Disclaimer: I don't own Mirage of Blaze, Kubawara Mizuna does.

Author's Note: This is the sequel to another story of mine called "There Is No Such Place", set during the original life times of Kagetora and Naoe. Some things in this story probably won't make sense to you if you haven't read the prequel first. I've taken certain liberties with both historical facts and Kuwabara Mizuna's novels. The main difference is that Naoe and Kagetora when they begin their kanshousha careers already have a personal "history" with one another and carry old misunderstandings into the afterlife.

Enjoy :-)

~*~

All Honesty

You must not lose it.

Its power is infallible,

Love gave it to you.

-- Alexander Pushkin, The Talisman

~*~

An End Has a Start (Prologue) – 1585

Kagetora's POV

„Saburō Kagetora…"

A name like two sides of a coin. Two halfs of a life. My life. A life that lay behind me and should have for a considerable time. And still, I reacted to the call.

"I am disappointed in you."

I knew I deserved this. Still, it seemed the verbal – or metaphysical – counterpart of being slapped.

"You, my son?" Kenshin asked. "You of all men becoming a vengeful spirit, haunting and harming the innocent? I can say without exaggeration that I find myself aghast, Kagetora…"

What could I say in return? That I was shocked by myself and what I had been able to do? I wanted nothing more than acknowledge my guilt and apologize. However, the still smouldering embers of the very same wrath and bitterness which had enabled me to act against everything that I held dear and believed in kept me from doing so. Hadn't others wronged me first?

If this conversation had taken place during our former lives, I believe my father would have shaken his head in sorrow. I would have been standing with my back turned towards him, my arms crossed in front of my chest. It was a posture of youthful rebellion, one I had never assumed in life. Never but once, that is.

I remembered this one conversation very clearly: my father trying to convince me of his plan to hand the Uesugi over to me after his death, and me trying to talk him out of it. He did much better than I did, of course. I was devoted to Uesugi Kenshin. I would have done anything he asked of me. But that didn't mean I couldn't argue with him over this particular point.

Indeed, it was only when Kenshin let me in on his misgivings that the Uesugi would be lost to Oda Nobunaga without the combined forces of the Hōjō and the Takeda coming to their aid that I conceded. Who if not I could bring such an alliance into existence – a confederacy of the most powerful clans among Oda's enemies? A coalition of tigers and dragons.

I was part of them all. That had to be good for something – and still, it wasn't.

"In your eagerness to avenge your grievances, you poisoned your memory to the world of the living."

"What do I give about the world of the living? What has it ever done for me?"

Waves crashing against the shore of Odawara. The sea of Japan, weeping… always weeping…

"The eldest brother, the heir, while he was still in the womb… and then the lady Zuikeiin, too…"

"What a sign of misfortune."

Walking on my uncle Genan's hand through the gates of Sōun temple. Travelling to Kai under the fu-rin-ka-zan. Becoming exposed to a world of strangers. A world of eyes that followed my every move.

The red moon, an uncanny glow that deformed the familiar surroundings of my childhood home. Matsuda Takahide's fist in my clothings, pulling me to the ground.

The blade in my hand, trembling against my jugular. Weak, the winds outside whispered. Afraid of the pain even now, are you?

Echigo. Again, a world of eyes. Looking to Kenshin when everyone else was looking at me.

The morning of his burial. Haruie… The first blood.

"We're lost to the greed of Oda if we're going to war against one another! Why? Kiheiji!"

The land that Kenshin had entrusted to me… soggy with our blood.

Sending Seienin to her brother. Lifting Dōmanmaru up to into Norimasa's arms. Watching them ride through the gates to be slaughtered and never return.

Glowing sparks falling from the ceilings at Samegao-jō. Closing my fingers around the handle of my sword.

Not afraid, this time.

"He wouldn't even let me see you…" It sounded lost to me, those first words I actually contributed to our exchange.

But when I spoke of him, I all of a sudden realized that we weren't communicating with words at all. What transmitted from me to my father was the impression of a male being – a proud, self-assertive presence. Cold but inflammable. Hinted at only and still understood. So I didn't have to explain to my father who it was I was talking about.

"Kagetora…"

It was the equivalent of him putting a hand under my chin for me to meet his eyes when I was reluctant to do so. A gesture he had exhibited ever so often in life. Nobody else had ever done this. They had just let me be aloof and keep to myself as much as I wanted.

Kenshin alone had been able to decipher the complicated language I conceptualized my state of mind with. When I drew back, I wished to be pursued. When I became aggressive, I felt insecure. When I was being obdurate, it meant that I was sorry.

And he had this way of letting me know that he could see right through it.

So now that I failed to explain myself, to apologize for my actions –

He knows all the same…

My ire wouldn't survive this. Already I could feel it slipping through my fingers as my gloomy musings used to subside under the influence of sake. But instead of becoming intoxicated I could feel clearity at last sweep through my consciousness.

"Now listen to me."

I always listened to him. And why not? The only time that I didn't, it had resulted in my death. In Haruie's death. In Seienin's and Dōmanmaru's and Norimasa's…

As I stilled and listened for him to hand out my punishment, soft laughter touched me.

"Ever the naysayer," my father smiled into my sinister thoughts. "To think I called you to me just for chatting about the deeds of the past…"

~*~

Naoe's POV

A few hours ago already, the nightly storm had subsided, but it seemed to me that the wind freshend when I approached the shore at dawn. It threw glistening waves of water over the sand which smoothened the surface irregularities and washed away the footsteps of the man whose silhouette I perceived in the distance.

His gaze was turned away from where I was walking towards him. I imagined those eyes before I saw them: watching the green and silver sea, restlessly as if looking for lost things. Those amber-coloured orbs that were prone to pulling you in or cutting through you at will.

Cursing inwardly that I recalled their dark-golden slant so effortlessly even after all those years, I called myself to order. That body wasn't his anymore, neither did I look what I had in my previous lifetime.

The past was the past and –

All thought abruptly left me, when he turned around and looked at me with those very eyes.

Fright rippled forth from the core of my heart, not unlike the waves a stone produces when it falls into still water. All the occasions when his eyes had met mine before seemed to blend together. But I just as vividly recalled the last time I had been subjected to this pervasive look.

He had rushed to Kasugayama at the news of Kenshin-kō's death, and I had stepped in his way, petty revenge leading my every step, spurred by my pride wounded seven years before. In a voice so cold that it didn't even leave room for sneer, I informed him that his presence was not required at his father's death bed – and that Kenshin had named Kagekatsu as his sole heir.

Back then, his eyes had been full of barely concealed sorrow, for once lacking even the strength to glare. It made me sick to think of it, now. How pitiful we both had been. It was the only time that I had let my scorn get the better of me. To this day, I wondered what Yasuda Nagahide and Irobe Nagazane who had been with me at the time had been thinking.

Returning his gaze now – equally pensive and haughty as the feline's he had been named after – as if transfixed, I could be certain that he had not recognized me yet. There was a certain irony to me for once being the sole one who was aware of both our identities.

"Kenshin-kō has appointed me as your guardian," I said in a voice fainter than I wished it to be, the wind ripping the words from my lips. "I am Naoe Nobutsuna."

Unlike myself, he hadn't known what – or whom – he was getting involved with when he had accepted his father's mission. I suspected that much and even though he showed no noticeable reaction to the disclosure I was sure it came as a shock to him.

Just when he had thought that the past lay behind him, I had appeared on the scene. Maybe he was thinking of the sheer masses of his brothers armies that branded against the walls of his very last stronghold – led by me which couldn't have escaped him. And chances were, he held me responsible for his son's death, too.

He seemed to take a deep breath. Then,

"Are you not afraid?"

My eyes narrowed at the unexpected question.

"The leader of the enemy forces is still here. The soul who perished at Samegao-jō is standing right in front of you."

He was referring to the time shortly after his death, I realized, and the ongoing verbiage among the people of Echigo and its surroundings. The peasants naturally attributed the incidents to him and the ones who had died fighting by his side. Whether gales blew or lightning struck, somehow it was always regarded as his doing. People had been crazed with fear at times, rurals and nobles alike.

If I hadn't, it was due to the fact that I hardly felt anything at this time in my life.

"I need not be afraid, " I responded carefully. "Because from now on, Kagetora-kō is my lord."

"Can you really accept me as your master?" he demanded to know.

I had been wrong, I realized, when I had thought me knowing before he did would somehow put him at a disadvantage. But he had easily turned the tables on me. In fact, it only meant that I had had time to become anxious whereas he seemed to be dealing with the disclosure of my identity pretty well.

"No bōroku, and no rewards, no reciprocation. Can you still acknowledge me as your master?"

I should have been used to this by now, I thought trying to ignore the hot feeling spreading in my stomach. Nothing would shake him. Anything would drip off him, even the most vigorous rain. I had seen it before, hadn't I?

"Yes," I answered firmly, but – as if to undermine my own words – added: "As long as it is Kenshin's order."

Something flickered in the depths of his eyes, the first however preceptible sign of unease. Good. If my words helped install some tiny measure of inadequacy in him, the better. I had felt it, too, after all, when this task had been dealt and the reasons explained to me.

There will be four of you, Kenshin-kō had told me. I chose you carefully. I want him to be surrounded by a group of companions each of which fulfills another need of his: his best friend, an elder man he can look up to, someone to measure his strength against – and the one who loves him.

It had taken some time for me to dive through the implication of these sentences. In fact, it seemed that only now I could grasp its full meaning. Meanwhile I had seen the light of the world again through the eyes of a foreign body.

So I don't deem you as someone worthy of him measuring his strength against? The shame due to which I had considered ending my life is what qualifies me for the task of watching over him?

A heavy squall surged the green and silver sea behind him, pulling at the midnight-coloured strands of his hair. Love was not a word I had ever used in relation to the calamity that had befallen me thirteen years ago and caused such a stain on my honour that apparently not even death could extinguish. Having it thrown at me by Kenshin-kō - from whom I had wished to hide those happenings first and foremost - in such a causal way shook my insides. Had everyone known about it? Had my pride been a mere illusion?

The crux was standing right in front of me, demanding my fealty, and I would give it.

My shame alone had brought me here, though - his deceit, and I wasn't intent on letting myself forget it.

~*~

Author's Note: Dialogue between Naoe and Kagetora is from vol. 20 of Mirage of Blaze (more or less).

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