Disclaimer: I don't own Weiss or Schwarz at all, all credit to Koyasu Takehito.
Chapter 46
Jonin
The sakura had been in blossom, I remembered it vividly, smelt it in the air. The delicate petals had littered the ground, disturbing the flow of the energies in the garden with their chaotic placement. And yet...it was still beautiful, despite its corruption.
The sight was graceful, and somehow calming. I lifted the tea to my lips and sipped silently, legs crossed beneath me upon the wooden deck. I watched the garden through the steam from the cup and blinked slowly. Peace and quiet, the slight rustle of the breeze through the maple trees, the sweet trill of a bird, hidden within the foliage. I could feel the house behind me stirring but tried to ignore it, hang onto this peace just a little longer.
It was early, even for me, to be rising. Before dawn, although I had not cared to take a proper estimation. All I had known was that the house had been silent and dark, and I could not sleep. I had set the fire and boiled the water almost sub consciously, making my way softly out to the garden to sit and tend to my thoughts. I had been sitting here for hours, but when I tried to recall what I had thought throughout my meditation I couldn't place anything specific. I brought the tea back to my lips and wondered if my mental state was slipping. I never usually found myself this...wandering. Even when I considered my nights activities.
"How long have you been sitting there?"
The voice genuinely startled me and I tried my hardest not to react. Yet, while still out of sorts, I managed to spill some of my tea onto my dark yukata, frowning in displeasure at my reaction and its consequence. I turned to look over my shoulder to confirm that the voice I had heard belonged to the person I believed it did. Kansuke-san stood, a tall and slightly imposing silhouette against the open door behind me. The shy morning light was rising on the east side of the house, casting itself through the windows to outline his figure without illuminating his features. I rubbed absently at the wet patch on my clothing and turned back to the garden.
"Good morning Kansuke-san," I said back after a moment's hesitation, trying to recall the passage of time "honestly, I cannot say."
"What you mean to say," his rich voice inched closer while his tread remained silent, testimony to his skill, "is that you've been here too long."
"Or not long enough," I replied quietly, setting the remains of my tea to one side as he settled down to my left, pulling at his yukata as he made himself comfortable.
He sat and stared at the garden, his gaze a mirror of my own. I felt that I should be more flustered by this point, should have realised more quickly that I was sitting before my general in improper dress, my red hair loose around my shoulders, my melancholy hardly disguisable. Yet I could not bring myself to care, nor do anything to rectify it. I realised, as I traced the path of a descending petal, that it had been a long time since I had truly behaved in such a manner. The General seemed to encourage his troops to fraternize with each other, to whatever extent the bounds of rank would allow, and was friendly and companionable off the battlefield. I had still found it a little unnerving, but realised that I had been falling into his social habits, even if he had only hired me for this mission alone. Things had recently raged out of hand, however, and fraternizing was far different to real feelings. Last night...
"...You're still troubled," he said with a frown, not looking at me.
"It is nothing," I shook my head.
"Well," he said in a slightly exaggerated tone, "it does not seem that you are yourself. I don't like my men in a state of unease."
"I am sorry you feel that way," I said, head bowing a little as a spike of duty thrust itself through the haze, "but I am not one of your men."
"Fujimiya, you are worried about your wife, are you not?" his tone shifted, deep, lulling.
"...," I hesitated, not sure how to respond, not sure how he even knew, wondering if he knew that his own interpretation of my disquiet was a lie, "she is sick."
"Hmm, yes," he replied, nodding, "I am sorry you have to be away from her at a time such as this. Yet I fear that you are needed here even more than you are needed at her bedside."
"What do you mean?" I asked after a moment's pause, feeling uneasy at his choice of words.
"...Is it not usually warmer this close to the end of Spring?" Kansuke-sama avoided my question easily, "It is no wonder that the sakura drops to the ground so early."
I nodded in return, feeling a little lighter. I noticed, as he continued to talk, that he had been right. I had been out here too long alone, in fact, I had been too alone for most of my life. The simple sound of the General's deep voice was enough to shake me slightly from my depression, let me focus on something trivial and transient and, for a moment, simply forget that there was anything wrong in the first place.
"Fujimiya," I blinked, realising that he had been calling my name, turning to look into laughing brown eyes, "ah, I see that you have come out of your shell a little, that is good."
I felt a slight blush heat my cheeks and turned my face swiftly back to the garden. I swallowed and tried not to think about why I had come out here in the first place, of what was in my room that I could not consider telling anyone about.
"Fate can be kind and she can be cruel, my friend," the General spoke on as if he had not noted my reaction at all, "but she does not heed the woe of others, or their joy. I assume your wife never wished you misery?"
I swallowed again, ignoring the lump, and tried to do as he asked. I looked at him through the veil of hair falling over my cheek and tried to forget, tried to forget...
"I assume you have never met my wife, Kansuke-san?" my light tone surprised even me.
His laughter was loud enough to wake the house and I blanched. Yet, as he shook his head and wiped at his eyes, I felt as if I was letting something inside of me, or perhaps letting something go. It was not wise to travel life alone, friends and allies alike were something of a mystery to me, but that did not mean I could not find my way through the puzzle.
The smell of smoke filtered through the haze of memory, pulling my eyes from the garden, so far away, back to the dimly lit room in which I stood. The soft light created deep shadows in the corners, the low roof slightly claustrophobic. I blinked and fingered the hilt of the replacement katana hanging at my side. I was not used to such heavy swords as this, more used to my shikoro-ken with its sharp biting teeth. I had been trained in the use of a katana, briefly, but was definitely no master. As a sword I felt that the weight was wrong, the hilt a little too broad, but it would do.
"Ran-kun," that sickeningly innocent voice sounded from her crouching form in the middle of the room, "are you troubled?"
I turned my face away and hid my emotions beneath a mask of indifference.
"Only as troubled as you would expect a man standing patiently in a burning building to be," I said back with a hint of a smirk tugging at my lips.
"Of course!" I caught her closed eye smile out of the corner of my eye and swallowed, "However you know that I would never let you come to harm, not my dear 'brother'."
"Can't we dispense with this illusion now?" I said irritably, unable to hide my unease at the reality of the situation, "You are my client, I am your blade, no blood ties us."
"Oh, true," she shrugged, dark hair spilling over small shoulders, "but it does tie these bodies, like red ribbons, ne?"
I shivered and tried to stop myself from playing into her words, his words. A perfect snake; body of an innocent, eyes of a murderer. I turned my head slowly once more to regard her, him, and forced the distinction of the two into my mind. With her eyes closed and her smile in place it was almost impossible to imagine killing her, yet when her eyes slid open the illusion disappeared and all I could see was oceans of blood. Inhumane.
The longer I had stayed in this body, the more and more my memories had slipped back into place. At first I had been disoriented, terrified, finding myself in this strange and yet familiar body, in this strange yet familiar town. They had taken me from the rain slicked street where I found myself lying, wide eyed and paralysed, to the nearest building and told me exactly what had happened.
I had been brought back. Uesegi had brought me back. I was no longer a prisoner of death.
The thought was so very liberating that it distracted me momentarily from the fact that this situation was entirely insane. I was dead, Ran Fujimiya, Jonin of Iga, bringer of death, killed in the field of battle. Yet now I breathed, now I saw, now I felt. It was almost disgusting in its abnormality. I had looked into the faces of the men above me and frowned, feeling the skin along my forehead crease as I did not recognise either of them, or their strange dress. They seemed to notice this, and continued to tell me about their lord's dilemma, Uesegi Kenshin.
The name brought bile into my throat. I remember throwing up onto the floor and one of the men cursed. It wasn't long after, as they continued their plea, that my last thoughts of Kansuke-san filtered into my consciousness. My memory began to return, slowly, working backwards from the point of my death, further and further back. It was only as I stood here, in this room, wondering how on earth any of this was even possible without demon magic, that I had remembered talking with Kansuke-san that morning more than five hundred years ago.
He had brought me back, Kenshin had brought me back, wrenching me from the otherworld and forcing me back into my body, this reincarnated body. I hadn't really taken full control of my functions until I reached Kenshin's hideout, this mountain retreat. Then I had been free to question him, and yet it was her, and he told me of his plan. His plan to rule once more over the prefectures of Japan.
Fool, tyrant. Yet I could do nothing but listen and learn and submit for the time being as he ranted and raved. I was powerless, afraid and entirely alone in this new world of horrors. The world I knew was five hundred years in the past, and the people I loved were long dead. It was as I thought of them that I had realised something.
"Uesegi," I interrupted, dark eyes focusing on me intently, "this body..."
"Ah yes," he interrupted right back, "your ancestor, a pure descendant of the Fujimiya bloodline. The resemblance is quite striking, don't you think, your face and his?"
"I hadn't given it any thought," I shrugged, lying blithely; when I had seen his face first I had almost believed for a moment that this was all some horrible dream, and I had never died at all, so true was the likeness, "but that isn't what I was to ask."
"Then out with it," his irritated tone belayed her calm expression.
"How did you...no, I mean his life, how is it that..?" I stumbled over describing something I could not comprehend.
"Ah, so noble," a smirk, "worrying about him are you? Don't worry, his mind is long gone now, you have full control of your functions yes?"
"Yes," I replied numbly.
"Hmm, then the Fujimiya of this time is truly dead," he shrugged child's shoulders, "I took control of his mind before I pulled you from deaths grasp you see, helped prepare him for the insertion of your mind. It was really quite interesting, and entertaining, to manipulate someone as strong as Fujimiya Ran. I enforced your jutsu skills onto his untrained body, turned him against his own team, his own clan, and made him try to take their lives."
I felt my eyes narrow instinctively and I could feel my hands shaking against my thighs. So dishonourable, such a vile creature. Uesegi hadn't changed.
After he had finished his take, I instantly considered taking my own life. He intended to use me, as he had during Kawanakajima, to implement his plans and carry out the dirty work his samurai followers would never lower themselves to. Fools, all of them, not one understood the skill I possessed. However, in the end I decided this was too rash, I would play along. I had pandered to his whims so far and played that part of the loyal assassin, the hired blade. I would wait for my time and then I would strike, then perhaps I could atone for my own sins before returning to the nothingness of death.
Yet...killing that boy, Nagi, it had almost blown my entire act wide open. It had been hard enough to torture the man with the flaming hair, force myself to help that snake Yusuke pull the information from him. Ah yes, I remembered Yusuke with no problem at all, despite his female form. Uesegi's right hand, cruel and depraved as any demons lapdog should be. It was no surprise to me when he had ordered the child's death. But it hadn't made the deed any easier to bear.
"You look suddenly squeamish Fujimiya. You are a nijutsu-zukai are you not, one with the art of remaining unperceived? Your kind do not unsettle easily ne? Do not tell me you have lost your skills along with your memories," the subtle chiding laced his tone, breaking my chain of thought.
"I could not lose my skills even if I wanted to," I said, eyes closed, feeling bile in my throat and quelling it instantly, "it is impossible to lose something which is as much a part of me as my heart."
The door took that moment to slide open urgently. Baba quickly enetered hidden, within the body of another innocent. Baba, Kansuke's lieutenant, the man who had helped lay the trap for his own army, his fellow soldiers, on the fateful field of Kawanakajima along with his comrade Kosaka. The damned lieutenant, traitor and assassin, looked slightly worried. I couldn't help but smile at that. Thankfully, it wasn't entirely out of character.
"My lord, they are coming," he said, slightly out of breath, "Yoshitsuna and Yamagata are here."
"Good," the girl said, standing from her crouch on the tatami, "then we are all set."
"They have another with them, a man, he's Weiss," Baba said, eyes narrowing and focusing on me, "he's come for Fujimiya."
"Is that so," the smile was back on her innocent face, "well, then we'll just have to show him how jonin deal with their pursuers, isn't that right Ran-kun?"
"Don't call me that," I said softly, belaying my rising hatred, "you've brought me back for one last mission, isn't that right?"
"Oh come now," she rolled her eyes and padded softly towards Baba, "I know that you are the best Fujimiya, why do you think I brought you back, picked you from all the ninja I have hired in my long lifetime? You're deception was instrumental in Kansuke's defeat at Kawanakajima, I can't forget such a loyal and rewarding act."
Suddenly Kosaka appeared from the shadows behind the doorway. His face was entirely different, yet as with Uesegi's, his eyes betrayed him. The eyes of a traitor also lived within this man. He produced a soft, thick shawl and wrapped it protectively about his lord's shoulders. I ignored their twin glares and focused on the demon between us.
"I owe no loyalty to you," I said back blandly, noting the stiffening of Baba's shoulders, "only to my own code. I have accepted your mission, I will see it done."
"That's all the loyalty I need," she smiled, "take care of Kudo for me."
With that she walked out of the doorway and down the corridor, flanked by her lieutenants. I followed behind for a few paces before breaking off from the group, listening to the intent crackling of greedy flames as I neared the sight of the blaze.
AN: I am very sorry for this taking so long, have had the most ridiculous case of writers block and am stunned that I managed to produce this. I thought for a long time that this story was doomed. However, I think I just needed to get past this chapter and now things will start flowing again.
I want to thank Gillian Sillis again for the nagging! I appreciate it, honestly, and I hope you enjoy this chapter. To all the others who have reviewed so far, thank you! And to those still reading, I hope you enjoy!
Maiko x