Chapter Text
A sniffle. It is very low, choked off. Hard to hear over the rain and the splash of booted feet through puddles, the crack of the practice range. The melancholy of contemplation is a fog across through which Issho walks, following the small sound.
Tears are not new on a Navy Base. Tears of anger, tears of anguish, loss, grief. Common ripples through the air, through life. But these tears are different. He imagines the rain is sluicing down the new cement, still figuring out the paths that it will one day wear down as he passes the new barracks, the new cannon towers, under archways and down alleys not yet marked by memories.
She sits under the old tree, branches gnarled and covered in lichen and moss. A lifetime clinging to this edge of the island, against raging seas and winds. But still it lives, all of its former brethren replaced by buildings of new wood and new paint and new rules and regulations. The bench under its branches is not new. The letters engraved in the stone have long been unreadable. Alone, as she has been since she arrived.
Droplets splatter like oil in a pan through the twisted wood, down to soak into the needle covered mud. She doesn’t see him approach, this Captain Tashigi. Transferred to Naval Headquarters after doing a job well done, but not as a reward. Her sword is unsheathed upon her lap. The mud is a mess of footprints, he can feel the way the ground is still resettling from the force of her steps.
Petrichor hangs in the air, sticks in the back of Issho’s throat as he sits down next to her, the cold of the stone seeping through the fabric. The young Captain stiffens, unsure how to react to his sudden quiet presence. They have met before, but usually through the mediator of her former superior, Smoker. She points her sword away from him. Despite the cold of the wind and the rain, warmth radiates from her skin. Her heart beats fast from practicing swing after swing.
“The rain is quite solid today, no?” he says, resting his shikomizue across his knees. He can hear her mouth open and close, feel the way she shrinks a little more then pushes back out, shoulders straight. A soldier.
“Sir,” Captain Tashigi responds, carefully neutral, not at all what is in her heart. Is she trying on a new mask perhaps? Listening to the words of caution murmured in her ear by those who know the rain hides many things.
It saddens him. “Though I am blind, the rain obscures my world too.” She sneaks a look at him, unsure what to make of him, the Admiral Who Shouldn’t Be Here (he had not touched the ground, geta were a tool, not a part of him). The Admiral with self appointed scars upon his visage. Was he friend or foe? A viper or a dog? His title said predator, said luck, said beware.
But titles, like the rain, obscure and make all the world murky.
“But there are always benches to hide from the new struggles presented by the heavens.”
Captain Tashigi blinks, her fingers grip the hilt of her katana tighter. Her blade hums in the air, a pulse of soul. The sniffle comes again a moment later. “I suppose so, Sir.”
The wind picks up, the rain coming down harder, sweeping mud and leaves over the cliffside. Clearing dust and debris from rooftops, washing away the powdery smell of fresh cannons and paint.
“It may obscure, but the world is always cleaner after.” Issho stands up to leave. He feels her eyes on his back as he walks away, the rain swallowing all the world up until she is just vibrations in the air, forward slice, forward slice, forward slice.