beautiful one, sharer of my longing

28: Tank!

"y/n-sama?" a little girl spoke from under your bed, her mother wide eyed at the informality.

"Yes, my love?"

"Gojo-sama will protect us, won't he?"

You smiled at the mention of him, nodding after a moment. "Of course he will."

-

It was hard for Satoru to fight like this.

He was the best swordsman alive and nobody could refute that fact, but even he had to admit, battling angered townspeople in the dead of night was harder than usual. He could barely see and he wasn't sure where his own men ended and their foes begun, and he was sure his father was going to die tonight. Normally, Satoru would crack a joke and poke fun at the old man, but not tonight. Not now. Maybe later if he survived.

Handling a sword was second nature by now. He'd just cut another man's throat in the darkness and spun around within the second to do another, almost in a contagion. His senses were heightened, he was in a groove, even if there was blood both on his hands and on his clothes. Shouts and clanging of metal were all that Satoru could hear at the moment, and all throughout this time, possibly about an hour of fighting, the first light was beginning to rise over the horizon.

It was the odd time between dark and dawn, where the sky was less black and more blue.

The grunt of an elderly man stopped him in his tracks.

"Dad?!" he whirled around, "dad!"

"Satoru!"

His eyes widened, searching everywhere but his eyes could not focus on one specific thing. He was analyzing the faces of people everywhere in a flash, but none of them registered in his mind as that decrepit old man. And then suddenly he saw him. A white sleep yukata stained to the bone with dark blood and a tall, slim man standing over him.

Satoru ran over, legs pulsing and arm cocking back as he cut that man's neck halfway off. He fell to the ground within the second as momentarily, the shouting drowned out of his ears as more men fell by the second.

"Dad--"

"The battle has not yet finished!" Master Gojo roared.

With a small eye roll, Satoru turned back momentarily only to see that the grounds were quiet. Any Zen'in supporter either had run down the estate's hill or was quickly ended by the most dominant Hei unit in the country. Satoru's sword hung down by his leg, and he watched as the first light began to pass over the bloody field.

"Yes it has."

Bodies collapsed, men trudging back to get treated by doctors, the reek of blood and metal at the same time. The shallow breaths of his father. Satoru looked down at the man, who was pathetically laying on the dirt with a pool of his own blood beneath him.

"Satoru," Suguru said as he approached, "everything okay?"

"No," Master Gojo was staring up at his son almost with contempt, eyes hard as his breaths became more shallow. Suddenly he held his hand up and Satoru grasped it with confusion. "I am dying on my feet." He said, the words echoing in the silence of early morning. Satoru nodded quietly.

This was the end of the daimyo's reign. They both new that. Suguru bowed to his master once he stood (with difficulty) and left a moment after to check on the women. And then Satoru was left standing with his dying father and he could do nothing else except stand among the deceased Zen'in men and watch the sun rise over the barren trees.

It was cold. It was so fucking cold as the late December chill always had the earth: dry and brittle.

"It is your birthday soon, is it not?"