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The battle must nearly be over, Tokio thought. Or rather, it would be ending soon, even if those who had gone to fight would not be returning. She’d stood by the side of the two young women, and the even younger boy, as they all stared out at the battleship. The sea’s constant churn and the spontaneous eruptions of fire from the dark ship itself were the only points that changed on the skyline. As far as battles she’d watched, Tokio had to admit this was the most veiled to her eyes.
Not that Hajime would be pleased for her to admit she’d watched any of his fights. He’d consider a failure, a way he’d prevented her from remaining entirely safe in a world they both knew was far too full of evil.
Time passed. The ship grew more fractured, the military began to fire upon it, making those standing nearest to Tokio cry out in shock. She, however, remained silent. One did not survive the Bakumatsu without some calm acceptance of the calculus done by governing forces. A handful of extra deaths, to stop Shishio, that would have been easy math to many. Even to her husband, except for the fact he’d not believe the killer was truly dead, unless he saw the event with his own eyes.
She murmured some calming words to the other women, soft, near-useless things that were once what older women told her, in those early days of marriage to a wolf of Mibu. He’ll return. He’s made of stronger stuff than this. It will be an easy battle for him.
And just like then, the two younger women looked to her, smiled, but the hope did not reach their eyes. What could? When they were to wait, and the men were to fight, to say anything else would be to acknowledge how powerless they were.
But with a cry, the young boy, Yahiko, pointed to the boat, cutting back across the water, steered by four bloodstained figures. Her eyes scanned over the group until she saw the tiniest plume of cigarette smoke. Only then did that tension around her heart uncoil.
Safe. Alive. Certain now that justice was rendered.
Her momentary companions charged forward, over the embankment and down the sandy beach, still littered with bodies. Their shouts of relief, of joy, still held that tinge of fear, for the wounds on all of them were quite severe. Battles didn’t end in a flurry of rose petals. No, often they ended like this, with the victors dragging themselves back, barely more alive than those that had fallen to their blades.
She watched as Hajime stared out to sea, seemingly ignorant of the tearful reunion occurring near him. But of course, a wolf would never survive in the wild if he didn’t notice far more than he admitted to. But he’d told her before that such celebrating at the end of a battle did not honor those who hadn’t returned. Why celebrate the brave few, when the unnamed many would become forgotten, over time? Even now, she knew he must be thinking of the officers lost in the prior attacks, of orphaned young Eiji, and all those other names that Hajime acknowledged privately--those who had fallen in pursuit of swift death to evil.
Then, before she could begin her own descent to him, she heard the thunderous feet of the military regiment, the booming words of Ito Hirobumi. Though the speech is certainly well-said, Tokio only has eyes for her husband, who watches, apart and indifferent, at the side. He hadn’t even bothered to drop his current cigarette, one of those small things that made her shake her head with fondness.
Then she hears the well-rehearsed line, that this ends the specter of the final days of the Shogunate, and her already weary heart aches a little more. No. Nothing can so easily end a time so full of ghosts, a past with so many deep roots in the present.
But at last, the crowd dispersed, in first a trickle, then in large groups. Bystanders realizing there was nothing left to watch, now that the heroes had returned.
But not all of them. Even if Hajime would hate to be called by that term, (indeed, she could hear him scowling as he said it, scoffing, lip-curlingly, annoyed) he was a hero to Tokio, would always be. It was that thought that kept her standing on the beach, even as the young woman--Kaoru-- and her small group of friends walked past, supporting the badly injured man with auburn hair.
Tokio did not miss the warm, regretful look her way from Karou, nor the moment of slight calculation from the sword-carrying man. Did she look familiar to him? For she knew who he was, of course, though it didn’t matter to her, not in this new era.
The little group left, all of them talking, hopeful in a way that betrayed the youth of almost all of them. Because amid the friends’ relieved faces, Tokio had spied the exhaustion on both of the swordsman’s faces. Though Misao and Karou certainly made them each smile, their closeness did not drive way the shadows of the past, etched onto their faces. Love and fondness could make life sweeter, certainly, but it could not heal all wounds.
No, that power alone belonged to time, which may pass swifter with company at one’s side. But even time could not work miracles, and ghosts of prior battles would always haunt those who fought them.
As she stood, now alone, on the beach, Tokio felt every one of her thirty-one years, weighing her down into the sand. No longer a young girl with foolish hopes this would be the last time she waited for him to return. Not yet an elderly woman with a husband who had finally, finally retired. But rather, caught between hope and resignation, strength and weariness.
She thought back to Karou, to the girl’s face which had shown every passing fear, every rallying moment of hope. Such an exhausting way to wait for the end of a battle, and yet, one Tokio knew well. She used to refuse to sleep, on nights the 3rd patrolled, as if her alertness somehow aided his. Each deployment, she’d send him off with a kiss, a promise, a prayer, trusting them to return him to her.
She still did, these days, and still waited for him, because she knew no other way to live her life. When one’s heart beat in the chest of another’s, there was little choice in the matter of hope. But she comforted herself with the fact the exchange was equal. If he held her heart, a soft, yearning thing, then she surely carried his, which was ironclad and as trustworthy as the sun’s rising. It’s this that consoled her, even now, as she closed her eyes. Picturing that quiet strength, that intense resolve, which had yet to fail them both.
When she opened her eyes, it was to see a lone figure--a lone wolf, one might say--approaching, step by limping step, up the sandy beach. Tokio, a hand to her kimono, lifted it to run until she reached him.
“I’m fine,” he muttered, low. A second time, too, this with more effort.
She squeezed him too tight for him to say it a third time. “You stubborn man.” Tokio pressed her face to his shoulder, breathing him in. For all that she normally hated the cigarettes, now, they reminded her, with every inhale, he was here, he was alive.
“I didn’t know you were here.”
“I didn’t know it mattered.” She didn’t step back, not yet. Because as soon as she did, they would return to the roles they presented to the world. The wolfish officer and the elegant housewife. For as long as her arms remained around him, they could be as they once were; young lovers, impetuously intimate, heedless of all that would come in their future.
She could almost feel the brush of long hair, the fluttering of white-mountain-trimmed haori sleeves, the pressure of chain mail beneath fabric, the sensations of a lifetime ago.
The markers of a samurai she’d fallen for, the uniform of a Shinsengumi she’d trusted with her life.
Then he cleared his throat, his voice raspy, and not, she thought from one too many cigarettes today, as he said, “if I knew, I would have been here quicker.”
And all she knew was the prickle of his wool uniform against her cheek, the smoothness of a gloved hand against the small of her back, the whisper of the ends of his short-cropped hair on her palm as she smoothed her hand over his neck, over and over again.
The traits of a police officer she raised a family with, the steadiness of a man who provided them a new life in this new era.
She didn’t need him to be as he was, did not wish to return to the past, not if it meant giving up these years spent by his side. Nor did she need him to be any more romantic, any less stubborn, than he was. For as much as he’d grumbled, he still hadn’t pulled away.
He was hers. Her husband. Her heart, in every lifetime, and in every moment. Saitou Hajime, Fujita Gorō, even Ichinose Denpachi. All these names she knew, and loved the man who wore them.
Carefully, he stepped back, and she used the moment to graze her thumb over his cheek, eyeing the wound on his forehead to see if it would require stitches, and his general demeanor, to see if she’d have to demand him to sit still while she did so. Both seemed likely.
The blood no longer scared her, neither his, nor anyone's’ staining his clothes. Wounds healed, and fabric could be washed. Justice, as he would say, would always need to be dealt.
What Tokio hadn’t expected, while she’d studied him, he’d done the same to her. Not looking away, not tensing, waiting for any additional threats, but rather, locked onto her, as if memorizing her. As if she was the wounded one in need of healing.
And maybe she was.
Because when he bent, and kissed her forehead, something inside her knit back together, as surely as a broken bone setting. The kiss lasted less than a second, just long enough for her to realize it, long enough to curl her hands tighter around him. Whatever ache, whatever pain had settled in her chest, dissolved.
She looked up at him, and spied that small, private smile, the one that always belonged to her, for the faintest moment, before his mask settled back into place.
“Let’s go,” he said, stepping forward in the sand, confident as ever, despite the battle wounds which made him limp.
She followed, her head down, not out of bashfulness, nor a sense of ladylike calm, but rather, because she could not stop blushing and grinning like a newlywed.
“You will need stitches,” she murmured.
“We’ll see.”
“And you’ll need a week off.”
“No.”
“Hajime.”
“Do I have a choice?” He turned, offering her his hand, and that sardonic half-grin, less rare than the prior smile. She took it, letting him help her up the sloping sand.
“Maybe if you’d been earlier.”
Together, they walked away from the crowds, those celebrating, those grieving, and all those in between. As they had so many times before. As they would again, and again.
For as long as there would be swift death to evil, there would be a slow wait for the one who made that quest his life.
But in every age, there would be a small, private reunion between the one who waited and the one who wielded the justice.