Work Text:
Sara comes to, groggy and slow, feeling the remnants of her fight with that wretch La Signora throb and pulsate through her bones. She lost. She lost, and her Goddess—
Shit. Is the Shogun—
Trying to sit up as quickly as she did doesn’t do her any favors. Her head spins, and with a groan, she falls back on her pillow.
What a useless general she makes. Treason ensnared her clan, its claws closing dangerously around the throat of the Shogun. They were purposefully withholding information from her, keeping her in the dark about their dealings and nefarious agendas.
Her Goddess was deceived, and Sara is to blame. She should have seen it coming. She should have paid closer attention to her family, should have checked and double-checked reports that would end up in her Goddess’ hands. How dare she be so weak and gullible?
How dare she believe that her family, the people who loved her and raised her as their own, since she was a child, are good, kind people? How dare she trust them?
Her Goddess must hate her, now, she is sure. The weakness she displayed —during the fight with the harbinger, when her family’s deceit went unnoticed— is utterly unbecoming of a general. She wouldn’t be surprised if she was dishonorably discharged, or even given prison time.
She would take it in stride. She would welcome it, even. Because she is entirely deserving of any punishment her goddess deems fit to bestow upon her.
Her thoughts, incoherent and a storm of self-loathing, are momentarily halted by the doors of the bedroom opening.
It takes her a second to realize she is in a bedroom much more ornate than her own, and it takes her even longer to realize it is the Shogun, standing at the door, the uncertainty marring her face a shock even bigger than everything else.
There is something about her that shifted. Sara isn’t quite sure what it is, can’t quite put her finger on it. It’s like trying to hold on to remnants of half a dream. Maybe it is in the way she holds herself, maybe it is in the clear purple of her eyes, maybe it is in the way she bites her lip.
Sara stares.
The Shogun stares back.
“You’re awake,” the Goddess states, approaching the bed, and settling on it next to Sara. Something in the General breaks, her thoughts skidding to a halt. Her brain. It is her brain that broke.
The Shogun is sitting next to her. In her bed. In the Shogun’s bed. She is in the Shogun’s bed. She is in—
“I’m glad,” she continues, her lips pulling into a soft smile. “I was afraid to have lost you before even getting to know you, General.”
Sara’s brain splutters back to life. It is a struggle to form coherent thoughts, but she makes it work.
What does she mean, ‘before even getting to know her’? Sara has been her general for years.
The Goddess doesn’t notice her questioning looks, or purposefully ignores them, Sara cannot be sure. She is taken by the small smile still playing on the Goddess’ lips, a sight so rare, so infinitely precious, Sara tries to burn it onto her memory, into her mind. She wants to remember this smile for the rest of her life. She wants it to be the last thing that crosses her thoughts before she is taken into the next world. She wants to make a religion out of it.
“I wanted to apologize,” the Almighty Ruler of Inazuma whispers, her hands fiddling with her sleeves. Sara’s throat runs dry. She wants to what now? “I seem to have plunged Inazuma into quite a mess.”
Sara’s mouth opens automatically. “It was your will, my Lady. Carrying it out is our duty.” The general doesn’t even know what the Goddess is talking about, but something about hearing her apologize rubs Sara the wrong way. So wrong, in fact, that she shivers violently. Something is wrong.
The Shogun takes notice. The concern that bleeds into her features, so obvious, so open, makes Sara’s skin crawl.
“Are you alright? Are you cold?” The woman frets over her like she is some kind of sick child. She takes an additional blanket out of a closet to their right, and drapes it over Sara with such care, the General feels bile rise to her throat.
The alarm bells in her mind go off, rattling inside her skull, the start of a migraine.
She finds her movements less groggy than a few minutes ago, her aches less prominent. She tests the movement of her hands, her arms, as surreptitiously as possible. She seems to be in one piece, just a bit sore.
The woman that is decidedly not her Goddess smiles as she sees the shivers abate. “There, all better. You had me very worried there, for a minute. The physicians have assured me that you are in perfect health, if not a bit banged up, but you wouldn’t wake up.”
Sara utters an ‘I’m sorry’, and the woman laughs. “It is not your fault. If anything it is mine. Again, I apologize—“
The blasted apology spurs Sara into action. Before her heart can beat twice, she has the woman masquerading as the Raiden Shogun pinned beneath her, her hands around her throat, her legs firmly holding her in place.
Her Goddess would never, not in a million years, apologize to her, or to anyone, in fact. Her Will is absolute. Her Word is law.
The woman beneath her seems shocked beyond words. Her first instinct is to claw at Sara’s hands as they tighten around her throat, cutting off the air supply for a good ten seconds before going lax.
The woman gasps for breath, her eyes wide with surprise, and a shocking degree of fear. Sara’s disgusts mounts further. Fear? The Raiden Shogun would never feel something as trivial as fear.
“What— What is wrong with you?!” The False God gasps beneath her, causing Sara’s fury to multiply ten folds.
“What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with you?! Who are you, and what have you done to Her Excellency?”
In her anger, her hands tighten unconsciously once more, causing the woman’s nails to dig into Sara’s hands. The more this goes on, the more Sara is convinced that this is not the Almighty Lighting of the Lands. The Goddess would not have hesitated a single second, cutting Sara in half before she could lay a finger on her.
This weakling, gasping and trembling beneath her, is but a cheap replica, some kind of imposter Sara wants eradicated. And it will be, soon, but not before it tells her what it did to her beloved Archon.
“It’s me, Sara—“ her eyes are wide and pleading, her hands pulling at Sara’s fingers. “General— stop—“
Sara’s teeth grit, her fury thundering. “LIAR!”
The purple eyes flash, a wave of mirroring anger flaring in them as sharp as lightning. The False God’s hair, splayed under her like a halo, out of its braid for the first time since Sara has known her, glows an eerie purple.
The words that are uttered next chill Sara to the bone. “Let go, if you value your life as much as I do, General.”
The tone drives a knife clean through Sara’s chest.
… That’s her. There’s no mistaking it.
Immediately, she lets go of the Goddess’ throat, her own going dry, icy fear clawing at her heart, ripping inside her chest. She jumps off her —she was straddling the Shogun, oh gods— scrambling backward, her ears filled with static and her eyes wide.
Oh goodness, oh archons. She just tried to kill her. In a fit of paranoia, she almost assassinated the ruler of Inazuma.
Tears blur her vision, as she watches, dread freezing her in place, the Shogun cough, and sit up with some difficulty. Her hair stops glowing, going back to its usual indigo color. She rubs at the darkening marks around her throat, her eyes dark and accusing, glaring daggers at the general.
“I ought to have killed you where you stood,” the Goddess spits, more a growl than anything. Sara wants to throw herself at her feet and beg for forgiveness. She is a wretch, underserving to be alive at the same time as the deity. She should beg her to end her life.
Instead, she sits and stares.
The Shogun’s glaring abates after a few seconds, a weary sigh escaping her lips. Her voice is hoarse, as she says, “the fact that you are not wrong is the only reason you’re still breathing.”
The world stops dead in its tracks. The planet almost spins off its axis. Sara feels like she’s teetering on the edge of the abyss for the hundredth time that day.
“W-What?” She mumbles, her eyes snapping from the hand-shaped marks around the Goddess’ neck, to her mildly annoyed face. Like Sara is nothing but a pestering child.
Death is the punishment she deserves, yet her Goddess seems to have reserved her right to kill her for another day.
The disappointment she feels is somewhat off-putting.
“I am, in fact, not the Raiden Shogun you know,” she begins, a sigh escaping her lips, hurt marring immaculate features. Sara’s reflex is the overwhelming desire to wipe out whatever has caused her Lady so much pain, but she refrains from any questions, too worried by the words uttered.
The explanation she plunges into is not rushed. It is detailed, and slow. The Shogun— Ei takes a few breaks to catch her breath throughout her retelling of the events leading up to this moment, to reorganize her thoughts, to give Sara a chance to process.
She has been serving a puppet for years. Everything she has ever known, everything she has ever believed in— a lie.
“Was any of it real?” She asks finally, after a stretch of silence overtook the room, taking the place of the Goddess’ soothing timbre.
Ei looks up at her curiously. “Of course, it was. The Shogun was following my express directives. All of it was real.” She narrows her eyes at Sara’s empty face. Something sparks in her, and her eyes widen in sudden realization. “You loved her.”
Sara’s heart lurches in her chest. She almost empties the contents of her stomach on the —real— Shogun.
“You did,” the Goddess whispers, the utter terror on her face hurting Sara more than she thought possible. “Celestia above, General, I’m so sorry.”
Sara’s chest heaves, and she belatedly realizes she is sobbing, unraveling, unspooling like string tugged on.
Her Goddess is gone. The searing pain in her chest is due to her leaving, dying, whatever happens to a puppet when their master has no need for them anymore.
No —and the realization hitches her breath— her Goddess is back. That is the source of her misery.
She should delight in the fact that the rightful ruler of Inazuma has awakened from centuries of sleep to guide the city once more.
Instead, she is mourning a fabrication, pieces of machinery and magic stitched together by the sheer will of the deity in front of her.
Her shoulders shake, her wings straining against them, begging to be let out. The mounting pressure in her spine is almost unbearable—
She feels arms encircling her, tight and reassuring. Ei buries her face in her hair, whispers words of comfort, hushes and coos at Sara until her breathing is even, and her eyes are dry, if not a bit red-rimmed.
She raises her head, looks the woman hugging her in the eyes. She was right, then, when she thought her eyes look clearer. The empty lilac is now a startling purple, electrifying and soothing at the same time. Her lips, so soft and rosy, are pulled into the softest of smiles. Regret mars her features, giving her a sad sort of air, and Sara is taken by the sudden desire to kiss the hurt away.
Instead, the Shogun herself drops a kiss on the General’s forehead, and passes a hand through tousled hair.
“Get some rest,” she whispers, gently pushing Sara back into the pillows. The General obeys wordlessly, because this is what she has wanted all along. This tenderness, this intimacy.
The thought of her betraying the Goddess —puppet— she knew is unbearable. Her eyes squeeze shut, trying to erase the phantom of Ei’s lips on her forehead.
She hears her stand up, and walk towards the door.
There is a long silence, and Sara thinks the Shogun retired for the evening. Then, in the softest, most melancholic of voices, a hushed whisper. “Goodnight, my General.”