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Genji does not read as much as Hanzo.
That’s not to say he’s illiterate-- Father would never tolerate it, smiles and praise aside. They’re rather different, as brothers are meant to be, yin and yang, but yin and yang are meant to exist in perpetual balance, not upheavals and arguments and cold glances; it’s never been anything more than that. Men have their differences, Father told Genji. It is what makes us strong. A united front of interlocked pieces is difficult to break.
He hopes that particular piece of wisdom starts to make sense soon, he thinks as he steals a glimpse over the top of his beautiful dark teacup at his brother. The sharp, inky-black lines of Hanzo’s profile look more like a silk painting than reality in the glare of the summer afternoon: he inherited their father’s look more than Genji, the vigilant Shimada eyes, hooded under jagged brows, the sloping nose and the regal confirmation. He certainly looks the part of clanmaster, dignified and imperial, always composed, perfectly unruffled.
Genji knows better. They are brothers, after all. Hanzo gets this knot of angry tension between his shoulders when he’s dying to say something but is making the effort of keeping it to himself, and it makes him look like he’s standing to attention with an iron pole shoved down the back of his kimono. It’s always been easy for Genji to notice. Hanzo is the proverbial placid lake: glassy above, tumultuous below, intentions unknown. Genji’s glad for it. He’s never been much of a leader, but Hanzo…
“Is there something on my face?”
Genji snorts. “Only your face.”
“Focus on your tea, brother,” Hanzo says, and then turns his attention back to the book held securely in his hands.
“As the young master commands,” Genji says with a shrug. He drains the last of the tea in one swig, lets his upper body loll backward until he hits the wall, and then reaches up to pull the brim of his headband down over his eyes. Black floods his vision, taking away the summer sunshine suffusing the teahouse, the glow of it behind the fusuma doors, the sight of thousands upon thousands of golden motes dancing in the light around Hanzo’s head like so many fireflies. “His Most Imperial Highness wouldn’t mind if his humble servant took a nap, would he?”
He hears an answering huff, and a scoff that oddly sounds like the word “typical.”
But it just makes him smile, there in his self-made darkness where he can hear the wind in the sakura trees and the whisper of the breeze in the rafters above them.
It would be good if this could last forever.
…
At sixteen, Hanzo is taken into a bright room where old Kasamatsu with the gnarled hands is sitting, the tools of the tebori trade neatly laid in front of him. Silk. Wood. Needle. Ink.
The men strip him down to nothing but a loincloth and he sits on a square mat, bare left arm proffered to elder. Genji sits by the door, peeking in as if his presence isn’t allowed, watching the proceedings with wide eyes. The consultations leading up to this moment had been rather long. Kasamatsu and Hanzo had talked for almost hours on end, though Genji couldn’t understand why they’d have to complicate what seems like a fairly straightforward series of events.
Kasamatsu draws the dragons on Hanzo’s arm with a strong-smelling marker, lines firm and flowing, marking the path the ink will take; Genji recognizes the family guardians, of course, he’s been staring at them since the day he was born. They are the Shimada emblem, the crowning glory of the clan, a power Father says they’ll master when the time is right.
The needle is driven into Hanzo’s skin, again and again. Plick. Plick. Scrape. Scrape. Kasamatsu almost works like a machine, turning the long wooden handle of his tool with a precision you can only earn after decades of practice. Black blooms on Hanzo’s arm: the eye of a dragon, then a claw, a plumed tail, the curve of a scale, the tip of a fang. Scrape. Still Hanzo’s expression doesn’t change, only hardens. Scrape. Kasamatsu wipes away the excess ink and the dew of blood with a wad of cloth, considers his next move, and begins his work once more at a different angle. Progress is slow. A muscle in Hanzo’s jaw tightens, taut as wire.
“I will not scream,” he’d told Genji before going in.
He doesn’t.
…
At eighteen, tattoo finished, smooth-faced, and completely tense, Hanzo has his first taste of saké. It’s just after six, and the shrine is quiet, but the teahouse is gently lit, orange lanterns all around. He worries too much about the little things, Genji tells him, tipping the gourd in his direction.
A swallow, and a pause. He sets the porcelain ochoko down, now empty, and blinks his dark eyes.
“Well?” Genji says expectantly.
“It’s…” Hanzo stops, searching for a word. “…Nice.”
“Told you,” Genji laughs. “The punch can be a little strong in the beginning, but you’ll get used to it.”
Hanzo regards him suspiciously-- like Hanzo regards most of the world. “You’ve drunk before.”
Genji grins, jiggling the gourd. It’s a wonderfully-made hyotan, double-lobed, cherry-red, glossy, with the Shimada emblem stamped on its side. Father’s personal stores. Only the best of the best. “Maybe,” he answers conspiratorially.
“You’re underage,” Hanzo says, a stiff note in his voice, and Genji has to contain the guffaw that threatens to burst out of him.
“So’re you! What’s the point in waiting? It’s not like this family’s on the right side of the law, anyway.”
His older brother sniffs, nose wrinkling, for a moment the perfect image of stately disapproval. “Fair enough.”
They share a little bit more of it-- Genji pours-- the saké goes down smooth, and despite the burn, it is sweet on the tongue and in the back of the throat, not too overwhelming, but pleasing enough. It locks a comfortable haze into the consciousness, a sort of woolly cloud you ride on high where no one can touch you, especially expectations. It’s one of his favorite things about indulging, and he suspects Hanzo will come to appreciate that part of it, too.
He’s on his third cup when Hanzo takes a deep breath and blurts, “Why green?”
For a second, Genji has no idea what’s being asked of him, but when the comprehension does set in--
“What’s so funny?” Hanzo says sourly as Genji clutches at his ribs to shield himself from the force of his own laughter.
“The young master can’t hold his liquor,” Genji tells him-- wheezes, more like it-- and watches the redness dusting Hanzo’s high cheekbones become more evident.
“Answer the question,” Hanzo insists.
Genji wipes a tear of hilarity from the corner of his eye and then reaches up to brush a hand at the tuft of hair peeking out from under his headband, lime-green and very hard to miss. His roots are coming in. He should probably do something about that.
“It’s my color,” Genji says, careful about his choice of words. “I didn’t know you had a problem with it.”
Hanzo’s answer is a noncommittal grunt. “I don’t. Much. I cannot say the same for the elders.”
Genji’s smile turns brittle. “The elders will be able to cope, I’m sure.”
Perhaps it’s a trick of the lanterns and the shadows, but it seems for an instant that the harsh edges of Hanzo’s expression soften. “Genji…”
“I really resent the fact that you’re apparently observant when you’re tipsy, too. Are you sure you’ve never tried some before?”
Hanzo eyes the gourd with something like fascination, obvious and sloppy change of subject notwithstanding. “Positive.”
“Well, then,” Genji says, pouring out another serving. “We’ve got work to do.”
…
Hanzo takes to English more easily than Genji. That’s the way it’s always been, honestly.
He naturally excels at anything he puts his mind to. It doesn’t matter if Genji has been here longer, working harder; eventually, Hanzo’s shadow will catch up and overtake him, but he can’t bring himself to be particularly resentful or bitter. It makes Hanzo stand out in the eyes of the elders, and that is one line of fire Genji does not enjoy standing in. He likes his freedom, and his girls, and he likes spending his own time on his own terms with the people he chooses. Hanzo doesn’t understand, but then again, Hanzo doesn’t understand many things because he doesn’t try. He’s afraid of perspective. Not that Genji would ever say that to Hanzo’s face. He likes breathing too much.
“It’s a good thing, trust me,” Genji says when Hanzo puts a grammar book down with a frustrated sigh. “Girls love it when you talk to them in English.”
Hanzo chuckles. It’s dry, and sort of derogatory, but still a chuckle. “Only if they don’t know your English accent is atrocious.”
“Hey,” Genji admonishes. “It’s not that bad.”
“It isn’t. But it could be better.”
Genji rolls his eyes. “Couldn’t everything?”
The silence that settles is uncomfortable. Hanzo reaches for his book again, turning back to the page he’d abandoned, but he’s no longer reading, not really. Genji can feel the drill of Hanzo’s stare in his side.
“Yes. It truly could be.”
…
He breaks four ribs when he falls for the last time.
There is blood in his lungs and on his tongue, in his mouth, on the floor, all over his hands. He’d lost his sword in the disaster that had been their final clash. Hanzo had seen through his feint and sliced at the inside of his wrist, quick, clean, vicious, and the katana had dropped from his nerveless fingers as his arm stopped responding entirely to his commands. He’d watched it spiral away, the wicked edge of its blade glinting in the low light of the main hall, and Hanzo had kicked him. Crack. Winded. Wounded. Flying.
He lies there, prone.
How did we get here?
He’d said no. He always has said no. That hadn’t been the unusual part of their argument.
“Turn around and face me,” Hanzo had told Genji. “Father is no longer here to save you.”
And then he’d drawn his sword.
It had been an even fight, at the beginning. Hanzo has a touch for archery-- swords are not his favorite weapon, though he admires the artistry of its lessons, and there’s no doubt who is-- who had been , now-- the better swordsman out of them both. Another title he had never wanted, lost. Hanzo’s been training. Hours, longer than before, away from everyone, even the closest of Father’s former advisors. There’s no one to stop him. The ceiling is so far away that Genji cannot clearly see its end, but that might be the doing of the tears in his eyes.
The tatami barely shifts as Hanzo pads over to him. Though his kimono is torn and his sandals gone, he is still breathing calmly, like he cannot feel the cuts on his cheeks, like the wall behind him isn’t peppered with shuriken, like he isn’t pointing a katana at Genji’s throat.
“You can change your answer,” Hanzo says, his voice hoarse with exertion. His eyes are wild, the fine hair of his bangs plastered to his cheeks with perspiration. “You can still join me.”
What would I have, if I did? The words gurgle in Genji’s throat, thick with phlegm and iron. He can feel the soak of his shirt, the pool that is gathering under his back.
“Is that a yes?” Hanzo asks, politely. As though they’re discussing the weather.
“Hanzo,” he manages, somehow, past the block in his trachea. His brother’s attention sparks to life. Embers of hope. “Never…”
A cast comes down over Hanzo’s face, terrible, and so much like Father.
“I see,” Hanzo says through gritted teeth. He does not move, for a long, horrible moment. When his hands shift at the hilt of his sword, the knuckles grow pale, bleached, and Genji can imagine the gashadokuro that lives inside his brother pressing to the surface, its ghastly hunger finally unleashed. Like Father. Greed… and anger. He doesn’t want to be a part of this world of theirs. Father is dead, and Hanzo does not wish to leave. Does not wish to keep people safe. It is his duty, he’d said, sounding like he believed that.
I don’t want it.
“This will hurt,” Hanzo says at last. A blue fire builds under the tattered sleeve of his kimono, drowning out the red in his face, blanching it bone-white, until his eyes are points of obsidian standing out on the plane of his merciless visage. Smoke streams from his arm, rearing up behind him, swirling and solidifying. The eye of a dragon, then a claw, a plumed tail, the curve of a scale, the tip of a fang. Sacred. Scared.
Genji’s hands will not obey him. They twitch at his sides as the dragons coil together above Hanzo’s head, their brilliance blinding him.
“Goodbye, brother.”
They fall upon him as a storm, and he screams at their scorching touch, at the cold that sears deep; he screams, and when his voice and flesh are too ruined for him to do even that, he weeps, bubbling and hissing and heaving and crying.
Everything is blistering, bursting.
He lets go.
.
.
.
He is small. And ugly, Hanzo had thought at two, bent over Genji’s cradle, watching the his new brother sleep. His hair had been thick and dark, his face red and angry, his nose upturned, his ears stuck to his head, his hands so tiny and bizarrely strong, and he did not mind slumbering under the patchwork sunlight in the nursery, green and gold.
He is small, Hanzo thinks as he looks down at the smoldering, twisted corpse before him, its eyes glazed, terrified. And I made him that way.
The katana chips when it tumbles from his grip, but he does not reach to pick it up again.
Father had cautioned them against that. “Never drop your sword! Never strike something it cannot cut!”
Father is no longer here. Neither is Genji.
And I made him that way.