We did not have a symbol for "I love you." at the time no words were needed and we had all the time in the world to tell each other so.

"I look forward to our duel" she spoke the words to me, but "I have missed you" she told me with her eyes and hands.

We gave each other the challenging stare that was expected of us, and she departed with her new husband. I was left to pick up the pieces of what was once my heart.

No that was not dramatic extremism, that was how I felt. She was no longer mine. I knew she could not possibly have chosen the man she hated so much as her mate, but still, while she could be with me in secret and in the heart, we could never feel the joys of being man and wife.

So yes, it was my heart that lay there on the tatami mats.

As she walked out the door behind her husband, she turned to send me a last gesture.

"Meet me tonight" her hands signalled.

She rushed out when Kiso turned to see what was keeping her. Over his shoulder his eyes met mine. Triumph, were all they told me.

I turned to bow my leave of my brother, but he stopped me before I could make my exit.

"Brother, whatever you feel for that woman. Our cousin must never find out." He showed his apparent knowledge without the slightest hint of feeling. It was a statement of facts, not of emotions.

With those words echoing through my mind, I left to prepare for my meeting with Tomoe. This called for another few hours of training to take my mind off of the possible what ifs and why nots.

According to the system we had developed on our mountain temple, I was to wait for a note telling me the location of our meeting place. I wondered how she would send it. Before we had a special hollowed out tree in which we would leave each other messages, here we had no such thing, and we both knew that we could not rely on the servants. Servants were too easily bought and their loyalty was too fickle.

While I was mulling over this, I felt something whiz past my face. Ahh, I had forgotten her skill as an archer. I reached over to pluck out the arrow imbedded in the tree a couple feet away from me. She had made it such a close call on purpose. I smirked at the thought. Looking over I could just barely see her standing in front of her husband, who was waving his hands around frantically. She was in the pose she used when she was trying to appear innocent to the monk or monks who were lecturing her for some random prank. Hands behind her back and head down, looking up through her lashes. It was surprisingly effective. Obviously her husband was lecturing her for so blatantly trying to kill off the younger brother of Yoritomo. He did not know the secret to the arrow. It had a small piece of paper rolled around it and painted the same color as the wood of the shaft.

In order to keep up the pretense, I stalked over to demand an explanation of Kiso, completely ignoring Tomoe as he no doubt expected.

"What is the meaning of this Yoshinaka?" I demanded, purposely forgetting his less formal name and pushing the arrow, minus the note, in his face.

"Should I suspect that you are, perhaps less confident in your wife's skill?"

He stuttered for a moment, obviously surprised by my forceful attack after my silence in my brother's presence, but then he found his bearings.

He waved his hand for silence as Tomoe opened her mouth to state some small excuse.

"Forgive my wife" he whined out, "she does not know her own strength. She was aiming for a much closer target and did not expect her arrow to go quite so far, else she would have aimed in a different direction." He effectively placed the blame entirely on Tomoe while aggrandizing her prowess and hoping to catch me in a statement of fear at my close call.

I looked over at the absence of anything between our location and the tree at which I had been standing, there was nothing in between.

"I see."

Without waiting for a reply to my doubtful statement, I spun away to return to my practice. I wanted to leave immediately to scan the note, but I knew I could not show such an obvious sign of disgruntlement. I resolved to go as high as I could in my forms so as to completely scare Kiso. I was relatively sure Tomoe would not have told him of my skill, nor would she have revealed her own. This would put an edge of fear and desperation in his actions, as I could tell that he was paying more attention to my movements than to his supposed critique of his wife's archery. After all, she was a superb archer, and her black arrows edged with goose wings hit the center of their target time and time again. A sharp disparity to his wide ring of arrows that circled around the center in random tangents, but never hit.

I did worry for her at that. Such an obvious show of superiority over this arrogant man would not bode well for her later. His face grew very red as the men watching began to laud her skill and make small snide remarks at his expense. Or at least they must have appeared biting to one so conscious of his own merit, but to others it was just playful joking.

His anger consequently effected his aim and his shots fell wider and further from his mark, further increasing his anger. Finally he laid down his bow, making an off hand remark about the karma stating this was a bad day for his accuracy and wandered off, trying to appear nonchalant.

I smiled to myself as I continued, I had not yet reached my sixteenth form and already he was leaving. Kiso zero, Tomoe one.

Night fell, and the darkness provided the perfect cover for my movement. I was too big to take the tree route, but I was familiar with a couple back routes between my rooms and Kiso's complex. Fortunately her note had set to meet on the edge of their rooms, at the border of the nearby forest. Easily slipt into if approached, and invisible to any eye looking out from the housing complex."

Oh such clandestine going ons these late night meetings under the moonlight with nary a sound but your own breaths and whispers. Ahh young love.

"You laugh Kage, silly boy, when you fall in love I will pay you back in full for your mockery. But of course you will not realise it because your head will be too full of dewdrops and daisies"

He scoffed at me and turned his nose up in the air, an unbecoming look that he had no doubt learned from Sora, on whom such expressions looked much more endearing. I told him so.

He denied it emphatically and told me that he would never succumb to the wiles of any female. I could already tell by the blush on his cheeks that he was presently experiencing his first puppy love. Perhaps the niece of the tea merchant who had recently come to visit her old uncle? I had noticed Kage's absence from the house more often, and I heard rumors of his presence around the tea house. The old merchant had gone so far as to come to me to complain about his detrimental effect on business. Kage did hav a rather impressive glare, which he had doubtless levelled on any competitors for the niece's affections, basically any and all who had approached the tea house.

I told the old man that this affliciton would pass as soon as his niece's visit ended, and we shared a look of long suffering commiseration. What crazy things these youngsters got up to. It was so different back in the day when we were young, after all. Buahaha.

Oh dear, Kage is looking at me like I have gone off my rocker, sudden laughter after long contemplation would promote such a belief I suppose.

"I was early to our meeting spot. Unwilling to wait for the zenith of the moon and I crept out as soon as full darkness fell.

Everything sounds so much louder when one is trying to move silently. The footsteps I made on the soft carpeting of pine needles echoed like sharp cracks in my mind. And when a twig snapped underfoot, oh horror of horrors. Every shadow was a person just waiting to catch us. I must admit, my hand was firmly placed on the hilt of my sword throughout that short journey. My eyes were darting around warily.

But once I arrived at the place designated for our reconnaisance, all such worries flew from my mind at her appearance.

I was surprised at the strength of my emotions. True I had missed her, but I had not realized how much I missed her. Everything seemed to settle into place with a last clink as I was finally able to talk and act freely with her.

We flew into each others arms, and we were quite indescernible for some time. To wrapped up in feeling each other's skin to ensure that we were really there, than any verbal communication.

Finally we broke apart in order to breathe and stare into each other's eyes.

"Yoshitsune" she started, and then paused as if trying to figure out what to say next.

"What happened?" I substituted for her. I wanted to know how she had fallen into the claws of the disreputable man she had fled in the first place.

She smiled then, "well we were perhaps not as discreet as we first thought."

I must have made some sound of disbelief and she full out grinned.

"Yes Yoshitsune your amorous expression whenever you glanced in my direction, and moonstruck attitude when we were apart..." she started teasingly.

I poked her, "No it could not have been I" I stated in a dramatically pompous tone. "You were the one who had such a woebegone expression at every small leavetaking and you were the one who would often be caught gazing at my handsome visage."

Laughter erupted from both of us and we collapsed to the floor, consumed in our giggles. Ahh it felt good to laugh freely once more. To be silly without ramifications.

Our laughter gradually faded into the peaceful silence, softened by the treebranches. We were left in a state of repose. I leaning against the nearest tree trunk, and her body resting against my chest. It was a pose that was usual to us, as we had spent many happy days before in each others company as such.

She traced the scars on my hand.

"Ahh Yoshitsune, how I have missed you" she murmured.

Fearful it would be

to speak it out in words

so I endure a love

like the morning glory

that never blooms conspicuously

I murmured in agreement. Watching a petal drift down from the cherry tree above us, I contemplated just how impermanent our existence was. Soon gone after its first bloom. Even our happiness could not last.

Eventually she stirred, and turned to face me.

"I was serious about our belief that we hid our affections."

I looked in her eyes with no small amazement.

"You mean?"

"Yes. Our last meeting under that far away cherry tree was not as well hidden as before. Apparently we were too distraught or made too much noise. Regardless, one of the monks, a new one who still dipped his hands in the jar of politics and had yet to achieve that meditative neutrality, saw us and decided that relaying the news of my actual gender to a passing courtier would benefit him better than a shaved head.

Well the passing courtier spoke to his wife who told her friend who told another friend who happened to be the current phase of one of the officers of Yoshinaka, who eventually relayed this news to his lord.

Apparently Yoshinaka had yet to forget the one girl to get away from his lasciviousness, and absence had put me on something of a pedestal. I became more worthy of his lust and he dug deeper. My family was an old diluted line of some minor official, just barely acceptable. But that was enough for him and he decided to punish my rejection by forcing me into marriage. He could thus satisfy his lusts at the same time he destroyed my freedom.

He and his retinue arrived just weeks after you had departed.