Archive of Our Own

Not yet two days had passed since Ashina started burning.

They could have traveled faster, but after passing through the silver grass field, Lord Kuro had insisted they wait for Lady Emma. If he was honest with himself, Wolf was relieved by the order; Emma had done too much for them to leave her behind in good conscience. He breathed a sigh of relief when he spotted her approaching late the next morning. From a distance, her face looked as studiously blank as ever, but as she drew near, Wolf saw the carefully restrained grief in her gaze. With a frown, Lord Kuro inquired about what she had observed.

“The Ministry hadn’t reached the castle proper yet but...Ashina is burning. With no one left to defend it, there is nothing it can do but fall.”

Lord Kuro’s brow furrowed and he averted his gaze. Wolf was taken aback by how upset he looked. He waited several moments, but when Lord Kuro did nothing else, he said, “We should leave now. Before the conflict reaches us.”

Lord Kuro hesitated, then nodded and turned his gaze to Wolf, filled with sorrow and determination. “Right.”

So the trio continued onward, war in their wake. Even though they were leaving Ashina castle and its surrounding grounds, they would be traveling through Ashina lands for a while longer. Wolf wouldn’t feel safe until they’d left the country behind.

They reached a village in the late afternoon. The war hadn’t touched this place yet. From what Wolf had seen, the Ministry had approached Ashina from the south. Those lands had likely already been razed. Yet, everyone was clearly well aware of the danger. All around, they could see villagers preparing their belongings to leave. Metal banged, people shouted, children cried, and animals brayed in the chaos; it grated against Wolf’s sensitive hearing. The villagers were less wary than Wolf expected them to be. Perhaps it wasn’t so unusual to see a group of people coming from the direction of a battle; other fugitives might have already passed through. It helped that he, Emma, and Lord Kuro could easily pass as a family, he supposed.

Normally, Wolf could and would pass through this village without pause, but he had Lord Kuro’s well being to consider. He was already tired from the day of travel and the lack of sleep the night before; it would be best for them to stay the night. Still, he hesitated until Emma said, “They hadn’t taken all of the castle yet, and after they do, I’m certain the Ministry will regroup before doing anything else. I’m not worried about an attack tonight.”

The answer eased his paranoia and Wolf found them a place to sleep for the night and bought a small meal. He noticed Kuro’s eyes linger on the villagers as they lamented the loss of their homes and debated on what to bring with them. Emma put a tender hand on his shoulder, but Kuro brushed her off, retreating to his futon for the night. Wolf only lightly dozed, wanting to know the moment something went wrong.

Nothing did.

Wolf managed to get enough food to make breakfast for Kuro in the morning. Most of the villagers were unwilling to part with their food at such an uncertain time, but he found some that wanted his coin more. As they prepared to leave, it seemed many of the villagers were doing the same. Grim faced mothers, children with tear stained cheeks, righteously angered young men, all were readying to abandon their homes.

Kuro had the same look on his face that he had been wearing for the past day. Pained and longing. “I wish we could help these people,” he murmured.

Wolf frowned slightly. He shared the sentiment, but there was nothing they could do. He placed his hand on Lord Kuro’s back. “It’s the reality of war. It’s out of our hands.”

Kuro opened his mouth as if he wanted to say something, but before he could, a man’s raised voice cut him off. “This is pointless! We don’t have to leave our home!”

They turned to see a man arguing expressively with a woman, his wife, perhaps. The man was wearing battered clothes, stained with soot and ash and had a bandage wrapped around his left wrist. Wolf hadn’t noticed him the day before. A pack weighed heavily on the woman’s shoulders and her expression was strained as she tried to reason with him. “Please, it’s not worth the risk. We can find a home somewhere else. If we stay, the Ministry will-”

“I’m telling you! The Ministry will never get the chance to attack us here! I just came from the castle, I saw the battle with my own eyes! I know the Ministry will fail, I know it as well as I know the sun will rise tomorrow. I’ll tell you what I saw!” The argument was starting to draw a crowd. “Ashina’s general has returned to her, to avenge what the Interior Ministry has done to them both!”

Not yet two days had passed since Ashina started burning.

Wolf jolted and shared a sharp glance with Lady Emma. He saw his own disbelief reflected on her face; they had not seen hide nor hair of Genichiro since he fled Ashina castle after Wolf’s victory. If he really had survived, it was hard to believe that he would stop pursuing Lord Kuro and the power of the Divine Heritage.

“There’s nothing those bastards could do to cut down that monstrosity,” the man continued. His declaration had produced a great deal of squabbling from the other villagers that had come to listen. “Can we really rely on their chances of victory?” cried one. “The Ashina have always protected us!” bellowed another.

The woman grabbed the man’s uninjured wrist, bringing his attention back to her. “I’m just not sure this is wise.” The man looked ready to restart his tirade, but before he could, she said, voice edged with desperation, “Please, can we continue this inside?” The man deflated some, then nodded, and the pair entered the nearest house.

At this, a few of the villagers dispersed, but many gathered in small huddles, gossiping about what they had heard and reevaluating the merits of leaving. They did the same. When Lord Kuro tugged on the edge of his sleeve and looked up at him with eyes burning with questions, Wolf led the three of them to a quiet corner of the village.

“If Genichiro really has returned to defend Ashina, do you think he would succeed?” Kuro asked Emma swiftly.

Emma’s brow furrowed deeply. She considered the question for several moments before answering slowly. “I don’t know. He is certainly the one best equipped to do it, but that may not be enough. From what I observed, the Rejuvenating Sediment is an...inelegant thing. It seemed to sustain him, but not preserve him, the way the Dragon’s blood does to Wolf.” Kuro averted his gaze. “Even if he could survive whatever battles the Ministry puts him through, he could be injured to the point that he could no longer fight.” Emma sighed deeply. “Genichiro will never yield, but Ashina’s fate is still far from certain.”

They were interrupted by a squalling baby. From between the gaps in the houses, they saw the mother pass by, carrying him in her arms, leading a wobbly legged, heavily burdened horse behind her. As the crying receded, Kuro murmured, “I wonder if he was right, that the power of the Dragon’s Heritage could save Ashina.”

Wolf looked at Kuro with concern. He once again felt a pang of guilt for not rescuing his master in Ashina castle sooner. “You owed Lord Genichiro nothing. You made the right choice when you refused to take him into the Immortal Oath.”

“I know that,” Lord Kuro said firmly. “Yet, still...” he chewed his lip, clearly deep in thought for several minutes. Wolf exchanged a look with Emma, but neither of them interrupted. When Kuro looked back up at him, his eyes were full of fiery resolve.

“Loyal Wolf.”

Genichiro woke to hell.

The whole world pulsed around him in painful, unintelligible patterns. His body screamed in agony and when he tried to twitch his fingers, the sensation was like sending his lightning ripping down the limb. A dazed fog of pain clouded his mind. He couldn’t think of anything but breathing; in and out, in and out, stay alive, stay alive. He couldn’t say how long he laid there. For a long time he tried and failed to piece together his last memories, to understand where he was and what he was doing there, but every time he made progress, the pain surged up again and washed it away. So, instead, he tried to open his eyes.

He tried to scream.

He opened his eyes to such intense vertigo, he felt like he was coming apart at the seams. Senseless patterns of red exploded across the black field of his vision. His hands scrabbled uselessly at the ground beneath them. He squeezed his eyes shut again, but it didn’t make a difference. The whole world was painted in shades of black and red; it was all Genichiro knew. He arched his back and tried to scream again. In a detached sort of way, he heard a horrible, inhuman sound in response. He didn’t know what it was. It couldn’t have been him.

He collapsed back into the ground, whole body trembling in shock. He returned his focus to his breathing; it was all he was capable of. Stay alive. The rest comes after.

After what felt like an eternity, the eddies of black and red calmed into something bearable. His eyes stayed shut. Slowly, painfully, like trying to set a freshly broken bone, Genichiro pieced his mind back together and tried to make sense of his situation.

He had left Ashina castle to find the Black Mortal Blade, he recalled. He had failed, he also recalled. He had hoped to use it to force the Divine Heir’s hand, or, barring that, use the power of the Open Gate to give Ashina the savior he had failed to be. He’d ranged south, hunting down the place where the Mortal Blade was enshrined like a starving beast, but he’d been waylaid. A woman came dashing up to him from further down the road, tears streaming down her cheeks, blood streaming down her side. Sobbing, she begged him to confront the soldiers burning down her village, killing her neighbors. The Interior Ministry was already bearing down on Ashina and they had gotten further than Genichiro had imagined. He went to put them down.

The whole village was ablaze. The Ministry soldiers had fire spewing cannons. Already he could see parts of corpses half concealed in the rubble of their collapsed homes. Ashina’s people. Hatred boiled in his blood. There were at least a dozen foot soldiers, but the real threat was the giant. One of the Red Guard, the man was even taller and Genichiro, and far wider. He drank heavily from a gourd and laughed as he set fire to more of the village.

He threw himself at them with rage and lightning.

The foot soldiers fell to Tomoe’s power. The way their skin charred just like the people they had killed satisfied him. He’d committed his focus to the Red Guard when an enemy he’d missed lashed out at him. One of the Ministry’s wretched shinobis, he saw, a Lone Shadow. The bastard was fast, and he felt his strength flagging as he tried to fend them both off. The Shadow finally managed to sink his poison into his veins. He dropped to one knee with a gasp and the last thing he remembered, as the last of the sun dipped below the horizon...was the giant’s sword cutting clean through him.

Dread settled deep in his stomach, making its home there. The world still pulsed in a way that he couldn’t explain. His eyes were still closed but he could see...no, not see, sense, everything around him. He could feel the fire licking away at what once had formed homes, he could feel the corpses strewn around him- those of the Ashina people felt different from the Ministry soldiers- and he could feel a pull, undeniable, to something several paces away from where he laid.

He could feel all of it in a wash of black and red.

He drew in a deep breath and even though it sounded muffled, as if underwater, he could hear the way it wheezed. He shifted his arms to his sides and started to leverage himself up. There was nothing else for it. As long as he was still breathing, he had to stand up.

It didn’t take long, he thought, before Genichiro was on his feet once again. It helped clear the fog in his mind, at least a little. Before anything else, he staggered over to that presence a few yards away, dragging him forward with inescapable force.

He knelt down and picked up his head.

He felt it shift beneath his fingers and after a few moments, he realized his brow had creased in response to his instinctual scowl. It still answered to his will, it seemed. Genichiro couldn’t say what he felt about that. Still, that force kept him from abandoning it; instead, he fumbled with the swath of red cloth at his waist and yanked it out of place. He tucked his head inside and after clumsily ripping rope off of the equipment of the dead soldiers, he was able to secure it tightly around his waist.

Once done, he turned north. It would be a long, dangerous trek, but he felt drawn, guided, and he knew he would not falter. It was the same force that had drawn him before; Ashina was just as much a part of him as his own head.

He knew the Mortal Blade still laid behind him, but it had no pull. It felt worthless now. The Mortal Blade, the Divine Heir, the Dragon’s Heritage, he could not feel them in this agony that had replaced his vision. He knew he would never find his way to them. But Ashina...

Being so thoroughly broken had shifted his priorities. Even though everything else had gone dark, one thing, at least, was made clear. He could no longer indulge in seeking more power to defend Ashina. He had to defend Ashina with the power he had.

They were both out of time. Ashina...and Genichiro.

So he started forward, wading through this foreign world of black and red, following that inexorable pull, driven by a single goal. Ashina. Home.

He did not falter.

Ash stung at his throat and Wolf raised the edge of his scarf to cover his mouth and nose.

Wolf snaked his way through the Ashina outskirts, growing ever closer to the smoke rising near the castle. He stayed to the rooftops as much as possible, but it seemed that the fighting had moved on from here. The only people he spotted in the streets were the dead. Still, he looked, Kuro’s words echoing in his mind.

“This war will hurt too many innocent people. Even those who are never touched by battle will have their homes destroyed and their lives uprooted. They don’t deserve it,” his lord had said. “I can’t stay idle if I can do something about it.”

“I know that I cannot let Genichiro use the Dragon’s Heritage; he was too blinded by it. But I may still be able to use it to help these people-” Here, Lord Kuro broke off with a sigh. He looked Wolf in the eye. “You... could use it to help. But I don’t want you to be bound by the Dragon’s Heritage. It’s part of why I sought Immortal Severance in the first place... I won’t ask this of you, Wolf, unless you also agree with it.”

And that was the worst part, Wolf reflected. He was trained as a shinobi. Even though he had broken the iron code by killing his father, it was deeply ingrained on him. The purpose of a shinobi: obey your orders...and nothing else. He was not made to make decisions, only follow them. He’d tried to tell Kuro that, but he insisted on Wolf’s own choice.

“Please, my lord, I will always do whatever you think best. You don’t need to concern yourself with me. Whatever you ask me to do, I shall carry out without regret or resentment. Please, you don’t need to ask my opinion.”

Something of his desperation must have sunken into his response, because, after a long silence, Kuro relented.

Wolf still wondered if it was cowardly to force the burden of decision onto his master’s shoulders.

So he continued to scan the ruined streets of the outskirts, looking for survivors to help, as Lord Kuro ordered. None appeared, so Wolf continued on to the castle. Each step, the air thickened and the tension mounted.

As Wolf cleared the end of the outskirts and neared the castle grounds, he started to hear the clashing of metal and the shouting of men. Someone in Ashina was left to fight, it seemed. After grappling up the interior of a tall building to reach the higher level, Wolf saw the first fight. A pair of Ashina soldiers were harrowing a Ministry elite who limped badly as he tried to push them back. Wolf watched for a few moments before slipping past unseen. He wouldn’t involve himself yet.

“If you find Genichiro, then help him fight the Ministry,” Kuro had told him. “If you don’t... There’s no reason to put yourself in harm’s way if Ashina will fall regardless.”

That was yet to be seen.

Wolf pushed forward, careful to keep to the shadows as he found more and more skirmishes. He took careful note of each and moved where the fighting increased in intensity. Soon, he found himself at the idol at the base of the castle stairs. He peered around the gate to where the riotous sounds of battle were already ringing out. The first thing he noticed was that Ashina’s castle looked, miraculously, still untouched. Next, he noticed that it might not stay that way for long; clearly the heart of the battle had moved right to its doorstep. He quickly grappled to the roof flanking the stairs for a proper vantage point on the chaos.

It took several long moments for Wolf to comprehend what he was seeing.

Ashina’s general had returned to her indeed. At least, what was left of him.

Genichiro Ashina’s extraordinary skill with a bow seemed undiminished by his lack of a head. He drew his bow, the fletching hovering just above the gore of his truncated neck, then fired three arrows in rapid succession, all finding their marks.

One of the unfortunate men tumbled down the stairs after being struck, his body eventually coming to rest against a much larger corpse strewn at the base of the stairs. Wolf saw the battered red armor beneath blue cloth and realized it was a Red Guard soldier that made him recall the drunkard he’d fought the night at the Hirata Estate. His skull was split from crown to jaw.

He returned his attention to the fight.

Amongst all the smoke and ash, it was impossible to tell if Genichiro produced the same bone chilling mist as the other headless Wolf had fought, but he appeared to wield the same Terror. The Ashina soldiers fighting beside him seemed unaffected, but Wolf saw it. Genichiro took three rapid steps forward, and though most of the Ministry elites shook themselves and returned to their skirmishes with renewed aggression, many more of their more common foot soldiers could not. They recoiled and froze in terror, hesitating long enough for the Ashina soldiers, Genichiro included, to kill quite a few with ease.

An enraged shout sounded and a Lone Shadow shinobi launched himself at Genichiro. Their swords clashed loudly as he threw up a block and Wolf finally snapped out of his daze.

He only hoped that the general wouldn’t turn his sword on him.

He launched himself off the rooftop and landed a clean deathblow on an unsuspecting Red Guard advancing on a stumbling foot soldier. The man gaped at his sudden, bloody arrival, but made no move to attack him as he turned to the rest of the Ministry forces. He slid between their ranks, thinning them where he could, paying particular attention to the ones who threatened to defeat some of the Ashina soldiers. All the while, Genichiro and the Lone Shadow wove a savage dance together some yards away. Wolf noticed that Genichiro fought differently than he had before. His swordsmanship was still just as fast and brutal, but his footwork had worsened dramatically. He had been fast and agile before, but now he seemed to make an effort not to move; his footsteps shuffled, as if lifting his feet was a burden. It put him at a disadvantage fighting the deadly quick shinobi.

And yet he could not be overcome.

The pair continued their contest as Wolf continued to cut down the Ministry. None of the Ashina had attacked him yet, but Wolf did his best to stay out of their way, not wanting to give them the chance. He tried to avoid Genichiro as well, but it seemed that he inched closer to their battle each time he found a new target. Soon, there were no more enemies for him to face nearby, only bodies. The battle was far from over though, so Wolf crept up on a soldier, much closer to the dueling pair than the rest had been, and slit his throat. As he let the body fall to the ground, the Lone Shadow’s gaze caught on him, rising from the dying man to settle on Wolf’s face.

The last thing he would ever see.

Blood sprayed in a singing arc through the air as Genichiro decapitated him. The man dropped, lifeless, and Wolf grimaced at the morbid irony. Genichiro slid into a ready position, leveling his sword at Wolf. He instinctively lifted his gaze to meet Genichiro’s eye, then flinched at the reminder of his mutilation.

Without an expression, Wolf couldn’t guess what Genichiro was thinking as they both waited. Several painfully tense moments passed where Wolf prayed he could carry out Kuro’s order without additional conflict. Genichiro abruptly sheathed his sword only to seize his bow. Wolf dodged to the side, quick enough to see the arrow bury itself in the neck of a man who had started approaching him from behind.

The soldiers surrounding them from both armies who had paused to watch their confrontation, now resumed their fights with renewed frenzy.

Wolf and Genichiro did the same.

With the smoke clogging the sky, it was impossible to tell how much time passed as the battle continued. It was a bitter, exhausting struggle, but with the strongest members of the Ministry’s troops now dead, and with Wolf now supporting them, the Ashina felt the tide turn in their favor. It was only a matter of time until they claimed victory.

Time that Wolf used to observe the general.

Whatever let Genichiro sense his surroundings seemed an inconsistent thing. He tracked his enemies’ movements with unerring precision, as deadly as he had been with his full faculties. Wolf watched him shift his sword around a soldier’s block and cut clean through his arms (Wolf’s own twinged in sympathy). Yet, less than a minute later, he saw him slam his foot into the side of a burnt out wagon, and almost tumble completely over it. He seemed to frequently slip on the edges of the steps as well.

Later, Wolf would realize that this likely accounted for his shambling footwork.

He was both similar and different from the headless Wolf had faced before, he gathered. He never tired. He hadn’t reclaimed his armor, only a cloth shirt, but it hardly made a difference. The Ministry swords, in the rare cases that they connected, did next to nothing. He wondered briefly if Divine Confetti would make a difference. But he also bled; only a little, and only sluggishly, but he bled nonetheless, something none of the headless had ever done.

Yet still the Ministry recoiled from Genichiro’s advances. When he had faced the headless, as well as other, equally horrifying foes, they seemed to twist his Terror away from an emotion under his control, as it should have been, into a force, a weapon, that took on a life of its own. He saw its effects on the Ministry like he had before, but still felt none of it, even now, fighting right at Genichiro’s side.

The Ashina soldiers remained similarly untouched. Wolf wondered if, given the opportunity, the other headless could have distinguished friend from foe. He would never know, but somehow, he doubted it.

Eventually, the battle drew to a close. The few remaining enemies turned to flee and Genichiro picked them off with his arrows. As the chaos of conflict finally eased, Wolf noticed one more thing.

Genichiro was breathing.

Had the other headless breathed? He combed through his recollections of the encounters, but he couldn’t remember. He’d never seen one breathe before, but in the heat of battle, something like that could have easily escaped his notice. He just didn’t know. But Genichiro was most certainly breathing.

It was a grim, ruined, and pitiful wheezing.

An Ashina man wearily worked his way over to them. Wolf had noticed him during the fighting; he seemed the most skilled out of the Ashina forces, save for their Lord. He thought he was one of the Seven Ashina Spears. He glared at Wolf as he approached.

“What’s the meaning of this?” he ground out. “What is this mutt doing here? Aren’t you the very same one that was killing our men just a few days ago?” Genichiro shifted to face Wolf as well.

“I am here at the behest of my master.” As he explained what had happened and why he was there, Wolf continuously flicked his gaze between the spear bearer and the lord awkwardly. He was shaky in the most standard of social situations and this was anything but. Normally, he would address Genichiro exclusively, but...he didn’t even know if he could hear him.

When he finished his explanation, the man looked similarly unsure of his place. He hesitated and shifted uncomfortably. Genichiro released a noise that might have been a hum had his head been attached and could have meant anything.

The man shook his head, then said, “I think you should go. You’ve already-” Genichiro lifted a hand in front of him and he flinched as he cut him off. So he was listening. “My lord?”

Taking a risk, Wolf turned to face Genichiro completely and asked, “May I stay to support Ashina in the war as my lord wishes?”

Genichiro made that same noise again and then bent the stump of his neck. Wolf was so hypnotized by the nauseating sight of his spine that he needed several moments to recognize the motion as a nod. “Very well,” the other man sighed, and Wolf tore his gaze away to look at him. “We can make some space in the castle, I suppose.” Despite his earlier rejection of Wolf, he didn’t seem to care to debate his Lord’s decision. Instead, he bowed to him, then moved away to direct the remaining soldiers. Wolf noted that the men called him Shume Oniwa.

Wolf saw that the men went to him and not Genichiro. Clearly, he no longer had the words to command the tactics of an army as he needed. He made no attempt to stop Shume as he reorganized the battlefield. And yet, even in his state, there were still places where Genichiro acted as a general. As several men debated over whether to reinforce the reservoir or the southern castle grounds, Genichiro snapped his fingers twice to get their attention, then pointed to the south. They bowed. After that, he somehow picked out the most injured soldiers and, slowly making his way to each, tapped them on the shoulder and pointed to the castle. They went without hesitation.

No one questioned Genichiro. Their devotion surprised Wolf; with his morbid state, Wolf would have expected him to be run out like a demon out of fear of curse or corruption. Then again, he recalled the words of the man in the village, his insistence that the general would save Ashina, and reflected that Genichiro was likely the only reason any of these men survived. Saving someone’s life inspired a certain kind of loyalty, no matter who the savior was.

Yet none of them would look directly at him. They looked past his shoulder or down near his feet, never at his ruined form. Wolf wondered if he was aware.

Soon enough, everything was calm. The injured had returned to the castle and the remaining men laid down near the entrance to steal whatever sleep they could before the battle resumed. Wolf did not lay, but he sat with his back to a wall, saving his strength. Genichiro did not join them; he milled about uselessly, looking lost.

He did not make the same fog as the headless, he could see now. The ground he churned beneath his feet was covered in soot and snow, but not mist. And yet, Wolf felt something...similar, in a way, around him. He felt dragged down, but by something far more human. Misery, exhaustion, pain: Genichiro radiated it. It was a subtle thing. In this war torn battlefield, it blended in with everything else, but Wolf could pick it out. He wondered if anyone else noticed.

No matter. The Ministry would only take a few hours to resume their attack, Wolf anticipated. The peace would not last.

Four days had passed since the morning Genichiro had returned to Ashina. He would have never known, but he heard his men talk.

Two and a half days had passed since the evening Wolf had arrived.

Wolf helped. A lot. More than Genichiro would have ever admitted before, but now, his desperation had overruled his pride. He would take help from anyone, even someone who he’d cut down and who had cut him down in turn. He made for a blazing force of black and red, always snagging Genichiro’s attention as he whirled through battle. He doesn’t know what state they’d be in had Wolf not joined their efforts. Or, rather, had the Divine Heir not ordered him to join their efforts.

He resolved not to think on it.

He stood inside the castle for the first time since his return. He felt more confident on his feet here. Ashina castle had been his home for so long, he knew it like the back of his hand. He let his fingers trail over the wall as he moved through the halls, but he knew where he stepped. Now, he stood near the doorway of the largest dining hall, which they had converted into a makeshift infirmary

Before, Genichiro would have been striding through the injured, thanking his men and trying to raise morale. Now, he knew that the best he could do for them was to stay away. A headless corpse walking amongst them would be foul and unwelcome, no matter how much they might pretend otherwise. And Genichiro no longer needed to be close to gauge their injuries anyway.

It was hardly encouraging.

The war had reached its first true lull since he’d returned. Before now, the few breaks in the fighting had lasted scant hours. The wounded were numerous and the remaining men were exhausted, and for that reason, Genichiro was grateful that they had dealt the Ministry enough of a blow to keep them away for a few days.

Otherwise, the break in the conflict felt horrendous.

Genichiro hadn’t slept since he’d woken up four days ago without his head. Never felt the need to. Even the shinobi had slept, a few hours, here and there.

He still did not feel tired. Instead he felt angry and restless and lost. He turned from the doorway and stalked outside, back onto the steps leading up to the castle. He walked several paces this way, then that, then back again with nowhere to go. He aimlessly shuffled in confused, pitiful circles, as had become his habit when the fighting had stopped. Red pulsed around him but he didn’t know how to react. In the heat of battle, at least, he knew where to direct his focus. When he had his sword in hand, that much was clear; block, deflect, lunge, kill. But once he put it away...Genichiro didn’t know what to do with himself.

He flexed his fingers, stretching out and balling up his hands anxiously as he continued his fruitless pacing. He stumbled once as he was struck by the sickening sensation of trying to move the head he no longer had (well, had attached ). He wanted to shake it, to try to clear his mind, but of course...

He paced because both his mind and his body refused to rest. The new tirelessness was helpful while fighting, but once it was over, it made his skin crawl and his muscles twitch. He needed to do something. But he wasn’t being productive. He felt the focus of the soldiers nearby linger on him before they shook off the distraction. He kept bumping his aching toes into the edges of the stairs that he couldn’t sense. He was a nuisance, milling about, and he knew it.

Through a great effort of willpower, Genichiro forced himself to sit cross legged on the ground and tried to calm his aching body and mind.

Instead, the pulsing grew more rapid and intense until it became a buzz, then a hum. The frequency and volume increased with every passing moment. Genichiro bit his lip bloody inside the red fabric at his waist, where his head was still hidden.

The furious black and red rose up and boiled over. It overwhelmed his senses. It felt like his eyes searing when he forgot to look away as he summoned lightning. It felt like his ears bleeding as Isshin wrenched his spear through steel plate armor, demonstrating how to take advantage of his enemies’ weaknesses. It felt like his skin shrieking as Dogen put stitches in a gash on his leg, not from the pain, but from the hands burning a foreign touch into his thigh. It made him want to squeeze his eyes shut but he already had. He wanted to wail and clamp his hands over his ears, drag his fingers through his hair, and smother his face in his arms but he could do none of that. And it wouldn’t have made a difference if he could. 

He had no protection against this new sense. It was all too much and there was nothing Genichiro could do but take it.

He felt like he was on fire and freezing all at once. His nerves needled seething, desperate agony into him without cause, as if they couldn’t remember how to work properly. He couldn’t blame them for that, he supposed. He was never meant to exist like this.

He didn’t know how to exist like this. So he sat there, drowning.

His chest heaved desperately and his sad, wheezing breaths echoed across the yard. His men gave him as wide a berth as possible when they were forced to pass him, but Genichiro barely noticed. The world had fallen away behind the fog. Genichiro ignored it all over a time he could not track.

Until Wolf approached him, cutting through the hum as easily as he cut through flesh and bone.

Genichiro picked him out immediately. He made the blacks burn just as bright as the reds, they sang together in harmony when they made up his form. Genichiro was relieved in a way, it was easy to focus on Wolf. It only made sense. Their contact before this had been high stakes duels where focus meant life or death. Even before losing his head, he knew Wolf as something to always be aware of, whenever he was present. He had burned Wolf’s image, idea, into his mind.

The habit was not easily forgotten.

He reached his side, and after a moment’s hesitation, sat down next to him. He still felt tense. “Now that there is more time, I intend to rejoin Lord Kuro and Lady Emma. I need to report to my master. I imagine they will return with me and stay here again.”

My castle is open to them, Genichiro wanted to say. He could not. It made sense for the Divine Heir to return, so that Wolf could continue to protect him, even as he fought for Ashina. Emma, he felt less sure of. Would she still return now that Isshin was not there for her to care for?

Genichiro was there when they brought his grandfather’s body down from the upper castle. He was there as they buried him next to the old graves already behind the castle, likely just an hour or two ago. It disturbed him, how much the feeling of his grandfather’s corpse had resonated with him. He should have died the very same night, he supposed. The only difference between them was the Sediment.

He wondered what he would have thought if he could see him now. Most likely, Isshin would not hesitate to slaughter the abomination he’d become.

The thought was sad, but not nearly as sad as how unsurprising it was.

No matter. Genichiro hoped Emma would come regardless, they could desperately use her talents.

My castle is open to them, Genichiro tried to say. He still could not.

“I think it will take a full day to reach them then return. I-” Wolf fidgeted- “I take my leave now.” And then he was gone.

Genichiro remained. Unmoored, he could do nothing as the black and red swallowed him whole again. This time, he devoted what attention he could to his breathing. Maybe he could keep at least one thing steady as the rest of him fell apart.

Stay alive, he thought, but it was an indulgent notion. He couldn’t really claim to be alive in the first place.

“I did find Lord Genichiro, but...not how we left him... He isn’t whole... The Ministry forces must have found him and...”

“Have you heard tell of the headless?”

Explaining Genichiro’s fate to his master was an extraordinarily hard task. For one, he barely understood it. He only assumed that the Ministry was responsible for his beheading, but truthfully, he had no idea what happened. None of the Ashina men could tell him either. And the only reference he had, the headless, didn’t fully match whatever became of Genichiro.

But the general still fought and Wolf had still joined him, just as Lord Kuro had ordered.

Eventually, Wolf could do nothing else but tell them outright of the headless form that remained of the man. Kuro recoiled and shivered with revulsion. Emma went incredibly tense, her back straightening more than he’d thought possible. She demanded he describe everything he had seen.

“And yet, he’s alive?” Emma asked incredulously after Wolf had explained all he could.

Wolf grimaced and said, “I suppose it depends on your definition of alive,” which, in retrospect, was likely the last thing a doctor would ever want to hear.

In the end, they both accepted his tale and agreed to return to Ashina regardless.

Luckily, the journey back was just as uneventful as the journey out had been. Soon enough, they reached the temple where the Sculptor once lived.

From the dilapidated temple, they could go right to Ashina castle through the shinobi secret passage, yet Wolf lingered reluctantly. Kuro noticed his hesitation and turned to him. “What is it, Wolf?”

He parted his lips, hesitated, then stifled his nerves. “I-I would like to make a request of you, my lord.”

“Of course,” Kuro said with a note of surprise, looking at him with wide, curious eyes.

Wolf shifted uncomfortably under the attention. He bowed first, appreciating the gesture both for its familiarity and for the way it hid his face. “The Divine Child of the Rejuvenating Waters...she is still at Senpou Temple. I’m worried that the Interior Ministry might attack there. The Divine Child was always hospitable and kind when I visited her...I would like to go and offer to bring her to the castle as well,” Wolf finished, hoping he explained his wishes well enough.

To his great relief, Lord Kuro smiled at him and nodded. “I think that’s a very good idea. I wouldn’t want the Divine Child to be in danger simply because she never had the choice to leave. And also...I would really like to meet her,” Kuro trailed off wistfully. “You should go and see if she agrees to accompany you.”

Wolf nodded then looked to his master. He didn’t want him to go to Ashina without him present. Genichiro didn’t seem to care about the power of the Dragon’s Blood anymore, but Wolf was still starkly aware of the danger. And yet, it was not his place to make another request- it had not been his place to make any request, in all honesty. He kept his mouth shut.

Fortunately, the same thought had apparently occurred to Lady Emma. She set a hand on Lord Kuro’s shoulder and said, “This temple should remain safe from the conflict. The two of us can await your return so we can go back to Ashina together.” Kuro looked up at her, then hummed his agreement.

Wolf looked at Emma with appreciation.

“Very well.” He bowed to his master once more. “I shall return as quickly as I’m able.”

Kuro smiled softly, almost sadly, at him. “Of course. Travel safely, loyal Wolf.”

And so Wolf went on his way to Mount Kongo. Thus far, Senpou Temple was untouched by the Ministry forces, and yet, Wolf could see signs of their preparation. There were more monks than he had ever seen before and they swarmed about like bees around an overturned hive. They never noticed Wolf, who had traveled through the temple more than enough times to slip by with ease. Few remained in the upper areas where Wolf entered the inner sanctum.

The Divine Child whirled around to stare at him with wide eyes. Then she gave him a strained but genuine smile.

“Shinobi of the Divine Heir,” she began, sounding pleasantly surprised, “I thought the war might have driven you out of Ashina. I’m happy to see that you’re still here. The sanctum is always open to you.”

“Thank you,” Wolf said, truly meaning it. “We left at first, but circumstances pressed us to return. We are trying to preserve Ashina.” Wolf gazed at her small form. So young, yet she had endured so much pain. He didn’t want her to face any more. “I came to offer to bring you to Ashina castle with the Divine Heir and me,” he said simply. The Divine Child gasped. “It may not be any safer in the end, but...I believe it will be. I think Ashina will survive this war. But there’s no way to say. The choice is yours.”

The girl’s gaze shone with desperate longing and reluctance. “I...I need a moment to think,” she whispered. Wolf dipped his head and backed away. He sat on the edge of the wooden porch, giving her space. He heard her murmur, presumably to the lingering spirits of the other children. Wolf wondered if it was cruel to offer this to her, the chance to leave the only home she’d known in a long time, no matter how much of a prison it was.

And the only family as well, no matter that it was made of the dead.

But Wolf couldn’t bring himself to leave her, not with war on the horizon.

He sat there peacefully for what might have been half an hour before the Divine Child stepped out to join him.

“I’ve seen smoke rising from below the mountain,” she said slowly. “The monks have been preparing for war for days. I’ve enjoyed the peace I’ve found in the Sanctum, but I can tell it’s coming to an end. I will go to Ashina castle with you.” She gave a sad little smile. “I think...it’s better to take a chance on hope, no matter how slim, than to cling to doom out of fear of change.”

Wolf stared at her, impressed as ever at her maturity and wisdom. “I’m glad you’re coming with us.” Then he stood and held his hand out to her. “Well then, my Lady, let me escort you from this place.” She giggled lightly and took his hand.

Her face grew more serious as he continued, “The way there will be dangerous. I can bring us there safely, but I may ask you to hide if there’s conflict. Can you do as I ask?” She nodded, wide eyed, but she did not look afraid. “Then let’s go.”

Progress going down the mountain was slower than going up. Wolf took enormous care to avoid any dangers. With the turmoil the monks were in, he managed to slip past them all without being noticed. In the end, all that challenged them was a roving pack of wolves that he picked off with his shurikens as the girl hid behind a boulder.

Once they passed the entrance to the temple, Wolf lifted the Divine Child into his arms to carry her the rest of the way. She apologized profusely for her poor stamina, but Wolf didn’t mind in the slightest. They made their way easily to the dilapidated temple where Lord Kuro and Lady Emma waited.

The pair sat where the Sculptor once carved his Buddhas. Emma stood quickly when she saw Wolf carrying the Divine Child. “Were you hurt?” she asked, concerned.

“No, no,” she said quickly, flushed, “I’m sorry, I’m just not very strong.” She squirmed and Wolf gently set her down. She bowed formally and introduced herself. Emma relaxed and returned the courtesy, as did Lord Kuro.

Wolf watched Kuro glance at the Divine Child in thinly veiled excitement and she seemed to reciprocate his interest. They started to converse, still under the awkward pressure of formality, but they clearly enjoyed it. Likely, neither of them had ever thought they would meet someone so similar to themselves. Wolf was glad that they finally could.

For that reason, Wolf hated to interrupt them, but time was not in their favor. The war would not wait for them. “I’m sorry, my Lord,” Wolf interjected softly. “We should return to the castle now.”

Kuro looked at him in surprise, as if he’d forgotten why they’d returned for a moment. He shook himself. “Right, of course. There will be plenty of time to talk there.” And for Kuro and the Divine Child, there would be. But Wolf needed to return to the fight; it itched under his skin. He wondered if an end would ever come.

But now was not the time for such thoughts.

He guided them to the secret passage and let them all through the shinobi door one by one. It was ungainly to use the door with someone else, but it was little compared to what Wolf was willing to do anything to make it work. Anything to avoid bringing his master through the rest of Ashina’s perilous lands. Soon enough, they all gathered in Kuro’s room again.

An Ashina elite was standing in the library when they arrived, rifling around anxiously for some text. He jolted when he saw them enter and abandoned his search. “Lord Genichiro will want to know you’ve returned,” he said quickly, and swept from the room before any of them could respond.

Kuro shifted uncomfortably. “I hope he doesn’t object to us reclaiming our spot here.”

“Other than the library, it doesn’t seem like anything else has seen much use,” Emma commented, walking around the room that seemed untouched since they had last seen it. She paused, gazing at an innocuous spot on the ground. It took several moments for Wolf to realize that it was where Lord Isshin had died. He saw the men take his body away and heard he was buried by the old graves. Before he could think of anything to say, footsteps interrupted the silence.

At the sight of Genichiro, Emma shuddered and closed her eyes, brow pinched tightly in grief. Wolf saw Lord Kuro look to him and flinch, immediately averting his gaze. Involuntary sadness over what had become of Genichiro stung in Wolf’s chest. Then he noticed the Divine Child of Rejuvenation staring at him.

Guilt stabbed him as he realized he had said nothing to prepare her for the sight of him. Wolf quickly stepped to her, intending to guide her away, only to see that, though her gaze was fixated on Genichiro, she did not look at all afraid or repulsed.

She looked like she was searching for something.

“You have drank of the Rejuvenating Waters...” she said distantly. “No...the Sediment.”

Genichiro did nothing.

“Yes, he had,” Kuro murmured, to answer what hadn’t been a question.

The Divine Child hummed, looking painfully understanding. “Indeed.” She dipped her head respectfully to him. “I am sorry for the fate you met.” She sounded utterly sincere.

Genichiro stirred. He released a long, low noise that Wolf couldn’t interpret. It hung in the air for a long, tense minute.

Finally, Genichiro seemed to pull himself out of his daze, and he shifted away. He made a sweeping, presumably welcoming gesture to the room at large. Off to the side, Kuro bowed his head and said, “Thank you.” Normally, the situation would demand a more lengthy and formal expression of gratitude, but Kuro looked too deeply shaken.

Genichiro seemed aware of the effect he had as he retreated a step back towards the doorway. Instead of leaving, however, he turned back to the Divine Child. The girl, for her part, cast a quick side glance at Wolf before returning her attention to him.

“Ah- this is General Genichiro Ashina, the Lord of this castle,” Wolf said stiffly holding his hand in Genichiro’s direction. Probably uselessly, he similarly indicated the girl as he looked at Genichiro. “And this is the Divine Child of the Rejuvenating Waters.”

“Yes...but I have left Senpou Temple and its monks behind. I think I would like to reclaim the name I once had, before they took me. Please, I am Yumiko.” 

Genichiro made another noise, this one short and lighter, one that Wolf with the rest of the men had collectively decided meant agreement. With a small, sad smile, Yumiko said, “Thank you for letting me stay in your home.”

Genichiro twitched at the word home, then made his aborted, nodding motion, showing his trauma. Then he turned heel and strode out of the room, the echoes of his footsteps lingering along with the uneasy atmosphere.

Wolf made sure Lord Kuro was properly settled before he slipped away, hoping to claim a few hours of sleep before the battle resumed.

Blood splattered as Genichiro flicked it clear of his blade.

Each day brought new Ministry soldiers and each day Genichiro met them eagerly. He didn’t take pleasure in battle- he couldn’t, not after everything, but at least it gave him a sense of clarity and purpose. It was his purpose, his only purpose. His goal- his need- to protect Ashina was all that kept him sane now. As long as there was more to be done for her, Genichiro could keep moving forward.

Today, it was just a small skirmish, but Genichiro put them down with the same ruthlessness he always did. Don’t give them anything, not even an inch. You’ll never know what they’ll take next.

It hadn’t lasted long. Already, he’d returned the castle proper. He pushed open the door, letting memory guide him to an overlook several floors up. He wanted a better vantage point on the castle steps; the last battles had damaged their defenses there. The cold air caressed his skin as he stepped into the room. He strode to the railing and settled there.

Then he stopped.

What was he doing here.

A better vantage point would do nothing to show him what the black and red had hidden. He could sense what it illuminated and nothing more. Nothing would change that. He was powerless to the whims of the black and red and whatever it deemed important, as always.

Even then, he felt Lord Kuro walking the castle’s halls, far away from him.

The power of the Dragon Heritage gave the child a unique impression in the black and red, a signature Genichiro could always identify. Only Wolf and the Divine Child- Yumiko- came anywhere near the feeling, but still couldn’t hold a candle. The elegant harmonies the black and red made to fill in Kuro’s outline were edged with divinity that made Genichiro shiver.

Yet he was still just a child. Still human. He could also feel the fear and disgust that rose up in him when he came near. Kuro feared him and he had every reason to. Even before his beheading, he had kidnapped him, held him hostage, and sought to claim his power to meet his own ends.

He would make Lord Kuro endure his presence as little as possible. It was the least he could do now.

So it surprised him when he noticed Lord Kuro deliberately making his way to him once he spotted him.

Wolf trailed behind him, at ease for the moment, but as the child’s shinobi, Genichiro knew he was perpetually wary of any threat. He stayed back as Kuro approached, joining him at the railing a few feet away.

After a brief hesitation, “How have the battles gone today?”

Genichiro did nothing. He didn’t know what Kuro expected him to do.

The boy sighed deeply. He started speaking again, slowly and carefully. “I hope you understand what I was trying to tell you now. I didn’t withhold the Immortal Oath because I wished ill on Ashina. The Dragon’s Heritage, the Rejuvenating Waters, they all come from the same source...and lead to the same end. It’s monstrous. It’s inhuman. No one is meant to become something like this.”

Unseen, Genichiro scowled.

“I wish you could have known where this would lead when you first brought me here. Nothing would have changed if you’d had the power of the Dragon’s Blood,” He said with an air of sadness.

“Do you see now, what a curse immortality is?”

Genichiro wanted to spit.

Now you ask if I can see, now that I am blind? he raged in his mind. He wanted nothing more than to voice his anger and bitterness, to rail against Kuro’s accusations veiled in sympathy. His breathing picked up and his lips moved fruitlessly, but he did not try to quell the habit. For once, he embraced it.

Does it please you, to lord it over me now that I can’t speak for myself? Does it satisfy you to say that you told me so? How dare you? How dare you boast your foresight when I can’t even boast to be alive? Enough of this! I have to endure enough without your preaching.

He had nothing to show for his tirade than his breathlessness.

It nauseated him, settling caustic in his core. He hated having all his mistakes, his every failing, pointed out to him long past the point when he recognized them himself. Of course it was a curse. Of course he was a monster. Did Kuro honestly believe that he still had the luxury of denying any of that anymore?

He didn’t even have the luxury to speak. To live.

He regretted the Rejuvenating Sediment. Yet he failed to see the point of condemning it now, now that nothing could be changed.

His regret didn’t matter. What was done, was done. As long as the Sediment still had hold over him, he would use it just like every other tool at his disposal. He knew it was a curse, that it would destroy him, but it didn’t matter.

His destruction meant nothing if it could prevent the destruction of Ashina.

Kuro seemed to register some part of his anger and shifted in place uncomfortably. Apparently unsatisfied with stopping there, he tried again. “I don’t want to corrupt men’s lives-”

He hit his hand against the rail in bitter anger. Against his better judgement, he turned and pointed directly at Wolf.

Silence fell for a time. Yet, when Kuro spoke next, he sounded even more resolute. “I understand why you sought to use my blood to protect Ashina. I understand why you drank the Sediment and made yourself undying. I’m not a fool, Lord Genichiro, no matter what you think of me. Of course immortality could turn the tide of a war, there’s no way it couldn’t. That’s why I’ve ordered Wolf to join you in the first place, but- Don’t you see?” His voice wavered with the intensity of his emotions.

“It doesn’t matter in the end! Do you think that the Ministry is the last threat you will face? When this war is finally over, it’ll just be followed by another, then another, on and on for as long as immortality holds sway in this land. Ashina will never know peace while the Dragon’s Blood endures. When I say that immortality corrupts men, I don’t just mean the few who actually become undying. I’m talking about hundreds upon hundreds, whole armies worth willing to turn to slaughter just because they know it exists. Willing to invade someone else’s home and burn it to the ground...”

“It has to end,” Kuro declared quietly, more to himself than anything else. “It will, I’ll make sure of it. Severance has-” He cut off abruptly. Fear spiked in him.

Severance. So it was true. Genichiro had suspected the Divine Heir’s intention since his shinobi returned with the power of the Mortal Blade burning at his back. Lord Takeru and Lady Tomoe sought Immortal Severance. Genichiro had thought them fools for it then, but now...

“I-I didn’t mean-” Lord Kuro started hesitantly. He clearly thought that Genichiro would turn on him now that he knew his intention. He felt Wolf tense, gripping the hilt of his katana. Their reaction weighed heavily on him. He wished he could do more to put them at ease than to wave his hand dismissively, but he couldn’t.

Because, as much as he loathed it, only now could he see immortality’s place in Ashina, only now that he was blind.

Kuro was right. Genichiro would do nothing to stop him from completing Immortal Severance. In fact, it eased him somewhat to know that they were capable of the ritual. As long as he endured long enough to protect his land and his people, they would face no opposition from him.

Although he couldn’t deny that the thought made a part of him cold with dread. Immortal Severance would kill him, he had no doubt of that. But he had already decided.

His destruction meant nothing if it could prevent the destruction of Ashina.

When Genichiro continued to hold his peace, Kuro’s initial fear eased. “After the war is over, I will go through with it,” he murmured. “Immortal Severance. It has to be done... It’s for the good of Ashina.”

Genichiro knew that wasn’t Kuro’s goal, but Kuro was wise enough to know that it was his.

“I only hope-” He stopped. “I’ve said enough.”

He pushed away from the railing and walked back across the room. Wolf turned, ready to follow. But before Kuro left- “Farewell, Lord Genichiro.”

On the table of their makeshift war room, General Tenzen Yamauchi spread his map of Ashina and her neighboring lands.

The initial battles had spread the Ashina forces dangerously thin. They had come together sometime earlier, but now was the first chance they had to more formally organize with the important individuals who had returned. They needed to reassess the situation and plan their next moves now that they had defeated the Interior Ministry’s initial onslaught.

At the head of the table was Lord Genichiro, Shume Oniwa of the Seven Ashina Spears beside him, both of whom fought outside the castle with Wolf in the earliest battles. Also present was General Tenzen who had been caught fighting beyond the outskirts during the initial assault. A man and woman stood further back, both of lower rank, but they supported the fight in other locations and were the best equipped to report on all that had happened there. Emma had joined as well, being the most knowledgeable about the state of their soldiers and what they could endure.

And himself, he considered as an afterthought. Wolf couldn’t guess why he’d been invited, but he had, and nothing came as easy to him as following orders.

That and killing, but-

“Intermittent meetings when necessary have served us well enough until now, but no longer,” Shume began. “Now that we have the opportunity, we need to take stock of everything and decide what to do next. Best to start by laying out everything we know.” He paused for a moment, considering the map. “Kaori, If you could start by recounting everything you observed from the fights in the outskirts,” he said, turning to the woman.

She stepped forward and bowed. “Yes, sir.” She made her report in a clipped tone. The losses to the soldiers she fought with were worse than they’d hoped but better than they might have been. She talked at length about the destruction of the outskirts, much of which Wolf had seen first hand when he traveled through them. However, she discussed several specific places and buildings Wolf had no reference for but clearly meant something to the others. Frustration rippled through the room as she described the state of some of them.

Eventually, she finished and stepped back. Shume then prompted the man to do the same. His report was briefer. Much that he had seen echoed what she had already said. Some different details, same grim picture. He stepped back in due time.

Tenzen came forward then. Wolf remembered slipping past the man during his initial entry into Ashina to rescue Lord Kuro. Apparently he had returned to the castle while Wolf had fetched Lord Kuro, Lady Emma, and the Divine Child- Yumiko. The man had removed his bronze horned helmet for now, but his expression looked just as wild.

Tenzen struck Wolf as a fierce and passionate man, if overly aggressive. He’d spit on Wolf’s feet when they’d first met. He’d railed furiously against Wolf, demanding he face punishment for his crimes against Ashina. He only relented after an unyielding push backwards from Genichiro, which spoke louder than words. Tenzen seemed to abandon the better part of his hostility now that he had fought at Wolf’s side.

In rare moments, Wolf would hear his laughter echo through Ashina castle and thought that he was likely a boisterous and enjoyable man in better times.

These were not better times.

Tenzen’s report lasted much longer. With the military training that accompanied his position, he had far more insight on the state of the war. He opened with a more standard recount of his battles, but moved on to new topics. He listed all the important Ministry leaders they knew of, lords, generals, and elites: who they had slaughtered and who still breathed.

Wolf picked out the name Kitawano Shimataka several times and gathered that he was the head of the Interior Ministry. He’d never heard of him before. Apparently, he hadn’t been spotted in battle so far; he was content to wait out the fighting safely behind lines.

Tenzen spoke of him with disgust. Even Shume, level headed and composed, wrinkled his nose and scowled.

A rhythmic tapping started up and Wolf turned to see Genichiro, who’d shifted to stand beside a cabinet. It took Wolf a moment before he noticed his hand resting on the wood, his index finger thumping into the surface. He seemed deep in thought as Tenzen continued to report. The quirk intrigued Wolf; it felt so very human. He watched for a while longer. The rhythm reminded him of water dripping onto a window sill after a storm. Eventually, he pulled his gaze away to refocus on the report at hand.

As he shifted back to Tenzen, however, his gaze landed on Emma. She was staring at Genichiro just as Wolf had, but she looked... stricken. She looked at him with such distress that it stunned him for a moment. Genichiro continued his tapping unaware, wrapped up in internal deliberation as he seemed. Emma looked so upset that Wolf nearly told him to stop when Emma shuddered and turned back with a visible effort of will.

Wolf followed her lead, disquieted.

At length, Tenzen finished, “What the Ministry lacks in positioning, they have in man power. They know we have a far stronger position, holding Ashina castle as we are, and they hope to overwhelm that advantage with more men. They’ll continue to bolster their forces for as long as they can afford to.”

Silence answered his words.

Shume sighed. He sat at the table, fingers tented in front of his face. “We need to decide how our efforts would best be spent now. Ah, Emma, would you please brief us on the health of our troops?”

“Of course, sir,” Emma replied with an almost undetectable tremor in her voice. “Things are far from ideal, but considering everything, I feel we have come away very lucky. Our wounded haven’t exceeded our ability to treat yet, and many are recovering quickly.” Speaking evenly now, Emma went on to describe the state of the infirmary and more specific numbers on their injured, their physicians, and any medical supplies. Lastly, she voiced her opinions on what, generally speaking, the army could endure and what would prove too overwhelming.

Genichiro’s tapping droned on all the while in the background. It was the only sound for several minutes after Emma had finished.

Then it stopped.

He approached the table, Tenzen shuffling aside quickly to give him room. Genichiro swept over the map. With the size of his hand, it only took one back and forth to cover the whole thing. Then, he lifted his hand and brought his finger to tap thrice, right on the mark of the reservoir. The sound reverberated through the wood underneath.

Wolf couldn’t fathom how he could sense the content of the map, how his touch could allow him to do that, if indeed it had. Perhaps Ashina was so much a part of him that he could simply sense it in any form.

“The reservoir, my lord?” Oniwa asked for confirmation. Genichiro grunted.

He set his hand over Ashina castle, fingers curled. He pushed it outwards, over the reservoir and splayed his fingers out into more of Ashina’s lands. The lands Wolf traveled through in their initial effort to escape. He did this several times. Genichiro traced a line over the reservoir, then made the motion again, fingers now stopping before they covered the rest of Ashina.

“If we reinforce the reservoir,” Wolf surmised, “it will prevent the Interior Ministry from reaching the rest of the country. It will keep those people safe and we won’t have to worry about fighting over a much larger area.”

Genichiro thumped that spot once more, resolutely, then pulled back, looking satisfied.

“That seems...” Shume replied slowly, looking dazed at the bizarre situation, “like a wise course of action.” His eyes flicked to Genichiro, then Tenzen, then around the rest of the room as he floundered for a few seconds. He shook himself, stood to see the map more clearly, then nodded, resolute now.

“Yes, we’d best start there. If position is our greatest advantage then we must maintain it. Much of our physical defenses in the area have been destroyed, but we can salvage supplies from the buildings beyond repair. With luck, this break will last long enough for the reinforcements.”

Tenzen hunched over the map, squinting. He traced several lines through the reservoir. “If we build strategically enough, we could make an effective bottleneck. If we could cut the Ministry off here and post men here and here-” two taps- “we might be able to...hmmm. I want to look over these spots as soon as possible.”

Shume and Tenzen spent a few more minutes discussing the logistics of the project before they both took off, eager to begin. They brought the man and woman with them, issuing new orders as they all walked out.

Genichiro left right after, whatever he intended unknown.

Wolf and Emma lingered. Emma sat down in a now vacant chair, breathing a weary sigh. Wolf approached her cautiously and gathered his courage to break the silence. Eventually, softly, “What has you so upset, Lady Emma?”

“It’s nothing, it just-” Another sigh. “He...always had that habit. Whenever he was gnawing over some especially difficult problem, he would start tapping his finger like that. I remember Lord Isshin used to tell him off for it- he found it distracting- but he would never stop for long. Isshin gave up eventually. I just...never thought I’d see him do that again.”

Wolf pondered that. “Considering all that has happened, he seems remarkably unchanged,” Wolf hazarded to comment.

Emma looked at him, expression studiously blank. The attention made Wolf uncomfortable, but she seemed to want him to continue.

“Comparatively, at least,” Wolf added as an afterthought. “I battled a fair number of the headless apparitions when I was searching through Ashina, and Genichiro is very different. Those beings were...supernatural. They wielded demonic blades, they could vanish and reappear behind me without ever moving, the mist around them would seep into my bones until I could barely move. But more than that, he feels more alive, somehow. I’ve seen him bleed, even.” Wolf paused. “His heart must beat to do that. I think he is still alive, at least, in a sense.”

He loathed to talk at length, but some force continued to pull the words from him. He didn’t know what. He didn’t know what he meant to say with all this, but something in him found it important enough to voice.

“Even without that, there’s all this.” He gestured to the map. “The way he could direct what the army should do next, the things he still does to command his men, even that he still tapped his finger like you remembered- he’s still acting like himself. I’ve noticed him after battles too, so restless. I...don’t think he knows what to do with himself anymore, but...none of the headless would have ever done that. Whenever I watched from afar, they could stand motionless and unchanging for ages. Even without his head, it seems like most of Genichiro is still left.”

Emma considered his words for a long time before replying. “Be that as it may, I still don’t think he will improve in any way after this, if he survives at all.” Emma spoke delicately, as if trying to avoid offending him. It took Wolf aback. That hadn’t been what he was trying to say with all this...had it?

“I didn’t mean-” Wolf stopped, unsure of himself. Regardless of his remaining humanity, Genichiro had still been decapitated. There was no future from him. Wolf knew that.

He still didn’t know what had compelled him to say all this. Emma touched his shoulder gently. “I need to return to the infirmary.” She left softly.

Wolf remained for a while longer, searching within himself for answers he didn’t find.

In the middle of the night, Genichiro sat on top of his futon, rolling his shoulders restlessly.

He still couldn’t sleep. He was too broken to do anything so human, he figured. The monstrosity of battle was all he was good for now.

Without anything else to do, he had pulled the swath of red cloth around towards his front so that it rested on his thigh. His hands were buried inside the folds, cradling his head. He was simply drawn to it. He had tried to resist the urge the first few times he had found himself alone, revolted at himself. It felt so unnatural to handle his own head in such a way. That feeling lost importance over time. Part of him wanted to deny what had happened to him in any way he could, but that part had died quickly enough.

It was one of the last comforts he had, now, to cup his face, his severed head, between his palms. In the back of his mind, some voice still told him that it was a pitiful, childish impulse, like the tattered blanket he religiously slept with as a child. But he couldn’t give it up. There was something about renewing contact with his head that made him feel more whole. Just barely, but still.

Genichiro craved it.

He needed it.

His eyes were closed as they always were now. He still couldn’t see; even if he opened them, it only served to make him nauseous with vertigo. But as he shifted his thumb over his cheekbone, he felt a few tears had slipped out.

It was harder to keep himself from crying now, he’d found. Often, he’d go a long time before noticing the tears tracing damp lines across his cheeks. He didn’t bother wondering how he could still cry; it didn’t matter.

It never came easy before. He wondered if the change came from his beheading or if it was simply because he’d stopped caring, abandoned any effort to restrain it. No one saw. What difference did it make?

Genichiro would say that there was just so much to cry about in these past weeks, and that was true, but...that wasn’t it. Now, just like each time before, his crying felt purposeless, devoid of any reason.

Tears for their own sake.

Genichiro didn’t know what that said about him and he didn’t care.

He appreciated the distraction it provided, slight as it was, from the black and red.

It writhed around him, seething, like a living beast. Here, in these empty hours with nothing to do, it was the worst. It oversensitized him with no escape. He’d hoped, at first, to adjust over time and learn to cope with the empty, racking nights, but nothing had changed.

He was always aware of the black and red, no matter how unwillingly.

Aware enough that, when something strange pulsed to life, it snagged Genichiro’s attention. A malicious force that, with his knowledge of the castle’s layout, he placed on the roof outside a room some ways down the hall. Even as he noticed it, it moved inwards, likely right up to the building.

Genichiro righted the cloth, unsheathed his sword, and rose to his feet.

He went swiftly down the hall and the person moved even closer. He felt a presence already in the room start to wake. The black and red shone clearer as they jolted up with a flash of fear, and Genichiro realized that it was the Divine Child of Rejuvenation. Both he and that murderous force rapidly converged on her.

He flung the door open just as Yumiko shrieked. He threw himself at the other who clearly felt like a Ministry wretch. Assassin, kidnapper, or someone else; it didn’t matter when their swords clashed deafeningly.

“Get out of my way!” the man growled and tried to force his way past him. The fight was fast and savage, fueled by blistering adrenaline. In an enormous test of focus, while still tracking and answering each of the man’s swings, Genichiro shifted his weight and stretched his foot to where Yumiko curled frozen on her futon, trying to nudge her away from the fight. She jolted out of her daze, but instead of dashing out the door, she scrambled right behind Genichiro, one hand on his leg to steady herself.

The action gave him such pause he almost didn’t block the man’s vicious cross cut towards his stomach. He had meant for her to get to the safest place possible, not...

Well. If that’s where she was, then Genichiro would make it the safest place.

He shifted his stance and began a thunderous Floating Passage. He couldn’t advance on his enemy like he once had; uncertain footing aside, he couldn’t leave the Divine Child open to attack. But he used his stable position to put even more force behind his blows. On the last hit, the man’s posture finally collapsed, and Genichiro drove his blade into the base of his throat.

He felt blood splatter him as he removed it. He heard high pitched gasps in the renewed silence.

He turned, knelt, and with his free arm, scooped Yumiko up into his grasp. It’s not safe here, he tried to say. I need to bring you somewhere to hide; somewhere innocuous where no one from the Ministry would look for you. His lips moved and his breath flowed and he said nothing. Just wheezed. He could only hope that Yumiko trusted him enough to stay with him without an explanation.

As Genichiro whipped down the hall, he felt the Divine Child bury her head against his chest. Her hitched, breathy cries echoed through him strangely. He tramped down the stairs, wanting to put as much distance between them and the Ministry man as possible. He almost fell when the landing came a step earlier than he anticipated

Just as he had almost reached his destination he felt Shume Oniwa turn right into his path. He snatched his arm before he could go by, startling the man. “My lord?” he questioned, confusion heavy in his voice.

Genichiro pointed up, then down, then chopped his hand through the air several times, each time lower than the last. Shume, ever quick on the uptake, asked, “You...want a sweep through the castle?” Genichiro grunted in agreement.

Then, Shume seemed to register his bloody sword and the Divine Child trembling in his grasp. “Was there an attack?” Shume asked sharply. Genichiro repeated the noise. “We’ll search every inch, my lord. I’ll report back as soon as I know the castle is clear.” He raced off and Genichiro finally slipped into the kitchens.

He’d reasoned that the kitchens were so utilitarian and pedestrian that the Ministry would never expect to find the General of Ashina and the Divine Child of Rejuvenation hidden quietly inside.

Only a man and a woman were inside, working quietly when he entered. He ignored their shocked yelps and went past them to the back of the room. He tucked them out of sight in one corner and set Yumiko down gently. He froze, then, suddenly unsure of his own intentions. He stood motionless for a time, considering all his options, before finally, achingly slowly, lowering himself to sit beside her.

He doubted his presence could ever be a comfort anymore, but her safety was a higher priority.

Though, once he settled, Yumiko latched onto his arm and started to cry into his shirt.

He stiffened. After some deliberation, he curled his arm around her side. She didn’t react, so Genichiro simply stayed still. She wept for a short while until her breathing started to even out again. Genichiro retracted his arm when she released it, giving her more space. He heard the rustle of fabric as she wiped her face on her sleeve.

“It’s pretty foolish, I guess,” Yumiko said, voice strained. “I...I can’t even die, and yet I’m so afraid.” She gave a wet, self deprecating laugh. “I can’t even fathom how you and Wolf can go into battle and face so much danger as fearlessly as you do. I could never do something like that.” He thought he heard her wringing her hands.

In the back of his mind, he thought he and Wolf were the worst possible examples for an assertion like that, given that they also couldn’t die. Mostly, he thought that she shouldn’t see battle as the sole measure of value, that she could be strong in other ways. Most of all, he thought it was natural for her to care for her own life and to fear when it was threatened. Never forget to fear for your life, it keeps you human, he wanted to tell her. He was the fool, for having forgotten it.

Out loud, he did nothing but wheeze sadly.

She started to sniffle again and Genichiro’s chest tightened uncomfortably. He barely knew how to comfort a child before, and having had his head chopped off hardly made it easier. Unable to say anything, he instead tried to strain his sense of black and red. Non living things were incredibly difficult for Genichiro to sense, but he hoped he could find what he was looking for. They were in the kitchens after all.

Finally, he thought he found it. Even though he couldn’t eat anymore, food did have a certain sort of energy. Rice, he guessed from the very faint flickering black. He rose to his feet.

“Don’t-!” Yumiko yelped, stopping Genichiro in his tracks. He felt her flare of fear sink away. In a tiny, uncertain voice- “...leave.”

He turned to her and made a hesitant gesture for her to stay there, then pointed to where he meant to go just a few yards away. When she didn’t object further, he cautiously made his way there, feeling around for anything in the way. He reached on top of the table, grunting when he slammed his fingers into the edge on the first attempt. Then, groping around, he found the food. Two onigiri, likely forgotten in the rush of dinner. He grabbed them and returned to Yumiko, holding them out to her.

“Oh,” she murmured. He pulled his hand back once he felt her take the rice balls. “Thank you.” Her voice still sounded thick, but he heard her start to eat.

Genichiro’s grasp on people’s emotions was a fragmentary thing. He could track fear the best, the rest was far from certain. And yet, as Yumiko slowly ate the onigiri, he felt her frantic, whirling emotions settle into something calmer. And somehow, somehow, Genichiro felt himself relaxing with her.

It wasn’t by much, but it felt like everything.

“Thank you,” she said again when she had finished. “They were very good... And thank you for protecting me, as well.”

Genichiro almost nodded before he stopped himself. The poor girl was already distressed, he didn’t need to emphasize his severed neck like that. Instead, he made a low, even noise, as even as he could, at least, to acknowledge her words. A poor attempt to tell her that he would always do all he could to make her feel safe in his castle.

It was, after all, why he defended Ashina so rabidly. After Isshin adopted him from his old life, stalked by poverty and death, Ashina was the first place he had ever felt so secure. A home unlike any he’d had before. Ashina gave him a place to grow into something we could have never imagined without having to worry if everything might fall apart around him the next day. And in return for that gift, Genichiro would fight for her with everything he had.

He loathed the Interior Ministry for trying to rip that away, not only from him, but from everyone else who longed to make Ashina their home in peace.

“Umm,” Yumiko broke into his thoughts hesitantly. “C-can I...” she trailed off and shuffled closer to him. She brushed his arm and he stilled, uncertain of her intentions. That was, until she set her hands on his leg and started to leverage herself onto him.

The move startled him so much that he didn’t even think to stop her. She clambered into his lap and squirmed for a moment until she felt comfortable. She was so small compared to him that when she leaned her head against him, it only rested at the middle of his chest. Once she was settled, Genichiro couldn’t bring himself to move her. He sat very stiffly for a time, unsure where to put his arms. Eventually, he let one rest at his side and set his other hand loosely on Yumiko’s back. She hummed softly at the move, sounding content.

A few minutes later and she was asleep.

It was very late at night (at least, Genichiro thought it was) and she had just endured a very stressful attack. It only made sense for her to be exhausted. It was no surprise, then, that she might fall asleep, even in Genichiro’s company. She was just too tired for his abhorrence to register. It made sense. Best to let her sleep without disturbance while she could.

So he did, for however much time.

He sensed Wolf’s approach a few moments before his arrival.

It seemed to take him a few moments to spot them in the corner, at which point he quickly made his way to them. “You found a good place to hide,” he noted softly, stopping in front of them. “Shume asked me to report to you.”

Genichiro remained silent, uneager to disturb Yumiko. Wolf paused, then dropped into a crouch before continuing. Perhaps he felt awkward talking down to him. Though, whether that was from the reversal of their usual statuses (and statures) or reluctance to see his wound so clearly, he didn’t know.

“No one else has entered the castle. The Nightjar have done a sweep of the outside and found no one. They’re searching the rest of the buildings now.” He felt Wolf’s attention flick to Yumiko. “Servants have been sent to take care of the body, but I doubt they’re done yet.”

Just as well. It wasn’t as if Genichiro was itching to get back to sleep.

He heard Wolf huff, but nothing else. He got the feeling that he had more on his mind, but he seemed disinclined to share it. Hoping to prompt him, Genichiro shifted his free arm and flicked his fingers inwards. The silence remained and he almost repeated the gesture, thinking Wolf hadn’t seen it, when he spoke up again.

“I think this was a kidnapping attempt,” he said, voice slow and halting. “If the Ministry has heard about Yumiko’s past- and I think they must have to motivate this attack at all- they may want to use her to make themselves undying. Attempt to, at least. And I don’t see what they would have to gain by killing her”

Genichiro nodded twice. He had reached the exact same conclusion.

Still speaking softly so as to not rouse her, Wolf added, “Tomorrow, I’ll request that Yumiko share Lord Kuro’s sleeping quarters so that I can watch over them both. It wouldn’t surprise me if the Ministry tried something like this again.”

That seemed...reasonable. Wolf was more than strong and capable and he had already adjusted to defending the Divine Heir. The two kids got along well, Yumiko would have no reason to refuse. If anything, they would likely be thrilled at the opportunity to stay up gossiping together. And with Genichiro’s sleeplessness, he would just keep the girl awake if he took it on himself to guard her. It was a practical solution.

And yet, Genichiro was glad Wolf intended to wait until tomorrow to implement it.

“I’m glad you were there tonight,” Wolf surprised him by murmuring. This was more than Genichiro had ever heard the man say. He wondered if a one sided conversation was easier to have. “I don’t want her to suffer. I don’t know what I would do, if my choice to bring her here only served to bring her into harm’s way.”

Wolf leaned in to shift Yumiko’s hair away from her face softly. She stirred and he paused until she settled back into her slumber. His hand brushed Genichiro’s own as he retreated.

Wolf’s tenderness stunned him. He truly cared for this child. It made him ponder what truly bound him to the Divine Heir. If the shinobi code didn’t tie him to Kuro, would he still go to the same lengths for him? He wondered what it might reveal about Wolf, had his duties and desires not aligned so nicely.

With jarring abruptness, Genichiro suddenly remembered that they hadn’t. He had heard Emma mention, only briefly, that Wolf had killed his father to defend Lord Kuro from him. The great shinobi Owl had come to claim the Dragon’s Heritage for himself and Wolf cut him down for it. He had defied the core of the shinobi code, the crux of his training, to protect Kuro.

Unseen, his lips twisted into a grimacing smile at what a fool he was. Here Genichiro sat, wondering if Wolf might care for Kuro regardless of obligation, when he had already proved that in the fullest of measure.

In a profound sort of way, Wolf’s care for these children struck Genichiro. Wolf valued people so differently from everything Genichiro knew. He cared for who they were and not what they could provide. He cared for Kuro and Yumiko, not the Divine Heir and the Divine Child. He wasn’t after their ties to immortality.

Not like the Ministry was.

Not like Genichiro had been. When he seized Kuro and kept him captive, all for the strength of his blood.

“Thank you,” Wolf told him.

He choked on a fluttering cough as bile threatened to rise in his throat.

He felt crushingly unworthy of the gratitude.

Wolf shifted his weight. “I...could bring her back with me, if you’d prefer?” Genichiro was twisting his neck, as close to a head shake as he could manage, before he even realized it. Wolf hummed. “I suppose it’s best she stays hidden for tonight,” he allowed and gratefulness swept through Genichiro.

“I’ll tell Shume to report to you in the morning.” He stood. Wolf’s breath stuttered as if he wanted to say something more, but he left without another word.

Genichiro remained.

Distinctly rattled, he eased his weight back against the wall. He tracked Yumiko’s peaceful breathing with a feeling he couldn’t identify. She slumbered, unaware, until Shume found them in what Genichiro could only assume was the morning.

Back to the bloody grind. Wolf had long since run out of shurikens.

Judging by the pincushioned appearance of many of the corpses, he guessed that Genichiro had also run out of arrows.

They had pushed the worst of the fighting out of the castle grounds a while back. The two armies now clashed in the field just outside the castle gate. Earlier battles had already ravaged the place, but it ensured that no other buildings were damaged in the conflict. The outskirts were already in rough shape, no reason to put the surviving structures at further risk.

Each battle the Ashina killed the Interior Ministry men and forced those who they didn’t kill to retreat. Each battle the Ministry sent new soldiers. Rinse and repeat.

Wolf wondered how long it would take for them to run out of fodder.

They hadn’t yet. Wolf faced a gunman he’d managed to reach in the back of their army. He’d sought him out to stop him from picking off the Ashina forces. The man noticed his approach and exchanged his rifle for a sword and he used it well.

Wolf stood in a dangerous place on the field. To escape unscathed, he needed to end this fight sooner rather than later. He hadn’t used it in combat before but Wolf readied his sword. After a preparatory breath, Wolf launched himself into a Floating Passage attack. The text he had exchanged for carp scales was too archaic and obscure for Wolf to make full sense of. Only now that he’d had the chance to watch Genichiro perform the combat art many times over did Wolf feel confident in his abilities.

The flurry overwhelmed the gunman. His posture collapsed and Wolf ended him with the final strike. Several more soldiers had begun to converge on him, but Wolf grappled out of range before any could reach him. He dropped back to the ground at the Ashina line and took a moment to compose himself.

A soldier lunged at him with a howl. Wolf was ready. Back to the bloody grind.

The soldier didn’t stay standing for long, but plenty still remained to take his place.

The battlefield was a riotous place. Endless screeches of metal ripped through the air, punctuating the sounds of death. Gunshots, flame jets, and cannon fire clambered for attention, all harbingering their unique destructions. To manage his sensitive hearing in the thick of battle, Wolf had to purposefully ignore most all of the sound. Listen only to the things nearby; his other senses could tend with the dangers from afar.

These battles of war were different than the isolated duels Wolf was accustomed to. He still hadn’t adjusted to hearing words while fighting, orders bellowed across the field. They drew his ear now as they always did.

“Enough! Cut him down!” The shout rang from behind the Ministry line.

It distracted the soldier facing him down and Wolf took the opportunity to finish him off. He swung around, then, looking for what the order could imply. It took several moments to spot it.

The pale slips of paper drifting down led his eyes to the first spark of purple. The Red Guard hefted his swords now enhanced by the Divine Confetti. Then another to Wolf’s right, then a third behind the first two. Ghostly violet flames licked over the blades of the three soldiers as they advanced on their target.

Wolf’s chest tightened in fear.

The Interior Ministry had gone so long without using the Confetti that Wolf had convinced himself that they wouldn’t. Either they couldn’t get any or perhaps they didn’t realize its use against the headless. It was obvious, now, that they had stockpiled as much as they could for a simultaneous attack. A desperate attempt to destroy the headless general who had plagued their army so ruthlessly.

Wolf’s only comfort, as he turned to that general, was that he could clearly sense the danger. Genichiro pulled back into a defensive stance, angling himself towards the new threats.

“Kill them!” Tenzen roared somewhere amongst the Ashina forces.

Wolf used his grapple to launch himself at the nearest Red Guard. The other two converged on Genichiro. The Ashina surged to follow the order but the Ministry had clearly prepared for this assault. Their remaining soldiers pushed back hard, preventing them from reaching their lord and ensuring the warrior’s their opportunity.

It was smart, Wolf spared a moment to think venomously. Powerful and tireless as Genichiro was, he often pushed deep into the Ministry’s line. Waiting until he went far enough to cut him off, then arming multiple soldiers with Divine Confetti was very clever. The Red Guard in front of him tried to shove by to reach his target, but Wolf was not so easily outmaneuvered.

They clashed more savagely than the battle had yet seen, fighting with nothing in reserve. The high stakes pushed them both to their limits. With single minded intensity, the Red Guard fought to reach and kill Genichiro and Wolf fought to prevent precisely that. The man whirled his blades through the air with wicked intensity; each deflection jarred Wolf’s arms. The twin swords were difficult to contend with. The Red Guard took full use of the advantage, attacking twice as much as Wolf could. It commanded all of his attention.

He couldn’t see Genichiro and it bothered him more than he ever would have anticipated. The man might have already fallen, the Ministry might have already finished the bloody work his decapitation began but he didn’t know. The Divine Confetti might prevent the Rejuvenating Sediment from working again, or they might have found some other way to kill him for good, but Wolf didn’t know.

That single shout cast Genichiro’s fate in horrible uncertainty and Wolf was unprepared for the effect it would have on him.

A well timed Mikiri Counter gave Wolf an opportunity he didn’t take. Instead, he started to turn. He just needed a glance, just one, just to be sure-

Hesitation is defeat, Isshin’s voice sounded in his ear as he died.

Maybe the desperate nature of their fight made the Red Guard forget, or maybe he never knew about Wolf’s power, or maybe it was just dumb luck, but he didn’t wait for Wolf to rise again. He stepped over his corpse, rushing towards Genichiro. When the power of the Dragon’s Heritage lifted Wolf back to his feet, he never saw Kusabimaru until it killed him, running him through from front to back.

His gaze finally found what it sought. One soldier kneeled, wounded. The other still stood. The blessings of the Divine Confetti still blazed along their swords. And Genichiro...was turning towards Wolf even as he turned to him.

Whatever part of Wolf’s duel had distracted him was irrelevant. The Red Guard lunged at Genichiro’s abdomen. Wolf’s rough, wordless shout gave him just enough warning to twist aside, staggering back. The sword ripped just wide of his hip, slicing through the outer layers of his clothes. Red and gold cloth unfurled from the gash even as Wolf raced forward to join the fray.

He almost faltered when the next blow landed.

Its needlessness struck Wolf the hardest. He had spent long duels fighting against the Lord, and longer battles fighting alongside him. Too long to believe that Genichiro couldn’t have avoided that blow. Blocked it, deflected it, anything, but he didn’t.

Instead, Genichiro lurched to the side, towards the strike. With a desperation Wolf didn’t understand, he swayed the blade from its course by trapping it between his own arm and side. When the Red Guard pulled back, it cut deep just under his ribcage. A sheet of blood followed the sword back in the air.

Almost by chance, Wolf saw Genichiro grab at the unraveling folds of his clothes. The shift cost his remaining balance and he fell to one knee.

The injured soldier gathered the last of his strength to claim the chance. The soldier still on his feet seemed taken aback; he paused for a heartbeat before preparing a final blow as well. It wouldn’t be enough, the distance was still too great to end them both in time, but Wolf prepared a burst of speed anyway.

The air pressure dropped, ozone filled the air, his hair stood on end, and Wolf had to fight his every last instinct to keep moving.

Wolf pulled the injured man back with his sword mere inches shy of Genichiro’s chest. He buried his katana in his neck with relief and satisfaction.

The other man didn’t stand a chance at such a close range. The bolt of lightning had barely left Genichiro’s sword when it took him full in the chest. His body seized and collapsed in the deafening echoes of thunder.

Genichiro staggered upright and backed away several steps. His posture was more defensive and furious than Wolf had ever seen it. He struck then, a savage cut that opened the front of the man’s throat with a spray of blood, different from the clean deathblows Wolf had come to expect from Genichiro. It didn’t matter. It ended the Red Guard before he could recover from the shock.

Though, judging by the power of that lightning, that would have required quite the feat.

A despairing cry went up from a Ministry soldier. Several started to retreat with halting steps. The failure of the attack made for a perfect blow to the soldiers’ morale. The Ashina men began to push the Ministry back, invigorated by the victory and, more importantly, gave Wolf and Genichiro the chance to pull back for the time being.

And a very important victory it was. The Divine Confetti had done its work. Hot, red blood spilt from Genichiro’s side, the wound clearly worse than any other a sword had inflicted on him since his beheading. The blood still entranced Wolf, proof that, all evidence to the contrary, Genichiro was alive. His heart still beat. All the more important, then, that they had stopped the Ministry before they could have done more damage.

It was too close, Wolf thought, trying to catch his breath. Much too close. What had Genichiro been thinking, throwing himself into a strike like that?

Wolf looked at him. He had his arm clamped over his wound, but his hand still grasped the fabric at his waist.

There...had to be something there, he concluded. Something worth protecting. Genichiro wouldn’t do something like that for any other reason.

That thought clicked something into place in Wolf’s mind. 

Because it was true. Protection drove Genichiro, it gave him his strength. It was clearer now, more than ever. Power of the Sediment aside, it took an uncommon man to stand up and keep fighting without a head. It demanded unparalleled passion and Genichiro’s passion was for protection. Of Ashina- her lands and her people, certainly, but Wolf now saw something else. It started with the way he’d defended Yumiko, and now this.

It was more than his responsibility to Ashina, as Wolf would have said before. It was something deeper; an innate instinct to protect what he cared about. It resonated with a part of Wolf that felt exactly the same way.

And Genichiro excelled at it. Ashina would be ashes without him. Yumiko would be gone without him. And this...

What had he been protecting this time? Surprising himself, he almost asked before he remembered that Genichiro couldn’t respond anyway. He leveled his gaze at him as if he could pull out the answers by staring alone.

He turned and Wolf got a good look at the cloth. The way he pulled the severed fabric tight clearly confirmed Wolf suspicions. Something was obviously wrapped inside. Under normal circumstances, Wolf would have guessed that it was a gourd, much like the one he used for medicine. But it couldn’t be. There’s no reason for Genichiro to protect a gourd so ferociously, or to even keep one on his person considering he couldn’t drink at all anymore. That couldn’t be it.

Something about that size though, and rounded enough to create such a lump in the clothes.

Wolf went still. It couldn’t be...except it could. If Genichiro had recovered it, then very possibly...

He suspected but he didn’t know

If it was, it could have enormous implications or it could mean nothing at all. It could make a difference in Genichiro’s fate, which he had presumed doomed all this time, but Wolf didn’t know.

There was a more pressing threat to his fate, however, that needed his attention at the moment.

“May I look?” Wolf asked cautiously, looking at Genichiro. A moment passed where he did nothing and Wolf started to think he would refuse to let him inspect his wound. Then he lifted his arm away from the laceration and let Wolf approach. He shifted the blood soaked clothes to see clearer. The clean cut looked thin, but Wolf knew from experience that it ran deeper than it appeared. A draught from Emma’s healing gourd would likely do a lot of good, but of course, Genichiro couldn’t drink it. There was nothing Wolf could do.

Without thought, Wolf gently touched just above the gash. The warmth of his skin spread through his fingertips, yet another difference. The headless were cold. Above him, an almost whine sounded from Genichiro.

“Fucking rat cowards!” Wolf flinched and retracted his hand. Tenzen had pulled away from the battle and approached them. He panted loudly even as he bared his teeth in a snarl. “Thinking we would go down to a few scraps of confetti, bah!” he seethed.

We, Wolf noticed, even though Genichiro was the only one attacked. He didn’t just bear the name of Ashina, it seemed, but also manifested the well being of the country as a whole. Wolf wondered how heavily that weighed.

“How does he look?” Tenzen directed at Wolf, catching him off guard for a moment.

“Ah, it’s not life threatening,” as the phrase left his lips he wondered if it could ever apply to Genichiro, “but it needs attention.” He turned to address the general. “You should go and have Emma see to it.” Tenzen grunted and nodded.

Genichiro drew out a low noise. It didn’t sound happy.

Tenzen barked out a rough laugh. “Don’t worry! The Ministry is more than a bit distraught that their little ploy failed. It’ll be easy for us to rout the rest of them as you get patched up. It’d be worse if your wounds put you out of commission.” Genichiro turned back to the fighting and seemed to assess the condition of the battle for a minute. Then he grunted and turned to the castle.

“Right.” Tenzen clapped his hands together. “Come on then, shinobi, we need you.” Wolf jolted and ripped his gaze from Genichiro to Tenzen then back again. He opened his mouth but didn’t know what he wanted to say.

Genichiro waved a dismissive hand in his direction and turned away. Wolf longed to follow him, to ensure his safety, but instead he turned back to Tenzen and managed to force himself to follow the man. He cast several backwards glances at Genichiro as he retreated towards the castle.

Still remembering the words of Lord Isshin, Wolf did everything he could to direct his focus to the ongoing battle. It was a good thing that the most threatening members of the Ministry forces were now dead, because the distraction lingered in the back of Wolf’s mind all the while.

Shume Oniwa sat at the head of the table. Genichiro loomed over his right shoulder. Wolf shadowed his left.

At the other end of the table sat Kitawano Shimataka, the leader of the Interior Ministry. Behind him stood his two chosen lieutenants.

Genichiro wanted to rip them all to shreds.

But that was not what they were here to do. After butchering the Ministry on the field yet again, they had finally requested a meeting. They were prepared to negotiate a peace treaty, they said. Finally, they wanted to make their last crushing defeat their final one. Genichiro might have been surprised how long it took to bring Kitawano to this point, but he supposed it was easy for the man to delude himself about the horrors bearing down on his army.

He did not lead like Genichiro or any of his generals led. He didn’t command his troops on the battlefield. He didn’t fight on the battlefield at all. His cowardice kept him safe from the pain, injury, and death his men faced each time he ordered them against Genichiro and his forces.

It was the only reason he still lived.

Genichiro would have slaughtered him had he found him in battle. This man was responsible for the whole war, the one prepared to burn his way through Ashina, destroying homes and lives alike, all to claim it for himself. And here he sat, unscathed, just a few paces away from Genichiro, who was anything but.

He flexed his fingers and stifled his bloodlust.

“There’s no point in dragging this out any longer.” Shume said. “Let’s begin.”

It would have been Genichiro heading the negotiations, but he had to trust him in this. They’d discussed it. Shume, aloud, and Genichiro with ink on paper. He had never bothered to use that before, perhaps out of a sense of despondence, but the importance of the situation demanded it. His writing had likely been abysmal, considering that he couldn’t see any of it, but apparently muscle memory had served well enough. Together, he and Shume had spent long hours to reach an agreement on what to demand of this treaty.

Because they would be demanding. The Ministry had already lost. They were in no place to request any allowances from them.

As negotiations continued, Kitawano seemed increasingly unhappy with this.

“Surely,” he interjected, “if you would allow us some of the land in the south, it would help us support our people.” He spread his palms in a gesture of false sincerity. “Those lands are fertile and the food would make a great difference to us.”

“You razed those lands,” Shume reminded him callously. “We must wait for the land to recover before it can be planted again. Because of what you did.”

“Indeed, I do not deny that nor would ever think to make any excuses for it,” He simpered with an air of remorse. Genichiro would have spit if he could. “But we would hate if hunger drove us into conflict once more. If we can’t find a place that can support us without your help, harsh winters or drought summers might make us desperate. It’s hard to watch your kith and kin starve when your neighbors table is bountiful.”

He felt anger rise up in Shume “Think before you make threats, Shimataka.” His voice was cold as ice and sharp as steel. “Surely you’ve learned by now what will happen if you turn against us again. We’ll end you. You’ve already lost. You’ll have no land from us; we owe you nothing.”

“That is...unfortunate,” Kitawano intoned, abandoning his previous air of deference. “I cannot force you into anything; I’m only sorry that you refuse to see things from our perspective.”

Shume hummed deeply but didn’t comment. Genichiro thought of several biting retorts he might have voiced, but of course, he didn’t need to try to hold his tongue.

And so, deliberations continued.

Eventually, they finished laying out all that Shume and Genichiro had planned. Kitawano, of course, had no choice but to agree, but by this point, he could feel the chagrin building underneath the man’s skin. As things stood, Genichiro estimated that the treaty wouldn’t last more than five years before the Ministry attacked again. Even now, his thirst for rebellion grew.

Kitawano was smart enough to make no show of it, however. Instead, he bowed his head to them. “Thank you for your generosity and willingness to treat with us. I’m pleased we could find peace without further bloodshed. I hope it shall last for many long and prosperous years. We will honor the treaty.”

Finally, Genichiro stepped forward, right up to the table. He unsheathed his sword.

The Ministry men grasped for the hilts of their own blades but neither of their hands reached them. Not when Genichiro summoned forth his Terror stronger than he ever had before. They all froze. It rolled over the room like a suffocating miasma; he felt it sink its jaws into the hearts of each and every one of them.

It brought him grim satisfaction.

But it couldn’t compare to the satisfaction he felt from Kitawano’s spike of fear when he leveled his sword at his neck.

He held his blade with inhuman stillness. The threat hung in the air, as heavy as it was silent. For a moment, nothing moved. No one breathed. Even the black and red went motionless.

Genichiro shifted his weight, closing the hair’s breadth that remained between his blade and his skin. With unerring precision, he made a single cut into the front of his throat. Less than an inch long and so shallow that it did not shed a single drop of blood. But Kitawano felt it. All of the Interior Ministry felt it. Genichiro knew.

There’s already one headless corpse in the room. There could be two. I could get my revenge. Don’t forget. Never forget.

Then he pulled back.

In the silence of the room, the slide of his sword as he resheathed it was hair raising. He let his Terror slip away like water through a half closed drain. Agonizingly slow. No one interrupted, everyone waited until the feeling was gone, until the air felt breathable again.

When the last dregs of Terror sank away, its stark absence was even more chilling. The men stirred as if waking from a harrowing nightmare. Kitawano released a single, aching breath; after everything, it sounded incredibly loud.

He lifted a hand to the cut in his neck. It hovered there for a moment before it lowered again.

“We will honor the treaty,” Kitawano said again. This time Genichiro believed it.

He rose from his chair and bowed deeply to them. Then he turned and left the room, two lieutenants trailing behind him.

Shume released a long breath and slumped back into his chair. “I admit,” he started, sounding tired now, “it worried me when you didn’t say how you planned to hold them to such an agreement. But that was...well played.”

“You planned for that?” Wolf spoke up for the first time. Genichiro made his affirmative noise. “That was smart.” The impressed tone of Wolf’s voice surprised him. “I think the Ministry will hold to this treaty as long as Kitawano still lives and leads them.”

“Agreed.” Shume released a loud sigh, this time sounding like shedding a great burden. “Peace has returned to Ashina at last! Rebuilding will take a long time yet, but for now, this is cause for celebration. I believe our stores are comfortable enough for a feast, we should have that arranged. For now, I need to announce the good news to our people.”

He bowed quickly then left the room, feeling lighter than he did when he entered.

Genichiro remained.

Wolf also remained.

He felt uncharacteristically scrutinized as he felt Wolf’s attention fixed on him. More than ever, Genichiro wished he still had the words to break the silence. After what felt like a lifetime, Wolf finally said, “Would you like to come with me to inform Lord Kuro and Yumiko about the treaty?”

Whatever Genichiro had expected him to say, it wasn’t that. It took him a long moment to process the question, but Wolf waited patiently. Then he nodded and moved around the chair.

Wolf tread quietly out of the room.

Genichiro followed.

One week had passed since the signing of the treaty and the end of the war. Already, Ashina started to recover.

Rebuilding had begun. The task was daunting after all that had happened, but the men took it in stride. Leveled buildings rose faster than Wolf thought possible, the injured were healing steadily, and the air tasted fresher than it had in months. It was novel to Wolf, so accustomed to war and so unused to the peace that could follow it.

The celebrations had ended a few days ago. At first, Wolf privately condemned the feasts that Shume insisted upon. He saw them as a useless waste of resources that they would need later. Once they occurred, however, Wolf was forced to recognize their value. The festivities allowed everyone, swallowed for months in the turmoil of war, to change their state of mind. Men gripped by rage, exhaustion, and grief the day before started drinking and laughing and rejoicing together. The celebrations gave the people of Ashina the morale they desperately needed. It brought some life back to everyone.

Save for one.

No one had seen anything of Genichiro Ashina since the treaty. For a short time Wolf had wondered where exactly he’d gone until he discovered that he’d retreated into his room. Wolf didn’t enter, no one had, but they could feel him.

Now that the battles had ended and the people were celebrating, the grim, dark emotions radiating from Genichiro were starkly apparent. Just standing outside his door, one could feel the pain and despair coming in waves from the room, seeping through the walls and sliding through the cracks. It had worsened to the point that everyone in the castle avoided the hall at all costs, preferring circuitous routes rather than go by their lord.

So Wolf didn’t know what had drawn him here.

Genichiro had likely already sensed him standing in front of his door, but he heard nothing from within the room. He wanted to enter, to see him again, but he wouldn’t know how to explain his presence. He couldn’t even explain it to himself. There was certainly nothing he could do to improve Genichiro’s situation, no matter how much he might want to. He likely wouldn’t be able to ease his pain either.

Wolf lifted a hand and knocked.

Action always suited him better than deliberation.

Nothing changed. Even with his sharp ears, Wolf couldn’t hear anything through the door. He waited longer to no end. Eventually, anxiety tightening his throat, he edged the door open just a touch. When still nothing happened, he opened it fully and slipped inside.

Genichiro sat cross legged on his futon. At the sight of him, Wolf’s anxiety bled away in an instant. He realized he had no obligation to explain himself because Genichiro had no way to demand him to. Perhaps it was taking advantage of the circumstances, but Wolf relaxed enormously at the thought that he couldn’t be questioned by the general.

He refused to question himself either as he closed the door then sat down opposite Genichiro.

He still did nothing, but Wolf had seen him turn in his direction when he’d entered and follow him as he’d walked into the room. He was well aware of his presence.

The swath of red fabric he wore at his waist had been pulled loose and now sat in his lap; it caught Wolf’s eye. The way it laid convinced him further that something was hidden away inside, but he didn’t know. Not for sure. He did nothing to interrupt as they both sat in still silence for a long while.

Eventually, Genichiro started fiddling with the frayed edges of the fabric. The motion seemed more idle than nervous. Wolf watched. More time passed.

“Is that...your head?”

Long minutes passed where nothing changed. So long that Wolf assumed that Genichiro refused to answer. Then he stirred.

Without a sound, he shuffled through the red fabric. He gently pushed the folds aside until Wolf could see waves of dark hair. Then the edge of an ear, the gore of his neck, the line of his jaw. Wolf watched, entranced, as Genichiro uncovered his own head, just as he’d suspected.

Once freed from the cloth, Genichiro lifted it from his inside lap to just beyond it, up against his crossed legs. His face was turned to the ceiling and his long, matted hair splayed out across the floor. He kept his hands on his cheeks for several long moments before slowly pulling back. For just a heartbeat, his eyes, still burning crimson, opened and met Wolf’s, red rimmed and unfocused. Then he squeezed them shut, brow pinched deeply.

Tears escaped his eyelids and rolled down his cheeks.

It perturbed Wolf, how silent it was. Genichiro cried without a hitched breath, a whine or moan, a wheezing gasp. The unnaturalness of it unnerved him. Simply silent tears and waves of sorrow. It felt so solemn and sad, Wolf’s heart twisted in his chest. No one deserved this. He wanted...to do something.

Without waiting to think twice, Wolf leaned in and set his palms on Genichiro’s cheeks. Immediately, he made a broken little sound. His fingers jerked, but when he made no move to stop him, he brushed his thumbs over the damp of his tears, drying his sorrow. More spilled out to take their place, but Wolf didn’t let it bother him. He soothed those over as well.

After a little while, Genichiro shuffled his fingers then reached out to grab Wolf’s wrist. He almost pulled back with an apology before the nature of the touch registered. His hold was loose, limp, uninterested in pulling him away. The pads of his fingers rested tenderly on the inside of his wrist. The other hand quickly followed, mirroring the grip on Wolf’s other arm. His fingers curled around the bone of his prosthetic. He would never have guessed such a contact could feel so intimate.

It felt strange. It felt right.

For a while longer, Wolf just let his fingers wander gently. Genichiro’s hands followed wherever his traveled. His crying did not stop; he periodically made sad, mangled whines. Wolf wished he could do more.

An idea occurred to him and he looked around the room.

A small table with a drawer in the corner caught his eye. He gently pulled his hands from Genichiro’s grasp and stood. He went stiff and huffed in response. “Wait,” Wolf murmured and walked to the table. He pulled open the drawer. With a little shuffling and a bit of luck, he found what he wanted.

He picked up the comb and returned to Genichiro.

As soon as he reached his hands out again, Genichiro reclaimed his grip on his wrists. Wolf returned one hand to his cheek, but the other, holding the comb, skimmed his hair. It was disastrously tangled. Fortunately, even the ends near his neck seemed free of blood; he must have taken the chance to rinse it out at some point. It was the only good thing he could say. Clearly, the time spent hidden inside the red fabric had not done his hair any favors.

Wolf moved in close enough that his knee touched his head to help keep it steady. Then he gently grasped at the roots of his hair and ran the comb through the rest.

The mats stopped him after barely an inch, but Wolf was patient. He kept his grip at the base steady so it wouldn’t pull on Genichiro’s scalp when he tugged at the tangles. He slowly coaxed them loose, freeing the comb for another pass whenever it pulled too hard. Eventually, he could run it from the base through the ends smoothly. He did so several times before separating out a new chunk.

Wolf repeated the process.

The mindless rhythm of the task soothed him. It felt good to use his hands for something no more serious than untangling hair. It was so different from the violence that had filled the last couple months; it put his mind at ease. It reminded him, in a way, of his rituals of cleaning his weapons. Kusabimaru, the Shinobi Prosthetic, the grapple, the Flame Vent, the shurikens, and everything else, all religiously cleaned and cared for. Yet it also felt different. With his tools, the cleaning took priority. Now, it was the caring for that mattered most.

It was what Genichiro needed most.

Soon, the crying stopped. The furrow in his brow loosened and his countenance relaxed. Genichiro’s arms moved limply, tracing after all of Wolf’s movements. After a time, he began to rub little circles in the side of his wrists, flesh and metal, with his thumbs. A faint whine edged each of his exhales.

The feeling around him had changed. Not improved, exactly, but transformed nonetheless. The pain that had radiated from Genichiro was gone, exposing what lay beneath. It was grief and resignation, poignant sorrow. More than anything, it felt...vulnerable. So vulnerable. Like a raw nerve exposed to the open air. Wolf spared a moment to brush his knuckles across Genichiro’s cheekbone. His lips parted slightly in response.

After a while, he could smoothly pull the comb through all the hair on the side. As tenderly as he could, Wolf shifted his head until Genichiro’s face rested against his own calf and Wolf could reach the back of his hair. Genichiro made no objection, maintaining his mild grip on Wolf’s wrists. The knots were even worse here but he was not deterred. If anything, Wolf relaxed at the thought that he would have no reason to leave any time soon.

He restarted the rhythm of teasing them out, the gentle rasp of the comb filling the quiet room.

As time wore on Genichiro’s body relaxed more than Wolf had ever seen it. As he held onto Wolf even as Wolf moved through his hair, his body started to sway ever so slightly, following the push and pull of the motions. Wolf knew he didn’t sleep anymore; he couldn’t imagine what it must feel like to constantly command your body with no chance to rest. It had clearly worn on Genichiro. When the tension bled from him, it left exhaustion in its wake.

Wolf finished with the hair in the back. He ran his fingers through it a few times before gently picking up the head and turning it around to reach the other side.

He started at the front and steadily worked his way back. His hand slipped once and he tugged on the comb much harder than he meant to. It didn’t seem to bother Genichiro who didn’t react save for slightly wrinkling his nose. Unwilling to break the silence, Wolf petted his hair for a moment in way of an apology.

Genichiro still hadn’t opened his eyes again. Wolf wondered if he could see anymore.

Some time later, Wolf suddenly realized he’d finished brushing out the last bit of tangled hair. He couldn’t guess how long he’d been there; he’d stopped paying attention long ago. He looked over Genichiro’s neat hair with a feeling of...disappointment, almost. He’d completed his task but he had no desire to leave.

He combed through his hair with broader, quicker strokes to check that he hadn’t missed anything. He hadn’t. It could still use a wash, but Genichiro’s hair was fully untangled. The slight waves shone where they curled around Wolf’s fingers.

Genichiro released his right wrist and pulled his fingers through his own hair, blackened skin blending in with the dark locks. He felt around and easily combed through places where hopeless mats had been before. After a few moments, he brought his hand back but moved it higher, holding the top of Wolf’s forearm and resting his thumb in the crook of his elbow.

There was longing in that grasp. Wolf understood it. Longing for connection, peace, and comfort, all the things that he’d been robbed of. Wolf wished he could give it. He wanted to give it.

“I want to help,” Wolf told him, the beginnings of a plan forming in his mind. “I will come back.” He stood, pulling away from Genichiro. He made no attempt to stop him but his hands trailed after him, lingering in the air before lowering back to his sides. He turned to Wolf as he stepped around him to the door then quietly exited.

Wolf paused there for a moment in the empty hallway.

Dizziness swept over him for a moment as he reoriented himself. That room with Genichiro had felt isolated and untethered to the rest of the world. Somehow, stepping out into the hall to find it just the same as it had been before felt strange. He wandered down it until he reached the window at the end

Wolf peered outside. He saw that the last dying light of day was starting to fade, the sun long gone beneath the line of the horizon. He ought to get dinner while he still could.

Instead, he turned and went up the stairs.

When he arrived at the upper floor of the castle, Lord Kuro sat in his customary spot reading a book. Several feet away, Yumiko sat folding an origami piece that had yet to take shape. She looked up and smiled at him as he entered. Kuro glanced at him then watched more attentively as Wolf approached him. He knelt when he reached him.

“My lord, I have a request to make of you,” Wolf said.

There was a pause where Wolf realized that Kuro was staring at him with undisguised shock. He composed himself a moment later and said, still with an edge of surprise in his voice, “Of course, Wolf, what is it?”

He took a moment to gather his thoughts. He was hardly asking for something small. “I wanted to ask you to consider delaying the ritual for Immortal Severance a little longer.” Kuro had already held off on his plans during the war to ensure that Wolf’s life was not in danger. After the signing of the treaty, he had started talking about it again. They had all of the materials ready at any time. And yet...

“I fear that if we complete the ritual now, Lord Genichiro will die.”

Kuro flinched and looked away. He released a heavy breath. “That thought occurred to me as well,” he admitted quietly, “but I’m not sure there’s anything we can do about it. I fear that Immortal Severance will end in Lord Genichiro’s death no matter what we do. Yet he also seems deeply miserable as he is now.” Kuro squirmed where he sat. “It might be the best thing we can do.”

“I’m hoping to find an alternative, my Lord,” Wolf confessed. “I seek your permission to go through Senpou Temple. Their monks are the ones who make the sugars that use the powers of the headless spirits. I thought that if I could ever find any information that could help, it would be there. They could know more about the headless than we’ve ever known.”

Kuro made a faint noise of distress. “Maybe...but I don’t know what help it’d be. Could it really make a difference? He...he was decapitated,” he finished, upset.

“Forgive me, my lord,” Wolf stated, “but Genichiro still has his head.”

The silence was deafening.

He saw Yumiko put down her papercraft and focus on them intently. “You mean he recovered it? His head, after it was cut off?” She was staring, eyes enormous.

“Exactly.”

“You’re certain of this, Wolf?” Kuro broke in, stunned. “Without a doubt?”

“I’ve seen it clearly, my lord,” Wolf replied evenly. “I am certain.”

“And-and it wasn’t...” Kuro trailed off, searching for the words he wanted. An uncomfortable look crossed his face.

After a few moments, Wolf hazarded to say, “It seems as alive as the rest of him.” Kuro blinked at him then looked aside, humming thoughtfully, apparently satisfied by the response. He chewed his bottom lip, eyes focused on the distance.

Yumiko shuffled closer to the pair, still staring at Wolf. “With his head, do you really think that...that you could save him?” Hope gleamed in her gaze.

“I think there’s a possibility.” He couldn’t deny his own hope.

Kuro stirred then, looking over at them. He wore a curious expression that Wolf couldn’t identify. “You have my permission,” he stated, locking eyes with him. He seemed reluctant to hope yet; Wolf couldn’t blame him. He wasn’t offering anything concrete. Genichiro’s fate was still far from guaranteed.

Lord Kuro said nothing else, gave the shinobi no more orders. This time, Wolf did not need them. He knew what he had to do.

Three days passed before he returned in disgrace.

He’d scoured Mount Kongo from top to bottom, many times over. He spent hours sitting in front of bookshelves, scanning texts so old he feared they might fall apart in his hands. He read until his eyes ached from the tiny characters, from the search for anything relevant. He did find numerous mentions of the headless, even some accounts of the people who eventually became them, which would have been interesting had he not been so frustrated. This wasn’t what he needed.

He found no word that any of them had ever recovered or that any attempt had ever been made to that end. Regardless, he refused to give up yet.

Wolf had started breaking into the buildings he couldn’t access, searching for more. After far too many skirmishes and useless buildings, he actually found the place where they made the sugars. He killed the first two monks inside, then cornered the third, interrogating him. He demanded everything he knew about the headless and how they drew power from them. Almost everything he said repeated what Wolf already knew and confirmed his suspicion that Genichiro was more different than similar. All useless.

Finally, he outright asked if anything could be done to heal a headless. The monk laughed at him. He stopped when Wolf buried Kusabimaru in his chest.

Wolf had read everything in that building even more thoroughly. A spare few scraps of information peeked Wolf’s interest, but none of them lead anywhere. He gnashed his teeth in frustration. He found fascinating things, but all ultimately worthless.

Still he’d kept going.

He questioned several more priests. He combed through their temples, starting with the largest, then turning to the minor ones when those proved fruitless. The Mortal Blade, which had sat largely untouched on his back during the battles, now whirled through the undying abominations the monks had created. None of it made any difference.

It took three days for Wolf to accept that there was nothing for him here. Nothing for Genichiro. He did the best he could. The thought did nothing to ease the weight on his chest as he traveled back.

The path up the stairs to the roof took longer than Wolf ever remembered. When he entered, Lord Kuro sat near the incense burner and Yumiko and Emma sat a few feet away, talking quietly. They all looked up when Wolf came in; the childrens’ eyes shone with anticipation.

He knelt before Lord Kuro as he always did. “Well? What did you find? Anything helpful?” The thinly veiled excitement in his voice made Wolf’s heart sink even lower.

Wolf shook his head, unable to meet his master’s gaze. “Forgive me, my lord, I did not. I searched every part of Mount Kongo I could, but I couldn’t find anything. The most relevant thing I learned was that none of the men who became the headless had drunk the Rejuvenating Waters or were undying in any other way. So the nature of Genichiro’s preservation is different from theirs...but it’s of little use.” He frowned.

“Nothing else seemed helpful. Forgive me, Lord Kuro, that I could not do better,” Wolf felt compelled to say even though Kuro had not ordered him to go, even though he had left out of his own desire.

When Wolf finally looked up, Kuro was looking past him, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “It might not have all been for naught. What you learned about the Waters, I think that actually bodes well for our plan.” Wolf blinked at him in surprise. Kuro focused on him again then seemed to recognize his confusion. “Ah, well, it’s Yumiko’s plan, actually.”

The Divine Child flushed when Wolf turned to her. “It’s really just a thought that occurred to me after you left.” She wrung her hands nervously then cast a hesitant glance at Lady Emma. She nodded encouragingly to the girl.

“Well, the reason the monks had so much trouble making me- why they wanted a Divine Child at all- is because simply drinking from the Rejuvenating Waters doesn’t make someone immortal. In fact, the Waters don’t do anything until the person has already died; that’s the only time they activate, to pull them back.” Yumiko paused for a moment, pensive. “With the...connection I have with the Waters, I thought that I might be able to activate them independently. If we could get Genichiro’s head in place and I could direct the powers of the Sediment inside him, it could repair the damage that was done.”

Wolf looked to Emma in shock. “Do you really think that’s possible?”

The doctor spread her palms mildly. “I don’t know. I’m far from an expert on the Rejuvenating Waters and all its effects. All I can do is accept Yumkio’s word on that. But I do know that if Genichiro still has his head, I can examine the wound and stitch it into place if we decide to go through with the plan.” She pinned him with an even stare. “There’s not much to lose.”

Yumiko broke in nervously, “I’m really not sure if it will work; I’ve never tried anything like this before. I just...think it’s worth the attempt.”

Wolf looked down at his hands. “I agree. Genichiro-” deserves the effort, Wolf almost said before he stopped himself. He recalled the sight of Genichiro’s hair woven between his fingers. He shook his head minutely. “I agree,” he repeated. “Have any of you spoken to him about this yet?”

“Not yet,” Kuro answered. “We were waiting for you to come back to see if you discovered anything more promising.”

“Shall I go tell him?” Kuro nodded.

Wolf rose to his feet and bowed to his master. His feet carried him out of the room and down the hall faster than he intended. The next moment, he found himself standing in front of the door, feeling the emotion pulsing from behind it.

He slid the door open and returned to Genichiro, just as he’d promised.

Shume, my loyal general,

I write to inform you that Lord Kuro and his company have thought of a plan to restore me to what I once was. They believe they know a way that will make me whole again. I have decided to go through with this plan on the off chance that it might succeed. If it fails, I intend to seek a true death at the edge of the Mortal Blade.

I tell you this so that you won’t be caught off guard by either outcome. I sincerely thank you for all you’ve done in service of Ashina.

Genichiro stood calmly as he waited for Shume to read the note he’d just handed him. His sense of time was almost nonexistent now, but the silence lasted long enough that he thought he must have read it through several times. He could understand why.

He had incredibly difficulty writing that note. He’d hunched over that piece of paper for a long time before writing anything. He could still barely comprehend the outlandish plan Wolf had described to him, much less explain it to someone else. It felt unreal.

When Shume finally spoke up, he sounded similarly stunned. “Do they really believe this?” Genichiro huffed. “When do they plan to go through with this? Soon?”

A nod. “How soon? T-today?” Another nod and Genichiro pointed to the ground. “Now?” Another nod.

Silence fell between them. An almost tangible feeling of shock radiated from Shume. The pair stood motionless for a time.

Then Shume bowed. A deep, formal, devoted bow to Genichiro. “Then I shall pray for their success,” he stated firmly. Genichiro twitched in surprise. “Thank you, Lord Genichiro, for defending Ashina so tirelessly. We would have been destroyed by the Ministry long ago if not for you. That can never be repaid. Thank you.”

Genichiro stood there for a moment, stunned. Finally, he bowed back. With his rank, he did not need to, but it felt right. Shume straightened after he did. “I wish you the best of luck, then,” he said, voice low, before nodding and retreating back down the hall.

Genichiro remained motionless for some time. Eventually, he could do nothing else but go to the castle’s peak and meet whatever fate awaited him there.

Kuro, Yumiko, Emma, and Wolf were already gathered when he arrived. The tension spiked when they noticed him. The black and red pressed in on him heavier than before. “Good, you’re here, let’s get started,” he heard Lady Emma say. He approached slowly, feet thumping lightly on the wood. “There’s no point in wasting time.” He suspected that only his many years of knowing the doctor allowed him to notice the edge of anxiety in her voice.

He sat beside her. Kuro stayed apart, but Yumiko and Wolf came in closer. A tense moment of expectation passed before Genichiro reached to his side to free his head. He warred with his instincts to do it. He wanted his head as safe as possible, secret and unseen. It demanded all of his willpower to set it aside for Emma.

He’d done so Wolf, but that felt different. He couldn’t say why. The answer felt dangerously close, but he couldn’t spare any thought on that right now.

“That’s...” Emma started, but she left whatever judgment she had of his severed head unspoken. Instead, she picked it up and made to move over to her medical bag a few feet away. Genichiro hissed out a breath and seized her arm at the elbow. Emma jerked and stared at him for a moment before she seemed to understand his frustration. She settled back and asked Wolf to fetch her bag for her. He obeyed with the promptness of a man made to take orders. Or a man with a vested interest.

She refrained from moving his head any further from his reach.

She tilted it over, inspecting the wound. “At least it was a clean blow,” she murmured. “You’re lucky the infirmary isn’t demanding much of our supplies anymore; this will need all the needles I have.” Genichiro made a slight noise, confused by the idea.

“Stitches in this area are dangerous,” Emma explained, still tilting his head in her grasp. “Many crucial veins and arteries run through the neck. To ensure that I don’t go through any of them, I intend to put the needles I’ve already prepared into the top of your neck before I realign it with your body. That way, I can place them while I can still see inside the wound. I should be able to stitch the back normally, but the front...it’s not worth the risk.”

He could sense the intense scrutiny with which she examined the gash. Eventually, he heard the tiny clink as she picked up one of those needles and set it against his skin. She pushed it in expertly then left it to wait for his other half before being pushed through to complete the stitch.

The sensation was unpleasant, but was nothing compared to everything else he’d been through after losing his head.

“Did it go in right?” Wolf asked apprehensively.

“Luckily.” Genichiro huffed questioningly. “With the way that your body repels swords, we were worried we’d have difficulties doing the stitches,” Emma told him while setting the next needles into place. “Fortunately, this seems shallow enough to work properly.”

The thought hadn’t occurred to him. Genichiro wondered how exhaustively they’d studied this plan.

Silence fell over the little group as Emma continued to meticulously prepare needles around the front of his neck. The task consumed her; she carefully skirted his frail veins and the delicate edge of his throat. The rest of them could do nothing but wait. By the time she finally finished, his skin crawled and he wanted nothing more than to pull them all out, but he held himself still.

“Right then,” Emma sighed. “I need you now Wolf.” The shinobi moved in, closing the distance between them. It vividly recalled the feeling of the man sitting beside him and gently tending to his hair and Genichiro’s breath hitched. “Wait until I say,” Emma told him. “I need to align this perfectly first.”

She lowered his head until it hovered a finger’s breadth from his neck. Then she leaned in close to see properly; he could feel the warmth of her breath on his skin. The first time she tried to lower it, Genichiro jerked reflexively; the sensation was vile. “You can’t move!” Emma snapped, pulling away again. “This has to be perfect.” Genichiro clenched his fists and tensed his muscles.

After a while longer of more minute adjustments, Emma rejoined his neck once again. She started directing Wolf to hold the connection in her place but Genichiro couldn’t focus on that. After a few moments, a new feeling started to overwhelm him.

He’d wondered on several occasions if breathing was superfluous to him now, if he only continued it out of habit. Now he knew that it was not. At least, it felt like it wasn’t. It felt like he was suffocating. He felt Wolf’s calloused fingers grasp his neck, firmly holding his broken pieces together with immense care. He wanted to lean into the touch. He wanted to rip himself away.

His breathing began to whistle grotesquely as it attempted to flow through the seam of his neck. His muscles trembled with the effort of keeping himself still. They noticed. The fear spiked again. “I have to work fast,” Emma whispered, gasping the first needle.

And she did. Emma pulled the prepared needles through the halves of his neck and tied off the stitches with efficiency born from years of practice. As she worked, she ordered Yumiko to thread a spare needle for the back side of his neck. The girl rushed to comply, fumbling the thread in her little hands. Emma did not falter but it didn’t spare Genichiro’s aching lungs. By the time she finished in the front, Genichiro’s chest heaved and his hands scrabbled uselessly at the wooden floor.

Yumiko handed her the new needle the moment Emma held her hand out. She started on the rest immediately. He pinched his brow and bit his tongue. Tears stung at the corners of his eyes. He could feel Wolf focus on him intently, unable to do anything to help but hold his head in place. His broken airflow was just barely enough that Genichiro didn’t fear falling unconscious anytime soon, if indeed he could. He could still only guess if the feeling of asphyxiation was born of instinct or actual danger.

After tugging yet another knot into place, Emma declared, “It’s done!” He heard a faint ting as the needle was tossed aside. She raised her hands to join Wolf’s then, guiding his flesh and blood hand to the back of Genichiro’s neck. “You need to lay back,” she told him. “Carefully, slowly, follow my lead.” She kept one hand on his neck and placed the other on his chest and pushed him back gently. He lowered himself for what felt like an eternity before his back touched the floor. Emma’s hands retreated but Wolf’s remained, holding him steady.

“Everything’s ready,” she murmured. “Just do all you can.” She pulled away to make room.

The black and red of Yumiko’s form swirled chaotically as she approached. She knelt at his side, her breathing echoing loudly in his ears. She shifted the folds of his shirt enough to set her hands on the bare skin of his abdomen. They trembled. She breathed in and out once, deeply.

Her form did not move, but he felt her focus intensify greatly.

Genichiro shivered as he fought not to move. He was always fighting something. He clung to the hope that whatever happened, today would end that.

Yumiko’s deep breaths rang out in the silence, muffled echoes like everything sounded to him now. Her hands twitched unsteadily at their place on his stomach. His own grasped at the floor, digging his nails into the wood and setting them there.

Her anxiety and distress jumped with each passing moment, making his own panic crest in return, aggravated by the worsening feeling of suffocation. Genichiro couldn’t remember why he agreed to this. He couldn’t think of a point. He should have just asked Wolf to kill him and finished this. He should- He should be dead.

Yumiko breaths turned into gasps, shaking on each inhale. They hitched and edged on sobs. Black and red rose over him in thick, sickening waves. “Ahh- I can’t do this!” she cried out in pain. “It’s not enough- I can’t!”

“Yumiko,” Wolf’s voice sounded, low and calm. Genichiro could feel Wolf’s presence hovering at his shoulder. His hand laid hot and heavy beneath his neck. At the sound of her name, Yumiko’s attention shifted to him.

“You said to me, it’s better to take a chance on hope than to cling to doom. You’ve proven that. Even the most damning fates aren’t certain when someone cares enough to change them. The same can prove true here.”

Her hands shifted away from him just slightly. Yumiko took two more heaving breaths, then released a long exhale. He felt her steady herself. She set her hands down again, steadier, pressing harder. A strange tugging sensation filled him.

Something unbearably cold flared in the pit of his stomach

The black and red seized up, boiling over in unparalleled fury. It convulsed like a dying beast, tearing through him in its desperate agony. He arched up off the floor, contorting in an attempt to escape the pain. Twice, he slammed the flat of his hand hard against the floor but he could barely hear the sound.

Freezing fire formed in his gut and traveled upwards, ravaging every inch of his flesh. He writhed as it blazed along the lengths of his nerves. It settled in his neck like a horrible shackle, as freezing as it was burning. It closed in tighter; Genichiro couldn’t breathe. He jerked to the side. Some force tried to stop him but he shoved through it and twisted his shoulders until he could cough the blood out of his throat. Hot and slick, it coated his tongue, colored his teeth and splattered the ground. He couldn’t stop.

Still the feeling cinched tighter, tighter, until it wasn’t even a ring anymore, until it was a ball coalesced in the center of his neck, trapped between the columns of his throat and spine. Tighter, tighter, smaller, smaller, it collapsed in on itself, shrinking until-

It was gone.

Then the black and red vanished without a trace.

The reek of iron still filled his nose and he coughed up several more bloody mouthfuls before his airways felt clear enough to roll onto his back again. Everything felt different; the sensations surrounding him felt incredibly foreign. The black and red had disappeared, replaced by a mild darkness. He panted. Slowly, oh so slowly, he relaxed, easing the tension in his brows, dropping the grimace from his lips. His lashes fluttered, he held his breath.

He opened his eyes and saw.

Brown.

The warm, deep brown of Wolf’s eyes, staring back at him with unveiled concern.

He saw the tan of his skin, the light gray mark of the Dragon’s Heritage trailing back into dark shine his hair. He saw the yellow tone of his linen scarf draped over his shoulders. Two bands of turquoise lined the contours of his slate gray chest armor. He traced the maroon cords that held his gear in place with his eyes, winding through the sun faded orange of his well worn haori. And then he finally lifted his gaze back to those brown eyes.

Wolf was the most beautiful thing Genichiro had ever seen.

“How do you feel?” he asked him.

“Whole,” Genichiro rasped without thought.

Later he would retract that statement, reflect that he still felt broken and unsure of his place after all that had happened. Later, he would lose himself in memories made of black and red and struggle to remember that he’d been healed. But in that moment, nothing was more true.

He felt whole.

When Wolf’s expression relaxed in response and Genichiro saw him more at ease than he ever had before, he felt even more so. Wolf’s hand still cupped the back of his neck. He felt the warmth seeping into his skin.

Gasping breaths registered in his ear and he turned to Yumiko.

Her hands still rested, shaky, on his middle. Two damp tear trails lined her cheeks but her eyes glowed with wonder. Genichiro lifted a hand to dry her face; she leaned into the touch. “Thank you.”

She gazed at him for a moment, seemingly at a loss. Then she beamed at him, wide and genuine, eyes crinkled shut. “You’re welcome!” she chirped and Genichiro could do nothing but stare.

Stare at this girl who just saved his life when he thought it was impossible, when any reasonable person would have seen him as lost. This girl who only knew him as a headless beast and yet went to such effort to save him. This girl who knew better than anyone, the monstrous nature of the Rejuvenating Waters and what a fool he was to willingly submit to it, yet didn’t hold it against him. Used it to save him instead.

This girl who reacted as if she had done nothing more than give him a pretty flower that she found outside. As if piecing back together his broken form was the most natural thing in the world, that didn’t warrant a second thought.

Genichiro was speechless.

Thankfully, Kuro took that moment to scramble up to them, wide eyed. “It really worked?” he gasped.

Wolf hummed. Genichiro started to prop himself up on his elbows and Wolf twitched and began to retract his hand. Before either of them could move so far as an inch, Emma shoved him back down (pinning Wolf’s hand again) with a bark of “Don’t move!” She scowled again. “If, after everything, your head rolls off again because you aren’t careful, I will scream.” She prodded at the line around his neck rougher than he felt was wholly necessary, inspecting the new connection.

Genichiro couldn’t help a grin. “Like you did when I snuck a lizard into your bag when we were younger?” he asked cheekily, voice still gravelly from misuse.

Emma side eyed him. “I can chop this right off again, I swear.” But he could see the smile on her face as well.

The doctor made him very slowly and carefully move his head in numerous different ways before she allowed him to sit up. Wolf wrung his hands awkwardly once he had the chance to pull back. Genichiro kept seeing him steal glances at him out of the corner of his eye. He tried to focus on Emma still examining his neck. “How do the stitches feel?”

“Itchy.”

“That’s fine. You seem fully healed but you need to stay careful until we know for sure. I’ll leave them in for now.” At last, she pulled back with a weary breath and examined him fully. Her expression went curiously blank, as if she didn’t know what to think about what she saw.

He couldn’t blame her. He didn’t know what to think either.

“How do you feel?”

Genichiro blinked at her. “Exhausted,” he answered this time.

She hummed. “I can imagine why. You should sleep. I’m glad your room is close...” she trailed off, glancing to the side. Genichiro saw the piles of needles she used for his neck sitting beside her. There were more than he realized, all needing to be cleaned.

“I would go with him, if you need-”

“Wolf, I’d like to borrow you for-”

Genichiro and Wolf cut off as they talked over each other, eyes meeting sharply. The shinobi flushed and looked away when he continued to stare at him. “Fine,” Emma interjected, continuing to look over her supplies. “Fetch me if anything happens.”

Genichiro stood, muscles aching. The atmosphere grew somewhat awkward as Wolf followed him silently out of the room. There footsteps echoed, going down the stairs. For the third time, the pair ended up alone in Genichiro’s room.

He sat on his futon, too tired to keep standing, but there was more he needed to do before he could sleep. His eyes roved over Wolf, captivated by the sight of him. He held himself differently than the last time he saw him properly, before he was decapitated. Returning his gaze, Wolf sat opposite Genichiro. “You were asking for me, Lord Genichiro?”

He nodded and almost startled at how different it felt now. “Yes. I wanted to thank you.” Wolf looked caught off guard. “If you had not joined our cause...we would have lost. With this position, I learned long ago that I can’t afford to indulge in false pride or baseless arrogance. The cost of overestimating capabilities is too high when your decisions affect the lives of hundreds. I cannot- will not- pretend that I alone would have been enough. I wouldn’t have, no matter what I did, that much is obvious now.”

He paused, carefully collecting his thoughts before looking Wolf in the eye again. “Ashina means everything to me. I will not forget the lengths you went to to help me preserve my home. Your home too, if you want it. You’ll always be welcome here.”

Genichiro hoped he wanted it. He hoped Wolf would stay. He wanted him to stay.

Wolf shifted and looked aside. “...You don’t need to thank me. Lord Kuro was the one who instructed me to support Ashina in the war.”

Genichiro huffed tiredly at that response. He thought of numerous things he could say to that, but in the end, he left them all unspoken. Instead he continued, “I also thank you for saving my life.”

Wolf blinked at him in surprise. “I was hardly the one responsible for that-”

“You did,” Genichiro insisted. “Yumiko told me, when she was explaining her intentions in more detail, that you searched Senpou Temple for anything that could help me. She said that your plan was the reason the idea occurred to her in the first place. It was indirect, but you did save my life and I refuse to let that go by thanklessly.”

Wolf looked at him strangely for a moment, looking confused at the sudden outpouring of gratitude. Genichiro could understand why. The last time he could speak to him properly was during a fatal duel where Wolf killed him in the end. Going from then to now was a strange jump to make, but Genichiro wouldn’t stop.

He needed to voice something of what he felt for Wolf and ‘thank you’ was easier than ‘I love you.’

He swallowed.

“You valued my life and thought it worth saving when no one else did...myself least of all. That matters.” Trying to quell the nervous pounding in his chest, he attempted a light hearted smile. “Or are you going to claim that Lord Kuro ordered you to do all that too?”

Wolf regarded him silently for a long minute. “No. I just... You’ve sacrificed so much, you care so much for others, you deserve someone to care for you too.” He looked so sincere it hurt. His heart ached with it.

Genichiro hissed out a long, shaky breath. He couldn’t look away from his gaze. “I don’t think I deserve that.”

“I disagree.”

He closed his eyes, overwhelmed. Wolf’s fingers brushed his cheek, sending tingles through his skin. It felt so much like that night that it took his breath away. Before he could stop himself, he reached up and took his hand, holding it against his face. He heard Wolf sigh, then his prosthetic hand joined his first, cupping Genichiro’s face between his palms. The contrasting sensations of his real and false hands set his nerves alight. He grasped at the elbow of the shinobi prosthetic, desperate to ground himself. He leaned into the touch, so tender, so caring. He didn’t deserve this, he didn’t-

“Would you deny me this?”

Genichiro opened his eyes. Those brown eyes stared back.

He couldn’t. He couldn’t.

Releasing his hold on Wolf’s hand, he shifted his hand up to his jaw, touching feather light. He did nothing to pull away so he moved closer, cradling his jaw. He lifted his other hand to his neck, mingling with the folds of his scarf. He set his thumb over his pulse point, feeling the gentle throb of life beneath it.

“I love you,” Genichiro rasped.

Wolf’s eyes fluttered shut. Wordlessly, he tilted his head back, slowly, sensuously, careful not to dislodge his hands. The lines of his exposed neck were highlighted in the faint light, an expression of trust and affection so deep and earnest, Genichiro could do nothing to deny it.

He leaned in slowly, but he did not falter.

Their lips met simple and soft. The first kiss was barely more than a brush. He felt Wolf’s warm breath fan across his lips before he returned with more pressure. They moved together languidly, each moment dragged out as far as it could go. Even when they needed air, they pressed their foreheads together, unwilling to stray any further. Wolf’s lips were rough and chapped and Genichiro’s even more so, but nothing could have mattered less. Not when Wolf drifted aside to kiss the end of his jaw. Not when his lashes brushed against his cheek.

Genichiro shifted his grasp to Wolf’s biceps and set his head on his shoulder. Faded orange filled his vision when he opened his eyes, blurred by his exhaustion. Wolf caressed his upper back softly. His breaths stirred his hair. Finally, he said, “You’re tired. You need sleep.”

Genichiro could do nothing but hum, eyelids already heavy. Wolf shifted his weight back and Genichiro followed his lead, laying back on his futon. He pulled himself between the layers, relishing the warmth. Leaning down, Wolf placed a single, tender kiss between his brows. “Rest now,” he murmured.

He did. With love fogging his mind and peace filling his heart, the tension in him faded away into nothing.

For the first time in months, sleep took him.