Like Father...like son.

The beauty of the courtyard would not be sullied by the denegration of name, but it was as memorable to him as any home could be, a place where true meaning could be exposed in the late afternoon air, thickly infused with the scent of cherry blossom and water lily. A garden of ritual, where at last he could achieve the sacred act of atonement.

He knelt, white linen on green grass, a symbol of purity upon the growing earth. Slow strokes of the pen transcribed images into words, and words presented thoughts that had been reflected on with the same percision of a bride preserving her wedding gown. Resistance, remonstrance, loyalty and expiation, disgrace and defeat accepted with grace upon the rice paper.

The fire of dwindling sun glistened on the kozuka laid neatly before him, bound and wrapped with paper with its end inches exposed. Clean. Sterile. Chaste. When the pen was laid aside, an act of contrition, he allowed his fingers to run over the edge of the robe with an unshaking hand. The garment fell open, exposing the hard sculpted, burdened chest and abdomen, the colour of earth.

After a slow exhalation of breath, he lifted the blade from the tray and without so much as a blink, a flinch, the tip pressed into his flesh. Across his stomach it danced left to right in a straight line. He pulled it out sharply so that he brought the scarlet entrails into the cool breeze, displaying his 'true intentions', unfolding his true self.

Even as the light in those darkest eyes began to fail the second man, as nameless as he, stepped forward in light paces that reminded of falling leaves and presented his companion his sword. It was an elegant weapon. His Kaishaku waited to be given the signal. For a moment it was grotesquely beautiful how he leaned forward, a precise, rigidly controlled angle of proper spinal alignment, and nodded but once. Steel and flesh met between earth and sky in a moment of silent love.

In the silence that followed, it was as if the witnesses of the moment could see the life turn black and wither, before the Kaishaku ensured his face was hidden and the stigma was cleansed in the torrent of heart's blood that flowed into the earth.

~*~

Only when the Seppuku was complete did the woman turned away from the scene, and away from the glass of her window while lifting her hands to her colourless lips and restraining the cry that wished to fall away from her. Not for the first time over the years did she wonder, wherever he was, if Derrial Meria would wish to know the fate of his son, who had always followed his steps all the days of his life.