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His hands make hers seem so small. The familiarity of it- aristocratic fingers twining with porcelain makes his dead heart nearly begin to beat. Her hands are... So soft, near delicate (to him, to any like him he would imagine), and so cold. Fingertip snowflakes and fox's dewclaws like snowdrop petals.
His hands make hers seem so small.
One night was a lie, but oh he still holds desperately tight to that little white lie like a safety net- a spiderthread holding him over the fiery pit.
The night is cool, and calm, and soft- and as much as she denied it so was she. No longer wearing the mask of a madame doctor, no longer whispering of money and time and chemical compounds and herbal remedies she hums to herself on the outside deck where the moon hangs bright- a new coin, an old prayer, a familiar face fogged and blank in a mirror backed in silver. He stands, ominous in the shadows he creeps through with his naturally silent steps and the whisper of his wavy hair hanging over his back- silk on silk on skin, the kimono is open to show scars and flesh in human measure as he watches with four of six eyes widened.
She hums and dances through her garden- tending death and delight in equal measure and he wonders what she once looked like in the sunlight.
Dark hair. Soft Touch. A voice that carried like leaves on the wind before winter. Familiar, familiar, familiar.
He feels eyes on his back, and glances over a shoulder to see the young one skitter into the depths of the home.
How many days had he spent here- how many weeks has he lost himself in thought and disguised it as meditation and buried it in the layers of his mind where it's safe to dream? How many times, he wonders, will they tell each other 'Just one night' and not mean it?
He ducks out into the night air and breathes deep as her bare feet pass over the low growing greenery and her clothing flares like mothwings and she stops with her back to him- He acts on instinct- his hands gently cradling hers as she hums along to music she keeps closed inside of herself- locked away and on a silken pillow in the places where the rage will never reach. The places where she is still soft and delicate and loved and treasured-
He deadened her eyes once, remember and remember again how she stared at stars she thought she lost-
He blinks the odd 'memory' away and steps silently alongside her- Letting her move like she danced in forgotten sunbeams with her eyes closed now. He feels himself soften- he feels something fall fallow and gentle like resting fields and dormant trees and moves along with her; always with just enough space between their bodies to keep the illusion alive.
Starlight is caught in her eyelashes as she raises her face with a remembered crescendo to come to a stop- and those eyes open. She registers the hands twined with hers, the figure standing in synchronicity and wonders how they breathe in the same tempo.
She swallows hard, her cheeks bright and looks down.
....She had needed to think- she had slipped out after they coupled (again, and again and again and this no longer felt like just one night anymore) and had passed around the garden and growth to see the moonlight dust the colors of flowerpetals the same shade as nursery blankets and wedding finery with a lump in her throat she couldn't swallow down and ignore. So she let it break apart like a robin's egg and free the songbird it strangled with a lack of air and light and softness; she had let her steps become light as youth, light as hope and let the green and midnight carry her like the summertime once did- once, when she was surrounded by love and safety and all the things she sacrificed (or were they stolen, by rubied eyes and a silver tongue that leaked promises like rot?)
Her chest ached, she let her steps lead her as her eyes had closed-
A chest cavity filled with death; dermestid beetles and botfly larvae sprinkled on sour incense on pockmarked stone, a monument to abandonment-
Her chest ached, and she tried to bleed it out like leeches and arrow wounds in old stories and had been so wrapped in her own whirlwind she thought she imagined the hands against her own.
"....You... danced with me."
"Yes."
His words are simple, his emotions easy to read (if one had practice, if one knew how and where to look and knew how to parse the truth from lies) and she rescinded one hand to press it to her chest.
"I... Apologize, sir samurai.", she whispered, awkward and falling back upon her etiquette, "I... was lost in memory."
"I know.", he answers with near infuriating simplicity. His freed hand moves to press against her side, a clawed thumb brushing over the silk over the edge of a rib- a rib that covered a hollow hole, she swore, so empty was the place her heart should be.
"...My name."
She looks up, blinking in a bout of confusion, "I. I beg your pardon?"
"Call me by my name.", he says; each word meant, each word honest, and the hand that still holds one of hers brings it closer so he can lean and kiss the knuckles made sore by cleaning and caring, "Call me by my name, Miss Tamayo, please."
"Very well, Kokushibo-"
"Michikatsu."
She freezes solid, her breath caught in that empty chest cavity that perhaps wasn't so empty as she thought because she met his eyes to find cotton softness clouding blooddark sclera around gold coin irises.
"...Alright, Michikatsu.", she breathed. He pulled her closer and she felt her body bend to acquiesce against her will so warm were his hands and gestures that it nearly felt real. Her hand uncurls from its position against her chest to gently grip the edge of his kimono and she let her head rest against his chest. He had not released her other hand, simply moving his to be able to slot their fingers together as the moonlight dusted them in shades of nursery silk and wedding finery.
Her eyes closed.
...His chest resonated- humming along to a song summoned from somewhere she wondered if he could recognize and he held her close and closer and they swayed in time to the notes rumbling out from his chest.
Time stopped for just a moment, for forever, for just long enough for her to commit the incense scent that clung to his clothing to memory, for them both to learn how they fit together when not leaving marks on the cast of shells of their long sacrificed humanity-
"The dawn will be here eventually.", he whispered as his humming faded like hers had, "And I have.. preparations yet to make."
"Then we should... get inside, Michikatsu."
"Agreed, Miss Tamayo-"
"Just Tamayo, please.", she answered, pulling back to look up at his eyes, "No need anymore for... formalities."
He smiled. Her long silent heart gave a beat, she swore it.
"Of course, Tamayo. Come, we should retire for at least a little while."
He moved away from her, hands seeming to separate in slow motion until dewdrop dewclaws tickled over swordsman's callouses and her cheeks stung from the rosey color blooming over them. She blinked a few times rapidly, a wide eyed maiden for the first time in so painfully long it nearly broke her bones and crushed her soul with a sudden weight of longing before he reached the open door and half-turned- looking back at her.
"Tamayo?"
Her steps wavered at first, the way he hooked a thumb in his clothes and stood so at ease with a tilt to his head and the last breezes of the evening slipping through his wild hair almost making her stumble-
Remember before, remember the first time soft eyes and wild hair caught your heart, remember the second time too- the second time, when it clipped your wings little luna moth-
She steadied herself with a breath, smoothing her clothes back into place before taking her fox quick steps back into the safety of her home before the sun rose and brushed them from existence like gravedust. He closed the door behind them, following with his heavier steps.
He walked beside her, a hand at the small of her back and his thumb brushing along where her spine was hidden by silk and skin and years of chrysalis she wasn't sure she could shed anymore.
He fixed his clothing, murmuring to her his goodbyes- as it always went, now; Days and nights wrapped in and around each other but eventually oh eventually he must return to the hellscape she once left behind.
His sword at his hip, the hilt odd and matte dark and-
His lips to her cheek. The cheek that grew rosier as the previous blush had not yet faded and-
"Goodbye, Tamayo.", he murmured, his voice low and calm and unfairly so deeply warm now, "I will see you again soon?"
A question, a question that carried the weight of the world in the crook of its punctuation and she let her eyes closed as the robin's egg came back to haunt her throat and the songbird wants its freedom-
"Please do, Michikatsu.", she whispers, hoping the words carry the weight she lay upon them when her arms go up and over his shoulders, when his arm goes around her waist like a vise, "Promise me you will, even."
"I promise, Tamayo. I swear."
She watched his back vanishing into the night- the flutter of his tied back hair like vulture feathers and snake scales as she hugged herself tight too tight to try and hold back the skylarks and housefinches clamoring to climb free of her once empty ribcage.
She vanished before the sight of the sun had a chance to find her- curled up in silk and linen and holding tight to something violet, something spare and left behind like a half remembered face in the starlight.
And her chest ached and it felt like feathers choked her voice and she buried her nose in the smell of incense and weapon polish and blood as the sun chased the moon away once again.
One night, oh one night had been such a lie- such a lie indeed.