Rainy Day Friends
by KC
Disclaimer: I don't own the Ninja Turtles or Usagi Yojimbo and co.
Pairings: Usagi/Leonardo
Warning: Slash, violence, crossdressing.
Part 3
Five minutes later, he walked holding the fan in front of his face. What little skin showed was white, and the rest of him was hidden under the robe and behind the large fan. He'd had to remove his mask, tucking it into a sleeve, and his swords hung awkwardly at his side which he hid with the other sleeve. Worst of all was maintaining his balance on the high shoes. They weren't so high that he couldn't walk without falling and he knew they weren't the highest platforms that courtesans wore, but now he understood why the women walked so carefully and deliberately.
He didn't know why they kept so many pins in their hair, though. If he had to listen to them rattle overhead much longer, he thought he'd go insane.
His hand began to tremble as he reached the door. He'd never attempted a disguise this elaborate and gender-specific before. Telling himself that he only needed to cross the room, he took a deep breath and went inside.
"It's about time you came back," one of the men half-snarled. "I finished my sake a long time ago."
Rather than go to his side where the illusion would fade under close scrutiny, Leonardo made a show of ignoring him, tilting his head away as if admiring the carved dragons along the support columns. Accentuating his swaying walk, he figured he was doing it right when all the other men in the room laughed at the jilted courtier and taunted him that he couldn't handle a woman. Leonardo's path across the room took him directly in front of Lord Nerai, but he didn't dare look directly at him. So far he'd only seen him from the back and now he had to look out of the corner of his eye. The man was more human than everyone else he'd seen in this world but still didn't look quite like someone from Earth. He was dressed like he imagined a lord would, but it was hard to see with two semi-naked girls draped over him.
Looking only at the two guards standing over Usagi, Leonardo came within arm's reach when Nerai snapped at him.
"I told you stupid girls not to go near them! Stupid damn whores--" Throwing the other girls off, Nerai got to his feet and came towards him, one arm out as if to hit him.
No more time. Raising his left arm, Leonardo pulled his hand free of the sleeve and with it the kaiken blade which cut the throats of both guards. All the women screamed as the men fell to their knees with blood welling over their fingers. The bodies got in Nerai's way as Leonardo grabbed the ropes around Usagi and dragged him back into the corner. He felt bad about dumping his friend face first on the floor, but the move bought them precious few seconds as he cut through the ropes. When Usagi got to his feet, Leonardo pulled his swords from beneath the robes and pressed them into Usagi's hands.
A sparkling glint warned Leonardo in time. He turned as fast as he could, leaning back with the kaiken raised, blocking Nerai's short sword. As Nerai snarled at him, however, Leonardo inwardly winced. He was completely off balance and holding the knife at the wrong angle. He might be able to deflect another strike, but not more, and the courtiers were already close.
He stumbled as Usagi pushed him to one side, blocking Nerai's next stroke inches from his face. Another two swipes sent Nerai back and Usagi grabbed Leonardo's hand, pulling him out of the room and running down the hall. Behind them, the heavy footsteps of their pursuer's struck the floor.
Wishing Usagi would give him a second to get out of the damn shoes, Leonardo yelped as he was roughly pulled into a small room that he hadn't noticed before. Usagi shut the door and stood guard, but Leonardo couldn't keep his balance and toppled against the wall, muffling his wince with his sleeve.
After a moment, the footsteps rushed by them and Usagi sighed, turning to face Leonardo. The room had a window but it was very small and near the ceiling, almost hidden, so they couldn't see each other well at all.
"Forgive me for not knowing your name," Usagi whispered with a small bow. "But I owe my life to you. Rest assured, madam, I shall see you safely away."
Leonardo couldn't help it. He started laughing, and no matter how hard he tried to muffle it under his sleeves, it became quite clear to Usagi. The samurai winced and held his hands up to comfort the emotional courtesan.
"Please, hysterics will only make it harder to escape," Usagi started.
Waving him down, Leonardo quelled his laughter. "And you said you couldn't imagine me as a courtesan," he said, still smiling. "
"Leonardo?" Usagi bent and stared at him, eyes wide. "Is that...you?"
Pushing off the wig and shoes while wiping the make-up off on his sleeves, Leonardo nodded once, still chuckling. "Sorry, I didn't mean to laugh."
"But how did you find me? You don't know your way around my world."
"I met your friend Sanshobo at the temple, and he lent me a horse." Leonardo sighed and looked up at him. "For awhile, I was afraid they'd kill you."
"I have no doubt they intended to do so," Usagi said, helping him stand. "I do not know why they kept me alive. It...it's very good to see you."
For a moment neither said anything.
"You make a very convincing courtesan," Usagi smirked.
"Don't you ever tell Raphael--no, don't ever tell anyone I did that."
"But surely I must applaud your ingenuity to all who might listen--"
"Let's just get out of here." Leonardo grumbled, looking around the small room. "Where are we anyway?"
"One of many secret rooms I am sure line these corridors," Usagi said. "When you live in a palace, you learn to recognize them quickly. Do you have any weaponry left?"
"Just the kaiken the girl had," Leonardo said. "I didn't think I could fight dressed like that, so I gave you my swords."
"I will need to retrieve my own swords before we leave," Usagi said.
"We can't waste time wandering around with everyone looking for us."
"We won't have to. Nerai ordered his men to take them upstairs to their observatory. We need to find the stairs and make our way up."
Leonardo sighed but didn't try to argue. He simply couldn't understand a samurai's obsessive nature about his swords. There was some sentimental value of course, but ninja were simply more practical than to assume a piece of metal held their souls.
"Use mine for now," he said. "We'd better get going."
"Agreed."
Once Usagi had cleared the corridor, he led the way back to the room they'd left and farther, taking him around another corner. It was easy to tell where the guards were since they all ran in groups with someone holding a lantern in front, especially since Usagi and Leonardo made a point of blowing out any candles they ran across. When the darkness prevented Usagi from moving, Leonardo took the lead and kept them clear of guards.
"Here we are," Usagi whispered when they came to the stairs. Lights from the floors above shone softly on the steps, giving them just enough illumination to see. The flickering candles above made the light play on the walls like a broken electric light. "Come on."
Leonardo didn't know why, but a sick feeling welled up in his stomach. This was too easy. Nerai had told Usagi exactly where to find his swords. Nerai had kept him alive long enough for Usagi to lead Leonardo somewhere. The ninja clans had not killed Usagi in the first place.
Damn Usagi's need for his damn swords! Leonardo swallowed his protests and followed him up one flight, then another. They heard women scream as they went, alerting the guards to their presence. On the third flight, he grabbed Usagi's arm and pulled him to a stop.
"Leonardo, what are you--?"
"Quiet," Leonardo hissed. "Look!"
Usagi turned and looked up the staircase. And took a step back.
As densely packed as a forest, shapeless shadows crept over the floor and along the walls, their long arms sinking into the paper and out again without tearing. They didn't come closer but waited patiently as if that floor belonged to them.
"Are they dangerous?" Usagi whispered.
"I don't..." Leonardo watched them creep silently along the floor, watched them slip into the ceiling without making the wood creak. In them, he saw the smooth motion and heard the breathless silence that unnerved anyone who watched him move. "No. They would have attacked by now. They--they're waiting for me."
"For you?" Usagi faced him with wide eyes. "What do you mean?"
"Sanshobo thought this whole thing might be an elaborate trap for me, but he was wrong." Leonardo let go of Usagi's arm. "You can't come with me."
"What? Are you insane?"
"No, and I can't explain, but you can't--Usagi, promise me you'll wait here. If the guards come, you can hide on the roof outside the window, but I don't think they will. Please wait for me. I'll bring your swords back."
"Leonardo--" Usagi hesitated, torn between fear and trust. Finally he nodded once. "Very well. I will wait."
"Thank you."
Without another word, Leonardo started up the next flight of stairs. The shadows swarmed around him but shied away from his touch, parting before him as he passed the next flight. At such close range, he could make out vague humanoid shapes for each of them, but they wavered like smoke and dripped down the walls like ink.
As cold as the night had been, the stairs felt like ice and the breeze like wind from a cave. The observatory lay at the very top of the steps, a single room with three of its walls pulled back to give anyone inside a perfect view of the crescent moon. Heavy clouds blocked most of the sky and rain splashed across the floor, but the person seated in the center with Usagi's swords in front of him didn't seem to notice the weather.
His features were obscured by shadows cast by nothing. His clothes wavered and seemed always on the verge of fading at the edges. Unlike the creatures on the stairs, he had eyes that locked onto Leonardo and never blinked.
"I've been waiting so long to meet you," he said, his voice as cold as rain and as black as ink. "Finally you are here."
Leonardo walked closer and knelt in front of him, inclining his head. "You saw to that."
"Indeed. You know who I am?"
"I think so," Leonardo answered. "Not your name but I know you. You are the first of us."
A laugh. "I gave up my name a long time ago. Now I am a forgotten god, remembered only by those who do not exist."
"My kind," Leonardo said. "Spies and assassins."
"In some ways," the god said, "you exist even less than they do. Unknown by your entire world, you cannot even enjoy the luxury of walking in the street unnoticed. You are less than a shadow, less than a whisper. And from that nonexistence, you have become stronger than the best of our kind."
"I am just a student," Leonardo protested, biting his words off when the god laughed again.
"You have trained under two masters already. Your skills need no more honing. At your age, your technique is immaculate."
Leonardo swallowed once. The presence of the god felt strong enough to sweep him off the floor and destroy the entire estate, so strong that he didn't know if he could keep his mind as he faced it. "You didn't call me here to praise me."
"Not entirely. I had hoped you would owe me a favor when you arrived. I gave you several opportunities to take my help."
"Help from a plot you orchestrated."
"Of course. We are far more practical than samurai." The god ran the vague blur that was his hand over Usagi's swords. "I would have called that debt by securing a promise from you, one deed to be done that would sully your honor and leave you no choice but to join my side."
The threat to his honor turned his blood cold. "As part of your collection?"
"No. The creatures you saw are the souls of disgraced ninja. They do their penance with me before returning to the wheel."
The god smiled, or at least Leonardo thought he did. He kept his eyes lowered not out of submission but because he simply couldn't stand to meet the god's stare.
"No, you would be much more than that. My right hand, a commander of legions of souls. There is much work to be done in this world and the next, our work."
"No." Leonardo shook his head once. "No, I'm no spirit."
"Your soul is already stained with so much blood. How do you know you won't have a choice when you die but to come to me?"
"If that were true, you wouldn't have tried this. I am no disgraced ninja. I never will be."
"Ah, that is where you are mistaken." The god stood, the rustling of his clothes like leaves in the night air. "I planned to extort a favor from you, but instead I have a new means of blasting your soul. Your friend sits vulnerable in the stairwell. Only my creatures keep Nerai's men from coming up and overwhelming him."
"You won't hurt him," Leonardo said, holding his anger in check. "You would have done it already."
"You are a fine ninja, but you still need training in subterfuge and tactics." The god walked to the very edge of the floor, heedless of the long drop beneath him. "Here is the first of many lessons I will give you, a choice. Disobey me and the samurai dies. Do as I command and he lives."
"You're no god," Leonardo hissed. "You're a demon."
"Semantics." He waved his hand idly. "Besides, my task is not so terrible for one with as much death on his conscience as you. Merely slaughter everyone inside this estate's walls to the last man. Promise me this and Usagi will walk free. If not..." He turned and faced Leonardo again. "Then he will not make it five feet to the door."
Leonardo said nothing for several minutes, and the god did not rush him. Leonardo did not wrestle with philosophies or what his father might think. He didn't weigh good against evil or try to think of a bargain. He spent those minutes trying to think of what he would say to Usagi, but nothing came to mind.
"Let me speak to him before I start," he whispered. "Let me take his swords to him."
"Of course," the god said, sitting back down in front of him. "You wouldn't want to use his soul for this kind of work."
"Will you be watching?"
"I trust your honor," the god said. "You say you will do it, then you will do it. Do you have any other requests?"
"You will let Usagi leave without being attacked," Leonardo said. "And...if it is in your power, you will bring the storm back. I want rain and lightning."
"I can and will do both," the god said and bowed his head. "I will see you again in the garden when you are finished."
Leonardo nodded tensely as if a contract had been signed. When he looked up again, the god was gone. Letting out a shuddering breath, he put his hands on the floor and leaned forward, trying not to throw up. Cold, exhausted, sick now, he wanted to curl up in his room and pretend nothing was happening. There were women inside this estate. There had to be children, Nerai's children but youngsters nonetheless. It couldn't all be samurai and guards.
Swallowing once, he picked up Usagi's swords and walked down the stairs which were now empty of dead souls. Usagi still waited for him on the third landing. At the sound of his steps, Usagi looked up with a relieved smile.
"Thank heaven, I was worried you wouldn't--" Usagi broke off as he got a look at him. "What happened? You look strange."
Meeting a god would do that to anyone, Leonardo thought. He simply shook his head and gave Usagi his swords.
"I can't explain right now," he said. "You have to leave."
"What?"
"You'll be able to get out safely, I made sure of that. Just walk out of the gate and keep going. Don't turn around."
"Leonardo, what are you saying? I can't leave you here."
"Don't worry about me, I'll be fine. But I need you to go. If I thought anything might happen to you, I--" He glanced away. "Please go."
"Why? What happened up there?"
"I'll explain later, but there's no time right now." He felt a soft hand on his face and looked up, meeting Usagi's eyes. "This is no place for a samurai."
Something in his voice made Usagi's hand fall away. The samurai blinked once and shook his head. "I don't understand, but I'll trust you. You are not staying here to die? Promise me you won't."
"I promise," Leonardo said. "I won't die tonight."
Unsatisfied with that but unable to demand more, Usagi looked at him one more time before retreating back down the stairs and out of sight.
Leonardo watched him leave, then sat down on the steps and waited. Outside the storm gathered intensity, striking the walls and ceiling with raindrops that sounded like hammers. The windows rattled and started to pull at their moorings as the wind raked at them. The lanterns went out at once. Although clouds blotted out the moon and made the night black, lightning now lit up the sky and earth so that he saw everything in the harsh glare between flashes.
At last he could stall no longer. Standing and drawing his swords, he looked up to the stairs above. He heard the voices of the women crying out in fear as the house began unraveling around them.
No one heard him through the wind and rain. Flinging back one door after another, he discovered hapless servants, concubines huddled within their apartments, and a woman he thought might be Nerai's wife since she held one infant in her arms with another in an attendant's arms. He also found several armed soldiers standing guard over them, but they fought like children against a demon out of the night. When a pale silhouette of a woman occasionally slipped by him and escaped into the hall, he paid no mind. He would follow in a moment.
On a lacquered table top now covered with blood stood a solitary oil lamp. He took a match from his belt and struck it, careful not to let the flame blow out as he lit the lamp and guarded it from the wind. In the relative stillness of the hallway, he held the lamp up and watched the flames leap to the wall, devouring wood and paper in an instant. By the time he made it to the stairs again, the whole floor was busy consuming itself.
This time he made no attempt to hide from the armed men searching for him. One at a time, in pairs and in waves, they fell at his feet. He didn't know why it was so easy now. It couldn't just be because of the storm and the darkness. It couldn't just be their growing panic or the shrieking women distracting them. He doubted the god would help him after saying he wouldn't. Perhaps this was simply how it felt to fight with nothing to lose.
The lanterns were all dark and no matter how often lightning struck the trees, they only smoldered in the driving rain. Even the gates lay broken and the walls half-burned. He could hardly hear the sounds of men dying around him for the thunder and wind. To his surprise, when the last man stumbled in the mud and lay still, the storm continued to rage but turned silent despite itself. Panting for breath, he sat down in the bloody lake that was once the garden, his swords falling out of his hands.
Something loud cracked behind him and he looked over his shoulder. The wooden beams supporting the observatory crumpled in on themselves and the entire building fell inwards. He expected flames to shoot up or spread across what was left of the ceiling. Instead the fire turned to smoke and Nerai's estate leaned sideways, blackened and gutted.
The wind dwindled and died. The lightning stilled. Although the rain didn't stop, it softened to a steady shower as the clouds broke up and let moonlight through. The death toll, only hinted at in the shadows, now revealed its true horror in the light. Bodies littered the ground. Even Lord Nerai lay on the steps leading to his home, his head nearly severed and hanging at an angle. Leonardo wondered what Nerai's connection with the god had been. Probably just a useful pawn.
Footsteps splashed through the gore. Leonardo didn't bother to look. He knew who it was. For a long moment, neither spoke.
"Why?" Usagi whispered.
"To save you," Leonardo answered.
"But...there was no need. I escaped easily." Usagi looked over the mess of bodies and shuddered. "This was no fight. This was slaughter. Did no one--?"
"'To the last man'," Leonardo said softly, repeating what the god had demanded.
"And the women?" Usagi demanded, his voice turning harsh. "The children? The servants? Did you slaughter anyone you met?"
Leonardo didn't answer. Usagi put his hand on his sword, hesitated, then let it fall away again.
"That you helped me," he whispered, "I thank you. But I was wrong. A samurai can never be friend to a ninja."
Only the sound of rain accompanied Usagi out of the garden again. Leonardo couldn't bring himself to watch him go. Right now, he couldn't even bring himself to move. Besides, he was sure he had one more person to speak to before the night would be finished.
This time no footsteps or splashing warned him as the blurred edge of a darkly patterned kimono appeared before him. He didn't bother with a greeting as the god sat down in the water but didn't get wet. With a wave of his hand, a small table appeared with a single cup of tea that caught no raindrops. Leonardo wondered if it was even real.
"Everyone in this estate is dead," the god said. "Except you."
Leonardo stayed quiet. He wondered how well the god could see in darkness and tried to keep his hands from shaking. This was the most dangerous moment, he knew. An angry god could destroy him, his family and his friends on a whim, rules be damned. He had to stay calm, keep his mind clear. Now he was glad for all the hours Splinter made him meditate. The technique came to him like second nature. With his mind calmed somewhat, he raised his head.
The god stared at him but no longer was his stare unbearable. In fact, the god looked confused.
"You have done what I asked," he said softly. "And yet your honor is unstained. How is that possible?"
"Maybe you confused me with a samurai," Leonardo said, his voice numb. "I am a ninja. Our honor is different."
"I am your god," he said. "I know your nature."
"You may be a god," Leonardo said. "But you are not my god."
The god finished his tea and both the cup and table disappeared. "Perhaps not yet. But in time. I have nothing if not time."
Refusing to rise to that taunt, Leonardo simply watched him slowly fade from sight. The clouds completely vanished, leaving the ruined estate bathed in silver. The jutting beams and singed trees stood out like calligraphy, bold but as jagged as the end of a brush stroke. Solitude felt like a luxury but he knew it wouldn't last. Already the city guard and townsfolk milled around the gate, curious to look in on the devastation.
Gathering his swords, he stood and headed back to the shell of Nerai's estate, stepping over bodies as he went. After picking up a chunk of burnt wood, he began tracing out the characters that would create his gate home. Drawing the intricate symbols strained his memory but he sketched the last one just before the bravest man started edging towards him. The gate shimmered to life and he stepped through, finding himself back in the alley he'd originally left. It was even still raining.
Sunrise found Usagi sitting on a bench outside a roadside inn, nursing a bottle of sake and watching the early travelers trudging through the mud. He hadn't slept yet. His memory kept repeating the last night so that every time he closed his eyes, he saw his friend sitting amongst the dead.
It made no sense. He never would have believed Leonardo could kill so coldly, so brutally, especially when he didn't need to. They could have escaped without incident. Most of all, he didn't know why he had killed the women and children he knew had to have been in the estate. He'd seen the wife and servants, seen the concubines. Had Leonardo killed the prostitutes, too?
Usagi was no stranger to death but such wanton slaughter appalled him. Was Leonardo's honor merely a treacherous facade to be dropped when inconvenient? Or had Usagi assumed too much about the ninja?
He took another drink. If Leonardo had imitated a samurai's honor without truly having any, then he was the best actor Usagi had ever known.
He shivered as the wind coursed around the inn and once again wished that there was room inside to sit down. So many people had come in during the night to escape the storm that the inn had neither rooms nor chairs. Usagi knew he'd been lucky to get even a bottle of sake to warm him before he started roaming again. He looked at the road and then back at the ground. He didn't want to start walking again. He wanted to crawl inside the sake bottle and stay there.
Beside him, the door opened and a noblewoman in full veil walked out, one hand on her attendant's shoulder to steady her as she walked. Several more attendants followed her out, more than Usagi would have considered normal, and behind those another older servant followed carrying an infant. He watched them huddle together, looking over their shoulders as they started walking. And then the noblewoman's hat tipped forward, raising the veil and revealing a glimpse of a two mon crest.
Usagi breathed in sharply. One of the women heard him and looked over her shoulder, but when he didn't move towards them she turned back and hurriedly covered her mistress's crest. In silence they walked on the grass just off the road, keeping their heads down to avoid anyone's notice.
Looters of the dead? He shook his head at that. Impossible. The bodies weren't even cold yet, and besides, looters would have had no opportunity. He stared at their clothing again. Torn along the edges, singed in some places, completely muddy hems and mismatched, as if they'd grabbed whatever they could. Upon second look, they were not merely a noblewoman and her attendants. They were survivors.
"He didn't kill them all," Usagi whispered. "But then why...?"
He could think of no answer. The only one who could answer was Leonardo, and he--
Usagi frowned. He didn't know where Leonardo was. Perhaps still at the estate? No, surely he would have left almost immediately. Maybe he'd returned to his own world. Leonardo hadn't known the symbols to create a gate before, but he'd seen them twice now.
Hoping he was right and that Leonardo was not hiding in the city somewhere, Usagi left the sake bottle and cup on the bench and walked around the side of the inn. The hour was still early so he didn't think anyone would notice him as he wrote the gate symbols on the wall. Instead of the character to represent Leonardo, however, he wrote the character representing Leonardo's home. He wanted to speak with Splinter first.
To Usagi's surprise, he stepped into Splinter's room and spotted the old master sitting on a mat in the corner. Splinter looked up and smiled in recognition.
"Usagi, it is good to see you again." He took the candle in front of him and lit several more along the wall, providing them with more light.
"And you as well, Master Splinter," Usagi said with a bow. "Please forgive my abruptness, but I must ask if Leonardo is home."
"Yes, he came home this morning." Splinter's face clouded and he sighed. "He was missing for several days, though, and refuses to tell me where he was."
"Is he all right?" Usagi asked as he sat down.
"Physically. But something hangs over him. Something bad happened, I can feel it." Splinter looked up with a glimmer of hope in his eyes. "Perhaps you could speak with him? Your friendship may bridge a gap that a parent cannot."
Usagi grimaced and stared at the floor. "I feel I must tell you I think this is my fault. You see, he has been with me for the past few days. I asked for his help and we had to leave before he could tell anyone."
"Then he was in your world?" Splinter asked. "What happened?"
"I was beset by every single ninja in the country," Usagi said, unable to ignore the frustration he'd felt before calling on Leonardo. "I'd hoped that escaping into this world temporarily would shake them off my trail, but instead Leonardo had to keep them at bay while I took us to the Nexus."
For a moment he hesitated. Everything that happened before no longer seemed as important as asking his friend what led to the slaughter, and he didn't want to implicate Leonardo in something he may not be guilty of, especially not in front of his master.
"I am not sure what happened," he said slowly. "We travelled and fought together but then we were separated. When we met again, it was not on good terms."
"Usagi?"
"Master Splinter, please forgive my presumption, but I must speak with Leonardo. He alone can tell me if I am mistaken, if it was yet another ninja ruse that I simply did not understand."
Now Splinter hesitated. "Something very bad happened, didn't it?"
"Yes, but I'm not certain how bad. May I speak with him?"
Splinter stared at him for a few seconds, then nodded once. "Very well. He is in his room. He said he would be asleep but I doubt he is. I suggest you speak quickly. His brothers were out looking for him but they will be home soon. You may not have much time before they barge in."
"I understand. Thank you." Usagi bowed again and rose, but he paused at the door. "Master Splinter, I know very little of your world. Please, how different is a ninja's honor from that of a samurai?"
"Honor varies from clan to clan," Splinter said, carefully considering his words. "Ninja by our very nature must be more practical than samurai. But even in different guises, working for different goals, honor remains the same. We are different, we see life differently than you do. But our morality and our most basic tenets remain the same."
Usagi thought about that, then walked out. He knew where Leonardo's room lay from previous visits and made his way across the lair. For the first time, however, he stopped and truly looked at the lair, comparing it to the homes and places he had lived in all his life. Here there was no sun, no wind. Light came from artificial sources and merely held back the shadows. Whereas he lived his entire life in the open air and enjoyed occasional companionship, Leonardo had only his family, his clan, which lived in the same concealing darkness. It was no wonder that their outlooks were so different at times.
At the top of the stairs, he took a deep breath to reassure himself. If he was right, then he had wronged his friend badly. But then Leonardo was not blameless in this, either. He peered into the room and waited for his eyes to adjust. True to Splinter's intuition, Leonardo was not asleep. Instead he sat in the far corner, a scroll spread across the floor. He stopped reading but he didn't look up.
"I didn't expect you to come here," Leonardo said softly.
"Neither did I," Usagi said. "May I come in?"
"Of course." He pushed two other scrolls out of the way to make room. "But why did you come? I thought you were rather clear last night."
"I was clear," Usagi said, sitting down in front of him. "But you were not. You hid something from me and I want to know why."
Leonardo looked up, but he didn't say anything.
"I saw them at an inn outside the town," Usagi explained. "Several women. I wouldn't have spared them a second glance, but one of them wore Nerai's crest. You let the women live. You let the servants live."
Neither spoke. And then Leonardo half-smiled and shook his head.
"Damn. I thought they'd hide better than that."
At the inn, Usagi had hoped to be proven wrong about Leonardo's actions. Now that he was, he found that he wasn't happy at all.
"You let me believe a lie?" he hissed. "Nearly severed our friendship, convinced me you were an honorless bastard, and for what? What could've been so important for you to lie to me?"
"I wasn't lying," Leonardo hurried to explain, leaning back from Usagi's palpable anger. "Not really. But I couldn't tell you the truth. All I could do was parrot back his own rule."
"Who's rule?" Usagi asked.
Leonardo opened his mouth to explain but he wasn't sure how to begin. "What do you know about ninja?"
"They are deceitful, treacherous and often infuriating," Usagi snapped.
Repressing the urge to snap back "are not," Leonardo forced himself to stay civil. "Besides that."
"Their services can be bought," Usagi said. "They are efficient assassins but they are also spies and thieves. They work in groups or alone. Other than that, I don't know."
"When we were traveling, I noticed a lot of shrines and idols everywhere. There are a lot of spirits in your world."
"Yes, and many don't have shrines or idols. What does this have to do with Nerai?"
"Priest Sanshobo said that he suspected the ninja hired by Nerai were just one part of a large trap set for me. He was right, but it wasn't Nerai who orchestrated everything." He spread the scroll out again between them. "It might surprise you to know that ninja know very little about ourselves, too. We've hidden our origins and encouraged rumors about our abilities to mask ourselves even further. You samurai can trace your families and clans back for generations. Our records are more like legends, and most of our names are never recorded on an ancestor tablet. We have no idea where we come from."
Usagi narrowed his eyes. "Leonardo, who did you meet in Nerai's home?"
"He didn't have a name. I guess it makes sense. If I didn't have my family, I would forget mine, too." He looked up at Usagi and breathed out, as if still stunned. "He was the first of my kind. He called himself a god and I don't think he was lying."
"You met a god?" Usagi whispered.
"Tch. Some god..."
When Leonardo didn't explain further, Usagi leaned forward and covered his hand with his own. "What happened?"
"He gave me a choice. If I didn't kill everyone inside the estate, he'd kill you."
"Me? But--"
"It was a test. He wanted to blight my honor so I'd have no recourse but to join him."
Usagi frowned. "But surely even then your family wouldn't turn cast you aside?"
"They wouldn't have to. I would."
Usagi stared at him for a moment in perfect understanding, but the moment didn't last long. "Wait, then why didn't you tell me what you had done?"
Leonardo blinked as if it was obvious. "I was already taking a chance by leaving the women alive. If I'd told you, he might have heard and then--" He cut himself off and glanced away. His voice dropped to a whisper. "It was bad enough I was gambling with your life."
"But," Usagi murmured, "I would've thought you were a murderer."
Leonardo didn't look up. "If you died...I can't even think--" His voice hitched.
Usagi's mouth parted in surprise. He hadn't dreamed that Leonardo's feeling for him ran so deep. Slowly, hesitating as if the ninja's skin might burn him, he put his hand under Leonardo's chin and tilted his face up until their eyes met.
"I would rather die," Usagi whispered, "than think you dishonorable."
There was no response Leonardo could think of. When Usagi tilted his head and leaned forward, he simply closed his eyes. The kiss that followed made the rest of the world disappear.
"Usagi..." Leonardo murmured. "I never would have thought that--you never acted like you were--"
"Nor did you," Usagi said. A small smirk crept over his face. "Your behavior was proper at all times. I look forward to seeing what you will do now that we need not be so proper."
Knowing he was blushing furiously and that he couldn't stop it, Leonardo was saved from a reply when the downstairs door slammed open and Raphael's angry voice echoed through the lair.
"Leo! Where the hell have you been?"
"Little brothers," Leonardo sighed. "I'm afraid we'll have to continue this later. I haven't told them anything yet and Raph sounds really pissed."
"Of course," Usagi said with a nod. "I would also like to hear the story. You didn't have time to tell me how you met Sanshobo."
Wondering how far he could edit the story and still seem believable, Leonardo rolled up the ancient scrolls he'd borrowed from Splinter and set them aside. He had plenty of time to look for clues and scraps of legends referring to the dark god. The first ninja belonged to the world of shadows and death, and for now his world had blossomed unexpectedly into light, like clouds parting after a storm.
End