A/N: Rather than listen to my Anthropology lecture, I spent the hour and fifteen minutes furiously scribbling this little number, then spent about an hour and a half working on it when I got home at six-thirty in lieu of eating dinner, which means I am now in my grandmother's bad books (this is not entirely unusual in my house). It's unusual for me to post a oneshot so soon after I've written it (I like to mull over it for at least a week beforehand), but, I don't know, for a change, this one seemed to come out easier than the others. So enjoy my first attempt at tackling Sano—hopefully, I wasn't too off.
Disclaimer: Oh, if only….
Words To Watch Out For:
Tokugawa Bakufu: Military feudal government which dominated Japan from 1603-1867
Sekihou Army: Military unit formed mainly of civilians who believed in the cause of the Emperor's restoration to power, but were eventually turnedupon by the pro-Imperialist forces and denounced as traitors
aku: character meaning "evil"
hitokiri: translated literally, "manslayer," though "assassin" works just as well
(All definitions taken from Volume 2 of the Rurouni Kenshin manga)
"Gray"
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Sanosuke's life was a study in black and white.
When he was very young, he knew the patriots were right and the Tokugawa Bakufu was wrong, he knew a new era of equity and prosperity was just around the corner, he knew it was true.
Except it wasn't. Because the patriots betrayed the Sekihou Army—his army, his captain—and suddenly he knew he'd been on the wrong side. But the other side was wrong too. So Sano decided that since both were wrong, he was right.
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When he was a little older, he knew he was strong and they were weak, he knew he was clean and they were dirty, he knew it was true.
Except it wasn't. Because Sano, now Zanza the fight merchant with the "aku" character proudly emblazoned on his back, wasn't really strong, he was just pissed off, pissed off at the injustice of it all, pissed off the world was either here or there, pissed off so many people fell between the cracks of a dirty system that was a pathetic shadow of all the Restoration had promised. He was still a little boy, nine-years-old and hurt and betrayed and crying, inside the body of a young man who refused to fall or back down or accept defeat because he was too damn angry. And the more he fought, the more he convinced himself that he was right and they were wrong.
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When he was nineteen, by all rights a grown man, he knew that good was good and bad was bad, he knew that black was black and white was white, he knew it was true.
Except it wasn't. Because a man with red hair and a cross-shaped scar and a past soaked in blood wasn't black but wasn't white either, he was somewhere in between. He was a patriot who wasn't dirty; he was a hitokiri who refused to kill; he was black and also white, and Sano couldn't understand this gray man who stood in the space he'd long believed—known—to be empty.
Except that he could. And did. And realized he had been wrong: the world was neither black nor white, it was somewhere in between, with the red-haired man. And when he stepped into that space where the red-haired man stood with the little missy and the kid—when he too stood in that space—he knew, in a way he hadn't known before, that this was right.
Because there was no black, and there was no white.
There were only shades of gray.
