My thoughts, my words, my darkness
Disclaimer: I do not owe Soujiro, Shishio or any other character from Ruronin Kenshin. I wish I owed Soujiro though! He's so cute!
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It was a typical samurai night, Soujiro had observed, staring calmly from his seat on a cliff into the vast night in front of him. There was the inevitable full moon, misty despite the relatively clear skies (relative to when the Yumi was around spraying her perfume lavishly onto her assets if only to annoy Kamatari), the sakura tree with sakura petals floating about around him (the petals were supposed to have been dyed pink by blood, but he found it mainly girly), and of course, the cool night breeze (which was currently messing up his hair and getting into places he didn't even want to mention). All in all, the young assassin decided, it was mostly beautiful – mostly.
Presently, however, it wasn't beauty, or a lack of beauty, that was on the mind of the young assassin. It was another word, a word that he had heard Houji refer to once when he thought Shishio-sama had not been listening. Shishio-sama had laughed at it, and told Soujiro that Houji was absolutely correct. Insanity. Houji had mentioned once that insanity ran wherever Shishio-sama went. He had said it with a smile on his face.
Soujiro had not understood what Houji meant. What was insanity? Well, technically, he knew that insanity meant madness, lunacy, the lack of the ability to think clearly and understand… things. That made no sense however in the context of what Houji had said. Everywhere Shishio-sama went, the people understood without a doubt what was going on, what was going to happen and how it was going to end. The people who worked with Shisho-sama knew clearly what they had to do, and for what they were fighting. He knew. He understood.
Sighing, he lay back in the tall grass, staring up into the moon. It was huge, he realized, large in a way he had never imagined before. It seemed to fill up the whole sky, seemed to illuminate the world in a cold, white light.
Death. His mind skipped suddenly to a different topic, a rather… unexpected topic. What in all the seven heavens, eight hells, and nine great wonders of the world had inspired him to think about such a mundane topic? He had seen death more times than he had eaten sweet beancurd (which he distinctively disliked). There was nothing special in it. When the end came, it came in the same way for everyone; the sudden widening of the eyes, the sharp intake of breath… perhaps the last scream for mercy, the blood then… silence. He liked that silence in particular, so different from all the other kinds of silences in the world. It was a silence that came with nothingness, not just the non-existence of noise. He liked it quite a bit in fact, must more than he liked the blood.
But there was not always blood. It wasn't all the same.
His whole body froze suddenly, as his memories took him back in time, back to a time of innocence and pain. There was this one time, he recalled, when death had been… different. He remembered it. The body had been lying on the mat for days on end, quiet and still. Then it all ended. He had been there, he recalled. No one had even realized there was nothing left to salvage, for the soul had slipped away, and it was minutes before anyone realized the body was empty, empty forever. That was… different, for there had been nothing to mark the passing of the spirit… and the eventual decay of the body. Yet he had been terrified, terrified that his own death should be as… as insignificant as that.
Why does it matter? Death is death, no matter what form it comes in.
He smiled again, and relaxed back into the cool, dewy grass. That was true. Death was just death. It was the end of life and nothing more. Death by bleeding, death by drowning, death by strangulation… it was all the same. It was all the same emissary in a different disguise; sword, rope, child-demon.
Me. Shock led to the tensing of the body frame again. Taking a deep breath, he forced himself to relax back into the grass. That was true, he realized – he had been referred to as a child-demon more than once in his entire life. The first time, he remembered, was when he had killed one of the lower ministers who had ordered the assassination of Shishio-sama. A maid had caught sight of him and had run from the room screaming.
The devil has the face of a child.
He had laughed at that and slaughtered her before fleeing quickly from the scene. Yet the words had stuck in his head. Then he had killed again and this time, found a more concise way of phrasing it. Child-demon. Was that what he was? Was that all he was? No. He was much more than that of course. He was Soujiro, right-hand man of Shishio Makoto, the Tenken…
Child-demon.
Impatiently, he brushed the thoughts away and turned his gaze back onto the moon. He was startled to find it fading behind a thick layer of clouds. The sky had darkened, throwing a back shadow over the lands. Maybe rain would come that night, he thought, maybe.
The strong shall live, the weak shall die. Smiling, he closed his eyes and focused on the philosophy. Now this was a thought that would not trouble him, for there was nothing to wonder about, nothing to muse, nothing to question. No one would – it was the ultimate truth.
He does.
Blue orbs snapped open and he stared at the dark sky, a feline smile fixed tensely on his face. Of course he does, the foolish man. Battousai, the legendary manslayer, famous for his god-like speed and his harsh sword techniques had now turned self-proclaimed protector of mankind.
Hypocrite.
Definitely. Soujiro laughed out loud. How could he even dare to say things like that? A man with hands soaked to the bone with blood, the blood of hundreds, thousands… millions! The blood of men, women, children – evil, innocent, purity, all over his hands like a fungal growth. It spread to his heart, it took up a place there, and it made itself his god, and now he claims to be a protector, a non-killer? The dead would have turned in their graves, all the hundred thousands of them!
He wasn't there for me.
Even to his ears, his laughter sounded force and harsh – hysterical. No one had been there for him. Alone in the rain he had stood, holding the sword, the blood of the weak all over him, flooding the world like the curse of the gods. He had been alone, all by himself… isolated because of his weakness. Now he was strong, and people bowed to him, feared him, pledged their loyalty to him because the weak always, always are drawn to the strong. The exact opposite of Battousai… no… he was no longer Battousai. He was Himura Kenshin… a weak ruronin. Weak… weaker than any one he had ever met. His new god would fall before Shishio-sama's god.
Should he be right?
The body recoiled against the mind, and he sat up, heart pounding furiously. "Never," he whispered then louder, "Never." Almost screaming now, he stood up and faced the black world before him. "NEVER!"
A silence greeted him, broken only by the terrible pounding in his heart and the breathless intake of air as he stood before the world, faced it, tried to shut it out.
I never realized I still had a heart.
Almost sick to the bone, he spun around and jumped when one of the many soldiers Shishio employed appeared before his eyes.
"Soujiro-sama." The voice was nervous… not just nervous…
Terrified.
He smiled. "Yes?"
"Shishio-sama wishes to meet you in his chambers right now."
"Yes… yes of course," he smiled harder.
He was still smiling later as he walked again, leaving bloody footprints on the ground, wiping his sword with a piece of cloth. Still smiling as he recalled the widening of the eyes, the sharp intake of breath, the blood… and the silence. Like always… so typical… so stable. Everything he knew was the truth. Everything he did was for the truth. The strong shall live and the weak shall die. He was no child-demon. Death is the same for everyone. He was not insane.
Not too much at least.
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Author's Note: I cannot stand it when people portray Soujiro as this happy, cute, naïve boy etc. I personally think that Soujiro is far more twisted than Shishio ever was. After all, Shishio's motive was understandable. So this is just a little drabble on how I feel Soujiro's mind works.