owned_by_a_cat | Taming Frenzied Butterflies

Series:      Taming Frenzied Butterflies
Fandom: Brave 10
Genre:      Romance/Adventure
Rating:    M
Pairing:    Saizo/Kamanosuke, with a bit of Rokuro/Yukimura on the side

<< Part 6

Part 7: Boon

"I can walk, damn it!" The soak in the hot herbal bath had revived Kamanosuke enough that some of his contrariness raised its head again. The complaints lacked punch and acid, though, so Saizō took the redhead's grumbling in stride. Once upon a time, the fact that Kamanosuke could barely keep his feet but insisted on walking would have riled Saizō to violence. Just as he would have found the redhead's clutching at Saizō's sleeve to hold himself upright irritating, rather than oddly endearing.

But matters had changed and Saizō's patience for all Kamanosuke's idiosyncrasies had grown to the point where he felt protective rather than riled. And the gods help him if Sanada ever caught wind of that.

"Then walk," he suggested. "But come this way. The healer is expecting us."

"I don't need healing."

You have no idea what you need, brat, Saizō thought, amusement mingling with heat as Kamanosuke leaned heavily against him. The clean clothes the healer had provided were a little loose on Kamanosuke's lithe frame. Saizō had not bothered fastening all the laces, more intent to get the redhead dressed and to a safe place where he could sleep, and now the shirt was sliding off Kamanosuke's shoulder as he dragged against the larger nin.

"You may not need healing, but you do need sleep and we're guests in the healer's house. So stop your whining." Saizō tucked the shirt collar up, took a firm hold of Kamanosuke's elbow and turned him off the main road and down the smaller thoroughfare that led to the healer's cottage, glad when they arrived without incident. Taking care of an injured comrade was one thing. He didn't want to be seen carrying a loudly complaining, struggling Kamanosuke through the village. That would just be... wrong.

And far too enticing.

As soon as the healer was in sight, Kamanosuke straightened from his slouch. He squared his shoulders and raised his chin defiantly, daring the man to declare him less than hale and hearty.

Fortunately for the peace of the village, the healer did neither. He bowed instead and invited them into his home where two futons had been set up side by side and a table waited laden with food. Water bubbled in a kettle and the healer set about making tea as soon as he'd ushered his guests through the door.

"'m not hungry," Kamanosuke grumbled. He made it to the futon and pitched face down onto the blankets, not even bothering to remove his boots.

Saizō turned an apologetic look towards the healer, but the man merely shrugged and smiled gently.

"He'll be hungry later, when he has recovered some of his strength. See if you can make him more comfortable and then we can eat. Oh," the man stopped Saizō before he could turn away and held out a small cup. "He should drink this before he sleeps."

Saizō wrestled Kamanosuke's boots off and woke him enough to force the herbal concoction down the man's throat before he tugged the blankets closely around him. Kamanosuke didn't protest, barely blinked and was asleep as soon as he was horizontal.

"I've never seen him as exhausted as that," Saizō said as he came back to the centre of the room and settled himself at the table.

"It was an exhausting task, your friend undertook." The healer's manner was soothing, his movements unhurried and measured. It reminded Saizō of the way Rokurō tended to the lord of Ueda, quietly and unobtrusively. Sanada Yukimura was not an easy man to anticipate. He cultivated masks and idiosyncrasies as other men cultivate chrysanthemums and – thus far – his disguises had served him well. And yet, all Sanada had to do was stretch out his hand to be offered exactly what he had need of in that moment – and in Saizō's experience that could be anything from a cup of tea to the means to assassinate an emperor. It told much of Rokurō's skill and even more of the bond the two men shared.

He'd watched Sanada fight for Rokurō's life, seen the determination and the moments of quiet desperation Sanada fought as fiercely as he fought the poison, and he didn't like to think that, just because Ana got lucky, that bond between Sanada and Rokurō was doomed. Gratitude welled inside him for Kamanosuke, who'd taken on a disease. Saizō hadn't considered it before, but with the fever raging through the villages, convincing the healer to accompany them to Ueda might have been an impossible task. Might still be, but if new cases stopped arriving, and those afflicted recovered...

"Will you travel with us to Ueda to heal Rokurō?" he asked when the food had all but disappeared and he faced the healer over fresh cups of tea. He was grateful for the respite, the silence and the chance to think, but now he grew anxious for an answer.

"It would do little good for me to travel to Ueda," the healer said, reaching for a large mortar and a handful of sweet smelling herbs. "Tell the lord Sanada that he must ask this boon of another."

"Who?" Saizō braced, ready to saddle up and go find the man the healer named. Only Kamanosuke's still form in its nest of blankets stopped him from leaving there and then. The redhead deserved a few hours of rest before they returned to their errant.

"Unno Rokurō," the healer said calmly. "Ask yourself what he gains by sacrificing his ability to see. Or ask Sanada to ask himself that."

"I don't understand." Saizō hated admitting that, but he hated seeing pain in the face of the quiet brunet who guarded Sanada's life so diligently even more. If he could heal the man's troubles he'd do so.

"Any warrior's special ability is part of his soul," the healer replied. The stone pestle grated in the quiet between them and the air filled with a soothing scent. "You can learn to throw a kunai, you can learn to kill someone with your bare hands, you can even learn to expel poison from your body, but your magic comes from a place deep within you. The light is yours, just as your companion," he nodded towards the futon where Kamanosuke slept like the dead, "can call the wind to do his bidding. You will always be able to call on this strength, even if you're gravely hurt or have lost all other means to fight. You can never lose this skill... but you can choose to give it up."

"But Rokurō controls the water. And Ana's attack injured his eye."

"No." The healer shook his head and his face grew soft and vulnerable as he smiled. "You're only considering parts of that picture. Rokurō controls the water, but his sight is part of that ability. Yes, his care surrounds and supports those he has chosen like water surrounds and supports a swimmer, and he can fling his fury towards a foe like a storm surge and batter down the toughest defences. But, like the water it has chosen as a representation, Rokurō's soul is also a mirror. It reflects what he sees and experiences. He'll return loyalty for loyalty, faith for faith and trust for trust. Poison can kill him. But even losing his eye won't lose him the ability to see – unless he chooses to sacrifice that ability."

Cocooned in a haven of soft sounds and sweet scents, Saizō sat and thought. The healer's home was a peaceful as the roof above his quarters in Ueda and – whether Saizō had considered it before or not – many of the healer's words made sense. Rokurō was quiet and rarely involved himself in the squabbles of the rest of Sanada's braves, but he saw everything and never failed to step up when he was needed.

Why would someone who saw so much, and took pride in being on hand at need, choose to lose the ability that allowed him to be useful? Unless he had seen something... or had failed to see something...

"Not yet, shinobi." The healer's chuckle drew Saizō from his abstraction.

"You read minds?"

"You were not bothering to hide your thoughts. And you are closer to understanding than you were before."

"You know Rokurō well."

"I should," the healer smiled. "He's my brother." He scooped the paste of herbs he'd prepared into a small dish and added oil, stirring gently. "He may have served the lord of Ueda since he was twelve, but life at Sanada's court hasn't changed him so much that I've lost my ability to see right through him. Poison aside, I think he's being dramatic. Sanada Yukimura's influence, no doubt."

Saizō wanted to swear at the smirk and the indulgent chuckle that greeted his astonishment, but in the end he just gave up. Sanada had known who he was sending them to find, but the bastard entertained himself by playing games with everyone. Saizō knew that. He just hadn't accepted it yet.

The healer added a wick to the small dish of oil and herbs and set it carefully beside the sleeping Kamanosuke. "The scent will help him sleep and ease his mind," he explained. "This one is sorely troubled. And yet, he finds it in his heart to take on nature itself."

"He has the soul of a brave," Saizō said, very softly.

"He does. But his mind is in pain." The man sat back on his heels and regarded Saizō gravely. "I can sense that you have horrors in your past," he said, "but you balance them out by remembering good times. Watching this young man, I'd say that few good things have come his way. Even a simple touch startles him so much..."

Saizō knew that to be true. He remembered the redhead's astonished face when he found that Saizō had washed and mended his coat while he slept. He recalled the shivers of pleasure that had rocked the slim frame when Saizō's fingers had traced his scars. He knew the healer spoke true, but...

"Can you help him?"

The healer shook his head and smiled. "No, but you can. He needs good memories to balance the bad ones, other things than blood and war and pain. Give him those and he will heal."

xxX oOo Xxx

Reeds rustled overhead. Stone ground on stone, the soft scrapes cutting across the sounds of quiet voices close by. Yuri Kamanosuke, curled in a nest made of layers of blankets, felt as if he'd been sick for a year.

But that wasn't right.

The fever had never touched him.

His mind conjured the image of a beautiful green-eyed woman with delicate features and a skin like fine porcelain. Her inky hair hung to her waist and she loved to sing while she worked. No, the fever hadn't taken him. It had taken...

Kamanosuke's body rocked as if he'd been slapped. He ground his teeth, then forced his eyes open and stared at his surroundings, determined not to remember, not to let his mind go down that route.

Scents drifted in the air around him – fresh, spicy and green – and slowly, his mind made sense of the things his eyes saw: the reed roof, the herbs, the large stone mortar, tiny bags of twigs and other unrecognisable items tied in bunches... This was the healer's cottage. Even though he had no idea why he was here. Or how.

The quiet voices came from the doorway of the cottage, where the healer sat crushing herbs in a mortar. The stone pestle, grating against the mortar's base, was producing the soft scraping sounds that had woken Kamanosuke. The events of the previous day came back to him, then. He remembered his battle with the swamp, tearing it out and digging it up – destroying any part of it that lived and breathed, until it had lost the power to kill those who could not defend themselves.

He remembered little after that. The unfamiliar shirt and loose trousers he wore suggested he'd bathed at some point during the evening. His mind also teased him with vague memories of soft, flickering light, sweet scents and intriguing tales of Rokurō's soul.

Kamanosuke had liked the quiet brunet on sight. Even believing – deep in his heart – that the man was more dangerous than all of the other braves combined, he liked Unno Rokurō. And out of the dreamscape his mind had woven while he slept from soul-deep exhaustion, soft sounds and half-remembered phrases, Kamanosuke suddenly understood why. He even had an idea how to help ease the brunet's mind.

A small noise, like a snort, made him flinch and turn. Saizō lay on his back on the second futon in the room. He was without his tunic, on top of the blankets, and his skin gleamed softly in the pale light streaming in from the doorway. He was also deeply asleep.

Warmth tightened Kamanosuke's chest at the sight. It wasn't embarrassment this time, and Kamanosuke didn't turn away. Instead, he paid attention to every detail he could see: sleep-mussed dark hair, faint purple bruises around Saizō's closed eyes, the fan of long dark lashes against Saizō's cheekbones, a faint glimmer of sweat on his upper lip and just the hint of a shadow darkening his jaw.

Saizō had seen him fight the swamp, had lent his strength and skill to help destroy it without Kamanosuke having to ask. He'd held his blade straight out and called the light, but now the taut muscles in Saizō's shoulders were softened by sleep. He slept with his head thrown back, and his collarbones drew tantalising shadows at the base of his throat.

Thin scars showed pink on Saizō's gleaming skin: one on his bicep, where he'd not been fast enough to avoid Kamanosuke's air blade, another just over a dusky nipple, maybe a cut from a reed. Both were healing and Kamanosuke was gathering breath and courage to continue his detailed perusal, when Saizō opened his eyes.

Scant three feet separated them, and people were talking about herbs and healing just outside the door, but in the way their eyes met and held, and in the way the silence around them wavered and shifted and solidified, they could have been thousands of miles away.