Disclaimer and Acknowledgements: I do not own Mirage of Blaze and its associated characters, they belong to Mizuna Kuwabara and probably Anime Works.
Author's Notes: This was written for an LJ challenge, theme was Grey and time limit of 90 minutes. It was posted in a mildly different form, then I took my time fixing it. A beta gets Editor credit from me by making a substantially better story through a major revelation. Editor for this was Thirteenth Nightengale, my deepest friend. This is dedicated to Anon for the most enthusiastic review I've ever received, and to Van-chan, for sharing her MoB.
You ask about my conscience and I offer you my soul- Blaze of Glory, Bon Jovi
It was already one of those nights. I wasn't going to sleep any time soon, lying in the electric neon starlight of a cheap hotel room, with Lord Kagetora only a thin wall away. The unfortunate metaphors were stronger than I.
The bar would probably still be open.
I stopped on my way toward the elevator, to brush my fingertips lightly against the next door. Yes, it was much better for him to have his own room. As my palm pressed tightly to the wood, I wondered how many more times he would say 'I'm not Lord Kagetora' before I got angry enough to prove to him how wrong he was.
It was definitely one of those nights.
As soon as I crossed the threshold of the lounge, the soothing numbness hit me. I brushed it off to look around, the survival technique too strongly ingrained. Soft clink of glasses, dead air punctured by music too soft to really hear, sharp alcohol-perfumed conversation, a scattering of tables guarded by high-backed booths. It was no accident that hotel bars were the same all over the world. Their function was partially to offer the comfort of the familiar, age after endless age. A hotel lounge contained no surprises.
It could have been the same bar where you questioned me that night, Takaya. It wasn't, but then this was one of those nights. The similarities brought the conversation to mind as the bartender delivered my first drink. I drank Scotch that night as well, and with the taste I could almost hear your voice.
"Tell me, when you say reincarnated, does it mean we possess someone's body and drive out the original soul from it, that in essence we make the body our own?"
Yes, Takaya. You should understand right now what I am. What we are. No matter how nicely you phrase it, we are killers.
"Then that means this body really isn't mine, right? But still, there's supposed to be someone named Takaya Ougi that really IS Takaya Ougi."
Now you begin to comprehend the enormity of our existence. What we are driven to in our bitter devotion to duty.
"And you just keep on doing it like it's normal?"
No Takaya, it's not normal. It's wrong, it's a perversion and it's the only thing we can do to save the living from the vengeful spirits of the dead. There is no help for it, despite the many centuries of anguish we live through.
"Something that can't be helped, is that how you sum it up? Don't you have any guilt that you're taking somebody's real life away from them?"
Your angry, innocent questions flayed the skin from my morality and left my heart bleeding. How can you still deny you are indeed Lord Kagetora in the face of such actions? When you keep hurting me, over and over.
It's a strange type of weapon, the truth. I looked it up once, on a night much like this one. 'Possessor: n. A person who owns or controls; a person who holds property without title of ownership.' Property. I acknowledged the unintended irony of the word. We must indeed regard these bodies we possess as such. We, in essence, suppress the souls born into their rightful bodies until they die or fade away. Small deaths avoid a greater evil.
Each Possessor maintains a storehouse of justifications for nights like this one. We pass them amongst one another like a beloved novel. 'One life for the lives of many;' 'If it could have been explained properly, I'm sure they would have agreed;' 'They're not really in pain, it's not like we're torturing them'.
Then there was one of my personal favorites, 'The past is constantly being sacrificed on the gallows of the future; sacrificing someone's future on the altar of the past is simply karma.' That was a little convoluted for some of us, but in my case it provided an adequate justification.
At least it did when I wanted to pretend my reason for being a Possessor was my work. When I maintained the illusion that my continuing existence had nothing to do with Lord Kagetora, other than as the leader of the Uesugi army.
When I was ignoring the fact I would and had committed deeper and graver sins than assassination to stay near him. On nights very much not like this one.
The world is never easy, never as simple as the black-and-white symbolism of yin/yang. Grey is the color of cold hard truth. The color of 'the ends justify the means'. The color of murder.
It was, undeniably, one of those nights.