Whoo! I promised myself that after writing this and ch. 4, I'd do homework, so... yea.
TO THE KIND GUEST WHO HAS BEEN REVIEWING: thank you a ton! I really appreciate the reviews! I know the skipping around thing is confusing, but I want it to be hard to follow. (lol). But yes, thank youuuu anyone who reviewed! It makes my day :)
IMPORTANT NOTICE: I made a mistake in ch. 1. The assassin who attacked Zenshi didn't die, he was simply wounded and then ran away real fast because y'know, people tend to do that. (my mistake, I had Zenshi stab him in the wrong body part lol)
DISCLAIMER: Ohhh Sorachi-senseiiii these characters belong to youuuu except Zenshi but I suppose you own his race too XD
NOW. I PRESENT MORE CONFUSING TIME SKIPS FOR YOU!
if you're confused about ages and times and what the heckie is happening, I may clear up at the end.
Eyes of Wolves
- 3 -
.: SEVENTEEN YEARS AGO :.
There are bright blue eyes gazing at him, and he is not sure he is comfortable with the disconcerting sapphire hue twinkling innocently at him. The child's hand is wrapped firmly around his finger, and the child giggles. But all he can feel is the pulsating Yato blood of the little boy, hidden within veins just beneath that thin, pink baby skin.
"Hello," Zenshi says. His voice is flat, lacking inflection. He is sometimes told that if he continues to fail to communicate like a normal person, he will never become a successful man like his father.
He doesn't necessarily care, though.
The toddler giggles. Zenshi, however, does not even spare the child a smile.
"Zen," his mother chides gently, "we're just having tea. You're welcome to join us."
The uneasy flicker of his own blue eyes is easily read by his mother. Well-accustomed to his silent ways, she has long since learned every single gesture and its meaning.
"Well then," she decides, "please keep an eye on Kamui."
Kamui, however, does not need to really be looked after. At the moment, his small hands are still grasping Zenshi's, and he is all smiles and blue eyes.
Zenshi realizes, then, why he dislikes those eyes so much — perhaps, even by just a shade, it is because they were far too similar to his own.
Eyes of a Yato.
.: APRIL, PRESENT :.
"And that is where the Night King Hosen used to live," Seita announced, priding himself on his extensive knowledge of the City of the Night. Having abandoned its old name, Yoshiwara stood in broad daylight, the skies open to all. "Mom lived up there, too."
Zenshi had nothing against the city, but he was uncomfortable to say the least. The open air sent a hundred aromas, a hundred auras, a hundred colors to his vicinity. He could not shake the habitual itch that percussively strung his nerves; the itch that pulled him around in a wary circle to survey his surroundings and assure himself that no one was tailing him.
"What do you think? Nice, huh?" Seita spread his arms, and then put his hands on his hips. "Welcome to Yoshiwara!"
Zenshi offered the boy the smallest of smiles — he was not unkind, after all — and put a hand on the child's shoulder. The gesture, however subtle, was soaked in by Seita, who grinned and began down a new road. Zenshi swung his umbrella to the other hand, lamenting his lack of light but finding calm in the soothing shade of his parasol.
He convinced himself, eventually, that a pair of blue eyes was not following his every move.
.: TWELVE YEARS AGO :.
The Amanto has a vengeful grin and several weapons strapped to his person. Zenshi will not forget the face that hissed in his own that night, several years ago. He will not forget the rotten, putrid scent of that alien's breath down his neck as his eye was nearly gouged out. Not then, and not now.
"You," hisses the Amanto, his scaled skin bristling. "Of all people, I run into this little boy?"
Zenshi brandishes his umbrella. He is stoic and silent, pretending he doesn't care.
"I'm sorry, do I know you?" But he does know the Amanto, and he's going to kill him right there, right then, right now.
"The little politician's boy," scoffs the Amanto. Hit for hire is written all over his face, all over the steady stalk in his stride, his calculated distances. "Shall I finish the job?"
Zenshi fires, but underestimates the other man. He suddenly feels scaled skin on him, the same as it was when he was just a boy and too cold with fear to feel a thing.
"I'll make sure to gouge your eye out nice and good this time, yes?"
The man must be insane. He must.
There is a scuffle, and Zenshi pushes the man away with a strangled shout. He feels the knife veer away from his eye, but it drags across his nose and down his cheek, and he is screaming murder.
His father runs out into the plaza, horrified, and he is followed by an Amanto ambassador who calls for his embassy's police. Strong arms pull Zenshi away from the man, but it's too late.
The knife is sitting squarely in the Amanto's chest, his heart — Zenshi made sure not to miss this time.
And from the corner of the courtyard, a pair of blue eyes alight upon the scene. He smiles his smile, and then erases it; but not before Zenshi sees.
A little wave and a hop, a skip, a step, and Kamui is gone.
.: APRIL, PRESENT :.
Smoke stung his eyes and nose, but he ignored it. He also disregarded the short kunai poised at his throat, blade leaning against his skin.
"You underestimate me," she said. Pointedly, she rotated the knife in her hand. When he didn't so much as bat an eye, she recalled her weapon. "Yer not afraid of anythin'."
Was it a question? Or a statement?
"No. There are still things," he said simply.
"Like?" Tsukuyo staked the kunai decisively in the wood of the windowsill, grinding its blade into the oak rim until its splintered.
"Many things." Zenshi took the hint and backed away from the window.
"Like what yer tryin' to run from? What is it? Who is it?" She gripped the knife handle harder. "I appreciate ya tryin' to get away before ya bring trouble, but at least tell us why."
His lips were dry; his eyes flickered out the window, and back. Tsukuyo was sharp, and she caught on quickly to his gestures. She did not, however, follow his gaze.
"No one you need to concern yourself with."
"All right, tough guy, suit yerself." Tsukuyo offered her kunai, handle first. He took it. "Don't die."
"No promises," he warned, voice soft. He touched the windowsill and ducked through it. He felt the need to repair the window, but relented and allowed Tsukuyo to do as she wished. The only reparation to his humble heart was that he did, at least, know their names.
.: Tuesday, TWO WEEKS AGO :.
"You sleep lightly." A weathered, calloused hand passed over his face. A surge of panic threw itself from his stomach to his throat and down his spine, but he grappled with the fear until it subsided into a dull shiver.
"Otose-san," came a strange, husky woman's voice. The cat-woman. "His temperature's finally gone down."
He felt the hand press against his forehead — he could see nothing, as a cool towel had been placed over his face — and then retract.
"Since you sleep so lightly, you might as well get up and eat." The towel was pulled away, again, revealing the old woman. "Tama makes a mean breakfast."
He quickly absorbed his surroundings: his hands first itched for his missing umbrella, and then his eyes quickly calculated the time it would take him to register a threat at the front door and depart from the back exit before the building was surrounded. A tad lightheaded, he found that the dimensions of the little shop were disconcertingly bobbled, wavy.
"Don't move too quickly," the woman advised. "Your wounds will reopen."
He pressed a hand to his shoulder. The spot where the bullet grazed him was sore, but felt healed enough to move full through its full range of motion. His left leg, on the other hand, was stiff and ached like a bag of rocks had been poured under his skin. The bullet itself had been expertly extracted — in fact, he believed that the mechanical barmaid was inspecting the smashed metal — and his leg was wrapped up in neat gauze. The wound had closed, for the most part, and experimentally stretching didn't cause him too much pain.
"The window's locked," deadpanned the woman, without turning. "So don't try any funny business."
The Yato, slightly miffed, let his eyes slide to where the cat-woman was wiping down a booth. She shot him a haughty glance, which he promptly disregarded. He rocked back onto his heels and stood slowly, testing his leg. It was stable enough, so he entered the open parlor of the shop.
"Would you like orange juice or apple juice?" asked the green-haired android.
"Neither. I won't be stayi—"
"Get him some water, Tama," cut in the old woman. "He'll be staying whether he likes it or not."
.: APRIL, PRESENT :.
The seamless transition with which the silver-haired samurai guided his slow, relaxed movements into ones of casual caution caught Zenshi off guard.
"You know," said the other man, gaze slowly sweeping the area, "there are some nasty looking fellas over that-a-way." He jerked his thumb behind him. "With fancy umbrellas."
Zenshi shot the samurai a wary glance. "And you are?"
"Probably a neighbor." The samurai shrugged. "Tell Tsukuyo that Yorozuya says hello, will ya?"
Zenshi stiffened at the name, but then guardedly assumed that if he was a friend of Tsukuyo's, then he would probably be of no threat.
"Gin-san," called a young boy, a teen about sixteen. He wore simple spectacles and had a simple cut black hair; he wore an uncomplicated striped light blue keikogi and matching hakama; he was the epitome of plainness, to say the least. "There are some suspicious people hanging in Otose-san's place. Kagura-chan's afraid to come out."
"Eh? What?" drawled the samurai, very casually sticking a finger up his nose.
"Gin-chan!" came a shrill cry. "Gin-chan, there are creeps under our house!"
They whirled around to face the building — atop an old shop that Zenshi would have only recognized in the dark — to see a girl sticking her face out, waving her arms frantically. A man from the shop below emerged, and the girl, alarmed brandished a purple parasol.
"Kagura-chan seems a little bit overworked," commented the boy with glasses.
"Patsuan," sighed the silver samurai. "Look."
He gestured toward the men with umbrellas.
The boy visibly paled, and was about to say more, but Zenshi was not around to hear it.
He'd disappeared into a corner, moving far, far away.
.: FOURTEEN YEARS AGO :.
He looks into the eyes of the newborn girl, and immediately decides that he likes her. He is thirteen years old and has hair down to his shoulders, loosely tied in the back. He holds the baby, who cries softly, because his own mother is clasping the hand of the child's mother, and his aunt is tending to all the things that she tends to.
"You are weak," his aunt says crisply. "Drink some water for now."
"My baby," whispers the woman. She is a beautiful woman, with long, cerise hair, vibrant like a red rose. Her arms trembling, she raises them to accept her child into her arms. Zenshi passes the baby over, and the newborn ceases into soft gurgles.
"It's too bad your husband isn't here to see his daughter," sighs Zenshi's aunt in a low voice. "Where is he this time?"
"Near," says the new mother. "He promised to come home soon. He sent a letter yesterday."
At that moment, a man bursts through the door, looking agitated and disheveled. He's got straight, defined features that Zenshi would have easily picked out on the man's son, except this warrior has hair like black ink and it messily falls across his face.
"Am I late?" he asks, still panting.
"I'd say it's better than nothing," replies his wife, smiling. The man strides over and gingerly brushes a strand of his beloved's hair behind her ear, gazing down at the baby.
"And we agreed on a name, right?"
"Yes." The woman beams, and the two are caught in a quiet, intimate moment as the others recede to the edges of the room. Zenshi wonders if he should speak to the boy, the fifth figure present in the room before the Yato man arrived. He even considers giving the boy a nudge forward — it is his family, after all.
But he doesn't need to, because the boy's mother calls him over. Standing beside his mother and father and newborn baby sister, the boy looks like a striking blend of both. He curiously peers into his sister's face.
"Say hello to everyone, Kagura," whispers the mother, cradling the baby to her bosom. "Everyone, say hello to Kagura."
The father is bent over the child, smitten, but the boy seems confused. He is almost forlorn, and when he raises his eyes to meet Zenshi's, there is something that Zenshi will not see in the boy for a long, long time.
Something that may possibly never surface from the depths again.
Zenshi hesitates to call it love, but he supposes that nothing else will suffice.
Okay! I promised I'd clear up a little bit.
Hereeee it goes. A little vague overview.
PRESENT:Zenshi decides to leave Tsukuyo and Hinowa's place, where he's been taken care of. Go go go Zenshiii.
Two weeks ago:So presumably, he's running from some particular people. Seeing as he almost ran into them, you can assume they are Yato.
Twelve years ago:Zenshi is fifteen (wow I made him kind of old but who cares I actually think Gin is almost this age?) and that one assassin dude, who is on a different job, runs into our young Yato. Goes insane, or already is, and tries to finish his first attempt at gouging out Zenshi's eye. Fails, and Zenshi ends up with a big scar across his face (see the art on my dA).
Fourteen years ago:Zenshi's aunt is the maid who attends to Kagura's mother, also serving as a midwife. Obviously, Kagura is born.
Seventeen years ago:Zenshi's around 10, and Kamui is about 1. Oh Kamui. Gosh, Zenshi, you're like a decade older than him, WHY DON'T YOU MAKE HIM LISTEN TO YOU ALKDHGLAKSDJFLAHGLKajdsf.
that's all for now!
might spit out one more chapter before I resign to hw. OTL.
There goes my New Year's resolution of actually doing hw lol.