MC is thiiiiirstyyyyyy

Pairing(s): background Masamune/MC (here named Aya)

This is an excerpt from an unfinished fic I wrote purely for myself, in which the Oshu family adds a tiny new member, thanks to an injudicious act of compassion by Masamune. Things...don't go smoothly.

I've never liked my own writing. I am trying to be less of a perfectionist in the coming year, however, so forcing myself to finally put something longer than a sentence or two out there is part of my commitment to that. Anyway.

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The girl’s name means stop. 

This fact bothers Masamune sometimes, when he’s sifting through his papers, and finds the word among the plans and correspondence. The girl’s name is written only in hiragana --とめ -- but the implication of the name, the character that crosses his desk every so often and never fails to stop him, is plain as day given the girl's personal history.

The character 止 carries no trace of softness. It is stiff and unyielding lines, the rightmost stroke an arm stretched in prohibition. Unwanted. Forbidden. No.

It suggests an unwished child, and Masamune knows all about being unwished. 

After all, his eyes are much like her own.

“It’s actually a common enough name,” Aya tells him one night in his annex kitchen, his wife's back to him as she chops vegetables for their dinner. “A lot of families will call their daughter that, if they don’t want any more children. Especially if they have one too many mouths to feed.” 

But Tome had been born to a samurai family. 

_________

In one sense, he must admit, the girl’s name is suitable.

Tome is a brittle, sticklike figure, her bones sharp and prominent in places where Aya insists there ought to be a peachy softness. There is a faintly skeletal quality to the six-year-old, something wholly insubstantial, and sometimes Masamune feels that if he breathes too hard, she might blow away. 

The greatest stiffness, though, is in the way she regards them, in the fragile quiet that suggests she is all too used to being shattered.

Watchful, Kojuro calls her. Both men know this is a polite gloss on afraid. 

(“We rescued her, Masa,” Shigezane says to him once. “Even if we had to make her a hostage to do it.” Masamune watches the uneasy set of the girl’s shoulders beneath Aya’s hands and wonders if they’d rescued her from anything.) 

These first months have made him awkward and clumsy. Masamune has never loved his own body, and now he feels there is too much of it altogether: standing near the girl feels more like looming, and on the vanishingly rare occasions that Tome finds the courage to reach for him, one of his hands easily swallows both of hers. 

“Bend down when you talk to her,” hisses Shigezane in his ear. “Kids like it when you get on their level.” 

Ouch. Thankfully, this is otome, with all the sugar-dusted happy endings that (often) implies, but it's hard not to think about how badly this situation would end, realistically.