Tempus Fugit: Jadeite
So, yeah. Like the story of Kunzite I just posted. Except it's about Jadeite :P
Many thanks to cbrandtwright for always listening and satine86 for helping me plot this thing out. Hope this won't disappoint all y'all R/J shippers and JedoJedo fangirls!
Title: Tempus Fugit
Characters: Jadeite, Rei, Rei's father, Kaidou, Setsuna, and a few OCs. Obviously, R/J.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: I keep dreaming of you...
I.
The temple in the Wudang Mountains is enshrouded by mist, a small and picturesque building with a grove of poplars in the front and a row of willows in the back. A garden of herbs flourishes in front, throwing scents of angelica and cinnamon into the cool air. A brook runs in the back, alongside the graceful willows, and aside from the sounds of songbirds and running water, the land surrounding the temple is a quiet place.
The baby is found at sunset, fourteen days after the Ghost festival. His cries break the silence and attract the attention of Taoist Master Yang and his wife Lady Liu as they make their sojourn to the brook to set paper boats with candles afloat to guide the spirits of the dead back to the underworld. He is less than a month old, fretful and hungry, swaddled in a blanket and left in a wicker basket. When Lady Liu picks him up, he quiets, the pale golden fuzz covering his head shimmering in the dying sunlight.
Gentle and compassionate as the willow that is her name, Lady Liu takes him home after the rituals and prayers have been observed, and Master Yang, strong and wise as the poplars, searches the mountains all night for a sign of the boy’s mother. He finds none.
The boy might be a gift from the ghosts, but they take him in. A year later, after they leave out a feast for the ghosts and burn incense at the altar, Lady Liu picks up the baby, whose eyes are the blue of aconite flowers and whose hair falls around his little head in golden curls, and sets him down on a mat surrounded by various items. The baby crawls over past a copy of the Tao Te Ching and a fresh, dewy lotus blossom, and wraps his chubby fingers around the hilt of one of Master Yang’s ceremonial blades, carved of the finest jadeite, snowy-white, streaked through with thin lines of red.
“He will be a warrior,” Master Yang murmurs even as he gently pries the heirloom out of the baby’s hands. “A fearless fighter of extraordinary skill.” He smiles faintly with pride. “I will teach him the ways of fists and swords when he is older, and the patience and honour to use them well.”
“I hope that he will not have to use them often,” Lady Liu whispers as she picks the boy back up in her arms. He gurgles and smiles and toys with her long black hair.
They name him Bai-Yu Jian-- White Jade sword, and call him Jian-Er.
II.
“Keep your back straight and your breathing slow and even. Your mind and heart must be completely calm, your muscles in a deep state of relaxation. The soft and pliable will always eventually defeat the hard and strong.” Master Yang’s voice is soothing as he sits at one end of a yin-yang painted on the floor. At the opposite end, gamely motionless but not so tranquil, six-year-old Jian-Er tries to mimic the posture.
“When will you teach me how to use the sword and the sabre?” Jian-Er asks, not for the first time. In the weaponry room of the temple, a rack of weaponry lies against the far wall. More than once, the boy has watched in utter fascination as his surrogate parents sparred in the expansive floor of the room-- Lady Liu wielding her namesake willow-leaf sabre, Master Yang armed with a tasseled sword. On occasion they would use other, more exotic weapons-- deer-horn knives, chain-whips, spears and quarterstaves, but regardless of the weapon, they would spar with grace and speed and remarkable skill.
But for now he must sit in the meditation room, focus on the yin-yang and the eight trigrams and relax his mind. Because his surrogate father has his eyes closed and does not answer his question, Jian-Er pouts at the injustice of it before closing his own eyes. He wants to be a hero, like Lord General Guan-Yu, patron deity of warriors and chieftains of the battlefield, invincible as he defeats his enemies and protects the downtrodden.
But there are many steps to take before he can become a great warrior, and the meditation is key to strengthening his qi and giving his mind the focus it needs to dispel the attacks of opponents. So he sits, in a pose learned from watching, and tries to ignore the itch between his shoulder blades as he counts his breaths.
Vividly behind his eyelids he sees a vision: the visage of a girl he does not know, perhaps a few years younger than him, looking small and sad and lost as she stands next to a big suitcase on the wooden steps of a temple not quite like his. She gets smaller and smaller, her face blurring with distance, as he-or-probably-someone-else walks away.
The caw of a crow echoes in his ears. He almost feels a wind picking up, though he is indoors, and in his mind he sees the girl’s long black hair flutter in the breeze.
“I will save you someday,” he makes a silent promise, and now sits still in earnest. The trigram at his feet is the one which represents fire.
III.
Jian-Er learns fast, and within a year, has mastered all of the basic stances of Wudang hand-to-hand. By the age of eight he is adept at the four major weapons of spear, sword, sabre and quarterstaff. By nine, he is skilled enough at Qing Gong to take to the roof to avoid Lady Liu’s wrath when he accidentally breaks one of her prized agate vases. He is assigned the task of sweeping the steps of the temple and the walks for a month as punishment, and every morning, he is so quiet and solemn as he clears away the autumn leaves that Master Yang becomes concerned.
“You always finish this task too full of Yin melancholy to concentrate on your meditation,” the Taoist master states one frosty morning. Overhead, the geese are flying south, and underfoot, both willow and poplar leaves litter the ground. Jian-Er scuffs the toe of his shoe against a slightly loose cobblestone and sighs as he looks up into the face of the man who has been a father to him.
“There is someone else who sweeps the paths, but not here, and she cries when she does it,” he says quietly. “I see her tears, hidden by her loose hair, and it makes me sad.”
“A ghost, perhaps?” Master Yang raises an eyebrow. “The stories of old are just stories, Jian-Er.”
The boy shakes his head, hair the same colour as the fallen leaves blowing back in the wind. “It’s a dream. She’s waiting for me.”
“You’re still young,” Lady Liu says placatingly, making a mental note to give the boy an infusion of wolfberry and gingko before he went to bed that night. “You still have much to learn before you can find her.”
Jian-Er raises his head and meets her eyes, fearless blue to forthright brown. “I will learn all I can, Shimu, but I need to find her.”
He is excused from sweeping the steps, and sleeps quietly that night. But he still talks of the girl who is waiting, a faraway muse in an unknown land, and though he flourishes in his training and learns all the forms and weapons that Master Yang can teach him by the time he is fifteen, he’s restless, unable to find the tranquility to abide within the mountains.
On the sixteenth Ghost Festival since his arrival at Wudang, he prays with the others and sets a paper boat holding a candle down within the creek, but rather than coming home, follows its path.
Many years would pass before Master Yang and Lady Liu would see him again.
IV.
There is a living that has to be made in the busier, grittier parts of the world than mountain temples, and Jian-- no more affectionate diminutive attached-- finds this out quickly. Sleeping under the stars is not safe in the cities, and after a few skirmishes with a few hoodlums after an attempt to steal the heirloom jade sword that has been bequeathed to him five years back, finds himself brought forward to an abandoned warehouse at gunpoint.
The man sitting behind a desk speaks with the smoothness of a professional and wears a sharply tailored suit, but his aura is very murky. But he offers Jian a delectable meal at a pricey restaurant and a plush hotel room. The next evening, he says, there is to be a fight, hand-to-hand, for a lot of money. And the victor would take twenty percent of the spoils.
It is a better deal than getting into fisticuffs with foolish youngsters who engage in petty crime for cheap thrills, and Jian agrees. The next evening finds him in the middle of a ring facing a hulking brute with arms wider than his temple’s pillars, surrounded by shady businessmen and cigarette smoke and bottles of liquor. His opponent leers, revealing broken teeth, and barely bows before throwing a punch with a fist the size of a cinderblock.
“The soft and pliable will always defeat the hard and strong,” Master Yang’s lessons echo in his head, and he slowly moves in a circle, arms sweeping up over his head. A gentle block, a faint shrug, and the brute lands hard on his face.
The fight is over in less than three minutes. Jian isn’t even winded, and ignores the roar of the crowds, the shuffle of stacks of money. There is no aloofly beautiful dark-haired girl among all the faces of the crowd, or in the fancy restaurant, or the hotel.
That night, when he sleeps, he dreams of fire burning against the skies.
V.
The next battle is against a smaller but more skillful opponent. They’re armed this time-- Jian wields a plain sword to his opponent’s more showy selection of a pair of tonfas, and Jian enters the ring with the belief that the fight is to be a friendly one.
He takes it easy on the other fellow, whose vaults through the air and flourishing movements disguise but don’t completely hide his nerves, and then has to throw himself to the ground to dodge a brutal blow to the skull. The crowd roars-- the sound bloodthirsty and feral-- and the inner tranquility of a true warrior is buried underneath indignation. He spins, kicking one tonfa out of his opponent’s hand as the tip of his sword flings the other across the room, and has the man on his back, blade to throat, a second later.
The winnings increase, and he acquires more money and glory than his wildest dreams. He fights with skill and intensity, but his heart is not in it. There is nothing heroic or even honourable about sparring for the entertainment of villains.
One day, after a brutal battle in which he takes on and defeats three armed opponents wielding nothing but his fists and feet, a kittenishly charming young lady-- the daughter of a top backer-- accosts him with fluttering eyelashes and dazzled smiles.
He plays along, but only for a few minutes. It’s all wrong, and she’s not the one.
She would never bat her eyelashes to get his attention. She wouldn’t have to.
But the tales of the young, golden-haired warrior spread far and wide, and attracts the attention of others outside of the shadowy world of underground prizefighting. Jian accepts an offer of a position as a powerful politician’s bodyguard, and moves to Japan.
VI.
Hino Takashi is wealthy, shrewd, commanding and cold as ice, surrounded by quietly dignified servants and priceless antiques in a house that sits empty of true emotion. The room he offers Jian is impeccably clean and elegantly decorated, and almost twice the size of the room he’d had in the temple in the mountains. Nonetheless, it is chilly in there when he sleeps at night on a mat on the floor, as though the majority of the house has not had human habitation in ages.
Senator Hino curtly introduces him to his various servants and staff members, but makes no mention of family. He is in his forties, in the prime of his life, and it is only after several days that Jian learns from one of the chambermaids that the man is a widower with a daughter that lives elsewhere. Something about it bothers him, and it is only Hino’s frigid lack of emotion that prevent him from asking his employer why his family is gone.
Being in the employ of a Japanese politician is a job that requires more patience and cunning than winning fights in an arena. Jian makes an enemy his first day at the senator’s office.
The senator’s secretary is a young man with an intellectually handsome face that thinly glosses over his inherent superciliousness. Hino introduces the fellow as Kaidou, and though Jian knows nothing about him, they size each other up like strange cats. Kaidou gives him the barest and coolest of bows, which he does not return, and then sneers.
“Jee-ann, is that your name?” the political secretary drawls, perfectly polished and poised in his western-style suit and neatly knotted navy blue tie. “You grew up in the remote mountains in China? How quaint. I suppose I cannot expect you to know that here, in Japan, you’re supposed to bow when you meet someone.”
Two pairs of blue eyes meet-- one stony, one mocking. Jian makes a shuffling motion with his hands, and the other man is on the ground, prostrate, unhurt but utterly humiliated. Jian gets some satisfaction that Kaidou’s tie is askew and his perfectly groomed hair is falling in dishevelled tufts now, and takes a step back.
“All right. You have bowed, and we have met. I’ll thank you to leave me alone from now on.”
Later that evening he apologizes to the senator for his ill manners, though the latter waves it off as he waves off anything that does not have to do with his work, and then Jian retires to his room. In the cold, expansive space, he sits and wonders why-- when he does not feel any personal attachment to his boss-- does he consider Kaidou a rival.
Kaidou is simply another of Hino’s large crowd of servants and assistants and colleagues-- the people who exist to do his bidding and do not matter otherwise. It is not as though he has anything that Jian could possibly want.
VII.
April 17th.
“It is my daughter’s birthday.”
The senator will not be attending, and Jian is given instructions and the necessary background information. Hino’s daughter, who resides in a temple with her grandfather, will be fourteen. On the last several birthdays, it has been Kaidou who would bring her a white dress from her father, which she would wear to an exclusive restaurant for dinner. After the dinner, year after year, she would be presented with a bouquet of Casablanca lilies before they parted ways. But Kaidou is getting married, and it is now Jian’s duty to meet with the younger Hino.
“Why don’t you attend the dinner yourself?” Jian asks before he can stop himself. And for the first time ever, a flicker of emotion-- grief so strong it must come directly from the heart-- crosses the Senator’s usually-impassive face.
“Rei is nothing like me,” Hino murmurs, shaking his head, and all of sudden Jian sees him for what he is-- an old man with too many regrets and losses that he will never be able to atone for, and feels a wave of deep pity. Hino clasps his hands together, clears his throat. “She’s just like her mother.”
The moment passes, and then the senator is impassive again, stone-faced and businesslike. “You will meet her at seven. She will be expecting you. You will return at half-past nine.”
At a quarter to seven Jian walks out of the parking lot and approaches the intersection. The restaurant, with its gleaming glass windows and bright lights, is just across the street, and at the street corner, clad in spotless white, is a girl with long, dark hair.
Jian’s eyes widen behind the sunglasses he wears, and his senses tingle with anticipation. She is facing the restaurant’s door, her back to him, but he knows that it is the girl who haunts his dreams, the girl that is his destiny to protect. The bouquet of Casablanca lilies nearly falls from his fingers as he steps off the curb.
A black car approaches the intersection and stops at the light, and suddenly his nerves jangle with imminent danger. Even before he sees the redheaded woman behind the wheel or the gun she holds in her hands, he is vaulting over the other pedestrians, a hot-blooded warrior in a navy blue suit, deaf and blind to the shrieks and exclamations and gawking from all the people. He has only one thought-- her.
He lands on his feet right in front of her, and has a split second to see her face-- startled, beautiful, achingly familiar-- before the window of the black car starts rolling down and he pushes her out of the way, shielding her with his own body. Shots ring out and he reels from the pain, and the Casablancas fall out of his hands, an arc of red-splattered white. A nightmarish image-- a tasseled Chinese sword stabbing through her heart as the world smokes and burns around them-- flashes before his eyes, and he whispers “Forgive me” right before everything goes black.
He cannot be sure that she heard him, but the last thing he feels are her hands reaching for him.
When the dust clears and the police arrive, neither him nor the car are anywhere to be found. The senator’s daughter is left in front of the restaurant with a trampled bouquet of flowers at her feet and red blood splattered on her snow-white dress.
VIII.
White.
White lights, white walls, white sheets. An antiseptic-scented snowfall that surrounds him, and it is nothing like a city street. Jian sees a sleek fall of raven hair close by and struggles to sit up for a moment, then stops.
“Don’t overexert yourself.” The woman is beautiful, with striking features and eyes the colour of rosewood on an olive-skinned face. “You were badly injured, and your body is still recovering.”
Jian’s sigh escapes silently between his lips as his eyes focus on her face. “You’re not her,” he blurts out. “I’m sorry, I... what happened? Who are you?”
“Meiou Setsuna,” she introduces herself and takes a seat by his bed. “You are in Kyoto. It is August 17th, 2010. Midnight.”
It is four months and four years exactly from the last day he remembers, and the number four is unlucky. He struggles into a sitting position, terrified but game, and stares at the woman. “How did I get here? Where is she?” Through a window close to the bed he can see outside, and there are fires glowing amidst the darkness. “What is happening?”
“It is Obon-- the Ghost Festival, and the fires are to guide lost spirits back home,” Meiou-san tells him. “You have been injured, and asleep for a long time. And she is all right.”
It is the twenty-second ghost festival of his life, and he does not remember the last several.
He also does not remember the origin of the faint, faded burn scars laddering up and down his forearms. With Meiou-san watching over him in silence, he slides back into a fitful sleep, and dreams of a girl in red and white, her dark hair softer than a lover’s caress underneath his fingers.
IX.
Old habits die hard. Jian tolerates the doctors poking and prodding at him, but recovers his strength through meditation and the focus of his internal energy more than the bouts of physical therapy or the parade of pills. Meiou-san visits him once in a while, bringing him his jade sword and personal effects and some-but-not-all information. He can almost feel the power radiating off of her, but she offers no explanation for her identity or the reason that she has taken to helping him out. She does, however, listen in silent sympathy and a strange sort of understanding when he talks about his dreams and a feeling of regret that plagues him, and does not scoff when he rambles in his sleep about dark-haired princesses and broken vows.
One day Meiou-san visits and tells him that if he wishes, he can return to Senator Hino’s employ at any time, with a hefty bonus for saving the politician’s daughter, and he is tempted. At long last, he would meet her, and maybe she would smile like she so rarely does in his dreams. But the sense of guilt can’t be shaken, and he agonizes all week over the decision.
She visits him again the next week. It is winter now, and he has recovered from all his wounds, though the burn scars remain like faint, shiny fingerprints on his arms. He is standing by the window when she walks in, watching the snow fall to cover all the soot and grime of the world in a blanket of white.
“I have to go back to the temple on the mountains. I have to regain my balance, find myself again. My Shifu and Shimu deserve an apology and an explanation for my unfilial behaviour.”
She smiles, nods. “I know.” She reaches into a purse and hands him an envelope. “Here.”
“What is this?”
“Your passport-- I took the liberty to get it renewed for you, a boarding pass for a flight to Shanghai, and a train ticket to Shiyan Prefecture, from where you’ll be able to reach the mountains.” At his expression of surprise, her smile widens just a little. “You do yourself and your Shifu’s teachings justice, Bai-Yu Jian. I knew that you would.” She sets the envelope down and walks towards the door, pauses. “You will be back right in time for the Lunar New Year. They will be happy to see you.” She bows, as is the Japanese custom, and without hesitation, Jian returns the gesture of respect. “Have a safe trip.”
X.
The temple is remote, picturesque and timeless, and when Jian climbs up the mountain, he recognizes the same tall poplars in the front, the same graceful willows in the back. The brook is frozen over and the herb garden covered in snow, but it is still the home he remembers from all those years ago. There is a pair of red banners hanging on either side of the main doors for the Lunar New Year, written in a pretty calligraphy that he does not recognize, reading “As faithful as the lilies that bloom in spring, so the hundreds of souls will join for peace”. For the first time ever, Jian hesitates at the door, unsure of his welcome, but before he can decide whether or not to knock, it is thrown open. He finds himself gazing down at a small, apple-cheeked girl wearing festive red ribbons in her hair, who has Master Yang’s eyes and Lady Liu’s smile. “Hello.”
“Shu-Li, if you wish to play outside, you must put on something warmer.” Her voice is still the same, soft and even-timbred, and he hears her footsteps approaching. Lady Liu is as elegant and gentle as he remembers, though there are a few strands of grey in her hair now, and when she sees him, her eyes fill with tears.
He bows, then wipes his own eyes before taking the hand that she holds out to him. Formality and ceremony fall to the wayside and he takes the woman who had raised him and loved him into his arms, letting his own tears fall into her hair. “Niang,” he whispers, addressing her for the first time not as his teacher but as his mother, “I have returned.”
“You must be my big brother Jian-Er that mother and father have told me about,” the little girl finally breaks the silence, with a smile that draws an answering one from Jian’s face. “Father says that you are a great warrior. I am Shu-Li and I will be seven years old this year.”
Jian lets go of Lady Liu and stoops down to be eye-level with the little girl, whose name means ‘beauty of writing’. She would have been born a few months after he’d left. “I’m so pleased to meet you, little sister. Happy New Year.”
“I wrote the couplet hanging on the door,” Shu-Li tells him with ingenuous pride. “Mother teaches me calligraphy. I had a feeling that this new year would be a special one.”
“She picked an heirloom ivory ink brush for the ceremony on her first birthday, like you picked the jade sword.” Master Yang’s voice is still deep and strong, tranquil without being listless, stern without being cold, but his eyes give him away as he surveys Jian. A faint smile crosses his face. “Your aura is not so impulsive and restless as it was when you were a child. Your mind is clearer. Have you found your peace?”
“I’m still seeking it,” Jian answers honestly, clasping the hand Master Yang holds out to him in both of his own. “But I am much closer than before.”
XI.
Winter ends, and spring begins. Jian helps Master Yang chop wood and Lady Liu tend her garden, and plays with little Shu-Li. He visits the villages down in the valleys and helps maintain law and order. It is a far more humble life than that which he had before-- retrieving purses stolen by pickpockets and stopping local drunkards from harassing the tavern maids is hardly exciting work, but he feels more at peace now than the days of battling others for entertainment or learning about the intrigues of high politics. He meditates daily and does not find it difficult to sit still and clear his mind any more.
He roams the mountains and forests of his youth with little Shu-Li, and sees everything in a different light, though the eyes of a child whose imagination beautifies everything around her. She begs him to teach her how to fight, and he encourages her to focus on her poetry and calligraphy, and brings her sweets from the markets of the villages.
One day she shows him a spot, a hollow that he has never noticed before, where white lilies grow. “I wrote my New Year’s couplet about lilies, because they represent peace and unity. But this is the only place they grow here. Mother says that she has walked past this spot many times without seeing anything, but they started blooming in April five years ago.”
He remembers another bouquet of lilies on April, five years ago, and closes his eyes briefly. She would be a young woman now, and in his mind’s eye he can still see her face. Memories swarm in his mind-- the clang of weapons, a group of men in armour, a blue-eyed prince, a dark-haired princess. The yearning that comes is so strong that his heart aches with it, and he forces himself to focus on the little girl who holds his hand so trustingly. Shu-Li looks up at him with eyes full of an understanding that belies her young age.
“You will find your own lily, your own peace and unity. I will see you again.”
He smiles and hugs her close, and tugs on one of her pigtails. “Try not to give your parents as much trouble as I did, little one.”
This time when he leaves, it is with the blessing of his surrogate parents. Master Yang walks with him to the base of the mountain, and they pause at the fork in the road. The older man claps him on the shoulder and smiles.
“You’ll find her, Jian-Er. She’ll be waiting.”
“You believed me all this time? Even when it was just the rambling fancies of a child?”
“I did not raise you to be a liar,” Master Yang says simply. “You’ve grown up to become an honourable man, Jian-Er. I am proud to have you for a son.”
XII.
He stops at several holy spots during the course of his journey, paying his respects at Mt. Emei and Shaolin Temple and Peng-Lai and Mt. Fuji before arriving in Tokyo. He arrives at Hikawa Jinja at sunset, and makes his way down the quiet paths-- past falling cherry blossoms and cawing crows-- to the Fire Room. Kneeling down at the altar, he takes out the silk-covered box that contains a priceless jade sword, slides open the tiny ivory pins that hold it shut, and lifts the white blade out of its satin nest. Carefully, he sets it down on the altar with both hands, bows his head, lights a stick of incense.
“I have lived so long for battle and war. I have broken a promise to you in the past, and lost you due to my own weakness. But I have paid-- my blood for yours, my life for yours-- and in the event of necessity would pay it again. Now, because you don’t need a protector so much as a believer, because you need to be loved rather than saved, I will live for peace, and for honour, and for faith. I pray for a chance, but more, I pray for your happiness.”
He shuts his eyes and lets his mind clear, let the tranquility of the place and the scent of the incense and the warmth of the fire surround him. He is so absorbed in his meditation that he does not hear the running footsteps, or the door sliding open, does not notice that he has an audience as he repeats his words to himself. But he opens his eyes when he hears a gasp, and, heart hammering, turns his head.
There she is, in her shrine robes of white and red, her raven hair loose and billowing behind her as she stares at him. She is even more beautiful than his dreams and memories, silhouetted by the glowing sunset, and so many emotions flit across her eyes that he can barely keep up.
Wordlessly, he picks up the jade sword, its blade cold and sharp, and holds it out to her. “This is yours now. Do what you will.”
His words spur her into action, and she steps forward, takes the blade. He does not move, does not drop his gaze, and she shakes her head as she places it back in its box.
“You... I cannot take this. I will not do what you think I would.” Her voice softens, and there is a barely perceptible tremor in it. “Bai-Yu Jian. I know who you are. This sword is you-- your namesake, your legacy.”
“It is who I was, perhaps,” he smiles faintly. “I’ve shed the blood of many in my time, too many. I have come in search of peace now, to atone for the past. You’ve killed me-- but worse, you’ve hated me-- for what I have done. I don’t know if I will ever truly find redemption for that.”
She does not move, still staring at him in shock, and he takes a deep breath, lets it out as he stands. The pain in his heart will come later, like a dart coated with slow-acting poison hitting a pressure point. For now he smiles down into her lovely face and walks towards the door. “I have knelt at your fire, prayed for your happiness. I have truly met you at last, and you’re so much more than even all my dreams and memories. I will always have this moment. It will be enough. Thank you.”
He puts one foot in front of the other, but doesn’t go more than three steps when her voice stops him. It is soft, but it definitely has a hitch now.
“You’re wrong.”
He glances back, and stares into her brilliant amethyst eyes. She takes a step forward, away from the sword still on the floor, clasps her slender hands as though in prayer. “The man that I remember, who loved me and believed in me, would never thank me like a visitor and leave.”
He crosses the remaining distance between them and grasps her slim shoulders. They’re shaking slightly, but she does not lower her eyes. And everything begins to fit together like the halves of a yin-yang as he pulls her close. She has unshed tears in her eyes, but the smile that crosses her face is radiant.
“Leave? I’ve just arrived. I’ll never leave you again.” She reaches up and touches his face, stands on tiptoe, and guides his lips down to hers.
Outside, bearing witness to this reunion, a benevolent full moon rises in the sky, bathing the world in pure white light.
Many thanks to cbrandtwright for always listening and satine86 for helping me plot this thing out. Hope this won't disappoint all y'all R/J shippers and JedoJedo fangirls!
Title: Tempus Fugit
Characters: Jadeite, Rei, Rei's father, Kaidou, Setsuna, and a few OCs. Obviously, R/J.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: I keep dreaming of you...
I.
The temple in the Wudang Mountains is enshrouded by mist, a small and picturesque building with a grove of poplars in the front and a row of willows in the back. A garden of herbs flourishes in front, throwing scents of angelica and cinnamon into the cool air. A brook runs in the back, alongside the graceful willows, and aside from the sounds of songbirds and running water, the land surrounding the temple is a quiet place.
The baby is found at sunset, fourteen days after the Ghost festival. His cries break the silence and attract the attention of Taoist Master Yang and his wife Lady Liu as they make their sojourn to the brook to set paper boats with candles afloat to guide the spirits of the dead back to the underworld. He is less than a month old, fretful and hungry, swaddled in a blanket and left in a wicker basket. When Lady Liu picks him up, he quiets, the pale golden fuzz covering his head shimmering in the dying sunlight.
Gentle and compassionate as the willow that is her name, Lady Liu takes him home after the rituals and prayers have been observed, and Master Yang, strong and wise as the poplars, searches the mountains all night for a sign of the boy’s mother. He finds none.
The boy might be a gift from the ghosts, but they take him in. A year later, after they leave out a feast for the ghosts and burn incense at the altar, Lady Liu picks up the baby, whose eyes are the blue of aconite flowers and whose hair falls around his little head in golden curls, and sets him down on a mat surrounded by various items. The baby crawls over past a copy of the Tao Te Ching and a fresh, dewy lotus blossom, and wraps his chubby fingers around the hilt of one of Master Yang’s ceremonial blades, carved of the finest jadeite, snowy-white, streaked through with thin lines of red.
“He will be a warrior,” Master Yang murmurs even as he gently pries the heirloom out of the baby’s hands. “A fearless fighter of extraordinary skill.” He smiles faintly with pride. “I will teach him the ways of fists and swords when he is older, and the patience and honour to use them well.”
“I hope that he will not have to use them often,” Lady Liu whispers as she picks the boy back up in her arms. He gurgles and smiles and toys with her long black hair.
They name him Bai-Yu Jian-- White Jade sword, and call him Jian-Er.
II.
“Keep your back straight and your breathing slow and even. Your mind and heart must be completely calm, your muscles in a deep state of relaxation. The soft and pliable will always eventually defeat the hard and strong.” Master Yang’s voice is soothing as he sits at one end of a yin-yang painted on the floor. At the opposite end, gamely motionless but not so tranquil, six-year-old Jian-Er tries to mimic the posture.
“When will you teach me how to use the sword and the sabre?” Jian-Er asks, not for the first time. In the weaponry room of the temple, a rack of weaponry lies against the far wall. More than once, the boy has watched in utter fascination as his surrogate parents sparred in the expansive floor of the room-- Lady Liu wielding her namesake willow-leaf sabre, Master Yang armed with a tasseled sword. On occasion they would use other, more exotic weapons-- deer-horn knives, chain-whips, spears and quarterstaves, but regardless of the weapon, they would spar with grace and speed and remarkable skill.
But for now he must sit in the meditation room, focus on the yin-yang and the eight trigrams and relax his mind. Because his surrogate father has his eyes closed and does not answer his question, Jian-Er pouts at the injustice of it before closing his own eyes. He wants to be a hero, like Lord General Guan-Yu, patron deity of warriors and chieftains of the battlefield, invincible as he defeats his enemies and protects the downtrodden.
But there are many steps to take before he can become a great warrior, and the meditation is key to strengthening his qi and giving his mind the focus it needs to dispel the attacks of opponents. So he sits, in a pose learned from watching, and tries to ignore the itch between his shoulder blades as he counts his breaths.
Vividly behind his eyelids he sees a vision: the visage of a girl he does not know, perhaps a few years younger than him, looking small and sad and lost as she stands next to a big suitcase on the wooden steps of a temple not quite like his. She gets smaller and smaller, her face blurring with distance, as he-or-probably-someone-else walks away.
The caw of a crow echoes in his ears. He almost feels a wind picking up, though he is indoors, and in his mind he sees the girl’s long black hair flutter in the breeze.
“I will save you someday,” he makes a silent promise, and now sits still in earnest. The trigram at his feet is the one which represents fire.
III.
Jian-Er learns fast, and within a year, has mastered all of the basic stances of Wudang hand-to-hand. By the age of eight he is adept at the four major weapons of spear, sword, sabre and quarterstaff. By nine, he is skilled enough at Qing Gong to take to the roof to avoid Lady Liu’s wrath when he accidentally breaks one of her prized agate vases. He is assigned the task of sweeping the steps of the temple and the walks for a month as punishment, and every morning, he is so quiet and solemn as he clears away the autumn leaves that Master Yang becomes concerned.
“You always finish this task too full of Yin melancholy to concentrate on your meditation,” the Taoist master states one frosty morning. Overhead, the geese are flying south, and underfoot, both willow and poplar leaves litter the ground. Jian-Er scuffs the toe of his shoe against a slightly loose cobblestone and sighs as he looks up into the face of the man who has been a father to him.
“There is someone else who sweeps the paths, but not here, and she cries when she does it,” he says quietly. “I see her tears, hidden by her loose hair, and it makes me sad.”
“A ghost, perhaps?” Master Yang raises an eyebrow. “The stories of old are just stories, Jian-Er.”
The boy shakes his head, hair the same colour as the fallen leaves blowing back in the wind. “It’s a dream. She’s waiting for me.”
“You’re still young,” Lady Liu says placatingly, making a mental note to give the boy an infusion of wolfberry and gingko before he went to bed that night. “You still have much to learn before you can find her.”
Jian-Er raises his head and meets her eyes, fearless blue to forthright brown. “I will learn all I can, Shimu, but I need to find her.”
He is excused from sweeping the steps, and sleeps quietly that night. But he still talks of the girl who is waiting, a faraway muse in an unknown land, and though he flourishes in his training and learns all the forms and weapons that Master Yang can teach him by the time he is fifteen, he’s restless, unable to find the tranquility to abide within the mountains.
On the sixteenth Ghost Festival since his arrival at Wudang, he prays with the others and sets a paper boat holding a candle down within the creek, but rather than coming home, follows its path.
Many years would pass before Master Yang and Lady Liu would see him again.
IV.
There is a living that has to be made in the busier, grittier parts of the world than mountain temples, and Jian-- no more affectionate diminutive attached-- finds this out quickly. Sleeping under the stars is not safe in the cities, and after a few skirmishes with a few hoodlums after an attempt to steal the heirloom jade sword that has been bequeathed to him five years back, finds himself brought forward to an abandoned warehouse at gunpoint.
The man sitting behind a desk speaks with the smoothness of a professional and wears a sharply tailored suit, but his aura is very murky. But he offers Jian a delectable meal at a pricey restaurant and a plush hotel room. The next evening, he says, there is to be a fight, hand-to-hand, for a lot of money. And the victor would take twenty percent of the spoils.
It is a better deal than getting into fisticuffs with foolish youngsters who engage in petty crime for cheap thrills, and Jian agrees. The next evening finds him in the middle of a ring facing a hulking brute with arms wider than his temple’s pillars, surrounded by shady businessmen and cigarette smoke and bottles of liquor. His opponent leers, revealing broken teeth, and barely bows before throwing a punch with a fist the size of a cinderblock.
“The soft and pliable will always defeat the hard and strong,” Master Yang’s lessons echo in his head, and he slowly moves in a circle, arms sweeping up over his head. A gentle block, a faint shrug, and the brute lands hard on his face.
The fight is over in less than three minutes. Jian isn’t even winded, and ignores the roar of the crowds, the shuffle of stacks of money. There is no aloofly beautiful dark-haired girl among all the faces of the crowd, or in the fancy restaurant, or the hotel.
That night, when he sleeps, he dreams of fire burning against the skies.
V.
The next battle is against a smaller but more skillful opponent. They’re armed this time-- Jian wields a plain sword to his opponent’s more showy selection of a pair of tonfas, and Jian enters the ring with the belief that the fight is to be a friendly one.
He takes it easy on the other fellow, whose vaults through the air and flourishing movements disguise but don’t completely hide his nerves, and then has to throw himself to the ground to dodge a brutal blow to the skull. The crowd roars-- the sound bloodthirsty and feral-- and the inner tranquility of a true warrior is buried underneath indignation. He spins, kicking one tonfa out of his opponent’s hand as the tip of his sword flings the other across the room, and has the man on his back, blade to throat, a second later.
The winnings increase, and he acquires more money and glory than his wildest dreams. He fights with skill and intensity, but his heart is not in it. There is nothing heroic or even honourable about sparring for the entertainment of villains.
One day, after a brutal battle in which he takes on and defeats three armed opponents wielding nothing but his fists and feet, a kittenishly charming young lady-- the daughter of a top backer-- accosts him with fluttering eyelashes and dazzled smiles.
He plays along, but only for a few minutes. It’s all wrong, and she’s not the one.
She would never bat her eyelashes to get his attention. She wouldn’t have to.
But the tales of the young, golden-haired warrior spread far and wide, and attracts the attention of others outside of the shadowy world of underground prizefighting. Jian accepts an offer of a position as a powerful politician’s bodyguard, and moves to Japan.
VI.
Hino Takashi is wealthy, shrewd, commanding and cold as ice, surrounded by quietly dignified servants and priceless antiques in a house that sits empty of true emotion. The room he offers Jian is impeccably clean and elegantly decorated, and almost twice the size of the room he’d had in the temple in the mountains. Nonetheless, it is chilly in there when he sleeps at night on a mat on the floor, as though the majority of the house has not had human habitation in ages.
Senator Hino curtly introduces him to his various servants and staff members, but makes no mention of family. He is in his forties, in the prime of his life, and it is only after several days that Jian learns from one of the chambermaids that the man is a widower with a daughter that lives elsewhere. Something about it bothers him, and it is only Hino’s frigid lack of emotion that prevent him from asking his employer why his family is gone.
Being in the employ of a Japanese politician is a job that requires more patience and cunning than winning fights in an arena. Jian makes an enemy his first day at the senator’s office.
The senator’s secretary is a young man with an intellectually handsome face that thinly glosses over his inherent superciliousness. Hino introduces the fellow as Kaidou, and though Jian knows nothing about him, they size each other up like strange cats. Kaidou gives him the barest and coolest of bows, which he does not return, and then sneers.
“Jee-ann, is that your name?” the political secretary drawls, perfectly polished and poised in his western-style suit and neatly knotted navy blue tie. “You grew up in the remote mountains in China? How quaint. I suppose I cannot expect you to know that here, in Japan, you’re supposed to bow when you meet someone.”
Two pairs of blue eyes meet-- one stony, one mocking. Jian makes a shuffling motion with his hands, and the other man is on the ground, prostrate, unhurt but utterly humiliated. Jian gets some satisfaction that Kaidou’s tie is askew and his perfectly groomed hair is falling in dishevelled tufts now, and takes a step back.
“All right. You have bowed, and we have met. I’ll thank you to leave me alone from now on.”
Later that evening he apologizes to the senator for his ill manners, though the latter waves it off as he waves off anything that does not have to do with his work, and then Jian retires to his room. In the cold, expansive space, he sits and wonders why-- when he does not feel any personal attachment to his boss-- does he consider Kaidou a rival.
Kaidou is simply another of Hino’s large crowd of servants and assistants and colleagues-- the people who exist to do his bidding and do not matter otherwise. It is not as though he has anything that Jian could possibly want.
VII.
April 17th.
“It is my daughter’s birthday.”
The senator will not be attending, and Jian is given instructions and the necessary background information. Hino’s daughter, who resides in a temple with her grandfather, will be fourteen. On the last several birthdays, it has been Kaidou who would bring her a white dress from her father, which she would wear to an exclusive restaurant for dinner. After the dinner, year after year, she would be presented with a bouquet of Casablanca lilies before they parted ways. But Kaidou is getting married, and it is now Jian’s duty to meet with the younger Hino.
“Why don’t you attend the dinner yourself?” Jian asks before he can stop himself. And for the first time ever, a flicker of emotion-- grief so strong it must come directly from the heart-- crosses the Senator’s usually-impassive face.
“Rei is nothing like me,” Hino murmurs, shaking his head, and all of sudden Jian sees him for what he is-- an old man with too many regrets and losses that he will never be able to atone for, and feels a wave of deep pity. Hino clasps his hands together, clears his throat. “She’s just like her mother.”
The moment passes, and then the senator is impassive again, stone-faced and businesslike. “You will meet her at seven. She will be expecting you. You will return at half-past nine.”
At a quarter to seven Jian walks out of the parking lot and approaches the intersection. The restaurant, with its gleaming glass windows and bright lights, is just across the street, and at the street corner, clad in spotless white, is a girl with long, dark hair.
Jian’s eyes widen behind the sunglasses he wears, and his senses tingle with anticipation. She is facing the restaurant’s door, her back to him, but he knows that it is the girl who haunts his dreams, the girl that is his destiny to protect. The bouquet of Casablanca lilies nearly falls from his fingers as he steps off the curb.
A black car approaches the intersection and stops at the light, and suddenly his nerves jangle with imminent danger. Even before he sees the redheaded woman behind the wheel or the gun she holds in her hands, he is vaulting over the other pedestrians, a hot-blooded warrior in a navy blue suit, deaf and blind to the shrieks and exclamations and gawking from all the people. He has only one thought-- her.
He lands on his feet right in front of her, and has a split second to see her face-- startled, beautiful, achingly familiar-- before the window of the black car starts rolling down and he pushes her out of the way, shielding her with his own body. Shots ring out and he reels from the pain, and the Casablancas fall out of his hands, an arc of red-splattered white. A nightmarish image-- a tasseled Chinese sword stabbing through her heart as the world smokes and burns around them-- flashes before his eyes, and he whispers “Forgive me” right before everything goes black.
He cannot be sure that she heard him, but the last thing he feels are her hands reaching for him.
When the dust clears and the police arrive, neither him nor the car are anywhere to be found. The senator’s daughter is left in front of the restaurant with a trampled bouquet of flowers at her feet and red blood splattered on her snow-white dress.
VIII.
White.
White lights, white walls, white sheets. An antiseptic-scented snowfall that surrounds him, and it is nothing like a city street. Jian sees a sleek fall of raven hair close by and struggles to sit up for a moment, then stops.
“Don’t overexert yourself.” The woman is beautiful, with striking features and eyes the colour of rosewood on an olive-skinned face. “You were badly injured, and your body is still recovering.”
Jian’s sigh escapes silently between his lips as his eyes focus on her face. “You’re not her,” he blurts out. “I’m sorry, I... what happened? Who are you?”
“Meiou Setsuna,” she introduces herself and takes a seat by his bed. “You are in Kyoto. It is August 17th, 2010. Midnight.”
It is four months and four years exactly from the last day he remembers, and the number four is unlucky. He struggles into a sitting position, terrified but game, and stares at the woman. “How did I get here? Where is she?” Through a window close to the bed he can see outside, and there are fires glowing amidst the darkness. “What is happening?”
“It is Obon-- the Ghost Festival, and the fires are to guide lost spirits back home,” Meiou-san tells him. “You have been injured, and asleep for a long time. And she is all right.”
It is the twenty-second ghost festival of his life, and he does not remember the last several.
He also does not remember the origin of the faint, faded burn scars laddering up and down his forearms. With Meiou-san watching over him in silence, he slides back into a fitful sleep, and dreams of a girl in red and white, her dark hair softer than a lover’s caress underneath his fingers.
IX.
Old habits die hard. Jian tolerates the doctors poking and prodding at him, but recovers his strength through meditation and the focus of his internal energy more than the bouts of physical therapy or the parade of pills. Meiou-san visits him once in a while, bringing him his jade sword and personal effects and some-but-not-all information. He can almost feel the power radiating off of her, but she offers no explanation for her identity or the reason that she has taken to helping him out. She does, however, listen in silent sympathy and a strange sort of understanding when he talks about his dreams and a feeling of regret that plagues him, and does not scoff when he rambles in his sleep about dark-haired princesses and broken vows.
One day Meiou-san visits and tells him that if he wishes, he can return to Senator Hino’s employ at any time, with a hefty bonus for saving the politician’s daughter, and he is tempted. At long last, he would meet her, and maybe she would smile like she so rarely does in his dreams. But the sense of guilt can’t be shaken, and he agonizes all week over the decision.
She visits him again the next week. It is winter now, and he has recovered from all his wounds, though the burn scars remain like faint, shiny fingerprints on his arms. He is standing by the window when she walks in, watching the snow fall to cover all the soot and grime of the world in a blanket of white.
“I have to go back to the temple on the mountains. I have to regain my balance, find myself again. My Shifu and Shimu deserve an apology and an explanation for my unfilial behaviour.”
She smiles, nods. “I know.” She reaches into a purse and hands him an envelope. “Here.”
“What is this?”
“Your passport-- I took the liberty to get it renewed for you, a boarding pass for a flight to Shanghai, and a train ticket to Shiyan Prefecture, from where you’ll be able to reach the mountains.” At his expression of surprise, her smile widens just a little. “You do yourself and your Shifu’s teachings justice, Bai-Yu Jian. I knew that you would.” She sets the envelope down and walks towards the door, pauses. “You will be back right in time for the Lunar New Year. They will be happy to see you.” She bows, as is the Japanese custom, and without hesitation, Jian returns the gesture of respect. “Have a safe trip.”
X.
The temple is remote, picturesque and timeless, and when Jian climbs up the mountain, he recognizes the same tall poplars in the front, the same graceful willows in the back. The brook is frozen over and the herb garden covered in snow, but it is still the home he remembers from all those years ago. There is a pair of red banners hanging on either side of the main doors for the Lunar New Year, written in a pretty calligraphy that he does not recognize, reading “As faithful as the lilies that bloom in spring, so the hundreds of souls will join for peace”. For the first time ever, Jian hesitates at the door, unsure of his welcome, but before he can decide whether or not to knock, it is thrown open. He finds himself gazing down at a small, apple-cheeked girl wearing festive red ribbons in her hair, who has Master Yang’s eyes and Lady Liu’s smile. “Hello.”
“Shu-Li, if you wish to play outside, you must put on something warmer.” Her voice is still the same, soft and even-timbred, and he hears her footsteps approaching. Lady Liu is as elegant and gentle as he remembers, though there are a few strands of grey in her hair now, and when she sees him, her eyes fill with tears.
He bows, then wipes his own eyes before taking the hand that she holds out to him. Formality and ceremony fall to the wayside and he takes the woman who had raised him and loved him into his arms, letting his own tears fall into her hair. “Niang,” he whispers, addressing her for the first time not as his teacher but as his mother, “I have returned.”
“You must be my big brother Jian-Er that mother and father have told me about,” the little girl finally breaks the silence, with a smile that draws an answering one from Jian’s face. “Father says that you are a great warrior. I am Shu-Li and I will be seven years old this year.”
Jian lets go of Lady Liu and stoops down to be eye-level with the little girl, whose name means ‘beauty of writing’. She would have been born a few months after he’d left. “I’m so pleased to meet you, little sister. Happy New Year.”
“I wrote the couplet hanging on the door,” Shu-Li tells him with ingenuous pride. “Mother teaches me calligraphy. I had a feeling that this new year would be a special one.”
“She picked an heirloom ivory ink brush for the ceremony on her first birthday, like you picked the jade sword.” Master Yang’s voice is still deep and strong, tranquil without being listless, stern without being cold, but his eyes give him away as he surveys Jian. A faint smile crosses his face. “Your aura is not so impulsive and restless as it was when you were a child. Your mind is clearer. Have you found your peace?”
“I’m still seeking it,” Jian answers honestly, clasping the hand Master Yang holds out to him in both of his own. “But I am much closer than before.”
XI.
Winter ends, and spring begins. Jian helps Master Yang chop wood and Lady Liu tend her garden, and plays with little Shu-Li. He visits the villages down in the valleys and helps maintain law and order. It is a far more humble life than that which he had before-- retrieving purses stolen by pickpockets and stopping local drunkards from harassing the tavern maids is hardly exciting work, but he feels more at peace now than the days of battling others for entertainment or learning about the intrigues of high politics. He meditates daily and does not find it difficult to sit still and clear his mind any more.
He roams the mountains and forests of his youth with little Shu-Li, and sees everything in a different light, though the eyes of a child whose imagination beautifies everything around her. She begs him to teach her how to fight, and he encourages her to focus on her poetry and calligraphy, and brings her sweets from the markets of the villages.
One day she shows him a spot, a hollow that he has never noticed before, where white lilies grow. “I wrote my New Year’s couplet about lilies, because they represent peace and unity. But this is the only place they grow here. Mother says that she has walked past this spot many times without seeing anything, but they started blooming in April five years ago.”
He remembers another bouquet of lilies on April, five years ago, and closes his eyes briefly. She would be a young woman now, and in his mind’s eye he can still see her face. Memories swarm in his mind-- the clang of weapons, a group of men in armour, a blue-eyed prince, a dark-haired princess. The yearning that comes is so strong that his heart aches with it, and he forces himself to focus on the little girl who holds his hand so trustingly. Shu-Li looks up at him with eyes full of an understanding that belies her young age.
“You will find your own lily, your own peace and unity. I will see you again.”
He smiles and hugs her close, and tugs on one of her pigtails. “Try not to give your parents as much trouble as I did, little one.”
This time when he leaves, it is with the blessing of his surrogate parents. Master Yang walks with him to the base of the mountain, and they pause at the fork in the road. The older man claps him on the shoulder and smiles.
“You’ll find her, Jian-Er. She’ll be waiting.”
“You believed me all this time? Even when it was just the rambling fancies of a child?”
“I did not raise you to be a liar,” Master Yang says simply. “You’ve grown up to become an honourable man, Jian-Er. I am proud to have you for a son.”
XII.
He stops at several holy spots during the course of his journey, paying his respects at Mt. Emei and Shaolin Temple and Peng-Lai and Mt. Fuji before arriving in Tokyo. He arrives at Hikawa Jinja at sunset, and makes his way down the quiet paths-- past falling cherry blossoms and cawing crows-- to the Fire Room. Kneeling down at the altar, he takes out the silk-covered box that contains a priceless jade sword, slides open the tiny ivory pins that hold it shut, and lifts the white blade out of its satin nest. Carefully, he sets it down on the altar with both hands, bows his head, lights a stick of incense.
“I have lived so long for battle and war. I have broken a promise to you in the past, and lost you due to my own weakness. But I have paid-- my blood for yours, my life for yours-- and in the event of necessity would pay it again. Now, because you don’t need a protector so much as a believer, because you need to be loved rather than saved, I will live for peace, and for honour, and for faith. I pray for a chance, but more, I pray for your happiness.”
He shuts his eyes and lets his mind clear, let the tranquility of the place and the scent of the incense and the warmth of the fire surround him. He is so absorbed in his meditation that he does not hear the running footsteps, or the door sliding open, does not notice that he has an audience as he repeats his words to himself. But he opens his eyes when he hears a gasp, and, heart hammering, turns his head.
There she is, in her shrine robes of white and red, her raven hair loose and billowing behind her as she stares at him. She is even more beautiful than his dreams and memories, silhouetted by the glowing sunset, and so many emotions flit across her eyes that he can barely keep up.
Wordlessly, he picks up the jade sword, its blade cold and sharp, and holds it out to her. “This is yours now. Do what you will.”
His words spur her into action, and she steps forward, takes the blade. He does not move, does not drop his gaze, and she shakes her head as she places it back in its box.
“You... I cannot take this. I will not do what you think I would.” Her voice softens, and there is a barely perceptible tremor in it. “Bai-Yu Jian. I know who you are. This sword is you-- your namesake, your legacy.”
“It is who I was, perhaps,” he smiles faintly. “I’ve shed the blood of many in my time, too many. I have come in search of peace now, to atone for the past. You’ve killed me-- but worse, you’ve hated me-- for what I have done. I don’t know if I will ever truly find redemption for that.”
She does not move, still staring at him in shock, and he takes a deep breath, lets it out as he stands. The pain in his heart will come later, like a dart coated with slow-acting poison hitting a pressure point. For now he smiles down into her lovely face and walks towards the door. “I have knelt at your fire, prayed for your happiness. I have truly met you at last, and you’re so much more than even all my dreams and memories. I will always have this moment. It will be enough. Thank you.”
He puts one foot in front of the other, but doesn’t go more than three steps when her voice stops him. It is soft, but it definitely has a hitch now.
“You’re wrong.”
He glances back, and stares into her brilliant amethyst eyes. She takes a step forward, away from the sword still on the floor, clasps her slender hands as though in prayer. “The man that I remember, who loved me and believed in me, would never thank me like a visitor and leave.”
He crosses the remaining distance between them and grasps her slim shoulders. They’re shaking slightly, but she does not lower her eyes. And everything begins to fit together like the halves of a yin-yang as he pulls her close. She has unshed tears in her eyes, but the smile that crosses her face is radiant.
“Leave? I’ve just arrived. I’ll never leave you again.” She reaches up and touches his face, stands on tiptoe, and guides his lips down to hers.
Outside, bearing witness to this reunion, a benevolent full moon rises in the sky, bathing the world in pure white light.