The Woods Are Dark and Deep

by Blue Jeans

Chapter 13

"I hate them..." I woke to the light of the sun and the white of the fall sky. A single leaf drifted and fell, brushing my wet cheek and then tumbling to the ground beneath me. I had thought I would not be able to sleep, but I had slept and I had dreamed.

But it was not just a dream.

The emotion inside of me now was pure and black. Even with the fresh, pain-shaking heartache the night before, I could barely remember where I was or who I was or why I had been sad. In the wake of that dream, I had almost completely forgotten about Kazama and my unrequited feelings for him. My present loss paled in comparison to the one I had forgotten.

Losing Kodo, losing the Shinsengumi, even losing Kazama...

It was laughable. Those losses were not comparable to what I had already lost in the past.

I remember now, watching the strangers cut down the same people who braided my hair and sang songs with me. The same people who held me when I cried and loved me all the days of my earlier existence. I had watched them all die for not wanting to fight, for not wanting to hurt others. I remembered the blood that sprayed on my face and stained my clothes, blood from someone I loved so much it hurt even now to remember it, even though I had forgotten who they were. How different that had been than to have the blood of strangers on one's face. I remembered Kaoru's steel arms trapping and protecting me as he carried me away to safety, his heart beating alive and vengeful in my ear...

We had been so young...

I was glad no one was there to see my face. Surely, at that moment, I could have inspired the same fears that Kazama so easily inspired in his enemies.

All of that pain, and for what?

For the humans' need to conquer? For their thirst for power and wealth, for fame and fortune? All this time I had defended them, I had even fought for the Shogun under the Shinsengumi. I had helped the Tokugawa, the very people who had torn away all that I held dear.

No wonder Kaoru hated me. He has probably hated me since that first time he caught me in Okita's presence. No wonder he wanted me to suffer. I had abandoned him, betrayed him and forgotten him. Here, before me now, was the person who had loved me when I was young, the person who had saved me when everyone else had been torn from us, and I had rewarded him with only more things to be bitter over. In my forgetfulness, I had left him to deal with his mounting sufferings by himself and all he had left, all he could do, was tend to his hatred so that he could survive. Unlike me, he never found someone to love him, even if it were pretend. Unlike me, he did not, could not, forget.

We were not the same coin when we met again. We shared the same face but everything else we had held together I had simply let go of in the bright care of Kodo's love. Kodo, who had sold both of us out to the Tokugawa to live, and all I had been able to do was thank him for his sacrifice.

Kodo who had gone to the enemy, worked for them and then continued on to work for more humans, betraying our race with his every breath...

Perhaps, the madness he gave to the Shinsengumi was a type of atonement for what he was doing. Yet, even now, for the first time, I was truly glad that Kazama had cut him down. To work for the humans, the very ones who had killed my family and then to seek them out again at the end of the war so he could gain favor, was unforgivable.

I was unforgivable.

I rose, and all I felt was hatred. It was a burning thing inside of me. I wanted to tear the world apart, tear this horrible country and its horrible creatures apart with my bare hands. Their indifference gulled me, their desire to use the demons fed the fire of hate inside of me until I wanted to-

A twig snapped and I sharply turned my head, my face must not have been very different from an animal's then. Kaoru stood there and when he saw me looking like that, he smiled. Here was probably the expression he had been searching for all along. There was no fear in him as he stared at me while I remained wrapped in the darkness of my memories. After all, he shared it with me. Looking at me, he must have felt that, at last, I was myself again.

"So," he said, for the first time looking tired. "You remember."

"We didn't want to fight. We just want to live in peace... But the humans came anyway. They killed everyone... We hadn't done anything!"

I could feel the hate and anguish stir in my breast again as the words came out. My dream was not just a dream. He knew all of this, but I had to say it. My words, they seem to stir him from his weariness.

"They killed us for wars and their pride! Parents, children... everyone! They killed them all and they didn't even care!"

I had not wanted to hate humans. Some of them were bad, true, but there were many more who weren't. And where were the good ones, a voice in my head asked, on the day those humans massacred your family? When I looked at Kaoru then, I wondered too where the demons were as well.

Where were the ones who could have saved us?

"I can't even make sense of my own feelings," I finally said, trying to calm down. Dimly I remembered Kazama's face. I remembered Sen's smile and Amagiri and Kimigiku's wry humor and loving dedication. I remembered the Shinsengumi, even though they should have been the enemy. Finally, the faces of those men who had tried to help me managed to take the edge off of the hate still burning inside of me, threatening to eat me alive.

Yet, as soon as I acknowledged it, the hatred I felt for humans flowed in my veins, gripped at my chest, and pounded against the inside of my skull again. I'd never felt anything like it before. Even as I struggled, the hate drove out everything else. I could feel my mind begin to slip-

"I see that you have finally remembered everything." Kaoru faced my hatred, a sad smile on his face.

He was still smiling, but his eyes were cold. "Do you understand the truth now? Nothing's fair. There's no justice. This world rewards the foolish and the vicious, and punishes the weak and innocent!" He spat out the words in disgust and frustration. There was a time when I would never have understood him, but I was no longer that person.

"Our home was destroyed by the humans, wasn't it?" I asked. Even now I could smell the fire. Having helped Amagiri and Kimigiku burn the corpses made that dream all the more real.

"We were ordered by the western domains to fight for them, but when we refused, saying we wanted peace and not war..." His eyes were wide and sunken, like the sockets of a skull again. I had seen that look before. "We were slaughtered."

"Like animals," I echoed.

Kaoru smiled at me then, a smile I had not seen since my dream. His misery and rage were all too easy to understand. "And now at last your comfortable, pleasant life is over, and you understand the unremitting cruelty of reality." His smile looked somehow tired, and he stared off at some invisible point in the distance as he spoke. "Now, we are finally equals."

I almost thought I saw his shoulders sag with relief. "The misery I endured for so many years, you have experienced in a fraction of that time. You understand what I suffered, and so I no longer have any reason to hate you..." He looked at me then and I realized how lonely he must have been without me, the other half of his set. "Once I return home, I plan to revive our clan. I will take back the life that was stolen from us."

"You mean to bring back the Yukimura clan?" I asked, surprised.

He nodded.

"But not before I bring justice to all those who did their best to destroy us! The western demons, living fat off the slaughter of their kind; the humans who infest this country..." His eyes burned with hate. I shared Kaoru's pain, and so his rage didn't frighten me. It affected me no more than my rage had affected him. I felt only sadness for him then, and sadness for myself.

The cycle was finally complete. I had found myself becoming a part of it. I had not understood my role in it, but now it was clear.

"With Kodo's improved Water of Life, we can create a whole army of furies that don't lust for blood nor fear the sun. Even those from weaker demonic lineages could regain their strength through the Water of Life! We will found a kingdom of our own!" It explained why I had only felt slightly tired in the day but had neither felt a lust for blood nor that I was truly weaker.

Then again, strength had never been what I was good at. That could change though, I thought as I looked down at my clawed hands. I had not bothered to change back to the girl I had been before Kazama left me, before the memories came back of the past I had lost.

"We'll destroy anyone who stands in our way, and carve out a part of this country where we can live." If Kodo had indeed removed the side effects of the Water of Life before his death, and I had seen it with my own eyes, then such ambitions were certainly within our reach.

I don't know how I looked but I was smiling when I met Kaoru's eyes. "Yes," I answered from the part of me that I had abandoned and betrayed long ago. "Somewhere where the humans will never have the power to take away our most precious things," I finished for him.

Kaoru was in front of me again, but this time there would be no more pain or fear. Instead, his hands cupped my face gently and I looked up to him, this person whose visage was a reflection of my own. Here was my other half, the only one in the world who could truly understand all that I had lost.

I had finally found him.

We were two sides of the same miserable coin, but together we will change that forever. Kazama's abandonment no longer hurt me as much, so long as I did not think on it. Kodo's death could not even touch me anymore.

I was a phoenix rising from the ashes.

I was the girl I had discarded and forgotten so long ago.

I was myself again.

To be continued...