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Ikedaya: Part 4

by Mir ::: 05.Aug.2002

Even the night itself seemed to grab at his body and impede his progress as he flew through the streets of Kyoto, red hair streaming behind him like fire from a burning arrow shot upward into darkness. Air passed rapidly in and out of his dry lips, his lungs burned, and his ribs ached with exhaustion. And all the while, his mind screamed, 'faster'.

And like the rainbow that follows the storm, she trailed behind him, not knowing what slight of hand enabled her to keep pace with him. Pale fingers clutched her skirts, hiking them up well past the point of decency, and around her, the night blurred out of focus until all that she saw was the trailing end of his ponytail flicking rusty sparks across the spray of stars above.

- - - - - - - - - -

"Where's Katsura?"

Not surprised by the sudden presence of the man beside him, Okita, breathing hard, shook his head in frustration. The night had settled into itself, covering blackness with blackness as the temperature fell and clouds drifted across the sky. The jubilant festivities had been silenced by the smothering weight of the midnight hours, and the few lingering pedestrians still staggering homeward were too drunk to appreciate the deceptive serenity.

"He wasn't here, and neither was the assassin." Okita casually wiped the smear of blood from his cheek with the back of this hand, but there was nothing to be done about the dark splots sprinkled irregularly across his haori. 'Sloppy'. It had been weeks since he'd been thus anointed. "It appears Miyabe has committed seppuku."

"Coward." The gaze of Saitou Hajime drifted tiredly from the blood- stained balcony to the torn shouji and the splintered wooden frame that littered the street. "It would seem that Kondou ran into our missing assassin..."

Okita's eyes widened slightly at the news, his hand unconsciously falling to the hilt of his sword. At the end the street, the bobbing of lanterns signaled the retreat of several of their comrades, four men proceeding cautiously side by side and a fifth trailing lamely behind.

"... he walked away, but there's finally a rent in that ridiculous armor of his. He's absolutely furious that the boy escaped without a mark on him." Although hidden in the darkness, the taller of the two men grinned silently as he leaned against the wall behind him. "Serves him right for sprinting ahead. Those who hunt glory only get what they deserve." The two captains had separated at the bridge, and when Saitou and his men caught up with the rest of the unit, there was nothing to do save close the eyes of the dead. Only one Ishin hitoki could have committed the deed with such precision and efficiency. "I guarantee that he'll deny everything tomorrow -- damn pride of his."

He tilted his chin upward, his eyes closing halfway in contemplation, and from the dark smudge of sky above, the wind suddenly rippled down the street and threw golden clouds of dust into the soft glow of lanterns. Saitou exhaled slowly. "White plum."

- - - - - - - - - -

He turned the last corner to the inn and skidded to a halt so abruptly that Tomoe was forced to grab hold of a nearby building to keep from tumbling into his back. The flat cadence of whispered conversation drifted across the empty road, and as the moon slid behind the encroaching clouds, two lone figures half-obscured by shadow fell silent and turned with the tacit instinct of trained swordsmen in the direction of the newcomers.

"I see you're not familiar with this section of Kyoto--" Saitou sneered, his voice cutting effortlessly though the silence. "--if there was enough time for me to stumble across Kondou and still beat you here. Then again, I would have expected no less from you Ishin morons." His gaze drifted from the boy to the one who stood beside him. "Tell the woman to leave. She has no place here tonight."

Having regained both her breath and composure, Tomoe, instead of obediently backing away, stepped forward and laid a hand upon the arm of her companion. The light of the moon, as it made its swan song appearance before retiring behind the thick curtain of clouds, reflected in the whiteness of her cheeks and slid in slippery beads down her pale kimono. "He's wrong. My place is with you," she insisted softly into Himura's ear.

"If you value your life, do as he says."

If she was surprised by the flatness of his response, she let no trace of emotion cross her face. It would not do to show weakness before such men as those who stood before her. Oblivious to the thick dust that coated the hem of her kimono and the matted hair that clung to her shoulders, she pulled herself up straight and, with eyes trained carefully on the ground, she insisted, "If you want me to go, then make me."

"Fine."

And before she could react, he had shoved her backward with all the speed and strength for which he was known. As her legs folded beneath her, her palms collided heavily with the ground, and she blinked against the cloud of dust that encircled her. "Kenshin--" Ignoring the tender bruises forming on her shins, she pulled herself first to her knees and then to her feet. But what use was a sheath once a sword was drawn?

"Stand down Okita. I, Saitou Hajime, will be the one to take Battousai's life tonight." Fragments of speech, words floating disjointedly through the air, echoed from one end of the alley to the other.

"Kenshin... be careful." She pressed her cheek against the side of the building and traced along the wood’s stiff ridges with her fingers.

"I am a Tenshin Rishin, after all." Okita insisted hoarsely as he clenched his teeth together, determined not to cough.

"But you're also feeling ill tonight; you can't pull the wool over my eyes." The smirk faded almost as quickly as it appeared, a fleeting shadow of emotion that dissolved into quiet inward strength. He turned from his companion as if to address the larger audience, an actor ignorant of his part onstage. "Battousai -- "

And if by some unspoken cue whispered from behind the curtain of darkness, they flew toward each other like hunting eagles that fight about the clouds. Once, twice, three times steel clashed against steel -- mere streaks of light carving sharp geometric patterns against the stars. And when the indistinct blurs stabilized and at last came to rest in the middle of the street, the two men with eyes blazing like fire stood face to face, straining against the blades of their swords.

"You'll never win--" the taller of the two growled as he shoved forward, throwing the lighter man from him. Even as the other's sword raked across the wooden supports of the building behind him, the Wolf of Mibu fell back into the infamous gotatsu stance for which he was known. Their eyes met in the briefest of appraisals, and then once again the scene disintegrated into shifting flashes of light.

"--neither will you." Embedded in the low whisper was confidence built not from arrogance but from experience, and as they glared at each other across the seemingly interminable expanse of blackness between them, each knew that the words were nothing save the truth. "Not tonight." And yet, as the feral instinct from which man was born overrode common sense and blotted out rational thought, the two figures charged forward again and again beneath the scattered clouds of dust.

“Miyabe died by his own sword.” Two forms fell from the night like dew coalescing on new spring leaves. The smaller lunged forward with all the grace of a charging tiger, but his opponent pivoted sharply, avoiding the thrust by a tightrope margin of life and death.

“He was not my responsibility.” It was Battousai’s turn to twist away from the swift retaliation, but even the sharp ringing of steel blocking steel couldn’t drown out the cool indifference in his response.

- - - - - - - - - -

'What time is it? Why am I here?' The thoughts penetrated his mind even before he was fully awake, and the thin candlelight that flickered by his head did little to disguise the lateness of the hour. 'Have I missed the meeting? What of Miyabe and the others?' He couldn't ignore the throbbing behind his temples and the loudness of his heartbeat in his ears. 'Drugged. I've been drugged.' His hands reached for his swords, which thankfully he found by his side. 'But why?'

Katsura Kogoro, unofficial leader of the Choshu domain, pulled himself to his feet in the half-darkened room, thoughts of betrayal etched clearly across his features. He dared not call for Ikumatsu -- for she, undoubtedly, was the cause of his current state of affairs since he had had nothing to eat since midday. 'Why'. Even as he smoothed the wrinkles in his kimono and slid the swords through his obi, he couldn't shake the question from his mind. 'After all this time, I've given her no reason to turn against me.'

But before he could escape through the garden out onto the deserted street beyond, she was there beside him, eyes beseechingly meeting his as she reached for his kimono to keep him from leaving. In the muted moonlight, her hair fell in thick viscous streams down her back, and her light summer yukata was poor disguise for the graceful curves of chest and hips. "It's my fault," she murmured, suddenly reluctant to close the distance between them. "I couldn't stand to see you killed."

Katsura, puzzled by her cryptic admission and torn between belief and disbelief, stood immobile before her, anchored to the floor like a tree to the ground. "What happened tonight?" She had known something he hadn't, of that he had no doubt. "You must tell me... for the sake of the domain and the men --"

"--who died in your place tonight." Unlike some women, she had no intention of dolling out strings of euphemisms, no desire to continue to withhold information from the one she loved. With the hour of the dog long since expired, the need for caution had passed as well. "You know that sometimes I overhear information -- for some men are willing to divulge secrets in front of a woman that they wouldn’t breathe a whisper of in the presence of their own sex."

Katusra nodded, at once both curious and impatient. He pressed his lips together in determination as he fought the urge to pace back and forth across the floor, both to shed nervous energy and to clear his head. "Continue."

"There were men from Aizu who knew of your meeting and planned to attack the inn tonight, just after the hour of the dog." Her voice was flat, noticeably devoid of emotion. "And not only that, but they had ensured the aid of the Shinsengumi." She tilted her head to the side as she let her shoulders sag in defeat. "They knew too much to be bluffing."

"Then the meeting was a failure." Momentarily stunned by the news, Katura stared blankly into the semi-darkness as his mind raced across the myriad spectrum of possibilities. 'Indeed, what of his followers? How many had survived?' For a fleeting moment he wished he'd instructed Himura to meet him at the inn. 'Stupid, stupid. What could he alone have done against a squad of Shinsengumi? He would have wasted his life for nothing.' There was no point in regretting the past; what mattered most was directing the future. "I must return to the Choshu headquarters tonight."

She stood silently as he sighed and walked past her toward the waning night. Once she began to raise a hand toward his back -- but she checked herself with a stern thought. It was not her place to interfere in the inner workings of the domain. 'Except when they are life and death matters for you, love.' There was a time for action and a time for inaction.

As if in response to her truncated movement, Katsura paused mid-step, one hand on the wooden doorframe. Although he scanned the deserted garden with his eyes, his voice was clear over the stillness of the air. "You'll be safe. No one knows I was here, and daylight will come soon enough."

"At least change your clothes before you leave... there may still be Shinsengumi in the streets."

Again he sighed, torn between the rationality of her words and the feeling inside that urged him make haste back toward the Choshu headquarters. 'But what difference will another minute make? If the damage has been done, it's been done.' And so it was dressed as a common beggar that Katsura Kogoro finally crept through the lonely streets back toward the Choshu headquarters, back toward an uncertain future and the beginnings of a revolution.

- - - - - - - - - -

She reached forward to touch the red stain on his sleeve to prove to herself that the figure before her was real flesh and blood, not merely an illusion conjured into existence by a mind dazed by fatigue. The fabric beneath her fingers was slick and moist -- and she knew that it was only by luck that no one had been seriously injured. The humidity had fallen from the sky like water draining from a rice paddy, leaving behind a newfound crispness that would with time mature into pale hints of morning. They were alone in the empty street, alone with nothing to prove the night's existence save the dull red stain that she pressed absently to her cheek.

"We should leave..." His voice was low, hoarse from shouting, but his tone left no room for argument. Not that she would have thought of arguing with him, not with the scene she'd witnessed freshly imprinted upon her mind. "...I need to find Katsura." There was a slight hesitation to his speech as if he was afraid to reveal his true reason for abandoning the ruined inn.

The fight had ended when the two opponents were too exhausted to continue. The stared at each other like wild animals, teeth bared, eyes narrowed -- but neither had the strength to continue. And so the two Shinsengumi captains had left in pursuit of their comrades, content for the moment to call the match a draw.

"That wound, it's bleeding again." It was then that she realized that the blood wasn't from any fresh injury but from the cut on his cheek that stubbornly refused to heal. The humidity circled around them like a vulture hovering around a dying animal, but she barely noticed as she drew close beside him.

He jerked away as she reached up with the edge of her sleeve to wipe the blood away. "Don't bother. It'll stop on it's own." But as if regretful of his coldness, he turned back toward her at last, amber eyes muted by the shadows of approaching storm clouds, and said simply, "I'm sorry... about the evening."

And she nodded as her eyes met his, forgiving him unconditionally.

*end of part 4*