thenearshore | Beware, beware, beware of the naked man [Open, backdated]

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Beware, beware, beware of the naked man [Open, backdated]

Who: Hijikata and You! (Plus Hijikata and Souji]
When: Backdated to November 10th, before the disappearances
Where: Just off a path on the Far Shore, evening
What: Some asshole ~~shinki~~ steals Hijikata's clothes for giggles.
Warnings: Comedic nudity, extensive profane kvetching. Things might or might not get a little PG-13 in the closed thread with Souji, depending on how that goes.

[I. Far Shore, evening]

Fuck.

[This started as such a nice evening.]

[Ayakashi-hunting was good, and his usual training went well afterwards. A late-night stroll took him slightly off the path, where he made an interesting find - a natural hot spring, pleasant to the touch and a safe temperature for bathing. The cool weather and his sore muscles made a persuasive case for taking a little dip to test it out, and he spent a pleasant hour there, stargazing through the steam of the spring and the gaps in the autumn leaves, letting the heat take some of the ever-present tension out of him. It's getting pretty late, though, and he ought to get back to his temple for the evening, so he stretches out a bit, looks back the way he came...]

[And realizes, to his immediate displeasure, that his clothes aren't where he left them.]

[For just an instant, he glimpses a little curly tail disappearing into the woods, hears the sound of piglet grunts and muffled giggling, but by the time he gives chase, it's too late. He finds himself back at the edge of the path he abandoned an hour ago, with another horrible realization on his hands:]

[Someone's coming, and it doesn't sound like Souji.]

[That someone might get the sense, as Hijikata hides behind a tree and tries to figure out what to do now, that someone is lingering nearby. Or perhaps, if they listen, they might just hear someone muttering indignantly:]

Maybe I should just make a run for it...

[II. Later, closed to Souji]

[It takes nearly until dawn to make it back to his temple, and when he does, he finds the culprit waiting for him, his yukata folded neatly beside him.]

[(He doesn't even feel guilty, the little bastard. Not a hint of a sting.)]

[Still stark naked, Hijikata stalks across the main courtyard towards his shinki, his voice dropping to a low, threatening growl.]

Souji...

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[It's been a while, certainly, since they actually talked face to face. Hijikata makes a habit of keeping a distant eye out, but it sort of felt like, with the Secret to protect, it was safer for him to avoid getting too close...]

[Those new scars are giving him more than a few second thoughts about that approach, though. The chill of the November air has let him catch his breath a bit from his initial soak, so he moves to the water's edge, sitting down and dangling his legs in the water to begin with. Even a big man like him can get a bit overheated if he's not careful.]

Bumps, huh?

[The demand to be told more is pretty loud, for being unspoken.]

Bumps.

[Her lips actually twitch a little in genuine amusement. Ayumu's always been a perceptive woman and it seems that amnesia hasn't interfered too much with her ability to read the undertones. She waits until she's settled comfortably into the hot spring before answering though.]

I haven't made the best decisions lately. I left Hakkai-san some time ago and was reassigned to a new goddess, a rather nice lady named Sanzang. Things are going smoothly with her, however.

[At least, to Ayumu's knowledge anyway. Sanzang hasn't expressed much in the way of displeasure in her service to her anyway.]

After that, I started working at this bar on the Near Shore. It's run by a friend but in a rough neighborhood. So he's been trying to clean things up. To make a long story short, I wound up getting involved.

[As he sinks a bit further into the water, Hijikata reflects briefly on the conversations he's had with Hakkai revolving around her. He trusts Hakkai not to have told her, not least because it might raise questions about what kind of stake Hijikata has in his connection to her, but it's a little odd sitting here pretending like this is all new information.]

[Still, it's hard to bring himself to feign total uninvolvement.]

Someone from the Near Shore did that to you?

[You wouldn't even need to know him that well to pick up the clear undertone of menace there.]

[Ayumu blinks a bit, this time startled by the sudden surge of protectiveness she detects underlying Hijikata's tone. But without knowing their history, she simply chalks it up to him being really dedicated to his work.]

Oh, you mean, my scars? The new ones? Yes, yes, they did but they're all dead now. Or most of them, I think. After I was wounded, I turned the matter over to Hakkai. We don't work together anymore but we're still friends and he'd said I could come to him for help if I needed it.

[She stares at him, a little wide-eyed, but doesn't back away.]

You'd have to ask him for more information. I've been keeping my distance from it all lately since I've been recovering.

[Does it say bad things about him that he's sort of relieved to know someone with a slight history of mass murder handled the situation? Probably, but oh well. He actually seems to relax a bit when she mentions Hakkai, and nods a little by the end.]

Probably for the best, staying out of trouble for a while.

I think It's best if I avoid combat. The men that attacked outnumbered me. I froze.

[There's a hint of shame to her tone. Even with her past being a mystery, she's too experienced at fighting and killing to panic the way she had. That's she'd reacted so poorly bothers her, just as how she'd reacted to sleeping with someone recently. Her reactions make no sense, not with the set of facts she has.

There's just no good reason for how emotional she's been lately.

Ayumu sinks deeper into the spring. She's still blighted but it's well hidden beneath the mass of hair covering the back of her neck.]

[Knowing the men are probably dead already, it comes as a bit of a shock to Hijikata how hot the flame of vengeance burns in him at Ayumu’s words. Usually, he’s able to write off his more violently protective side as a type of pragmatism, a determination to get things done and fix the situation, but he finds himself sticking on the thought that he almost hopes one or two got away so he can hunt them down and kill them with his own hands.]

[Ayumu’s too perceptive for him to allow himself to lose control of his emotions around, though, even internally. Not because he doesn’t trust her — he does, more than nearly anyone — but because he cares too much about her to want to trouble her with his own mental weakness. He makes an effort to shut down the thoughts of revenge, and what rises to the forefront instead is something softer.]

Anyone can freeze. It’s important to recognize your limits and have people to watch your back if it happens.

[At first, he isn’t going to talk about the reasons he can relate — they’re still so painful that the idea of leaving them vulnerable drops the bottom out of his stomach a bit. But looking at Ayumu, he finds the words slipping out.]

...When those gods disappeared a month or two ago, I had to stay away from the hospital that was affected. Because I know... the sound of coughing can make me freeze.

[Can make him, at any moment, into a terrified and lonely little boy, grappling with the immensity of knowing no amount of love, nothing he could do, would save his loved ones.]

Did you know someone who was ill? Before you came here?

[It's a little strange how comfortable she feels talking to him or how she's compelled to actually listen to him and give his words proper weight. Ayumu's become rather dismissive and withdrawn in the time she's been here, hardening her heart toward many save a select few. She doesn't trust or open up to very many people and more often than not, her interest in others is of a more calculated kind based on their potential usefulness.

It's a more genuine, softer sort of caring than the kind she has to force just to get through the day.]

I wish I'd had solid backup that day. Tsuzuki-kun tried but he's not much of a fighter. And the friend who is wasn't there.

[Even so, Ayumu doesn't bear either Gojyo or Tsuzuki ill will. It'd been an accident of circumstance more than anything else. And she'd hardly been undeserving. She'd tortured and killed the attacking party's comrades and even drawn pleasure from their suffering, enjoyed the power she'd had over life or death.

The scars Masuya's men had left on her run so much deeper than the boundaries of flesh.]

But they're civilians. I don't think they understand the nature of war.

[Not many of her friends seem to. She's grateful for the ones she has but it's still a bit saddening and lonely at times.]

I did. More than one "someone."

[Hijikata makes a soft sound of affirmation as he listens, sinking down a bit further into the water and turning his eyes up towards the sky to watch the steam rise. Sometimes it's easier to talk when you don't have to meet anyone's eyes, after all.]

There are things people like that can't understand. It's probably a good thing they can't, but...

[But it's hard, the distance it puts between you and someone "normal." The uncomfortable awareness of being less clean than other people.]

[He sighs, wishing his smokes hadn't disappeared along with his clothing.]

[It's an uncomfortable awareness Ayumu's all too familiar with, even now. She sighs.]

They seem so naive sometimes. Irresponsible and reckless but I suppose it's a good thing to be carefree.

[She certainly wishes she could put all her worries and thoughts aside more easily than she does. It'd make her life much easier. But at least, she's learning.]

I wonder if they realize what a luxury that can be. Or if they simply take their lives for granted.

Most of them probably do take the way their lives are for granted. It's hard not to, if they don't have something else to compare to.

[Lacking his pipe to fidget with, he trails his fingertips along the water's surface, instead.]

It's not easy to watch them that way. But I've always thought that there's something about people like that...

If I can't ever have that 'something' myself, at least I can protect it in the people who do have it.

[He's always known he could do great things, but the other side of that coin is that he's always known he could do something terrible, too. He wonders if he ever had any innocence in him at all -- but protecting Kondou's idealism, Souji's smile, Tetsunosuke's gentleness, all the civilian lives he has to believe his work saved, that gave his own sharp edges purpose. The soft things in his world have always been what made everything worth it, even when he's never been able to feel like he really belongs anywhere near them.]

I think I understand what you mean. Wanting to protect what you can't have yourself.

[How often does she look at the younger, more innocent residents of the Far Shore and want to protect them from how ugly the world can be? Guide them onto different path, an easier and happier one than the one that feels most familiar to her? Her memories might be gone but Ayumu's smart enough to figure out that whatever life she'd once lived had been one full of loneliness, violence, and heartbreak. She'd always been a perceptive and deductive person, capable of piecing together observable facts to paint a larger picture.

Unfortunately, the same traits that made her such an asset as a shinobi are fatal flaws for a shinki to possess.]

Though sometimes in my weaker, darker moments, I have the impulse to take it all away from them. It's selfish but it's lonely.

[And she often feels so empty and hollow which she supposes is the best thing for her goddess. Giving in to jealousy will only hurt Sanzang along with those undeserving of her wrath.]

But it's nothing anyone has to worry about because I never act on it.

[Instead, she turns it inward and represses it. What else can a shinki do?]

[Something about this whole conversation gets him thinking about when he was younger -- having so little, wanting so much, lashing out blindly and desperately at the world.]

[That person is still in him somewhere. Some of it has fallen away as he gained power and adult confidence, but it's not as if the need for affirmation or the urge to grasp at power and strike out at authority just disappeared.]

You aren't alone.

[He pauses, trying to formulate his next words the way he wants them to be.]

Everyone else might not see the battles we have to fight against ourselves. But at the very least, there are others who have to fight those same battles and understand.

That's good to know.

[And it is. It's oddly comforting to be able to talk to people who understand. With all the civilians and people from worlds that Ayumu simply doesn't comprehend, she often feels isolated here. And while she values the friendships and family she's found here, she's not the same as them. Ayumu comes from a place very different from most, she thinks, even if she lacks context.

After a long moment of silence, Ayumu speaks up again. Her tone's measured and calm.]

I tortured men on the Near Shore. They were criminals, violent men who exploited children to increase their ranks and terrorized the weak. They'd sent a message to my workplace by murdering a helpless dog. So we decided to send a message back in turn.

[This next part is difficult for her admit but she's held onto it for so long.]

I enjoyed it. Breaking their bones, drawing out their suffering, holding their lives in my hands, and hearing them plea for mercy. I didn't give it to them.

[Had Ayumu always taken sadistic pleasure in killing disgusting men like that? As a shinki, she has no way of knowing that it's a new trait only acquired after her ordeal at the hands of Masuya's men. In life, she'd had few, if any, reservations about killing when ordered to do so or a change in circumstances deemed it necessary. But she'd always been professional and efficient, devoid of personal feelings.

This behavior is something completely new from her.]

That's quite the confession.

[He's always known that Ayumu has a lot more to her than initially meets the eye, of course, and that she's been capable from the beginning of whatever was necessary for her work. It's somehow still hard to reconcile the image she always projected of herself back at the compound and the sheer harshness of her words now.]

[He wonders if there was something about what the men had done that reminded her, on some buried level, of what she was put through when she died. The mere thought of it still turns his stomach, somehow even more than it did at the time. It renders him almost dizzy with a sudden rush of vivid memories -- the grotesque details of the reports on her body's discovery, the awful pallor of her skin where the funeral cloth didn't cover it completely, the slow horror of always being aware of exactly how late she was to report in, the cold fury of knowing they'd taken their damned time about it, knowing they'd had their fucking fun with her, knowing they were going to pay for it if it was the last thing he did--]

[Hijikata takes a very deliberate breath, dragging himself back into the present and anchoring himself firmly to it. He takes a moment to calm any wildness that might have crept briefly into his eyes, to strip his voice of the sharpness that still comes to it too easily and won't help Ayumu now.]

[It still makes him this angry just to think about it. Is it any wonder Ayumu is short on mercy for men like that?]

I've... let my feelings affect my work like that before. There was a man we captured when I was human, someone who'd been in charge of the men who captured one of my agents. To tell you the truth, as much as I wanted to get my hands on the allies he was protecting, having him talk was just a convenient side effect of breaking him.

[There was definitely a part of him that just wanted to make the son of a bitch suffer.]

[It had felt like redemption for failing Ayumu, maybe.]

[They had though Ayumu herself doesn't understand why the yakuza's swagger, callous sneers, and utter lack of remorse for the lives of those weaker than them had filled her with such rage. Buddy might have been a dog but he'd still been a defenseless innocent creature who hadn't deserved to die. Seeing her friends' grief over his loss had only spurred her on even further down the path of vengeance.

But not having any context for why they'd sparked such a violent, intense reaction from her and had only led her to assume that cruelty and sadistic wrath were simply who she is. Once the furious haze had passed on and she'd realized what she'd done, the shame had begun to set in on a subconscious level.

Hearing this from Hachiman lightens her spirit a bit somehow. Ayumu might not know him well but he strikes her as a good man, better than many. If someone like him could have a similiar response, maybe she is being a little too hard on herself about it.]

That's comforting to hear. That's it's happened to someone else. It must have been very painful. It's hard to see people you care about get hurt.

[And there's no doubt in her mind that Hachiman's the kind of man who actually cares about his subordinates very much.]

[Hijikata's not even really sure what he's done with the last decade of his life besides see people he cares about get hurt, some days.]

[He measures his words, though not at too great a length this time.]

It wasn't something I'd want to relive. Turning the pain to anger helped make it more bearable, but it was still something I had to live with, in the end.

[Ayumu's quiet a long moment, just relaxing into the hot water as she ponders. What she'd done to those men is something she'll have to live with, too.

It feels like she has a lot of things to live with somehow. There's been a heavy invisible weight on her shoulders ever since her arrival and it's been a very heavy weight to bear. She's often found herself wondering about it, why she struggles so much to just carry herself much less support those she's meant to support.]

It's hard - carrying the weight of things we've done. Or even just think we may have done. It's a lot for a person to bear.

[A brief pause before continuing with a self-deprecating laugh.]

Maybe that's why I lost my temper with Hakkai when he died. I was just so angry with him putting himself at risk so much and I was furious when he came back and didn't even know who I was. Maybe I was hurting...

[Spoken like a true alien trying to understand human emotion, Ayumu.]

[He's going to have to get more out of her about Hakkai's death -- that's not something that he's heard a whole lot about, and he never likes feeling like he's in the dark about important goings-on. But that's a matter for later -- what's important right now is this moment, in the shared warmth of the spring and of their strange, judgement-free understanding.]

Doesn't seem like that odd a reaction to me. It can get pretty infuriating when it feels like someone's in too much of a hurry to die and leave you behind.

[It's a comfort, just being able to speak freely about such things without fear or anxiety. So often, she's plagued with the feeling that it's best if she just keeps her mouth shut.]

I just figured he wanted to get away from me. We didn't see eye to eye on a number of things. I suppose I got the sense he was uncomfortable with me around, too. It's hard to work for someone who doesn't trust you and be happy in that arrangement.

[Maybe Hakkai had been trying to protect her but it's hard not to read it as him not trusting her competence, judgment, or capabilities to some degree, at least, as well.]

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