Part 2: Deep End

Author's note: I am surprised. No one hated me for making Fuuko into such a traditional meek woman. Hmm. Or maybe people were too angry to write me a review. How sad. Or maybe no one really cared. Anyway… the series isn't mine. Wouldn't I be rich and well known if it were?

In many ways doth the full heart reveal

The presence of love it would conceal.

E. Coleridge

" Go, Fuuko san!" Kaoru cried out, enthusiastically waving his Kougan Anki about and nearly decapitating Domon Ishijima as he did so. " For Mikagami kun!"

Fuuko gritted her teeth in concentration. Amino was already covered with bruises caused by Tokiya's icicles and he might not have noticed that the flail had very well placed cracks on it, care of the Ensui. It was a very dire day indeed when Amano dared Fuuko Kirisawa in battle. " This is for you, Mi-chan!"

" Fuuko."

" Yes, my lord?" she was shaping the rice balls nimbly in her hands. Tokiya loved it that she rinses her hands with lemons. The scent and a lingering taste is left on the rice balls. " Do you want of anything, Tokiya?"

" Can we go down the creek today?" walking slowly towards her in the kitchen. He watched her slim back as she worked, wanting to span her waist with his hands. The thought was so foreign to his common cognitive functions he surprised himself by blushing. " I want to see the waters sparkle under the sun, to listen to the cheerful song of the birds… again." And to think that he almost would never. Had he died… this chance would never again come.

Her smile was more than enough gratification for this unexpected bit of poetry from Tokiya Mikagami. She placed the last rice ball on the tray and rinsed her hands with the lemon scented fingerbowl. " Are you sure you are strong enough, my lord?"

He nodded. " Would we go?"

She tilted her head to one side coyly. " Why of course, my lord, since you so want it to be so." She crossed her arms. Her teasing attitude reminded him of a boyish girl, who cut her hair short and fought men's battles. Love wasn't part of that memory, but he knew there could be. Maybe… there should be.

" I want you to want it to be so as well." He said, somewhat petulantly. That was so uncharacteristic of him that he was surprised yet again. He usually never cared enough what others wanted as long as he got what he wanted. Funny what love, unexpected it may be can do to a man.

" But I do so want it." She said innocently. " Didn't you know already?"

" You aren't making fun of me are you now?" he asked in mock humility and assumed hurt tones. " And I thought better of you, hanata."

" I never jest, my lord." She said, dimpling. He had never noticed those before, her dimples. But he noticed so little the last seven years he might as well have been dead. He leaned over to inspect them closer. If he had to make a fool of himself to see her smile again, then let him be a fool. Assuredly, she would never think it of him. " You should know that by now."

Fuuko sat down by the jutting root of a tree without sparing a thought for grass stains on her black kimono. She had packed their lunch in a cloth and had the small bundle on her lap. Tokiya leaned against the trunk of the same tree and breathed in the sharply cold air.

" If anyone can see the winds" Fuuko said, dreamily. " I think these ones would be as bright and sparkly as diamonds."

He looked at her absently. Without her usual cloak of misery, she looked quite young, her features small and somewhat kittenish except for her full lips, which were quite large for her face. Plum colored eyelashes fanned her cheeks languidly as she watched the ripples on the brook. Her stance was relaxed, but he knew how gracefully she could move. Which wasn't surprising. She was one of the Hokages, was she not?

" I have forgotten you." He mused, idly. " as I have forgotten who I once was. Myself I could know anytime. Nobody truly does forget. But you… would you permit me to know you again?"

" I don't think it would be very wise, after all, my lord. Your father never did approve of – of you marrying outside the clan. After all, you were betrothed to Mifuyu were you not?"

" What should they matter to us?" he said, although he felt that he was protesting too much, and she felt it as well. " I have married you."

That statement was met with silence and he realized it was probably the wrong thing to say. It sounded twisted. Almost selfish. Almost wistful. Why had he given Mifuyu up, really?

" Why, my lord?" Fuuko asked, almost inaudibly, he had to lean down to hear her. " Indeed, why did you marry me?"

" I love you." He whispered, although they both knew that it was only partly true. He frowned. Why did she have to ask that?

" You spoke of a girl… you said you didn't love her as you love me. Was that a lie? How can you love me when we are alike and you don't love her?" Fuuko stood up, the packed lunch rolling onto the grass, forgotten. " Do you lie everytime you say you love me?"

" I married you, Fuuko, isn't that enough?" he asked coldly. He remembered Mifuyu's brown eyes and he wanted to cry.

Her green eyes were shuttered against him. She looked away. The sorrow in her had subsided, or rather, she had hidden it cunningly away. " It is not enough for you, my lord. It never was." She wanted to run away, but she knew he would not like that. Even she would not like that. She had run away for too long, she had gone so far. She sat down again, staring at the package, so gaily wrapped, on the grass. " I know that. You don't need to hide it from me. I might possess you, but it will never be enough. I knew it to be so. But I married you, because my love dictated me to do so. Because I would not listen to anyone. Because I knew that I would live in pain and sorrow gladly to be with you."

He knelt in front of her like a monk asking the gods for supplication. " Why is it not enough?" he asked, wanting so much for her to enclose him in her embrace. How could it be not enough when he felt so for her? When he felt for her so strongly that love outlasted her memory?

" Because you are dead to her Tokiya." Someone answered. " Because you are dead to everything but Mifuyu and her memories."

He clutched at his head, remembering. Yes. Yanagi Sakoshita, he tried to love her because she looked like Mifuyu, but that wasn't enough. He couldn't feel anything for her but the indulgence of brotherly affection. He groaned.

" My lord!" Fuuko said, softly. It didn't seem to be her nature to panic. She glared at the hooded someone by the edge of the creek. " Who are you?" she hissed, clutching at his shoulders. " Identify yourself!"

The cloaked figure glided closer to where they were sitting, so gently and swiftly it seemed like but black cloth dancing in the winds with nothing material inside. Tokiya gasped. The figure reached out to knock Fuuko away from him. He heard her cry out even as the woods vanished. There was only darkness. And in the midst of that nothingness, were they.

" This is a dream." He muttered, eyes wide. " a nightmare…" he bowed his head. And Death had come in sleep to take him away. He would never regain the Ensui. Never see Fuuko smile again.

" Yes, it is, Mi-chan." Fuuko was standing again. She was looking at him intently. " You can get out of it. You can still wake up."

He touched her face gently. This was what he wanted! To touch her face. And he never realized until now. " But you?" he said, incoherently. " If I wake up, where would you be?"

She slapped his hand away, laughing. The gesture hurt him. The laughter tore his heart apart. " You kid yourself, Tokiya Mikagami." She said, coldly. " You ask me where I should be! I was always there, my lord. It was you who never cared."

" But why?" he asked, hands clenching into fists.

" You are dead."

" It is not enough."

The first speaker reached out and pulled down the hood. " Tokiya, would you not stay here?" It was Mifuyu who said that. Mifuyu who now looked at him, wrapped in the cloak! Her shroud hadd been white. The imperfect white of pearls. " Do you not love me?" she was crying, and it broke his heart. But not enough pain. Not the same pain when Fuuko slapped his hand away.

" It is not enough." The girl repeated.

Tokiya took a step backward. Fuuko was right. It wasn't enough. And Mifuyu was right. He was dead to everybody because he was so wrapped up in her death! He didn't want to wake up because this was a world where Mifuyu was alive. It wasn't because of his 'wife'. The love he never knew existed was there, but he was dead to it because he wanted only to remember his sister. He cabbot fully love anybody, because of his first love, Mifuyu.

" But Mifuyu…" he said in a lost way. " Mifuyu is…" he gulped at the words. The finality of them. " she is…dead."

Your friends need you, hanata.

" Mi-chan!"

" He is alright, Fuuko san." A calm voice intoned, soothingly. " But he must not be disturbed now, he needs to rest."

" I don't care, Saicho." The voice was loud, testy. Tokiya smiled. " I won his Ensui back. Doesn't that give me an immunity to the rules?"

" Fuuko san…" an exasperated sigh. Then the soft click of the door opening.

Tokiya lay on the bed. Fuuko had never noticed until now how pale he really was. Yanagi and Saicho had healed him so that his wounds were gone. But he was still tired. And he had so much blood neither of them could not supply.

She got closer to him wanting to feel his breath against her face, to ascertain that he was truly alive. " Mi-chan?" her hands tightened around the Ensui nervously. " Mi-chan, I have fulfilled my promise. I have your Ensui back."

He looked at her. " Kirisawa…" he said, slowly. He reached out to touch her hair. " I dreamt… a funny dream." He smiled.

" What was it?" she said gently. So gently for Fuuko Kirisawa. This was a side to her that he never noticed before.

" You had long hair." He answered simply, making her laugh.

" Would you like my hair if I let it grow long?" she asked, smiling still.

He turned away slowly, almost shyly. His hair was untied, and it fell in cascades down the white pillow beneath his head. " It doesn't matter." He murmured. " If you like your hair short… it is enough."

" Yes, Mi-chan. Enough."

Ai: :: sniffs:: I don't know if I was touched or touched in the head for writing such a cheesy fic. Heck, I read too much cheese. Hope you didn't fall asleep midway… or fall out of love with me after all this time. :: sniffs again :: bad Ai, bad Ai! Thanks for giving me your time. I hoped I have touched a vein in your day to day existence. As for the strength matters… it never really occurred to me that way. If I made it sound like Tokiya is stronger than Fuuko, it was unintentional. But we must also take into consideration the fact that Fuuko is female, shorter than Tokiya, with shorter limbs. I'm really sorry.