DISCLAIMER: Characters, places, etc. all (c) Quentin Tarantino.
ARCHIVING: Only with the permission of the author.
Showdown at the House of
Blue Leaves
By Cleo DeMayon
I tried to calm the flow of adrenaline coursing through my veins as I stepped out of the House of Blue Leaves and into the snowy courtyard. Her voice didn't startle me when she started asking about my sword. I answered her calmly in Japanese, and listened to her bullshit. O-Ren always was a woman of pretty words. She always conveyed exactly what she wanted to, precisely and vividly.
She stepped daintily out of her white shoes and came towards me in the snow. I swung down at her after raising my Hanzo sword. It met hers with a clang. We held each other off during a few moments of sword play. It was exhilarating. One of us was going to die tonight. It was going to be O-Ren. As we stepped away from each other, I couldn't help but admire that she still fought with a sword without a hilt. She was amazing. I wanted her as badly as I wanted to kill her. We both knew what it was like to want revenge. I could see it burning in her eyes as much as she could probably see it in mine. She was not afraid.
We swung at each other again. After another flurry of samurai swishes, we paused again, studying each other, waiting to see the other's next move. I let my Hanzo sword go limp in my fingers, to show her how I felt, but not too lax that she could kill me before I grabbed it again. To my surprise, she re-sheathed her sword and lay it in the snow by her shoes. I set mine aside too. "Come on," she said, now in English. I followed her to a small pagoda in the back of the garden. We were kissing before she pulled the door open. She pulled off my yellow suit, and though it was soaked with the blood of her own men, she still kissed and sucked the skin underneath it. I was sure she felt hatred and disgust towards things about me coupled with this strong inexplicable attraction to those same things. That's just what I felt too. As I looked up into her eyes as she laid me down on the lush rugs on the floor of the pagoda, I couldn't help flashing back to the time she was staring down at me as I lay on the floor of the Two Pines wedding chapel. My body seized up a little, but at that exact moment, she pushed the jumpsuit down to my knees and started fucking me. I couldn't believe how intense the pleasure was when her fingers pushed against and into me. She had let her kimono slip off down around her waist, and I grabbed her breasts and kissed her neck as hard as I could.
O-Ren and I had only spent one night together before, after one of the usual parties thrown by Bill for the squad and his friends and cohorts, this time at one of his houses in Mexico. Bill had not been very affectionate towards me since I'd returned from Pai-Mei. O-Ren had troubles of her own. We both got trashed on tequila and ended up in a small candlelight room in the big house. Her hair was shorter then. I was feeling completely wiped, I couldn't even explain my hopeless exhaustion. As we talked softly in that small room I thought that O-Ren's lips might contain something that would wash away those feelings. Her lips touched mine, and I closed my eyes to the candlelight, not even touching her face until minutes into the kiss. I'll never forget the way she unzipped the tight black shirt she wore. I pulled my shirt off too, her hands encircling my body as I did. Even though we were both drunk, we fucked each other steadily and gently, both coming again and again for hours into the early morning. She fell fast asleep afterwards. I watched her sleep. She looked so innocent lying there that for a few moments I forgot that she had been a killing machine for most her life. I'd never been with a woman before; I didn't know if she had. I woke her up to come watch the sunset on the beach with me. "As cheesy as this is," she told me, "I've never watch the sunrise this way before." I still don't know what she meant by "this way." As we sat on the beach, she put her hand on my thigh and we kissed. She rubbed her hand over my crotch as I fondled her breasts, but we didn't have sex again. After our passion had subsided, I looked into her eyes as she pushed my hair back from face. "I love the Deadly Vipers," she said. "All of you." I didn't know what to say. After a long silence, I said, "I don't think things will stay this way." She didn't respond, but I knew that she agreed. I don't know if the other Deadly Vipers ever found out about this night. I know I never told Bill.
Remembering the way she'd said she loved the Vipers made me even angrier at her betrayal. I bit her skin and pushed her down hard. I got on top of her and shoved my hand into her. She gasped, but she never closed her eyes. After a while, her moans of pleasure became even louder, and I kept kissing her everywhere on her body. Her pussy started squeezing around my hand as she came. I touched my fingers to her mouth, and she sucked on them a little before rolling on top of me, and kissing down my stomach. Her hands were on my hands, my arms, and the blood stains all over me didn't affect her at all. When her tongue touched my clit, I didn't know what to think. She released my hands and let me writhe in pleasure. I didn't think about her life, her betrayal, my lost daughter, or my revenge, I just let myself lie there and marvel that we could be together this way after all of this time. After I'd mutilated Sofie, her lover. Before we drew our swords against one another for the last time.
I cried out as I came in her mouth, and she just stroked me and waited until the orgasm was finished. She wrapped her kimono back around her shoulders and stood up. But I didn't want this to be over. I pulled my suit back up. Before zipping it, I stepped over to O-Ren, and kissed her fiercely on the lips. Her hand slipped inside my tracksuit and touched my breast again. I pushed my tongue fervently into her mouth. I pushed against her until my mouth ached, and then I pushed harder. I didn't know when this would end and the fighting would begin.
Eventually, O-Ren pulled away. Then, she came back so our lips just barely pressed against each others'. It reminded me of how I'd kissed Bill moments before he'd betrayed me. I looked into her eyes as I had that morning on the beach, looking for some kind of answers. Deep in the black depths of her eyes, she told me. At that moment, I knew that no matter how this fight would proceed, no matter who would be injured how, no matter who would die tonight, we would have another moment like this, where our eyes connected like this, even if only for one second, and after that, even if my Hanzo sword sliced unfeelingly through her flesh, I would forgive her.
The End