Cards

Tokito doesn't believe in the cards anymore.

How can she? She relied on them to tell her everything, and they were silent about her father/uncle/clan (Muramasa is dead. Fubuki is beyond her reach. The Mibu die a little more everyday) and about her death/defeat/despair (Tokito of the four elders, son of Muramasa, is dead, killed by Akira no-longer-of-the-four-emperors. In his place is broken little girl who doesn't know what to do).

She ought to throw them away, these theatrical props that 'he' used to confuse and terrify 'his' opponents into traps, but she can't bear to, because Tokito has nothing left from her or 'his' mibu days that means anything but the cards that have failed her and that's something really pathetic that Akira would laugh at her about if he knew so she's not thinking that anymore.

She had them before everything. She cannot bear to let them go, these pieces of reinforced paper with painted pictures in ink.

Tokito lays them out the way she was taught (she does not remember if it was Hishigi or her mother or Muramasa who taught her. She also does not care. Much) and the cards tell her change (the card for this is death. Yes, Tokito is dead. How apt), tell her renewal, tell her love.

That boy is coming here again, his distinctive aura pressing down on her senses and irritating her just a little because he's not even trying to hide his presence, not that he has to try.

Suddenly she wants to tell him about the cards, wants to show him the pictures and tell him what they mean and hear his slight condescension trivialize the cards and what they say and turn the cards back into pieces of painted paper, not her possible future.

She thinks that she will show him the cards and he would snort and then he would laugh and then she would no longer believe in the cards, no longer give them the power to hurt her with false hope.

He's standing behind her now. She shows him. Akira does not laugh. Instead, he says, "maybe the cards are correct," and suddenly Tokito is aware of how much bigger than her he is and how much of an adult Akira can be sometimes.

The moment passes, and he takes her by the hand to half-drag her back to the main halls for dinner.

His hand is large and warm and callused, and she thinks that maybe the cards are correct again.

This moment does not pass.

-end-