I wonder, she thinks, staring at the dark wooden beams above her head, sleep far away for now, if they remember me at all. She pulls the quilted blanket, slightly stained but comfortingly soft, all the way to her chin, curls towards the coal brazier glowing in the darkness. It's a familiar warmth, much like all those campfires, back when she was still a wanderer, when the road was home and steady lives were a distant dream.
It's not a constant thought, this one, it just sneaks up on her sometimes when she sees the overly-collected samurai, usually serving some fatcat lord who remains unseen (but not unknown), chatting politely to each other over cups of heated sake, their fingers long and elegant around the chipped roundness of the bottle. She's always extra careful with them, sometimes sneaking in a little extra food here, another bottle there, hungry for the quick glances of gratitude shot her way. Like her customer's eyes tonight, too-weary and still-soft, dimmed with the alcohol, but still with a spark of some unmistakable defiance buried in the coals of his irises.
And now, exhausted from the strangeness of her day, still—even now, after he has left her, with that crooked smile, that knowing bend in his neck—afraid of Tobi or Toda or whatever-he-was, she can only think back to that time when it was easier to run, and easier to feel as if there was nothing to worry about. As if one would not die alone, in this bed tonight.
She's decorated the room some since she's gotten here—a worn pink tanto, its lacquer case cracked, skull and dice attached by threadbare strands of silk, sit in front of some gently glowing incense. If she was brave enough, she might have taken his sword. If she wanted to remember him, she might have taken the dirt of the island, where he was buried, where so much blood was spilled, so much grief brought to the air.
She might have even bought some sunflowers, and let their telltale scent wash over her, the scent she'd been following in half-earned memories and long-fought journeys.
She doesn't know if she wants to remember him, or even if she managed to say all that she wanted to say. She turns on her side, daring to gaze at the tiny memento she did take from Yuri, when they finally met again, and she could finally weep for him.
It's a tiny thing, but of course it had to be the most dangerous, in this day and in this age-a small cross, that Yuri fashioned out of a melted gunstock. It's bluish-gray, imperceptible now in the shadows, and heavy. Solid, Yuri said, like the faith that had anchored her father.
The faith, she mused, that had made a man given up everything he loved, all for a promise she wasn't sure had been kept, in the end. Gods were tricky.
But she remembered too, that she had been desperate once, desperate for the promise of something better than her own life, and she wondered, had he been living with that, all his life? Until he'd found his strange god, for which he gave up all traces of his past existence?
She looked away from it—it was too hard to remember, sometimes.
She yawned, a wide and deep yawn, and pulled her knees up to her chest, staring at the low lights of the brazier and the incense in the dark, her eyelids feeling heavy as her memories slipped back into the shadows.
Men are such pigs, she mused, as she fell fast asleep.
He can count them, as far as his rudimentary math allows, every time they fall into step behind him. One pig, and two and three, squealing snickers, and stomping steps so loud they might as well be stampeding through the brush. His own step barely falters, his geta clacking, the metal scraping harsh and screechy against the pebbles, but there's the shift, the slight tightening of his spine, the limbering of his wiry frame, the decisive cracks of neck and knuckle. Five, maybe? Seven? He can't remember the numbers past twenty all that well.
A thousand? The hell does a thousand even look like?
That ninja girl, she must've been a terrible spy. Two days down his wanderings, as he's approaching the boatsmen to find someone who'll take him to Ise, and some arsed-up official, waving some kind of paper with a freshly-imprinted seal, his hair cut sharp and his sword duller than chicken bones, tried to have at him.
Or more precisely, to be fair, his monstrous yojimbo, fresh-hired, hair sticking up like a stray dog's and as tall as an oak tree, swung a giant halberd at him, and he could barely breathe, feeling the slice of metal down his face as he propelled himself backwards, falling flat on his back before smashing the official's nose with his heel and flipping, ever so casually if you well please, back on to his feet, away from the monstrosity that was his newly-hired yojimbo. Newly-hired, because he smashed his own employer with the back of his hand in his haste to set the halberd straight again, so glad was he for a fight. The hell do they find these guys, he thinks, even though he knows.
They find 'em, same way that she found him.
Nearly blind with blood, and he thought he'd lost his damn eye, though he'd only acquired a gash down his cheek and chin.
He will not imagine that anything like this will have gotten to his companions, the quiet one or the loud one. Because if they did, he muses, in that moment of perfect thought before he dodges the halberd, stomps the blade hard into the ground, and runs up shaft and shoulder, as if he were as light as the pestilent wind, and not an angry, blood-blinded and perfectly grown man, thank you very much, landing behind his monstrous attacker and driving his sword to the hilt through his back, hearing the crunch of bone, because if they did, he would never turn away from this.
To the dark, to the deep, to this, the perfect blindness of the battles that will not leave him. He's covered now in it—pulling his sword out brought out blood and sticky bits that weren't his, and he's not entirely sure how much of the stuff on his shirt is his own. He grins, white teeth set crazy against the drying black blood on his face, gray eyes fanatically pleased and fantastically bored all at once, one drooping half shut, a sliver of white against dark brown skin.
"Well, ya damn pigs, the hell are ya waiting for?" His sword smells bad, he's sure he smells much worse. He heard once, from a shipmate, that the hell of the foreigners was some kind of place that burned red fire and smelled eternally of sulfur. Wonders, idly, what sulfur smelt like, what hell smelt like. Like him, probably; it had been a while since he found a good spring to soak in.
And there, the soft steps into line. Five?
"You should know, we are—" The sentence is cut by a gurgling choke, burbles, as if the speaker was suddenly dropped into a pond.
No water here, though, although he can smell the unmistakable sea salt clinging at him, the scent that keeps him tethered to the edge of sanity, even as everything else sharpens and flickers to blood and thick shadow.
He pauses, yawns—exposing yellowed teeth—and asks them himself. "Well, so what should I know?"
And they wonder then: do you answer the questions of Yama himself?
Is it all a trick, or do all the answers come out no matter what you decide, in the trembling of your sword, the fear of being swallowed by this madness, so perfect and whole?