Mirage Of Blaze Fan Fiction ❯ War Dead ❯ War Dead ( Chapter 1 )

Disclaimer: Mirage of Blaze is the property of Kuwabara Mizuna, Cobalt Books, AnimeWorks, and a number of other legal/corporate entities that I have no connection with. No challenge to copyright is intended, and no profit has been made.

A/N: Too many stories downplay or dismiss the reality of Naoe's crime. It's time Minako got some justice.

Helpless.

Haruie refused to name the emotion surging through him as 'panic'. The absorption seal, a twisted perversion of the Uesugi's own kekkai choubuku, devoured their every attempt at rallying their spiritual powers. Only Kagetora and Nagahide, the two strongest of the Yashashuu were even still standing.

And their opponent was Oda, and he was not alone. Haruie could see Shibata and Narimasa, adding their own strength to their lord's. We are dying, Haruie thought. Irobe hadn't moved since the ground literally dropped out from under him, trapping both he and Naoe in the rubble. Naoe's desperate clawing only ceased when he was forced to defend himself from Mori or Narimassa.

Kagetora and Oda might as well be alone in this pocket of hell. With only his own strength of will keeping him tethered in the unfamiliar body of a woman, Kagetora still sought to complete the formula that might yet exorcise Oda. Dharani came from the gods, and no matter what Oda fancied himself, he was not yet counted among the denizens of Heaven--or even Hell. He could not keep out the power of Bishamonten, if they could just make a crack in the cursed seal large enough! Except, like a back-stab from Fortune, the principle caster wasn't Oda, but Mori, with Oda and Narimassa more than able to protect him from counter-strikes.

Kagetora was tiring, wounded, and weighed down by the triple trauma of a forced act of kanshou into an adult body, into someone he knew and--

Kagetora's legs buckled, and the slender figure dropped to its knees. The air above him shimmered, an aura manifesting in the visible. A soul, about to desert its body. Mori and Narimasa closed ranks, supporting their lord physically, even as they cast their power forth again.

The roiling swirl of power streamed towards them like a ball of lightning. Everything slowed to near-stillness. Haruie saw Kagetora's spirit sink back into the battered body, saw the body rise with massive effort, as if against a torrent of flood water. Kagetora raised slender, shaking hands, reduced to the wards a simple human might use, mute invocations to heavenly powers who could chose not to hear. Even from this distance, Haruie felt Kagetora's will snap to.

"Ari nari tonari..."

Oda flung back his head and laughed. "You're wasting your breath, Uesugi!"

Desperate, Haruie added her voice to her lord's. This damned spell drank down their power. What could--how could--Kagetora hope to prevail? Only an outsider could break the seal. Only...

"...anaro nabi kunabi!"

Oda's expression twisted with rage. "You waste my time as well! It's over for you, Uesugi! Now, die!"

He raised his hand, premptory to his trademark attack. Kagetora acted as if Oda wasn't even there, hands folded, chanting through pain.

"Naumaku samanda bodanan beishiramandaya sowaka!"

Undaunted, Kagetora began the spells again, eyes fixed on Oda, sweat streaming down her face. A seal could contain only so much--perhaps enough power could break it. Or perhaps Bishamonten might hear.

"Enough games!" Oda pressed forward--

Kagetora's shoulders lifted in time with a drawn in breath.

"Go!"

An order that could not be refused, a command that drew on the oath ties of vassal to liege and demanded compliance. As if from half a world away, Haruie heard Naoe's cry of denial. Nagahide, still strong on her right, swore on what became his last breath.

Uesugi Kagetora was the spiritual son of a war-god. Even under this seal, it seemed his prayers still held power. Oda's power swept over them. It burst around Kagetora, who stood in its path like a rock in a river, blunting and redirecting a part of its force. Haruie cried out as it struck, claws digging deep. He could feel the walls of his ancient spirit cracking, threatening to split down to the core.

The body's lungs seized up, the heart skipping beats. Haruie "twisted," not inward, but up and away, abandoning the dying body. Forgive me, he thought, as the living world fell away.

At once, the chill winds of the between-places swept over him. Oda's power snapped and crackled, reaching even here. Haruie fled, ranging far from the place of battle.

Distance had no meaning here, nor direction. Only purpose mattered, the firmness of will that kept one from following the winds to the place that awaited all the dead. He must get back. Without a body, he had no defenses against pursuit, and there were things that lurked between the worlds that waited for the unwary to pass by

They went a long time between meals.

In a body, he had at least the protection of a physical vessel. The wounds dealt his spirit might have a chance to heal. The body rose up, a solid rock in the stormy between-worlds sea. An older body. Too old by the code of the Yashashuu. Too old, living too long with an identity of its own. Kagetora-sama, struggling with his first adult Possession in centuries, with the unfamiliarity of living within a woman's body, of bearing Minako-san's terrible memories...

Forgive me,Haruie thought again, and dived,

The spirit resisted, struggling in Haruie's grip. Shock, disbelief, a flare of primal recognition. Haruie firmed his will. Kanshou was like skinning an animal. Using his will as his blade, Haruie began to cut.

Scattershot of images and sensations: mother's face the whole world-taste of milk-dance of color and shadow-weight of clothing against the skin-discovery of the end of skin, the beginning of the world.

The first layer came free, gluey with memories. Haruie cut again, slicing through personality. Curious-wonder-delight-fear-comfort
-watch-learn-joy. The young soul had defenses--the instinctive armor set by the parental bond, the bubble-thin defenses of a psychic too young to understand.

Forgiveness was impossible. He was a murderer, the foulest kind: a child killer, slaughtering a small girl before her parents' eyes. Demons, they called the Yashashuu, and they'd earned it.

Cartoons-strong fingers guiding child-chubby fingers around chopsticks-pictures in a book-sunlight-wind-snow-cars passing-monster in the closet, under the bed, outside the window-monsters-monsters- MONSTERS--

Inside her skin.

Haruie took a deep breath, coughed, breathed again. Alive. In the world.

"Nami!" A hand shook her shoulder. "Pay attention!"

Haruie blinked, swiveled her head. An elderly woman sat in a rocking chair. A pale shape flickered nearby. Okaa-san! Obaa-san! Help me! the child sobbed.

Haruie made the body move in a childish bow. As Tsuta, she'd learned how to let muscle-memory take over, to let the body move the way it knew. The mouth opened, a soft apology lisping out.

Kaa-san sat back. Out of the corner of her new eyes, Haruie saw the weeping spirit-child. The screaming would start soon, the wordless peals that pierced anyone with more than a flutter of psychic awareness.

"Kaa-saaaaan," Haruie said, putting a whine in her voice. "Don' feel good..."

"Look at how pale she is, yome-chan! And so thin! No wonder she is sick! What do you feed this child?" Obaa-san scolded.

Haruie clung to her--his--no, Nami's mother's sleeve. Shock began to creep in on icy feet. The child-spirit's weeping grated on her nerves. Sickly pale tendrils, limp as jellyfish limbs, lay sprawled between the body and the cast-out spirit. Haruie closed her eyes, hid her face against the woman's shoulder. Go, she thought to the spirit. Go on to the place that waits for you. Go!

"Nami-chan," the woman's voice sounded gentle. "Obaa-san says you can lie down in the other room. Pick up your toys."

Haruie edged away, fighting the urge to vomit. A small pink ball rested near a child's bag. The ear of some plush toy poked out. She'd seen dozens of such bags, owned them, bursting with childish treasures. The toys would still hold the aura of the child who first owned them, the psychic stain like blood on her hands.

"It's cold," the child wept. "I'm cold."

Haruie drew a slow breath, visualized the sign. She crooked her fingers in a certain sign, hiding them beneath a fold of her puppy-print skirt.

"Bai,"she breathed out, sub-vocalizing. "Choubatsu..."

The child's image wavered like a chalk-drawing in the rain, then faded away. The wind chime hanging from the eaves sounded once, faint and hollow. Without another word, Nami got up to gather her toys.

She lay ill for the next four days.

Haruie sat on a stone bench in the temple's garden, taking care not to swing her feet or look bored. Inside the temple, her parents were meeting with a high-ranking priest, arranging for another round of services and offerings that weren't going to work.

She rubbed her head, which ached from the effort of holding up the semblance of being a ten-year-old girl. The hardest part of showing reverence at a temple lay in not displaying too much knowledge. She had to remember to make childish mistakes, just as for years, she'd had to remember to speak and move like a woman, not like a man.

She could sense the guardian spirits swirling in a low-grade state of agitation. She couldn't be sure if they were reacting to her, or if there was another kanshousha here on the temple grounds. Overactive spirits, actually, their energies thickening and--

No, that was no guardian. That was a kanshousha, an old one. She stood up and began to turn, feeling the energy crawl over her skin, feeling like the split-second before a lightning strike.

The boy behind her could not be more than twelve in physical years. He wore novice's robes and a solemn expression that showed more of his true age. Automatically, Haruie bowed, respect to a student of the temple. This was the other kanshousha.

He returned her bow, and murmured, "Who are you, please?"

Haruie hesitated. At this age, most of her powers remained dormant, only the passive, receptive elements or the most basic protections available to her. If the one before her was an enemy of the Uesugi, there wouldn't be much she could do, unless the temple spirits themselves chose to intervene. A child's body could not long sustain the energies needed for attack or active defense. It made childhood a very dangerous time. And this body...

She glanced around. Etiquette declared that she not speak to a monk on temple grounds--but he wasn't really a monk, and she wasn't really a female. Public rules were one thing, mandates for an Uesugi Yasha in service to Bishamonten something altogether different.

No one seemed nearby. "I am the son of Kakiza--"

*Haruie!*The boy's face transformed, lightening, regaining some of its youthful ease. The familiar shineha washed over her, and the energies she sensed settled into a more familiar pattern. She could sense rough patches in the pattern, 'scars' from the damage wrought by Oda's attack.

*Naoe?* she responded in kind. They'd all scattered so far... *How did you come here?*

*I took the youngest son of the family here.*

Not unusual. Most of them preferred hosts with a certain degree of spiritual power. Those bodies were just better suited to handle the enormous forces the Yashashuu channeled. And for a very long time, the prime candidates for such vessels were found in temples and shrines. Holy men and women.

It made the guilt they bore that much heavier.

*And you?* he asked, pretending to look out over the garden. *Why are you here?*

Haruie rested a hand over her heart. *This is the first vessel I found--but it's weak. There is a flaw in the heart. It will die soon. O-kaa-san will not hear the doctors who say this, so she takes me on pilgrimage with her. This is our fifth temple. I think she believes the practices of the Shingon-shu Buzan-ha offer the most hope. It's useless--I'm dying, and all this travel only makes me die faster.*

The grim truth of that held them both silent. Haruie's head felt heavy. Even for a healthy child, this trip was tiring.

*Sometimes,* she continued, *I wonder if Nagahide hasn't had the right approach all along: separate as soon as possible. Whether we stay and try to be dutiful children or cut ties in some rebellious way, we are still lying to them.*

Naoe's eyes narrowed, his only visible reaction to the comment. Haruie shook her head in silent apology. She was tired, feeling queasy and weak--worse, tired beyond any illness. She still had not assessed how deep the damage from Oda's attack went. It might be that such weak bodies were all she would ever be able to hold from now on. And what then of her duty, and her promise?

Naoe turned his face away slightly. The breeze soughed through the grass, making the flowers bob and sway. She could hear the delicate sound of chimes and the gentle murmur of running water.

"A lie," he said softly. "An illusion, a hope, a dream... Even great priests and sect founders, perhaps even bosatsu still struggle with these."

Hairy chewed her lower lip, a habit Nami's mother berated her for. "And what of your hope?"

Naoe's shoulders tensed. *The same. I have--Haruie!* He turned towards her, eyes a-gleam with a fire no child of his years should know, stretching out a hand. *Have you--*

An image of Minako-san's brutalized body flashed through her memory, the large, compassionate eyes opaque as a corpse's. Haruie stepped back, flung up a hand. Her goshinha snapped up, a humming sphere of iridescent energy.

Naoe froze. They stared at each other, their images distorted by the slow ripple of the defensive barrier. Haruie trembled, torn between her friend's visible shock and pain and the memory of Minako.

With her own hands, she daubed away the crusted blood, willing herself not to react as Minako-san flinched and whimpered as her most delicate areas were tended. She could do nothing for the bruises ringing the woman's wrists, swelling up her face. Darker, crueler bruises on her hips, thighs and breasts. Two days later, and she was still spotting blood...

Almost below her conscious perception thrummed the shivery awareness of prey confronting a predator. This knowledge came not from Nami, or any of the specific women whose bodies she'd claimed over the years. No, this was more something bred deep into the bones of women, the hard, hard lesson of realizing the dangers that lay behind a familiar face.

Samurai lived, embraced the shadow of death. It took an extra step to become a predator--and in his last life, Naoe had taken that step.

His hand dropped to his side. "Haruie..."

She closed her eyes. She remembered that first death, Naoe Nobustuna's stone-cold eyes as he wrenched the sword free. Hot blood and coldest despair, the agonizing knowledge that he had failed. Kagetora-gimi...

And when he'd obeyed the summons... To see that miserable scion of the Naoe, whelp of the traitorous bitch who'd helped shatter the Uesugi clan for their own miserable gains...

Only Kagetora's act of absolution had drawn him back from the edge. Only his merciful kindness allowed Haruie to cling to hope. To take the step through hatred, to pass through it and not avoid it... That was something he had learned from Kagetora. He would not shame his lord with forgetfulness of such a painful lesson.

Haruie put her hands together, breathed a soft dismissal of her goshina. Naoe cradled his right wrist in his left hand staring down at the ground as if some abyss lay before him.

"Am I truly meant for the Path of Beasts?"

Haruie started. Had she been meant to hear that? *Naoe?*

*Is this punishment? Have I been cast out, even from the Yashashuu?* he asked, his thoughts red-purple with anguish. *Is this why he keeps from me?*

"Nothing you did would earn punishment for us all," Haruie argued. Abandoning proper manners, she clutched at his sleeve, willing him to believe. "Remember, he stood and bade us all to go. Even you, even then, he acted to save! Just because he is not presently in the world doesn't mean he is gone past hope!"

Shintaro...Waiting, always waiting, tormented by doubts without number. What if he was reborn as a woman, one who loved only men? What if he was already married, with a family, when Haruie finally found him? What if she found him only to have to watch him die of old age, or illness again? Or what if he was in the world now, but in China, or Korea, or--or Holland, or some place further West? Reincarnation was the way of things for the unenlightened. Only a Kanshousha could return with identity and memory intact. And it was conceit that assigned ethnic boundaries to souls.

He jerked free of her grip. "It's not the same!" he said savagely. "No matter the place, the time, he will never take me back!"

His harsh gesture had pushed back the sleeve of his robe partway. She could see the pink, knobby scars on his wrists, scars laid in precise lines.

"What have you done?" she gasped.

Naoe stood with his head bowed, clutching his wrist to his chest as if the scars were love-tokens of a desperate affair. "He is lost! There is no answer to any call, none at all! You are right--he would not punish you in my place. He is dead--and I murdered him!"

She stared at her friend, how he clutched his arms about himself, as if literally holding himself together. And those scars... She knew how such marks changed over time, from burn-red to pale salmon pink, then finally to silvery-white. The marks on Naoe's wrists were all still a warm deep pink, no more than a few years old.

Just old enough for Naoe to have awakened inside this boy--and realized their Kagetora-sama was nowhere to be found. And it brought her to the point and topic she least wanted to touch.

"It can take days, weeks to really settle into an adult body," she said. For her the memory was still vivid: abandoning his dying male body and with the cruelty of necessity, wresting Tsuta's soul loose. No time for subtlety, no time for even a clean 'kill'.

And then, to open his eyes, to know a body his, yet for it to feel so wrong. Nothing had gone right that first time: his balance was off, his reflexes, his strength not even a quarter of his accustomed force. Unable to walk without falling, or to sit. Failing to remember how to eat and speak like a woman, reversing gestures he'd seen only from the outside and trying to make them his own.

Scattered pieces of memories, names and faces she knew but had never seen. To this day, Haruie did not know why or what Tsuta had been doing alone in that field. Taking another body always proved a little disorienting. but such a complete change could and usually did require a long period of adjustment, even for the oldest Kanshousha.

Then, she'd had Shintaro to care for her. Kagetora had had the guilt of 'killing' the woman he loved, the knowledge of Naoe's criminal betrayal carried in her own flesh, and Oda on the attack. War showed no pity, no compassion. These things existed only in the hearts of those who survived the wars. And some things needed time...

"You alone I will never forgive!"

The words still lay between them, a searing memory neither could meet straight on. Kagetora's anguished rage, Nagahide's disgust, Irobe's quiet, smothered shock. They'd been broken before the battle even began. Naoe's criminal act had done the enemy's work for him. And by the young boy's pallor, he knew it.

"Minako-san had no power of her own," she continued, pretending she didn't see Naoe's flinch. "And she was pregnant. There is no time when a woman is more vulnerable."

Naoe made no reply.

"She was alone," Haruie said, forcing the words out. It felt like she had a ball of fire in her chest. But Uesugi spoke for the forsaken dead as well as defending the living from the vengeful.

"Her family lay dead because of Yami Sengoku. Her only protection lay with Kagetora--and then with you, by his order."

Harie fell silent, waiting, willing ther other to respond. To speak, to at least look up. But Naoe did none of those things. He can't see past Kagetora to what he's done, Haruie realized. Even now, he thinks of her only in terms of Kagetora.

But... hadn't they all? Just as, to all the rest of the world, Shinataro was only a name, a brief flicker of history, a rangukasha of no significance. Born, lived, died, the measure of a single lifetime. So much left undone. What, Haruie wondered suddenly, had Minako-san wanted to use her life for? To his shame, Haruie couldn't remember.

Haruie remembered how the woman had brightened whenever Kagetora appeared. At the sound of her voice, the worst of the haggard exhaustion had slipped from her lord's shoulders. Minako had asked nothing of Kagetora, only making her love a gift for him to use as he willed.

Haruie shook her head, tears burning her eyes. All that vain hope and steadfast love. All that trust and faith. All brought to horror and ruin.

"How could you? You've seen him with others before, seen him marry. What--why--was it different this time?" she forced through her teeth, a warrior's outrage in a child's body. "How could you?"

"How could he?"

She looked up. Naoe stood pale and trembling, but his eyes-- Haruie shuddered, a thought away from summoning her goshinha again. Those eyes had to be what Minako-san saw, during her ordeal. That same look, before everything smeared into madness.

He raised his hands, a gesture both imploring and furious. He stared, his eyes glazed and unseeing--at least not anything in the present time. "Those others... only wives of the nightfall. She... She was nothing and he treated her like everything!"

"She was Kitazato Minako, and our lord wanted her safe," Haruie corrected, a little surpised at the cold steel in her voice. "And she had as much right to live and love as any of us--more, because she was innocent. Every onryou, every jibaku-rei, was deemed 'nothing' by someone. We have been battling nothing for centuries!"

If possible, Naoe turned even paler.

"Well," he said through bloodless lips, "we needn't worry about her adding to their number."

Without blinking, Haruie slapped him as hard as she could across the face. Naoe turned with the blow, but did not otherwise react. A knot of what felt like red-hot barbed wire coiled tight in her chest, slowly squeezing out the air from her lungs.

"And the child...?" she wheezed. "Did you once spare a moment to consider your child, then or now? Or is it another point to you in this wretched game, to kill Kagetora's child again?"

Naoe's eyes kindled, hot and lethal as grass-fire. Haruie stood her ground, her own rage shaking through her limbs. The child Kagetora had been unable to protect, just as he had been unable to save his son during the fall of Samegao. The child, the woman... a hideous repeat of the agony that had started it all. Naoe could not have crafted a surer way to earn Kagetora's undying emnity if he'd tried.

*I... I would have... I did not want the child to die, Haruie! A child... even Kagetora-sama could not refuse me, not with a child of both our blood. I did not want him to die, but he sent me away! I tried to reach him, but he sent me away! He would rather die by Oda's hands than turn to me!*

Haruie closed her eyes. The grief and rage in Naoe's thoughts swirled around her. They ran hotter than any battle madness, so dense and focused it was as if they'd become a living thing, a blood-hungry parasite that tore at the wound again and again, starving, desperate to be fed.

Unbidden, an image formed in her mind: Kagetora, as he'd been in the early years, naked to the waist in a pool so clear it rivaled glass. The lord cupped his hands together and raised them from the water, silvery droplets falling from his fingers, his hair. Blessed water, to cool the fever of wounds, even the wounds of spirit. And those eyes, so deep and sad, as if Minako-san and Kagetora stood in the same flesh, holding out their hands in absolution...

The strange thing was, Haruie felt sure that Minako-san, in time, would have given true forgiveness, not the hasty, desperate assurance she'd given that next morning.

"She forgave me," Naoe had whispered over and over, hands clenched together. "She forgave me..."

Then, Haruie had said nothing, but she had known. No woman forgave her violater before the blood was even dry, not unless she was a bosatsu, and perhaps not even then. A woman alone, in terror of another attack, would say whatever her attacker wanted to hear.

And somehow, Kagetora had known as well, and she didn't think it came just from the shards of Minako-san's memories. He knew, he grieved, and he raged--and he had the power to give his will form. The seeds of vengeful spirits still slept in all their hearts.

The knot in her chest contracted, harder and tighter, a hot, heavy pain. She gasped, pressing a hand over her heart. Oh... not now! It would destroy Nami's mother if she were to die here.

"Haruie!"

She felt Naoe's hands, one on her shoulder, the other clutching her arm.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

At least, that's what she thought he said. The blood roaring in her ears distorted sound.

"Need to sit down," she gasped out.

Steady hands guided her to the bench she'd been sitting on before. She sank down onto it gratefully. The stone felt like ice, the cold seeping through the thin material of her dress. Sweat beaded her forehead, running into her eyes. Shaking with the effort, she raised her hands above her head, an instruction drilled into her by parents and doctors both.

It seemed to help; at least, her breathing eased and the pain subsided a tiny bit. Not this time, she thought, her muscles gradually loosening from their knotted state. This wasn't the time she would die. She had a little bit longer as Nami.

She kept her eyes open, breathing in a slow, steady measure. The urge to rub at the knotted, aching place in her chest was overwhelming. People did that with things that hurt, she reflected. They clutched at them, as if pain were a separate, mobile object that could be caught and caged with one's hand.

Haruie looked at Naoe. He'd settled onto his knees beside her. The strained, haunted expression lingered in his eyes. The mark of her hand still stood out on his cheek, a blotch of bright pink. It made her think of the scars on his wrist.

"Do you hate me now?" he asked.

"I want to," she confessed. "We all have nothing, now." Kagetora. Shintaro...! "Maybe, if I were older, more like myself, I would try to kill you," she said, lowering her arms.

They exchanged a look, each remembering that first meeting as Yashashuu. He'd tried to kill Naoe, enraged at the idea of this servant of the enemy, his own murderer, so close to his own lord Kagetora. His intent had been firm. Nothing less than Naoe's bloody death would serve.

And he remembered Kagetora, who interceded, who drew him into an embrace as he wept out his frustration and his failure. Kagetora, whose soft words and offered forgiveness washed clean the festering wound in Haruie's own spirit. It had been a long, hard road before trust and friendship developed between himself and Naoe. The murdered did not easily forgive their murderers.

Haruie had needed Kagetora's forgiveness before he could forgive Naoe. Perhaps--well, no perhaps about it. Naoe needed Kagetora, in far more ways than Haruie could name, before there was even a possibility that Naoe could truly face what he'd done to Minako. And even then... Naoe, she knew, was not... good at owning his own feelings and motivations.

She pressed her lips together, one small hand curling into a fist. Naoe put everything on Kagetora, everything. Haruie wasn't blind to her lord's cruelty--but she also saw how he took those emotinal loads they all set on his shoulders and bore them. To carry that, plus the weight of being the leader of the Uesugi Army, one army ranged against all of Yami Sengoku...

On a much smaller scale, Shintaro as a healer and a rangakusha, had taken on those same odds, carried those same burdens. She could not reject Kagetora without also rejecting Shintaro, and she could not reject Shintaro and continue to live.

Kagetora could have refused to allow her to keep taking female bodies. As a woman, Haruie had needed special protection for many years. It had taken extra effort to keep her free to perform the duties of the Yashashuu. Special dangers awaited women who dared to wander without the protections of a husband or male kin, or enter into the provinces of men.

Even during the most dangerous and turbulent of times, Kagetora had not ordered her to abandon a female body and claim that of a male. Instead, he'd taken on the responsibility of protecting her when she should have been protecting him. The dangers that lurked in wait for other women had never had a chance to claim her. Kagetora had seen to it.

So he owed something to the man who'd taught him so much, to the man who held his heart in trust until his beloved returned. And things between Kagetora and Naoe had not always been so toxic. When Kagetora had offered Haruie freedom, he'd offered to all the Yashashuu--freedom without shame, without guilt.

Allof them.

"I think," Haruie said, choosing her words with care. Breathing was so difficult. "You forget something. You won't hear me now... but maybe one day... you'll remember just who was the last to die that day--who stayed, so we had even that slim chance to escape."

Naoe's pallor took on a grayish tinge, the sort of color that made Nami's mother run for the oxygen tank and hated tubes. He stared through her, across time, to that doomed battlefield. Naoe measured every word, every gesture, the weight depth of silence differently from the rest of them. No-one knew Kagetora better than Naoe, yet no-one read him more wrongly. What, Haruie wondered, did Naoe remember of that day?

"Then why...?" he murmured, still with his mind miles and years away.

Haruie looked away. She thought she could feel Minako-san's presence, a spirit of deep sorrow, lingering at edge of her perception. Sheerest fancy, only bleak options for that lost spirit. I doubt he was any gentler casting out her spirit than assaulting her body. As if that didn't damage a spirit as well! Minako-san could have had no defense at all against Naoe.

Yet she'd fought beside Naoe for centuries, in the name of the man lost to them both. No matter how many generations had been born and died since their fall, they were both samurai still, with all the obligations that came with it. In the absence of their lord, they must still perform the tasks he'd set them to.

"Naoe," she said, and waited until he focused on her. "Have you not yet learned the danger of underestimating our lord?"

His gaze snapped to hers, wary and cold. Naoe could indeed manipulate Kagetora, but to predict him was to control him, and that still lay beyond Naoe's grasp. She stood up, brushing off her skirt. Her chest and back ached, and her head thropped as if with a killing fever. She fixed her gaze on where she knew Naoe to be.

"He has never let you pass unpunished, Naoe, not even for the smallest things. Do you think he would allow you grace for this?"

Her stomach roiled, her body's instinctive effort to somehoe ease the pressure building in her chest. Black and gray spots ate up her vision. The disconnected feeling she recognized as her lifecord unraveling swept over her. Yes, her time as Nami was growing very short. Haruie took a deep breath, summoning every scrap of pride she'd known as his father's son and a proven warrior of the Uesugi.

"If there is a way, in any of the worlds, for him to return, he will. And I don't know whether to rejoice, or pity you when he does."

"Haruie!"

But then the black and gray swelled up, stretching out into the familiar aching indigo. Well... not as much time as I thought. Gnaws eyes tracked him as his spirit slipped free of the crumpled girl-child, fading out from the physical world. As if from the end of a long tunnel, he heard Naoe begin to intone the prayers for the dead.

Kadowaki Eimi opened her eyes at the small cry. With the anxiousness of a new mother, she got out of bed to check on her daughter. They'd decided to name her Ayako, after her husband's late mother.

The baby lay wrapped snug in a diaper and blanket, a little cloth cap protecting her head. As she watched, her daughter's eyes opened partway. Eimi shivered, caught by that dark gaze. Those eyes... did not look like an infant's eyes. They held a sorrow and a knowing that she rarely saw even in those her own age.

"Aya-chan?" she whispered, half-reaching out her hand. She stopped in mid-motion, gripped by the strange certainty that this was not her child.

The dark, shining eyes held her gaze for what felt like hours. Then, with a sleepy baby noise, she closed her eyes, pressing one chubby fist to her slack lips. Shaken, Eimi backed away.

What nonsense, she scolded herself, making her way into the sitting room. Of course that was her baby! She'd held the little girl, still red and wrinkled from the womb. That was her child in the other room, her own flesh and blood. This was just new mother nerves, she decided, pausing before the small shrine they'd set in the corner. Just confronting the reality of what had for so long been a part of her own body, now outside, breathing and moving on its own.

Her hands shook as she lit the incense. They continued to shake, even as she pressed her hands together. She tried to pray, to ask the spirit of her husband's mother to watch over her namesake. Instead, Eimi found herself only able to repeat the mantra to the merciful lady Kwannon, over and over, as if it were the only prayer she knew.

-end-

Notes and Such:

*Haruie Possessed another body between the time he died in Oda's attack and becoming Ayako Kudowaki. That body apparently didn't live long. Details as to its age, name, and manner of death are my invention. Source: Exaudi Nos, translation by Asphodel.

*Kekkai Choboku:the 'barrier exorcism' mentioned in the anime.

*Yashashuu:Name given to the group of five Kanshousha (Kagetora, Naoe, Nagahide. Haruie, Irobe) that lead the Uesugi Netherworld Army.

*Goshina: That nifty bubble-thingy used to ward off spiritual and physical attacks.

*Onryou: vengeful spirit

*Jibuku-rei: spirit bound to its place of death.

*Shineha: Form of telepathy.

*Kanshou: Possession of a living body by one of the dead by casting out or smothering the original soul. Since I use this word, I also use kanshousha in place of the English 'Possessor'. Looks silly, otherwise. Okay, it still looks silly, but it's consistently silly.

*Narimasa Sassa:[Narimasa Sassa]: One of Oda's generals. He shows up in the story of Sarayumi-hime, which sets off all sorts of bad flashbacks in Naoe's head. Putting him here, at the Uesugi-Oda battle felt right.

*Rangakusha: [Rangakusha] "Scholar of Dutch learning." In the OVA, Haruie specifies that Shintaro used 'some Dutch medicine.

*Shibata Katsuie: Oda Oichi's first husband. Oda gave him his sister as a sign of his forgiveness and recognition of his loyalty. I have no idea if he actually returned to aid Oda in Yami Sengoku, but rage at the fate of his wife might well have been motivation enough! Source: Oda Oichi

Special thanks to Asphodel's Haven (Asphodel's Haven) and Petronia's World of Mirage of Blaze (World of Mirage of Blaze) site for much of the novel-derived information used in this story.