Chapter Text
It had snowed the night before.
Kai can taste it; it’s a sharp bite in his nose, a vivid chill on his tongue. There’s nothing to show for it now; the engawa creaks beneath his tabi, but there’s no crunch, no wetness to tell it was once there. Only the lingering scent remains, and only for those who know to look for it.
Hah, reminds him of someone he knows. Oh, how it would annoy him to hear it, to hear his shadow wrapped in strokes and made solid on the page. Maybe he would whisper it in the Vice-Commander’s ear one day; at least then that bit of poetry could come from a welcome mouth.
He takes in another breath, the cold burning deep in his lungs, and– ah, it’s not just winter on the air today, but something else. A buzz, a jangle of bells; something dissonant with the usual bustle and boom of the compounds. This is a place filled to the rafters with young men; it should be boisterous, a raucous din of swords clashing and chatter threading through the air, but instead–
Instead it is silent. Kai is not one to put a hand to hilt, not when there is no reason to draw, but in this loud lack, he considers it.
Kai is not a small man; we could put you in the ring, Nagakura would tell him when his wallet no longer made the sweet music it ought, really give those sumo a run for their money, eh, Raki-san? He would laugh– what man wouldn’t, when Nagakura rolled his words in his mouth, undaunted by sake or sense– but it was true he was of a size with those men, that he could make the ground thunder under his feet should he choose it.
But when he paces the engawa now, no boards sing beneath his feet. Sound is a choice, but silence takes practice, takes precision. Babes are born into this world wailing, but it takes a lifetime to learn how to stifle a step, how to sit with a quiet mind and a calm heart. When they write of him, they will say that Shimada Kai moved mountains when he walked, but only the Watch will know that he could breathe so slowly that dust would lie still.
Well, the Watch and Gen, who slides open the shoji with a sigh, wiping at his tonsure with a grimace, and promptly jumps.
“Shimada-san,” he laughs, weakly. “I didn’t hear you coming.”
Kai would assure him that he wouldn’t be the first, but considering his reputation, he doubts that will be much of a comfort. Besides, this is hardly the first time he’s caught one of the captains unaware. I’m going to put bells on you, the Vice-Commander told him more than once, frowning at his spilt tea, then at least I’ll know you’re coming before your shadow arrives.
There’s voices coming from behind the paper; the Vice-Commander’s low, intense rumble is one of them, as well as Okita’s higher, prodding tones. The two of them sharing a room without shouting was rare enough, but for Gen to have subjected himself to it– “There’s a meeting of the captains?”
Gen’s men call him stern, an exacting task master as relentless as any dojo’s sensei– but they never fail to remark upon his kindness either, nor the open warmth his smile radiates, like the gentle heat off a hibachi. Expressive, a learned man might say; it makes him a good captain, a lethal warrior, and a terrible diplomat.
“Ah…” His mouth pulls tight, a grimace that flashes before he is able to school his face. “Yes. Er, or should I say, among some. There was quite a commotion last night.”
“A commotion?” It had been Okita in that room and the Vice-Commander. It would be a necessity to have Kondo as well, to keep them from nipping at each other’s throats. Captains, with Gen but one among them, but not all– the arithmetic alone makes his blood run cold. “You mean with the Furies.”
The word alone sets Gen’s face slack, his eyes pulsing wide as he searches the courtyard, fearing the ears that might hear them, unwitting. “Yes,” he replies slowly. “Two ran free last night.”
If Shimada cussed, he would be sorely tempted to do so now. “There were bodies then? Has Yamazaki-kun–?”
“Toshi sent him out last night,” Gen assures him. “Just after he returned with Saito and Souji. There will be nothing for anyone to find when they wake this morning.”
He would be back soon, then. Dawn leaked over the horizon, lazy as it always was in these last few winter months. “Then why have the captains met?”
Gen’s breath tumbles into the air, troubled. “There was a witness.”
“A witness?” Kai shifts, restless. That would make things complicated– or simple, depending. With their luck, however…well, anticipating the worst made more answers seem sweet.
“It’s a boy, barely more than a child.” Every word bobs heavily between them, weighed down by Gen’s disapproval. “We’ve had him in custody since last night.”
“Even a child can hold a knife.” Something a man who knew Okita as a boy should know, if half of what he’s heard is true. “And those that can’t have eyes and tongue still.”
“You would say that,” There’s no heat behind Gen’s words, just a reluctant fondness. “But you still let them beg you for candy in the marketplace.”
Ah, he would bring that up. “Even a child can hold a knife,” Kai blusters, “but that doesn’t mean every one does.”
“Then you see what I mean.” Gen shuffles down the engawa, casting a thin scowl toward the shoji. “This boy’s cheeks are smooth, not a threat of stubble on them, and yet we have him bound hand and foot like some common criminal. And all because he had no choice but to witness…”
His words stumble, but Kai does not need to hear them to know just what those child’s eyes have seen. Yamazaki may be the one that cleans up after the Fury’s missteps, but he has seen what their bloodlust leaves behind. Pieces, never enough to be made into a whole; hardly enough to throw into furnace for ashes.
“Toshi wants me to bring him,” Gen mutters when Kai matches his recalcitrant pace. “A boy not old enough for a razor, but they’ll interrogate him to see what he knows.”
“No.” The answer rattles around in his chest, hollow. “They want to know what he thinks he’s seen.”
“They might as well ask a man asleep in his bed for all the good it will do them.” Gen’s mouth is little more than a blade’s edge, hardly parting as he grits out, “Fear paints uncertain memories, and the terror this boy must have witnessed…”
Kai does not speak, but in his silence, he agrees. The Vice Commander could fire his barrage of questions, as relentless as any Black Ship, but for a child to remember anything but the beating of his heart as he waited to die– he would be a true warrior, not to be wasted on Okita’s blade.
“It won’t be so bad,” Gen says with a wave of his hand, as if the movement alone could banish their concerns. “Heisuke is of an age with him. You know he could hardly stand to see a potential comrade in distress.”
True enough. Shinpachi used to tease him about Serizawa’s page; to hear him tell it, the boy had barely awoken before Heisuke asked him to call him by the same, bandying about the name Ryunnoske like they were brothers rather than strangers. He doesn’t, not anymore, not since…
Well, perhaps this time Heisuke would not be so quick to adopt a stray. Not when the last had hardly washed clean from the river’s shore.
“And Shinpachi-san and Sano-san won’t suffer it either.” Gen’s voice bubbles brightly, like the sunshine over a still river’s rapids, danger lurking just beneath the surface. “They might sit quiet now, but once they see this child…”
That, Kai doubted. Both were good men, but they made better warriors. Perhaps if this boy were as pitiful as Gen claimed, he would have the right of it. But otherwise, his age might work against him; boy he might be to men such as them, but to two that were used to thinking of Heisuke as an equal rather than a child–
“Okita will want to kill him,” Kai reminds him instead; the largest danger. Shinpachi and Sano would bend whichever way the Vice Commander’s wind would blow, but Okita is ruled by his own whims– or Kondo’s word. And Kai knew which of those were faster.
“There’s few enough men he doesn’t,” Gen grumbles. “He can say what he wishes. I doubt his word will carry much weight among the captains, after…”
Everything. The Shinsegumi’s name might be new enough to shine, but already it is smeared with blood, and most of it from Okita’s blade. No one would be eager to follow his lead, not when Serizawa’s influence sat heavy on him as a yoke.
Gen hesitates, steps stilling on the boards. “You’ll watch for him, won’t you?” He turns his head over his shoulder. “Yamazaki-kun, I mean. Toshi will want to speak to him, once all this is…decided.”
Between a body and a hostage, he means. “I will,” Kai promises. “We will be ready, when it’s time.”
One way or the other.
Kai knows better to linger when Gen brings the boy out– he needs to make a show of normalcy, of everything being what his men expect to see, even if Shinpachi is not there to drill them when they stumble from their quarters, bleary-eyed and cotton-mouthed. He does, however, catch a glimpse later when he lingers at Nagi’s well.
The boy’s a narrow thing, undersized, not dressed in the more subdued kimono of the emperor’s dictates, but a pale salmon. Not that it makes him strange among the men here, but still– it’s odd, as is his lack of haori, and the way his hakama sit on his hips. There’s something strange in the way he walks too, in the flexibility of his spine, but Kai can’t put his finger on it, the answer just out of reach.
“There was a witness.”
He does not startle as Gen did; instead Kai peers up at the roof, gaze catching on the shadow that doesn’t sit right until it resolves into a man instead. Yamazaki isn’t a small man– though he’s not tall either– but he seems it crouched there, dressed in unrelenting back.
“There was,” Kai confirms, “but the captains mean to keep him.”
Yamazaki nods, eyes too serious above the cloth of his mask. “Until they know what he knows.”
Yamazaki had always been serious; Kai noticed it that first day in Nagi house, when they swore to uphold the name of the Roshigumi. Such gravity is not often seen the young; it marked him to Kai’s eye, made it easy to take him on as a colleague in the Watch, despite their difference in ages. But he had hoped, as he watched this young man take his first stumbling steps toward friendship, that it would lighten him, give him back some of the boy he still should be.
Whatever youth Ibuki had brought out in him, there’s no trace of it left now. All that remains is that stern intensity, that arrow-like focus.
It makes him afraid. Not of Yamazaki– he is not the sort of man one needs to fear without reason– but for him. He’s too young to throw himself away on the dreams of other men, but it’s useless to tell him so. At his age, Kai would have been much the same.
“Yamazaki, perhaps–”
There is a commotion in the courtyard; one loud enough that his hand is on his hilt before his thoughts catch up to him. The captains have converged already, all of them on a single door, and he can’t imagine why, until–
Until he catches that glimpse of salmon, and the wide, determined eyes of their captive.
“Idiot,” Yamazaki grumbles. “Who would try to escape when they know they have the notice of the Vice Commander?”
“I don’t think…” Kai slows his tongue to match his thoughts. “I don’t think he did. I think…he doesn’t know he’s of interest at all. He hardly even knows what he saw, let alone what it means.”
The air prickles with silence.
“Enough,” Yamazaki says, decisively. “He saw enough.”
By the time the Vice Commander calls for them, Yamazaki has changed into his jinbei; no longer the lethal ninja, but a mild-mannered acupuncturist. Still, it does not change the intensity his eyes take when he kneels across from Hijikata, nor the way his hands clench at his pants.
His head bows. “Vice Commander.”
“Shimada. Yamazaki. Thank you for handling our problem last night.” A faint smile lingers around his lips, but with his next breath, it’s gone. “But I’m about to hand you another one.”
Yamazaki jerks up at that, eyes pulled wide. “Sir?”
Every word is sour when Hijikata replies, “We’re keeping the girl.”
A pin could drop, and they all would hear it.
“Girl?” Kai’s voice lifts an octave. “You mean that the boy was–?”
“A poorly disguised girl? Yes. And that’s not all.” His mouth pulls thin with distaste. “She’s Kodo’s daughter.”
Were it in him to goggle, Yamazaki would. “Yukimura-sensei’s…?”
“Yes.” The word twists wryly in the air. “Quite the coincidence, isn’t it?”
Kai shifts restlessly on his knees. “Then does she know–?”
“She doesn’t know a damned thing about Kodo’s whereabouts,” he spits out, mouth rumpled in an irritated knot. “To hear her tell it, it’s been a year since she’s heard a single word. Came all the way down from Edo to look for him.”
“Alone?” Kai asks, too sharp.
Hijikata’s brows lift. “That’s what she said. She was coming down here to find Matsumoto, see if he’d heard anything since him and her dad were old friends. But apparently he’s out of town, and she’s out of luck.”
Kodo Yukimura’s daughter showing up on their doorstep mere weeks after his house burned to the ground with not a body to be found… it’s too good a story to be true, too convenient. Still, Kai find himself believing it, believing this girl he’s only seen a glimpse of.
Hijikata sighs into their silence, leaning an arm against his desk to lounge. “Sanan thinks that if we keep her here, Kodo might finally peek that shiny head out from where he’s hiding.”
“Do you think she’ll cooperate?” Yamazaki asks, every word dripping with doubt.
“Maybe. She’s quiet enough.” The Vice Commander huffs out a laugh. “Well, except when she tried to sneak out. But to be fair, I wouldn’t stick around if Souji said he’d kill me either.”
Yamazaki goes rigid at the sound of that name, knuckles blanching on his knees. Still, he stays silent.
“For the record, I don’t think the girl lying,” Hijikata mutters, already ill tempered from the thought. “But as long as we keep her, I want you two to keep an eye on her.”
“But Vice Commander–”
“Yamazaki.” The name cracks like a whip from Hijikata’s tongue. “Are you questioning my orders?”
He squirms on his knees, mouth bowing into a frown. “N-no, Vice Commander.”
“Good.” Hijikata’s mouth twitches. “Her identity stays between us. The men don’t need to know there’s a woman among us, no matter how she’s dressed.”
Kai considers that. “But if she’s meant to stay here, at Yagi House…”
“She’ll need a better cover. I know.” If anything, the Vice Commander turns…petulant. “Souji had the bright idea of putting her as my page, and Kondo thought it was a good idea–” the implication in his tone that he did not agree was impossible to miss– “so make sure that’s the story that circulates.”
He nods. “Of course.”
“Good, then you’re both dismissed. And Yamazaki?”
The boy perks up, eager as any dog for his master. “Yes, Vice Commander?”
Hijikata hesitates, his face growing lean and wary, the way a hunter’s does before the hunt. “If she runs, you have my permission to deal with her.”