Chapter Text
Dororo opens her eyes wide. Hyakkimaru is standing next to her, holding her left arm steady as she uses her right hand to prime the gun she's got clenched between her hand and the crook of her arm. She aims at the target they've drawn on a withered old cedar tree and fires.
Two centimeters off center.
Better than last week, when she'd been four centimeters off. And the week before that, when she'd barely managed to nick the tree.
"Not bad," Hyakkimaru says, damning with faint praise in her opinion. "We'll make a marksman of you yet."
She smiles a little to herself, and her stomach rumbles.
Hyakkimaru smirks. "Some things never change." Hyakkimaru extracts the gun from her grip with one solid pull, putting out the matchstick between his fingers. He moves toward the cedar tree they've been using as target practice for the past few weeks.
They set out one of Hyakkimaru's ragged old blankets and break out stacks of onigiri, some filled with fish as well as rice and wrapped in seaweed. Dororo inhales her food, unselfconscious, not needing refinement or table manners out here. If she were a little girl, this meal would be a feast and not a picnic lunch.
"We have to go back," he says, not eating anything.
Dororo polishes off one of her onigiri and looks at the sky. It's a cool clear day, bright with sunshine, and the forest is still and peaceful, stunned silent by gunfire. "Not yet."
"Daigo might send them again," he mutters, staring at the ground between his fingers.
"Oh good," Dororo says, selecting another onigiri. "We haven't played hide-and-seek this week yet."
***
"Hide-and-seek" is Dororo's pet term for having Daigo's masters of scouts chase them through the woods to bring them back to Enuma. They do this frequently, but not every day--presumably because they have actual scouting duties. They're sent often enough that it annoys Hyakkimaru; it's not like he and Dororo don't know the way back to town from less than ten kilometers away.
He knows why they come, though. There are two reasons: the first is that Dororo is still Daigo's heir and needs some kind of official protection, for appearances' sake if nothing else; the second is that neither Kurakawa nor Oosuji, Daigo's scoutmasters and loyal retainers, trust Hyakkimaru at all.
Hyakkimaru and Kurakawa in particular had gotten off on the wrong foot. Hyakkimaru had come back to Kaga with Tarou and two pack horses loaded with burn ointment. Daigo, ever helpful, had failed to introduce him to anyone, and so Kurakawa had assumed, somewhat rationally, that some of the medicine Hyakkimaru carried could be poison.
Hyakkimaru is not always good with words. This has been demonstrated by his catastrophic failures and near-misses talking himself into and out of tight places; usually, he needs to fight his way out. He accepts this about himself, but starting his homecoming in Kaga with a duel against one of Daigo's most loyal men is not something he'd planned.
Kurakawa's first and favored weapon is a bow. Hyakkimaru hadn't known that at the time, but in hindsight it makes sense; when he'd attacked Hyakkimaru, he had done so from range, but Hyakkimaru has dodged hundreds of arrows from Daigo's people in his lifetime, and he had managed to avoid these easily while yelling at Tarou to get back and flee into the trees. Then he'd closed the distance with his swords, and Kurakawa had been ready with his own shortsword and a dagger, trying to grapple him close enough to stab. From that Hyakkimaru had thought he'd been trained as a brawler or infantry soldier. He hadn't been wrong, exactly; all of Daigo's scouts are trained in multiple weapons and styles of martial arts.
What Hyakkimaru had realized, and rapidly, was that men who are proficient with all weapons are usually expert at none.
So he had waited for Kurakawa to close the distance again, then used his kodachi to bracket his chest in and cut inwards and up, under the man's ribs on both sides. The kodachi had cut through Kurakawa's light armor like paper, but Hyakkimaru had moderated the force of the cuts. The blow had not been meant to kill him, but to make him stop attacking.
As Hyakkimaru had watched him stagger and drop his dagger from numb fingers, the woman scoutmaster, Oosuji, had stepped forward to stop the fight, giving Hyakkimaru a look of grudging admiration. Then she had lifted Kurakawa, supporting him over her shoulder, and walked off dragging him.
As they had left, Hyakkimaru had offered to pay to repair Kurakawa's armor, but Kurakawa had refused. Whenever they encounter one another outside Daigo's palace or in the woods outside Enuma now, the look Kurakawa gives him lets him know exactly where he stands--and the glare Oosuji gives him usually matches Kurakawa's.
That situation is going to blow up, eventually. He can feel it.
***
After his fight with Kurakawa, he'd met Dororo on the bridge. She had tripped over him, causing a major traffic jam and spooking dozens of horses. And ever since, she has either been with him or close by, as if she is afraid he is going to leave again.
That, too, is a rational fear. He can't stay in Kaga forever. He hadn't even intended to stay for a day. But he knows himself, and knows that what he'd said to Daigo at the Hall of Hell is true: Dororo has a way of worming her way into his life, and he tends to let her.
He needs to talk to her about going back to Konzo. He's been waiting for Iwasa and Akiko to arrive, since they'll provide the perfect excuse to travel onward, but they've been detained by spring floods coming down from the mountains; the wooden bridge between Asakura territory and Kaga had gotten washed out the day after he and Tarou had crossed it.
So he can't go back to Konzo unless he rents or buys a boat. And he can't do that immediately, either, since Iwasa had managed to send him a message by courier telling him that he and Akiko are taking the scenic route to avoid the flood damage. He's stuck in Kaga, or at least the area surrounding it, until Iwasa gets here.
If he didn't know for a fact that Iwasa had no control over the weather, he would have accused him of engineering this scenario. Iwasa had always pushed him to go home--while he still had one.
Tarou is stuck in Kaga with him, but that seems to suit him fine. The city is entirely different from when Hyakkimaru had left it six years ago: thronged with people with money to spend, clean and well-fed and happy. Konzo is not as prosperous as Enuma, not yet; but it reminds him of the village he'd adopted in many ways. Here was a place where ordinary people created wealth and stability, and thrived in peace. It's nice to see, though he still finds it hard to relax in crowds.
He had also managed to register as a merchant in Enuma, which comes with complimentary protection of the entire marketplace from vandalism, theft or violence. Hyakkimaru is grateful for that policy, and the resources that back it up: because of it, he is able to split time between Tarou and Dororo without feeling like he's putting Tarou in danger.
He had asked Tarou if he had any concerns, of course, but Tarou had expressed none. He's a better salesman than Hyakkimaru: a faster talker, quick to please and compliment. Sometimes when Hyakkimaru sits and mixes more ointment or fever medicine with him, he jokes that Hyakkimaru's strong-and-silent act scares away the customers.
It's not an act if it's who you are, but Hyakkimaru just shrugs at that kind of joke. If Tarou feels safe here, and has reliable protection, Hyakkimaru won't insist on more. There are roving bands of guards that line the street on either side market, and more guards at every gate. Besides, Tarou is not the helpless little boy whose home was burned and who was taken and enslaved and raped; not anymore. Hyakkimaru has taught him to use the shortsword hidden under his clothes, and while he's not expert he's competent; and Akiko had spent hours teaching him the vital points to stab in the hours they were supposed to be sleeping. If anyone tries messing with Tarou this time, they'll be in for a surprise.
Hyakkimaru returns from shooting practice and running rings around scouts one afternoon to find Tarou in the middle of the town square, doing brisk business still even though the market's about to close. He reports the earnings for the day with a bright smile, and Hyakkimaru asks him if there were any incidents or causes of concern, and he shakes his head--but then he freezes. "Uh," he says nervously. "I did, actually, um. Hear something. Today."
Hyakkimaru tenses. "What is it? Tell me."
"Well...You go off into the woods with Dororo, almost every day," Tarou says. "People talk."
He narrows his eyes. "What people?"
Tarou shrugs, then glances in the direction of the market guards. Some of them are spies for Daigo, and all of them work for him. Or Dororo, but the lines of demarcation can be hard to see. "Who do you think?" Tarou asks.
"Oh," Hyakkimaru says dismissively when he notices who Tarou is looking at. "Those people."
"Those people are Daigo's people," Tarou says. His tone is serious. "He rules here. You haven't forgotten?"
"Of course not." Daigo doesn't seem to have told anyone about their personal history, which is a help in some ways and a hindrance in others. "Are they giving you any trouble?"
He shakes his head. "It's not me they want gone," he says. "It's you."
"Why?" Though really, he can guess...but he'd like to hear what the popular reasoning is. It's hard to fight the charges against you if you don't know what they are.
"Well..." He gestures for Hyakkimaru to lean in closer. "They say you're Daigo's son. His heir. But that can't be, because Dororo is his heir--isn't that true?"
"I'm not his heir," Hyakkimaru says. He refuses to be. "Dororo is. That's right."
Tarou nods and appears visibly relieved. "I heard them say you were going to kill her," he says in a voice that's almost a whisper. "But you'd never do that, and if you're not his heir you'd have no reason to--right?"
"Exactly right." He nods firmly and holds up his hand. "I solemnly swear that I will not kill Dororo." Daigo is inching up his want-to-kill list, though. "Let's get everything packed up."
***
He and Dororo don't even get a chance to practice shooting before Oosuji is on them the next day. Hyakkimaru moves through the trees to the new rendezvous point, hearing Oosuji and Dororo bicker as he goes:
"How much longer are you going to chase us, Oosuji?" she gasps as she lands above Hyakkimaru in a battered oak tree surrounded by sycamores and pines.
"How much longer are you going to abscond to the woods with strange men, Dororo-sama?" Oosuji replies.
Hyakkimaru looks at Dororo, then points to himself in a sort of 'who, me?' gesture. "Given present company, I don't think I'm all that weird." He hears the keening of an arrow and leaps to a higher branch of the tree. Oosuji has them mostly surrounded, but there's always an opening somewhere--
"Your opinions don't matter to me," Kurakawa cuts in, leaping into a tall sycamore some twenty feet away from Hyakkimaru. He climbs to his level in a flurry of movement, then draws a black arrow from his quiver and nocks it. "You won't be able to run as fast with one of these in your leg."
Dororo and Hyakkimaru briefly exchange glances. Then, almost faster than the eye can track, they spread out in a fan shape, moving in opposite directions toward their new agreed-upon rendezvous point. This is an old familiar game by now--hide, while Daigo's lackeys seek.
Kurakawa and Oosuji know the location of the first rendezvous point they'd made, so to be safe Hyakkimaru leaves a red piece of cloth at that checkpoint and keeps running; red means to redirect to the third rendezvous point, in an old cave where medicinal mushrooms grow. Hyakkimaru had spent a lot of time there as a child, and because the mouth of the cave is all but hidden by the trees, neither Oosuji nor Kurakawa had found it--yet.
He gets there first and ducks inside, pressing his hands and forehead against the cool white stone in gratitude. Dororo joins him less than five minutes later, looking harried; an arrow had grazed her arm, but the leather armor she wears for sword training had absorbed most of the damage. She stumbles into him as she enters the cave, entirely exhausted and out of breath.
"They're getting better at this," she says with some resentment.
"Or maybe we're just out of practice." He frees his water pouch from his belt and hands it to her. She accepts it gratefully, and they sit in companionable silence for a while as Dororo gulps down water. They wait for the search to die down so they can separate without being seen: Dororo to Daigo's palace, him to Tarou's market stall.
After a few minutes have passed, there's a crackling sound like something moving in the underbrush. They hold their breath together, but the sound passes.
The silence stretches, and Hyakkimaru realizes that he's alone with Dororo in a quiet place; and this strikes him as a good place to talk. Without entirely thinking it through, he says, "We haven't really talked about it." Then he listens for footsteps. Nothing.
"Talk about what?" Dororo asks distractedly, eyes roaming the trees around the cave for signs of Kurakawa. Hyakkimaru knows he's not there. He would have heard him by now.
"Me leaving Kaga," he says neutrally.
"Which time?" she asks, and the question has some bite to it. She doesn't look at him. "Now, or five years ago?"
They pause in their canvassing of the area for pursuers and look directly at each other, and for all that they've been in close contact for the past few weeks, this feels closer, intimate and terrifying, like being naked and wounded in front of someone.
"You left me," Dororo says. Her eyes are bright.
"I left you with Biwamaru in a safe place," he says. "I didn't want you to follow where I went."
"Why?" she breathes out.
"Because I knew it would be dangerous."
She rolls her eyes. "Fuck danger. You and I killed twelve demons and burned down Daigo's palace, for buddha's sake. Did you really think I couldn't handle it?"
He shakes his head. "That's not it."
"Then what?" she snaps, hisses, almost yells, but she remembers to keep her voice down because the scouts may be close.
He doesn't have an answer. Or, he does, but not one that would satisfy her. His journey with Akiko, Tarou and Iwasa had taught him vital things about himself, but he doesn't know how to present those things without making Dororo resentful--or jealous.
The silence they sit in after that is far from companionable.
***
Hyakkimaru wakes up with a knife at his throat.
Faster than thinking, he uses his chin to clamp down on the hand to prevent it from digging too far in, then elbows his attacker in the ribs. They go sprawling from him, arms wide, and Hyakkimaru uses the opportunity to get the knife away from the attacker.
It's Kurakawa. He should have expected that. He levels the knife at him. "Killing people while they sleep, huh," he says. "I know it's the spy thing to do, but I thought Daigo had outgrown that kind of cowardice."
"I'm not here on Daigo's orders," Kurakawa says. "I'm here because you're a threat to him and Dororo-sama, and I will eliminate you by any means possible."
Hesitantly, Hyakkimaru raises the knife he's holding so that the hilt faces up: no threat in him. "I don't consider myself your enemy," he says, because that's accurate. He kind of hates Kurakawa and Oosuji, but not in a personal way. They interfere with his movements, probably on Daigo's orders, and he resents it; but his dislike doesn't extend far beyond that. Far be it for him to judge loyal people for doing their jobs, especially when they've barely even tried to kill him yet.
Kurakawa nods at him shallowly. "You're right. I also do not consider us enemies. But take a moment. Consider what your presence here means."
Hyakkimaru cocks his head. "I'm here as a peddler selling ointment, and as a friend of Dororo," he says. "What else would my 'presence' here possibly mean?"
"You are Daigo's heir."
It takes great internal effort not to sucker punch Kurakawa in the gut. "Maybe I was when I was born," he says, "but that's not what I am now."
"You can't change who you are," Kurakawa says. "This isn't a game, son."
Hyakkimaru flinches. He does not have to get into a pissing contest with Daigo over Dororo. In fact, he refuses to. But Kurakawa is forcing his hand, it seems. "I'm aware."
"Are you?" he says. His hand is on the hilt of a dagger, still sheathed; Hyakkimaru could have the knife embedded in his chest before he draws it. "Then I'll give you two options. Leave the quiet way," he says, and his voice drops almost to a whisper, "or the noisy way."
Hyakkimaru offers him a bitter grin. "It's unfortunate, but...you really don't know me that well."
He knocks out Kurakawa with the handle of his own knife, then ties his hands and feet and carries him all the way to Daigo's palace. On his way there, it starts to rain, which does little for his mood.
Most of the servants have retired by the time he reaches the palace, but there are still guards on the gate. He's approached the building several times since returning to Enuma, but he hasn't been inside yet; too many old memories.
He stands on the threshold with Kurakawa, looking at two guards whose faces he doesn't know, and remembers that Jukai died not far from this very spot. The knowledge makes his arms shake and his face hot.
He holds up the barely-conscious Kurakawa for the guards' inspection. He is recognized, as Hyakkimaru thought he might be, and so they're permitted to pass right through.
And then he is inside the palace he remembers burning down, searching for Daigo in a maze of rooms and people. Several times, Kurakawa almost comes to, and Hyakkimaru clamps down on his jugular to keep him unconscious. Kurakawa is his pass to get in here, and he doesn't want him causing trouble.
Daigo's rooms are at the end of a long corridor lined with delicate art on rice paper that catches the light; it looks like sea waves and mountain forests. The art is a detail that Hyakkimaru doesn't remember from this place, and he considers the idea that it may be new.
"Hyakkimaru," Daigo says, and his tone is resigned. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"
Hyakkimaru proffers Kurakawa's unconscious body like a plate of food. Come to think of it, Kurakawa's getting heavy, and he's already served his purpose, so Hyakkimaru lays him out gently and approaches Daigo, a few hesitant steps at a time. "Your goons are getting presumptuous," he says. "This one tried to kill me." He produces Kurakawa's knife from his obi, as proof.
Daigo sighs heavily. "I warned him you were out of his league. He acted against my orders."
"Will you kill him?"
"Probably not," Daigo says. "Loyal scouts are hard to find." A pause. "Does that bother you?"
Hyakkimaru shakes his head. "I came to return him to you. And to say I won't be coming back."
Daigo simply stares at him for a moment. "I would like to believe you," he says, "but I don't."
Hyakkimaru frowns. "Why not?"
Daigo shrugs. "What would Dororo say?"
"That doesn't matter," Hyakkimaru says. "Now that Kurakawa's failed with me, he might put my traveling companions in danger. I can't risk staying here."
Daigo raises an eyebrow. "And Dororo?"
"I told you that doesn't matter," Hyakkimaru says. She has a home now; so does he. They can write letters, or see one another in neutral territory: he's not going to put Tarou and Akiko at risk. Or Iwasa, for that matter; if Iwasa finds out that one of Daigo's men had attacked him with intent to kill, he'll go on the warpath for sure.
And Konzo can't win a war with Kaga. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
"I'm telling you it does," Daigo says. He sits up in his chair. "Or haven't you heard the rumors?"
"What rumors?" he asks. "That I'm Daigo's heir, maybe? Come to kill Dororo and take your empire?" It takes a tremendous effort of will not to roll his eyes. "You're going to have to be more specific."
Daigo grips his knees. "I am talking about rumors of Dororo proposing marriage to you."
Hyakkimaru goes slackjawed and does not speak for several seconds.
Daigo nods. "As expected, you haven't heard that one. Dororo had a birthday party for her coming-of-age ceremony. She talked to almost no one in attendance at that party, except my physician--and your good friend Takeda Iwasa." He spreads his hands. "And now you show up, and spend a lot of uninterrupted time with her. Alone. If she were even a little bit older, it would already be a scandal."
Hyakkimaru blushes from the roots of his hair down to his feet. "You know I would never--"
"--I know," Daigo says. "More to the point, I know Dororo. But look at it from the outside. People talk. I would like nothing more than for you to vanish from my sight forever, but if you did that, Dororo would almost certainly follow you."
Hyakkimaru nods woodenly. He's right. He ran away from Dororo once, and had succeeded because he'd been better at tracking, hunting, running; if he tries the same thing this time, she may be able to keep up--and hunt him down.
"So you see the problem," Daigo says. "We're enjoying an uncommon period of stability. I know you didn't intend to throw a wrench in things, but it's there, and now," Daigo says, hand coming up to pinch the bridge of his nose, "it's up to me to fix it."
Hyakkimaru's eyes narrow. He generally does not like Daigo's solutions to problems; cf. solving Kaga's famines by sacrificing Hyakkimaru's infant body to demons. "How do you intend to fix it?"
"Since Dororo cares only for her big brother and can't be bothered to think about marriage," Daigo says sarcastically, "I have been thinking that I would remarry myself. Get a new son to inherit this domain."
Hyakkimaru is once again stunned speechless. It's an unusually humane idea, for Daigo: if he marries and gets another male heir, Dororo won't be under nearly as much marriage pressure, and the line of succession will be more clear-cut, better derived: good qualities for ensuring a peaceful transfer of power.
"Who?" Hyakkimaru asks.
"Who?" Daigo looks puzzled.
"Who will you marry?"
Daigo waves his hand. "Oh, that's not settled. I've been weighing candidates for months. This situation has brought matters to a head, so in the best case, I should be able to declare an engagement within two weeks."
Hyakkimaru nods cautiously. "Well, be nice to her, whoever she is."
Daigo raises an eyebrow. "Not going to be here yourself, to pester me on that score?"
"No." By the time two weeks are up, he'll be long gone. "But in return, I need to ask a favor."
Daigo looks intrigued. "I'm listening."