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The first time she met Kamisato Ayaka had been when they were both young, her standing half-hidden behind her (adoptive) brother and Ayaka behind hers. They’d been wide-eyed and unknowing then, pale smoke-grey eyes melting into darkened gold. They’d been there, silent and curious and innocent, watching as their fathers shook hands and spoke in terminologies they didn’t understand. They’d been no one but the daughters of the Kamisato and Kujou Clan heads back then, no one but the sisters of the future heads of the Yashiro and Tenryou Commissions.
And now, standing here like this, it is amusing, almost, how things have turned out, and all of a sudden, she wants to laugh. To look Ayaka in the eye just like she had that day when they were so young and to laugh with her, to gesture at the mess that’s going on outside and laugh about how strange things have turned out, to think that they’d be here like this. But she can’t even smile.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you.” Ayaka’s voice is smooth and unhurried as she reaches a hand out, and Sara nods in response as she takes hold of it in a firm shake. “I apologise that an audience with the head of the Yashiro Commission could not be arranged—my brother is busy with pressing matters. I am here in his place instead.”
Sara dips her head again. It doesn’t come as a surprise—the younger of the Kamisato siblings has always been the one in the limelight, and she’d expected no different when the Shogun had tasked her to schedule a meeting with the Yashiro Commissioner.
“It’s not a problem,” she finds herself saying. “I am here in place of the Tenryou Commissioner, as well.”
Ayaka doesn’t pry, much to her relief. The Decree had only just recently been called off, and with all the changes being made, news of Kujou Takayuki’s betrayal has yet to break, save for within the Tenryou Commission itself.
“I ordered food. It was only just prepared before you came in, so it should still be warm.” Ayaka gestures to the platters laid out on the table before them in invitation, and Sara murmurs out a faint response of gratitude as she follows behind the Kamisato in taking a seat. “I hope it’s to your tastes.”
She picks up the chopsticks and begins to take small, modest bites of her food, with Ayaka doing the same across the table from her (albeit with a little more practised elegance). The words are beginning to build up on her tongue, but she swallows them back down with every sip of tea that she takes, and after downing half her cup she realises she doesn’t know where to begin.
She’d lived half her life training to be the Shogun’s General, the other half as the Shogun’s General. She’d always chalked up the handling of the Commission’s affairs to the now-exiled Clan head, and by extension his eldest son—she’d never quite expected herself to be in a position like this, discussing matters with someone she’d only properly spoken to a few times a decade or so ago.
“Are you okay?” Ayaka asks, out of nowhere, and Sara draws a blank.
There is a pause as she processes Ayaka’s question, her brain rushing to respond appropriately with recent matters regarding the Tenryou Commission, and then she comes to a realisation.
Her. Ayaka had been asking about her.
“I’m fine, thank you for asking.” Another pause. “... Why do you ask?”
Ayaka smiles, the upward-tilting corners of her lips soft with apology and concern both. “Your hands were shaking.” She nods towards the cup that Sara’s holding and the General lowers it to the table forcibly enough that she’s afraid for a moment that it might shatter.
“Oh,” Sara replies, and then trails off. “I’m alright.”
The evening light filters through the windows and casts the wooden floors of the Komore Teahouse with a shade of deep gold, spilling trails of dandelion-lilac across the table and dipping along the shadows of the folding screen against the walls. Time is passing, she registers somewhere in the back of her mind, and she should begin talking.
It’s a lot harder than she had expected it to be.
The Raiden Shogun has always been one for concrete decision-making and cut-to-the-chase orders: commands that had always been a breeze to carry out, with no space left between the syllables for any form of uncertainty. But this time, through rushed words and the sound of hasty footsteps making their way towards the Kujou compound where Kujou Takayuki is under house arrest, the Shogun’s orders had been—perplexing, to say the least.
“Arrange for a meeting with the Yashiro Commission and acquaint yourself with their leaders. You’ll be serving as the temporary face of the Tenryou Commission while we sort this situation out, so it’d be best for you to familiarise yourself with the rest of the Tri-Commission.”
She had agreed without a second thought back then—as always—but sitting here, like this, a part of her is starting to think it’s a little ridiculous that a task like this is causing her so much difficulty. It’s embarrassing, really, to think that she could take out legions of men at the Shogun’s command, and yet the thing that ends up having her stumped is having to acquaint herself with someone.
Worse still that they’re already technically acquaintances.
She’s never actually learned how to acquaint herself with others before. If that’s something that others get taught, at least. Her etiquette classes had been discarded for extra training sessions back before she became a General, and after she had taken up her duties by the Shogun’s side there had never particularly been a need to be on friendly terms with anyone—everyone she addressed was simply someone she spoke to on behalf of the Shogun. The same old formal tone, the same old businesslike behaviour.
Sitting here in the evening light of the Komore Teahouse, she comes to the realisation that she’s never quite learned how to speak to someone as herself before.
“I hope you’re enjoying the meal,” Ayaka says, breaking the silence, and Sara stutters.
“I am.”
The Cryo user nods her head, a small smile playing on her lips as she raises her own cup to her lips. “That’s a relief to hear. With everything that’s been going on as of late, have things been taxing for you?”
“Um.” It’s not something that’s really crossed her mind before. “I’m used to it. Work, I mean. I’m usually busy with things like these anyway, so it’s not really—I don’t mind.”
Ayaka chuckles softly around the rim of her teacup. “You’re allowed to feel tired for working hard, you know,” she comments, and Sara blinks.
“... What do you mean?”
Now it’s Ayaka’s turn to look surprised, her eyes widening a fraction as she lowers her teacup before her expression fades back into a polite smile. “It’s nothing. I apologise if anything I said made you uncomfortable in any form. Sometimes my words slip out without me meaning for them to.” She laughs in some attempt to diffuse the awkward air that’s beginning to filter across them and Sara follows suit. “Anyways, what do you usually do on your days off?”
Sara’s eyebrows furrow. “I don’t usually have days off,” she says after a moment of thought. “If I have free time, I train, I suppose. Or I visit the Kujou Encampment to make sure things are holding up well.”
“Ah.” Sara figures that her responses must come off as awfully boring to the Kamisato heiress, but there is little she can think of to say no matter how hard she tries. Her life has always been one of routine, revolving entirely around the Shogun and her Clan both. She likes it this way—she doesn’t have to think for herself, like what she’s trying to do now, and she doesn’t have to worry about putting a step wrong if everything she’s doing is in the face of someone else, every word leaving past her lips crafted by another’s mind. But she supposes it doesn’t make for a very good conversation.
Ayaka doesn’t seem to mind, though. The smile doesn’t leave her face even as she continues to ask Sara questions—how’s her family? Her favourite food? Her favourite place to visit in Inazuma? And each time Sara thinks the answers leaving her mouth sound more like a report than a reply (and the Shogun’s name ends up escaping her lips more than her own), but Ayaka doesn’t seem to pay any heed to that, either.
In return, Ayaka tells her about herself—the dango milk she likes to purchase from the vendor down the street from Komore Teahouse, the custom-made kimonos she sometimes buys from Ogura’s—maybe I can take you there someday, if you don’t mind? I think purple would look lovely on you. They get their silk straight from Liyue—and the games of Go she likes to play in the lunchtime, on occasion against her brother. She talks about how much she enjoys it even if she does always lose to him, and Sara glances at the wistful smile bright on her lips and marvels quietly: how can one feel so happy to lose?
There is much she has yet to learn about Kamisato Ayaka, she decides, tilting her cup to her lips and finishing off the remnant drops of tea within.
And Ayaka must have felt the same, for she turns to Sara after their meal is over, their hands interlocked in a shake outside the doors of the Komore Teahouse, the wood painted a gentle shade of night-violet and washing watery rays of post-sunset hues across their silhouettes.
“It was a delight dining with you today,” she says, and Sara manages to respond with a likewise before Ayaka continues. “If it is convenient for you, perhaps we could arrange a second meeting?”
“Oh.” Of course. They hadn’t even made mention of their respective Commissions today, let alone discuss any plans for the future; the tip of her ears burn, and she hopes that her hair, slightly tousled by the evening breeze, is helping to cover how red they must be. What would the Shogun say if she learned that her General couldn’t even raise such a simple subject up in conversation? Discussing the plans of the Shogunate was supposed to be her speciality, for crying out loud. “That’ll be fine.”
The uncertain smile on Ayaka’s lips brightens considerably, her eyes flicking up to meet Sara’s, and she seems almost pleased by the Kujou’s response, a faint hint of delight flickering in her voice. “That’s great! If it’s alright, then, I’ll arrange for another private meeting in Komore Teahouse and send you the invitation when I have it prepared—unless you’d like to visit a different place?”
“No,” Sara responds, more hastily this time. She’s never taken much interest in places of dining and relaxation within the city. “This is fine. It’s nice.”
The corners of Ayaka’s eyes crinkle. “Alright,” she says, and it is only after she finally lets go of Sara’s hand that the latter realises how long they’ve been standing there locked in a handshake. “See you then.”
“See you then,” she echoes, and as the pale-haired heiress bows her head in farewell before heading off towards the city gates where her bodyguards are waiting to escort her back to the estate, the General distantly registers the thrumming in her chest in the place where her heart is supposed to be.
And how ridiculous, she thinks, squinting against the after-sunset light, that her heart is racing so much faster now than it would against a battalion of armed soldiers.
It’s such an easy thing—in theory—to acquaint oneself with someone, and yet in her attempt to navigate waters she’s never quite tested before, she comes to the revelation that it’s far easier said than done.
What would the Shogun think of her?
It is with this question ringing through her mind that she accepts Ayaka’s invitation, a few days on from their first meeting in the teahouse, with somewhat less hesitation than before. There’s a certain determination to her as she steps into the building, greeting Taroumaru with a dip of her head, and makes her way to the same room where the Kamisato is standing in wait for her.
This time she is more prepared, the words she’d been planning to say running through her mind even as she exchanges greetings with Ayaka and takes a seat at the table. A part of her wonders if there would be a more appropriate timing for her to broach the topic, but a reminder of their first meeting flashes through her mind and she swallows down her doubts with a sip of her tea.
Now or never, she thinks, and this time the amusement that bubbles within her at how ridiculous she’s finding herself and this entire situation blossoms on her lips in the form of a half-smile. It should be just like every other discussion she’s made regarding the Shogunate—she doesn’t know what it is that ties her tongue and makes her stumble over her words when it comes to the Kamisato heiress.
“What will be the Yashiro Commission’s stance on Inazuma and the rule of the Shogun following the abolishment of the Vision Hunt Decree?” she blurts, the words coming out sounding more like a spiel and less like the practised question she’d been meaning to ask.
Her cheeks burn.
Ayaka blinks, lowering her chopsticks slowly, and bewilderment crosses her expression first, then confusion. “Huh?” she says, and Sara feels her mind going blank.
“I—you—I understand the Yashiro Commission pushed for it to be abolished when the notice was first sent out.” She struggles to get the words out, and then stops, watching the furrow in Ayaka’s brows and the half-part of her lips, forming words that won’t fall out. “Isn’t that—is that not why you invited me today? To discuss—or was I—”
The rest of the words don’t come out, and she opts to fall silent instead, feeling the heat against her cheeks. She’s never been like this before, not when it involved her orders from the Shogun.
It’s mortifying.
Ayaka’s eyes are wide, boring into hers in an expression akin to shock and embarrassment, almost, and it’s the first time that Sara hears the normally-composed Kamisato heiress stutter quite so much. “I—well, you see—that’s not really—” She draws a deep breath, steadying herself, and her gaze drops away from the General’s. “I’m sorry.”
Her apology catches Sara off-guard, and in the back of her mind somewhere she reproaches herself for bringing up the topic so suddenly. She should’ve attended all those etiquette classes back when she was younger. Maybe then she’d know how to hold an actual conversation. “No, there’s no need to apologise. It’s just—I suppose there’s been a misunderstanding between us, that’s all.”
Ayaka laughs easily, but her cheeks are dusted a light rose shade, and this time it’s not the evening light filtering in through the windows of the teahouse. “In all honesty, I just wanted to spend some time with you,” she admits, a little shyly, and Sara’s mouth opens and then closes. She doesn’t know what to say. What she’s supposed to say. She’s never been told something like this before.
Ayaka looks up to meet her gaze, and then continues. “I know that aside from when we were much younger and a few days back, we haven’t spoken much outside of official business.” A giggle edges her words as she adds, “and even then we disputed more than we agreed on things.”
The corners of Sara’s lips curl upwards. She’d spoken to the Kamisato siblings on occasion, and they’d more often than not ended in arguments, especially with the Yashiro Commission’s opposing stance to the Tenryou’s in light of the Vision Hunt Decree. But she had been there as a representative of the Shogun and nothing more back then—it’s different from now, and a part of her wishes the Shogun had given her concrete instructions to follow, just like back then.
“But now that I’ve actually had a chance to speak with you after all these years, I kind of feel like—” Ayaka pauses, searching for the words to say, and Sara decides to remain silent and listen. “I know this may come off as strange, but I find it comforting being with you, in a sense.”
Sara’s lips part, but no words come out.
Comforting. That’s a first. She’s not sure she ever thought she could be capable of being thought of that way.
“How so?” she dares to ask, carefully. Ayaka smiles, raising her gaze to Sara’s, quiet grey meeting curious gold.
“You’re one of the first people to treat me like that,” she says, and Sara draws in a breath.
“Like… that?”
She doesn’t remember treating the Kamisato in any special way. Perhaps she had unconsciously done so, somehow, given the Yashiro Commission’s important role in the Shogunate, or perhaps because of her now-elevated status as the proxy face of the Tenryou Commission (which she’s still struggling to get used to, evidently).
“Like I’m no one special,” Ayaka replies, and the breath leaves Sara’s lungs in a rush.
Ayaka must have seen the confusion in her gaze, for it brings a quiet giggle to her lips before she explains. “Everyone I meet treats me like I’m… you know. Someone worthy of admiration. Someone special. Like I’m more than I am. And it’s flattering, it really is, but—” The hesitation that catches in her words doesn’t go unmissed by Sara, and she half-expects the heiress to stop, but Ayaka continues. “There’s a part of me who wishes I could be me to them, you know. Not the eldest daughter of the Kamisato Clan or the Shirasagi Himegimi .”
Sara lets out a hum that she hopes comes off as understanding as she’s trying to portray, and Ayaka breaks off suddenly, light laughter following her words with a shake of her head. “Sorry for saying all of this. You didn’t come here to listen to my concerns. Let’s just—”
“No,” Sara says, louder than she had intended, and her face flushes at how insistent she had sounded. Softer now, “you can continue. If you’d like. I’d like to know, if you’re comfortable with me knowing.”
An expression she can’t read passes over Ayaka’s features before it’s replaced with a smile. This smile is different from her usual polite one, Sara realises, a little sadder round the corners but a little brighter, too, with a gentler kind of light brimming between the edges.
“Maybe it’s because you’re kind of similar to me,” Ayaka murmurs, “but you treated me like I was just another person, the same as you. And I know it’s just a small thing, but everything I told you that day about myself… It was so boring, and nothing impressive, nothing like the life everyone seems to expect me to live, but you didn’t seem to mind. And that fact was comforting to me.” Her gaze darts away and then back again. Sara holds it with her own. “That someone would see past all the titles and the responsibilities and realise that I’m nothing special behind all of that and still be willing to—”
She breaks off as she gestures at the food on the table before them and Sara realises, a little belatedly, with a crashing wave of mortification, that her attempt to bring up the Tri-Commission had probably given Ayaka the wrong idea entirely.
“I’d be willing to,” she blurts out, and surprise flashes across Ayaka’s face. Her words are coming out jumbled and she doesn’t really know what she’s saying anymore, but for some reason, she can’t quite bring herself to care. “I mean—if you’d still like someone to—I don’t mind. The things you told me were interesting. If anything, I was the boring one. And I don’t really know how to comfort others. But if I can be of help, then—”
She gestures to the table before them too and hopes it brings to Ayaka the words she can’t seem to say.
When the Shogun instructed her to acquaint herself with the Yashiro Commission’s leaders, she hadn’t quite expected herself to end up in this situation, nor had she expected herself to actually succeed. But the grin that blooms across Ayaka’s face is a genuine one, and there is a relieved lightness to her tone that hadn’t been there before as she responds.
“Then, if it’s okay with you, and since we’re going to continue seeing each other often now that we’re in charge of the Commissions,” Ayaka starts slowly, a little shyly, but a little braver than before, “let’s be friends?”
Friends. Sara tries out the word in her mind. She’s not sure she’s ever had anyone to consider a friend. Everyone she’s known for long enough to pay a greeting to or have a meal with is someone she has some form of obligation to: the wealthy merchants for funding the Commission’s activities, the people she grew up with for being members of the Clan that took her in, the Shogun for the oath she swore the day she became a General.
But, she supposes with an unexpected flutter somewhere in her chest where her heart is supposed to be, there’s a first time for everything.
She wonders if the Shogun will be proud of her success.
“Yes,” she decides, and this time she meets Ayaka’s smile with one of her own, “let’s be friends.”
This time when they shake hands in the light of the after-evening glow their palms linger a little longer against each other but this time it feels right, and this time it feels a little less like goodbye and a little more like see you again .
And this time when the Shogun asks her how she has been keeping up with her duties there is the faintest trace of a smile on her face as she responds: I am doing well, Your Excellency.
To acquaint herself with the leaders of the Yashiro Commission was a task entrusted to her by the Shogun, after all. And as odd of a task it may have been—complete with all the stumbling words and the reddened cheeks and the questions that don’t quite come out right—she’d never considered failure as one of the options, not when it was ordered by the Shogun.
(She hadn’t expected it to turn out like this, though.)
The concept of friendship is not one familiar to her, but over tea sessions and midnight walks down the city streets when no one else is around she comes to realise that it is not one Ayaka is particularly well-versed in either. There are walls in the words that they say to each other and the nights that they spend together mask both prying eyes and the expressions they wear on their faces.
But, she thinks, they are learning.
She has never been fond of sweet food, but Ayaka makes sakura mochi for her and she cannot find it in herself to reject the offer. At some point the formal invitations turn into showing up with barely any prior notice and by now the staff at Komore Teahouse are so accustomed to seeing her that they no longer ask her if she has an invitation to enter. She doesn’t quite know what friendship means but she thinks that this is the closest she will come to it.
She is so caught up in her newfound friendship with Ayaka that she almost forgets the reason why the Shogun had requested her to acquaint herself with the Kamisato in the first place.
“Kujou Takayuki’s trial will be held one week from now,” the Shogun tells her as she is finishing up work for the day, and the sudden mention of his name almost has her dropping her paperwork all over the table. “The heads of the Yashiro and Kanjou Commissions have been informed. They will be attending as well.”
She doesn’t know where she finds it in herself to dare to ask, but she asks anyway. “What will the likely outcome of the trial be?”
She knows the answer before it leaves the Shogun’s lips, and from the gaze that Raiden shoots her in the gloom of the Tenshukaku after dark she knows the Shogun knows, too.
She answers her anyway.
“There is only one fate that awaits those who betray Inazuma and her people,” the Shogun responds swiftly.
And it’s funny, Sara thinks, how the one with the sword through the chest won’t be her, but for some reason her heart aches all the same.
A traitor. It’s a shame how things have turned out, and she finds that she doesn’t quite know how to feel, and that fills her with shame. There’s a part of her that knows she asked the question as if hoping for a different answer and there’s a part of her that knows she shouldn’t be feeling this way.
The person who took her in and the person she once regarded as a father had betrayed both the Clan she’s loyal to and the Shogun she serves, and yet there is a part of her that cannot seem to hate him.
And there’s a part of her that hates herself for that.
And in the back of her mind somewhere, thinking of the news breaking across the Tri-Commission: what will Ayaka think of her now?
She had planned to pay a visit to the Kamisato Estate after finishing up her work for the evening, but the Shogun’s sudden announcement puts an abrupt halt to her plans, and now she gathers up her things and heads for her home in silence. Her footsteps against the street sound lonely and she veers off-track to take the long route home, away from the vendor down the road from the teahouse calling out to her to buy some dango milk.
There is a bitter feeling rising up somewhere in her chest as she turns the key and enters the dark of her home, walking past the abandoned Go board sitting in the corner of the living room table, eyes trailing to the figurine of the Raiden Shogun sitting by the folding screen, violet gaze dark and observant.
Perhaps she had been too caught up in discovering the thing called friendship that she’d forgotten the reason why they had met each other in the first place.
She remembers how she had felt when news of Kujou Takayuki’s betrayal had first hit her—the panic that had rushed through her veins, faster than any arrow and stinging sharper than any wound, the way she’d looked frantically for the Shogun, prayers hanging off the corners of her mouth and knees burning from the way they’d scraped the ground, begging for forgiveness.
And then the relief she’d felt when the Shogun had extended a hand to her, cold palm against trembling palm, told her the crime of her family did not translate to her own, that she had no sins to be forgiven. But she hadn’t missed the way the other members of the Kujou Clan had looked at her, at Kamaji, at Masahito, the distrust quiet in their eyes but deafening all the same.
Back then she hadn’t cared about any of it at all. Back then she had only cared about the Shogun’s opinion of her, of her duty as the General, of her service to the nation. But now, standing here like this, coat tossed haphazardly over her shoulder with her hand still frozen on the knob of the wardrobe as she stares at the purple kimono that’s hanging inside, she comes to the realisation that perhaps now she cares a little more than she thinks she should.
The revelation is startling, if not a little unsettling, and it is with haste that she strips off the rest of her clothes and steps into the shower, washing the grime out of her hair and the guilt off her skin.
She hadn’t meant for them to be anything more than acquaintances, than the proxy leaders of their respective Commissions, than another order completed perfectly in the name of the Raiden Shogun.
But what will Ayaka think of her now?
It hadn’t been long since the Yashiro Commissioner had been sentenced for the treason he had committed. They’d all looked disgusted then, cursing his name as he fell to his death for backstabbing the same nation he’d grown up in, the same nation he was supposed to serve.
And now the one in his spot will be the man she’d grown to look at as a father.
She casts one final look out of her windows after her shower, watching as the lilac sky fades away to dark, watery rays of night-blue dipping across the city walls and drawing jagged streaks of violet across the ground against the silver of the moonlight. It would be around this time that they would finish evening tea, or perhaps a game of Go, and embark on a walk around the Kamisato Estate. The sakura blooms always look prettier in the nighttime.
Maybe Ayaka won’t want to do any of those things with her anymore, not after she realises what all of their friendship had been built off—euphemisms and half-truths, I’m here as the temporary representative of the Tenryou Commission in place of my father is a traitor to the nation.
She clambers into bed and pulls the covers tight over her head, blocking her thoughts out. There is a caged bird in her chest where her heart is supposed to be and its wings are bruised from how many times it has rammed against the railings, and all of a sudden she feels like a lost child again, lying by the side of the road with tears down her face and waiting to be found.
It was easier being someone else.
She doesn’t know what time she fell asleep, or if she managed to fall asleep at all, but she must have, for she awakens to a throbbing head and a heart that wouldn’t seem to settle.
For the next seven days, she doesn’t visit Ayaka.
She keeps herself busy with whatever she can find—tidying up her home, sorting out paperwork, finishing up all the tasks she’d normally delegate to other members of the Tenryou Commission. If she wasn’t out on patrol, she’d be in the Tenshukaku, or going straight home at night; her hands are blistered from the number of hilichurls she has taken out and there are scars over her body in places where there hadn’t been before, but she doesn’t care, and no one asks, either.
But it is better like this, she thinks, running the cold water over her body and washing the ache away from her limbs, this familiar numbness, just completing every task she’s been assigned to, all polite smiles and practised words. Like this she is who she always was—the Shogun’s General, a member of the Kujou Clan and the Tenryou Commission, dedicated solely to her work in the name of the nation.
It is easier not having to think. There is something different about the way she’d felt with Ayaka, something she’d never felt before—something she didn’t know how to put a name to and something she didn’t know what to do with. And it had been confusing, if not a little startling, trying to navigate a wreck she didn’t recognise. It had been a distracting blur—of bewilderment and laughter and the in between—with Ayaka, and the lines of her duty had blurred somewhere along the way.
Friendship. Is that what this is? She’s starting to think that it’s more trouble than it’s worth. She’s been spending too many sleepless nights pondering over questions she doesn’t know the answers to.
The next time she sees Ayaka is one week later, at Kujou Takayuki’s trial.
She has been by the Raiden Shogun’s side since early morning in preparation for the trial, and once the audience has gathered she steps out beside the Archon, eyes scanning the crowd. In one corner, the higher-ups of the Tenryou Commission: looks of disapproval and anticipation both, and she sees Takayuki’s sons, too, heads bowed—in shame or prayer, she doesn’t know.
The Kanjou Commission is present as well, watching in keen interest—her eyes meet with Katsuie’s, and he dips his head in acknowledgement. There is a grave, sympathetic almost, look to his gaze, and she swallows. It has not been too long since Hiiragi Shinsuke of the Kanjou Commission had been sentenced for his involvement with the Fatui.
And then, the Yashiro Commission.
The sight of the Yashiro Commissioner makes her want to laugh—a part of her finds it funny how she never quite ended up meeting him—but the amusement bubbles in her throat and dies against her tongue before it can escape past her lips. He looks like his sister, pale blue-tinted hair brushing his face and suit fitted over his frame, sleeved arms folded against his chest. She had been meaning to meet him as per the Shogun’s orders, but at some point her meetings with the Yashiro Commission’s leaders had translated to meeting exclusively with Ayaka. It’s funny how things had turned out that way, even without her realising; but standing here like this, she can’t even bring herself to smile.
Ayato nods, his expression indifferent and betraying nothing, a far cry from the small smile that would play on his features even when they’d been disagreeing over matters between the Commissions, and there is nothing she can do but dip her own head in response, swallowing harshly.
And maybe they’ll never get to meet now, not after this, a disgraced Clan with her forced unto its helm.
Her eyes flicker to Ayato’s left and then widen a fraction, darkened yellow burning into torn slate-grey. Ayaka is staring right back at her, lips parted with no words spilling out, and Sara swallows again, the lump in her throat getting heavier now.
Shame.
This time she is able to clearly pinpoint the emotion that throbs through her veins, her footsteps slightly unsteady as she follows the Shogun to where soldiers are standing with Kujou Takayuki, his hands bound with rope. She had looked up to him as a father once, a saviour almost, an angel missing a halo. He had been the one to take her in when no one else wanted her, the one who gave her the name she’d carry with her till the day she died, the one who gave her back the life she thought she’d never get to live.
And now, standing here like this, she watches as the one who saved her life gets his own taken away from him.
The Raiden Shogun’s blade is as swift and precise as ever. It only takes one movement, a clean arc through the air, to slice through the skin, the artery, and then the muscle—blood blossoms across the ground like crimson tears and she watches in silence as his detached head rolls until it crashes into her boots and comes to a halt.
“For his treason against Inazuma and her people,” the Shogun says, her voice clear and detached, smooth with dominion and dripping with admonishment, “Kujou Takayuki has been sentenced.”
Her gaze is cold as it rakes over the audience, but there is a smile on her face as she continues to speak. “The trial is now adjourned, and you are dismissed.”
Kujou Masahito is the first to leave, followed shortly after by his brother. There are whispers that linger in their absence, and Sara fights the bitterness that rises in her throat at the conversations she overhears. All murmuring about the tears in their eyes and the way they’d been praying to the God who wouldn’t listen to spare his life only moments before his head had left his body.
It’s right that the audience should hate them, she thinks, for wanting someone who’d committed crimes against the Shogun to be spared.
But she thinks she hates herself more for not being able to hate them the way she thinks she should.
“General.” Her head snaps up at the Shogun’s voice, and the Electro Archon nods to the head on the floor, as well as the blood on her clothes. “You may be dismissed, as well.”
She bows her head, a deep breath leaving her in a wavering sigh. “Yes, Your Excellency.”
She takes a step back, and then another. Kujou Takayuki’s head loses contact with the tip of her boots and it’s a strange way to say farewell to someone she thought of as a father. She never imagined it’d end up this way.
And maybe if she cared a little less, she would’ve mourned his death. But the Shogun is watching her, and so are the members of the Tri-Commission who have yet to depart, and so she replaces the burning in her throat with an easy smile and brushes the blood drying on her skin away like it’s just another task accomplished, another foe abolished. Her footsteps are quick as she takes her leave, hurried and forceful and the smile plastered on her lips until she’s long away from everyone else.
Ayaka’s eyes remain on her until she’s gone from sight.
She doesn’t allow herself to feel until she’s far away from the city, washing the blood off her boots in the river by the forest. It reminds her of how it’d felt to have his detached head against her feet, eyes wide open and staring unseeing up at her like a silent prayer for redemption, and she ends up throwing up part of her lunch into the nearby bushes.
What a mess.
She’s a loyal General to the Shogun, and a dedicated member of the Tenryou Commission—if anything, she should have volunteered to kill Kujou Takayuki herself. Sitting here like this at the edge of the river, she should be glad of his punishment, but instead she feels an ache in her chest where her heart is supposed to be, a burning in her mouth in the place of cheers for his death.
It makes her feel weak. Useless. Guilty.
“You’re allowed to cry, you know.”
She shoots to her feet so suddenly that she stumbles, her head still light, her clothes smelling of blood and vomit both. A hand reaches out to catch her by the elbow and she freezes, eyes the colour of evening haze boring back into hers.
“Are you okay?” The smile that Ayaka gives her is a small one, sad and soft around the edges.
She forces the lump in her throat back down into her lungs, where it swells and aches like a phantom blade trapped between her ribcage. “I’m fine.” Her words come out choppy and strained. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
Ayaka’s eyes soften. “Your hands are shaking.”
“Oh.” She looks down at her hands, half-damp with water, liquid red with the remnants of the blood that had splattered and then dried across her skin. “I suppose they are.”
She wills them to stop shaking. They don’t.
Ayaka takes a seat by the riverside, dipping her hands into the running water and tracing patterns across the surface in ripples. Sara remains standing. The evening light is beginning to settle upon them, shades of sunset-gold and pale lilac painted in watercolour across their silhouettes.
“You don’t have to put up a front,” Ayaka says. The droplets linger at the tips of her fingers and then fall back against the water’s surface like a string of tears. “Not all the time.”
And for a moment, Sara is tempted to believe her.
It almost sounds as though she understands.
“I’m not,” she replies instead, the words tearing stubbornly free of her throat. “Putting up a front, I mean.” She opts to lean against a nearby tree instead of taking a seat next to the Kamisato heiress. The bark is sturdy against her back and there’s a part of her that thinks her knees might have given away if not for it. “I don’t feel like crying. He betrayed the Shogun and the Kujou Clan and the Tenryou Commission. I won’t cry over a traitor like that.”
For a long time, Ayaka is silent. When she turns her head back to look Sara in the eye, the smile on her face has morphed into something quieter and something a little more bittersweet than before.
“That’s how you should feel towards him as someone who serves the Kujou Clan and the Raiden Shogun,” she says, finally, and Sara nods, but she continues to speak. “But what about how you feel? As a person?”
Sara opens her mouth, but no words come out.
She’s never let herself dwell on that particular train of thought for long before. Not long enough for her to acknowledge her own feelings, at the very least.
“You’re allowed to cry,” Ayaka says again, simply, and Sara’s jaw hardens.
She thinks she might.
(And she doesn’t know if she should hate herself for it or not.)
The smile on Ayaka’s face ebbs away into something a tiny little bit more strained, distant, wistful nearly, and when she speaks it sounds as if she’s answering the question Sara couldn’t ask aloud. “The fact that he was a traitor doesn’t erase the past he had as your father.” She traces the surface of the water again, one ripple with her right hand and one with her left, both melting away into the river’s flow after a moment’s quietude. “You’re allowed to grieve for the person you lost while hating the person he became.”
Sara thinks back to the look on Masahito’s face, the redness in Kamaji’s eyes that he had been trying to hide. She wonders if they had been mourning for the father they had been forced to say goodbye to then. She wonders if the crowd that had cursed them behind their backs had hated the person he had become then.
“And,” she finds herself speaking before she can think it through, “you won’t hate me for that?”
Ayaka’s response comes immediate. “Why should I?”
She stands from her spot by the riverside and shakes the water droplets off her hands. They scatter like sunrays across the surface, catching fading gold in the final remnants of the sunset. She reaches out a hand, and this time, Sara dares to take it.
Ayaka pulls her forward, and her body leaves the sturdy embrace of the tree bark to fall into the warmth of Ayaka’s instead. The Kamisato heiress’ breath is soft against the side of her neck and the circles she is tracing quietly against Sara’s back feel unfamiliar, but comforting, in some odd, miraculous way.
“Sara,” Ayaka whispers, and the way she says her name comes out sounding like redemption, like promise, like angels with invisible halos, “it’s okay to be your own person too, you know. There’s a part of you that has a duty to the Shogunate but there’s a part of you that was his child too. And it’s okay to learn to be your own person. It’s okay to feel things others think you shouldn’t and it’s okay to do things that you want to even if other people don’t think you should. It’s okay to do what you believe in even when no one else does.”
And there is a part of her that desperately wants to believe what Ayaka is saying, to cling on to every word like it is a lifeline made of white light and vindication, to ease the empty aching hole in her chest where her heart is meant to be and to let her tears fall like the guilt off her shoulders, light and weightless and no longer bleeding with sins she didn’t mean to commit.
“I don’t know,” she whispers in the end, her voice raw and torn, and it is the first time she has been so honest with anyone before. “I don’t know if I can do it.”
She has spent so long living as someone else that she is almost afraid that she doesn’t know how to live as herself. And it is an oddly terrifying feeling, to go searching for something you didn’t even realise was missing in the first place.
“The light in your eyes when you win at Go. The way you’d go all the way to the Narukami Shrine just to watch the falling blossoms under the Sacred Sakura tree at nightfall. From time to time you’d laugh at something without even realising.”
Sara blinks, shifting a little, and a soft chuckle escapes Ayaka’s lips as she pulls back from the embrace and tilts Sara’s head towards her until their eyes are meeting. “You say you don’t know what you’re like when you’re not the Shogun’s General,” she says softly, “but I do.”
The sun shifts further down the horizon and crowns Ayaka in a veil of angel-gold. “And when you find yourself again,” she whispers, brushing Sara’s hair away from where they’ve fallen before her eyes, “I won’t ever hate you for it, no matter who others think you’re supposed to be. I promise.”
And there is something in her smile that says: I will be by your side, always.
Ayaka gives her one final hug before she heads off further into the forest towards where the Kamisato Estate lies, and Sara lets out a trembling breath as her knees give way from underneath her, her body crumpling into a worn heap under the falling leaves and the evening light blinking away across the water’s surface.
The tears come before she can stop them, rolling slow across her cheeks first and then all at once, sobs leaving her mouth in wretched half-gasps and stuttered exhalations, her entire body shaking with the weight of them. It’s getting hard to breathe and the world is blurring in shades of colour around her but the liquid across her cheeks reminds her of the blood on her skin and the life fading out of her father’s eyes and there is nothing more she can do but hug her knees to her chest and cry until her tears have all been cried dry.
She throws up the remainder of her lunch by the time the sun melts away beyond the horizon.
The Shogun is merciful enough to give her leave for the next two days following the trial, and for the first time, she actually accepts the offer. Even the Shogun looks mildly surprised as she thanks the Archon and heads out of the Tenshukaku towards the city centre instead of out on some patrol as she’d usually do, her eyes still red from the day before and her throat still rough with all the words she wishes she could have said.
Her footsteps end up carrying her past the city gates to the area near Takayuki’s—technically Masahito’s now—mansion where his newly-erected grave stands; she heard that Masahito had ordered his father to be buried there, rather than having his ashes simply discarded. The Shogunate had been kind enough to respect his decision.
She stops before the grave, staring down at the name carved on the smooth stone. Kujou. She had been someone before she was a Kujou, once. She wonders what her life would have been like if Takayuki hadn’t taken her in. If she would still have a life at all, that is. But the Shogun had been the one to save her life by granting her the Vision hanging by her hip—perhaps no matter who had found her that day, her fate would somehow have ended up intertwined with the Raiden Shogun’s.
Maybe it would have been easier if she hadn’t been found by him. Now that he’s dead, she’s been made to think about a lot of things that wouldn’t even have crossed her mind before. Like her own feelings.
“Sorry,” she finds herself saying, reading his name on the stone. She wonders if he’s listening to her from wherever he is. She wonders if he died regretting his actions. The Shogun aside, she had been the last person he’d seen before his death. She wonders if a part of him had been expecting her to save him, somehow. “I didn’t bring flowers.”
On the gravestone are white chrysanthemums, wet with morning drizzle and tinted slightly with soil. One of her adoptive brothers must have left them there. Probably Kamaji—he had always cared the least about what others thought of him out of the three of them. “I didn’t mourn your death,” she continues. “I didn’t cry because you died yesterday, but yesterday I found myself crying for the part of you that died the day you decided to betray the Shogun. Us. Me.”
She catches the words that escape into the open air and falls silent. When had betraying the Shogun equated itself to betraying her? It had come out so naturally. She supposes it’s been this way for all her life.
And, a part of her wants to tell him, I cried for the father I lost that day.
The words don’t quite come out.
“Rest well,” she says instead, “maybe we’ll see each other again someday.”
The words that she’d wanted to say stay stuck in the back of her throat until they melt and flicker away completely. Two days after the trial her return to work feels natural—too natural—and it is only too easy to fall back into her usual pattern of working, of serving the Shogun, of assuming her role as the General and carrying out every single order that the Electro Archon makes of her.
And it is simpler this way.
She sees the questions burning in Ayaka’s eyes each time they meet, the words unspoken and unanswered in the evening light of the Komore Teahouse, and each time there is an apology sitting with the tea they’d drink on the tip of her tongue: I’m sorry. I’ve been trying to find myself, but I don’t think I dare to yet.
And it’s ironic, she thinks, how easy it is to be brave when she’s someone else—the Shogun’s General, member of the Kujou Clan, leader of the Tenryou Commission—and how hard it is when it comes to herself.
It’s so easy being someone’s someone and yet so difficult being her own self.
Maybe one day, she wants to say, her eyes meeting with Ayaka’s and her lips forming a helpless smile for all the words she can’t speak aloud, maybe one day.
She may still be a little confused and a little lost and still searching for what she doesn’t know how to find, but in these fleeting moments of teahouse chatter and midnight walks and quick visits to down-the-street vendors they are at peace and maybe it isn’t everything but she thinks—for now—maybe this is enough.
For now, she thinks, they can take things slow.
And then maybe someday she’d be able to do all the things she’s been meaning to do, say all the words she’s been wanting to say, find the person she didn’t know had gone missing after all this time.
It is two months later—eight weeks after Kujou Takayuki’s trial and several more after the end of the Vision Hunt Decree—that their peace comes to an end. The siren that blares across the city is loud and unsettling and nothing like she has ever heard before, and the shock that ripples through her is reflected by the Shogun’s abrupt standing from where she’s been sitting in the Tenshukaku, the chair toppling to the floor behind her.
“General,” the Shogun says, and Sara has not heard her this way for a long time, her voice steely and frigid like the winter. “Come.”
The city is in chaos by the time they descend down the steps of the Tenshukaku. There is smoke in the air, asphyxiating amidst the screams that ring out around, and through the fire and ashes she sees blurs of colour against the sunset, Hydro and Cryo Visions and the crackle of thunder infused in arrows crossing the sky.
“Your Excellency,” comes a shout, “Sara.”
Sara’s eyes widen as the soldier comes skidding to a halt before them, breath leaving his mouth in half-pants, his helmet slightly askew atop his head and red across the crest of the Shogunate on his armour. She can’t tell if it’s his blood or someone else’s. “... Masahito.”
“There’s been an invasion on Inazuma,” he shouts above the din, and it is the first time she has heard him sound so panicked, voice strained and wavering. “A breakaway group from the Sangonomiya Resistance, and the Fatui. I believe they are aiming for your Gnosis, Your Excellency. It’d be best if you—”
His sentence ends with blood spilling out of the wound through his body and onto the dark fabric of Sara’s clothes.
She is frozen in place as he collapses by her feet, blood beginning to seep onto the cold stone floor and against her boots, a burning arrow in his chest in the place where his heart is supposed to be, his eyes wide open but unseeing.
“Nonsense,” the Shogun grinds out, and there is an anger to her tone that hadn’t been there. “I will confront them directly. General, with me.” There is a string of orders that she gives following her sentence, but they come out sounding like a jumbled mess of words, and Sara stumbles half-blind after the Shogun, not quite knowing where she is going, nearly tripping over Masahito’s body on her way down to the heart of the city, nearly tripping over herself in her state of out-of-mind.
It is the first time the city itself has been attacked; the first time they have been invaded out of the blue, like this.
And in front of her she sees more people beginning to die. Innocent people, faces she doesn’t know but people of Inazuma nevertheless, and acid burns in the back of her throat. They shouldn’t have had to die. Her adoptive brother is dead too, now. He shouldn’t have died. She should have done something to stop it. Maybe if she had been more alert, somehow.
But there is nothing she can do. She is rooted to the spot, watching, wide-eyed as blood from a nearby body spatters across her face and runs down the side of her cheek.
“Tell me what to do.” She hears the words falling out of her mouth in a plea as she turns to the Raiden Shogun, desperation scratching at her throat. “Tell me what to do to stop this. Please.”
The Shogun’s jaw tenses. “You will follow me to meet the Fatui. I suspect they are the masterminds behind this—Masahito said they are after my Gnosis.”
“What about the people?” she demands before she can stop herself. “They’re dying.”
The Electro Archon shoots her a sideways glance, eyes narrowing. “That is precisely why we are going to meet the Fatui,” she responds tersely, her words curt and cutting. “To put an end to this. Now come.”
Another person falls by her feet. A lady dressed in a kimono, eyes wide open with shock and blood down her chin. A civilian.
She swallows down the harsh lump in her throat and hurries after the Shogun. “Yes, Your Excellency.”
And then amidst the smoke and fire and screaming she hears a name that makes her come to a halt halfway through the crowd.
“Ms. Kamisato—!”
She turns her head towards the source of the noise. The civilians are screaming, despair colouring every feature on their face, and there are tears running down their face for where their feet cannot from their fate. The rebel Resistance soldier is already behind them, sword drawn and Vision flaring to life, and they are screaming for help, screaming for the only person they think can save them.
How pitiful, she thinks, for them to die like this. They are a family, and their child is only so young, dressed in civilian clothing, and they must have been out for a dinner or maybe an evening stroll before everything had turned to ruin in the blink of an eye.
“Ms. Kamisato,” the mother begs, sobs choking her voice between the syllables. The light of the Vision blinks and burns amidst the smoke. “Please save us.”
Sara turns, eyes of dark gold melting into soft sea-grey from afar.
And this time it is Ayaka who does not have to say a word for Sara to understand.
Don’t go, she wants to scream, don’t go. You don’t even know them.
But she knows Ayaka will not listen anyway. She knows it from the way Ayaka’s gaze flickers and then drops away from hers, towards the people screaming her name, towards the people looking at her through blurry eyes and begging mouths, praying for mercy, a saviour dressed in battle kimono and crowned in the angel-gold of the evening light.
The people of Inazuma had always been like that after all, looking up to her as perfection of some sort, like she could craft miracles out of her two hands.
(But not even angels can reverse a reaper’s blow.)
She is moving before she can even process it.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers, and something in the Shogun’s face changes, but she does not give the Shogun a chance to respond before she speaks again. “Let me go against your orders just this once, Your Excellency.”
If someone has to die, she thinks, her lungs burning as she lurches herself towards the smoke and the fire and the sword that glints with the promise of fresh crimson, she doesn’t want it to be Ayaka.
And maybe in the end Ayaka couldn’t be the person who wasn’t who everyone wanted her to be, either.
So she’ll do it instead.
The sword makes a clean arc through the air and tears through the fabric of her clothes first, then her skin, then her flesh, a gaping wound in her chest, right by her heart. She can feel it pounding in her ears, so loud and so fast, dimming away by the second.
Ayaka skids to a halt centimetres away from her. The evening light paints the sky a shade of watercolour lilac-gold and reminds her of the day they first met again after so long in the cosy embrace of the Komore Teahouse, stumbling over their own words with the taste of the tea on their tongues.
“No,” Ayaka whispers, and the way her voice splinters and cracks is heartbreaking, but for some reason Sara finds herself smiling as Ayaka reaches out and cups her cheek with warm palms.
“Ayaka.” It’s getting a little more painful to speak now, but she speaks nevertheless. She is grateful to the soldier who had missed her heart with the blade through her chest, for allowing her these final few moments to say all the words that have been sitting waiting on her tongue for all this while. “Your hands are shaking.”
It’s the first time she’s seen Ayaka cry.
“You told me to do what I believe in,” she murmurs, and when she reaches out to brush Ayaka’s hair away from her face, her hands don’t shake, not even with the dulling of her heartbeat in her chest and the blood’s that beginning to make her vision dip and blur into faded hues of smoke-grey and pale violet skies. “So… don’t hate me for this. You promised.”
And it is funny, because it is such a sad thing to be dying here like this, but for the first time she feels weightless, like her heart is made of flower petals blooming under the night sky, like there are wings on her back crafted of angel feathers and halos and blooming with white light, keeping her alight even as her legs threaten to give way below her. There is a smile on her face, wide and brilliant, where there wasn’t before, and this time the tears that fall freely down her face are bright and not broken.
For the first time, she thinks she can find it again, all the pieces that went missing before she even knew she’d lost them.
And there are many things that she wishes she could say to Ayaka, but in the blurring of Ayaka’s eyes against hers and the quietening of her heartbeat in her ears she knows that her time is almost up now.
“Thank you,” she says simply, instead. “It was the privilege of my life meeting you. And thanks to you, just this once…”
She thinks back to how it had been, from the day the people she never got to acknowledge as parents cast her away, rain seeping into the thin of her fabric by the side of the road, to the day the Vision had blinked to life by her side and the day the man she’d learned to call a father took her in, and then to the day she’d signed the oath to the Shogun with the mark of her own blood, a General to the day she died.
She’d lost herself before she had a chance to find all the pieces.
“For the first time in my life… I wanted to be the one to call the shots.” She smiles, her breath thinning as it rattles against her chest, her mouth tasting like metal and the bittersweetness of a life yet lived. “Ayaka, can you answer something for me?”
“Anything,” Ayaka promises, and the corners of Sara’s eyes crinkle. She’s never felt so at peace before. The world is bleeding and burning all around them, but Ayaka’s hands and the tears on her cheeks are warm, and it feels a little like picking up the pieces, a little like rediscovery, a little like finding what has been waiting to be found again.
“I did well… didn’t I?”
And in the closing of her eyes and the fading of her heartbeat in her chest she hears Ayaka’s final whisper, breath warm against her skin and lips kissing her forehead goodbye: “you did well.”