Disclaimer: I don't own Sengoku Basara. However, the reluctant heroine of this piece, Ichijou Akoya (now Date Akoya), is mine.
A/N: Any Engrish that Date uses will be in bold type.
The shoji flew open with a rattling crash, causing Akoya to leap out of sleep, her bedding, and almost her skin. Gasping in startled fright, the young woman looked about wildly with sleep-laden eyes, searching for the intruder. By the time her vision focused, he was sitting cross-legged on her futon, clutching his sides in glee.
For the first time in her life, she wanted to commit murder. Moreover, she told him so. His laughter stemmed at that, and he eyed her in bemusement.
"Never?"
"What?" she snapped, acutely aware of her semi-dressed state. The sleeping yukata was decent, but so...clingy, which hadn't escaped her husband's attention, much to her discomfort. "And stop eyeing me like I'm a side of prime beef!" Akoya added, her desire to squirm back into her blankets firmly offset by her desire to be as far from him as geographically possible.
"And just why not?" the incorrigible man asked. "It's not as if I'm allowed to do any more than look – so look my fill I shall." His lips curved then, disturbingly sensual and confident. "You see?" he murmured, tracing the curve of her hip below the tightly bound sash with a glint in his gaze that she didn't care to decipher.
I wonder if that's a compliment or just his way of being a nuisance, Akoya wondered helplessly, clueless about what to make of it all. In the scant three weeks she had been at Oushu, she had been treated well, if distantly. No one disturbed her – Save her husband. No one intruded on her privacy – save her husband. No one made her feel like a prize fool – save her husband.
And he accomplished all that mostly by appearing when he was least wanted and teasing her into impotent rage till all she was capable of doing was either throwing something at him (Which he'd proven adept at catching), or worse – stamping her foot and wailing (which would no doubt encourage him).
At the moment, the young lady of Oushu considered herself extremely fortunate on having successfully avoided disgracing herself completely by not succumbing to the latter urge, and settling for stony snappiness instead.
But at this rate, I'll turn into a fishwife! her inner self wailed.
"So, you've never wanted to kill someone before today?" Masamune asked her again, having decided that he'd given her enough hell for the present.
Akoya shook her head, all seriousness.
"That...I'm finding that hard to believe."
"You would. You are a killer by trade, after all." It slipped out before she could stop it - the first indication she had given him of her very real reasons behind her rejection of their marriage.
Silence enveloped them, punctuated by the distant shouts of men training in the dojo. The mirth was gone from the room, leaving something not quite cold, not quite terrible. Some thing uncomfortable and twitching, waiting to implode – or sleep forever.
Finally, Masamune raised his eyes to her, strangely contemplative. "You loathe violence, don't you?"
Akoya nodded, too surprised by his perceptiveness to lie or excuse herself.
"Then why did you agree to marry me, a samurai?"
The honest curiosity in his face softened her too; she relaxed in his presence for the first time. "The alternative was horrible."
He cocked his head, waiting.
"Hojo Ujimasa," she supplied, a dart of pleasure hitting her heart when he winced in sympathy.
But she wasn't getting away with it that easily. "So you decided to marry me – knowing you'd be trapping me in this farce of a...whatever the hell it is we've got here?" The understanding in Masamune's eyes did not temper the sharp force of his anger as he latched onto the idea that she had used him as escape – and failed to live up to her side of the marriage deal.
Three weeks ago, on that terrible first night together – when she'd repulsed him and driven him away – and wrecked them both – she would have agreed in a heartbeat. She wouldn't have cared what he would think.
The days since, when she had been accorded time and respect and mostly – solitude – had given her a grudging respect for the man she had married. There were so many things he could have done to her for the way she had behaved, yet what he had chosen was to leave her be and meet him on her own terms.
In a strange way, Akoya felt freer in her new home with this stranger than she had with the parents who had loved and nurtured her. I owe him honesty, at the least. "I would not have rejected you, Date-san, if I had not been given that choice," she acknowledged, partly apprehensive and mostly amused. Let us see what you do when you find out that you are the architect of your own entrapment!
What he did, in her imagination, was combust at once.
What he did, the reality sitting warm and mussed before her, was blink at her with a wide blue-grey eye, and dissolve into honey-smooth chuckles of calm hilarity.
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