Breathe in for luck, breathe in so deep. This air is blessed you share with me…
*****
Gossamer Dreams
Part 12
*****
"Father, there's a letter here." A young man with dark hair and sad brown eyes too old for his face entered a dank and oppressively dark room. His father, an old man who looked as though he had given up on life, was laying in bed as though he had neither the ability nor the intention of moving from his spot. His son's voice seemed not to reach him as he stared at the wall with clouded eyes. "It's from Rin." The son added, and like magic, the fog cleared and the old man blinked, turning to face his son.
"Let's have it, then." The father tried to shit, but he was clearly too ill to even hold the letter his son offered. After a grunted acceptance of this fact, he turned his face back toward the wall. "You read it, then."
"Yes, father." The young man closed the door and sat in a rickety chair next to his father's bed. At that point, he opened the letter slowly and cleared his throat before he began reading in slightly halted speech. "Dearest brother and father, I hope you are both well. I know it is sudden, and I hate to say it, but opportunities are so few, and so I have to face destiny and move on with my life. The plans have been laid, the coach is booked, and next month, I shall leave to seek my fortune in Seiiki. There I shall find my lot in life, and I can only pray that you both are able to live happily knowing that if I could, I would be living on beside you. Perhaps if I do well, I shall be able to send for you, and all three of us can live in a great mansion in Seiiki. Miroku tells me that mother came from a very rich family, and since I have her ring as proof of our relation, he thinks that I will surely be able to find my place amongst them. Father, take care of yourself and try to live each day as brightly as if mother were still there, throwing open your blinds and telling you to smile once in a while. Brother, try to stay out of trouble and if you have not already, find a nice woman who might help you in that respect. If you are married, please write and tell me all about it. I cannot wait to be an aunt! Until we meet again, know that you are first in my heart and prayers. Love, Rin."
"So that's it, then." The old man coughed weakly, seeming to lose every trace of life in his features. "He told me he would send her there…and yet…it had been so long, I thought that maybe…"
"She shouldn't be running off to Seiiki with you lying here, unable even to do the simplest things. Her place is here, helping me take care of you, not off gallivanting in the capital like some grand lady." The young man grumbled angrily.
"Shush, boy, you know nothing of it." Anger snaked into the old man's voice, weak though it was. "How could you? You're no better than I am, just a peasant, doomed to be nothing more for the rest of your life. Not very bright, not very attractive, not very strong. Nothing like your sister. She received the best your mother had to give. If only you could have been more like her…"
"Father…I…try very hard." Tears welled in the young man's eyes. This was obviously a sore point for him, but since his father was not even glancing at him, he did not have to bother to hide his upset features. "I want you to be proud of me, too. I am your son. You should be proud of me."
"It isn't that you're a bad son. You just aren't anything more than that. Just my son, nothing special." The old man wheezed and hacked slightly. "I'm sorry…I should have done more…something more. It's just so late now, and I'm so tired."
"Father, don't talk like that." He really was crying now, tears streaming down his face unchecked. "You do the best you can for me, and if I disappoint you…I'm sorry. All I want is for you to look at me and be satisfied. Is that so much? What can I do to make you care for me?"
"It isn't that I don't care…son, listen." The father turned then, not seeming to see the tears streaking his son's face. "I should tell you…before it's too late, the truth about Rin."
"That you love her best?" the son asked. "I knew that already."
"Son…stop." The old man sighed heavily, as though the blanket covering him made breathing difficult. "Your mother hid something from me, you know. She thought if I knew…she thought I would have her killed, I suppose."
"What could mother have possibly done that would make you hate her?" the young man asked. He remembered his mother very well. When she had lived, life had been sweet afternoons in the grass, carrying his sister on his shoulders, warm hugs that didn't feel empty, eyes that looked at him with love. He missed those days.
"She was Gifted." The voice was soft, shaky, weak, but the words filled the whole room ominously. It was a long time before the son was able to speak in response.
"Are…you serious?" he asked. He might not be the scholar that his sister was, but he knew what a Gifted was. Evil creatures, oppressors who ran about killing with no thought for anything but their own pleasure. Their mother had been one of those dreaded creatures? The joy, the cookies, the soft voice…a monster? "You must be joking."
"I'm not. And she passed it to Rin." The man went on. "Remember her eyes? Purple. That's what color the Gifted's eyes are. I read about it after he took her away. Just to make sure. It's the truth. One of the signs used to spot them. Purple eyes."
"But…they're monsters." He protested weakly.
"And in Seiiki, what do you think they say about Youkai?" the old man asked, not waiting for an answer. "That's the difference between you and her. Not the eyes, not the powers that come with it, not the fact that she studies and reads and writes so well, or that she looks like her mother. The difference is that she can see past what she's told. Rin sees into people's hearts and finds goodness where no one else can see it. Maybe that's what it is to be Gifted. Sure enough her mother was just as kind, just as sweet. And if that's what it means, why are they monsters? I'd follow people so pure as that without complaint. But you…you're just like me. Human."
"I…must be half, too. If mother was Gifted." The son offered.
"It didn't want you. That Gifted thing, it wanted her." The old man settled back down, staring at his wall. "It wanted her…no surprise in that, I suppose. Anyhow, that's why he took her, to show her a way to hide it, so she can turn her eyes grey and seem normal. That way, she can go back to Seiiki and live with your mother's family. Good to hear she'll get there, be happy and all. It's what she deserves."
"Father…she's just a girl." The boy tried, his eyes pleading. "She's only a daughter, she can't carry your name on."
"I wish she could." The father closed his eyes wearily. "I'd die happy, knowing that."
"I'm sure." The young man finally got up and left, going back to his own room, where he sat for some time staring at the window as though looking for an answer, as though mulling over everything he'd learned that day. After some time, he pulled out paper and ink and wrote a letter, cursing his poor penmanship as the perfect lines of Rin's own writing seemed scarred in his mind's eye like lashes from an imagined whip.
To the great protectors of the Imperial family,
Lurking in Yuurei is a snake, one of the Gifted who has learned to hide her eyes with a witches' spell. Her name is Rin, and I have enclosed her address and a sketch of her likeness. Please, do
something to remedy this situation as soon as possible before harm falls on the innocent.
Signed,
A Loyal Subject
At the bottom, he copied down the address of that house Rin had been staying at and drew a quick sketch of her face as best he could remember it. It had been a good number of years, but he was sure he got the details right. After all that, he sealed it and addressed it to the capital, taking his cloak up and going to mail it at once. Only once did he doubt his decision. As he handed the necessary coinage to the postmaster, he saw a flitting image in his mind of himself, his mother, his father, and Rin, all of them picnicking without a care down by the old creek, laughter and love filling the air. They were family. She was his sister. He was just as much Gifted as she was, after all, wasn't he?
And if their mother was Gifted, surely they weren't the creatures that he had been led to believe.
"It didn't want you. That Gifted thing, it wanted her. It wanted her…no surprise in that, I suppose."
And then, doubt fled in the burning fires of anger and vengeance that scorched his mind and consumed his reason. He handed over the letter and went home to his dying father who could not have cared less if he returned or not, anyway. He wasn't good enough. He wasn't Rin, after all.
And anyway…she was leaving the country. She would likely not even be caught by the authorities. Post was notoriously slow this far out in the country. She would be living lushly in Seiiki by the time the intended eyes saw his letter. He had done nothing, really.
Just a stupid letter.
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"I will be out for about two hours. My presence is requested across the river." Miroku could not help the stiff coldness that entered his voice as he addressed Rin. She was leaving. She was leaving tomorrow, and she obviously wanted to go. He felt betrayed, somehow, even though he had arranged the whole thing for her. "Will you be all right here?"
"Yes, I have some more packing I need to see to." She told him, her tone sad and soft. She did not want to leave. But she could not impose on him further. He was clearly annoyed with her. The fact that she had imagined them happy together so long was clearly a sign of her own childish selfishness. "I will see you for dinner, then."
"Yes, until then." He turned and left with a sweep of his cloak. She sighed heavily and went to the kitchen to prepare dinner. Packing was far too depressing for her at the moment. She thought that maybe, if she was able to make a wonderful dinner that last night, he would see that she was sorry she had caused him so much trouble. She had never meant to impose, but some foolish part of her had thought that maybe they could go on like that forever, like family. Miroku understood her in a way few could. They were both half Gifted on their mother's side, they had both felt the pain of a loved one's death. But how could she imagine what he felt, truly? Miroku had lost his sister and both his parents. She had only lost her mother, and while she had not seen her brother and father for some time, never wishing to spend that much of Miroku's hard earned money on something so selfish, she still knew they were alive, and she still knew that they loved her as she loved them. Miroku had nothing left. Her presumption, thinking they could understand one another, had surely earned her this bitter treatment.
She did not know she was crying until she felt a tear spatter down on her hands. Feeling foolish, she went to find a handkerchief to wipe her eyes, when she realized that she had packed all hers already. This only made her tears grow stronger, and soon she was on her knees, arms supporting her head against her open chest as she let out great heaving sobs. He was not her brother, or even her cousin, but Miroku was family to her, and the fact that he must hate her now stung her more deeply than she had imagined she could feel without having a loved one die altogether.
She was crying so loudly that she did not hear the door open, did not hear the movement in the hall, did not in fact realize that anything at all was amiss until she heard the door to her own room open, and she looked up, mortified to think that Miroku had come back to see her crying like a baby in her room. That was when she realized that not only was the man in the doorway not Miroku, he was not even someone she knew, but she surely recognized the insignia glinting viciously on his chest, as well as the identical badge on the man behind him. The Heisotsu.
She felt her eyes go wide, her tears stop in shock, and her mouth fall open in surprise. It occurred to her that she could simply act curious and confused. Then it occurred to her that as she had no intentions of going out that day, she had not colored her eyes. Purple. Her eyes were purple. She then thought that if she could only manipulate her spirit, she could knock these two men out and make a run for it. By the time she thought of that and knocked one out cold, the other reached her, the metal rod he carried glinting in the light as he brought it down against her skull.
The world was white. And then, the world was red and pain. And then, gradually, and yet swiftly, the world was black.
Rin slept the entire trip to the Palace. When they through her in the Dungeon, Miroku was just arriving home to see his front door and gate wide open. In a numbed panic, he ran into the house, seeing a half-prepared dinner laying about the kitchen first. Then he turned to Rin's room, calling her name out as he entered through the door that still hung wide open. He saw her trunk, half-packed with a few of the top articles crumpled and mussed. Then he saw blood on the floor. He fell down, and he cried tears that he thought had all dried up after the last time this had happened, after he had lost Kikyo.
Why did everyone he loved always have to disappear? What had he done so terribly that he was completely without happiness in this world?
Why had he left her home alone?
Why had he not simply told her that she was family to him, and that he did not want her to go, and that in his own way, he loved her?
He had never once said it, he realized at that moment. Never in all the birthday dinners and late night emergency calls and broken bones they'd mended and hearts they had watched breaking or the lives they had saved or lessons they had studied and skills she had mastered under his eyes had he once told her.
She was a sister to him. Not Kikyo, who was not really truly his sister no matter how he wished she had been. But Rin was his sister, all the same. And he had lost her, as well.
He was right to think that he was good for nothing, if he could not even save the few scraps of his life that were worth saving.
An hour later, a pigeon came, and he picked himself up, washed his face, threw on his cloak, picked up his bag, and went out to save someone else without another thought for himself. What was the point in worrying for the things you loved when they were all destined to slip through your fingers like grains of sand? Why not throw himself into Healing, into teaching, and become something useful at least to others who perhaps would have more luck and more happiness in their own lives, for they were normal. Human and Youkai in Fukumaden were welcome.
He was Gifted, so he was not.
He was cast aside.
He was damned.
*****
The End (Of Part 12, That Is)