attention he didn't want.

It's almost funny now. He spent so much energy avoiding it, trying to show he was fine, that of course he fainted.

The attention only got worse after that. I was little help since I was part of it, probably the greatest part. The house was a flurry of affection, worry, and overall guilt. Because I had been the only one there. They had not even known. Family trips, dinners, outings -- all canceled without a thought. Years since our war and we still remembered what it was like to be so close.

One day, I realized I was acting noticeably odd. Rowen asked me to run an errand, "if I could tear myself away from Ryo for an hour." The comment was not mocking, but I was shaken. I remembered suddenly that the first night back, I had almost slept with Ryo out of habit.

No, even I knew that I couldn't survive that without comment.

So I went paranoid overnight. I stopped talking to Ryo. I avoided him like mice avoid cats. I couldn't speak to him.  Even a simple, "Hello, Ryo, did you sleep well?" suddenly felt like a hidden innuendo that everyone could hear. I couldn't ask him to hand me my coat or remind him to get gas or watch him do anything.

I left three days early to go back to school. Didn't even want to say goodbye. But he found me... and I got mad. Let out stress as fury, told him how disgusted I was that he would be so careless. That he was always the one to get hurt. That I had no capacity to worry about anyone else these days.

...that last comment may have been unsubtle, and I worried he had me figured out for the longest time. Still, it became obvious that enough irritation in future days and weeks covered that up quite well.

God, I can't believe I was so calculating. And so incapable of curbing my anger.

This isn't the normal way these things are supposed happen. It's obviously not healthy, and I should find something better to do with my time than whine about it.

I won't tell Kento because he'd be far too weirded out. Rowen would laugh. And Sage... I know what Sage would say, what he'd want me to do, but I can't.

I can't tell Ryo about it because I'd rather stay away forever, rather earn his hatred, than have him find out and say no.

And he will say no. I know it. I cannot even imagine a world, a fantasy, in which he says yes. I can't suspend my disbelief far enough to play along with mental garbage that is so obviously false.

...so I just won't say anything.



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o_0

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There. Are you all happy now?

There is a plot hole in this, perhaps only a mere pinprick, but I'm still not telling you what it is.