Sanguine Falls
1 of ?
AN: Thanks to Silver Miko, Tokugawa, & Kettering who provided assistance and/or support through the writing of this crazy adventure.
Special thanks to Hikaru who generously provided the book which inspired this wandering insanity and probably more twisted tales in the future.
He was dead.
Aoshi-sama hadn't survived the final battle with Shisho. He died and her beautiful colored world bled black & red and when the flood receded there was only gray. Sanosuke and Himura had stumbled back to the Aoiya, broken down, and bleeding but alive.
Aoshi hadn't come home at all. All her fears and pains had been pushed aside in the urgency that surrounded treating the wounded that day. When he had finally recovered enough to speak again, almost two days later, Himura gave her the news personally. She recalled it with sickening clarity.
"I'm so sorry, Misao-dono, Aoshi-san didn't make it."
Everything, everything stopped... her world froze in place while her head continued to swim. Her head swirled and her balance was thrown off kilter. She recalled vividly the sensation of her head striking the floor but it hadn't hurt. She firmly believed nothing could hurt more than the knowledge that Aoshi-sama was dead.
Even now it hurt but it had dulled to a depressing degree. The others had been urging her to "move on" and that it would "get better with time." She was finding that to be overwhelmingly and startling true. She shocked herself by trying to hold onto her grief and guilt because to do otherwise seemed to abandon or invalidate or cheapen her love for Aoshi-sama.
How long had it been now?
"Misao, why don't you head up to bed soon?"
She rolled her eyes. Behind her she could imagine Okina with his head popped in the door, concern shimmering in his old eyes... he was so predictable that it was annoying.
"Okay," she agreed, pulling herself up onto her feet.
Her kimono caught under her toe and she tipped, her arms flailing. With a dull thud, she fell and winced at the hard contact between her and the floor. The tatami mats beneath her did little to cushion her fall. She crawled back up, rubbing her tailbone absently and headed toward the stairs.
She knew she needed to pay more attention but it was so hard to do. She'd declined, she knew that. Aoshi-sama would be ashamed of her. He'd scold her but... she wasn't sure what to do anymore.
Why did it matter what she wore when she got up? She had no one to show it to. Did it matter that she kept her hair long? Aoshi-sama couldn't see it. Why did it matter if she bathed? He could no longer smell her, or touch her, or kiss her, or indulge in any of her fantasies. He was gone. She had lost him. There was nothing she could've done.
Night fell and found Misao in the common room by the back garden. No candles burned to illuminate the silent room, no light save for that sparse shining of the moon which was bright and fair outside. She had laid her head upon the table hours ago. The others had obviously decided not to disturb her rest, however fitful, and left her to sleep there. She blinked her heavy, sleep achy eyes and stood up.
She'd become thin in her depression. Bone thin and pale. Her skin seemed to cling to her bones and she was no longer allowed in the Aoiya dining room in view of the customers as she was far too sickly in appearance.
Most of the room was filmed over in darkness with only a slim strip of light upon the sill of the window.
Her bony feet were unsteady and she tilted but didn't fall. She stumbled slightly as she moved toward the window. Her yukata, once beginning to feel a bit snug now hung limply off her frame. Even its drapery couldn't hide her thin limbs and torso. Once she had been teased about resembling an adolescent boy... now... now she was positively childlike. Before she'd been banned from the dining room a woman had come up to inquire about "the sickly child".
She reached out, curling her skeletal fingers against the wood of the windowsill to steady her uneven gait. Blank eyes, sunken from malnutrition stared out into the empty garden. While no people lingered, the garden flourished. Summer rain and sunshine had brought life and merriness to the plots of vegetation. Misao looked there and saw nothing but memories of old. She saw life stripped from her, she saw her love taken away, she saw happiness when she wanted sadness... the still even tones of silence.
There was nothing silent about a bright spray of daisies or the stalks of orchids... nothing at all
A fog had drifted down and overhead the clouds were drifting by the moon. She turned away from the sight beyond the window. Maybe she should go to her room and sleep?
No... no..
She wasn't tired. Maybe a walk would soothe her mind and grant her some peace? So far that strategy had failed her but oftentimes she found it a cool balm upon her frazzled nerves. She fumbled toward the front door and stepped out into the night.
She limped along the row of buildings the Aoiya stood in. She could not remember if she'd closed the front door... she didn't want to go back and look. She'd come back this way soon, she thought
Each building was darkened, the doors closed... she turned away from the dusty streets that led into town and instead turned the opposite direction. A nameless street to nowhere... at night they all were. They were all the same
The cemetery was somewhere along the road she currently stumbled along, that she knew. Her parents and Aoshi-sama were both buried there. They had tiny stone markers and each year she came to dust them off and lay flowers there. This year she hadn't come... she'd been too sick with grief, locked away in her room ill with misery and death
Now she fumbled along a loose dirt road where in the daylight horse drawn carriages kicked up dust as they clattered by. She could almost hear them now.
How much further? How much longer? The graveyard came into view and she stopped walking. The night air was thick with fog. It coated the area in whitish puffs. She came to stand at the edge of the graveyard fence. It was low, just over her hips and up to her abdomen. She didn't look for the gateway, she knew it was closed, she gripped the railing and lifted and shimmied herself across and promptly fell straight over.
She impacted the ground hard, her knobby knees striking a stone grave marker through the thin material of her yukata. Dizzily, she stood and fumbled. Aoshi-sama was in this cemetery somewhere... where... where... did she remember?
As she glanced about the ground, a gentle breeze seemed to float by. Her eyes were drawn to a strange almost iridescent butterfly. It fluttered by her, its wings dancing almost serenely... but it was large and the wings were delicate and lacy.
The gentle flapping of its wings was hypnotic. She stared, her feet moving to follow it unknowingly. She could imagine, she could see the tiny sparkles falling from its wings like tiny drops of moonlight. She reached out but it was far beyond her fingertips dancing to the strange, but yet silent beat of drums. The sound pounded in her ears.
Lub-dub
Lub-dub
The butterfly sparkled and danced to the macabre sound. It was so vibrant she could hear it in her ears... pulsing even through her own body. She stumbled along after the creature, tossing herself over the fence gracefully as she again came upon it.
She walked quickly but the butterfly was getting away from her. How had it gotten so far ahead? It was now far beyond her, she could barely see the faint sparkles from its wings down the road almost about to go over a hill and out of view
The butterfly swooped over the edge of the hill downward and was gone. Misao came to the edge and stood, glancing down over the little hill. It was a small hill, so small, but the butterfly was gone.
She glanced around
Road... grass..
Far, far ahead at a crossroads she thought she saw a person. She strained, squinting her eyes in the darkness... was it a person?
Butterfly forgotten, Misao walked forward. Her footsteps were silent upon the road and her clothes barely rustled at all.
A person?
She stopped when she saw not one person at the crossroads, but many. Many persons..
It was an entire group of people and they were all cast in the same gray skin tone. They were milling about or stopped quite oddly. Several were paused in the center of the road looking perplexed while the others shuffled by without paying any mind at all. Misao watched the odd scene, transfixed by the small, peculiar movements of the people. It was so normal and yet so abnormal... what was holding her in place to watch these people cross?
Better yet, what were all these people doing out here? How could she see them so well in the darkness and why were they so … gray.
She knew not, but she felt no desire to go back. So absorbed was she that she didn't notice immediately when one such presence came to stand at her back until one cold, spindly hand came to down upon her shoulder.
She turned slowly, still transfixed, far too much to be startled and turned her luminous eyes upon her interloper. She registered the presence but felt strangely compelled to ignore it and instead continue to watch the people cross. She turned and looked back behind her. Words tumbled forth before she saw anything... an instinctual response, something ingrained, something learned, something supernatural.
"Aoshi-sama."
She blinked and seemed to come awake. The sound of his name from her own lips seemed to rouse her from her stupor. She blinked again trying to clear her cloudy eyes and turned back but the strange persons at the crossroads were gone. All of them vanished.
Frantic that she was sleepwalking and had imagined Aoshi-sama, she turned around again, but there he stood.
He was the same ghostly gray color, no... no... not gray at all she thought. She looked up and stared at his pale visage.
He was white.
A pure, ghostly white, almost to the point of transparent. Where blue veins would have run beneath there seemed to be only whiter beneath. He was the exact color of snow or milk and looked just as cold. His mouth was reddish, no, pale colored but it was bright against the wintry pallor of his skin.
"Aoshi-sama!" she exclaimed, her mouth dropping open in both horror and astonishment.
He looked like a stage actor! Like... like...
"You are standing at a crossroads," he spoke.
His tone was impartial and the hand that had been upon her shoulder had fallen again by his side limply. She turned her eyes toward the appendage. He was so slender... so slim... so... sickly looking. She stepped back again. Was this another horrible nightmare?
He stared at her as though he'd never seen her before. Was this man not Aoshi-sama? Could that be? Aoshi-sama was dead, she reminded herself. He'd been that way a while now. It couldn't be him, couldn't be.
She wasn't an idiot. She knew a crossroads when she saw one!
"You have seen the crossing of the dead and now you will die."
She stared and backed yet another step away but he never moved, never blinked, never twitched. Nothing at all.
W-what! The crossing of the dead? Surely not those gray people?
"Give your life to me and I will spare you the curse of madness."
"N-no!" she exclaimed, startled. "What are you? Did you escape from somewhere?"
His eyes flickered and they glowed.
Glowed.
A dull kind of glow, it was a silver kind of color that resembled fog. It seemed to radiate from his eyes like steam over a hot cup of tea effusing slowly outward but never getting larger. The glow spread off and vanished around his face. She swallowed hard.
Was she imagining that?
"You will go mad. You will kill yourself and others.."
She shook her head. "I will... I would not!"
"You can, you will, because you are cursed."
She was overwhelmed. How dare this person who looked like her Aoshi-sama come upon her like this? How dare he? How …
How dare Aoshi-sama die on her! How dare he leave her before she could… before she could… Tears pricked her eyes. It wasn't fair!
Without warning or explanation she flew at him in a rage. Punches and kicks rained and fell upon nothing. Her target had vanished.
"Go then girl... When you are ready, I will be waiting."
She drew her arms around her frame panting from the exhaustive effort. One burst of activity and she was already so tired… so weak. She glanced around searching for him but saw no one.
Terrified, she ran home.
AN: Just wait, hopefully it gets better. If you're confused, that's okay. All will be revealed... or something close to it.
Chapter lengths will vary depending on scene breaks. I think there's a least one that's rather short and that's because of what follows it and my current progress. I'm usually a stickler for even chapter lengths but this story will break that.