"... To understand how important you are to me?"
Osamu was not one to be easily surprised. He had known they shared a camaraderie, a bond of duty between them, that of guardian and guarded, mentor and student; she cared for him because he was one of the Fujiwara Clan's stalwart Samurai, one who cared deeply for the wellbeing of their pack and the members within it. She cared for everyone in this way. Izumi was an Empress, a sovereign, a benevolent mouthpiece of higher understanding and capable of a gentleness he could not begin to fathom.
Why, then, did she now make it sound so personal? So - intimate?
He listened silently, looking back at her with an unreadable expression bordering on numbness. How she berated him with her caring, eyes shut, lowering herself to the ground as she steadily and methodically cut into his heart with the words he had only ever heard her speak in dreams.
Was it possible?
What did she mean, of longing to be by his side? Surely no student would miss a teacher's tutelage so much as to dream of it in captivity.
She had called him friend, but she had hesitated -
Osamu was perceptive, but he was also a tired, grizzled wolf approaching middle age, and the finer nuances of a woman's desperate beating heart often remained a mystery veiled in shadow.
And yet.
Of every soul left behind in the Clan with her absence, of all those who she had come to love and cherish and held so close to her heart, it was for him - against every impossible wish - that she survived.
An intolerable moisture gathered at the corners of his eyes. He could have blinked it away, but she alone, if no one else, deserved to see the Samurai weep.
It was without conscious thought that he moved forward to embrace her, gently tucking her into the warm curve of his neck as his body moved of its own accord. His head draped tenderly over her shoulder and he breathed in her scent as a drowning man, held only to this life by the precious oxygen she provided, for she was the sky, the sun, the stars above and the earth beneath him, the raging waters and the gentle breeze in summer; she was his purpose and the very air in his lungs.
The name tasted sweet upon his tongue.
Osamu was not one to be easily surprised. He had known they shared a camaraderie, a bond of duty between them, that of guardian and guarded, mentor and student; she cared for him because he was one of the Fujiwara Clan's stalwart Samurai, one who cared deeply for the wellbeing of their pack and the members within it. She cared for everyone in this way. Izumi was an Empress, a sovereign, a benevolent mouthpiece of higher understanding and capable of a gentleness he could not begin to fathom.
Why, then, did she now make it sound so personal? So - intimate?
He listened silently, looking back at her with an unreadable expression bordering on numbness. How she berated him with her caring, eyes shut, lowering herself to the ground as she steadily and methodically cut into his heart with the words he had only ever heard her speak in dreams.
Was it possible?
What did she mean, of longing to be by his side? Surely no student would miss a teacher's tutelage so much as to dream of it in captivity.
She had called him friend, but she had hesitated -
Osamu was perceptive, but he was also a tired, grizzled wolf approaching middle age, and the finer nuances of a woman's desperate beating heart often remained a mystery veiled in shadow.
And yet.
Of every soul left behind in the Clan with her absence, of all those who she had come to love and cherish and held so close to her heart, it was for him - against every impossible wish - that she survived.
An intolerable moisture gathered at the corners of his eyes. He could have blinked it away, but she alone, if no one else, deserved to see the Samurai weep.
It was without conscious thought that he moved forward to embrace her, gently tucking her into the warm curve of his neck as his body moved of its own accord. His head draped tenderly over her shoulder and he breathed in her scent as a drowning man, held only to this life by the precious oxygen she provided, for she was the sky, the sun, the stars above and the earth beneath him, the raging waters and the gentle breeze in summer; she was his purpose and the very air in his lungs.
Izumi,Osamu said her name again. It felt foreign, still, perhaps a little clumsy - but already it came easier with her admission.
Izumi.
The name tasted sweet upon his tongue.
If ever a soul belonged to another,he said, and he did not hesitate; he was a warrior, and a warrior did not waver even if he faced defeat. It would be said, and he would die with the words engraved in his heart and the final satisfaction of having spoken his truth.
私は持っており、常に維持するためにあなたのものになります。
"When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the center of your soul for years which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you'll not talk about the joy of words. I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?" - Till We Have Faces, C.S. Lewis
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