Disclaimer: I don't own Sengoku Basara. However, the reluctant heroine of this piece, Ichijou Akoya (now Date Akoya), is mine.

A/N: This chapter is from Akoya's point of view. She's my first female OC, so I'm feeling my way 'round her, trying to get her characterisation right. I think I managed fine in this one, but the next one promises to be a pain in my butt.

ANYWAY! You finally get to meet the heroine and see what's going on in her head! Hope you all like it.

How strange it was, Akoya reflected, that she should feel so clean when she was minutes away from being defiled by a stranger. The maidservants had scrubbed her to within an inch of her life, peeling away the layers of her wedding kimono and face-paint, taking down her hair and rinsing it till it fell free of the combs and resin that held it in place.

As she examined herself in the mirror – cotton sleeping yukata and hair in a long plait down her back – she felt just a smidgeon of amusement at the abject horror on her new husband's face when he'd first clapped eyes on her and his insistence that she be extracted from all her paraphernalia before he touched her.

Eye. Just one.

The reminder brought with it anger and disdain. She had been numb with fulfilled horror to learn of her sudden nuptials, but she hadn't expected her parents to be so callous as to throw her away on a man who wasn't even whole. She had railed against them for days . Not outwardly; a girl raised in the Ichijou clan never made such public scenes, but she had refused to eat and go about her duties in the household.

Her mother had tried to reason with her. "Come, Akoya, you know you must be married soon! And the Date boy is young, powerful and healthy...it took all my pride to beg him to have you!"

Akoya had responded to each such attempt on her mother's part by descending into deeper silence and refusing to go out of her room.

Till her father had intervened. "It's either Date Masamune or Hojo Ujimasa for you, my girl. If you won't have the first...Hojo-san has shown an eager interest..." he had let the implications of it trail off, leaving her to reach her own conclusion.

She sighed now, shaking off the memory. It couldn't be undone now. A man she had had never seen nor heard of, or an ageing lecher who made it his business to get uncomfortably close every time he visited them. Akoya had not even had to weigh the scales to make her decision. Better to battle the devil than drown in the sea, she had thought to herself, and decided to marry Date Masamune as per her mother's wishes.

Even hours after her marriage, all she knew of him was that he had only one eye, dressed in battle armour day in and day out, or at least, she assumed he did, since he hadn't bothered to dress in a wedding outfit to greet her in. She knew he was young and had a deep, smooth voice that spoke in rough accents and was tinged with resentment even when he was trying to sooth her into talking to him earlier.

It had given her grim satisfaction to catch that unwilling note in his voice, to know that he didn't want to be saddled with her either. But now that she was waiting for him, dressed as per his wishes, waiting for him to come and make her his wife in every way, she found no comfort in it.

If he did not wish to wed me, he will not care to be gentle tonight.

She forced herself to ignore the fear that came with that idea and think of ways to stop him from sleeping with her. The rational part of her knew that she had no hope of succeeding – a slim, unarmed woman against a battle-hardened samurai in the prime of his youth...there was no contest.

He would win. And he might be angry with her for daring to fight him, to deprive him of his conjugal rights. He owned her, after all. Her parents had foisted her on him in exchange for letting him have a precious tract of land.

"Marry our daughter, and we shall give you what you desire without a war" - that had doubtless been the deal.

She wasn't a wife, then, Akoya reflected bitterly. She was a possession. The price a man had to pay to preserve the lives of his troops.

I have been bartered, in the interest of peace.

So what's your first impression of Akoya? Review and tell me!