Chapter Text
— ♠♥♦♣ —
♠ Ruin. Hiiro has fought for hours at the gates of this place, of home . It had been beautiful this morning. There had been life. The plum blossoms had been flowering in the courtyard, a snatch of beauty that had heartened him as he passed through on the way to the war council. On the way to his brother , who surely… surely would stop the army at their gates. Who would lead. Who would do what he had been born to do and lay to rest the conflict that their parents had blindly entered, with Hiiro standing at his side.
Now he stands gasping breath into his smoke-burnt lungs under the crumbling arch of the gate, listening to the patter of stone falling around him, the tiny fragments shaking loose above his head with each mortar that collides with the keeps walls far away on the already broken battlements. If he cared for his safety anymore he would move, or flee. Instead he stands, feeling his dry throat clicking a plea for water from a canteen that's been empty for hours as he swallows, and comforting himself with the knowledge that dead men don't thirst. The ground beneath his feet is mud. Cooled oil and boiled water, the black splashes of what must have been blood before the ground took the life and color within it back into itself, all spattering his boots, his torn clothing. Here and there his own is seeping down to join it, weeping from the tiny cuts that litter his body. A score of small mistakes, ones that only grew larger with each passing hour he had fought until there was nothing but pain and exhaustion in his trembling limbs. It doesn't matter. One more task, and he'll be done.
The sky is a ruddy gray with smoke, glowing embers as crimson as the Queen who brought them raining down upon Hiiro’s home. The town is burning. Not the fields, not the houses; the Vermilion Queen is too practical a woman to ever harm the lifeblood of the places she conquers. The homes are whole, but the storehouses and barracks and government buildings, the walls of the palace? Those spew black ash into the sky as the flames engulf them, those places that Hiiro was raised in. The places he was meant to stand and protect.
The guard is gone. The battle is lost - was lost, the moment that Hiiro entered the war council room to find his brother missing and the elders in panic. Nothing he could have done would have been enough to rally his men after they’d learned that their chief had abandoned them. The fight is over, and Hiiro has sent his men to save their families, their friends, and to flee while Hiiro stays. He is the last remaining Amagi in this place, and he will fall with it.
Spine straight, his spear planted in the ground, his head lifted and eyes clear under the trickle of blood running from the crown of his bare head, Hiiro watches the ruined gates creak under the force of the red soldiers, the fanfare of a simple pair of horns announcing the woman who steps forward to meet him.
Hiiro expected a queen. He expected bloody rubies at her throat and cold malice in her eyes. He expected silk and hatred, the finery of the high and mighty, the powerful come sweeping in in her voluminous skirts perched high on a palanquin to sneer down at the last man left to crush beneath her heel, the only obstacle to claiming her victory.
Hiiro receives a Queen instead. Her high boots are soaked with the same mud that sucks at his own feet, the hem of her sensible, crimson general’s uniform stained with ash where it nearly sweeps the ground. Her hair is swept back into a sensible braid, utterly unadorned save for the commanders hat pinned in place atop her head, though wisps of it are escaping from their confines and sticking to her temples, the locks dark with soot and ash. She wears the same strange, modern styles as every traveler from outside does, hard wearing and made of strange, modern shapes that couldn’t be more different from Hiiro’s own traditional clothing. There is one of their modern weapons at her hip too- a pistol, a saber. She is armed, but her eyes are not full of any malice that Hiiro can spy. Instead she meets his gaze from where she stands at the head of her company, in the center of the outer wall’s crumpled gate, surveying the siege-worn wreckage of the bailey. Though there’s still a distance between them his vision is still keen; Hiiro can watch her eyes sweep over her prize. They light on the burning wreckage of a maple tree. The outlines of bodies in the mud. The smaller frame of Hiiro standing before the inner gate to meet her. And they fill with such aching regret that it knocks the little breath Hiiro has left from his body.
“The Vermilion Queen, the Goddess of Victory, Queen Anzu!” announces her crier, but she has already begun to cross the gap between them, her hand not straying once towards the sword at her hip. Hiiro plants his feet and straightens to his full height, calling on every scrap of self his parents had ever spared him when his brother hadn’t needed it, and meets her eyes steadily. He has no crier, but he doesn’t need one.
“I am Hiiro Amagi, second to Chief Rinne Amagi,” is all that he says. Beneath the sweat-soaked leather of his gloves his knuckles are white on the haft of his spear.
The Vermilion Queen pauses, then. Just for a moment, her face implacable as she takes that in. There should be distance between them. There should be a personal guard flanking her, protecting her. Do her people not care that she’s safe? he thinks faintly, something in him recoiling from the wrongness of it. She is well within spear range, and then she’s within sword range, and then she stops so close they might simply be two friends speaking in the courtyard as they greet each other.
“Where is Chief Rinne?” She asks, and Hiiro feels the despair threaten to well up once more before he tamps it down with everything he has left. There are things he could say. Excuses. All his life he’d made excuses for Rinne. Unreliable Rinne. Selfish Rinne. His beloved older brother, the one who would sneak him out of lessons and take him outside of the keep walls when they were meant to be home. Brotherly acts of love and rebellion that gradually made Hiiro’s stomach tighter with uncertainty the older he got, and the more he understood about everything their positions meant . The responsibility had never seemed to mean anything to Rinne, and Hiiro had envied him that ability to seem so light under all of the pressure. Hiiro had loved Rinne more than anyone in the world. Now, today, he finally realizes that it wasn’t that Rinne could shrug off all of the burdens placed upon him. He had simply never cared to pick them up at all.
There are excuses he could make. But Rinne’s reputation was always the Amagi’s clan’s most poorly concealed secret. Hiiro simply shakes his head, and breaks the queen’s gaze to gaze down at the distant fires of his burning home as his jaw sets in silent rage. He can hear her exhale, the long release of breath as though he’s punched her in the stomach and she can stave off the pain if only she moves slowly enough.
“Lord Rinne… fled? He left you to stand for him? Alone?” Pity. Empathy. Hiiro’s eyes snap back up to her, and there’s an anguish there in her eyes now that the shreds of his pride will not abide.
“I’m still Amagi!” The words ring through the courtyard with a strength that surprises even himself. “I am an Amagi, and even if my brother won’t stand against you, then I will be the one to answer you and take responsibility in his stead. This is my home, and my people, and I will not flee if I can buy them even a moment to retreat from you!” The declaration carries a strength that surprises him. It sounds like his father did, before he was too old to lead any longer. It hurts to hear, and that hurt gives him the power to stare down the Vermilion Queen and meet her as an equal. Just this once, in the moment before he dies, he can be the leader his people should have had.
And the queen- she looks at him, and she sees him. Hiiro couldn’t say how. Years later he couldn’t articulate it even to himself, to the people who ask him why , and how could you do this and what made you change? She simply sees him, and when she steps forward to lay her hand on his shoulder he does not lift his spear.
“If you are the last Amagi,” she says, “Then you are who I came for. Let us end this war.”
And Hiiro… stares at her. The look on his face must be priceless. He can feel the way his eyes widen and his mouth opens in naked shock, and the Bloody Red Queen smiles at him like he’s done something funny, even as she gives him the most respectful bow anyone has ever deigned to give the Amagi’s second son in his short life.
“I don’t understand. You- you’ve won.” he blurts, still staring at her. “This isn’t a trap. I’m not any good at traps.” The crier behind her covers her mouth to smother what has to be a laugh, and it would be such a funny situation if it wasn’t also the worst day of Hiiro’s life.
“I know. But I don’t believe in carrying on with a war that neither of us wanted to be in in the first place. Not when the instigators aren’t even alive anymore. Do you?” Queen Anzu’s smile turns softer, limned in regrets like the burning horizon behind her. Numbly, Hiiro shakes his head.
“Then call off the attack!” The queen turns, sweeping a hand out towards her retinue. Heels snap together crisply, and as one man lifts a horn to his lips and sounds it over the din of the rout, three more runners break off to carry the news. “All halt! Nothing is to be looted, no civilians are to be harmed! I want those fires out immediately!”
“I thought queens were supposed to talk quietly, like ladies?” Hiiro blurts again, numb with shock, and this time the words seem twice as loud in the sudden silence as the bombardment stops all along the walls. His ears ring as the Vermilion Queen glances over her shoulder at him, frozen midstep to stare at him like a cat that’s just stepped in a puddle. “Sorry! I apologize! I didn’t mean-”
But she’s laughing. The shrill, relieved laugh of someone who has had a truly awful day and needs the release as much as water and air, and Hiiro hears his own laugh join it. Higher than it should be, higher than hers is, hysteria creeping in at the edges the longer it goes on. The worst day of his life; he’s managed to accidentally end a war and insult the Vermilion Queen within two breaths, and it still might be ten times better than Rinne would have managed.
— ♠♥♦♣ —
♦ When Tatsumi wakes, he isn’t alone.
Everything aches. There’s a dryness in his throat that feels like it could crack itself in half on a single word, brittle with disuse. A pounding in his head, deeper than he’s ever felt before; night after night of study, of planning, a dozen hours spent in silent contemplation of maps and books until his neck felt as though it would stiffen and snap under the heavy weight of his own eyelids, and yet he’s never felt anything like this. And his leg… his leg barely feels at all. There’s the ache; the dull, bone-deep ache that pulses with his blood, but it’s muted. Softened. Painkillers. That frightens him: the pain that his captors deigned not to let him feel must be great indeed.
But all of that is nothing compared to the presence in the room. All of the hurt, and it cannot stop him from coming to with the intimacy of another human at his bedside already pressing at his awareness.
“Father Kazahaya?” The voice is quiet but clear, accompanied by the rustle of fabric as a figure bends over him. “You’re awake at last… you had us worried.” It takes discipline even to force his eyes open, but that Tatsumi has in deep supply. They open, and they don’t recognize the woman bent in concern over his sickbed at all.
“K-” No, he can’t speak. Even the small attempt has him coughing, his arm sluggish to respond to cover his mouth. Weak. All of him feels weak and tired and pained. It would be a great mercy from the Lord, he thinks, if his memories would come back slowly. If the thing that had put him here would be so terrible and great that his mind would give him a moment's peace to awaken and process what’s happened to his body before he has to contend with the hurts in his heart and soul as well. But it does not. He remembers everything.
The woman at his bedside withdraws as he begins to cough, a small noise of surprise following after before he hears the clink of glass and the quiet trickle of water being poured. Tatsumi has no choice but to wait for her to return, curled in on himself as best he can when so little of his body will move under his own power, holding himself still and disciplined as the coughing only slowly abates. When she returns, she slips her arm beneath his shoulders with a quiet apology for the practical presumption and lifts him up enough for him to drink from the glass she holds to his lips without spilling on himself. Though he should sip it slowly, his body drains it in moments in desperate gulps that leave him gasping when he’s done, but blissfully saved from the cracking dryness of before. She withdraws, and as Tatsumi slumps back against the pillows, he tries again:
“Kaname.”
The woman stills, hand still looped loosely around the glass she’s just set upon the bureau next to the bed. “I’m sorry for bringing you here without your permission, Father,” she says, words slow and careful. “I understand how confusing all of this must be. Please- believe me when I say that you are not a prisoner here, and that I don’t mean you or your friends any harm?”
It’s not an answer. Tatsumi closes his eyes and sends up a simple, heartfelt prayer to the heavens. Please. Please let him be alright.
When they open once more he takes a deep breath, slowly parsing through what he doesn’t know (much of anything) and what he does (that things will never be the same after what’s happened) and selecting the most important things first. “Then I owe you my thanks,” he rasps, inclining his head at her from where he rests. “I didn’t expect to wake, after everything that happened.” With great effort, he manages to draw himself up against the pillows. The woman lifts a hand, biting her lip as if to stop him, but seems loath to take that small agency from him. Instead she quietly bends forward again and slips another pillow beneath his back to help him stay seated. Many would be embarrassed to be so incapable of such a small thing, but Tatsumi has performed these simple gestures of healing a hundred times at the bedside of a hundred people. All he feels is gratitude that somehow God has delivered him from the lion's den and into a place that values those gestures as they should be, now that he is the one in need. He inclines his head at her in another thanks, finally able to meet her eyes at level as she sits once more in the chair by his bedside.
“You nearly didn’t.” She answers simply, her smile rueful. “But you will recover.”
“And to whom do I owe my recovery, as I thank God for your kindness?”
The woman hesitates once more, this time with a more guarded expression. “My name is Anzu,” she settles upon after a moment. “And this is my home. You were unconscious for some time, and we had to bring you some ways to provide the care you needed. You weren’t safe in Reimei any longer.”
“No…” And Tatsumi closes his heavy eyes once more, resting back against the pillows with a weariness that seems to pull him downwards, into the bed and into the ground and to the gates of hell. There is an echo in his ears he knows must not be real. The jeer of the crowd, the hollow sound of Kaname’s skull hitting the wooden planks of the platform they’d been speaking on. The snap of bone as Tatsumi had begun to stand and a heavy boot had come down on the outside of his knee. “No, I can't imagine that I am any longer.” The meeting hall had been hidden. Private, underground, a carefully kept secret. But the White King’s spies are everywhere. They need to be, to maintain such a widespread peace. “Then I owe you my life twice over, your Majesty.”
If the Vermilion Queen is surprised by his casual use of her title, she doesn’t show it. Instead she winces, as though embarrassed. It’s such a gesture of youth, so young and nervous on such a formerly composed and sure face that Tatsumi can’t help but smile, reaching out thoughtlessly to pat the back of her hand where it rests on the covers. “There are only so many “Anzus” with the power to retrieve a wanted revolutionary from the midst of a mob in the Reimei capital. And your sense of decor is far more on theme than you might want to place your guests in, if you’re trying to keep your identity a secret.”
The room he rests in is certainly cohesive. A red canopy and coverlet on the bed, cream and burgundy wallpaper, a plush maroon rug on the floor. Even the iron grate guarding the cheerfully crackling fire that throws light and warmth into the room is wrought into pleasant designs of hearts and roses. Anzu simply sighs and rests her hand over his, pressing it gently between hers with a familiarity usually reserved for family. “Not a secret. You’ve just been through a lot, Father. I didn’t want to make your waking any more difficult than it needed to be.”
“I have, have I?” He chuckles softly, feeling the motion send distant needles of pain up his ruined leg. “Well. I think the sooner a person gets through the bad times, the easier it is to start healing from them. Don’t you? No, I would like it if you would simply tell me what’s gone wrong, and what you would like my help with. Your reputation certainly precedes you, Majesty. I wouldn’t presume to know your plans, of course, but I know I had a spy or two of yours among my revolution.”
Anzu laughs too, his hand still clasped in hers as though she’s forgotten that it’s there. “Ah, and here they thought they were so cleverly hidden. You’ll disappoint them, Father!”
“Not at all! They did a wonderful job. The eyes of the lord are keen, however. I thought it best to allow it. I thought perhaps…” And what had he thought? That the enemy of his enemy was his friend? Reimei and its class system is the antithesis of the Vermilion Court, after all. What else would they war over? Why else would Reimei send low ranking soldier after low ranking soldier to fuel the warfronts of the nations that ring the slowly expanding city state as canon fodder for the greater powers that began the wars in the first place? Reimei never likes to recall that they struck first. That they were always far, far more afraid of the tiny, fledgling nation of ‘criminals’ and ‘outcasts’, afraid that the Vermilion Queen with her lofty ideals of equality and justice for the downtrodden was never afraid of them.
Yes, that’s what Tatsumi had thought, when he picked up the reports of spies in his revolution that Kaname had put in front of him and gently but firmly cast them into the fire. He had thought, “This is a person who should see what we are doing here.” Kaname had agreed with him, in the end. The two of them couldn’t help but laugh; Reimei and all its propaganda of class orders and the rights endowed by birth on the special, privileged few was always so afraid that Vermilion’s ideals might reach their borders and begin to whisper in the ears of the lowborn, and yet here they were trying to reach Vermilion with their own whispers instead. Prayers, perhaps. It seems to Tatsumi that the Lord has delivered his feelings right to the person who might be able to help him realize them, now that his own rebellion has died.
Anzu is waiting patiently for him to finish his thought, her keen eyes fixed politely on him until he remembers himself with a tired smile of apology. “Reimei’s revolution should be brought about from within Reimei. From the people who have been hurt the most by it. But when God closes one door, somewhere he opens another, and we would be fools not to walk through it because we are blind to any path but the one we saw ourselves taking.”
“I didn’t bring you here because I wanted to recruit you, Father.”
“No? Well. I can’t imagine I would be much good to you like this. And I don’t know how much of the revolution is left after the mob has had their way.”
“No! No, that isn’t what I meant at all.” Anzu shakes her head, squeezing his hand as though to draw his gaze back to the earnest look she entreats him with. “You’re a good person, Father. You wanted to do a good thing. You were fighting for something good. You shouldn’t die for it. Martyrs aren’t any better as icons than they are as living, breathing people. They're just dead. If you want to leave after you heal, I won’t stop you. If you want to find Kaname, I will do what I can to help without jeopardizing our spies in Reimei.”
An idealist. It’s one thing to know that there is a place that takes in the strays, the runaways, the criminal revolutionaries. It’s another to see its leader knelt at your bedside pleading for you to believe that she will ask nothing of you in return.
Well. Tatsumi has always firmly believe that the Lord places you where you are needed, and this is perhaps the least subtle His hand has ever been on Tatsumi’s back.
“And if I would offer my help freely? What then?”
Anzu draws in a slow breath, and even more slowly pulls her hands free of his to fold in her lap. Her spine straightens, her bearing altering in some imperceptible way. Becoming a queen, Tatsumi thinks, with a pride that’s nearly paternal for a woman he’s only barely met.
“Then I would gratefully take you into my council, Father Kazahaya.”
— ♠♥♦♣ —
♣ Phantom, they call him. In a war zone where the buildings are burned out husks and the wind tastes like ash in Mayoi’s mouth every time he dares to step outside, the soldiers who did this to what used to be home still find something else to fear: they fear him . It makes him want to laugh as hard as cry. Killers! Soldiers! And Mayoi is still inhuman and scary enough to frighten them. There's no way for him to find out what's going on, not without speaking to someone. But the colors on the soldiers' uniforms change almost every week, white to red to white again, and they bring new camps and fresh supplies. Things happen here, they warn new recruits. Rations stolen in the dead of night from caravans, prisoners freed from makeshift brigs, smugglers who somehow always find the right path through the dark forests until the soldiers on both sides of this contested territory are utterly convinced: there is a ghost in the remains of this town.
The feeling that used to make him sick- no it still makes him sick, it makes him want to fall to the ground and retch out everything inside of his half starved guts if only people would look at him as something else, if he could just heave out the ugly black thing inside of him that makes him so worthless - he wishes now that he could have more of it, all of it if only it would keep them from looking at him now. He wishes he truly was a phantom, some dark and nebulous ghost with no form. But he’s not a phantom at all anymore. Seen, he’s been horribly, horribly seen, and the deadly mistake that should only cost his own worthless life suddenly has a price so high that Mayoi would sell his soul if only he could pay with anything else.
Instead, the soldier chasing him fires off another shot that misses so close to the precious bundle clutched in his arms that Mayoi heaves a sob of pure terror thinking for a moment it didn’t miss at all- and then the shrapnel from the wall sprays him instead, masonry slicing into his cheek in a pain that brings the deepest of relief with it even as it stings. Tiny fists clutch at his shirt. She screams, as much as she can through her fear, the sound thin and muffled into his shirt.
“Shh, shh, it’s okay, I’m so sorry, little one! I’m s-sorry, I’ll put you down as soon as it’s safe!” He gasps for breath between words, vainly hoping he’s loud enough to cover the gunshots that patter around him. It’s not enough. Mayoi could never be enough, but the child is sobbing now as he throws himself into the darkness of the burned-out shell that had once been a grocery and all of the noise makes his head spin. The roof has collapsed, everything is rubble and the half burned remains of walls and beams, darkness and the smell of damp and ash all mixed together into a ruin that Mayoi slips into with all the familiarity of coming home. He tucks them beneath a collapsed shelf, pressing his back into a corner and tossing his cloak over the both of them, his hood pulled up until the dark fabric blends them both into the charred mess and shadows. Through it all he hears more shouts behind him- Stop! and Thief! and You fucking idiot, that’s a civilian! . Yes- yes the child is a civilian, maybe they’ll stop for her? A child might be beaten if they’re not protected, might be hurt, might suffer in this ugly, cruel world, but not shot. Surely not shot. Who would ever shoot a good child like this?
Somehow, he's right. The gunshots quiet. Silence falls. Maybe… no, oh no, oh no, Mayoi is worthless but he isn’t stupid. There’s the softest crunch of boots outside, attempts at stealth that could never match this wasted place’s very own ghost.
"They disappeared around here, right…?"
"I don't see any blood. You're lucky you didn't shoot them, I swear one of them was a child. You'd have been court-martialed before you could lower the damned gun."
"I'm sorry! I thought it was an animal at first, or- or the ghost…"
Oh no. No no no no, it's his fault. It's all Mayoi's fault, they shot at the child because they thought it was him-
”Shhh, lovely, shhhh, and take a deep breath for me?” Mayoi whispers. The little girl hiccups wretchedly into his shirt, her little heart beating so hard he can feel it against his chest where she clings to him. Mayoi’s own heart tears itself in half at the sound, but it’s the sound that he has to stop. If she doesn’t stop crying they’re sure to be heard, she’s sure to be left to whatever fate the soldier who had caught her picking small and hungry through the rubbish of the red army’s cook tent had intended for her- they cannot be found.
“Everything is going to be okay, see? They’re all gone. W-we just need to play hide and seek for a little while until they give up, hm?” Despite it all his voice stays sweet and even, a hint of sing-song like a mother’s coaxing. And it works. Somehow it works- he’s tricked her , into thinking that she’s safe, into believing in him. It makes him feel so sick he should die of it, oilslick acid pooling in the pit of his stomach. But the little girl just hiccups again and untucks her face from his throat, swiping at her tear stained cheeks with a fist still chubby with baby fat. She’s perfect. She’s an angel in the depths of hell. She can’t be more than five. In the near-dusk darkness, she couldn’t possibly see the shine of tears in his eyes. A small mercy for a worm who doesn’t deserve any mercy at all, but one he’s pathetically grateful for nonetheless.
“Aa~! There’s your sweet face. Tell me, are you good at hide and seek?” The sound of shattered cobble crunching softly underfoot is getting closer. Mayoi gathers himself to run, arms winding tighter around her again as she nods in innocent oblivion.
“Mhm..”
“A-ah! Shh! Shhhh, we can’t be too loud or we’ll lose… but that’s so wonderful! I’m sure you’re just wonderful at it! Would you like me to show you a very, very good hiding spot? It can be all yours after today, if you want. A special secret hiding place where no big scary soldiers can get you~”
And she nods again, blessedly no longer crying as she’s presented with something familiar in the face of all this hurting. Mayoi beams, careful not to show his awful teeth and frighten her, and then silently detaches himself from the corner they’ve hidden in. With his heart in his mouth, he creeps silently through fallen beams and the pitfalls of burned flooring until he reaches the security of stone stairs, granting him and his cargo a way down into the darkness of the basement.
— ♣ —
The children call him Mr. Ghost. This little girl whose father never came back from scavenging for food will join the brave little boy with a missing front tooth who knows the shadows nearly as well as Mayoi did at his single digit age, and the glaring girl of few words who had nearly died alone of infection like a wounded animal before Mayoi was able to steal the medicine that convinced her to let him take her home to safety. This town used to be a nice place. It hurts Mayoi that they need him, almost as much as it hurts for them to be forced into trusting someone like him with their needs at all. The only people left here in the center of the war's contested territory are the wretched, the evil, the helpless, and those too poor to afford even to run for their lives. Mayoi is two of them. He shouldn’t be with them, he’s going to corrupt them, they’ll be lost like him and he’ll never be forgiven. But there's simply no one else.
Mayoi picks his way back under cover of darkness after night falls and the soldiers hunting them have left. It takes time to come and go from the abandoned house he’d hidden them all away in. The ground is disturbed here and there in subtle ways, near the overgrown trees and shrubs that dot the lawn the spidersilk gleam of wire is strung in places only he and the children know to look for. Another way to keep them safe, if Mayoi can't do it with his own unworthy hands.
And it's the traps that give away their pursuer now, just as Mayoi spots two adorable little heads peering over the edge of the windowsill of the dark house to greet them. "I'm home~!" He's just called softly, the door creaking open on the little boy's face. And from behind him there's a soft gasp, a misstep, the twang of wire.
Mayoi throws himself forward the remaining distance as barbed wire springs upwards from the ground and engulfs their tail, practically tossing the little girl inside and into the arms of the older boy before slamming the door in both their faces and turning to face the threat.
Threats.
Soldiers clad in red and black emerge from the darkness around him. Two, three, five. Five of them counting the one swearing and struggling in the wire. Two in the treeline as backup, two approaching. A man and a woman, the man with a mop of scarlet hair and a noble, friendly face. The woman has straight auburn hair and is clad in a uniform Mayoi has never seen. It looks fancy. Too fancy, much too fancy for someone who's pursuing a lowly criminal like Mayoi. Ice fills his veins. How is he supposed to get the kids out of here? How did he not notice them? How could he possibly have messed up so terribly? How could he have ever thought someone like him could keep three innocent children safe for long, he deserves this and his punishment is- this should be his punishment, it shouldn't fall on them. Mayoi's breath begins to come in short, panicked bursts even as he readies himself to move.
The woman nearly steps on one of the traps. Though she's moving cautiously through the high grass as it parts around her, the traps are clever. She doesn't see it and Mayoi - he doesn't actually want to hurt anyone, no one should be hurt for him.
"Stop!" Whatever she sees in his face is enough to stop her cold in her tracks. Mayoi pulls the hand he'd thrown out back to his chest, clutching at his cloak as though that might anchor his racing heart and stop the shaking in his fingertips. "There's- there's a trap. Ahhh- no, I'm sorry there's- there's lots of traps! You c-cant come closer, please. You'll get hurt!"
Slowly, the woman takes a step back, her feet set carefully in the divots of crushed grass where she's already walked. The man at her side frowns, brows knit together but stands down as she waves for him to back off as well. "Alright, Mister Phantom." Her voice is soft but clear, carrying effortlessly across the distance between them. Beside her, the man pulls a lantern from his belt and lights it with a flick of a match. The yard around them comes to life with the writhing shadows of weeds and the low silhouettes of the traps that dot the ground. Mayoi cringes back from the light, pulling his hood farther down over his scalded eyes and shrinking into the shadows of the doorway.
"It is you, isn't it?" She continues as though she hasn't seen any of it. The force of her focus makes Mayoi want to squirm away into some dark little hole and never be seen again, it's so piercing. As though she can see clean through his skin to the filthy black miasma of his very soul. "The so-called Phantom that's been terrorizing my men? Stealing from the supplies?"
Mayoi can't do anything but sob and curl further in on himself, nodding furiously. "It- it's me. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to- I didn't want to scare anyone! I'm sorry that I caused you trouble, I promise you I would have just laid down and- and died quietly like I deserve- I- I would have, but the children can't get food for themselves- not- not with the soldiers around, and that little girl almost g-got shot today-"
"Little girl?" The tone is sharp suddenly. Mayoi cringes back from the strength of it, whining in terror, but she’s no longer looking at him. With a gesture she pulls the scarlet haired boy's attention once more, who shakes his head slowly without ever taking his eyes off of Mayoi.
"There was a commotion earlier, your Majesty,” comes a voice from behind. One of the soldiers who had held back at the treeline, tall and with hair the pale color of seafoam. “Some of the men reported that they thought they saw an animal by the supply cart, and shot at it to scare it off. It seems someone may have made more of a mistake than we had hoped."
"M-m-m- Majesty?! " Mayoi nearly swallows his tongue, only saved by the heart leaping into his throat choking out all of the room it might have taken. The queen. The queen, this is the Vermilion Queen. Mayoi loses the ability to breathe. Chest seizing, he heaves silently for air with the tiny gasps that are all his lungs will allow him now. "M-majesty, I'm s-s-sorry, you shouldn't have to s-speak with the likes of me! I'm sorry! I'm sorry, I'm so- please you can do whatever you want with me! The guillotine or- or- no, guillotines are for noble people, and I'm just a lowly gargoyle- the stockade? Or just throw me into a cell, just please don't blame the little ones for what I did!"
"Mister Phantom-? Please, calm down!" The Queen nearly takes another step forward, stumbling back as soon as she recalls herself and trading a helpless look with the boy at her side. The man with seafoam hair picks his way carefully over to join them, limping slightly but with his gaze steady on Mayoi. "I'm not going to throw anyone in a cell. I think there's been some terrible misunderstandings here, and we can all calm down and think through them together, okay?"
"But you should!" He insists wretchedly. "I stole food from you, and m-medicine, I'm sure someone went hungry because of me! I deserve whatever fate you decide is best-"
"Mister Phantom!" Mayoi's mouth snaps shut, nothing but a whimper escaping. He shouldn't have kept talking, he’s making things worse, he should never have spoken to anyone, ever in his entire life. He should have just- "Mister Phantom, I think what's best is that we all take a deep breath, and then talk through this like adults. My name is Anzu. May I know yours so that I can stop calling you Phantom? Perhaps you could put your hood down?"
The blood roars in Mayoi's ears at the simple request. They want to see him. They want to see the Phantom, and make sure he's a man. If he is! If he is a man! But he’s not. Mayoi knows what he is, but he also knows what he looks like. The curse he's been given, a mockery of what someone like him should actually have on the outside covered up with this face.
"M-Mayoi." It's barely audible across the space between them, a whisper the breeze has to carry the rest of the way to her. "Mayoi Ayase. Ahhhh.. I'm sorry, I must look so suspicious, I am suspicious, I’m so sorry for h-how I am…" With shaking hands he pushes the hood back from his head, forcing his squeezed shut eyes to open and look at her as he steps out of the shadows.
"Um, that's not like any ghost I've ever heard of?" The redheaded boy squints from behind the lantern, lifting it higher as though a better angle might reveal something different to the light. Mayoi wishes very much that it were true. "He's very pretty! My brother used to bring books- ghosts are meant to be twisted up or missing their faces or filled with maggots or something like that, yes? Or are the ghosts different in this country?" Mayoi's face burns from the attention. It's all he can do to keep looking at the queen, even as his nails sink into his biceps and his breathing starts to wheeze.
“No, Hiiro. I think our mysterious Phantom is just a clever civilian who was caught up in the mess we’ve made here.” Anzu’s gaze settles like lead on Mayoi’s eyelids as he shuts them tight again. He can feel it, the way she entreats him to meet her. “Mayoi, then. Mayoi, can you tell me what you’re doing here? Are there more children here?”
The creak of the door opening behind him stops Mayoi’s hammering heart cold. The little girl, the stubborn one who rarely speaks, steps out onto the sagging boards of the porch in all her tiny, stubborn fury. The boy follows, the purple and gold of his hair eating the light the lantern throws on him, the hand of the newest member of their messy little family clutched tightly in his as she hides behind him, all of them determined. Mayoi is so proud of them he thinks he might die happy if the queen killed him now. The girl says nothing but clenches her fists like she’s ready to fling herself off the porch and start swinging.
“Mr. Ghost protected us from the soldiers, and found us food, and he’s good!” The little boy declares, chin up and eyes flashing like a hero from a storybook. Mayoi’s heart leaps - he wants to cry. He shouldn’t need to be protected by children, he doesn’t deserve to be protected by anyone , but they’re so good, so perfect, such innocent, precious little beings that the goodness shining off of them as they fly in the face of what they think is an injustice has blurry burning gathering at the corners of Mayoi’s vision, his throat closing before he can get a word out to protest and tell them to go back inside.
Bare feet thumping on the porch, Shinobu in all of his eight year old bravery plants himself in front of Mayoi and the soldiers, flinging his hands out as if to bar their way. “If you wanna get him you’re gonna have to go through me! I’m a ninja of justice, you know, and I’ll fight all of you to protect the innocent!”
Mayoi bursts into tears.
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