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In astrology, Ceres represents [...] parenting and reproduction, fostering and adopting. Her themes are unconditional love, relationships between parents and children, and all the issues of devotion, attachment, separation, sacrifice, loss, and grief.
Ashura had not intended to get attached. This was only triage, after all. He could bring the child to Ceres and know that it would be the first (and possibly only) world to fall, or he could do nothing and survive long enough to see the end of all things across all the worlds.
He had not intended to get attached to this child that was not a child — one who had already lived longer than some of Ashura’s wisest advisors and still had centuries to go, one who had a monsterous, raw power that the dreams did not do justice. So, not a child, and plausibly not even human, for how could one human body so small contain enough power to rival an entire world — one particular, entire, magically-gifted world — and not be torn into pieces? As it was, Ashura had to set to work immediately to create a geas that could halt its growth, or else even all the magic in Ceres would not be enough to trigger the first curse.
He had not intended to get attached to this curse-ridden boy, one who never smiled and behaved like he already had a mission. (Ashura did not discard the possibility that he already had.) It should have been easy to stay distant from this unloved thing, this creature that would eventually be the end of Ceres, no matter what Ashura did. He only needed the boy to respect him enough to heed his teachings, nothing more. If the boy came to love him, that would only make the final days more difficult for them both.
He had not intended to get attached to Fai, who was eager to prove that he was useful enough not to be cast back into that valley, who worked himself to exhaustion to earn someone’s affection. Not to this strange child who didn’t play, not to this strange child who was rapidly becoming endeared to all who met him. Certainly, Fai was charming and clever and, miraculously, somehow still innocent, and the citizens could afford to love him. For the sake of everything, Ashura had to abstain.
He had not intended to get attached to his son, but that didn’t matter. Fai looked up to him and loved him, and Ashura had never had a hard heart to start. Even with what he knew he would have to do — how viciously he would have to behave — that, too, would be a labor of love. Love for his people, that they would suffer quick, clean deaths. Love for the people in worlds outside Ceres, that they would continue to exist long after Ceres and everyone in it was gone. Love, even, for Fai, that he might somehow be spared the sorrow he seemed destined for.
Ashura had not intended to get attached. Instead, he loved.
The most precarious thing in the balance had been Fai’s own heart. He needed Fai to love enough to want to protect the people of this land, but not enough to be broken when they were gone. He needed Fai to love him enough to do as he said, but not enough that he couldn’t do what had to be done in the end. He needed Fai to know love and feel love to escape the fate of becoming just a heartless pawn, but feared too much love would weaken him. As much as Ashura wished otherwise, Fai could not afford to be vulnerable.
It wasn’t until Fai had spirited all the remaining people in Ceres to the safety of another world, leaving himself behind to (unknowingly) deal with what Ashura had become, that Ashura knew for certain Fai’s love had erred on the side of running too deep. Instead of investigating the murders he’d come too late to prevent in the valleys, Fai had gone to the hills to get everyone else out, placing him too close to the castle, and having him returning too soon.
Triage , Ashura’s mind whispered. Fai couldn’t save those who were already dead, but he could protect the few that were left. It was triage that began this whole endeavor, and it was triage that sabotaged it in the end.
(Perhaps they two were too alike.)
It would have taken all the magic of all the lives in Ceres to surpass Fai’s magic, and Fai had let those vital final few slip away. Worse, he’d witnessed Ashura before he could find a way to remedy the situation. Perhaps there were some animals he could have taken from, or plants. If necessary, Ashura would have drained the very magic that held matter together if it had meant tipping the scales and triggering the curse before anyone else could.
But it was not meant to be. Ashura was taken to sleep, and Fai was forced into his journey, still nothing more than a ticking bomb as far as Fei Wong was concerned.
Ashura had failed, but he could still warn.
“The thing that will always inflict the most pain on you is your own kindheartedness.”
Ashura had always walked dreams. He’d seen the end of all things and followed the trails back to where they had begun. He had seen hundreds of permutations, and how they all collapsed back into each other to show only premature, painful death.
His only choice had been to intervene. He could not change the course of Valeria, and he could not enter into Fai’s time before Fei Wong had already done his damage, but he could change the course from there. He could free Fai from both curses before he’d even left Ceres, and maybe even take the anchor his twin had become away in the process. Fai would still go on the journey, but he would be free, and everything else would be alright. Ceres would be gone, but the multitudes that existed beyond it would endure, and only if Fai had the freedom to fight.
Ashura was again slipping into a dream as he saw his plans come apart. Fai was not to be saved, and neither was anything else.
It was unacceptable.
Even if Fai’s first curse would not be set off by Ashura himself, there was still a chance for the second. Fai would return, if only to retrieve his twin, and by then, the sleep would have given way to the sheer amount of power he already possessed.
Fai couldn’t kill his sovereign, but he could a beast.
When it was time to awaken, Ashura would become a beast.
Ashura was a monster of a sort. His past and present were soaked in the blood of innocents, and love drove him into becoming not much more than a beast, powerless to change the course of fate even as he drowned in it. Love had made him violent, and love had made him weak. All he could hope for was that one day Fai would understand and forgive him, or if he did not, that he would understand and use his hate to save everything Fei Wong set out to destroy.
Fai was a monster of a sort. His past and present were soaked in the blood of innocents, and love drove him into becoming not much more than a beast, powerless to change the course of fate even as he drowned in it. Love had made him violent, and love had made him weak. All he could hope for was that he would outlive his enemies, or if he did not, that he would live long enough to see all of Fei Wong’s machinations crumble to dust.
(Perhaps they two were too alike.)
Love did and did not destroy Ceres. It was Fai’s weakness that stayed his hand and led to Ashura being slain by another, and so Ceres was crumbling into dust around them all. He’d loved even when he knew he should have stopped — when he knew, logically, he should have only felt hatred and disgust — and now fate was proving Ashura right all over again by demonstrating that Fai’s own heart would be the death of him.
Fai did not deign to fathom what motivated Fei Wong.
The children were out and even Kurogane was out, but all that was left of Ceres and all Fai’s curses was a rapidly shrinking sphere. There was nothing more to do but to submit to the inevitable and finally, finally , be allowed to rest.
It was not to be.
Oh.
Fai’s mind had always been quick, and the pieces of the puzzle all slotted into place even before that arm had been fully separated from that shoulder.
After being owned by the mad King of Valeria, and owned by Fei Wong, and owned by Ashura, and owned, even, by his debt to his dead brother, Fai had mistakenly misattributed Kurogane’s motivations.
Kurogane had not been motivated by duty, and he hadn’t been motivated by morality, and he hadn’t even been motivated by hatred. That wasn’t to say that these motivations did not exist within Kurogane. They simply weren’t what drove him — weren’t the fuel to the fire behind those eyes.
Kurogane wanted to return to his princess because he loved. Kurogane protected the children because he loved. Kurogane desired strength to protect what he loved.
Turning him into a (monster, beast) vampire in Tokyo — that was love. It wasn’t a bid to claim ownership of him. It wasn’t a form of vengeance against Syaoran. It wasn’t to spite him for having been weak enough to lose to Syaoran in the first place. It wasn’t even because he hated him and thought it would be a laugh to see him reduced to a base creature. Kurogane saving his life, tethering himself to him forever, preventing him from killing himself through pure neglect — that was love.
Enduring through the cold treatment, keeping him from killing himself in Infinity, fighting him here in Ceres, even killing Ashura — all of that was love.
Kurogane’s arm hitting the scant remaining patch of ground so the other could yank him up by his shirt, staying conscious through it all through pure stubbornness, the fire behind those eyes as they bore into his remaining one — that was love.
Love.
Oh.
“The thing that will always inflict the most pain on you is your own kindheartedness.”
Fai was not kind out of love. It was merely a reflex. People looked upon him favorably when he was kind, did not see him as some form of monster when he was kind. Frankly, being outwardly cruel had always been a little distasteful. He’d always favored a more subtle approach.
Being kind was little more than a shield. It was hard to hate someone who was kind to you. People generally did not refuse a favor to someone who had been kind to them. Fai had wielded kindness like a weapon since the first day he was brought into the Ceresian court. He could talk people into all sorts of things, provided he demonstrated that he could be kind while doing so. Entire kingdoms had fallen, simply because he’d chosen to be kind.
It was kindness that would get the children to trust him, even as he handed them over to Fei Wong himself. That had been the plan. He could act kind, and still hold no love for any of them. It was a weakness he was not permitted.
But Ashura had not told him that love was weak.
It was what Fai had heard at the time, and he had set out to not be weak just to prove that he wasn’t from the moment he presented himself to the witch. That plan had failed — Kurogane had been the one to show him it had failed all the way back in Piffle — and all that had proven was that Fai had indeed become weak.
But Ashura hadn’t said that love was weakness.
His kindness inflicted pain. It sliced through everyone he sought to cut down. It was what had prevented him from killing Ashura himself in the first place.
That kindness was brittle and weak. Love was strength.
Oh.
Kurogane was strong because he loved.
Ceres was empty, but Fai’s heart was full.