He was gone. Korin rested his fingers lightly on the scroll,
feeling the rough paper against his fingertips. He sat for a moment, staring straight ahead, his arm on the table shaking slightly. He felt the blood start to
seep down his cheek, and raised his hand to reflexively wipe it away with the cloth. Rou. He had to go and find Rou. The noble's quarters were fairly empty
at this time of night.
Korin made his way to Lord Sohma's rooms, feet padding on the carpet with barely a sound. He opened the door quietly, knowing there would be no page on
duty, as Lord Sohma liked to spare servants from all but non-essential jobs. But Rou would hear. Rou heard everyone approaching. Korin wondered if he would
have heard the black-clad man in the library.
At this time of night the palace grew quiet and the pages (what few did not have graveyard shifts) retired, allowing a sense of peace to descend over the whole
of the building. It was a time for the inscrutable members of society to creep out and stalk the abandoned corridors, leaving naught in their wake but the
distant sound of their passing. Naturally Rouichi was awake. He was in the sitting room reading when his sharp ears picked up the sounds of someone's heavy
footfalls coming down the hallway. They slipped inside, and Rouichi wasn't too worried. No one who made that kind of noise was dangerous. Setting down his
book and crossing the room, Rou grinned at Korin as the other man came into view by the doorway. "Yo-" he began, then saw the line of red dripping
down his friend's pale face. "The hell happened to you?"
Korin swiped at his cheek one last time, clearing up the last of the blood. The seeping had slowed down, but it still stung. He knew
he was white-faced beneath it - he still hadn't got over the shock. He carefully shut the door behind him, from long-held habits of secrecy, before he even
started to explain. He weighed the scroll lightly in his hand.
"I was working late," he said. "And someone came in. They told me to give you this." He held out the scroll.
The redhead frowned and took the scroll from Korin. It was tied with a black ribbon - black, that never meant anything good. Not when it came from people who
visited his friends in the middle of the night and apparently cut lengths out of their face. Korin looked terrified; a bad feeling settled over Rou. "What
did he look like?" the swordsman asked, undoing the ribbon and letting the sheaf of paper uncoil naturally.
"I didn't get a very good look at him," Korin said dryly. "It being the middle of the night. He was wearing black
and he looked-" he broke off, searching for the word. "Cold," he said finally. "That may sound absurd, but it was all I can think of."
He looked down and folded up the stained handkerchief in half with the bloody surface on the inside. "There was a message, as well," he said,
pressing the cloth into smaller and smaller squares, his long fingers making precise, delicate movements. "Do you want to hear it?"
"Sure," Rouichi replied, tugging the parchment straight and holding it so that he could read it. It began simply enough. 'Dear Tokushima
Rouichi,' it began. But the next line caught him off guard and made him start, his breath hitching in his throat. 'Or should I say, Fire-san?'
Rouichi's fingers curled around the edges of the page reflexively. It was a simple note, not lengthy, but what could he have expected from someone like
that? The color drained from his face in an instant.
"He says it is time the brothers reunited," Korin said, so soft in the semi-dark room that his voice was barely audible,
no more substantial than the shadows that flickered at the edge of the lamplight. "He says: Come home." ....
Even the familiar surroundings of Lord Sohma's sitting room seemed alien, threatening. He didn't know what he was leading Rou into, but he knew the
message he carried was pure poison, in one way or another.
Rouichi lowered the scroll slowly, his movements jerky and mechanic. He mouthed the word 'Batsu', and then it all sank in. Air. Water. Batsu.
"Fei..." he said, a sickening fear flashing like lightning across his face. "Fei!" Korin was standing in the way of the door.
"Move!" he roared, with a sudden fierceness that probably woke Lord Sohma and shook the draping tapestries on the walls. This message was not good,
especially if what he suspected was the truth. He had to find Fei, now! He had to!
Korin flinched back from Rou's sudden roar, and moved aside before he even realised what he had said. "Fei Lin?" he said, in horrified tones. So
Korin had carried a threat to Rou's wife. And it wasn't just that that made Korin's stomach curl in fright for the other man. She was carrying
Rou's child.
Rouichi darted past Korin, brushing shoulders with him nearly violently. He didn't look back - didn't look anywhere, for that matter. His normally
cautious and quiet advance turned into a single-minded, loud run through the palace corridors. Fei Lin had gone back to the manor tonight - he had seen her off
himself. He had to get there. During their flight outside Rou knocked a page over when he dashed by them, spilling the paperwork he had been carrying all over
the floor in his haste. He didn't stop, but went immediately to the stables. He couldn't get to the manor fast enough on foot and literally stole the
very first horse he could find that was saddled, regardless of the fact that the soldier who had just been stabling the mount protested. He barked something
about 'orders from Lord Sohma' and to shut the hell up, but otherwise paid the man no mind.
Korin cursed and took off after Rou. Rou was faster, of course, but in the twisting corridors of the palace that didn't help
much, and Korin knew where he was heading - the stables, of course. Korin wasted valuable minutes asking for a horse saddled for himself, while Rou took off
towards the city. Korin disliked riding, but he had to stay behind Rou. Fei Lin might be in terrible trouble.
He knew the way to Lord Sohma's house. It wasn't far. He kicked the horse into a trot, praying that he would stay on, and then into a canter. The
sudden thought occurred to him that it might be a trap, that Rou might have gone running in headlong and that man or his friends might be *waiting*. He tied
the horse up outside Lord Sohma's house, cursing his own poor riding skills, in a slapdash knot that it would probably work loose in minutes. The door was
half-open. He ran up the steps and pushed it the rest of the way. "Rou!" he shouted.
The trail was easy enough to follow. Rou had gone straight to the bedroom where he knew Fei Lin was sleeping; or would have been, if things had been a normal
night. When Korin paused in the doorway and took in the room, Rou was standing in the middle of it, as stock still as a statue. He had his back to Korin, but
the tension running through the lines of his body was visible. He had something in his hands. The room was undisturbed, but empty.
"Where is she?" Korin said tightly. "Could she have gone somewhere else by herself?"
Rouichi turned slowly, and the expression on his face couldn't have been crafted to look more like despair than it already did. His hands shook, and when
he held out the object clasped in his fingers, it was a card. Its simple black marking did not look like much, but it held the world of significance to
Rouichi. "Batsu," was all he managed to say. They had Fei Lin. They had his wife and his son.
Korin looked at the curving mark on the card. An image vaguely stirred in his head - didn't Rou have a mark like that on his
shoulder? He raised troubled, uncomprehending eyes to Rou's. "I don't understand," he said hopelessly, in the face of Rou's despair.
"I don't understand."
Rouichi closed his eyes, his face pinching in a mix of anger and anguish. "The Batsu," he breathed, his words nearly drowned out by the sudden
crackle and burst of flame that enveloped his fist. The tongues of fire consumed the card, eating it until there was naught but ash left. As quickly as it had
come it snuffed out, and Rouichi tipped his hand, letting the ash slide from his palm as though he could no longer stand to touch it. "They are the
military - my past - my brothers." He spat the last word with such venom that his feelings on the matter could not be confused. "They..."
Rou's voice broke and he stopped, on the verge of an emotional breakdown. Clamping every barrier he possessed down on the feelings of outrage, of fear,
that whirled through him, he took a shaky breath. "They have my wife."
The military. So the man had been telling the truth. This was the division Rou had hinted at once or twice, the one he seemed not to
want to even remember. They had Fei Lin. "What would they gain by hurting her?" he said, trying to be reasonable, to anchor Rou. Rou should
be coping, Rou could always cope. Korin would have understood fury. But Rou in despair - it made him feel as the floor had been pulled from
under his feet. "They won't have hurt her," he said, trying to reassure them both. "They want something from you."
It helped, he though distractedly, in some capacity to have someone there who could think rationally. Rouichi's mind was spiralling uncontrollably through
what he knew of the Batsu, of what he knew of himself, and how he knew they would treat prisoners. But Fei Lin is different. Fei Lin... "They won't
harm her as long as I do what they say," he said slowly, managing some level of mastery over his voice. He did not look at Korin. He stared at the floor
instead. "Air is like that - he manipulates. He knows the only way to get to me is..." he stopped again, and then finally looked at Korin. Rather, he
looked at the cut on his cheek. "He's making a point. With Fei Lin, and with you. Control. That's what it's always been about. It's what
he thrives on."
"What does he want you to do?" Korin said, the fear clear in his voice. What could they want from Rou? "You left,
didn't you?" And the phrase ran through his head Tell him he has to come home.
"I didn't leave," he said, fixing Korin with a look that was at once unreadable and said everything. "He got rid of me..." Rouichi
shook his head and sank down on the edge of the bed. It was hard to think. All he could manage to focus on was Fei Lin. "... The letter didn't say. It
never says. He's..." Rouichi would never admit to fear, for he was generally not scared of anything, but there was one man who bypassed that. There
was one man he was terrified of - or rather, of what he could do. "I don't know. But whatever it is... I have to do it. They won't hesitate,
Korin. They're murderers.... A woman and child are nothing. We've killed them before with no mercy. They won't hesitate even a second."
"'We'?" Korin said quietly. A woman and a child? It was no colder in the room than it had been when he entered,
but he suddenly felt chilled to the bone. He knew Rou had never wanted to talk about what had happened before he had entered Lord Sohma's service. But now
it seemed it wasn't so much in the past as Korin - as Rou had assumed.
"She called us monsters... We are," he said despairingly, "we are." Korin wouldn't know what Rouichi was referencing and probably never
would. That day, that woman - it was true, all of it. He dropped his head into his hands and dug his fingers into his hair, barely controlling the urge to rip
at it in frustration. He should have never thought, even for a moment, that life could go on for him. He could never leave the past; it haunted his footsteps
wherever he ran.
