| Let's Not Speak of It Again [Ryouma, Katsuko] | [Dec. 26th, 2009|11:39 am] |
[[Takes place early in the morning of April 8, the day after Something That the Knife Took and two days after Lay Your Armor Down. Titles inspired by Dashboard Confessional's song Don't Wait.]]
By the fifth mile, the shallow cut on Ryouma's hip had clotted and he was beginning to find his stride. At the fifteenth, when they paused for a breather and for Ryouma to burn his reeking gloves and scrub his crusted hands, two of Katsuko's clones peeled off to backtrack. They caught up again half an hour later, running with easy satisfaction. One of the sharp-faced masks was sprinkled with blood. Ryouma thought about asking, and decided to focus on running instead.
At least they knew the territory. When Katsuko swung in a wide west-ward circle to avoid Ashirogi Swamp, Ryouma followed her without question. When her next clone peeled off, it returned quickly with a canteen refilled from a stream running cold with snow-melt. And when, near midnight, Ryouma veered south-east again into the low forested foothills near the border of Plains and Fire Country, he found the ancient ryokan still standing among its sheltering pine-trees.
The frail, white-haired old landlady was still there, too--a little deafer, and more than a little rumpled from the bed they'd rousted her out of, but still as bright-eyed and energetic as she'd been when Ryouma had first stayed here on his way to the border five years ago. She was also obviously dying of curiosity, but any innkeeper who made half her living from ninja clientele was a past master at the art of discretion. There were no other guests at the moment, she informed them as she entered a neat spiral-leaf sigil in the register. The baths were open-air, but heated by hot-springs; they would be quite safe, too, because years of ninja guests had left the perimeter so heavily trapped that not even squirrels could cross from the forest into the ryokan grounds. (The landlady's kitchen garden fared quite well in the absence of four-legged brigands.) She would stir up the maids and have supper waiting when they finished in the baths. "And a medical kit," she added, with an unsuccessful attempt not to stare at Ryouma's shoulder and Katsuko's broken armor. "Is there anything else you require, shinobi-san?"
"Privacy," Ryouma said, slinging his good arm over Katsuko's shoulders. She'd ordered her clones to linger in the woods outside when they entered the ryokan. Without that small army, he was pretty sure the landlady would get the picture.
She did, with a small "Oooh!" of surprise, another thoughtful glance at Ryouma's shoulder, and then an entirely approving smile for both of them. "Of course, shinobi-san. If you would wait just a moment, I'll have the baths prepared..."
She shuffled off down the hall with a surprising turn of speed for a woman nearly doubled over by age. Ryouma shucked his sandals and bent his head to whisper in Katsuko's ear. "I've stayed here before. It's about as safe as anywhere inside Konoha's walls. You can let the clones go, if you don't want 'em complaining at you tomorrow morning." |
|