They stood as equals, two sides of a spectrum, but unsure what the spectrum itself meant or what it was they represented to begin with. Life and death came so quickly for people like them, the warrior class ruled and guided by the upper dreggs of society. They were tools of war, weapons with a conscience. In the battlefield, they stood on opposite sides, the man and the woman: the defender and the invader. They were unassuming in their armor, easily missed from the rest of the fighting many-- yet as heroes, they stood out.
They'd done this before, this fight. It was little more than a repeat of old times. Since the beginning, they traded wins and losses, and now, upon a battlefield they scarcely recognized, one's final loss had to pass. They'd long since accepted their tasks, and it was far too late now to question what they'd done.
The boy sat up in bed, the book in his lap, and the next page held between his thumb and index finger. He had a habit of this, and all the books he read frequently had little stains, barely visible lest they were in the right light, permanently marred upon the lower corner of each page. He read of the man and woman's conflict, the fighting and the senselessness of the battle they seemed unwilling to accept. He'd read it all before, numerous times so far; he knew how it ended and how he always felt when he reached a certain passage, but he scarcely had the foresight to simply skip the passage. He turned the page.
"Haven't you ever wondered?" he asked her. His blade was let down, not quite released, but permitted to set by his side in a non-threatening way.
She, on the other hand, did not lower her blade. "Wondered what?"
"What we'd be like . . . if life was different?" He reflected for the both of them, "If you and I grew up together--what would we be like? Like . . . this, still? Two killers without a cause?"
"Does it really matter?" she replied, "What's done is done and there's no taking any of it back. There's no unmaking and remaking what we are."
The man smiled sadly. He dropped his arms to his sides and allowed his blade to fall to the stone below. "And yet, we'd all be better for it, wouldn't we?"
Toushikyo shut the book. He always hated that part. That sort of self reflection drove him nuts. It got his mind wandering too far. What would've happened, if he'd been different? If his family were different. If they were supernatural forces in the world, and not condemned to the same monotony of this village? Living every day with minimal recourse and continuous repetition? Oh, how it would change so quickly, had he power. A power. Something cold and efficient. He'd have frozen anyone that got in his way.
But alas, he wasn't the sort. Toushiko was just a boy. Barely fifteen years old, yet self educated well beyond his years. That was all he'd going for him. He was awkward, short and skinny and as frail as a thin ice sculpture, condemned to poor eyesight and reading glasses, and lost in a world that continuously seemed to forget he ever existed.
He looked out through his window, up to the stars and the low cloud cover that shrouded half of them. It was only after a second that he realized, across the gap between his house and the village clinic, another boy was doing just the same. As soon as their eyes met, Toushikyo leered at him disapprovingly. He knew that boy. He was Toushikyo's age. Toushikyo didn't bother to look for a reaction; he laid back down in bed, curled under the covers for warmth, shut his eyes, and pretended to be asleep. He only needed to lie to him for a few minutes before his body accepted it as truth, and he slowly fell to slumber.
