Chapter Text
Miyomi Haza is not a girl who enjoys running. But here she is, limping through forests and underbrush like her life depended on it.
Since it did.
She’s almost walked up into so many army camps in the last few days, the meager bit of rice flour and dried meat she had taken with her is long gone, and she’s been surviving on water and forest gatherings for the last week. She’s dizzy with exhaustion but she keeps walking and only catches the shortest of naps when she can find a hiding spot.
Red, red, red, more red, the battle fields are red, the garb of the armies is red, her feet are red with blood as her sandals crumble. Her ankles are covered in cuts and scrapes, blisters and calluses as she keeps moving, ignoring every time a stone catches her or a thorn stabs into her feet.
After weeks of this she’s too exhausted to realize she’s stumbling past a patrol until she walks right in front of them.
To Samanosuke and Yoshinao, both senior enough to be trusted on patrols now finally, one moment the forest is clear and they’re looking forward to getting back to camp and the festivities of a battle won, and the next moment a waif of a girl almost topples out of the treeline. She’s a mess of a thing, thin as a twig and spindly too long limbs as she’s still growing, black hair tangled around her shoulders and in a frayed gray kimono. There’s a drip of blood and they realize in an instant her feet and ankles are raw and bloody.
She gets a look at them and her eyes, dull and filmed over as she stares in confusion, suddenly brighten and she stumbles, scrambling back. They’re invaders still, they have to grab her until they can leave the area at least, but she wouldn’t know that.
“G-get away! Leave me alone!”
“Wait, grab her! Don’t let her get away, Hittou and Katakura-sama will kill us!”
By the time they grab Haza, not a hard thing as she’s so weak on her feet, and haul her back to the camp she’s crying with fear, but she’s still managing to try and escape.
“Let me go! Let me go I said I’m not-! I’m not going back!”
“Hey hey what’s this all about? You two aren’t the womanizer types, what gives?” Suddenly another voice breaks into the chaos as they reach the main camp. Haza catches sight of so many people in blue and armor she squeezes her eyes shut tight and waits for the inevitable blade in her throat.
“Hittou! We found her on patrol so we brought her but...she’s terrified.”
Haza flinches. There’s a pause of silence and she manages to squint her eyes open and glance over at their commander and is...surprised. “You’re not...an Oda commander.” In fact he looks like he’s her age.
“Hah?”
There is a moment where everyone looks at her, and her feet, and realizes she has run all the way from Oda territory. And they’re still trying to get into the entire area around Oshu, so she’s been through half the central region.
Kojuurou looks at her and sighs. “Get her some food. We’ll talk to her in the meantime.”
Haza squeaks as she’s suddenly standing on her own again, under the examination of two generals and fidgeting with her blood stained sleeves. It’s going to be a long evening. They’re clearly unsure of her too, so after a bit of discussion between them, Haza finds herself sitting tensely at one fire while Kojuurou prods her with questions and Masamune, as she finds out that’s the commander's name, occasionally comments or interjects.
“You’re from Oda lands?”
“...Yes.”
“Where?”
“Village in the...south east. Small, no real name, just next to one of the smaller rivers..”
“What brought you out here? You made an impressive distance on your own, you know.”
One of the two who had caught her brings a map and points to where she had likely started, and where they are currently. She nearly faints at the scale. “I...was running. The armies out there pillage and ravage and most things end up destroyed. And that’s just the army that’s stationed there! If a main force comes through we can’t eat for weeks!”
She pulls up at her own exclamation.
Masamune laughs. “You’ve got a good sense. Not every army is like that though, a lot of us try to stop that. Why leave all alone then? No family, friends?”
She goes pale and looks down at her food. “My village was barely alive. They don’t let Oda people past the borders so I had to run. If they found out I was from the region I…” She swallows hard and shakes herself. “My parents...haven’t been around in a long time.”
Things go quiet. Kojuurou sighs and passes her a small cup of sake. She looks up in surprise and down at the little bamboo cup as she takes it from his hands. The contrast between the clean cut wood and the red scuffed across her clothes, the dirt under her nails and the cuts all around her from her escape. She sips it slowly and makes an odd face, one he finds familiar in a young person, but keeps bringing it to her lips to just get a hint of the flavor. “Do you have a name, Miss?”
“Miyomi Haza.”
“Miyomi-san, if you’re willing to tell us anything you saw in your travels, we might be able to help.”
“I’m not sure I could tell you much. Armies all over, I’ve never seen any of these colors or banners until this month, I don’t know what I saw most of the time...this is the first break I’ve had in...days. Maybe more.”
“Kah! At least she’s honest. Too genuine to a spy, eh Kojuurou?”
“Indeed. We could at least offer her safe passage along our route.”
“The next few villages we’ll be trying to persuade to support us. I doubt they’d take her. Not sure if she can keep up with an army anyways though…”
“Oi! I’m still right here. If you can take me I can offer something in return. I’m healer trained, armies always need medics right? That’s the other reason I ran. I didn’t want to get forced and have to be around them after the stories I heard…” Haza pipes up. “I learn things fast too.”
“
Pay your way
?”
She looks over at Kojuurou to translate. He does with a bit of a laugh. Haza nods.
“Whatever I can do.”
“Alright, you four, you’re in charge of her. If anyone causes her problems, kick them out.”
<><><>
First order of business is getting the girl looking less likely to topple over in a stiff breeze. Kojuurou has the four go dig through the spare supplies and any damaged things they can repair or alter to fit her. As he looks her up and down, and judges her smart enough not to eat herself ill, he spoons an extra scoop of rice into her bowl and passes it to her. She looks at it like it’s gold and eats carefully and slowly, murmuring thanks over and over whenever she sips some water.
“How good is your healing lore?”
She swallows and thinks for a moment. “I’m herbalist trained from the women in my village, woodsman trained by my father, and before the Oda cracked down I’d been sneaking into their infirmary to read the scrolls.” She sighs. “But honestly I learned more from the diagrams than the actual words. I never learned beyond the basics for reading.”
Kojuurou smiles a bit. She’ll be useful then, very useful, even with low literacy she knows what she knows. “Experience with wounds?”
“Mhm. Oda was using us as a wounded ferry area. I was helping them, when I wasn’t just keeping any villager alive who got on their bad side.” She makes a face and looks back down at her knees. “We lost a lot of people that way.”
They go quiet at that. “Miyomi-san. We should clean up your legs, before you get an infection.”
“My legs?” She blinks. Kicks her feet a bit to warm by the cook fire. Looks at the shredded flesh and the gouges and cuts and the old blood. “Oh.”
Masamune raises a brow. “No way you don’t feel that.” How nuts was this girl?
“I don’t.” She finishes her food fast and sets her dish aside so she can pull her feet up to examine. “I’m probably in shock or damaged the nerves.” She’s sure it’ll hit sooner or later.
“Katakura-sama! We found a few things!” The guys run back up. They’re holding a small dusty blue kimono, a few under layers, and a patched up haori. And a blanket she presumes is going to be hers now. “One of the guys saw us bring you in and said you’d appreciate this. Said to apologize too for roughing you up.” Samanosuke hands her a little wooden hair pin that she blinks at, not even sure what to say.
Yoshinao grins. “Medicine for your legs too!” He holds up a pack of bandages and salves and hands them to her. “Rumor has it one of the big towns gets merchants from China, so we can get you some nice boots too.”
Haza blinks and blinks and looks at them all. “This is-this is too much, please-I’m just. I can’t pay!”
“You’re gonna help us, aren’t ya?” Masamune quips over. “That’s payment enough for this lot. Don’t worry about it, Date pay their debts well.” He grins. “And I’m not exactly poor y’know. I think I can spare a bit of change for a brat like you.”
She blushes. “Y-you!” She’d stalk off if it wouldn’t kill her feet. Sniffing at his rudeness she tears into the medicines and starts cleaning and wrapping her feet. She has to go from the base of her toes up to her mid shin, salves and herbs tucked in to help her heal. Once she’s done she sighs.
She expects to be left alone after that. But Kojuurou keeps talking to her, drawing out what little bits of memory she is sure of from the last weeks. Even the smallest bit of detail might be helpful, and as he realizes once he gets Haza talking, she’s not as fragmented as she thinks. He marks down previous locations of a few armies on their maps while the others listen. “We’ll move safer with all this information.”
They make sure the men have left to distribute the maps to the scouts before the next topic comes up. Haza’s rubbed most of the blood off her hands, and her legs are patched for now, but even running like hell, walking her feet nearly to the bone, doesn’t explain the blood specks across her yukata, the faint pale stains infected fluid leaves on fabrics, or the coating of dark red on the hems of her sleeves.
Masamune leans forward and looks at her steadily. Kojuurou is reminded of how a hunter looks at prey, eye contact so strong that neither can flee. “Care to explain why you’re coated in so much gore you look like you crawled out of a mass grave? The men didn’t notice, but they haven’t had to bury people like we have, Haza.”
She stiffens so immediately Kojuurou almost wants to grab his sword. She shifts in body language so fast, going on the defensive again, leaning away from them. Her fingers gather her sleeves into balls and what little color thats come back to her face drains away. She knows she can’t lie. But she still wants to try. “I…”
“The truth. Or I can’t trust you to be around my people.”
Haza’s eyes widen and she looks away. “When you’re alone, and you’re the healer, no one questions how you learn. Or how you prepare bodies for burial, when you’re a student you have to learn or you can’t treat anyone.”
“Did you-”
“They knew. They just figured it was the price for my work.” Her fingers spasm, imagining holding a knife. “I got a lot of information, at the end there. So many of us were dying of starvation, and none of us would eat each other, so I dissected them, did every autopsy myself. If someone died of disease I did too. Anything. Anything that let me compare and see how things worked, how to heal them, how I could have if only I’d known…”
She looks away.
“You kept doing it after you fled.”
She nods sharply. “I’m not sorry. They were all trying to kill each other. And at least cut up I could bury them after. I’d give their supplies to some stragglers on the edges and patch them up before moving on. A fucking waste of bodies and information and me without a guild so I figured what the hell, I’m dying of curiosity so I did it.” She sighs. “...Are you going to throw me out for this?”
Masamune hums. “Are you going to open up anyone’s body without their or my permission? If they say yes I don’t care, and if I need you to, that’s part of the job.”
She squints. “If I think there’s a need, I open them up. That means any unusual wounds, trauma, or if there’s a disease or poison suspected.”
Masamune smirks. “Fair enough. I won’t get in the way, kid, you’re not totally immoral about it as far as I can tell unlike some people out there.” With that, it’s settled. Haza sighs with relief and all the tension she’d pulled into herself for defense snaps away. Her shoulders slump.
Conversation peeters off for some time, Kojuurou hands her another small mouthful of sake, she survived a face off against his lord and that’s nothing to dismiss. She drinks it delicately, savoring it on her tongue, he’s reminded of a baby lizard. Since he has her here, he also deems it safe to ask a few medical questions to gauge her knowledge. They have a couple minor wounded resting at the tail of the army, if she can help by even advising he’d agree with Masamune that she’s worth taking along.
“We have a few burn victims, broken arms, fractures, nothing severe but would you be able to advise treatments?”
She looks at him from behind her cup and nods. “What do you have? Fresh or dried herbs, or medicine?”
“A mixture from home. Mostly dried herbs, some poultices, similar to what you just used.”
She hums quietly to herself and thinks for a moment. “Broken bones already set?” Kojuurou informs her that had been done immediately. “If no one festers, general treatment for the bones is fine. For the burns, you want to alternate thick and thin medicine layers so the wounds can breath without infection. I’ll take a proper look whenever you’d like…”
By that point Haza’s nodding off where she’s sitting. Masamune smiles a bit to himself. “Kojuurou. Find her a bed roll someplace decent to curl up. Too bad we don’t have…” He trails off. “Space away from the riff raff if they get rowdy.” That means by them, but at least they can keep an eye on her.