Somewhere

It’s night.

I go where I can go. I start first in a place that’s becoming familliar. The library.

She’s here.

“I gave the Battosai’s boy things you may need,” she says. “Did he get it to you?”

“Yes, and thank you,” I say. “I don’t know if it helped or hurt, but…” I sigh. “Thank you, anyway. How did you know what to bring?”

She smiles a little. “I’ve kept a man with end-stage tuberculosis alive for how long? So I learned, when I could. No formal training like you were able to add to your library, but… enough.” She looks up, her face clouding over. “But I think it’s almost over.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, quietly.

“You know, I told you, long ago, that he had died. During the Ito years. He didn’t, of course, as you now know.” She shakes her head. “I just wanted to keep you away. Thought that if things didn’t work out with Saitou-san, you’d come running back to him.”

I’m quiet. I’ve suspected that, since I saw Souji again with my own eyes. That the lie she told had a specific purpose. Funny… Yagi Hide, with all of the capitains at her feet. That was one shadow of the Hokkaido story that wasn’t in that sunny vision – that Nagakura-san didn’t come by much because his wife thought I would be after that old man too…

She speaks. “You were the woman who was finally putting an old love behind her. learning who you were after years of holding a candle. I was the woman who couldn’t move on, because he never let me.” She fidgets with the sleeves of her kimono. “I think he’s ready. I hope… he’s waiting to say goodbye, this time. But he shouldn’t die alone, in some jail…”

“I don’t know what will happen, with Hajime…” I don’t know what to say. I suspect that the foxglove overdose was to take out more than his -physical- heart. I look over at her. “I just don’t know. If Tokio comes, with her claims and rights… she could take my house! My family!” I start to sob. “What if he loses his memory again?”

Her voice is stern. “Crying won’t help you now, stop that, sister.” I can almost -hear- her roll her eyes as I struggle for my composure and wipe mine. “Going on and on about Tokio-san… tedious! She’s not the problem! It’s much, much closer!. But instead you look at her instead of him. You look at history, or “RK canon” instead of the man you have.” She waves her hands around. “-That- is history. But this….” she motions to the shelves along one part, and then the endless alcoves. “That is -inspired-. Look to that, the place you have there, and not to where it came from.”

She looks at me. “Because… if you can’t then you truly will be a weed clinging to a bamboo stalk. You made a -garden- – who else can say that? All these years, adventures? Get him back into it.” She looks down. “Make him want to be there, and not feel that he -must-.”

She grimaces, suddenly, as if she feels something. “Souji… he doesn’t have long. I think he’s been moved to the same place where Saitou-san physically rests.” She looks down, and despite her words to me about tears, one escapes down her cheek. “

We embrace, bound by the grief of the unknown surrounding the men we each love…

She leads me back to a door, hidden at the very end of the “SO” alcove. It’s so small it’s as if for a child. “That’s the path. It may not get you -in-… but there’s the path.”

I look behind and she’s gone. I kneel down, and almost crawl through the door. Every door in our world is closing. This must be the only one left.

---

I’m in Ito… listening as I speak to him. When he lost his memories, when he believed that I carried a torch not just for Souji, but for Makoto’s father. Another time he broke himself because of what I did to him…

I see myself, younger… and he smokes, in the dark, on the engawa.

“Because Souji always… even though he knew what was going to happen to him, he still -lived-. He played with the children, ate all the sweets he could get his hands on, fell in love and stayed by the side of his friends as long as he could to fight for something he believed in. He would have given into pity and apathy but he didn’t. Maybe that’s why he liked the night sky so much.”

And it’s like something suddenly shut off in his eyes, his shoulders slumping just a fraction. Because I sounded like a woman still in love with a man from the past. A remarkable man, who shouldn’t be forgotten.

But he was our scant connection, in those days when I was trying to find him again. And yes, I did admire those things about Souji – had I not tried to make him my lover, he would have been a perfectly fine friend had that been my expectations. At that time, thought… I still bought into my own story.

But is that explaination my excuse? My re-telling to myself to make it all better? And for who? Me? Him?

The path tugs me forward. To London…

Where I answer a question about Sir Charles. Did we try to have children. Yes, I said. Yes, I said, to the man I had promised to be my “first” in this world. Yes, I said, thinking that I fulfilled his request to “know love”. Yes, I said, having listened to the words and not the meaning behind them. Yes, I said, and again, I didn’t notice as the lights went out in his eyes, again, the shoulders shifting…

But the years passed and I forgot that part, remade the history into something else, a something else I embraced as the truth, when I did think of that episode. Frustrated that he always remained out of my grasp in London, at a time when I needed him so in Ito. Wanting what I wanted like a spoiled child, and missing… always missing how he felt. How my carelessness…

Breaks him. And yet he stays, comes back.

There’s something else I recognize. Something so recent I don’t need to revisit it. Hearing those words… it’s deeper than hurt. And in that version of Hajime, again, I see despite his casual, practical words, the pain.

Even the other night… he -kissed- me, gave me songs. His love isn’t giving me up. His love is enduring.

The landscape grows bleaker as I walk and walk and pass shadows of Kyoto, Tokyo, Glass and Steel, London, all of those places where we snuck away to -be-. Words drift by, both spoken and written, a calcaphony… I’m -tired- and I come to a river. I realize then… I’ve been in this place, before.

A song plays….

I walked across an empty land

I knew the pathway like the back of my hand

I felt the earth beneath my feet

Sat by the river and it made me complete

Oh simple thing, where have you gone?

I’m getting old and I need something to rely on

So tell me when you’re gonna let me in

I’m getting tired and I need somewhere to begin

I came across a fallen tree

I felt the branches of it looking at me

Is this the place we used to love?

Is this the place that I’ve been dreaming of?

Oh simple thing, where have you gone?

I’m getting old and I need something to rely on

So tell me when you’re gonna let me in

I’m getting tired and I need somewhere to begin

And if you have a minute, why don’t we go

Talk about it somewhere only we know?

This could be the end of everything

So why don’t we go somewhere only we know?

Somewhere only we know

Oh simple thing, where have you gone?

I’m getting old and I need something to rely on

So tell me when you’re gonna let me in

I’m getting tired and I need somewhere to begin

And if you have a minute, why don’t we go

Talk about it somewhere only we know?

This could be the end of everything

So why don’t we go?

So why don’t we go?

Oh, this could be the end of everything

So why don’t we go somewhere only we know?

Somewhere only we know

Somewhere only we know

And then I see it. It’s an old cabin, by the river. Both have had better days… the sky is leaden grey, the sort where it’s hard to tell if it just rained or if it’s just about to. Trees are bare, the ground is rough and torn, the river is sluggish and muddy. The cabin… leans to one side and as I get closer, it’s as if I can see through it, it’s only just a thing of shadows.

I see two men. I blink… two of -him-. Both sitting, one smoking, one…. god, I can almost see -through- the one sitting, as if he’s just smoke himself.

I stumble through to the door, feeling like at each step the cabin, or who is in it, is pushing me back… and as if the ground itself is trying to suck me up, I’m up to my ankles in something like mud, and every step I sink a little further. I struggle without my cane to get through it, my hands scraping on the porch floor, the rail… even breathing here is hard, like there’s fire in the air.

“Hajime!” I call out. “Hajime!” But a sudden, cold wind rips the words from my lips and sends it behind me, into the wasteland. I pull myself onto the porch, the feeling of resistance from the door making me almost feel -ill-… but I take a deep breath and -push- – for a place that looks like shadows and smoke, the door seems to be made of steel.

But I push.

(OOC – Hide is at Saitou’s private space, trying to enter)