AN: Still no beta… Any volunteers? Sorry I haven't been in contact with anyone. Life had really been tough lately and sometimes just getting through a day is all I can manage. If you contacted me previously, please let me know if you are still interested.

Collateral Damage

Chapter 3: Wreckage

Saitou 1879

Knock.

Knock.

Saitou looked up as his door inched open. "I'm busy."

"Husband?" Tokio stepped in looking unsure. "Husband, I am most sorry to disturb you."

Saitou froze staring as Tokio stepped hesitantly into his office. As usual, she looked beautiful, more so now that she was only a few feet away. He wrenched his eyes down to the paperwork that littered his desk. "Tokio, I am busy."

"I understand husband."

He hated that she called him that. He liked hearing her say his name, but the time for such things had passed years ago. Since Echigo, she only called him husband, and he long ago gave up the right to ask for anything from her. All he could expect was her tolerance.

"I came to ask for a small increase in the allowance for the boys." She stepped closer. "You are busy at work, so I have enrolled them in a school that will teach them the basics of swordsmanship until you have time to teach them yourself."

Saitou nodded. "Of course."

And now someone else was doing his duty as a father. Not surprising. It was only right that she find another man to step in to teach his children things that he was unfit to. It was more surprising that she hadn't found someone years ago. He had expected her to leave him when he had told her of the move to Tokyo, or at the very least tell him no. He hadn't even found a suitable place for his family to stay, instead, when she had shown up, he had taken the first house he'd found available. Somehow it seemed fitting that the house was a wreck. He dug in his desk and pulled out a purse of money and placed it on the front edge of the desk.

"Kamiya is a delightful teacher. I am sure that she will teach our children the basics of swordsmanship well." Tokio smiled happily picking up the money.

"Kamiya." Saitou felt his eye twitch. There were hundreds of swordsmen in Japan, maybe even thousands ranging from Himura's old master who still haunted a mountain top outside of Kyoto making pottery to young men who had never seen a day of battle in their lives and she chose…

"Yes, Karou Kamiya." Tokio still smiled. "I met her yesterday in the market with her friends Yahiko…"

Twitch.

"Kenshin…"

Twitch, twitch.

"and Sanosuke."

Twitch, twitch, twitch.

"I think they will be good influences for the boys."

Snap. The pen he had been clutching broke in half sending a fine spray of ink across the paper he had been filling out and his desk. He hastily dropped the broken shards and took out a piece of blotting paper to clean up the mess.

"I trust your judgment." Saitou managed to grind out through gritted teeth.

"Thank you, husband." Tokio bowed. "Will you be home this evening?"

Saitou looked pointedly at the pile of papers that sat on the front corner of his desk. "I have work to do."

Tokio bowed again. "Sorry. I should have noticed. I shall see you when you are off work then."

Saitou kept his eyes on his papers until she left, bowing one more time. As the sound of her footsteps wound through the station to the goodbyes of his coworkers, he sat back staring at the place where she had stood. She'd never invaded his workplace before and part of him was suspicious that she chose to do it now, especially to inform him that she had hired that tanuki girl to teach swordsmanship to his children.

Then, he shrugged and went back to work. It didn't matter. If she wanted to play games, she could. It had little to do with him. His place was to stay out of her way and enjoy the fact that she still was tolerating him to be her husband. She could do better. Perhaps she would find a worthy playmate if she kept stayed around Himura. Shinamori was in town, and while the man was a bit young, not to mention far below Tokio's level of cunning, the match wasn't bad. He was well off and after that business with Shishio, he had settled down to a quiet respectability. Maybe one of Himura's friends in the government would suit her better, though. Martial skills were unnecessary in this new age, as was bravery, intelligence, and honor. Perhaps Tokio would be better off with a Meiji husband who would keep her safe and living in the lifestyle she had been born to. Instead of living in the rundown ruin he had provided her with, she could be in one of those new, European houses that had become the newest fashion. She'd be able to wear silks again, eat delicate foods, and maybe someday…he wouldn't miss her.

Saitou 1870

The guard gave one last smirk and slammed the iron bound door shut. Mako, one his cellmates slid down the wall and landed with a thump on the floor. Hiro sat down next to him and wrapped his arms around his legs. It was winter and for another night they had only themselves and the threadbare rags to keep themselves warm.

"I thought… he…he said I won…." Mako shuddered, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and looking like he was going to vomit.

"They lie." Saitou watched from his place next to the heavy beams of the door as the group in the other cell scrambled to get under the wool blanket the guard had tossed them.

Mako didn't reply, instead rushing over to the small pail that served as their chamber pot to empty his stomach. Hiro shook his head and pulled his legs against himself tighter as the other man retched. Silence filled the cell. Down the hall someone was moaning softly in between sobs and soft whimpers.

It was the guards' newest game. Whoever sucked the best on the guard's cock got the prize. The "winner" of the game got a blanket and food for themselves and their cellmates. The losers got nothing, no blanket, no food. Seeing that they spent the day out in the snow with little in the way of appropriate clothing and less in the way of food, only to come back to their frigid cells wet, exhausted, and starved, it was only a matter of time until the cold or starvation killed them. The blanket game was, underneath the perversion, deadly earnest.

Mako had volunteered to be the one from their cell. Hiro had turned away, glancing uncertainly between Mako and the guard that had come to see if their cell wanted to play the game. Saitou had met the guard's sneer with a blank look. He'd learned that look after a few weeks of getting "taught a lesson in manners" by the guards when he had shown his disgust over some of the other "games" the guards had come up with. Those weeks had made him realize that Okita had been the lucky one. Lung rot was a far more honorable death then being tied to a post in a stinking side yard where the kitchen dumped its garbage, and where guards would visit to work off the day's frustrations on his body with whips, sticks, or just pelting him with the refuse that was strewn about the place. But seeing the new trend in humiliating, depraved games, he'd gotten off relatively unscathed back then.

"I can't…" Mako gulped as he sat back. "I just can't. Not again."

Saitou nodded still watching the hall. He'd like to have said that he didn't blame the man. He'd like to have said something along the lines that he had been surprised that Mako had volunteered in the first place, so his not wanting to repeat the performance was fine. He would have like to say that they could do without the guard's benevolence and generosity. But he couldn't and as he looked to Hiro, he realized that the other man wasn't going to say any of those things either. They weren't the people that they had once been. Mako wasn't a small country daimyo anymore than Hiro was still an aspiring priest at a shrine or Saitou was a Shinsengumi. They had become other beings. He couldn't say people. No. They had stopped being people the moment they had passed through the gates to Echigo prison. Even animals had more worth than they had. He was being liberal even with the word being, thing had a more truthful ring to it. Maybe someday, if he survived this, he might become a being, maybe even a person again, but for now…

Hiro leaned his forehead against his up-drawn knees. "We'll take turns."

Tokio 1879

Well that could have gone better. Tokio flopped inelegantly into the rickshaw and vaguely hoped that she'd be able to wrench her pregnant self out of it again when she got home. The most I got was a broken pen and a few eye twitches. Well, it's still early in the game. I've got time.

It had also been good to see him. She hadn't realized just how badly she'd missed him until she opened the door and saw him look up at her. Until then, she'd fooled herself that she was annoyed at him, played with the notions of getting him back for his absence, even considered in her darkest moments of packing and leaving. But watching him…

Where had her Saitou gone? He'd looked so… trapped, almost frightened when she'd stepped in. She'd wanted to reach out to him, step around the desk and run her fingers across his face, sooth him as she had once been able to, before the fall of the shogunate. She'd wanted him to come home with her so she could rub the stiffness out of his muscles while teasing him about something, anything so that his eyes would glimmer and his mouth would curl. She wanted to tug him out from behind the desk and go walking with him as he told her about his day until the unhappiness that hung around him blew away in the breeze. She wanted to go find Tsutomo and put him in his father's lap and say, "See here is your son. You have another on the way. Come home. We need you."

But she knew that was wrong and after years of carefully stepping around him trying to not upset the delicate balance of their life, she had to take the risks she hadn't dared to. She had to do something to get Saitou back. If she didn't, she would lose him. She weighed the purse and looked off to where the dojo was. She only had tonight to get the boys ready then tomorrow she could put things into play.

First though, she had to do something about getting them ready. The source of her problems came into view as the rickshaw came to a halt in front of the lovely mansion that Saitou had procured for them. She dragged herself wearily to her feet, paid the driver who was looking at the crumbling, decaying, horror she had been consigned to as if a ghost was about to come out and attack, and waddled herself up the uneven stone path, through the leaning, weathered gate, and through the front door that shrieked like a dying soul as she pushed it open.

The house was a wreak. It looked like the original owners had tried to blend a traditional house with a Western house and failed miserably. The roof, a Wester style tile, leaked and creaked ominously when certain walls were touched. The floors were wooden and weather beaten with graying boards that were both splintery and in places decayed. Shoes had be worn at all times and if one of them was careless enough to use good manners and take them off, they soon paid with multitudes of splinters and sometimes loss of blood. The outside walls were falling apart, with gaping holes in the paneled wood work and shoji doors with shattered supports that rattled and fell in even a mild wind. The inner walls were even worse. They had been made of lathe and plaster which had stained and cracked, leaving gaping holes. The only ones that seemed to like them were the rats that scampered through them and gnawed at the wood at night. She didn't even want to consider the few windows that were both small and broken.

Saitou couldn't have found a worse house if he had searched all of Japan.

The nurse, Kuni, that she had hired rushed to her the second she managed to push the door shut. "The fire went out again!" The woman was covered in ash and her hair was hanging askew of its once neat tie. "I swear I had it lit! I swear it, then when I came back to start cooking it was out."

Tokio wasn't surprised. The kitchen had the infallible ability to extinguish all forms of fire in the fire pit. It also had the distinction of having many, many Western style cupboards with shelves that slanted steeply to the left, right, front, or back. The only thing that even somewhat worked in it was a western style ice box that had to be supplied with expensive ice every two days that melted into a small stream that meandered through the dirt floor of the kitchen.

Tokio didn't even bother trying to calm the girl. She just pulled some coins out of the purse Saitou had just handed her and gave them to the girl. "Go to the noodle house and pick up a meal for all of us."

Glad to escape, Kuni ran off leaving Tokio, who made her way down the dismal hall, past the broken doors leading to rooms with shattered floors, to the two small rooms in the back that were still usable. Her two boys were crouched together giggling over a couple of carved wooden horses that they had racing up and down the graying floor boards.

"Have you bathed yet?" Tokio already knew the answer, but she felt it was somehow traditional that they go through this ritual.

"Momma, the bathhouse is haunted." Tsutomo looked up at her with a pout that she was sure would one day become just like his father's disgusted scowls. "It's scary in there."

Eiji nodded solemnly. "Can't we take a bath in the morning?"

"It is better to take a bath now." Tokio said her expected part of their ritual, but tonight she had extra ammunition that might inspire them to actually go out to the tipsy shack that pretended to be a bathhouse and get clean. "That way we can leave earlier for your lessons at the Kamiya dojo."

The toys were abandoned as the two boys tossed them aside and raced past her to get clean quickly. The echoing sounds of thudding feet, creaking wood, and shrieks of shock as delicate skin met icy water followed her as she made her way carefully down the hall to the kitchen, hoping she might cajole a little hot water for tea out of the reluctant fire.

She had a little luck and by the time the boys pulled their shivering, frozen selves in, she had a pot of tea steeping. "Hurry and get dressed. Dinner will be here soon and I have some tea made."

She listened carefully until both children were in dressing before pulling the small tea cups down from their precarious perch on a tipsy shelf. She carefully lifted her kimono and stepped across the muddy brook to get to the ice box hoping that there might be something to ward off hunger until the nurse got back. She only found a block of tofu and a few wilted radishes.

"Momma, I'm clean." Tsutomo came loping towards her through the mud. "I'm hungry. When is Kuni bringing food?"

She sighed at his now dirty feet and ruffled his hair. "Soon, here have some tea."

Eiji came in a few moments later being careful not to step in their homemade stream. "Can't we have hot water? It's getting cold and it would be really great if we could have a hot bath."

Tokio handed him a cup of tea. "Not until we get the ofuro fixed. With it sitting on the ground, we can't light a fire under it."

Eiji, having become used to such small luxuries as a hot bath, home cooked food, walls that doubled as windows, and floors that didn't attack feet, grumbled as he sipped his tea. "We should do something about this place."

Tokio nodded. "Good idea. We'll begin tomorrow after your class. We can start with…" She tapped her finger against her chin. She'd have liked to start with the roof, but she was too clumsy and heavy to be of any help and she was not going to send the children up there. She could hire someone to do that though, and perhaps she and the children could do other jobs. "We'll start with the walls."

She was met with two identical looks of disgust.

"We can pick up the paper and some wood on the way home tomorrow." She ignored the looks and sipped her tea.

"Momma, can't we just go home?" Tsutomo had asked that same question every night since they had stepped into this house.

"We are home." Tokio had carefully suppressed the comment she could have easily made that Saitou wanted them here. First, she didn't want her son blaming his father, and second, she wasn't entirely convinced that Saitou did want them there. The house was such a disaster that she couldn't help but wonder if it was Saitou's message to her to leave.

"I want to go home." Tsutomo wasn't ready to give up yet.

"Well, perhaps you should go to bed then." She frowned at him. "Maybe in the morning you will appreciate what you have a bit more."

Her son lapsed into a sulky silence leaving Eiji twitching nervously at his side. She knew that Eiji shared her son's opinion, but still retained enough good manners to not speak about it. However, it was more obvious to the boy that there was something definitely wrong with the situation. Tsutomo could only understand that the house wasn't a good house. Eiji could read in more, that the house was not only a bad house, that they were alone in the bad house, that Saitou had provided the house, and that Saitou was the one who was never in the house with his wife, son, and the child he had taken in.

After another cup of tea being sipped in Tsutomo's unrelenting sulking, the two boys went back to the back room to continue the game with the horses. It was getting dark out and Kuni had still not arrived back with dinner. Tokio wasn't entirely surprised. The girl had probably taken the money as her severance pay and ran home. It had happened with an almost depressing regularity.

She got up and coaxed the fire to light again and made some rice for her and the boys. It wasn't much, but it would keep them quiet for the evening. Tomorrow, she'd pick up some vegetables and perhaps a fish for dinner when they bought the paper and wood. She could also ask around to see if there were any laborers that could repair the roof and maybe find a new nurse. After that, she could come home, cook dinner, repair a wall or two, get the boys cleaned, fed, and in bed.

She could do it.

After all, no one else would.

Author Notes

Echigo Prison: I looked for something about Echigo Prison and found nothing useful as far as architecture goes. I am using what I hope to be at least something close, which is an old Korean prison I saw. I could claim that I am also using RK, especially Sano's stay in Saitou's jail, but that didn't give me enough to really work with, but it did confirm some aspects or construction. Prison doors were made out of really thick wood (maybe bamboo in RK) that was bolted together to form a cage like structure for the front of the cell and the door. The prison I saw had an iron bound door that separated the cells from the guard room. The floor was made from rock, and the windows, if they had any, would be tiny. Things I did find in Daughter of the Samurai were: that Echigo was known for very, very deep snow; political prisoners tended to end up there; there was a high death rate at the prison even after the "reform" period that Japan's prisons went through during the Meiji era; and that family members looking for imprisoned loved ones would often come through Echigo province searching for their lost and get absorbed into the area.

Daimyo: A daimyo was a lord of a region. While some held quite a bit of power, I noticed in Daughter of a Samurai that the country daimyos had little power beyond their immediate township. It seemed like the daimyo (who was the father of the author of the book) was little better than a hereditary figurehead that had a bit more money than his fellows. His children, while respected, still ran around town, bought candy in stores, and seemed little different from normal kids. The family seemed more trapped by their roles than they benefited from them.