死の神
Pai didn't know if she should have seen it coming.
On one of the training days, Kagetora told her to stay longer and watch the fight in its entirety, right to the end. She didn't notice the bright gleam in his eye, and she missed the little smile playing about his lips when he watched Shin struggle not to throw his knife straight at Kagetora's eye for putting her in unnecessary risk by making her stay.
She sat atop her designated boulder and watched the two Hengen's open clash against one another. Kuniumi wasn't there to spectate with her. She'd vanished seconds before their fight began, on to wherever it was she went to when she didn't hang around in Pai's mind to play with her sanity like it was a breakable toy. Pai didn't know why, and when she called out only silence echoed back.
Her heart sat lodged in her throat as she watched, lips pressed to an invisible line. She tried to keep track of Kagetora's insane speed, to spot Shin when he darted this way and that in defensive twirls or lunges that should have struck Kagetora, yet didn't. They moved so deadly fast, it was close to impossible to see anything more than their outlines.
They raced through the clearing, leaping up in the trees, coming down to land before they went right back at it again. Their blades sang as they swung through the air in deadly arcs meant only to maim, to kill. Sometimes Shin used his Ability and blinked out of sight, startling her, but Kagetora always seemed to be two steps ahead and anticipated every coming attack, without using any special abilities of that she could see.
She didn't notice that there was something different about this fight.
Her only hint that something changed was when a gust of wind blew over her when one of them whipped past her. She only had time to register confusion – they never, ever came close to the boulder when they fought, part of some unspoken deal they'd made – before she was yanked to her feet. She went, stumbling before she was swiftly righted with an arm coming up and around her shoulders in a blatant move to keep her in place.
Startled, she looked back and saw it was Kagetora holding her in an unbreakable grip. In the circle of his arms he kept her prisoner, preventing her when she tried to move by tightening his hold around her shoulders. There was a faint scratch of metal on stone, and she looked down to see he'd lowered the tip of his odachi to the ground.
"What are you – "
"Shh," he whispered, breath so close to her ear that she shivered in intense discomfort. Her skin itched where he touched her, even though it was through her clothes.
She hated people touching her. Her palms dampened, and perspiration beaded her forehead just below her hairline, sweat inching down her spine. She hated when another's skin came close to hers. Still, she instinctively reached up to keep her hands on his forearm over her throat, a pathetic attempt to keep him from strangling her if he tried to. She had had one too many experiences with asphyxiation already.
"What are you doing?" she hissed under her breath, ignoring his call for her compliance. She might look meek and obedient, but she sure as hell wasn't going to bend over backwards for anyone.
"Pull the trigger," she felt his answering grin at her back. "Kill the beast."
"What – " her eyes widened in realization, and her gaze dropped. Standing frozen in front of the boulder below, glaring up at the Kitsune, was Shin.
Half a second later, his form blurred before her eyes. Between one blink and the next Shin was standing right in front of her, a few feet away. The only sign that he'd moved was the tension in his wiry body halting his momentum, the stir of hair on his head ruffling from an unseen breeze.
Her mouth fell open in surprise at the wild fury burning in eyes long gone blood-red, crow's feet at the corners set against a deathly pale skin. His face was painted in harsh lines that made him look like someone else entirely – and not just any random stranger, but Shinigami. He looked barbaric, feral, wild and dangerous as he teetered on the brink of losing all control.
Her stomach churned as her eyes roved over him, trying to pick out any tell-tale sign that he was cut somewhere. He only looked like this, anywhere close to this, when Kagetora cut him with one of his many poisoned blades, and he was still trying to keep fighting through the pain. But Shin, despite the way he looked, wasn't injured. Kagetora hadn't stopped the fight as he did when he cut Shin, either.
But she wasn't so slow-witted to not realize that there was something different this time. Something had changed, was changing, in their battle. She just couldn't see what it was.
"Kagetora," Shin spoke in a harsh, doubling voice that wasn't entirely his alone. Her gaze sharpened when a flicker of something red ran down the length of his hair on one side, before disappearing in a flash. "Get the hell away from her."
"One week, Shin." Kagetora ignored the cold fury directed at him. "In the outside world it's been three days. Here, it's been one week since we started this training. Why won't you let him out? Do you really think I can't face him?"
"Get away from Pai," he snapped. He lips pulled over his teeth, and she stared blankly at his canines, sharper than they usually were. She couldn't bring herself to say anything as she watched this carnal side to him that she'd never seen before. Even Shinigami never looked like this.
Kagetora shook his head over hers. "Answer me, and maybe I will."
Shin pursed his lips tight, eyes narrowing in suspicion as he clenched his hands around his katanas. A spasm rocked through his body and he tensed, eyes shutting for a brief moment before he snapped them open to focus on Kagetora once more. She could see him fight with himself, torn between his stubborn refusal to heed anything Kagetora said, and the need to get her away from the Kitsune as fast as possible.
Finally, with an aggravated growl resounding deep from his chest, he snarled, "I can't."
"Why ever not?" Kagetora pressed, stepping forward in such a way that Pai did as well, moving with him as though they were one person. "You still can't bring yourself to trust my ability to train you?"
"Not you," he begrudgingly acquiesced. He looked at Pai, staring at him with her eyes wide as saucers, before going back to Kagetora. "It's him."
"The whole point of this training," here, where she hadn't before, she could hear faint traces of irritation in Kagetora's voice. "Is to learn to control your Makashi. You're not going to do that if you keep him locked away where he can't be controlled, Shin, where he can't be trained."
She stopped breathing when Kagetora whipped his odachi up to settle on his elbow, right at her neck. Its razor sharp edge kissed the side of her neck, cold as ice and sharp as the deadliest blade, and she dared not move an inch. Shin started when Kagetora held his odachi to her neck, eyes blazing in rage. He lifted his katanas as if he was about to attack him right then, but Kagetora clicked his tongue in faint warning, and he halted.
"Imagine how easy it would be for me to slice open her pretty neck." He admonished. Kagetora leaned down until his chin rested on Pai's shoulder. Her heart was starting to hurt with how heavy it weighed in her chest, how fast it pounded, as if it was trying to claw its way up her throat and run as far away as it could get.
He's close, she squeezed her eyes shut, swallowed thickly, trying not to look deeper into the question than she should. He was so close, if she turned to look at him her lips would brush his cheek.
She was sweating with real, palpable fear that churned in her gut like an angry serpent, hissing and biting at everything it could reach. Her breath shot out in quick, quiet gasps as she desperately fought to maintain calm, to keep a clear head like she always did, trying not to move lest she cut herself on the odachi Kagetora left at her neck. It was like she was standing on the edge of a cliff overlooking a vast ocean that would crush her against the rock face if she made a step in the wrong direction.
A single ice-cold drop of water plopped on the tip of her nose. Another followed, and another and another, until a light drizzle slowly began to drench them all, flattening clothes to skin, hair to head, grass to soil. She opened her eyes and looked up. Overhead, a heavy cloud hovered with the promise of rain. The drops stung her with cold even through her clothes. She swallowed thickly as she stared at the darkness of the cloud, blinking rapidly as the rain began to fall harder.
When she looked down again, Shin was staring at her. His breath misted in front of his wavering lips, just as hers was. He wanted to move, she could see that. He wanted to attack Kagetora with everything he had, everything he could, but he couldn't, because Kagetora had the upper hand now. He had Shin's trigger trapped in his arms, held prisoner by the sweet threat of death hovering at her neck.
She couldn't understand the look in his glowing eyes. The rain was falling hard now, and a fine mist seeped through the forest, lazily swirling around them. But she could still see him. There was fear, desperation, hatred in his eyes, all thrown together and mixed up that she couldn't tell where one ended and the other began. If not for the look in his eyes, she would have thought that it was Shinigami she faced.
And then Kagetora asked, "Why her, Shin?"
And she realized that she knew why. She knew why, because Kagetora had been right all along. She was Shin's trigger.
With his Mask off, he looked so like Shinigami that it was only the emotion behind his eyes that betrayed who it was that still remained in control. She wanted so bad to call out to him, but she didn't. How many times would she keep depending on him to save her?
And where was Kuniumi? She was always there when danger lurked around Pai. Where the hell was she now? Pai couldn't feel anything, not even a wisp of her presence. It was like Kuniumi didn't exist anymore, so total was her absence in Pai's mind that it was like a black hole roiling in her gut. Why wasn't she here to help as she said she'd promised to do?
And why was her first thought for comfort her, the strange woman whispering insanity to her?
Shin clenched his jaw, bringing his gaze of pure hatred back to Kagetora. "Why what?"
"She's human. She will die one day, like they all do. Why do you react to her where you would ignore all else? Why her?"
"None of your business."
Kagetora cocked his head to the side, and she tensed. He tilted the odachi so that the tip pointed down to the ground before her feet. She could breathe again. She tried to shift her head away, to move as far away from the blade as she could, but she was barely able to move in Kagetora's grip. The rain, the cold, the fog, did nothing to ease his hold on her.
"You know what?" he said wondrously, as if a marvellous idea had just dawned on him. "I call a new play of the game."
Shin growled, his voice low and dangerous. "Let. Her. Go."
Kagetora pretended not to have heard a word out of his mouth. With his face so close to hers, their cheeks almost touching, she felt more than saw his answering grin. "Get her away from me and she'll be safe. How about that, huh? Sounds fun, doesn't it?"
For who?!
"She has nothing to do with this." Shin snapped, echoing her outrage.
Kagetora laughed suddenly, and she jumped in surprise. She hissed when she the odachi pricked her skin from her movement, slicing just enough that a small trickle of blood beaded and trickled down, mixing with the rainwater flowing down from her hair to her neck and under her clothes. She wanted to put a hand up to cover the wound, but she couldn't when Kagetora didn't remove his odachi, even after cutting her.
She saw Shin's eyes widen as he dropped them to her neck, and her skin flushed when he shifted his burning gaze to Kagetora.
He merely leaned back from Pai, still keeping a firm hold around her shoulders so that she couldn't dart away. She turned her head minutely to look back at him, to glare accusingly at him; wanting to ask him just what did he think he was doing. She was silenced by the careful way he was regarding her, ignoring the crystalline drops of water hanging from his long lashes. He looked like he was debating what new way he could torture them.
Abruptly he took his arm away and reached down to grip her hand. Her world spun in a dizzying flash of dark green forestry and Kagetora's smirking face, her feet moving almost of their own accord as she twisted to keep herself from falling, before it all stopped. She found herself standing with her left arm outstretched, keeping a hold of Kagetora's warm hand in a death grip as her heart pounded painfully in her chest at the shock of what he'd just done.
She looked back at Shin, her lips parting to say something. What, she didn't know. He was already starting to move towards her, as if to snatch her away from Kagetora while she was apart from him. Before he could, Kagetora pulled, and she stumbled back unwillingly. In another encroachment of her personal space, he crossed his arms over the front of her body, settling his chin on her shoulder again.
"Dance, Shin," he taunted, lifting and twisting the odachi so that its blade was pressed against her hip. Even through her soaking clothes she could feel its biting edge. The threat of impaling herself was more than unappealing. "Dance together with him, and save her from me."
Kagetora burst out suddenly, moving so quickly that her feet lifted off the slippery ground as he swept forward. He brought his odachi up in a deadly arc in front of them. Shin leaped back in time to avoid it and Kagetora laughed, like it greatly amused that he did so.
He parried a blow from Shin, somehow able to keep her from tripping and falling as he twirled her around himself like they were dancing a waltz, jumping off the boulder and landing spryly on the ground below. He was able to do all this with his odachi still in hand, keeping it close enough to her that if she tried to move against him, she would be stabbed.
Shin leaped off the boulder after Kagetora, the song of his katanas whistling through the rapid pattering of rain as he brought them scissoring down on Kagetora's head. The Kitsune, chuckling in wild abandon, whirled around so that instead of him, it was Pai who was almost killed by those blades.
Her lips parted in an almost-scream a second before Shin realized what was happening. He twisted on the balls of his feet, katanas whipping out on either side of him and narrowly avoiding taking her head off.
Before anything could be said, before Shin could rage at Kagetora for going against his promise and putting her life at risk, Kagetora spun her around so that she was behind him, back-to-back, facing the forest. He kept a firm grip on her wrist as he lifted his odachi and deftly knocked aside a katana that came swinging for him once she was out of the way.
In a lightning-fast move, Kagetora stepped forward and twisted his odachi around a katana, knocking it aside. An instant later the odachi swept out, and she let out a sharp cry when she watched the tip of the blade cut into Shin's cheek. He sprang away, but not fast enough. He glowered at Kagetora from a few feet away, lifting the back of his hand to wipe against the blood trickling down to his mouth.
The sight of Shin bleeding because of Kagetora set her blood boiling. She feels a blackness crawling like animate liquid over the back of her hand. It's getting colder hotter warmer harder more less and then it vanishes, slipping back into the nothing it is born from.
She doesn't know if it's real. Her arms tremble with the effort of keeping it in, keeping the pressure building like a raging fire deep in the pit of her stomach from getting stronger, from exploding –
"Kage – " she yelped, cut off as he yanked her forward again just as Shin swept out with a blow that surely would have caught Kagetora's shoulder, at the least.
Her throat closed off in fear as her feet stumbled beneath her on the muddy grass. She didn't fall. Kagetora pulled her up against his side before she could, keeping an arm around her shoulders to steady her totally skewed balance.
Shit, she thought dizzily, blinking as she tried to bring Shin's blurring form back into focus through the mist of rain. He's using me as a shield against Shin.
There was no way Shin could – would – attack Kagetora when she was being used as a buffer like this. Every time he came close enough to catching the Kitsune out, Kagetora would simply fling her forward and Shin would have to twist around to avoid hurting her.
When her vision finally righted itself, when she was sure that the blackness she could almost feel in her hands was just in her head, that it wasn't real as it felt, she saw it.
She saw it, saw that it wasn't Shin fighting anymore, at the same time as Kagetora voiced it aloud.
"Welcome to the real world," he boomed in greeting. She would have glanced up at him, to see what crazy look was on his face this time, if she wasn't arrested by the sight in front of her. "Makashi."
Crimson eyes glowered hatefully at both Pai and Kagetora as Shinigami straightened, falling out of the offensive stance Shin had been in only seconds ago.
He looked just as she remembered him. Unruly black hair fell over the same eyes that glowed with malignity. The same sharpened canines that made him look closer to animal than man. The same lithe body he used to carry out death with the katanas he gripped in his hands. The only notable exception, something she was sure hadn't been there the last few times she'd come face-to-face with Shinigami, was an odd red streak around the ends of his hair on the right.
Turning, he stalked around Kagetora in semi-circle, who moved with Pai so that Kagetora always had his eye on him whilst still keeping a careful hold of her. Wordlessly, Shinigami reached up and pushed back the hair falling over his eyes, keeping them trained on Kagetora. His tongue flicked out to lick the blood dribbling down the side of his mouth, looking for all the world like he didn't care that he was cut. He showed no signs that Kagetora's blade had been dipped in poison like it usually was.
Shinigami swung the katanas at his sides in circles as he came to a stop, watching the Kitsune with such cold anger, such frigid malevolence, it would have stopped the beating heart of any ordinary mortal.
He lifted one katana and pointed it at her, its blade dripping with rainwater sliding down its length. "What makes you think I give a damn about her? You'd be doing me a favour by killing her."
Kagetora laughed snidely, the sound grating on her nerves. "Oh, I know you care very little for this sweet little human."
"Then what are you doing?" he mocked snidely.
Kagetora raised his odachi and aimed the sharp end of the blade at her throat. She could feel some of the blood diluted with rainwater dripping down her neck, onto the flat surface of the gleaming metal. Her eyes widened when she saw Shinigami tensing at the move.
A lick of madness dipped Kagetora's voice behind her. "You don't really care, but you do care enough that you want to be the one who ends her beautifully tragic life. You want to be the one whose blades taste her blood."
"Fucking bullshit." Shinigami snapped.
She narrowed her eyes at him, and he dropped his gaze to hers, as if he was asking her, You dare look at me like that? Whose fault do you think it is we're in this situation?
"Really?" Kagetora questioned. He sighed in mock sorrow.
Before she could so much as utter a word of shock, Kagetora pulled her out from his side to stand in front of him. For the first time since he'd physically touched her, he released her. She took a step to the left, to at least try getting away from both of them, but she stilled when Kagetora whipped up his odachi and aimed it at her heart. The tip of his blade was sharp; she could feel it pressed lightly to the wet clothes sticking to her skin. If he made one move forward, he would be able to so easily push his blade right through her chest. She knows what it would feel like, to have that metal sink beneath her skin, under it, right to where it matters.
She glared, but he only smiled at her as he called out, "Guess it was a waste of time keeping her around for so long, then. Perhaps Seiran will be glad for a new human toy to bite into." He cocked his head to the right, amusement glinting in his eyes at the pop of her mouth dropping open at his words. "You wouldn't mind if I go on right ahead and – "
He didn't finish what he was saying.
His eyes widened, a smirk tipped his lips up, and a blade come whistling towards them. Her stomach dropped to her feet and she squeezed her eyes shut, preparing for the worst, for the pain of having a foreign metal object penetrate her body. Instead, she heard the sharp clang of metal on metal.
Her eyes snapped open to see Shin – Shinigami – standing in front of her, having knocked Kagetora's odachi aside with his katana. A heat terrifyingly similar to the one she felt when near Kagetora flooded her body, and she took an involuntary step back from Shinigami. He half-turned at the sound of wet grass squelching under her feet, and she froze when he aimed a baleful carmine glower down at her.
He didn't have to say anything for her to know that she needed to keep perfectly still. Her lips parted in a feeble effort to say something, yet nothing worked its way past the ball stuck in her throat. A second later he dropped his eyes down when another line of blood joined the first from the cut in her neck, coming to rest at the hollow of her throat. It wasn't clotting because the rain was keeping it moist.
Out of nowhere, she saw a sliver of blue dart over the red, his eyes flickering as he watched her blood against the paleness of her wet skin. Her heart lifted out of the pits as she started to say something again, before Shinigami turned away from her.
If you're Shinigami, she thought, terrified of the hope lighting her, unable to dampen it as it burned brighter than ever. You'd have tried to kill me by now.
"I thought," Kagetora drawled, bringing their attention back to him. It was difficult for her to force her mind back to the Kitsune, embroiled as it was as she tried to figure out the pieces of the puzzle before her. "You don't care what happens to her."
Shinigami said nothing as he stood between her and Kagetora, a literal wall of tightly coiled muscle and lethal danger blocking the Kitsune from going near her. He didn't move, but tension radiated from him as if he was just waiting for Kagetora to make a single step.
Kagetora chuckled, eyes alight with glee. "Your actions speak against your words, you know? You say she means nothing to you, yet you protect her from me and don't use the ample opportunity provided to you to kill her. It's never been this easy to do it. Why is that, I wonder."
"It's not actually any of your fucking business, is it, Kitsune?" Shinigami snapped irritably, echoing Shin's earlier words, sounding exactly as the part of him he hated more than her.
There's something wrong, she realized, eyes fixed on his back clad in a fitting grey t-shirt drenched in rain and sweat. There is something different about him.
She couldn't pinpoint what it was. Shinigami seemed to regard her with the same level of hatred he had every other time they'd met like this, with him wrestling control from Shin over a shared body. But at those times he'd openly threatened her life. In Kyoto, he almost strangled her. He would have killed her right then and there, if Shin hadn't stopped him.
It wasn't like he was protecting her now, exactly, but he hadn't made a single imperilling move to her. Glaring didn't count. By now he should have done something to hurt her, at the very least. Kagetora was right about that.
Why hadn't he? What was different now?
Kagetora lifted his free hand, and she saw the corded muscles in Shinigami's back stiffen at the movement. With a sly smirk, the Kitsune waved his hand in a dramatic flair, as if he were a magician performing an elaborate trick.
An instant later, her stomach was dragged to the ground as her skin erupted in crawling goose flesh that rose the hairs on her arms. All the air in her was violently sucked out in a blinding vortex and she gasped, her lungs aching, struggling to breathe. Black flowers bloomed in her sight as her vision blinked.
Then the world around her warped, the colours of the forest and the light of the sky darkening with the promise of the rain bent around her. Her feet lost the ground carpeted in grass, and she was thrown in limbo.
Pai shut her eyes against the rolling nausea that swept over her, but snapped them open again when she felt the firm forest floor under her feet again barely a second later. A steadying hand at the centre of her back kept her stable when her knees buckled and threatened to send her tumbling to the ground.
She was standing opposite Shinigami again, staring at her with wide, disbelieving eyes. She whipped her head to the right, dizzying herself, blinking rapidly to get the water out of her eyes. She was by Kagetora's side again. It was like she'd never left. It was his hand at her back, both keeping her steady on her feet and warning her not to try running again.
Shinigami took half a step towards her, but jerked to a halt when Kagetora brought the long blade of his odachi right back up to settle its cold flat edge against her neck. If he so much as twisted it, the blade would cut into skin. It would be so easy to slit her throat this way.
"What – " she started. Her tongue too thick in her mouth, brain too foggy with befuddlement over what was happening, wondering how she'd been standing behind Shinigami only moments before and was now by Kagetora again. "What did you do?"
Kagetora spoke to Shinigami, stridently ignoring her. "I don't particularly care, actually, what it is you want to do to her. It isn't my business."
"Then what the fuck are you doing right now?" Shinigami growled.
"Playing a game." His mouth twisted in a smirk. "How about this – if you can get her away from me, if you can so much as cut me and make me bleed, even just like this," he reached up and slowly dragged his finger across her neck, painting a red smile on the white skin with her own blood. "You can have her to do with what you please."
I'm not an object for you to throw around like that! She railed silently at him, wishing she could spin around and slap him as hard as she could. She didn't dare move, much as she wanted to.
"Why should I do anything you say?" Shinigami asked, lifting an eyebrow in arrogant mockery. "I'm not your dog to bring to heel."
"Because if you don't fight me, I will kill her. Simple as that."
Blood drained from her face. She'd heard wrong, she must have. He promised that he wouldn't hurt her.
She was dying, Shinigami had confirmed it, and some part of her was slowly coming to terms with it – but, for some reason, Kagetora's threat weighed suddenly heavy on her. She was dying, but slowly. It wasn't happening all at once.
What Kagetora was saying...it would be now. Now, out of nowhere.
But how many times had she been told to go and kill someone? How many times had she complied and abruptly ended someone's life that would have gone on spinning if she hadn't cut it short?
An unexpected trembling began in her hands, but she hardly noticed as she remembers the blood of the Tanuki dripping down his broken nose as the guard yanks him to his feet, barely conscious.
Kiku kneels in front of her, calling her name, asking her if she's all right, if she can get up, if she can speak. His hand is cool when he brushes his fingers over the heated, reddening skin of her neck.
She doesn't say anything. She stares numbly at the white white white wall in front of her, endless disappointment surging through her. She failed. She had one chance to end it all, and she failed.
Maybe Akira and So Fu are right. Maybe all she is good for is killing others. Not herself.
"Didn't you make a promise otherwise?" she was brought to sickening reality by Shinigami's snide voice taunting Kagetora. "I thought Kitsune don't lie."
"We don't," he acquiesced. "I promised not to let any harm come to her. But," he put a finger to his smirking lips, as if he was revealing a secret he wasn't meant to tell anyone. "I didn't say I wouldn't do anything, did I?"
Kagetora fell into a constant state of dancing and laughing through the rain that unnerved her, reminding her too much of the absentee Kuniumi.
He parried blow after blow from Shinigami, spinning her around him like she was a marionette doll while he dodged every strike that would have loped off an arm, or a leg. Against her own better judgement, she clung close to Kagetora, moving on instinct when he spun her out this way and that, simply because she knew that she was safer with Kagetora than she was with Shinigami.
How safe that was, she didn't know. Perhaps she'd be better off with a hungry lion. At least she'd know the motives for it wanting to kill her. With these two men, she knew nothing. She didn't know why Shinigami didn't let Kagetora kill her. She didn't know why the Kitsune was using her like this.
All along he goaded Shinigami, pushing him to the limits by recounting the Kitsune's attack nine years ago, the woman Shin couldn't save in the fire, some mysterious event that happened in Siberia. Kagetora even went so far as to reveal that he knew whom Shin's tanto belonged to. He used Seiran's name to poke at him enough that against all odds, Shinigami took the bait dangled in front of him and attacked with a lethal fury.
She couldn't understand any of it.
He'd fallen right into Kagetora's trap when he made the first moved and lunged for Kagetora. She couldn't understand why Shinigami let the Kitsune get to him, get under his skin. How could he listen to Kagetora's demand for a fight, comply with it, when he wanted her dead?
Was Kagetora right? Was the only reason Shinigami fought because he wanted to be the one to kill her, and would allow no other the sadistic pleasure?
Despite having tried to turn her emotions to blocks of ice inside her, without Kuniumi's help, her heart sunk to her stumbling feet. Try as she might, she couldn't imagine just how much hatred festered in his heart if he allowed himself to be led into this dance, heeding the Kitsune's tune like this, just to be the one to kill her. Everything in her mind was thrown in blind disarray.
But if Shinigami hated her so much, why hadn't he used the opportunity to kill her? Why did he hesitate, as if he was being influenced not to go after her? Was Shin in there, stopping him from outright murdering her?
She knew that she should have been more careful when she forced the promise out of Kagetora that first day. She'd missed something, and he'd known exactly what he was doing when he'd phrased his promise so that he never explicitly said, I will not harm her. He said he needed her as Shin's trigger, but how was this helping? What was he trying to do, besides getting a katana shoved through her stomach?
"Duck," he murmured under his breath, a crazed, wild grin alighting his face.
Pai reacted instantaneously. She dipped her head as well as she could whilst caught in his arms. He did the rest by spinning around in circle, bending over her as a body shield instead of using her as one the way he had been when still fighting Shin. She squeezed her eyes tight as she held her hands clasped close to her chest, desperately trying to make herself as small as possible.
Dual blades whistled over their heads in a low-swinging arc that surely would have cut Kagetora's head off had he not moved. In no time at all, Kagetora sprung up again, parrying another blow, the swords ringing out in shrill screams as Shinigami brought his blades on the long odachi, pressing down, closing in with enough strength that Kagetora faltered but a step.
She looked up at the growling face of Shinigami above her, crisscrossed by the silver blades between them. His eyes glowed with battle fervour, wholly intent on his opponent as he pushed down harder, trying to force Kagetora to yield or drop his odachi to stop having his eye cut out. She had no idea how Kagetora was keeping him off with one arm while the other kept her closer than she liked.
"Where," Shinigami snapped in a brittle voice, lips curling over elongated canines, giving him the look of a feral animal. "Where do you think you're going with this? Taunting me," his gaze fell to hers before snapping back up. "Using her like a disposable doll. What are you trying to do with this?"
"Together," Kagetora answered smoothly, as if he wasn't locked in a battle to the death. "You fight together, now. You're right where you need to be to survive what's coming, Shin. That is where I want you."
What? She thought, jolted by the unexpected words that sounded more like they should be coming out of Kuniumi than the Kitsune. What do you mean –
With an abrupt surge of unexpected strength, he shoved Shinigami back, so hard that their connected blades screamed as they separated. At the same instant, he flicked his arm out so that she spun out from his side, twisting on the balls of her heels to keep from falling to the ground, his grip on her outstretched hand almost impossibly tight.
She came to a jarring stop in time to see Shinigami fall back nimbly, keeping on his feet as he straightened. He stalked around them in a slow circle as he swung his blades in circles at his sides, focused solely on Kagetora, searching for a weakness, a hole in his defence that he could slip through. It was only now, when Kagetora held her away from him in this deliberate move, that she realized what he meant. She turned her eyes, mind rattling in startled confusion, from him to Shinigami.
Her mouth fell open when she saw a splinter of blue weep in the red, and she unconsciously breathed Shin's name, unnoticed by either man. It was only when she saw his eyes that she realized Shinigami was not fighting alone.
The blue grew from a mere sliver to encompass his whole left eye. It was like the night at Kyoto when the stranger Kuniumi knew darkened one eye – but now it was red versus blue, blood and diamond fighting together in a strange, exhilarating coalescence.
Kagetora left himself purposefully open even as he pulled on her arm and brought her spinning back to him in a blinding whirl, keeping her to his side in an iron hold that, this time, she didn't think to try and wriggle out of. She watched Shinigami – and Shin – notice it, take advantage of the momentary drop in defence rather than stop to question it.
Half a second before he moved, Shinigami looked at her, still encased in Kagetora's arms. She saw something there, behind the blind anger and hatred. It was a question, asking her if he could, and an apology that she would see him do something he'd never before done in front of her.
Given the opportunity, she didn't know how she would answer him.
The katana slid into Kagetora's chest with unexpected malleability, coming out from his back between his shoulder blades. So close, all she heard from Kagetora was a quiet sigh as the blade drove through his body. She felt something warm touch her shoulder, just barely there, but she knew what it was.
It has soaked her hands for long enough that she knows what this familiar warmth is. She knows it too well.
The scream that echoed too loud in the forest came from her, as Kagetora's arm slipped from her side and her hands came up to cover her mouth as she stumbled away from him. Kagetora stood there with a katana protruding from him body, like some grotesque comic character. A line of blood trickled past Kagetora's smiling lips, dangling from his chin before plopping down to blend in with the dark red of his kimono.
Her wide-eyed stare swung from Kagetora to ShinigamiShin, hand releasing the hilt of the katana as he stepped back, leaving his blade buried in Kagetora. He almost tripped over a small stone on the ground behind his foot. His hands were trembling as he gaped, eyes large, at Kagetora, who merely smirked at Shin. Pai stared, dumbfounded, as she watched more red run over the ends of Shin's hair, like blood dripping over the long locks.
ShinShinigami, ShinigamiShin...it was happening, right now. They were becoming one right in front of her, the silence of rain pounding down on them all from the dark heavens the only sound ringing through the forest.
The man standing in front of her was no longer Shinigami, but not quite Shin, either. It was Shin's face she saw, with the added sharpness of Shinigami's canines to his teeth. It was the strong line of his jaw, his dark brows furrowed with fierce intensity, his lips thinning as he stared at the wounded Kagetora before him. But his eyes were a strange mix of both Shin and Shinigami, not quite one of the other.
She was moving before she realized it. His name slipped past her lips in a desperate call before she thought to stop herself.
Shin half turned, dropped his remaining katana and just managed to catch her in his arms as she threw herself at him, exhilaration sweeping her up in a dizzying tidal wave that made her forget the promise she'd made to herself to stay far away from Shin.
He wrapped his arms around her waist, lifting her clear off the ground as he held her breathlessly close, burying his nose in the loosened white hair that was plastered over her shoulders and to her back. She could feel the way his breath wavered, exhilaration still pumping through his veins like heroin. He pressed her so close to him, she could feel every curve of his muscled abdomen through his shirt sticking to his skin.
She instinctively wound her arms around his neck, hesitating before she decided, To hell with it, and pushed her fingers through the damp, tangled silken mess of his hair. Despite the chill in the air from the rain flooding them, heat – the likes she had only felt around a certain Kitsune and a certain Kamigami – pooled in her stomach, warming her.
She was gasping, crying, laughing, all at once. He was asking her if she was okay, if she was hurt, but she couldn't say anything as she held him tighter, refusing to let go, unable to believe the reality of the situation. She couldn't believe how good it felt to have her ribs almost crushed with how tight he hugged her, couldn't believe the strength of the relief breaking her to pieces that Shin had made it.
He made it, he made it through this insane training, he made it, he made it.
She didn't know how she knew. She didn't know how she knew that the man before her now, the man she embraced so fiercely, was not Ayakashi anymore. He was what Kagetora had warned her he would become if he survived the transition.
Shin was Kamigami now.
"Pai," still speaking in the same Ayakashi undertones, he lowered her to the ground slowly. Shin lined his hand to her cheek, keeping one arm around her waist as he peered into her eyes, concern the only thing she could see there. "Are you okay? I didn't hurt you?"
She was struck into speechlessness at seeing the tender, worried care in his eyes. She'd never seen the crimson side of him look at her like that. He'd only ever looked at her in hatred, in anger, with those eyes.
In almost veneration, she reached up and lightly traced the drying blood from the cut on his cheek, hazily wondering if she needed to patch it up, if it was poisoned. Her hands lowered to touch the ends of his hair, now so naturally dyed a red that was darkened to deep brown from the rain. When he said her name again, she physically shook her head to rouse herself out of her mind's wanderings, and dropped her hand.
"I'm fine, I'm – I'm fine, you didn't – you didn't hurt me, don't worry," she managed with a weak smile up at him. Her fingers clenched to fists as she dug her nails into her palms, forcing herself to remember her promise, clinging to her disenchanted belief that she could never, ever tell Shin how she truly felt about him. "You're okay? You're not – you're not – "
"Lovely to see you celebrating the elevation of Shin's primal status," a rankled voice interrupted from behind them, and she abruptly cut herself off. "While someone potentially dies right behind of you. I'd hate to fight a war with you. You're both terrible."
Pai spun around, more from shock at the fact that she completely forgot Kagetora was there, with a sword through his chest, than the fact that he spoke in the same gratingly mocking tones he always did. Her mouth dropped open in shock as she watched Kagetora reach forward, hands slick with his own blood, yet steady as he gripped the hilt of Shin's katana.
With a single move that looked far less painful than it should have been, he pulled the katana out. His face twisted in a grimace, but he didn't make a sound. The hairs on the back of her neck lifted when the blade made a sickening, squelching sound as he yanked it all the way out before putting his arm to the side and dropping it to thud on the grass.
She stared at its sticky red surface for a long moment, watching the blood stubbornly clinging to the blade as the rain tried to wash it away. She lifted her stupefied gaze to Kagetora. He simply smiled as he pulled a plain white handkerchief out of his kimono and began wiping away his own blood from his hands.
"How...how..." the impossibility of the entire thing had her trailing off into silence. People did not pull swords out of their chests like that was a normal and acceptable thing to do.
Shin finished for her, with more calm than she felt capable of mustering. "How are you still alive after that?"
Kagetora let out a sharp bark of laughter that made her jump, nerves completely shot to pieces. "How could I not be, is the real question."
He sounded almost sad when he said that. Almost like he regretted not dying.
"I stabbed you through the chest with a katana, Kagetora."
With a nonchalant shrug, Kagetora crumpled the handkerchief and disposed of it in some hidden pocket she couldn't see, presumably the one he'd pulled it out of. His odachi was nowhere to be seen. It had the disturbing tendency to simply vanish whenever he wasn't in need of it.
He looked up and smirked at Shin's entirely unamused expression. "What, do you want the real, boring truth?"
"The real, boring truth." Shin deadpanned.
It was only when Shin tightened his hold around her waist in a minute move that she realized he still had his arm around her. Her cheeks flushed before she forced herself back to reality. She wondered if she should move away, but changed her mind. This was probably the last time she'd get to be this close to him without fearing what he may think of her. She would take what she could get, for however long she managed to.
Kagetora sighed heavily. He crossed his arms over his chest, not even wincing as she imagined the skin around his wound pulling taut. He had just been stabbed, worse than what he'd done to Shin in their first fight. In all rights he should be dead, yet he was acting as if nothing happened, as if the blood he wiped from his hands was an animal's he just finished butchering for a meal.
"You could stab me thousands of times, lope off my head, burn me alive, rip my heart out of my chest, and," he spread his hands out on either side of him in defeat, a mocking smile on his lips – as ever – as he declared in a derisive tone, "I will still come back to haunt you every single time. Because you know what, Shin? You know what's so damn special about me?"
"What?" Shin snarled, the fury riding his voice a palpable thing she could almost touch. In a very obviously territorial move, he took a step forward so that he stood in front of her, blocking Kagetora's view of her. After what Kagetora had just pulled, she didn't mind it so much now. "Spit it out, Kagetora. Or I will rip it out of your tongue."
Kagetora's eyes twinkled merrily, as if he was talking about something he loved rather than the reason why he wasn't dead, why he couldn't die. But as she narrowed her eyes suspiciously at him from behind Shin, she thought she caught the stray wisps of a darkness buried deep inside Kagetora. It was one that disconcertingly reminded her of Kuniumi.
Kagetora grinned, looking entirely too pleased at this familiar yet unexpectedly ferocious side of Shin. "Because there is no grave that can hold me down, Shin."
☯
End of Season 2