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“Stop hovering,” Ringo says, without turning towards her. “Actually, you can just do it yourself. Nails, cuts, bruises, burns.” He points out each corresponding bowl of salve, then pushes away and stalks outside. He is so quiet without his bell Mizu isn't even sure if he's leaving until he closes the door.
Mizu huffs out a breath. She hasn't told Ringo what happened in Fowler’s castle, and he hasn't asked. Maybe if he knew he wouldn't be acting like Mizu is responsible for Taigen’s injuries along with everything else he blames her for.
Then again, maybe she is responsible.
She sighs lightly and sets one of Taigen’s limp hands in her lap to unwrap his bandages. The sight of raw, weeping flesh at the tip of each finger makes her stomach twist in a way she hasn't felt in years, like a child unused to the sight of blood.
With a clean cloth, Mizu scoops up some of the thick, sticky salve that Ringo had concocted, and gently dabs it on each nail bed. Taigen’s hand twitches ever so slightly, and she makes her touch softer. She watches his face, but there is no movement as she carefully wraps fresh bandages over his fingers. It’s been a long time since she’s treated any wounds but her own.
Ringo had left Taigen on his side, to keep pressure off of the worst of the wounds. Mizu eases him onto his back before repeating the process on his other hand. This time his eyelids flutter. “Taigen?” She whispers. Unconsciousness is the only thing sparing him from terrible pain, and still Mizu wants to shake him or slap his bruised face so those eyes will finally open. Stubborn soul, she reminds herself, setting aside the salve and taking a breath.
Mizu opens his haori, which Ringo had left loose and untied. She uses a knife to cut away the old dressings, and there’s relief in the more familiar motion. She gazes over his exposed chest, cataloging the evidence of what he withstood. Bruises from a fist– easy to recognize. It only takes Mizu a moment to match the darker, squarish marks stamped thrice over on his chest to the shape and weight of the hammers hanging on the wall a few feet away. The ribs beneath that tender, swollen skin are cracked. Welts criss-cross his left side, and Mizu can almost hear the swish of a bamboo cane when she looks at them. Other bruises are less distinct, blending into and obscuring one another.
There are cuts from well-sharpened knives. Not perfect, not by a master, but clean enough. Other cuts are ragged. Broken glass, Mizu realizes, from the windows she shattered with Taigen’s body. Each is closed by Ringo’s even stitches.
She pulls her eyes to something else. There are burns, too. Nothing could have made those but red-hot metal. They are kin to the scars on her own hands and arms, and on Swordfather’s. Those won’t ever fade away completely.
Mizu starts with the burns. The sharp, familiar scent of the salve fills her nose and she knows this one isn’t another of Ringo’s recipes. Sworfather always had a jar of this at the ready to soothe and cool and numb. If Taigen was awake, at least this one touch would not be painful. The burns are raised and still hot under Mizu’s fingertips as she smears the paste over Taigen’s marred skin.
She sighs, and starts on the cuts with a new clean cloth. He should have just told them what he knew. It wasn’t as though he had any information about her that would matter. Taigen certainly did not know her secrets. She scoffs aloud at the notion. Nothing he knows could have turned the tide against her.
Then she hears the familiar sound of tongs tapping against a split log on the woodpile outside, and Mizu realizes she is wrong. Taigen knew about Hokama. If he had sent them here, they could have found Swordfather. Mizu forces the evil thought away, and starts spreading the watery herbal poultice that Ringo claimed could speed the healing of bruises.
Why? The question hasn’t left her mind since she found Taigen. Mizu is inclined to think Fowler was at least half right– Taigen was stupid. Stupidity and pride. Loyalty , as Fowler had named it, certainly wasn’t it. Taigen would probably say it was for honor. If he let someone else kill her, he wouldn’t be able to regain his by taking her life himself. And beyond that, she reasons more charitably, he would not help advance the plans of a white man and a traitor to the shogunate.
Mizu thinks of the still healing puncture through his leg where the arrow of one of Heiji’s archers pierced him. Ringo had stitched that one up while she wrote the contract for their duel, after she had knocked him unconscious with the hilt of her first sword. There in that canyon, Taigen had been willing to shield her with his own body, with his own life. So maybe there was more. Maybe the honor in Taigen is the true thing after all. The type of honor Ringo wants from her. A samurai’s honor.
Taigen moans and stirs, and she realizes she is pressing too hard again. “I’m sorry, Taigen,” she whispers. She can only say it because she knows he cannot hear her. His eyes flutter again, and for a moment she sees the brown of his irises, shining in the firelight.
Ignoring his unconscious groans, Mizu pulls Taigen to a seated position, his lolling head slumped against her neck, so she can treat the cuts and burns and lashes on his back and wrap clean bandages over his torso. She eases his haori off his shoulder and it puddles on the floor behind him. Mizu can feel Taigen’s breaths, still too shallow, against the narrow strip of skin between her scarf and her collar.
When Mizu finishes dressing his wounds, she replaces his haori and rolls him back on his side with the blanket over him, but she doesn’t get up. A few strands of his hair are stuck against the scabbed skin on his cheek. She pulls the hair away, and tucks it behind his ear. It is still crusted from the seawater.
Mizu very carefully runs her fingers through Taigen’s hair, taking out the worst tangles and some of the stiffness of the salt. She has seen and touched his broken body, but this is the only thing that feels like an intrusion. Still, Mizu lets herself do it. The spot she cut at the dojo is just starting to grow back. She tests the prickly stubble with a fingertip, and smiles to herself. The topknot didn’t suit him anyway.
When she pulls her hand away, she sees that his eyes are moving beneath his eyelids. Taigen is dreaming. His unconsciousness has finally released him into sleep.