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Tsuki no Nai Yoru

by Sigel Phoenix

The night is heavy, thick and warm and sticky like a coating of blood. It clings to his nose, weighed down by scents and noises from the city, so he can hardly breathe without screaming.

Is this what he wanted me to see, to feel? Trapped like an animal in a writhing, bustling mass of people ... I'll go mad before midnight.

His mind returns, as it always does, to the task of this night, like an anxious child circling around an unopened present. Cloaked and mysterious, it looms over him; he gnaws and worries at the edges, trying to peek at the possibilities that lie hidden inside. He is anxious, and Katsura had seen, had told him to take this excursion into the city to relax.

To relax ... but that is not all. What Katsura had wanted, he knows, was for him to see the people of Kyoto, in all their life and beauty and suffering -- for him to get a glimpse of those he was to soil his virgin blade to protect. He wanted to give the predator a human face for his mission.

His fingers dance nervously over the empty space at his side where the hilts of his twin blades normally hang. For now, the predator is still an anxious pup.

The crowd jostles and bumps among itself, each person brushing others with their own breath and light and heaviness. Somehow they avoid him, knowing without knowing why not to touch him, this shadow without his own heaviness, and alone he looks up into the silent sky. The moon is hidden, away planning her own secret schemes for the night.

Or, perhaps, she is purposely averting herself from the dark deed that will be commited tonight? Amaterasu is lucky; she will not bear witness to the rain of blood that awaits.

"Oniichan, you have pretty hair," a voice jolts him from his reverie. He blinks, looks down, finding a childishly rounded face with an eager gaze staring back at him. Innocent, some would say; but really, what more does he know of the world than this child? The child surely has her own dreams, as does he; what she lacks is simply the means to fulfill those dreams, the reality that has placed a black envelope in his hand, the katana and wakizashi at his side. Is that all innocence is, the inability to truly grasp one's dreams, and all the dark truth that waits inside?

The child's mother tugs her hand and pulls her away, likely to warn her to avoid strange shadows like him. She wears plain, worn clothes, and her face is heavy with lines born of a life of work. He catches her eyes, which mirror her face's heaviness, as she passes; for a moment, he feels compelled to nod to her, and say, I will protect you.

I will kill for you.

Yes, that's it. He looks around, seeing the faces around him -- young and old, beautiful and plain, alive, distinct, all with their own heaviness.

I will protect you all. I will save your lives, and all it will cost is someone else's ...

He had wanted this, wanted it since he was a young boy with another life and another name. A young woman brushes by him, and he sees in her face the same gentleness that Sakura-san's once had. He wasn't able to protect her then, but now he can; now he can save her, so she won't have to be a slave, won't have to know a life of emptiness, won't have to feel the cold fire of a bandit's blade through her throat ...

I will save you. I will save you all ...

It is his duty, after all.

What is Hiten Mitsurugi Ryuu ... What is Himura Kenshin ... If I won't make the necessary sacrifices to save these people?

To protect. To kill. The two are inseperable now, entwined as intimately as lovers within him.

Katsura knows ... He fears. He needed someone as passionate and idealistic as him for this job. Yet somehow he needs to become a killer while still wanting to protect others, to have hands covered with blood while maintaining a heart of snow.

How does one fulfill a dream without awakening the dreamer?

But he will do this. He will not go back on his agreement to be a hitokiri. No more will he be helpless, no more will he be "too gentle."

I will never feel the blood of those I care about on my hands again ...

A heavy, warm wind wraps itself around him, sheathing his hands like a coating of blood. He looks down, sees his dry hands, sees them instead stained with death's crimson tears, shed from a shadowed figure giving up its heaviness to Enma Daioh. He cannot see the face, only the blood ... It crawls, weeping, reaches one beseeching hand toward an unseen mercy. He cannot see the face, the night is so dark, only the blood --

Someone in the crowd slips, bumps his arm. Heaviness against him. His mind balks at the invasion, and he turns around wildly. The person has disappeared back into the crowd, however, and he is left alone, hands grasping at empty space by his hip.

His darting eyes catch the form of a young man, cloaked and huddled, across the street. He becomes a shadowed assassin in his mind, hands reaching to his side to draw his sword ...

Don't. You're not thinking straight -- look away.

But his wolf's sense will not be appeased. He sees in an old man the hardened, wiry strength of a seasoned samurai. The lowered eyes of a woman shelter the suspicious gaze of a Bakufu spy. Around him, the crowd is transformed into a horde of hidden motives and hated enemies.

Stop! You're supposed to protect them!

Laughter becomes vicious, whispers become hisses, and everything in his vision is colored by a coating of blood. He turns desperately, seeing an old farmer, a merchant, a young mother -- a child -- hears his strangled screaming as his life fluid pours out over his blade --

Shuddering, he turns away.

I'm thinking too much about this. My decision was made long ago; I can't go back on it now. Take a deep breath, clear my head ... I need to get out of here.

The night air is still stifling, even as he escapes the masses of the city into an open field. Casting a glance back, he sees the crowd continue on its way, feels the pressure of their weightiness dissipate. Yet the easing of that pressure has done nothing to relieve the thickness in the air that strangles him with every breath. No, the torturous burden remains, while the fading people seem to call to him; their heaviness seems secure, comforting. To have a weight that holds you in your place, a steady guiding sheath to show you the way ...

What need do I have for a sheath? He thinks suddenly. I am like the wind ... like my Tenchuu and Hiten Mitsurugi Ryuu -- I am as powerful and free as the heavens themselves. He clenches a fist -- as if to grab the thick night sky and tear it from the stars -- as if to grasp the hilt of a sword of revolution -- Yes, free.

And you -- He looks to where the moon should be, now cowering behind the gauzy cover of clouds. You hid that night, as well, the night my parents succumbed to the plague. You were too cowardly to witness that loss, but I -- I will never hide.

The night seems to be smothering him now, choking -- and he struggles against the sudden, irrational urge to lash out, fight back.

He slides a hand over his face, wiping away the night's humidity as well as his own nervous sweat. If he doesn't calm himself, Katsura will not let him do this. He won't be able to let himself do this. And the night will know. It will laugh, and slither darkly as it reaches out to take another victim.

When he looks up again, he has almost reached the edge of he woods, and the man is almost at his feet. Startled, he wonders for a moment if it is an illusion -- he didn't even notice him -- if this cloaked man leaning against a tree with a sake jug slung to his hip is a hallucination produced by his mind, searching for something familiar.

But no, this man is different; his hair is pulled back high on his head, his cloak dark rather than blazing white. Age has made a visible mark upon his features, and his eyes -- they look up at him, piercing but absent of the innate superiority of his master's. Yet there is something similar -- something knowing, something that has lived, rather than simply grown old.

"It's a warm night, isn't it?"

He would have expected something more profound than that.

Nonetheless, he answers, "Aa. It is," wondering if the man could possibly tell how much that very fact had been torturing him.

But he only watches him, dark eyes holding his own violet ones as he takes a drink from his jug. Much like his master, he seems to drink without any concern about becoming inebriated. "You look like you don't want to be here. Are you looking for something?"

He shakes his head, his own eyes trained on the the spot next to the man's knee. "I ... have a place to be," he answers finally.

His impromptu companion laughs shortly, not exactly kindly but without malice. "You have a task," he corrects. "A role to play, perhaps ... but not a place. Not a pup like you."

Perhaps the man is not so different from his master, after all. "And you have yours?"

He receives a flat look. "I hope you don't expect me to say that my place is this tree."

He shakes his head with a wry twist of his mouth. Then he sobers, looking once again upon the same object beside the man's leg. "You say I only have a task?" he murmurs.

The man's hands follow his gaze, his fingers curving around the hilt. "That's what it looks like. You have somewhere to go -- whatever direction it is you're ordered to go. Or perhaps wherever the wind blows you." The man's eyes flick up at him, looking strangely hesitant. "But once it's finished with you, you'll just --"

"-- fall."

The word springs involuntarily from his lips, as if his mouth had simply been waiting to say it.

"Is that what it looks like?" It is a fine blade, and well-used. Older, and perhaps better than Arai Shakku's own.

"I don't believe you have anything to catch you, or guide you." His hand moves down the hilt to trace the carved designs on the sheath.

His eyes narrow as he watches the man's callused fingers, watches the grass beneath him shiver with a hot, heavy breeze. "Do you?"

"I don't believe we were talking about me."

What need do I have for a sheath ...?

"I -- have to do this." Is that the truth? He must protect, must stave off the corrupt night for the sake of Heaven's own justice. But will the blood he sheds simply make the world heavier, choke it more than the night ever could?

"I'm not telling you what to do, or not." A shurg, as if to dismiss the solemnity of his earlier words. "Whatever this is, maybe you have to do it."

If blood must be shed, it would be better to extract it from the night itself ... so long as the innocent are protected. From someone, anyone else, even if it must be his own ...

For the sake of the lost ones ... Sakura, Kasumi, Akane, Shinta ...

He closes his fist around a phantom blade, wonders how it will feel to push it through a man's flesh. "Perhaps falling ... would be less painful than ignoring the wind's call in the first place?"

"Perhaps." The man nods; his expression remains unchanged, but there is satisfaction in his eyes.

For their sake ... I can endure this weight.

"Don't put too much weight on what I say," the man says suddenly. "It's dangerous when you listen too much to other people ... And," he adds, with a slight twist of his mouth, "you have no idea how long I've been drinking this."

He blinks, staring at the sake jug for a moment, then smiles, and the man laughs. "Here."

Chuckling, he reaches for the profferred jug -- then freezes. A sudden fear grips him, his earlier blood-soaked visions flashing across his mind. If it tastes bad, then there must be something wrong with you.

What am I afraid of? He takes the jug and removes the stopper, lifts it hesitantly -- then closes his eyes and puts it to his lips.

... It's good.

"You act like you've never had sake before." A raised eyebrow, as he takes it back and takes a healthy swig.

He smiles and says nothing. Looking to the sky, to where the moon should be, he feels a weight settle on him. Not a comforting, guiding weight -- but not unbearable.

"I have to go."

Sensing his change in mood, the man catches his eyes, and the earlier, penetrating seriousness has returned. "You're not going to tell me your name." He meets the intense gaze levelly. "And you don't want mine."

Not for fear of tempting fate. Not for fear of seeing it written in a black envelope one day placed in his hand ...

"No," he replies, turning and walking away.

Thank you, he thinks simply. I hope you live to see the end of this madness.

Before him, he can see where Kyoto awaits, where the people await, where the night awaits for him to grasp his destiny. And he closes his eyes, and breathes --

lives --

dreams --

kills --

-- against the canvas of the moonless night sky.