The Words Left Unspoken

Kyuuzou was born without words. Screams, grunts, the gurgle of a last breath caught rattling in the throat filled the little room and as the whites of his birth-mother's eyes rolled upwards in death, his brother had stepped forward and without a word sliced open his mother's womb, pulling the bloody tangle of baby from the mess of tissue and meat and blood.

This was his birth.

His brother had raised him, in the only way he knew how, stealing, begging, trying to find a way to keep his only tie of blood there was alive in some uncharacteristic way of honor. He never spoke to the boy, uncertain in anything but to work towards staying alive. Kyuuzou never questioned, just did as his brother's eyes told him too. But he died as well, his belly slashed and his intestines and innards spilling along with his life onto the ground as the boys ran off with the pouch of wages he had earned for carrying rice bundles for a whole week on the pier. And so Kyuuzou was once again left, still without words and without anything and anyone but his strange lesson of honor and staying alive.

Death was no stranger to him and he killed his first man when he was 7. Dragged into an alley, he had been pulled and stuffed roughly into a corner, the splintered wood of the inn wall digging into his back. He spoke not a word, just watching as the grizzled bloodshot man fumbled with his belt-tie letting him lean in before ramming the long splintered chunk of wood he'd grasped on the ground into his throat. That time, he'd gripped so tightly that he cut into his own hand, his blood mixing with that of the dying man with the mangled throat. He stood up and after cleaning off his hands on his clothes and taking the knife he'd been threatened with, left, reborn in the death he knew even then that he did not fear.

Learning to kill with efficiency, to handle a sword, to slit a throat, all of this came without words. Other than his name, he rarely gave voice to anyone on anything. He accepted jobs, assassinations, protection. He killed without a word and closed his ears to any that he heard.

He'd met her by chance in an inn where he'd stopped to pick up supplies. She'd grabbed him, chased by some rowdy looking men and pulled him in front of her, neatly blocking her attackers with him. He'd dispatched them with cold, swift efficiency. When he turned she was no longer in sight. He saw her again later that night, eyes light like a wolf's, laughing at him. He'd walked the other way, but she caught up to him, again and again and again. And as the days wore on, she seemed to just lope after him, a easy-hearted playful she-wolf with laughing eyes. And the words she brought with her never seemed to have an end, like a well that had no bottom. She wanted to talk about everything, the sky, the news the winds brought, Edo1 stands where blackened crisp lines of sweet meat was sold on freshly grilled sticks, the tiny mancho2 bean filled buns that she brought and biting his arm, refused to let go until he agreed to take a grudging bite.

He didn't know why she followed him around and refused to leave his presence, following him to where he stayed, usually a hillside hole or an inn, where she would disappear and then reappear in his room, already sprawled on his bed. He was not a complicated man; the words dried up long ago even in his head. But if he had stopped to contemplate he might have realized how much he had missed words and missed life. Even a man living with the mask of death needs to see the light in the darkness sometimes. With her slyly beguiling chatter and refusal to be daunted or cowed by him, even when he tied her up once early on in their travels and left her in the room. He'd stayed, hidden outside in the rafters to watch of course, for he was not a man without honor in some ways, and he had seen how she'd calmly rolled her way around until she come to a sharp corner of the bed and worked herself loose before bounding out the doors and somehow found him in the rafters again.

And so she brought him the words he could not speak and he did not try to leave her behind again. Eventually, he learned to accept the happiness in her eyes for his own and though the words did not come still, he spoke to her with his eyes and his she-wolf understood him and loved him all the more for it.

"I saw your eyes and I felt lost without them. That's why I followed your footsteps." She admitted once, in the silent, private embrace of the night.

He had no words to explain that, he was the one that had been ensnarled by the laughing brown eyes of her.

Their strange happiness, the silent assassin and his she-wolf mate with her multi-faceted smile did not last long, but while it did, she brought light into his darkness. It is a dangerous and cruel life to be mate to a killer though, for those close to the one he killed hunts down not the one who supplied the coin but the one who supplied the sword. And so he came back home one day to the familiar smell of the sweet white sakura3 scent that she dabbed on the back of her neck and ankles after bathing entwined mockingly with the even more familiar scent of dead blood. Even then, he could not find the words, and he picked up the abused and broken body, wiping the rough uncertain way that men do at her face to try to clean it, and wrapped her in a kimono of his, the bedding haven also been splattered with her blood, and buried her. He had contemplated burning her corpse, so there would be nothing to hold him down, but that strange desire to keep the tie of blood and the past alive caused him to be unable to bring the lit torch down on her.

And it seemed as if nothing had changed. He burned down the home and eventually stalked down and killed without a word the men who had taken away his mate. He still did not speak but now, his eyes, the same eyes that had taken away her breath were dead and men whispered of him as a descendant of the darkness, a killer born of the night without a soul. "Yami no Matsuei" 4 they called him in dark rooms, wondering when he may be hired to silently run his katana through their struggling bodies, and if the last face they would see would be the man with dead eyes and no words.

But for him, it merely seemed as if the world had become deadly silent. When he was younger, he had not noticed the silence, for he did not know the words. But the she-wolf had brought words to him, had showed him the joy of a mancho bean bun, and given him the words that he had never known he could care existed. And now the words were gone as she was gone and he merely waited for an end, an absolution that would take away the silence and the merely that burned in his chest everyday of laughing eyes and endless words.

So he killed and killed with his dead eyes and un-relenting sword and with every death he killed a little more of the man he had been, had learned to become, and with every death he hoped to kill the man she had fallen in love with.

Author's Note:

1Edo-translation "the current city of Kyoto, former capital of Japan"

2 Mancho-translation "red bean"

3 Sakura-translation "cherry blossom"

4 Yami No Matusei-translation "descendent of darkness"