When soldiers (ex-samurai, deserters like himself) attacked him, Shinta drew his sword, and their blood fell over him like rain.
It didn't sicken him the way it used to. They would have killed him, and he couldn't die yet. He had to get to Kaoru.
He left their armor and their weapons. He took their coins. He took their food.
He kept to the path that climbed higher and higher up the mountain, higher and higher into the biting winds and the chilling clouds. He followed broken, trampled branches and the faint traces of wagon ruts. The tracks were getting deeper. He was getting closer.
Black eyes haunted his dreams, long black hair and white garments and a soft voice that whispered like snow.
Shinta ignored the way the night shadows seemed to watch him. He ignored the chill winds, and he ignored his memories.
.
When he arrived at the shrine - the broken stones, the shadows, the pilgrims with shorn hair - he felt almost as cold inside as he had been before she had ever warmed him.
But then she was there, seeing him, calling his name, coming toward him, and Shinta remembered what it was to smile.
He remembered. He remembered what it was to feel warm.
She was gazing at him and touching his face and calling his name (his old name), and Shinta felt alive.
A tall man, familiar from the manor, was watching him also, arms crossed, threatening. Some of the others gaped at him. Others went about their chores.
She had grown thinner. Her eyes - something distant, something dark.
It didn't matter.
She was alive.
He was alive.
Soon, he sat amongst them, in the half-repaired shrine. The people had made a humble stew - hot, simple, delicious. "Call me Shinta," he told them, after he had finished his bowl. "That is the name my parents gave me. My old name is dead."
It was the first time he had ever sat in a group of equals - all refugees, all pilgrims. It was the first time he had spoken as himself, for himself.
Shinta was alive.
The tall man met his eyes. Some of the other ex-servants nodded. They understood loyalty, breaking loyalty.
Kaoru stared at him and finally nodded, her fingertips barely touching the coarse fabric over his arm. Something concerning, something like confusion in her eyes, but he couldn't ask her then.
.
Later, in the evening, she sat next to him outside the entrance to the shrine. Shinta flushed. All of the rules, everything that defined what he could do, what she could do, it was gone. ...Could he touch her? Would she want him to touch her? Before, their touches had been brief, clouded by need or fear or worry. Could he... hold her...? As the evening set in?
"Shinta," she said. Her fingers touched his fingers. She tentatively took hold of his hand. "You are... still you. No matter what your name is." His hand lay slack, burning under hers. She tightened her grip. "Shinta, promise me..."
"Anything."
"Promise me you'll always call me Kaoru."
In the evening light her skin looked very pale, and her eyes were wide, pleading.
Shinta smiled and turned his hand palm up to match his palm to her palm, to squeeze her fingers in return. He met her eyes to show her that he was serious. "Of course, Kaoru."
She smiled. Shinta felt something like a choking in his chest, a desperate need to protect that smile, protect her.
He noticed again that she had grown thin since he had last seen her. He looked into her eyes and held firmly her warm hand and tried not to show her his worry.
They sat together in silence, close and silent. They sat with their shoulders leaning close together and their breath in concert and their hands locked as they watched the sun set.
.