A Passion with No Name
Chapter 7: In the Light of the Sun
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Author: Jun-I
Warnings:
-characters undergo sex change (Heihachi and Kyuuzou are women), yaoi, yuri
- spoilers within. Written with the assumption that readers have already seen the anime.
Pairings: female Heihachi x female Kyuuzou, Kanbei x Kyuuzou (implied)
Heihachi, Rikichi and Shichiroji arrived at the House of the Fireflies on a fine morning. Kanbei, Katsushiro, Kirara, Masa and Kiku were all there to meet them. The silent outsider Kyuuzou was there too. So it was as Okara and Komachi had said. "How long had she been there with him?" Heihachi wondered. Did they spend their nights together in the House of the Fireflies? A thousand jealous questions flooded her mind.
As always, Kyuuzou stood apart from the group, and yet stayed close to Kanbei, watching him when he was not watching her. It tore Heihachi to pieces from the inside to see this, but she knew she did not have the right to demand otherwise.
Just then her erstwhile traveling companion Rikichi caught sight of Sanae looking out the upstairs window. He called out to his wife but she shut the window quickly. The seven followed Rikichi as he ran up the stairs to meet his long lost spouse. As Heihachi witnessed the awkward, painful exchange between the estranged couple, she realized that her own torment was nothing compared to the agony of Sanae and Rikichi. To be hopelessly in love with someone who did not want you. The mechanic understood how that felt, and she knew Rikichi must have felt a hundred times worse than she ever did.
The tomboy samurai stood in that upstairs room with her comrades, looking on while Rikichi pleaded and Sanae wept. Then she realized there was someone else present besides Masa and the other samurai. Ayamaro was a few feet away from her, standing behind Kiku and clinging onto the robot's jacket as if seeking an anchor in this emotional storm. Heihachi stared. What was he doing here? And if she did not know better, it looked like Ayamaro was actually feeling sympathy! Ayamaro caught her gaze and coughed awkwardly. It was then they both realized it was not appropriate for them to intrude on the peasant couple's moment of private agony. One by one, the watchers left the room.
Heihachi walked back down to the riverbank behind the house, gazing at the boat that had brought the farmer to this unhappy reunion. The samurai felt a vague anger at the farmer's wife for putting Rikichi through all this hurt.
The tomboy heard light footsteps behind her. She already knew who it was. She had listened for that step many a day and many a night in Kanna. But at this moment the mechanic did not know what to say to Kyuuzou. She decided to start with the most obvious topic and perhaps the least personal.
"What is your ex-boss doing here?" Heihachi asked without quite looking at the woman who had just stepped up beside her.
"I had to bring him along. There was nowhere else for him to go. I could not just leave him defenseless on the streets of Kougakyo."
"We women are too softhearted sometimes." Heihachi sighed, "But I respect the fact that you honor your old loyalties. If only the same could be said for Sanae."
"Perhaps we should not judge her too harshly." Kyuuzou responded softly, "That woman is braver than the two of us put together. It is easier to choose death by the sword than to choose life as an incubator serving a monster. It is easier to submit one's body to a quick destruction than to submit to years of soul-killing degradation. She did all this because she loved her people. And she shut out her true thoughts so that she could bear that loathsome life. I don't think I have the courage to make her choice."
"And I won't think less of you for it!" Heihachi declared, turning to look upon the female samurai with large, shining eyes. "Why is it that we women are always expected to make sacrifices for our villages, our families and our men, even to the point of selling our bodies? I loved you because you dare to live for yourself. I loved you because you have the strength to defy the world of men."
"Loved?" the ruby-eyed lady asked with an unreadable expression. She moved closer and looked right into Heihachi's glittering black eyes.
Heihachi's lips parted, but no words came out. Their faces were just inches apart. She did not know if Kyuuzou wanted her to clarify her tenses or her verbs. The tomboy mechanic stared into those scarlet eyes for a moment, then she closed the distance and brought their lips together.
It was a brief, chaste kiss, but in that moment, there ran through the soul of the samurai maiden the memory of that ancient, familiar sadness at all the wrongs that had befallen womankind, wrongs yet to be made right. She wondered if Kyuuzou felt it too - the sense of a shared sorrow more vast and more ancient than the both of them. That sadness had always hung over her heart like a dark cloud for as long as she could remember, until the day the crimson warrior appeared. In the light of her shining princess, the old darkness fled her soul. It dawned on Heihachi then that she had spent her whole life living under a cloud; that she had never before seen the sun. But Kyuuzou was her sun.
When Heihachi ended the kiss, she wondered if she would face Kyuuzou's wrath. But strangely, she did not care. It was as if she was outside of herself looking in. The silent red samurai continued to look at Heihachi with unreadable eyes. Then she raised a slender hand and ran her slim fingers lightly over the female mechanic's flushed cheek. Heihachi quivered under the taller woman's touch. Just as wordlessly as she came, Kyuuzou turned and walked away.