Prayers Carried on Tainted Wings

The characters are based on actual historical figures from the Edo period. Those familiar with "Peacemaker Kuragone" and "Rounin Kenshin" will recognize some of these names, so don't be surprised. There will also be several completely original characters as well.

Please don't be alarmed by the switch in pronouns as you read, you will see why they are so screwed up once you get to the end of the chapter.

Hope you enjoy.

Chapter One

Okita had happened upon the girl stowing papers from Hijikata’s quarters in her kimono. She had bolted just as expected. He gave chase, running full tilt to the dojo that thankfully stood vacant in the oppressive heat of the autumn afternoon. She had no way of knowing that there was no chance of escape from the building, except to go back the way she had come and through him. Hopefully she would realize the futility of crossing swords with him, if she was even armed.

“Come out, Mitzuki-chan. I know you ran in here,” the violet eyed captain called quietly, sliding the shoji closed at his back. “Whatever you’ve taken, you can give back and leave without incident.”

Boards off to his left groaned as she eased into view, one of Sano’s blunt-ended practice spears in hand. “I have little talent with a sword, if you’ll forgive me.”
Still gray eyes fixed on him, he knew the code. Anyone to draw on a Shinsengumi must die—kill your enemy or be killed by your enemy—that was their way. “Put it down, you don’t understand what you’re doing.”

“Don’t I?”

“Mitzuki-chan…”

The slender girl circled away from the wall more fully into the light from the high, rectangular windows. The bow began to spin, turned over and over by clever, nimble hands. “Arm yourself, Wolf of Mibu.”

“It doesn’t have to be this way.”

“I won’t be leaving any other way. Isn’t that right?” She favored him with a tight lipped smile that set his skin to crawl.

Five paces from the bokken rack, the reach of the spear was well over a grown man’s body length when swung from one end. She was so fast he remembered from watching her match with Sano at the Dojoji temple festival.

“Will you make it?” The haughtiness of her tone was belied by the solemnity of her expression.

He dashed, somersaulting over the sweep of the staff that whistled by his cheek seconds before his feet hit the boards and the bokken leapt to his hand. The heavy bamboo thumped against the solid girth of the spear as she thrust it up to block his stroke.
The two leapt apart with a flex of muscle and speed, rejoining, spinning to thrust and parry blow after blow. The longer the battle wore on the closer to bloodlust he could feel himself hedging.

Fire roared in his veins, his vision narrowing to the pulse in her throat and the tell of tension in her shoulders just as she thought about a stroke. The last thing he heard was boyish laughter from the yard, the cry of “a match”, then the rest of the world was gone in a crash of wood splinters and solemn gray eyes. The spear head stroked across his ribs, slicing yukata, flesh and scrapping bone without discrimination. The pain was dull, but immediate. A red haze overwhelmed his vision as he charged, not noticing the spill of blood across the polished boards.

The combatants were oblivious to the slid of the shoji or the two boys that lingered in the doorway, gaping at the increasing speed of the dancing weapons. Each joining of the bamboo bodies groaned and thunked its way past them into the yard as more curious members started to make their way over.

Tetsu stared long and hard at his first friend and sparring partner in the Shinsengumi and nearly lost his breath as the constricted pupils and wolfish smirk told him the seventeen year old captain was lost in bloodlust. The girl was fast loosing ground and nearing a wall. “Turn now, Sashiro-kun!” the younger boy beside him screeched. The redhead was oblivious to the switch in honorifics as he stared on from the child’s left.
His sister’s head snapped around at the sound of his voice, her lips formed her brother’s name as she caught a glancing blow off the shoulder. She barked a strangled cough, again setting up a whining rotation with the spear to ward off any further blows.

“We have to stop them,” Tetsu declared as Sanosuke Harada and Shinpachi Nagakura shouldered their way into the dojo.

“Sashiria’s” staff connected with the ground as she vaulted over the tall, slender samurai’s head. A calculating gleam marred the boy’s usually tranquil expression as he batted the staff from beneath her, landing her hard on her back several feet behind him. A well-placed foot drug the spear from under her and sent it sliding across the dojo.

“Sashiro-kun!” The dark haired child beside Tetsu bolted toward the stalking man intent on reaching his fallen sister.

Disappointed Okita started his walk, closing in on the kill oblivious to the herd of interlopers headed their way. She had picked the wrong opponent this day.
The sounds of so many feet, a creak nearby, now—the body on the floor arched tumbling feet over head to spring into a torrent of backflips hunted by deadly accurate strikes slicing the air where her neck should have been at each rotation. Spotting the bokken rack kept her from angling off course, nerves kept her from worrying after the relentless attack.

Will I make it? Muscles and tendons strained to the point of snapping as the last powerful thrust of his thighs sent him over the taller frame that was suddenly directly in his path. The bokken was solid in his hand as he spun crouching, barley getting his other hand on the bladed end to help absorb the blow that never fell. A shriek ripped the air and bony, little hands bit into slender shoulders and a warm body slammed against a hard, lean chest.

The sound of the boy screaming as the bamboo blade punctured his side, separating ribs and piercing organs forced him from his bloodlust. True, rich heart’s blood was soaking the back of the simple, white garment the child wore. The girl still had her bokken raised to fend him off; a wide rim of white ringed her eyes as panting breaths blew unbound hair from her sharp, angular, sweat-bathed face.

“Sa…o,” he was trying so hard to get the words out, it hurt to breath like he was sucking in bubbles.

Please no, he wished away the feeling of the tiny body pressed to him, the growing, scalding wetness pooling in his lap. “Neiji-kun?” He finally looked; there was nothing else to be done. A sleek, tightly bound ponytail glared back at him accusingly. The bokken clattered to the floor forgotten as grasping hand ate at impossibly thin shoulders. “Neiji?” He fought to keep from screaming as unknown faces started to ring them in. He had no sight for them, as the ashen face, grinned shakily up at him, hazel eyes streaming tears of pain. “Neiji.”

“Sa…” a thin thread of blood dribbled past paling lips.

“Don’t talk, please, don’t talk.” He found himself chocking on the words. His whole life was right here in front of him bleeding out all over the rich silk of his kimono and it was all his own doing. The very thing that was to provide for that life was going to end it.

Tetsu watched in horror as the brother and “sister” stared at one another for a lifetime in silence. Why did this have to happen? Why to that poor little guy? He seemed contented enough to die in his sister’s arms knowing she was safe at least as far as he knew. But why?

“What is the meaning of this?” Toshihiro Hijikata demanded strong arming his way through the press of bodies. The pooling blood behind and beneath the children when he stepped from the crowd caught his attention first; he followed the spotted trail up the bokken and locked gazes with wide, stricken, violet eyes.

“I’ve killed him,” Souji’s voice was weak, regret seeping into his eyes as he watched the child laboring for breath in the silk embrace.

“I am a Chosu spy, a separatist, but this boy is innocent.” Another quiet tone deepened by sorrow and self-loathing.

“There are no innocents anymore,” Hijikata challenged, the child was doomed and so was the girl by her own admission.

“Please, help him,” once pale hands forced already soaking silk into the emptied wound. “Please.” He was already damned; begging could only spare his charge the pain of a slow bleed out. The buzz of rough voices had quited since the vice commander’s arrival.

“What has happened here?” A great grizzly of a man bellowed thrusting to the outer ring of gawkers. The child was near death, clutching feebly at the older child who was as pale as a winter’s frost. The elder’s pulse was beating like a caged beast trying to tear its way free. The protective elder child was shocky and streaming sweat, but clung to the narrow body with a fierceness that when released would shred the man nearest them to confetti. “It’s all right, child,” he soothed, stepping closer. “Hijikata-san, what is this?”

“Okita cornered a spy and the boy was an unfortunate casualty.”

“Please.”

The soft voice and soulful gray eyes lanced his heart, but Matsumoto-sensei could do nothing without the vice commander’s permission.

“I will do anything to save Neji-kun.”

“A trade then,” the doctor proposed, “hear me out,” he interjected when the stern, dark-haired man arched a brow, “the spy’s life for his. An even trade.”

“A spy’s life is forfeit,” Hijikata reminded staid.

The doctor regarded the spy solemnly, willing the child to sharpness. There was a certain logic to dealing with the vice commander that had to be feted out. The man was deathly practical according to Commander Kondo.

“My soul, my spear and my mind I condemn to the service of the Shinsengumi until my final breath,” he glared petulantly into the onyx eyes of the imposing vice commander. “That is all I, Ichira Shashiro, have to give. Now, will you save him?”

“All you say?” So it was a boy after all.

“My heart lingers elsewhere,” the bloodied teen answered warmth radiating downward into the strength of his arms around the boy who was slipping from consciousness, “Always.”
The two stared for long seconds over the boy’s head. The disgusted set of the vice commander’s lips told Okita that he would cave.

“Can you do anything for him?” Hijikata inquired of the burly, middle-aged physician.

“I make no promises, but I will try. Let me have the child.” The boy-spy’s grip tightened until the injured child whimpered. “You will come with us. You will tend him under guard if necessary.”

“So be it.” The vice commander conceded, “There’s nothing more to see here. Back to work.” The room instantly started to clear allowing the doctor to appoint his staff for the delicate surgery that would have to be performed to staunch the blood flow.

“Bring me Yamazaki-san,” Matsumoto-sensei instructed Testu before the red-head turned on his heels and bolted to do as bid.

Hijikata took a moment to appraise the pair of children dirtying his dojo floor before huffing disgustedly at his own charity and stalking toward Souji. “It wasn’t your fault,” he informed the boy gruffly, “you did as you should. Don’t trouble yourself.” With that he stalked away pulling his pipe from a sleeve and pawing through his lining to find sulfer matches.

Okita stared on in numb dissatisfaction and mild guilt as the surgeon and the newly arrive shinobi turned apprentice physician set to work. “Ichira Shashiro,” Okita reflected. So it was a boy… all this time Mitzuki-chan was actually a boy. A teenager named Shashiro…