Kingdom Of The Blind
The mirror is --
Zenon's hand moves to his eye, to touch the edge of the patch, to move along the edge of the patch, to trace the old scar which is so much a part of his face now that he has little memory of unblemished skin. There was a time when his flesh was as unscarred as that brat Homura's, but that was --
cut off cut away a slice taken out don't think about it
He rises from the bed. He avoids the frown of the Zenon reflected in the mirror.
step by step we go through the day
Litouten will have a job for him, he hopes. He's in the mood for killing. Death and pain and the familiar weight of his gun in his hands, the stock balanced, the pulse of bullets.
The sheets on his bed are still rumpled, untidy. If Mirei had been there she'd have been straightening them, her eyes downcast, but with that curve to her mouth that said of course she expected him to leave them untidy, of course she would be there to neaten them, of course she would be there . . .
Bile rises in Zenon's throat. He walks across to the window in quick ungainly desperate strides, and his hands clench on the stone of the windowsill as he looks out into the tiny closed courtyard there. The tree at the centre of the courtyard is covered with the eternal cherry blossom of Heaven.
His world got taken away yesterday and he still hasn't adjusted. Of course he hasn't adjusted. His mind registers profanity. His mind registers screaming. It's like a burn; sword wounds are cleaner, bullet wounds are more precise, and neither would leave him feeling so raw and so scoured. There is no safe place for his mind to rest. There is nowhere where he can turn his eyes that does not bring back what has just happened to him.
My wife and my son are dead.
There. Say it. Does that feel any better? The words are a pattern cut into him, and slowly they begin to burn again. Perhaps this is what a soldier feels like when he has lost a limb; the known absence and still the pain.
Zenon's fingers move to his eyepatch. Last night, he made a bargain. Last night he received a promise. Shifty and untrustworthy. He still didn't know if he could trust the bastard, but there had been something about him which Zenon had felt he could depend on. Something -- pride, that was it. A craftsman's pride. Someone who'd lie about anything except one thing, and in that thing he'd be honest.
and you're such a good judge of people, aren't you?
Zenon can feel the heat under the eyepatch, the burn of leashed power.
He hadn't had anything there for decades in any case. Lost long ago. It wasn't as if he'd given up anything to . . .
Zenon turns and walks to the mirror, and looks at himself in it -- such a warrior, such a soldier, such a practical man, such a killer of youkai -- and smashes his fist into it. Shards of glass fall to the floor and shatter further. The empty frame stares back at him.
Of course you can stay here, Litouten had said, with what was probably the closest that the Great Minister could come to real sympathy. He hadn't expected the other celestial to care about Zenon's
wife and child, think the words, wife and child
but at least Litouten had shown the proper respect for Zenon's loss.
He'd been half drunk when he'd found the other man. The immortal, the white-robed man with the sharp eyes and the concealing glasses who'd been so involved with little Nataku and who everyone in Litouten's household knew wasn't to be thwarted or interfered with or even involved with. Everyone was scared of him. That figured. Litouten didn't like him either, but Litouten had his own reasons for dealing with him. And now Zenon had his own reasons too.
A fragment of the broken glass that's still trapped in the edge of the mirror's frame winks in the morning light. That was last night. This is today. This was the morning. This was where everything started again and where suddenly his life is empty and there is nowhere to go and nothing to start with. Except for his job. He still has that.
Yesterday he'd talked to the brat Homura and made the offer that Litouten had given him to pass along. Yesterday he'd had a wife and child.
Yesterday he'd gone Down Below
I'm moving in fucking circles here, I need to think of something else
and Souei had been standing there in shadows and blood and said, She wouldn't do what she was told. Or, She got in the way. Or something like that. The words run together and get lost and perhaps it's better that way, not to remember it too clearly. The smell of blood in the air, and what was that doing in his home?
Zenon's right eye pulses. He presses the heel of his hand against it.
Yesterday night he'd made a bargain. He'd said, Give me a way to hurt the bastard, give me a way to kill him. You can do these things. Everyone knows it. Give me what I want.
Or?
Or I'll kill you.
Oh well, Zenon-sama, when you put it that way, how can I say no? Yes, things can be done, there is in fact something which I can do to help you, what a good thing you came to me?
Words blend together. He'd asked. The other had said yes.
And when it was done and the instruments had been put away and the smell of something -- something else? so sharp, harsh, rotten -- had faded from the air and he'd taken the leather strap from between his teeth, what then?
You've got this powerful eye but I strongly suggest not using it because the chances are good, in fact excellent, that it's beyond your control. Oh of course I might be wrong, take your eyepatch off any time and see whether you can do it, but do leave a list of your next of kin first, hm? Yes of course it'll do whatever you want, power at your very fingertips as one might say, but I'm very much afraid that it might consume you if you try using it. Pricetags on everything, Zenon-sama. Pricetags on everything.
Words blend together and time blends together and everything comes down to this moment and this fractured glass and this burning eye and this utter scream of loss which he will not, will not give voice to.
Zenon stands in a room in Heaven, and he will not weep, because he is a man. He will take vengeance instead.
It comes to Zenon that killing something would be pleasant.
Zenon picks up his gun fron the bedside table, and swings it over his shoulder. It nestles against him like a cat, it clings against him like a woman.
Litouten first, and perhaps killing after that. Minute by minute he will walk through the day, he will do his job, his fucking job, because that's what a man does, and perhaps . . .
but nothing's certain, Zenon-sama
. . . perhaps he can stop thinking about his wife and son, because the loss is too big for him, and it's eating him inside like a burn, and it leaves him hollow, and it makes the Heaven around him look like gilded trash, the setting for a play, fragile and empty and just waiting to come tumbling down.
---
The mirror is --
Zenon's hand moves to his eye, to touch the edge of the patch, to move along the edge of the patch, to trace the old scar which is so much a part of his face now that he has little memory of unblemished skin. There was a time when his flesh was as unscarred as that brat Homura's, but that was --
cut off cut away a slice taken out don't think about it
He rises from the bed. He avoids the frown of the Zenon reflected in the mirror.
step by step we go through the day
Litouten will have a job for him, he hopes. He's in the mood for killing. Death and pain and the familiar weight of his gun in his hands, the stock balanced, the pulse of bullets.
The sheets on his bed are still rumpled, untidy. If Mirei had been there she'd have been straightening them, her eyes downcast, but with that curve to her mouth that said of course she expected him to leave them untidy, of course she would be there to neaten them, of course she would be there . . .
Bile rises in Zenon's throat. He walks across to the window in quick ungainly desperate strides, and his hands clench on the stone of the windowsill as he looks out into the tiny closed courtyard there. The tree at the centre of the courtyard is covered with the eternal cherry blossom of Heaven.
His world got taken away yesterday and he still hasn't adjusted. Of course he hasn't adjusted. His mind registers profanity. His mind registers screaming. It's like a burn; sword wounds are cleaner, bullet wounds are more precise, and neither would leave him feeling so raw and so scoured. There is no safe place for his mind to rest. There is nowhere where he can turn his eyes that does not bring back what has just happened to him.
My wife and my son are dead.
There. Say it. Does that feel any better? The words are a pattern cut into him, and slowly they begin to burn again. Perhaps this is what a soldier feels like when he has lost a limb; the known absence and still the pain.
Zenon's fingers move to his eyepatch. Last night, he made a bargain. Last night he received a promise. Shifty and untrustworthy. He still didn't know if he could trust the bastard, but there had been something about him which Zenon had felt he could depend on. Something -- pride, that was it. A craftsman's pride. Someone who'd lie about anything except one thing, and in that thing he'd be honest.
and you're such a good judge of people, aren't you?
Zenon can feel the heat under the eyepatch, the burn of leashed power.
He hadn't had anything there for decades in any case. Lost long ago. It wasn't as if he'd given up anything to . . .
Zenon turns and walks to the mirror, and looks at himself in it -- such a warrior, such a soldier, such a practical man, such a killer of youkai -- and smashes his fist into it. Shards of glass fall to the floor and shatter further. The empty frame stares back at him.
Of course you can stay here, Litouten had said, with what was probably the closest that the Great Minister could come to real sympathy. He hadn't expected the other celestial to care about Zenon's
wife and child, think the words, wife and child
but at least Litouten had shown the proper respect for Zenon's loss.
He'd been half drunk when he'd found the other man. The immortal, the white-robed man with the sharp eyes and the concealing glasses who'd been so involved with little Nataku and who everyone in Litouten's household knew wasn't to be thwarted or interfered with or even involved with. Everyone was scared of him. That figured. Litouten didn't like him either, but Litouten had his own reasons for dealing with him. And now Zenon had his own reasons too.
A fragment of the broken glass that's still trapped in the edge of the mirror's frame winks in the morning light. That was last night. This is today. This was the morning. This was where everything started again and where suddenly his life is empty and there is nowhere to go and nothing to start with. Except for his job. He still has that.
Yesterday he'd talked to the brat Homura and made the offer that Litouten had given him to pass along. Yesterday he'd had a wife and child.
Yesterday he'd gone Down Below
I'm moving in fucking circles here, I need to think of something else
and Souei had been standing there in shadows and blood and said, She wouldn't do what she was told. Or, She got in the way. Or something like that. The words run together and get lost and perhaps it's better that way, not to remember it too clearly. The smell of blood in the air, and what was that doing in his home?
Zenon's right eye pulses. He presses the heel of his hand against it.
Yesterday night he'd made a bargain. He'd said, Give me a way to hurt the bastard, give me a way to kill him. You can do these things. Everyone knows it. Give me what I want.
Or?
Or I'll kill you.
Oh well, Zenon-sama, when you put it that way, how can I say no? Yes, things can be done, there is in fact something which I can do to help you, what a good thing you came to me?
Words blend together. He'd asked. The other had said yes.
And when it was done and the instruments had been put away and the smell of something -- something else? so sharp, harsh, rotten -- had faded from the air and he'd taken the leather strap from between his teeth, what then?
You've got this powerful eye but I strongly suggest not using it because the chances are good, in fact excellent, that it's beyond your control. Oh of course I might be wrong, take your eyepatch off any time and see whether you can do it, but do leave a list of your next of kin first, hm? Yes of course it'll do whatever you want, power at your very fingertips as one might say, but I'm very much afraid that it might consume you if you try using it. Pricetags on everything, Zenon-sama. Pricetags on everything.
Words blend together and time blends together and everything comes down to this moment and this fractured glass and this burning eye and this utter scream of loss which he will not, will not give voice to.
Zenon stands in a room in Heaven, and he will not weep, because he is a man. He will take vengeance instead.
It comes to Zenon that killing something would be pleasant.
Zenon picks up his gun fron the bedside table, and swings it over his shoulder. It nestles against him like a cat, it clings against him like a woman.
Litouten first, and perhaps killing after that. Minute by minute he will walk through the day, he will do his job, his fucking job, because that's what a man does, and perhaps . . .
but nothing's certain, Zenon-sama
. . . perhaps he can stop thinking about his wife and son, because the loss is too big for him, and it's eating him inside like a burn, and it leaves him hollow, and it makes the Heaven around him look like gilded trash, the setting for a play, fragile and empty and just waiting to come tumbling down.
---
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