Work Text:
How Cruel
A man once asked her,
“Don’t you have a human heart?”
The newly acquired tool feels heavy in her hands,
It’s warm and it thrums with every beat of her heart.
Onee-chan.
The thrum falters like a voice trembling, a plea for help,
And for a split second, Zen'in Maki sees a small hand outstretched to hers.
Close your eyes.
Maki longs for the days when it was as simple as that:
If you can’t see it, then it’s like it’s not even there.
But she’s no child anymore, she knows better;
She knows that closing her eyes won’t make the fear any less suffocating,
The memories any less painful, or her soul any more whole.
No, closing her eyes won’t heal the septic, agonizing wound in her chest,
It won’t soothe the raw, bleeding edges - Wake up, Mai!
It won’t fill the void in her chest, gaping and hollow where her soul once had a companion,
Where her heart was once protected.
The heart that hated her,
Condemned to suffer at the hands of her own ambitions.
While Maki dedicated herself to Jujutsu, her heart wept,
Desperate to keep beating, desperate to not be left behind,
Chasing after an unwanted dream.
Why didn’t you fall down the hole with me!
Her heart knew why though.
Her heart knew that there was no other path for Zen’in Maki,
And so her heart, her strong, loving, and selfless heart said, okay.
And with a final wish, Maki felt her chest burn,
She wondered briefly if maybe she was dead too, perhaps this was hell.
Destroy everything, everything, big sister.
Maki looks at the man before her,
The embodiment of everything she isn’t,
Everything she was supposed to be,
And Zen’in Maki, with eyes as empty as her chest, answers the man,
“No, it was taken from me.”