.·:·.✧ ✦ ✧.·:·.
The walk back from the wounded tents was mercifully short. Rensuke had done what he'd been told: escorted Payo and Shima to the first aid tent, waited until they were elbow-deep in blood and bandages, then turned around without waiting for gratitude, and started walking to his guard place in front of Seijiro's tent. Not that Seijiro needed a guard, not really. Rensuke exhaled through his nose, fingers brushing the tanto hidden in his sleeve; his eyelid twitched dangerously.
No, Seijiro didn't need a guard; what he needed was a damn leash.
The image from the battlefield, replayed without permission: the arrow striking; Seijiro's body folding; blood arcing through the air. And for the first time, Rensuke had intervened because he had to, not out of some play-acted loyalty, not for appearances. Because Seijiro was actually bleeding. A hole through his chest, real and mortal.
And it was all Kaoru Zenin's fault.
His jaw tightened hard as his boots whispered over the damp grass when he cut toward the main encampment. Since Kaoru Zenin had entered the picture, since Kyoto, since that first collision of Seijiro's silver hair and Kaoru's infuriating composure, everything had gone to hell. Before her, Seijiro's little acts of rebellion were small things, manageable. Insults. Late reports. Tactical delays that could be spun into a strategy if Rensuke were patient enough.
Now?
Now it was suicidal, bordering on treason. At this pace, Seijiro wasn't just provoking Akiteru Gojo; he was going to get himself killed. Rensuke knew Akiteru better than his own son ever would; the man lacked softness or mercy. If Seijiro ever became inconvenient—if he endangered the clan's position, or worse, his mother, Atsuhime—no blood tie would stop Akiteru from cutting him down some ways. He had smiled the day Takahiro Zenin died, even when he'd maneuvered his own son into delivering the killing blow. He had sent Seijiro to the border of war as if he were a disposable tool. He had never once recalled him, never once answered his request for supplies and reinforcements.
Was it not obvious?
But Seijiro, the brilliant, reckless idiot, kept pressing, and Rensuke would stake his life that Seijiro had known Kaoru Zenin would be on that field this morning, known and chosen silence anyway, shielding her instead of exposing her position and rearranging their forces on that strategic information.
And all for that? A fucking poisoned arrow through the chest.
Sentimental fool.
Rensuke flexed his hands once, hard. No need to think too hard about it. Seijiro was not a friend, or a brother; not even, technically, a comrade. He was an assignment. That was it. A lifelong one, bound to him when they were both five years old. A Koga shadow to the Gojo heir to observe, report, and never lie, with a clean binding vow to make sure of it. He had been trained for this, and feelings were inefficiencies for shinobi anyway.
At five, Seijiro had been loud, spoiled, and... infuriatingly reckless, even then. The kind of child who assumed the world existed to be interesting. Rensuke had despised him on sight; that careless strength and unearned confidence grated against everything Rensuke had been taught.
Nothing alike, nothing in common. Easy to trick and betray.
And Rensuka had. For years.
Except once; one idiotic month when Seijiro had vanished from the front without explanation and Rensuke—against training, against instinct, and against a damn Binding vow—had covered for him and lied by omission to Akiteru Gojo.
He had protected Seijiro Gojo. Kinda, still stupid.
Whatever.
Rensuke reached the tent at last, and old habits took over; he concealed his cursed energy and slipped from shadow to shadow, silent. It had kept him alive; it had kept Seijiro monitored; and Seijiro probably knew he was there anyway because those damned Six Eyes missed nothing, so it was really pointless. Except—
Rensuke exhaled quietly, shifted the tent flap an inch, enough for a glimpse.
He froze in place, eyes comically wide. Blink; blink again.
Surely that was fatigue; surely he had hallucinated that.
Too quickly for the stealth he prided himself on, he let the flap fall, stepping back mechanically, staring blankly at the side of the tent. From inside, muffled but unmistakable—
Seijiro's voice, scandalized: "Just—stop talking, unless you want me to explain to my entire command why Zenin-dono is straddling my blankets—" Followed by Kaoru's voice, pinched in offense: "I'm not straddling anything."
Rensuke closed his eyes, counted back from five, tried to make it unhappen.
"You're kneeling between my legs! They'll think I'm being assassinated or seduced, and frankly, I don't know which is worse."
No. Still there. Still happening.
Somewhere deep in the miserable, blackened core of his soul, he felt a twitch. It could have been a laugh. Or a scream. Or hysteria. Kaoru Zenin, inside Seijiro Gojo's tent, at night and apparently, kami help him... Kneeling between his legs? He stepped back too quickly for a shinobi and nearly caught his heel on uneven ground.
The heir of the Gojo clan and the head of the Zenin clan, the very same who had nearly gotten Seijiro killed hours ago. Enemies, by all means. Generals of opposing factions. Men, for fuck's sake. Practically... entangled.
A strangled sound threatened to escape, but he bit down on the inside of his cheek as he started circling the tent in an anxiety march. Seijiro, who could sense cursed energy from ten ri away, was apparently so... occupied he hadn't even noticed his presence when the flap shifted, had not even paused.
But no—no, that wasn't even the real problem.
The problem was this: by every metric of duty, Rensuke should have stormed in, dragged Seijiro out by his stupid silver hair, called an alarm, and saved the heir from himself. Saved the clan. Instead, he stood there, vibrating with second-hand shame and anticipatory dread. He was under a binding vow; he was, technically, to report without lies. How was he supposed to report this to Akiteru Gojo? He wasn't even sure what he was supposed to report.
He pressed a hand to his face and inhaled slowly. Think. This wasn't about loyalty, but about dignity. He refused—absolutely refused—to be the man who would have to look Akiteru Gojo in the eye and say: Your son is rolling around on a battlefield cot with the head of the Zenin clan. No, Gojo-dono, it did not appear coercive or a hostage situation. No, Gojo-dono, I did not intervene because they seemed… engaged.
The thought alone made his stomach knot. And yet—
Maybe this explained things. A lot of things, actually. The lack of interest Seijiro had ever shown toward women, despite the many, many opportunities and the many noble daughters from powerful clans paraded before him as potential wives. Seijiro had always played along just enough; smiled, flirted, accepted a sakazuki of sake. But there had been a detachment to it, as if it were all performance. Maybe it was.
Rensuke had struggled for years to phrase it delicately to Akiteru without getting his head sliced off. Yes, Gojo-dono, he spends time with women. No, Gojo-dono, he does not seem inclined in marrying one any of them.
"She's boring," Seijiro would say. "Only interested in the clan's money." Or worse: "I'm prettier than her. It'd be cruel."
Rensuke had chalked it up to arrogance and eccentricity, Seijiro being Seijiro. But no, maybe women weren't just his thing. And judging by the noises now coming from that tent, Rensuke didn't need to wonder anymore. He stopped, stared out at the black horizon, and thought, with exhausted clarity: yeah. That's probably it.
From inside the tent came the unmistakable cadence of something decidedly not diplomatic, and Rensuke decided it was time to take damn distance from that tent. This was not in the mission parameters. He wasn't judging, truly; he genuinely did not care what Seijiro preferred so long as it didn't complicate his job or get his head removed from his shoulders. But preference and duty were separate categories. He was the heir, and the title required a marriage, a wife to have one day an heir of his own.
Continuity to the glorious Gojo's bloodline.
And no matter how entangled Seijiro and Kaoru became on that cot, two men were not producing an heir like that.
Rensuke pivoted, scanning the perimeter around the tent. No patrols, no wandering sorcerers or soldiers, no idle shinobi. Good. He slipped back into the shadows near a distant tree and crouched low, hidden perfectly by the tall grass, hands resting loosely on his knees and ready to intercept. Because if anyone else stumbled upon that tent right now, Rensuke would have to kill them efficiently and quietly; better to crack a few skulls than explain why the Gojo heir was choosing Kaoru Zenin over the clan with his entire damn bare chest.
See, this was exactly the kind of idiocy he'd meant earlier. Seijiro wasn't weak; he was reckless, and he felt too much.
Rensuke scrubbed both hands through his black, cropped hair and stared up into the canopy. Of all the people in the country, of all the enemies, for reasons that escaped his logic, it had to be the Zenin clan head to tear a hole through Seijiro's defenses.
The worst possible choice.
Maybe it had been inevitable since the first time they crossed blades at Iga. Seijiro had come back smiling like an idiot. "He was fast," he had said, impressed. "I didn't stop him in time."
"As I told you. Unusual," Rensuke had muttered at the time.
And Seijiro had laughed. "Pretty Boy is going to be nothing but trouble."
And oh. Trouble, indeed.
Either way, Akiteru would find out; Rensuke would have to report, to tell him. Except—
Seijiro was paranoic bordering on obsession, after too many assassinations attempt when he was a child. In all their years, through childhood, through training, through war, Rensuke had never managed to approach within five steps without being noticed. Not once, even as Seijiro was drunk or wounded or asleep, he always noticed.
When had Seijiro ever dropped his guard like that? Maybe never. Only now, only with Kaoru Zenin.
Rensuke hated her for that a little. He hated her for cracking open the one place Seijiro kept sealed, and hated himself more for understanding why and caring. Somewhere deep and unpleasant, Rensuke got it. The hunger; the anger; the way Seijiro, without really realizing it, needed to be seen by someone who wasn't trying to wield him. Rensuke had watched that loneliness since they were children, after all.
And Kaoru Zenin saw him not as Akiteru's extension.
Rensuke cracked one eye open and stared at the tent again, seeing his downfall forming in real time. Oh no. He couldn't tell Akiteru, not if he could help it. Not unless the Binding Vow forced his hand. It would feel like snapping the neck of the only real thing Seijiro had ever reached for. Seijiro had never had anyone in his corner, and still, he moved through the world like he didn't know he was alone, or maybe he knew and just didn't care.
That was the kind of fool he was: a bright, unbearable fool.
Rensuke had spent years convincing himself his loyalty belonged to Akiteru, and maybe that was still true, but an ugly realization settled in anyway:
The real fool wasn't Seijiro. It was him.
He was going to get himself killed for that overgrown brat one day, probably soon, and it would be because somewhere along the way, the spoiled, arrogant heir had stopped being just an assignment.
Rensuke pressed his forehead briefly against his knee and exhaled hard, feeling completely screwed.
Minutes crawled by, too many. An entire lifetime, if you asked him.
The voices inside the tent had faded, but he didn't relax; he barely blinked at all. He refused to be caught off guard by something this stupid, and he would not miss the moment when the Zenin leader finally decided to leave and restore some shred of sanity to this wretched night.
Then, movement approached from the field hospital. Payo and Shima trudge through the damp grass with tired steps. They were heading straight for the tent.
Rensuke stood, posture snapping into place with arms behind his back and expression neutral, the model shinobi at his post as if he hadn't just spent the last several minutes guarding a scandal in progress.
Payo's eyes landed on him instantly. She took in the tension and the positioning. Before she could move closer to the tent—before either of them could—Rensuke stepped in front of her, blocking their path with casual grace.
"Seijiro-sama is resting," Rensuke said blandly. "He requested not to be disturbed."
Payo narrowed her eyes as she clearly smelled the lie. Smart woman. But she also knew when not to ask the wrong questions. "Mm," she hummed, unimpressed. "Very well." She gave a grunt that could have meant anything, adjusted her sleeves, and turned away with a dignified huff.
Shima, however, was less cooperative. The little mute menace tilted her head slowly; then leaned sideways, body bending at a ridiculous angle like a cat determined to peer around him. Rensuke broke into a cold sweat; he leaned too, casually, blocking her view with a grunt that might have passed for normal if he hadn't sounded like he was choking on his own dignity.
They stared at each other, shinobi versus tiny gremlin, a silent war. Finally, Shima rolled her eyes with a disdain that didn't fit her age and followed her grandmother, geta snapping against the mud.
Rensuke exhaled. Barely survived. But then fate decided that wasn't enough. A shadow came across the slope, too fast and urgent. Rensuke's hand brushed his tanto before his brain caught up.
A messenger, young and breathless, his traveling uniform streaked with dust. The boy dropped to one knee. "Urgent missive from Kyoto's main estate. For you."
Rensuke's stomach dropped as his eyes landed on the scroll that bore the Gojo mon. For him? Not Seijiro? Direct orders from Akiteru, then. Every instinct screaming that something was wrong, very wrong. He dismissed the messenger with a brief nod and stepped aside into lanternlight, breaking the seal open.
Inside, the words were concise and coded as usual. What he read made the world tilt, and the ground seemed to drop out from beneath his feet.
By the time this reaches the front, a star will be falling in the north. The relic will return to the capital. The blade must press east and cut through the forest.
Rensuke's blood turned to ice, heart slamming once, hard. A star falling in the north; Nagoya-go. The relic: the Mitsuboshi no Yari. The message's meaning was clear: the Zenin's former stronghold was under attack.
Akiteru was not communicating a plan to them; everything was already in motion. The Gojo's head had already moved, probably days ago, maybe longer; he would already be at Nagoya-go, or close enough that even the fastest horse couldn't undo what had already begun.
Naagoya-go might already be burning, or would be by morning.
Why now, or what the Mitsuboshi no Yari had to do with Nagoya-go, was something he couldn't understand, but if the spear truly rested there, they would raze the estate to the ground to secure it. No. Who was he trying to fool? He knew Akiteru, and he knew the spear was just an excuse; this was bound to happen sooner or later.
But the timing was damnable, and Seijiro wasn't meant to know. He was meant to bleed at the Iga front and finally collapse to the border, distract Kaoru Zenin there while Akiteru dismantled the Zenin heart.
Still, Rensuke's grip tightened until the scroll crinkled. Of course, Akiteru hadn't told his son; of course, he hadn't told Rensuke either until now, when it was too late to interfere. Ignorance had been the tool. It made sense on some level; collapsing the border at east and one of Tokugawa's domains on the Tokaido in the north would give the Western Army a great advantage in war. He could't risk an information leak when the stakes were this high.
If Seijiro caught wind of it too soon, he would act, and Akiteru needed someone to slow him down. Someone obedient. That would have been Rensuke without question, the loyal, good dog.
Inside that cursed tent, Seijiro was tangled up with the very person he was supposed to betray by omission and ignorance. And Rensuke—
Rensuke stood in the grass and understood exactly what it was, the scroll in his hands: a knife. Akiteru had placed it there carefully, and Rensuke no doubt in his mind about what would happen if—no, when—Seijiro found out.
He closed his eyes for half a heartbeat; he had already made up his mind, but he needed a moment. Then he turned toward the tent. Inside: silence. No raised voices, no movement, only blessed silence. Maybe it was finally over, and Kaoru Zenin had left. Maybe, if he moved fast enough, he could still survive the night without handing Seijiro's throat directly to his father. He just needed the right words and tactics when delivering the information to keep Seijiro from running headlong into disaster. He crossed the distance in two strides, stealth abandoned, then he shoved the flap aside and slipped in.
The sight that greeted him made him stumble.
No Kaoru, no trace of Zenin-dono. Just Seijiro, flat on his stomach, hair a chaotic spill down his bare back, tangled in blankets like a disgraced lord who had lost to sakè. Dead asleep. Rensuke nearly sagged with relief, feeling ten years younger in an instant.
Rensuke stared at the prodigy of the Gojo bloodline, the Six Eyes and walking catastrophe, drooling into a crumpled, bloodied blanket like a baby. Sleeping so deeply, he hadn't twitched at Rensuke's entrance.
How dared he sleep like a baby who trusted the world not to touch him? It told Rensuke everything he needed to know and everything he didn't want to know. No. He had no energy left for anger and this. Instead, all he felt was a bitter pity and something close to loyalty.
The kind that gets good shinobi killed young and stupidly.
Kami help us both.
Because when Seijiro woke up and read that scroll, the real disaster would begin.
Rensuke approached slowly, feeling each step heavier than the last; he stood at a careful distance, hands folded behind his back like he was reporting to a lord and not to a man sprawled half-naked in ruined blankets. "Seijiro-sama," he called, low.
Nothing. Just a muffled noise as Seijiro burrowed deeper into the bedding. Rensuke's patience snapped, but he still refused to touch him after what he had almost walked in on; there were limits to professional obligation. So he did what any reasonable man in his position would do: he kicked him. It was to wake him; he also released some tension.
Seijiro shot upright as if stabbed awake with his cursed energy sparking instinctively around his hands in half-formed Blue. Fast, but not clean, sloppy from exhaustion, from injury. He blinked at Rensuke as if trying to focus on a particularly irritating mosquito. The bandages on his shoulder were soaked through again with blood anf there were... bruises along his neck that Rensuke very deliberately did not want to know about.
Scowling, Seijiro scrubbed a hand across his face like a grumpy child. "What the hell, Rensuke?" he muttered. "What's so urgent it couldn't wait until dawn? Are the Hattori storming the camp?"
Suspicion came naturally now. It always was, these days, ever since Kyoto, ever since Seijiro had realized he wasn't just a friend, but a spy. Rensuke swallowed against the weight in his throat, and for the first time in years, he hesitated. He was not supposed to hand this over; Akiteru's orders had been clear. But—
He looked at Seijiro properly, at that impossible, fleeting peace softening his face, that for once made him look less like a weapon and more like a man.
Taking a slow, deep breath, Rensuke held the scroll out as if it burned. "From Kyoto's main estate."
Seijiro's gaze sharpened instantly. "Kyoto," he echoed incredulously. "Supplies? Or, dare I hope, reinforcements finally?" He took the scroll from Rensuke's hands and turned away, unrolling it slowly, the way a man does when he already knows he won't like what he finds inside.
Rensuke stood still. He had seen this before, the shift, the moment when Seijiro stopped being a loud menace and became something else entirely. He had seen enough of Seijiro to know what came next, and he knew, in his gut, that there would be no stopping it, because he was only ever truly terrifying when someone touched what he considered his.
And apparently, the list now included Kaoru Zenin.
The tent went utterly still, except for Seijiro's breathing, slowing dangerously, and the sound of the paper that crinkled under tightening fingers. When it came, his voice was flat and final: "You knew?"
It wasn't a question; it was an accusation already passed on him.
Rensuke didn't blink because he had heard that tone once before, in Kyoto, after Takahiro Zenin's blood had painted the council and after Seijiro realized how thoroughly he had been maneuvered by his father.
And now, here it was again, that same tone as Seijiro still gave him his back turned, and his cursed energy pressed more and more outward, dense and heavy. The calm before impact.
Rensuke closed his eyes briefly. "No," he said. "If I had known, I would have told you."
And that, at least, was the truth this time. He had not known this time, not until the scroll was in his hands, not until it was too late. But he should have known that it was too late, and he should not have expected a different reaction from Seijiro. He knew before he even opened his mouth again that he would not finish his next sentence.
"But—"
Rensuke, in fact, never finished. Impact came faster.
It felt like being slammed by an entire temple's roof. A fist, maybe, or raw cursed energy, or a compressed pulse of Blue. Rensuke couldn't tell because Seijiro hadn't even needed to move properly.
Pain exploded through his ribs, and Rensuke was airborne and thrown backward before his mind caught up, slamming against a distant tree that snapped with the impact. The world tilted sideways as air punched from his lungs. The tent had collapsed violently behind him, and the ground where he'd stood still smoked. He coughed, blood flooding one eye; he wiped it away blindly, tipping his head until his skull rattled against the bark. In hindsight, it was nothing short of a miracle that he hadn't died on the spot.
When his vision cleared, and he managed to focus, Seijiro was already there, too fast, nothing light in his movements, none of that reckless arrogance that made people underestimate him. Gone was the grin, gone the theatrical arrogance. The expression he wore was something Rensuke had seen before, but never directed at him.
Seijiro Gojo was really terrifying when he stopped pretending.
Rensuke pushed against the tree, trying to stand, but he didn't get the chance. A forearm slammed across his throat and drove him back into the bark hard enough to lift his heels off the ground. His breath vanished as the tree bit into his spine. Rensuke opened his mouth to gasp for air that wouldn't reach his lungs, but did not fight back. Would not. If Seijiro really wanted him dead there and then, there wasn't much left he could do about it anyway.
Seijiro's jaw clenched so tightly the muscle ached. He didn't even remember crossing the space between them. One second, there had been space; the next, there wasn't. All he knew was that he needed answers. "You tipped him off," he growled, deadly, with the certainty of a man who had run out of tolerance for betrayal. "Didn't you?"
"No—" Rensuke rasped, words forced through crushed air and blood in his throat. "Wouldn't have had time—They've been marching for days—"
Liar. The word pulsed savagely in Seijiro's mind. Liar, liar, liar. He pressed harder, felt Rensuke strain, and it still wasn't enough. Nothing was enough to silence the helplessness he was feeling clawing at his chest. "Then how did my father know about the spear?" Seijiro demanded. "How did you?"
The logic was simple. The Mitsuboshi no Yari wasn't in Edo, and only a handful of people knew that. Kaoru. Tatsuhiro. Hajime. Harunobu. And himself. And now that Nagoya-go was burning by the hand of his father, what was Seijiro supposed to think? Had he slipped? Had Rensuke followed a trail he'd carelessly left? He knew what Rensuke was, a spy longer than he'd been anything resembling a brother or a friend. That was the ugly, simple truth. If it wasn't him, then who? Some other ghost he couldn't see?
Rensuke forced words out through the pressure. "They—they've been intercepting messages for weeks. Nagoya-go's been compromised; it was a matter of time before they—they caught something—an opening—"
Seijiro hissed through his teeth. He knew, kami, he knew Rensuke wasn't lying now. Rationally, he understood this had been in motion long before this morning's skirmish, that his father had waited and somehow chosen the right moment. But knowing didn't help and didn't stop the fury. He drove Rensuke harder into the tree. Six Eyes burned behind his skull as the world around them layered into flows and cruel clarity, but there was no clue to read in Rensuke's cursed energy flow.
"Then why," Seijiro asked, voice suddenly too calm, "didn't you tell me?"
For a moment, Rensuke didn't answer as he held his stare. And then something in him cracked. A lifetime of obedience, years of frustration, months of helplessness, of watching Seijiro choose the losing side out of stubborn idiocy. It all boiled over. "Because you would have done something stupid!" he snapped, as loudly as his crushed lungs allowed. "You would've broken ranks and abandoned the front. Warned the Zenin like a damn fool, and this time Gojo-dono wouldn't have forgiven you."
Seijiro's grip faltered by a fraction, and Rensuke dragged in air, coughing blood.
"You think because you're strong you can do anything?" Rensuke went on, voice gaining. "You're the Six Eyes and the heir of the clan, but you're a tool with your father's name stamped on it. Gojo-dono is a monster. He'd put a blade in your ribs with a smile if you stopped being useful. I've seen it. You're too blind to stupid to realize—" His voice cracked as a cloth of blood caught in his throat. "I wasn't going to stand there and watch you slit your own throat. I was trying to keep you alive."
Seijiro froze, but the rage didn't disappear; it hardened. For one brutal second, the part of him that still remembered Rensuke not as a spy but as a brother wanted to believe him, wanted to believe that, for once, Rensuke would be on his side. But that version of them had died in Kyoto, on a tatami slick with Takahiro Zenin's blood. He didn't know if what remained was capable of trust anymore. Still—
He released him.
Rensuke dropped, knees buckling as he coughed blood on the grass, and something in his ribs shifted wrong. He didn't know how many ribs he had cracked or if he had some internal bleeding. Didn't matter.
Seijiro staggered back a step, chest heaving, and cursed energy skittering across his skin before folding inward. He wanted to tear something apart. Rensuke, probably. His father, surely. The entire world, possibly. But his men were moving nearby now, drawn by the noise, and he couldn't afford spectacle with the current disaster ongoing in the north.
He brought a hand to his mouth, gaze dropping as he fully processed the implication of what was happening. "You have no idea," Seijiro muttered, voice trembling, "what my father has just unleashed."
Rensuke wiped blood from his mouth with the back of his hand, spitting red into the dust. "It's war, Seijiro-sama," he rasped. "Sentiment has no place in it. You can't afford it."
Seijiro laughed. A short, bitter sound, so bitter and forced it hurt his own throat. He turned his head slowly to fix Rensuke with a dead, raw stare. "Sentiment?" he repeated, the word hollow. "You think this is about feelings?" He exhaled harshly, squinting toward the Iga forest far across the valley, a dark wall against the rising sky.
He wasn't thinking about Rensuke anymore; his mind was already reaching north and to what would happen next. He bit the inside of his cheek until blood flooded his mouth. Too late; it was already too damn late. He could almost see it; the way she would break not loudly or theatrically, coldly and in that way that was dangerous and made too much sense, as she decided which one of them would bleed first for this.
Seijiro could still feel her hands on him, her mouth on his. He closed his eyes for a second, but it only worsened the feeling.
"If Nagoya-go falls," he started quietly, "if anyone there dies—" He swallowed. "Kaoru will not mourn. Kaoru will bring the stars crashing down on us. Not with politics and restraint, this time. Every Gojo who draws breath becomes a target. Including my mother. Including Payo. Including Shima." He stared down at Rensuke with something akin to pity. "It won't matter who gave the order. Did none of you think about that?"
Rensuke stilled. There it was. Kaoru, not Zenin-dono.
Seijiro dragged the shaking, blood-slick hand that had hit Rensuke through his hair, shaking his head. "My father thinks he crushed a rival house," he went on, almost detached and with a smile he hadn't realized was on his lips. "He thinks he's closing a chapter. He has no idea what kind of enemy he just created." He jabbed a finger toward Rensuke without really looking at him. "He signed his own death warrant, and you—"
They dared to speak to him about sentimentalism?
Yeah. If only it were that simple.
This wasn't about feelings; this was already beyond that. Cause and effect. There was no way to warn her in time, and even if there had been—what then? Beg forgiveness? Offer his own head as collateral and hope she showed mercy? Hope she saw he wasn't his father's puppet, once again, even now? No. It didn't matter that he hadn't lifted a hand. It didn't matter that he hadn't even known.
Kaoru would never show mercy, and in truth, Seijiro didn't blame her.
Because he was Akiteru Gojo's son.
Once, he had hated her simply for being Zenin; blood feuds didn't care about nuance, he supposed, didn't care about love and trust and hope. They had been born into this war; no, it had already devoured them before either Seijiro or Kaoru were even born. And he had known it, hadn't he? Even while he kissed her, he had known. She had known.
They had done it anyway.
Another brittle laugh escaped him, reality solidifying. He wasn't laughing because it was funny; he was laughing because it was so stupidly inevitable. Personal? It had never not been personal.
"My father made this personal years ago," Seijiro said flatly. "The day he couldn't bear the sight of a son dying too young in his arms, and of the woman he loved lost to madness. This isn't strategy, it's generational bloodletting."
It wasn't Kaoru who started this. It wasn't Seijiro either. It was Akiteru Gojo, reaching back through decades to finish a war only he still remembered bleeding for.
Now they would all pay for it.
Rensuke opened his mouth, then hesitated. He believed Seijiro more than he wanted to, but what answer was there? Nagoya-go was either burning now or already ash. "You really think Gojo-dono hasn't planned for Zenin-dono's possible retaliation?" he muttered at last. "If you think your father didn't account for that, then you don't know him."
Seijiro smiled, but it wasn't warm. How sweet. They really had no idea what Kaoru Zenin was capable of if poked in the wrong way. "Yeah?" he said softly, blue eyes sliding toward Rensuke. "Then you don't know her."
The silence that followed was sinking with the inevitability of it all. But then Rensuke processed something strange in his words. Her. Something clicked in Rensuke's head. Wait a damn second. Her? He blinked through blood, eyes wide. "...Her?"
Seijiro froze for a fraction of a second, and that was all the confirmation Rensuke needed. Too late. Rensuke stared, his usual instincts screaming: remember that. Catalogue word for word. Store it, report it. Oh, kami. His luck was shit. He didn't want to know this; he really, really didn't want to know this.
Rensuke slumped back against the tree and released a long, shaky breath. "I really," he muttered hoarsely, half to himself, "wish you'd stop putting information in my head I can't fucking lie about."
Seijiro didn't answer; he turned slowly north, toward trees that were beginning to glow red under the rising sun. He closed his eyes for a moment to collect himself; he felt sick, not from the wound but from inevitability. There was nothing left to save; the stars were already falling. He must think about what he could do to prevent a greater tragedy.
"Get ready," Seijiro said at last, voice cooled into a more decisive and authoritative tone. "You won't die tonight."
Rensuke coughed. "You're serious."
"My father wants me to collapse the front? Good." Seijiro scoffed, more out of habit than actual amusement. "Let the Hattori collapse the front and gain terrain toward the capital, I don't gcare. Prepare our men to march back home. We'll need every bit of strength in the war that awaits us."
Rensuke stared at him, baffled and thinking he had finally lost it. "You're going to... desert?"
"Desert? No. I told you, my father had no idea of the kind of enemy he created. I need to secure our people. If we sit here waiting for Zenin Kaoru's wrath to fall on Kyoto—"
Seijiro smiled, and it wasn't a smile at all.
"—then we've already lost this war."
.·:·.✧ ✦ ✧.·:·.
The body was found south of Nagoya-go, along the Tōkaidō.
Just as the autumn grass lay flattened by the wind, ash drifted slowly on the ground like black snow. The body was of a young boy of fifteen, maybe, or maybe younger than that, even. Hard to say. His face was half-burned, with skin split and blackened, and smoke still curling from the fabric at his shoulders. A retainer, by the look of him, with travel-worn sandals, light armor, and the remnants of a Zenin retainer's robes.
Dead recently, not long enough for his skin to cool.
The only thing intact was the bloodstained scrap of cloth crumpled so tightly into his fingers they had to pry it loose. The Zenin mon was still visible beneath soot and grime.
The scrap was carried forward, passed hand-to-hand, until it reached Tokugawa Ieyasu himself. He rode at the head of his army, progressing north under the convenient cover of conflict at the Iga border and disorders near the capital. The road ahead led toward Aizu, toward the Uesugi Kagekatsu, and toward what mattered.
A scout dismounted and bowed low, ash still falling and clinging to his sleeves. "A young retainer, Tokugawa-dono. Bearing the Zenin mon."
The shōgun-in-waiting accepted the cloth without ceremony and unfolded it slowly, reading the words with eyes hooded under the wide brim of his jingasa.
Fire in the garden.
His eyes did not change. He lifted his gaze slowly toward the north, past the falling ashes blanketing the ground. Far in the distance, half-swallowed by haze, the smoke rose in a dark, steady column.
Nagoya-go was still burning.
"Tokugawa-dono," one of his captains ventured carefully. "Shall we intervene? It appears the Zenin estate is under active assault—"
Tokugawa did not look at him. "Why?" he asked mildly. The captain hesitated. "A falling star," he went on, voice conversational, "falls whether we reach for it or not."
He closed his eyes briefly, not in grief, but in recalibration. There were always maps within maps. Nagoya-go was a piece still under active assault, and they had no intel of who was perpetrating the attack or how many enemies were inside the stronghold. Nagoya-go held the Mitsuboshi no Yari; whoever had assaulted the place knew that and would surely have brought an army accordingly. Aizu ahead was a more certain board; the Uesugi held the real leverage, and securing the northern route mattered. Establishing control over the eastern approaches mattered. Edo mattered.
Nagoya-go was already burning either way.
"There are a hundred petty disputes in this country before breakfast," Tokugawa said lazily. "If I diverted men to every single one, I would have no army left for the real war."
He folded the cloth once, twice, as the wind shifted and ash carried faintly on it. His horse snorted, shifting under him. Didn't they get it? He was building an empire, not a damn nursery.
"If Zenin-dono could not defend his estate," he said, tone unchanged, "nor safeguard the relic entrusted to him, then that is his shame to bear and to answer for. When the time comes, he will explain himself in Edo." A pause. "That is, if he survives whatever is going on in Nagoya-go. Send words for him when the place stops burning."
"Send a rider north along the Tōkaidō," he ordered. "Intercept Date Masamune's forces before they descend." A subordinate bowed immediately. "Inform him that Nagoya-go is aflame and advise caution."
"What do we do, Tokugawa-dono?" another officer asked.
Tokugawa gestured toward the road ahead, the rising mountains, the greater war. He had no intention of entangling himself in the aftermath. He would retrieve the Three Star Spear, one way or another. Masamune would make of his orders what he wished as always. He would not march through a battlefield someone else had ignited. and would not be dragged into vengeance that did not benefit him. Anyone reckless enough to storm a great estate might still be nearby. Let them have the ashes. For now—
"We take the long road." Understanding moved through his officers; they knew better than to argue. "The Nakasendō," he clarified. "We veer west, bypass Nagoya-go entirely, and continue toward Aizu."
"And the message?" the scout asked, glancing at the bloodied scrap in Tokugawa's hand.
Tokugawa did not look at it again when he threw it at the scout. "Burn it."