Disclaimer: All characters and scenarios belong to all copyright holders of Rurouni Kenshin.
Souzou no Shiroi Suisen
A little vignette of warmth and companionship in honor of the 136th anniversary of the death of the Sekihoutai and Sagara Souzou, March 2 and 3, 1868, respectively.
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The early morning air was bracing, but not so cold as he remembered it eleven years ago.
Katsu hunched inward to bring the fronts of his haori tighter against the chill as he walked down the empty, narrow street. In one hand, he carried a jug of the finest sake he could find; in the other, the first of the waning winter's daffodils, just unfurled from their buds to catch the morning sun's first rays.
He had always spent these days alone. He had never needed a calendar to tell him they had come around again. They were burned into his memory, branded onto his soul. Heart overruled head and he had endured the time with nothing to dissuade him from remembering, nothing to draw him out, and nothing more important. Anyone lucky or unlucky enough to be associated with him came to understand that for two days out of each year, Tsukioka Tsunan traveled in the footsteps of the dead.
But this year… This year he would not journey alone.
Coming to his destination, Katsu didn't bother to ask for permission to enter. None would be given --- not out of grievance, but because the occupant simply wouldn't hear. He knew because he knew himself. In all other things, he and Sanosuke might be different, but not in this. The same nightmare plagued them. The same mark scarred their souls. Both sought escape in vain.
Sagara Sanosuke. Katsu smiled at the lump huddled beneath the futon's blankets. If he envied Sanosuke anything, it was his courage in daring to take their mentor's name and speak it proudly, even if, ironically, it had taken the strongest of the Imperialists to remind Sanosuke of the merits of that pride. Katsu couldn't resent Himura, the Battousai. It had been the same man, after all, who had reminded Katsu of the source of his own proud ideals and that the damage he would be doing to his own reputation out of vengeance was nothing to what it would do to the very thing he sought to protect.
He could never have imagined the means that had brought him around to the truth, but Katsu had had no doubts that the big turd coming back into his life was the best thing that could have happened.
Katsu set down his burdens and looked for something to hold the flowers. Grabbing a nearby jar, he left to find the well. His fingers rubbed at the rough surface of the base as he walked, and, curiosity piqued, he turned the jar over. Katsu laughed to himself. Niitsu Kakunoshin… A souvenir of Kyoto from a master in two worlds --- Hiko Seijuuro. It was appropriate that an object of gentility and beauty from the hands of one whose sword was only ever drawn to protect should hold memorial flowers for another whose gentleness and kindness had only ever wanted the good of the people.
Returning to the room, Katsu dropped the flowers into the water-filled jar and placed it where eyes opening from dreams would see them as his first sight upon re-entering the real world. Dawn was beginning, casting all in preternatural grays and heralding the new day with deafening silence. Katsu sat where he stood to await Sanosuke's awakening and stared at the spikes of brown hair jutting just beyond the edge of the blankets.
Of all the gifts Sagara Taichou had given him, this one was surely the greatest. In allowing him and Sanosuke to regard themselves as members of the Sekihoutai, relenting to their need to protect their captain and benefactor, Sagara had forged the first true friendship either boy had known in their tumultuous, lonely, young lives. Fraught with the need for love, they had needed no urging from Sagara to become the closest of friends. That it had taken less than a handful of months was insignificant. The bond was as strong as nature could make it, lasting across the space of time to survive separate sorrows and be rejuvenated with one look into the other's eyes.
If Katsu was the moon, as his name and demeanor suggested, then Sanosuke was the sun --- active, cheerful, full of life. The bond between them disregarded the fact that they had been and remained so different. Or did it? They attracted the other as mysteriously as the unseen magnetic fields of polar opposites… a completion, a circle, as stable as the routine of night and day. To know them as individuals, few would guess that they belonged together, needed each other… had been made each other's brother by the power of Sagara's love.
The need to be close hammered at Katsu until he could tolerate the ache no more. Shedding his haori and kimono, he stepped over the still form and gingerly eased under the cover behind Sanosuke. It was warm, like a cocoon, and felt good as the heat spread over his cool skin.
It wasn't enough, though, to soothe his troubled spirit. With care, Katsu lifted the blankets and moved them down to expose the head and bare torso. It amused him to see where the headband normally encircled the mass of wild hair --- like the difference between where Sanosuke's chest remained naked to the sun and was covered in wrappings, his hair spiked above the line of the headband and flowed loosely beneath. It was growing long and shaggy, long enough to rest atop the white jacket instead of slipping underneath, and Katsu's fingers itched to touch it. He reached out…
Sanosuke shifted, turning a gaze soft with longing on him.
There had never been any time when they were boys, their time together too brief. The natural explorations they would have indulged in had been denied by the need to be one step ahead of the Imperial Army. In the earliest hours of a Tokyo morning of Meiji 11, no Imperial Army threatened… no orders scheduled the hours… no maneuvers awaited them.
Two heads leaned into a chaste, tentative kiss.
In the back of his mind, Katsu idly wondered if the cool moon defined him still as he felt the warmth of the sun on Sanosuke's lips; as he saw the light shining in the expressive eyes looking back at him now. Sinking into their softness, he was suddenly aware only of the feel of smooth skin over hard muscle as his hand skimmed over a broad shoulder to caress down the length of Sanosuke's arm. He was conscious of no other thought than the keening directive to bring the hand he now held in his own to the need growing between his legs.
"Sano?" he prompted.
"Katsu… you idiot," the voice returned, husky with shared desire as Sanosuke followed through to grasp at the hardness beckoning him.
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The furls of the daffodil's trumpet tickled against his skin as it was traced across his cheek in deliberately torturous strokes. Katsu smiled even more, unable to prevent the giggle that escaped at the feel of it along his sensitized lips. He was happy… on a day he had never expected to be happy again.
"Where did you find daffodils like these?" Sanosuke asked, long fingers toying with the creamy petals once he stopped his teasing.
"Outside the Koshima estate wall… down by that little stream." Katsu turned his head to see if there was any sign the day would turn cloudy after all. "Remember?"
"Of course I remember. How could I forget?" Sanosuke dropped onto his back, still tracing the lines of the flower's petals, his mind going back into time. "Just before we left with Taichou to head south. His mother packed a small feast for the three of us. Damn… I swear I can still taste it."
"Who knew it would turn so cold after such a warm beginning," Katsu mused, the first sadness creeping back in.
"It's no good, Katsu." Sanosuke lowered the blossom and rested his hand atop his belly. Raising his other hand, he rubbed at eyes still tired from the early waking. "Taichou wouldn't want us to be sad. Nothing'll make it right again… it'll always stink of betrayal… but he wouldn't want us to remember him with tears. He'd want us to remember the happiness we all had."
"But it's not that easy, Sano. Not for me."
"For you, too, Katsu." Rolling onto his side to face his friend, Sanosuke brushed back the long hair from Katsu's face. "He always wanted the same things for both of us. Cricket-face may be right. Maybe I am a moron. But not about this. I know I'm right about needing to let the dead rest. Only you and me can give him peace and we can only do that by getting on with life… BOTH of us. All he wanted was for us to be happy."
Katsu rested graceful fingers against his bared forehead and shook his head in denial. "Everything's always been easier for you."
"Kuso…" replied Sanosuke, his tone soft with hurt and not the harshness of anger. He pulled Katsu's hand away and kissed the palm. "Don't ever think that. It hasn't been easy for me. The only way I could deal with it was to fight and when I couldn't fight, to get drunk. But it's different this time. The past year… it's taught me so much. Kenshin reclaimed Taichou's faith that things WOULD get better. Saitou showed me there's a way to make sure it happens. Shinomori gave me hope that even the toughest enemy can see reason. It's like being returned to where time stopped… because with all that, I've got my friend back, too."
Giving Sanosuke a bittersweet smile, Katsu answered the cherished thought by playing with the errant strands falling over Sanosuke's face. He was happy for Sanosuke's sake, for being here with him, but… "They're your friends, Sano… not mine."
"If you're my friend, they're yours, too." Contorting his face into exaggerated exasperation, Sanosuke sighed dramatically. "I forget what an idiot you always were."
"Taichou always said we were more alike than we realized," Katsu reminded with a grin.
"If you're gonna start thinking like that creepy cop, you can just leave."
Sanosuke shuddered, as if that was enough to dispel the Wolf's presence, but both men knew the Shinsengumi captain had come to fill the very large, very empty hole left in Sanosuke's spirit with Sagara's death… that losing Saitou to the inferno of Shishio's arena had hit on too many memories. It had pained Katsu to see the warring emotions reflected in Sanosuke's eyes when he had stopped by on his way to Shinshuu and told him Saitou truly was immortal. The happiness was clear enough --- hope had been restored that to love him didn't have to mean a death sentence --- but Katsu had seen the confusion, too… the look that said it wasn't fair that one beloved mentor had been returned while the other remained lost to him.
Katsu turned to lie face to face with Sanosuke. Everything, it seemed, exacted a price. It occurred to him that he was wrong to think of Sanosuke only in terms of Sagara Souzou and the past. Sanosuke was a man now, with a direction to go. A brilliant intellect he might not be, but Sagara had loved him no less… had put no less faith in Sanosuke's potential than he had in the studious, quiet boy he had also taken under his wing and nurtured into a warrior. Sanosuke was smart enough to justify Sagara's interest, if only in his capacity of heart and spirit. While it was true Katsu might never wield lethal fists against the corrupt to protect Japan, his images and words could rain deadly blows where Sanosuke, or even Saitou or Himura, could not reach.
Like the white daffodils that spilled down from Sagara's home to reach the brook beyond, he and Sanosuke could propagate the beauty of his vision beyond the past and into the future. He had demanded that they survive and had trusted them to obey. The lessons of childhood behind them now, Sanosuke had characteristically taken the first step into the legacy left to them by their martyred teacher. It was Katsu's turn to follow and take his place at Sanosuke's side. It was time for him to start thinking in terms of what they could do and forget what might have been.
Today, Katsu decided. Today… the second day of March --- the Sekihoutai would be reborn out of blood and grief and take its place… where it had always belonged… building a new Japan that would send its beauty across the oceans, expanding its horizons with nothing more than the spirit and love of two surviving students of a man who had refused to put his own honor above that of his country's. The Sekihoutai would begin anew, as young and refreshed as Katsu felt now, with new ideas and new purpose.
Looking at Sanosuke slowly fading back into sleep, Katsu couldn't help thinking Sagara was watching them and smiling. He retrieved the daffodil from Sanosuke's lax hand and grazed a finger along the protruding stamen. The finger came away yellow. Katsu smiled again and wondered at the color. To Sanosuke he would give the first copy of his enpon, and for the yellow that would predominate, Katsu would find a way to bind the daffodil's pollen to its surface.
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Notes ---
Translation of the title --- Souzou's White Daffodils
The "tsuki" of Katsu's name, Tsukioka, means moon.
Sagara's birth name was Koshima Shirou, the son of a wealthy family. He was born in Akasaka, which I believe is somewhat southwesterly in Tokyo. I am assuming the Koshima family would have had an estate there --- at least that is where I am putting it for this story.
An enpon is a book of erotic prints. Shunga were also erotic prints, but were separate pictures, not a collection published together.
The complete version of this story carries an NC-17 rating (the PWP part, which makes the mention of the enpon at the end make more sense) and is available in full at http://adultfan.nexcess.net/aff/story.php?no=20698
setsubou