For War is Kind ~ Chapter 1
Sagara held himself very still, savoring the few peaceful moments he yet had before dawn.
No one else was awake yet, but he was accustomed to these early mornings. The first sixteen years of his life had been spent working his father's small and barren plot of land. Eventually, crops had grown there, the fields had flourished, but Sagara had never been able to shake the habit of rising as soon as the sky in the east began to lighten.
He drew a deep breath of cold morning air. Sometime during the pre-dawn hours, the snow had stopped at last, and the damp earth and water-swollen pines smelled clean, as though a fine layer of gray dust had been swept from all the surfaces of the forest.
Sagara remembered that he had dreamed last night, of something he had never dreamt before. He stroked his chin thoughtfully, trying to recall… And then a lingering drop of water slid from one of the cedar boughs above his head to splash against the bridge of his nose.
Sagara blinked once, startled, and then he was laughing to himself, soft and low, hoping it was quite enough that it wouldn't wake the others. The water rolled over the hollow below his eye, tracing the line of his cheekbone downward. It collected in the corner of his mouth, and he tasted minerals.
It had been that boy from Kyoto, the stranger at the inn. He had dreamed of him, Sagara realized, and a slight frown came to tug at his lips. Those blue eyes hadn't been so strange that they should have stayed with him for the past two months.
Maybe, Sagara thought, he was haunted. The boy was a phantom, after all, or he might as well have been for the way he had slid so easily in and out of existence. The way he had spoken, softly, but with so much purpose. Sagara knew he should have been intimidated; the boy had wanted to intimidate him. But all his malice had faded away, like the sound of rain outside a dry room will disappear if it's ignored for long enough.
Sighing, Sagara shook his head. He couldn't trust himself in these early hours, when he was the only thing conscious save a few birds, and even they were still groggy.
Phantoms, indeed. He must have been the most gullible, unprofessional captain in the whole damn country.
"You're up early, Captain."
Sagara started a little; he must have drifted more than he had thought if he hadn't been alerted by footfalls on fresh snow. collecting his wits, and reached for the coat he had hung in the branches of a cedar tree the night before.
"Not so early," he said, shrugging into red coat. "I haven't been awake long."
"It's not even light yet." Ichiro Daisuke, Sagara's lieutenant, circled around in front of him, cocking a hand on his left hip. He was yet young – only a few years Sagara's senior – but the scars that crossed his body spoke of the role he had played in the revolution. Sagara respected the man deeply, and trusted him with the implicit trust he would have liked to give freely, but knew he could not.
"But it is nice, don't you think?" Sagara said as he buttoned his coat.
"Maybe." Sometimes, Ichiro humored him, and Sagara didn't mind. "But not as nice as eight hours of uninterrupted sleep would be."
"What a baby," Sagara teased. He ran a hand back through his hair, flattening it neatly against the nape of his neck. "But we are near Kyoto again, so you just might get your wish."
"I felt so welcome there last time."
Sagara's gaze escaped the other man's, but it only took a moment for him to recover his smile. "It wasn't so bad. I thought they were really warming up to us."
"What gave you that idea?"
Sagara didn't answer immediately. He knew the Ichiro was only was only joking with him, was only needling, but his words had hit against something that was more sensitive than Sagara would have cared to admit. His thoughts turned briefly to the boy, who had been so abrupt, so cold, in his dismissal of them.
"Lieutenant?" Sagara slid a hand over the rough bark of the cedar tree, feeling it bite him through his gloves. "Do you believe in ghosts?"
Ichiro shook his head, his eyes growing dark. "Haven't we both seen our fair share of ghosts, Sagara?"
The captain shivered a little, in spite of himself. "I suppose maybe we have," he said, "but that's not quite what I meant."
He drew a deep breath, for composure. It sounded foolish, now that he said it aloud, but that moment in the hallway when pale gaze had met pale gaze, icy blue on placid gray… He couldn't leave it alone.
He tried again. "I mean, do you think that there are such things as spirits that are so angry, or discontent, or miserable that not even death can put them at peace?"
"Sagara?" Ichiro's brow knit in confusion. "What's this about?"
"I'm not quite sure," Sagara admitted with a sigh. "Maybe just something I dreamed."
Ichiro watched him closely for a moment, as though he expected something in Sagara's expression to betray his true intent. At last, he shook his head once more. "No. No, I don't. I think we have enough to worry about without believing that even the dead can't find any peace."
"I see." Sagara went back to arranging the gear he had forgotten a moment ago. "I suppose you're probably right about that much."
He was prepared to leave it there; he could have let the whole matter fade into insignificance then, but Ichiro moved a bit closer, tilting his head to catch Sagara's downcast eyes. "My son," he said quietly.
Sagara looked up. "Daisuke?"
"I haven't seen him in seven years," Ichiro continued without raising his voice much. "I used to write letters to him all he time, when the fighting was at its worst, even though I knew they'd never make it back to him. Want to know what I used to say to him, Sagara?"
"I…" Sagara hesitated. Ichiro's words sounded like a lecture, and he hadn't been looking for that. But before he could change the subject or find a way to evade it, he was saying, "I do."
"I told him that everything I had suffered, I would gladly suffer it all again, if it meant he would never have to. Captain…" He leaned forward intently, so abruptly that Sagara wondered how he would maintain equilibrium, and he caught one of Ichiro's hands in his own to steady him. "The only way you'll become a ghost, is if you needlessly allow yourself to stop living."
Sagara stifled a smile. It was absurd advice, but at least it meant that Ichiro hadn't understood what he was really trying to get at. That, he would not have liked to explain.
"Thank you," he said softly. "I'll remember that you said that."
And then Ichiro looked away; the tension between them broke cleanly, like a twig from a pine branch. He laughed a little, and it set them both at ease. "You're still young, Sagara. You're an idealist, and that's why you fight this battle so well."
"I'm not sure if that's a compliment," Sagara admitted.
"Maybe it isn't." Ichiro shrugged. "It's the truth, though."
Sagara bent to retrieve his swords from where he had tucked them into his bedroll the night before. He clicked one a few inches out of the sheath, enough to inspect the blade, before buckling it into place at his hip.
"That's all I've ever asked for."
It felt like he had been awake for hours. This early in the morning – in the cusp between full dark and true light – time always progressed strangely. Behind closed screens, the rest of the inn's patrons slept on, and Aoshi's passage down the halls from the practice yard, where a slow procession of forms had barely warmed him against the morning chill, was stealthy and soundless.
Sometimes, if he concentrated hard enough, he could hear muffled noises through the walls: a cough, a sigh of breath, the rustle of someone turning in his sleep. This pre-dawn voyeurism was a guilty pleasure of his, even though the very concept of pleasure was strange to him, something that had never quite seemed to fit.
He was no longer a child, but it seemed adulthood had crept up on him; he had never felt conscious of an actual shift. Only now the men who had been infants when he had been an infant, who had been children when he had been a child, were no longer alone when they walked in the street. Pretty, frail women – like small birds – seemed always at their elbows, across from them in the little restaurants that lined Kyoto's sidewalks.
Something had changed while he had been absent in the capital, but he knew better than to blame it on the city. A revolution could never be stopped, after all. Not once it had been set in motion. That was what he had learned during his time in Edo.
He thought sometimes that it would only take the slightest effort to be jealous of these boys, but then he realized that it was an effort he could never make. His life had not been his own in a long time. Willingly he had broken it to pieces, and divided the shards amongst the few men and women who remained to follow him.
Aoshi stopped by his room to deposit his kodachi. Even in such a familiar setting - the only place he had ever come to associate with feeling safe - he hated being unarmed. But times had changed, and it wouldn't do if one of the patrons saw him carrying a blade.
He leaned the sword in the corner, then hesitated a moment, staring at it. He knew he should have kept it in the cabinet or tucked in his mattress; should have concealed it. But Aoshi was not ashamed of what he had done. He started to turn, then a voice from the door halted him mid-step.
Aoshi flinched, imperceptibly; only one man could have crept up on him.
"I know you're not just going to leave that there," Okina said.
Aoshi tilted his chin back a little, a gesture which call to mind defiance. "Master, I'm not going to cower before these men."
"No one's asking you to. But there's no shame in being cautious."
"I'm not a child anymore," Aoshi said, but he snatched up the blade all the same, and thrust it into the little cabinet in the corner. "Don't treat me like I don't know…"
"And you don't have to prove anything to us, so stop acting as though we're strangers." Okina turned to go, deliberately, and Aoshi glanced at him over his shoulder. He hadn't known the matter was at an end.
"Breakfast is ready whenever you are, by the way," the elder man said, and then he vanished.
Aoshi crossed the room to tug the screen shut behind him. Back in these walls, he felt always as though he was being watched. It was unfounded paranoia, and he knew he could not afford to let his composure falter on account of it. But Aoshi could feel the slight tension around his eyes, the compression of his lips that bespoke frustration. If Okina, the best of them, didn't understand what troubled him, then what hope did Aoshi have of finding understanding at all?
It was a thousand little things, all stacked against him. The uniform he was no longer able to wear in public, the blade he had to hide… And soldiers. Soldiers of the new government had stayed here, had slept in his home. The blow that had dealt to his pride had hurt more than any injury he had received on the battlefield.
Why had he spent all that time in the capital, away from everything familiar? Why had he suffered betrayal, shame, if, in the end, it had all amounted to nothing? He had lost so many comrades, only to end up right back where he had begun, enduring the same dull domestic bliss he had all those years ago.
The others told him there was nothing he could have done, that the same fate would have befallen any of them had they been in his position. But Aoshi wasn't just one of them; he was the best. He should have turned out the best results.
When he turned a little, Aoshi caught a glimpse of his face in the small mirror that hung near the doorway. He looked pale.
Furiously, he shook his head to drive away the last of his lingering uncertainty, or, rather, to force it deep inside once more. That was where it belonged, a place where no one else would know of its existence. He looked once more into the glass, and he was satisfied by his expression: it was calm. Thus assured, Aoshi went out into the hallway, following the path Okina had taken.