#sanitize extra

[sage-thrasher]

Extra: Tsubaki/Hatake (“These Small Hours“)

The winner of the Discord vote! Here’s the quick 900 word short with Tsubaki, Hatake, Emigiku, and Shikari. Enjoy!

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Convincing the prickly Wind Country artist to create Lord Oshiro’s glass monstrosity wasn’t as difficult as transporting the unwieldy sculpture across two countries. Tsubaki wouldn’t have bothered if it weren’t for the truly ridiculous payment, even with the artist’s cut.

She glanced at Rui, and though she knew that the Hatake was equally relieved, not a hint of it showed on the shinobi’s face.

“Perhaps we could visit that tea house,” Tsubaki murmured to him. “We both deserve a break.”

Rui glanced at her, and a smile tugged at the corner of his lips. The journey had been harder on him, having to defend her and the delicate artwork. Just as fast, his eyes snapped back to the hallway, and his arm relaxed by his waist, an innocuous gesture—if you didn’t know about the hidden knife.

It was just a gaggle of noble ladies. Tsubaki shook her head and stepped aside for the nobles, amused at his constant paranoia. The ladies were all second rate, by the look of it: unfavored concubines and fourth daughters. She idly categorized their fashions and patterns, making note of trends and colors. The layered wave pattern was ‘in’ again, and so was green. Tsubaki connected that to certain political trends, warlords and aspiring daimyos whose colors were the same—until she glanced at a woman in the back of the pack.

She was stunning, in every sense of the world. Black, silky hair with an undertone of blue, made all-the-more striking by the icy shade of her eyes. The woman briefly met her gaze and looked away, disinterested, but Tsubaki almost stepped back with shock. 

That woman was a ninja.

They’d met briefly, but Tsubaki was unlikely to forget their introduction. Emigiku—a geisha's name, and if it wasn’t a fake one, she’d eat that sculpture—was the blonde kunoichi who’d burst into Yui’s clinic and interrupted their tea. 

Tsubaki looked wide-eyed at him, and he gave her the slightest of nods. Of course, Rui had recognized her before she had. Maybe he was right to be paranoid.

------

They were both indulging in takoyaki on the street when the kunoichi slid into the seat beside Rui. He immediately stood up, angling himself in front of Tsubaki. 

“Oh, calm down, Hatake,” purred the other ninja. “I picked the empty seat next to you for a reason.” 

She was blonde again, with only the faintest hints of makeup. Her yukata was simple (though still wave patterned), and she fit in perfectly with every other middle-class city dweller. Well, almost perfectly. The look in her eyes was too sharp to be anything but predatory.

“Emigiku, wasn’t it?” Tsubaki gave her the neutral smile she reserved for new clients. “We’ve met before.”

“You can certainly call me that,” she said, amused. “But ‘Emi’ might be less of a mouthful.” Emi met Rui’s gaze, and her smile grew. “Is it really so hard to believe that I have no ill intentions?”

“Not a chance, Yamanaka.” His voice was low, edging into a growl. “You let us know you were here.”

Immediately, she blushed a deep, deep red and pressed her hands to her cheeks. (Tsubaki was rather impressed at how natural it looked.) “My, my, you have this all wrong!” Emi looked like nothing more than a bashful, naive woman, embarrassed by the misunderstanding. She straightened, and the act disappeared. “No, really. I don’t normally work in this area, so I didn’t try as hard to hide myself. Serves me right for being careless.” 

Tsubaki would say that Emi’s sheepish smile looked genuine, but so had everything else. 

“Mika, who are your friends?” A tall, scarred man sauntered to the counter, only to freeze upon seeing Rui.

The kunoichi laughed. “They know me as Emi, actually.”

Rui’s hand settled on his hilt. “You aren’t convincing me of your goodwill,” he said, quiet. 

The other shinobi stared at him and then Emi. “Goddamnit, Mika. What the hell are you doing? We were--what--” He pressed his hand to his forehead. “Alright, let’s go.”

“What do you want, Nara?” Rui stepped forward.

“Well, right now, I want to leave.”

Tsubaki finished her food and cleared her throat. “As entertaining as this all is, I think we can all relax a bit. Are you two going to order something?”

The three ninja glanced at her. Rui continued to look grim, but she knew that crinkle of exasperation by his eyes. The Nara, as Rui had called him, seemed ten seconds away from spontaneously combusting with irritation. 

Emi’s sly grin hadn’t changed. “Yes, Hatake, listen to your…” she paused, “employer. Yes, your employer. I simply wanted to say hi and,” her voice slipped into a rural twang, “grab some food.”

“You said hi,” ground out the Nara. “We can get food somewhere else. Let’s go.”

She sighed and stretched, twisting her body innocently--and both the Nara and Rui’s eyes followed her movement involuntarily. (So did Tsubaki’s.) “I think I’ll stay here.”

“In that case, I suggest the takoyaki,” Tsubaki said.

Emi raised an eyebrow. “You suggest the takoyaki… at a takoyaki stand.”

Tsubaki gave her most sale-closing smile. “Absolutely.”

For a moment, she was faced with the full force of Emi’s scrutiny. Her intensity didn’t lesson, but Emi’s smile broke through like the sun after a monsoon, and Tsubaki knew that men and women had fallen in love for less.

(But I, thought Tsubaki, trying not to look at Rui, have fallen in love for more.)

“I’d love to have some takoyaki,” Emi said, soft. “Would you join me, Kari?”

The Nara hesitated only for a moment before taking the seat next to his associate. “I don’t really have a choice, do I?”

Rui was the last to sit down, but when he did, it was with a brush of his fingers against her wrist.

[sage-thrasher]

Extra: “Sanitize” and Sen’s Story

This is a side story for Sanitize, and it takes place after Chapter 8. It contains spoilers, and it won’t make any sense unless you’re caught up. This is more of a... what if? It has no link to the story canon. Is this actually what happened? That’s up to you. But I wanted to write it, so I did. With no further ado, here’s Decay.

Sebastian didn’t like his name. It felt like a shirt that didn’t fit, pinching under the arms, tight in the wrong places and loose in the others. He was six when he told his parents that he wanted to be called only by his nickname—Seb. It still wasn’t right. There was a sound that didn’t fit. But it was closer, much closer, and easy to ignore.

His parents indulged him. They usually did. He was a surprise baby born to an older couple who’d long given up on their dreams for children. (Seb didn’t know why being an only child made him so sad. He felt like there was a hole in his family; he always expected soft smiles and chattering and sharing things he’d never have to share.)

Seb knew he was lucky. His parents were upper-middle class, one a lawyer and the other an engineer. They loved, if not spoiled him, providing everything he’d ever needed or wanted. So why did he hate wasting food and throwing things away? Why was he so frugal, storing his allowance like it could be taken away any minute? (Why did he have these dreams?)

In school, he knew things that other kids didn’t. Seb had to learn the alphabet with the other kids, he had to read the history textbooks and study, but things came easier for him. Part of it was his parents, both who spent hours helping him learn, but some of it, he couldn’t explain. When he saw a dandelion, he didn’t want to make a wish. He didn’t admire the flower. Seb instead thought inflammation and liver problems.

Still, he was happy. Seb liked people, he liked talking to them and making friends, he liked basketball and video games and bad science fiction, and he liked to learn. He went through elementary and middle school as a gifted, social child, one who almost everybody liked.

(Sometimes, he’d pick up a printed book and marvel at how flawless it was. Sometimes, he’d look at a car or a computer and part of him would dismiss it like a normal teenager, and other times he’d stare, thinking it was magic.)

When Seb started 9th grade in a decent private school, one of the requirements was taking a foreign language. For some reason he couldn’t explain, he chose Japanese. Any of the other options—Spanish, French, Chinese, Latin—would be more practical. But something tugged at him to do it, so he did. His intuition was rarely wrong.

When Seb sat down in his first class and somehow knew the letters and words for a language he’d never heard before, he began to remember. Nothing concrete, nothing that made sense, but he remembered.

The next day, he started a garden.

The day after that, he decided to become a doctor.

Seb worked hard, in school and in his garden. He threw himself into academics with the same stubbornness he used to pull up weeds or argue with his friends. Seb was still a regular teen. He flirted with girls, went to homecoming and parties and football games. But everyone, his parents and teachers and friends, knew something was different.

He had a sense of focus, a sense of grounding and understanding that made no sense for a rich teenager to have. (Why would someone like Seb know how to splint a broken leg with a stick and a shirt without first aid training? How could he speak Japanese so well? Why did his eyes become unfocused because of the strangest things?)

In college, he majored in plant science and took all the classes he needed for medical school. When he took medicinal botany, he fell in love again, and he knew he was doing the right thing. When Seb volunteered in hospitals, shadowing and writing notes, some procedures rung a faint bell. His favorite place to observe was the ER, a place where that feeling of half-remembrance was the strongest.

He applied in his junior year and was quickly accepted into multiple programs. He picked the one with a focus on emergency medicine. Med school was one of the hardest things he’d ever done. (One of, because the dreams of holding a dying child and being unable to save her still made him wake up in cold sweats.) His fellow students joked and marveled about his steady hand in the practicals, telling him that he should become a surgeon. His professors had said so too, but Seb knew his calling.

As soon as he was able, after graduation and exams and residency, Seb joined a nonprofit and left straight to rural health clinic in the middle of nowhere.

It felt like home.

He had two colleagues: Reid, a dark-skinned Briton with Jamaican heritage, and Akari, a sharp-tongued Japanese woman. They helped him man the desk, deliver babies, conduct surgeries, drive ambulances, and everything else. The three of them had to do everything, and Seb had never felt happier or more fulfilled. Sure, the internet was spotty, he got homesick for his family, and he always had a real craving for french fries, but this was what he’d always wanted to do. It never disappointed.

The first time Seb spoke to Akari in Japanese, it had been an accident. She’d mumbled and cursed to herself after their failing ultrasound machine broke again. “Stupid piece of trash. Why do we even bother fixing it?”

“Ye, ‘tis more suited for waste heap, yet mayhap it be better than none,” he’d replied without thinking.

Startled, Akari had stared at him for several seconds, expression changing to mortification as she tried to remember all the other times she’d spoken Japanese in front of him. Her first question was then “You speak Japanese? Since when?” which was followed quickly by “You speak Japanese like that?”

“What do you mean?”

“Your Japanese sounds... old, like a thing from a period drama. As if you were a peasant for a samurai or lord,” she said, laughing. “But it is very good,” she quickly added. “Almost flawless. Did you learn from TV?”

He shrugged and hummed noncommittally, letting her draw her own conclusions. Akari took his agreement at face value, But, after a moment, she said, “Would you like me to teach you? How to speak more normally?”

Seb squashed down the instinctive feeling of ‘I already speak normally!’ and instead smiled. “I’d like that.”

After that, their friendship became something more. Japanese lessons became long conversations. Their brief moments of free time in the clinic were spent entirely with each other. It got to a point that their patients would giggle, asking if they should call a priest or gather flowers. Even their colleague Reid had begun to crack jokes, even complaining that the lovebirds made him homesick for his own boyfriend.

Well. They weren’t wrong. Akari and Seb did end up married, after a hopelessly long and oblivious infatuation from both sides, after fumbling dates and growing love and an even more awkward simultaneous proposal. Reid was his best man, and his speech was long and embarrassing and the funniest thing that Seb had ever heard. Everyone cried at least once, including Seb’s parents, Akari, her parents (though her father tried to hide it during his stilted speech) and Seb himself. It was one of the happiest moments of his life.

(Yet, even at the wedding, he could hear that same voice whispering: You’re twice as old as you were then. You spent twice as long on this world. Why won’t you let go?)

Akari and Seb had decided on two children. Based on the results of a coin toss, the first child would have a Japanese first name and an English middle one, and the second would have the reverse. As they flipped through page after page of baby names, scrolled through page after page, they couldn’t quite find a first name that fit both their tastes. The middle name would be Madison, for no reason besides they liked how it sounded. 

It was during another session of name-searching that his wife had asked, “What do you think of Yui?”

It felt like someone had grabbed his heart and squeezed it.

“Seb?”

“Yui?” he managed to say. 

“Yes. I like how it flows, don’t you?”

He walked over, heart pounding, and wrapped his arms around Akari. “How is it spelled?”

“In English, it’d look like this,” she highlighted the letters on the screen, “but there are many kanji combinations that could be used for Yui.”

She scrolled down, showing him each one. One in particular caught his eye, with the symbols for only and robe. Something warm and kind and unbelievably sad enveloped him, and he could hear a voice whisper: It will be better.  

He shook his head slowly. “How about this spelling?” he said, pointing at the one below it. Ties, it read. The ties that bind one person to another. One world to the next.

“I like it!” Akari grinned at him, and Seb kissed the top of her head.

When their daughter was born, when Seb sat next to his exhausted and adoring wife, when he held the little wrinkled baby who cried defiantly to the world...

“Yui,” he murmured, and he smiled through his tears.

It will be better.

And it was.