The Space Between Friend and Foe

Warnings for language and adult themes. This story is a WIP.

* * *

Adrift

It had been nearly three years since he set himself adrift on the world. Too many villages, cities, countries to remember; he passed through all of them as namelessly as they passed him by. Facial features in the crowds that he didn't recognize, a jumble of languages around him that he didn't speak, foods that sometimes smelled too foreign to eat--mile after mile of this. During the war, he had learned to sleep anywhere, at a moment's notice, so it didn't matter to him whether he found a hostel for the night or holed up in an alley. About a year into this uncertain journey, however, he often found himself the only one awake amid a crowd of sleeping strangers, unable to quiet the anxious questions in his mind, the voice in his heart that wondered, Where are you going? What the hell are you doing? He came to take on a haggard appearance, his hair mussed, his clothes threadbare; the only care he gave to anything was to his swords.

Just over a year ago, after covering nearly three thousand miles' distance, he bought a seat on a steam locomotive, sat back and allowed the train to rock him to and fro all day and night as he stared out of the window at landscapes shifting, drifting past. When he would reach the destination listed on his ticket, he would simply pick a point at random on the map and purchase another ticket. In spite of the fact that he had already traversed much of the same territory on foot, it was unbelievable to him how much empty space loomed between stops. In the middle of the night, stations would materialize out of the pitch black, one dim bubble of kerosene lamplight usually containing a single passenger waiting on a platform. And then, the train would slowly set forth, and just like that, they'd be plunged into darkness again, the rhythmic noise of the train on the tracks the only proof of civilization in those early hours of unsettling silence.

One day, he found himself standing in front of a ticket cashier, an elderly woman with sagging jowls and chapped lips, hunched behind the thin metal bars of the cage. She gazed up at him with cataract-ridden eyes, but she made direct eye contact with him all the same, the first person to do so in a long time. "Where are you headed, sir?" she asked. And dammit if he couldn't answer, couldn't bring himself to look at the map, couldn't do anything but stare at her like a halfwit. He just couldn't go any further.

The elderly woman turned herself in her chair to face him squarely. With the swords on his back, the stone mask of his face, people usually did one of two things: shrink from him, or challenge him. She did neither. "You don't know where you're going?" she pressed him. When he remained silent, she said, "If you don't know where you're going, then you should go home."

The concern in her suggestion, the kindness in her tone, it sent a crack into him so deeply that thought he might break in two.

"Home?" he echoed blankly. The sound was dull and strange in his throat.

The woman nodded. "Home always has something for you."

He shook his head. There was no home to return to, he wanted to say, but the words stuck like dough, wouldn't come out.

The woman pulled out a receipt book. "Let me guess--you need to head east, right?"

He meant to ask her how she knew, but he couldn't organize the words in his brain. It didn't faze her; she carefully wrote out the ticket for him without any further questions. She ripped off the carbon copy for her records, and handed him the ticket with a soft smile. "I'll be the bow. Now, you be the arrow...samurai-sama."

He blinked, took the ticket with parted lips, without thanking her or saying good-bye. But he never forgot that woman, nor the renewed sense of direction she gave him.

* * *

He'd been walking for days, wandering again, but this time he intended to be here, back in the land of his people. He had always wanted to see the desert, and now was as good a time as any. Unfortunately, this was not a night for reflection or stargazing. The wind whipped his hair around his head, and something crunched in his teeth--the wind was carrying sand. He suspected a storm might be brewing, and he picked up his pace, moving with haste.

In the distance, a band of cold, unnatural light glowed on the horizon, and great columns of steam rose to meet the moon. He felt the vibration in the earth underfoot, caught the faint stench in the air of industry and too many humans in one place.

Kougakyo.

The plan, for now at least, was to find shelter for however long the storm kept him there. He preferred to only stay the night, but then again, he didn't mind the thought of a few days rest.

It wasn't hard finding a room at an inn in the pleasure quarter, though it was more expensive than he would've liked. He was running out of money--he'd been running out of money, but he'd developed such frugal spending habits during his travels that he had a knack for making his funds stretch a long way. He figured it was all right to make an exception this time. He appreciated that the futon was clean, that the innkeeper asked minimal questions, that they took his money and that was the end of it. Not long after he settled in, there was a knock at the shoji door--little did he know that a prostitute came with the room, but he was altogether too tired for that, and sent her away with the tip she would've earned otherwise.

The next day, after spending some time at the sento in the morning, indulging in a leisurely hot bath (the likes of which he hadn't seen in weeks), he headed off through the city. The storm he had anticipated last night never got a foothold, and it was a crisp, clear day, leaving him to roam unimpeded.

Kougakyo, it turned out, was both fascinating and repulsive. Over a quarter of a century, the city had grown upward in disorganized spurts to accommodate budding businesses and consequent population bursts. The result was a peculiar, piecemeal concoction of buildings and structures. Over time, the upper levels of Kougakyo, which included the posh merchant residences with stunning views of either desert or city, benefited from the wealth of private investors. The lower levels of the city, however, quickly degraded into slums and were in a constant state of disrepair. Around noon, he came across a walkway that had collapsed several days earlier and killed a handful of pedestrians. But the prevailing attitude he heard in conversations around him was one of acceptance--down below, at the "ass-end" of Kougakyo, when things fell apart, they were put back together with glue and string, and that's just how it was.

All things considered, the city was like any other. It was a filthy, cramped existence that reeked of garbage and sewer, even in some of the nicer neighborhoods. Food stalls and vendor kiosks stood wall to wall, and the streets were always clogged with pedestrians. The entertainers shouted above the din for attention, the homeless sat with apathetic eyes on the sidewalk, and the thieves were always sprinting away with someone screaming behind them.

But the sun still managed to touch all levels of Kougakyo. He stopped on the street when a bright ray of sunlight peeking between two roofs temporarily blinded him. It was delicious and warm on his face, and he appreciated that connection to the outside, the reminder that the world was so much bigger than this mess of concrete and steel.

One thing he noticed right away were the numerous ronin on the streets, some of them wasting away, being eaten inside-out by starvation and an overdeveloped sense of pride. Too many swords, too many faces marked with frustration lines. There was a constant tension to the streets, as if the balance of power could shift at any moment, as if an uprising might form anywhere, at any time. The magistrate of this city must run things with a heavy hand, he thought to himself, heavy enough to keep down even the samurai. Of course, depression and alcoholism among many of his fellow warriors contributed to that, but things couldn't go on like this forever, not when trouble was so obviously waiting to happen.

* * *

Middle of the night, and in spite of being weary to the bone, he still couldn't sleep. He liked to have fresh air while he slept, so he had propped open the long, narrow window, but the noise on the street wasn't lessening as the hour grew later, and flashing vendor signs kept casting garish fluorescent colors on the floor. Eventually, he realized it was a losing battle, got dressed, and hit the walkways again.

And he was grateful to be awake and on the move; as soon as he heard the high-pitched whistle once, then twice, he knew something was going on. People on the street kept rushing past, some of them slipping inside the first open door they came across. He maintained his usual, undaunted saunter, but whatever was happening couldn't be good, and he prepared himself for a bumpy ride into the night.

When trouble came for him a few hours later, he was in a gambling house--and cheating, to be sure (he had to make some money soon, especially if he wanted to keep that room at the inn for another night or two), but that wasn't why the officers were circling around him. No, this was a random shakedown of samurai, the merchants' way of reminding everyone of their place, of making sure it was clear who was in charge of Kougakyo; he was sure of it. The two swords on his back were too ostentatious to be missed, and either he was spotted on the street or someone from the gambling house called it in.

"On your feet," one of officers ordered him. This annoyed him more than anything else; his oyuwari was still hot, and he wanted to sip it, so he continued to do so.

"Are you deaf, samurai?" A second officer shoved him in the shoulder. "Stand up. Do it."

Two of them, one of them at each shoulder, approximately six feet tall, the one on the right about 180 lbs., the one on the left maybe 200. A third officer, three steps behind and off to the left, and three more watching from about ten steps back. He could so easily take out the three standing nearby with no more than two movements, without even quickening his pulse. But that was what was so disappointing about all of this--it was too easy, no challenge at all.

When the third officer closed that distance between them, he felt a twinge of claustrophobia and a need to reassert his personal space. Slowly (for him), he drew his swords and stood from sitting seiza in one smooth motion. It startled the officers enough to send them scurrying back. Several of them waiting in the wings drew their bows and held him at arrow-point.

"Are Master Ukyo and the others still watching nearby?" one of the officers murmured. "Go tell Hyogo that we need him here."

Yes, please do, he thought to himself. If I'm going to fight someone tonight, at least let it be worth my time. He stared down the officers, watching as some of them wavered in his gaze, their bows swaying, communicating to him their distress without meaning to.

It wasn't long until he heard slow, even footfalls, and a voice thick with arrogance. "Two swords, you say? This should be interes--"

The warrior's appearance was wholly disconcerting, as it was surely crafted to be. Thick black hair with only a portion of it pulled into a topknot, yellow-tinted glasses perched on the fair face, and black lips painted with a perfect hand. If he had not heard the smooth, deep resonance of the samurai's voice just before, he would've been unable to ascertain the warrior's sex. He fought to maintain his guard, and it seemed the samurai was struggling to do the same.

"Well, well. The magnificent Kyuuzou-dono has deemed Kougakyo worthy of his presence. I must admit, I never expected to see you again." The samurai chuckled and took a step forward. "Should I be happy? Should I kill you? I'm not certain."

He stood his ground, swords poised, not moving a muscle. Meanwhile, something in his brain fluttered, and he grappled with an odd feeling of having been here before.

The wide smile of white teeth bordered by black lips was both handsome and disturbing. "You don't recognize me like this, do you?"

And that's when it hit him, little bits of memory trickling out from the place where he'd shoved them away. Gunfire, and shouting. Bits of brain on him. He smelled puke and smoke coming from down the hall. He reeled at the shit oozing out of the man he just disemboweled. The world tumbling by as he fell drunk down the stairs, and so much hilarious laughter afterward. A teasing flick of the tongue, fingertips running down his arm. The endless parade of lovers he watched go into that one's bed, and always the question in his mind, Why? Why never him? Why the looks but never the invitation?

"Hyogo! Hyogo-dono." Kyuuzou shook his head, gave a wry smile, and sheathed his swords. "You son of a bitch."