#mitsuhide xmc

[the-foxes-fangs]

I Wish I was The Moon Part XII

Tagging the wonderful @louveau, @you-mass-effect-my-dragon-age and @otomediary

Warnings: Fiery speeches, angst

                         ｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆　　 ｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆

“I asked for information, ninja, not your opinion.” Mitsuhide said, drumming his fingers irritably on the butt of his matchlock, staring testily at Sasuke across the sputtering fire he had built in a slightly less burned out corner of the temple.  

“And I asked you to give me back my glasses, but here we are.” Sasuke replied wryly, the indignation in his usually impassive expression wasted on the tattered curtain that was receiving it. “I am absolutely never providing EMT services for any warlord going forward. You make lord Kenshin look incredibly polite.” He muttered to himself. 

“I don’t suppose I make anything look like much of anything to you at the moment.” Mitshude retorted acerbically. He had lost consciousness, and still felt damnably weak and unsteady despite his racing mind. 

“Taking a man’s glasses, that’s unconscionable. I don’t know what I expected from the Akechi Mitsuhide, but still, that’s a dirty trick.” 

“Oh, so my reputation precedes me, even into the future.” 

Mitsuhide banked the fire, waving away the smoke that flared up from the damp wood as it drifted into his face. 

“It’s not like I’d leave the man my bff– for reasons known only to herself and whichever star guides people toward terrible choices– loves.” 

“Your what now?” Mitsuhide asked, sharply, eyes narrowed at Sasuke as he considered the revelation of frequent ceiling and floor assisted visits. 

“Best friend forever.” Sasuke said reaching up to the blank space where his glasses normally sat as if to push them up the bridge of his nose disapprovingly. “And you have no cause for jealousy, she’s like a sister to me.”

“Yes, I suppose if you’d had designs you could’ve just gone back to your own time together.” Mitsuhide replied. “You said that the fissure would open again, so tell me where and when and I’ll just fetch her myself.” 

“I also just told you that that course of action is extremely ill advised, if it’s even possible at all. The potential distortion of space-time–” Sasuke replied, cutting himself off with a sigh. 

“Alright, so that’s the least feasible option. We’ll just put that aside for now. What other course of action can we take?” 

“I’m afraid I’m otherwise employed and must inform you that I have an extremely binding contractual obligation which regretfully prevents me from joining you in any ill-advised ventures likely to result in dismemberment, severe emotional trauma, beheading or otherwise unspecified bodily harm.” Sasuke countered flatly, reaching for his phantom glasses again and dropping his hand with a noise of displeasure. 

“Were you under the impression that you had a choice? I’m afraid not. Keeping you hostage is an absolute necessity.” 

“I could take you in a fight right now.” Sasuke said to a patch of white ash on a scorched pillar. 

“Oh I have no doubt, but you won’t. I might die, and you’re just ever so slightly more devoted to your bff than Kenshin.” Mitsuhide replied knowingly. 

“Dear god, it’s like someone desaturated Shingen and surgically removed his conscience.” Sasuke whispered in horrified awe. 

“And If you’re thinking ‘surely lord Kenshin will come for me!’ you should know that I know he doesn’t know you came here, and that I can keep you hidden for years.” Mitsuhide added. 

“You really just added a new and disturbing dimension to my relationship with Kenshin right off the cuff there, didn’t you?”

“Spare me the inane chatter, give me options. How do we get her to the wormhole at the right time?” He asked with a gesture that was wasted on Sasuke.  

“Leaving aside that we’re well beyond my known timeline, there’s no fail-safe way to ensure that any message you send will survive.” 

“If I could just get her back to Tanba…” Mitsuhide said, stroking his chin thoughtfully, thinking of the myriad hiding places he had built into the castle and the ways he could draw her attention to them without alerting five centuries worth of residents.

“You should know that Tanba was a ruin in our time, and my calculations suggest that an incredibly dramatic causal variance would be required to change that outcome.” 

They sat in contemplative silence for awhile, until Mitsuhide dropped his fist into the palm of his other hand triumphantly. “I’ve been thinking about this all wrong. It’s the people!” He said enthusiastically. 

“Are you feeling dizzy again, by any chance?” Sasuke asked with a note of alarm. 

“I feel like I’ve been trampled by several horses, but that’s not important.” He answered dismissively, his mind on fire with plans. 

He had been nearly paralyzed with leaden misery at his own helplessness, feeling only the overwhelming distance between them and the implacable rule of time around him like water closing over his head. 

Even if she didn’t return to him, even if they never met again, he had to make certain that she knew that she had been loved, would be loved, always. He only needed a problem to solve to find his feet. 

“We have two issues– how to physically secure a message, and how to draw her attention to the correct place.” 

“In extremely simplified terms, yes.” 

“She won’t be too keen to look me up, if I know her. She’ll be trying to carry on and let go of me, which precludes some kind of monument. But the people– they can protect Tanba and convey my message all at the same time.” 

“I don’t follow…” Sasuke replied curiously. 

“Of course you don’t, but all you need to do is follow along.” 

He had driven himself to the brink of collapse the rest of that winter, exhausting every moment that he could conceivably be away from Azuchi without rousing more then the usual levels of suspicion. He returned on a soft spring day just in the nick of time for a war council. 

Hideyoshi strode toward him with a mixture of anger and concern, grabbing his collar to growl “where the the hell have you been?” 

“Starving himself half to death, by the look of it.” Ieyasu interjected dourly. 

“Are we sure he hasn’t got the plague or something? He has a look in his eyes– and where’s the lass? Why isn’t she with you?” Masamune added, studying him closely. 

Nobunaga studied him impassively, and waited for the tumult to die down. Only the inner circle was present, as Mitsuhide had requested. He strode forward, but did not sit. 

“What I’m about to tell you doesn’t leave this room.” He began, and explained her absence. 

Masamune offered a low whistle, with an amused look in his eye, while Hideyoshi stared blankly and Nobunaga tapped his fan on his knee thoughtfully. Ieyasu snorted derisively, and Mitsunari knit his brow in concentration. 

“That was several months ago. What have you been doing since then?” Hideyoshi asked, finally shifting out of his reverie. 

Mitsuhide smiled perhaps the first entirely honest smile he had ever offered them, knowing that it was probably ghastly on his gaunt face. “Why, scheming to bring her home, of course.” 

“You’ve finally lost that tangled excuse for a mind.” Ieyasu said harshly. 

“Oh quite possibly.” Mitushide answered, sweeping his gaze across the room as he made his great gamble. “But then again, none of you have ever known me when I truly wanted something.” 

Nobunaga narrowed his eyes with a taut smile. “And just how do you intend to accomplish such a feat?” He asked, coldly. 

Mitsuhide cocked his head and looked out the window at the soft blue sky, picturing her under the cherry blossoms for half a moment. “With the closing of this rotten age, my lords. The time for peace and unification has come, one way–” he dropped his hand to his gun, “or another.” 

“You crazy bastard.” Masamune said with a wild laugh. “I like this side of you.” 

The blood had drained from Hideyoshi’s face, and his voice shook as his hand drifted toward his sword, hissing “what have you done?” 

“I wouldn’t, Hideyoshi. If I don’t leave this council with my head on my shoulders all hell will break loose.” Mitsuhide answered, lightly. 

“Speak your piece.” Nobunaga said darkly. 

“With Kenshin and Shingen alive and dragging the last of the Imagawa in tow, we could be at war for who knows how long, and with unpredictable results. But I need a rough sequence of events to unfold, and it doesn’t include endless war. The remnants of monks of Heiei and the Mori are problems all their own, and then there’s your puppet Shogun.” He said, gesturing at Nobunaga. 

“We’re all aware of the current situation.” Hideyoshi spat through gritted teeth. “What’s your point?” 

“There are too many personal vendettas and ambitions at play for this to ever be settled under only our volition, unless it’s by battle royale with only one left alive. Given her affection for all of you, that’s not a particularly desirable outcome either.” 

“All this for a woman.”  Masamune said with amusement.

“Lord Mitsuhide…” Mitsunari cut in at last, with quiet dread in his voice, “you’re talking as if you’ve brought in an outside army.” 

The air was electric as Nobunaga leaned forward with a hard glitter in his eyes. 

“Not so much an outside army as evening the odds for the people we have no business trampling over on our way to glory. I’ve armed the women in every fief, and given the farmers instructions to stop working the fields if our demands for peace aren’t met. They may choose to rise up and kill me, of course, but as long as I’m a convenient mouthpiece, I’m reasonably safe.” 

Hideyoshi struck him hard across the face, leaving him with the taste of blood in his mouth. “You’re going to– no, you’ve already thrown the country into chaos and famine!” He thundered, red faced with fury. 

“It sounds quite peaceful outside to me. More peaceful than it has in my memory. No thundering cavalry, no armies marching at the pleasure of men who are, in the end, only men no better or worse than they.” Mitsuhide replied, dabbing the blood from the corner of his mouth with his sleeve. 

“What hope could peasant women and farmers have against trained armies?” Nobunaga asked contemptuously. 

“Not much, it’s true, but how long do you think your foot soldiers would heed the order to attack their mothers, sisters, daughters and wives? You’d order them to destroy the future, and for what–” his voice rose, hoarse and strident, “to say that you ruled the world?” 

He made a sweeping gesture, hoping that his words, always his favorite weapon, would secure a bloodless victory. 

“Every throne casts the shadow of its own destruction, my lords. We clamber to the heavens and live in dread of those we leave below, driven to greater and greater cruelty to avoid being dragged to the hell that we ourselves have made.” 

He dropped his hands and and his voice, and looked each of them in the eye in turn. 

“Isn’t it better to dig graves for our pride than our people?” 

The silence was louder than any sound could ever have been. 

It was finally broken by a ringing, rolling laugh from Nobunaga, who finally sat back and cleared his throat with a wide, wild smile, and the tiniest flash of relief somewhere far, far back in his dark eyes. 

“I knew you were going to revolt eventually, but holding a gun to all of our heads, from the Imperial court to the local magistrates–” he shook his head and chuckled again, “and not even with the ambition to rule! Ingenious.”

“My lord–” Hideyoshi said, his expression tense. 

“Enough. We’ve been outplayed.” Nobunaga said with a wave of his fan. “It’s almost poetic– in the end, the people unified themselves.” 

…

How many years ago had that day been? His mind was still sharp, even as his body had begun to fail him, heart growing weaker by the day. He had wrung out every bit of his strength taking aim at the distant future.  

The years had been full of mountains of correspondence, leagues of riding from one end of the country to the other to keep the peace, to pluck out the seeds of war before they could be well and truly sown. 

And always in the dark, the memory of her, and the hope that every step forward and every day would build a shrine that could carry his heart to her. 

He whispered to her in the night, when the fear that it wasn’t enough chilled him, knowing that the odds were astronomically stacked against them, he whispered every sweet and longing word into quiet space where she should have been. Dreams of her carried him through, of the warmth of her body, the feel of her skin, every exquisite shudder and sigh, even the painful aching fire of unfulfilled lust he carried like a penitent barbarian in their horsehair shirt. 

He had spent the first half of his life trusting no-one, and spent the latter half holding his trust like a weapon– trust in her, in himself, in whatever capricious force had brought them together in the first place. 

The irony of dying in hopes of giving himself a second chance at life was never lost on him, who had never so much as believed in the immaterial soul. Time was an enemy and his dearest ally. 

With the final preparations made, with nothing left but to leave his faith in the children and grandchildren of his friends and one time enemies, he was helped into the saddle for one last ride. The old scar on his arm ached as the early winter snow drifted down. 

The ruins of Honno-ji had become an overgrown mass over the years, but he had built a small cozy hut there, the place where he had begun to live, the place where he intended to die. 

“Thank you, Kyubei.” He said as took the proffered cup of sake gratefully, watching the snowfall in the quiet night. 

“I’m Kyubei’s  grandson,” the young man said, and gave him a conciliatory pat on the shoulder. 

“Ah. Forgive an old man for losing track of time.” He said, quietly. 

The quiet snowfall had lulled him into a deep, peaceful sleep, a dream where she was curled against him, so warm, a dream of a long ago kiss upon the back of his neck, of her cradled in his arms, of her beautiful body tangled with his, of her precious voice telling him 

You do not have to be good

but you are

Somewhere in the deep blue dawn he heard the calling. He struggled up, half staggering, half crawling, toward the door. 

“Wait– where are you going?” The boy cried out, trying to take hold of his sleeve, but he felt lighter than he had in years, felt as light as the flakes of falling snow. 

“The wild geese are calling me to my place by her side…” he said, bare feet in the soft snow, strangely warm as he walked toward the place where the balcony had been and folded his legs neatly beneath him, hands in his lap, heart in his hands to give to her as he closed his eyes. 

…

She had had one day and 7 hours to dispose as best she could of her life, but nothing had ever been easier. She had already been living as if she were dead, and dropped her letters of farewell into the post without a single regret. 

It felt as if she were floating a little above the ground as she carefully wrapped up four sets of glasses for Sasuke, and went to the monument to wait with one more poem on her lips like a prayer

A kiss on the forehead—erases misery. I kiss your forehead. A kiss on the eyes—lifts sleeplessness. I kiss your eyes. A kiss on the lips—is a drink of water. I kiss your lips. 

How many lives were folded between the two of them like ink dropped into water, and why, she didn’t ask. Just one, even if it hurt sometimes, if it frightened them both, if it was struggle, just one would be so much more than enough. 

The pressure and the crackle in the air brought grateful tears to her eyes when they arrived, and she stood fearlessly and walked into the wormhole, eyes wide open. 

It was the same dark haze but she felt as if she were being dragged every which way, buffeted first toward one blurred landscape and then another, searching frantically for him. 

She saw the diverging paths of his life, the violent heartbreaking ends, the loneliness, and shards of incohate moments. 

Snow. He was there in the snow, seated as if in silent meditation, beauty still apparent under the marks of age. 

He didn’t stir as she cried out his name, again and again, telling him she had returned as the sight of his serene face faded. She felt a familiar cool hand brush her tears away with a touch so soft and light, felt guided toward a faint light, and began to run. 

…

“Are you ill?” Nobunaga asked as Mitsuhide pitched forward onto his knees, and clutched his head. 

“I– I just had the odd sensation of having… died.” He mumbled, faintly. 

Sasuke cocked his head thoughtfully, watching the storm as it descended. 

“You called these peace talks under threat of revolution you’re not allowed to die of a broken heart, you insufferable snake.” Hideyoshi said angrily.

The four of them had ridden up to Honno-ji as the storm came on, and he felt as if his head were full of intense flashes of something he couldn’t name– other selves, other lives. 

“I did warn you that the timeline reasserting itself might be unpleasant.” Sasuke said dryly, and adjusted his battered glasses. 

“Shouldn’t she be here by now?” Hideyoshi asked as he hoisted Mitsuhide to his feet. 

“There’s no guarantee–” Sasuke began, and was cut off by Nobunaga gesturing toward the balcony. 

He scrambled across the sleet slicked ground, feeling that same desperate fear and hope as he stumbled up the stairs, overcome with the sensation that it had been so much longer than a single year, weak in the knees as he slid down, straining to see into the twisting cloud. 

She toppled into him, snow in her hair and on her lashes, and they fell together onto the cold and sooty wood of the balcony. She was so warm in his trembling arms, her pounding heart pressed to his. 

***

WHEW, WE MADE IT THROUGH THE ANGST

This chapter’s poem is “A Kiss on the Forehead” by Marina Tsvetaeva