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She’s running. Running as fast as she can.
Jagged rocks, and broken sticks scrape the bottoms of her feet; vines and low hanging branches swat at her arm and face. They cut into her flesh like so many knives, a crimson outpour left behind like a trail of breadcrumbs through the forest. She can’t even feel them; the only thing she feels is panic. Panic, and adrenaline, and fear, and all her senses are heightened; every crack of a twig, every snicker of a tanuki, sends her into overdrive.
Her hair gets caught in a branch. Her ankle twists on a root. She falls backwards, and she can see flames behind her. She closes her eyes, and she can see death, and destruction, sparing nothing that gets caught in its wake.
She starts running again.
Before she realizes it, she’s at the edge of a cliff. She can’t stop. Her momentum sends her tumbling off, vaulting into the open air like a stone skipped across a pond. Except she doesn’t skip. She falls, sinks through the sky, screaming as loud as she can. Her wings flap uselessly behind her. She’s too young; they can’t do much yet.
Tears tear their way down her face, wicked away by the ever increasing atmospheric resistance, and she can see her life, her miserable, pathetically short life, flash before her eyes, like a surging light. She almost laughs. What had she accomplished yet? Nothing. That’s what.
She closes her eyes. ‘This will not kill her,’ she mutters, again and again and again, almost like a prayer. The first time she’s ever prayed in her life. She can’t believe this is the end; she refuses.
Before her eyes, a streak of purple crashes down, a lightning bolt starting fire on the ground, and the resounding thunder makes her chest hurt. She feels something circular, and metal in her hands. It’s cold. She likes it.
She blinks, and her father stands before her, tall and intimidating, before the gray of his hair had fully taken over.
She’s sparring with a kid about the same age as her; hand to hand, the first thing they teach the children bound for the military. As soon as a whistle blows, she catches an elbow to the chin, making her head rattle, and she can already taste blood in her mouth, feel the warmth of it on her tongue. She ducks, kicking her leg out, and attempting to knock him off his feet, but nothing in her life has gone according to plan up until now. Why would this?
The boy steps to the side quickly, grabbing handfuls of her hair, and throwing her across the courtyard like a rag doll. She screams, then; she can’t take it. She’s just a kid. All she sees is red, as she stands up, breaking into a sprint at the kid, with her still injured wings flapping behind her.
A flash, a gust of air, and her father blocks her path. A palm strikes her cheek. She’s knocked to the ground.
‘This is why boys shouldn’t have long hair!’ he howls, but how many times will she have to say ‘I am not a boy. My name is Sara.’ before he understands? How long will it be before he strips her of even that right? She can’t sing, she can’t dance, she can’t play with the other kids. She can’t even fly. All she can do is train, and train, and train, and he looks at her like an animal. Like some creature that crawled from the sewers to steal the souls of his real children.
Some creature, with fire red cheeks, and purplish-bluish-black eyes, and scars imprinted on her skin shaped like the Kujou family rings.
She cries, as he rips her away from the training ground. He yanks on her hair much like the younger boy had, but, when she looks back, she sees sorrow in the kid’s face. Not in her father’s, however.
‘Fine!’ He barks out. ‘Then a soldier shouldn’t have long hair!’ In one fell swoop, he chops her hair off, and she can’t help the sob she lets out when she sees long, mud stained, black locks flutter to the ground. She gets shown a mirror, and beyond tear streaked, bright red cheeks, her hair looks just like Masahito’s, just like her brother’s.
Her almost -brother. She wasn’t allowed to call them that.
Another blink, and she’s on a beach. It’s one she knows well.
Before she even opens her eyes, she can smell the stench of death. The blood tracing its way along the ground, washed away by so much rainwater, the heat given off by a corpse as life leaves its broken, battered body, the aroma of bowels contracting and expanding, of veins screeching to a halt, of the muscles contorted in pain as rigor mortis starts to set in, starting to freeze their faces. Some of these corpses were so, so old.
They say a flower blooms on the sight of rest for a fallen warrior. Without opening her eyes, she can tell this place will become a beautiful field, littered with scattered flowers anywhere and everywhere they could be, tossed down haphazardly like a child playing jacks. Without opening her eyes, she can tell the stench of death, the aroma of so much demise, will be hard to wash away. Without opening her eyes, she can see her comrades falling by her side, collapsing as she pushed on, and she can hear them begging for help, crying in pain, pleading to the archon for relief.
When she does open her eyes, however, she nearly pukes.
As battle hardened as fifteen years have made her, she can’t stomach it. She can’t stomach seeing the face of one of the only people she considered an almost -friend wracked with pain, his knees twisted and bent at odd angles, and blood dribbling from his mouth like the nectar of life leaving his soul. For as much as she’s seen, and endured, for as far as she’s come, she still can’t. She refuses to.
The contents of her stomach empty with a low growl, and then a scream, onigiri and water and bits of fish splaying across the sand. And it continues, flushing out so much bile and stomach acid that she can’t see straight. And it continues, tears streaking down her face, as she heaves, and yells, and curses. And it continues, flecks of red mixing in; her throat raw from screaming, and burning hot against the acidic juices that seem to never end.
She can't let out anymore. She collapses to the ground.
Another blink, one she prays with everything she has is the last, and she’s in Tenshukaku.
This one might be her least favorite.
She stares down the wretched woman in the throne room, shorter than she is, and blonde. She can feel fire rippling from beneath her skin, but, if it’s from her or the Harbinger, she doesn’t know.
Her gaze narrows. Every muscle in her body tightens, constricts, like a spring being pressed in on itself, filled to the brim with potential energy. Her fingers twitch. Her heart pounds in her chest, and it feels like it’s her very soul, telling her to ‘go!’ ‘act now!’ but she has to be careful.
She grabs her bow, and, before she can even knock a single arrow, ice pierces through her shoulder. A large, frozen bolt, that lodges itself between muscle, and sinew, and bone, and nerves. It’s cold. She can barely feel it.
She can’t move her arm anymore. She panics.
Before she can even react, a wash of cold is sent over her, and it chills her down to her soul. It freezes every muscle in her body, grinding her to a screeching halt, and it makes her bones feel like glass. It makes it impossible to move; not just her arm this time.
She wants to scream, but her throat is rapidly closing.
Another icy bolt hits her, this time in the side of her knee, and her vision goes black. She collapses to the ground, chest heaving with effort to please, please keep breathing. She hears the cursed woman laugh, and, if she could still grit her teeth, she would. The Harbinger walks over to where she collapsed. She can’t see it, she’s face down with no way to move, but she can hear it. Careful, measured footsteps, pacing towards her arrogantly.
‘Should’ve been quicker,’ she hears her say, and then, finally, as if the archon she has just oh so pathetically failed is taking pity on her, she blacks out.
—
Sara was screaming when she awoke.
She bolted upright in bed, gasping for breath, and doing her best to push away the icy feeling still in her lungs. She was covered in sweat, slicking her forehead, and the back of her neck, and she was shaking uncontrollably. She brought a finger to her eyes, and they were wet, terribly so, spreading out from the corners, and down her cheeks.
She heard a rustling next to her, and, when she turned to look, there was Raiden, laying on her side, staring up at her with so much concern.
Sara bit her cheek at the idea that it might be pity.
She turned away quickly, wiping her eyes with the backs of her hands, and using the undershirt she slept in to wick away her sweat. There was a clock on the wall, tick tick ticking away, and, when Sara looked at it, she was upset to find it at only 3:05. She pushed her palms into her lap, willing them to stop, but, before she could do anything else, she heard a voice from behind her.
“Are you okay?” Raiden asked, ever so gentle, and kind.
Sara didn’t even turn back. “Of course.”
“Sara-” Raiden started, but Sara cut her off.
“I’m fine.”
The room was quiet, then. The clock ticked on the wall, the wind rustled the leaves outside. Sara could still feel her heart pounding in her chest, threatening to tear through her ribs. She couldn’t sit still. She swung her legs over the side of the mattress, feet resting against the cool ground, and made to stand.
Before she could, however, an arm slipped around her waist, and a cheek was pressed to the small of her back. “Don’t do this, Sara. Talk to me; what’s going on?”
Sara felt her throat tighten. “It was just- It was a dream, is all.”
Raiden pressed her lips to Sara’s spine, trailing upwards until she reached her neck. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Sara’s response was immediate. “No.”
“Why don’t you come lay with me for a bit, love?”
Sara breathed deeply through her nose, still fighting against that same freezing sensation that threatened to make her lungs collapse in on themselves. She pushed herself off the bed, weight shifting from mattress to feet, and she’d be lying if she said her knees didn’t shake.
“I’m going for a walk; I’ll be back shortly.” She said, still not looking back.
“Sara, I-” Raiden seemed to want to interject, but, apparently, thought better of it. “Okay. Be safe.”
“I will,” and Sara almost unconsciously bowed.
She fled the room solemnly, patient and measured footsteps guiding her through the sliding door, but, when it finally closed behind her, her whole world threatened to collapse. Violent tremors shook her hand, more vicious than those from before, and she couldn’t help the way her knees almost buckled, or the way her teeth continued to tingle. She couldn’t see. The edges of her vision had started to dim, and everything seemed to be moving much too slowly. So, she did the only thing she could think of.
She ran.
She ran through Tenshukaku, hastily slipped on sandals clacking against the floorboards, and, when she reached the front doors, she didn’t even pause. She burst through them, and lept from the balcony, disregarding the stairs, and taking flight. She flew as fast as she could, going nowhere, going anywhere. She flew over Inazuma City, and Hanamizaka. She flapped mercilessly through Byakko Plains, veering right as hard as she could.
She didn’t stop until a faint blue glow enveloped her, and she touched down in Chinju Forest. She sat down, chest heaving with the effort of physical exertion, and, in her worn down, panic driven state, she didn’t notice a small tanuki sidle up next to her.
It jumped into her lap, and she laughed. Not a real laugh, one full of anxiety, and fear, and a high strung tension, but a laugh nonetheless. She stroked its soft fur gently, scratching right behind its ears, and laid her head back against the thick trunk of the tree behind her.
She closed her eyes, and found another bout of fitful sleep.
—
Sara was thankful her internal clock was as rigid as it had always been.
When she awoke, her head was throbbing, the tanuki had long since fled, and the sun was just starting to peek over the horizon. She quickly made her way back to Inazuma City, electing to head towards the Kujou Estate, rather than Tenshukaku, to get ready for the day.
All day, she couldn’t get it out of her system. She was distracted, in the moments she was less present her hands would start to tremble, and even the distant command of officers under her watch started to notice.
They didn’t say anything, though. Not only was Sara much too intimidating to approach, but most of them had been reprimanded by Takayuki for that very same thing as children.
The feeling of anxiety persisted deep into the evening, long after dismissing her soldiers for the day. Even the warm baths of Tenshukaku did little to help, despite their usually calming nature, and she could see ripples on the water from her ever present shaking. Even as she lied down, draped under sheets next to the woman she loved, did the feeling persist.
Raiden seemed to notice.
“Tell me what’s bothering you, love.”
Sara flinched when a hand reached for her bicep. “It’s nothing.”
“You didn’t come back last night,” Raiden pointed out, though it was neither upset, nor accusatory.
“I fell asleep… in the forest.”
“You need to take better care of yourself, love.”
“I’m trying.” Ironically enough, to Sara, it was her that sounded like a robot.
“Okay. I love you.”
Sara smiled faintly. “I love you too.”
Despite the worrying look Sara could make out on Raiden’s face through the darkness, the pair went to sleep, then, but, for Sara, it was only greeted by another round of nightmares.
Why? Why? Why?
Why am I plagued so, she’d think to herself.
She dreamt once more of Takayuki, his iron grip, and the cold steel of his rings. She dreamt of the soldiers she watched die. She dreamt of the mistakes she’d made, the decisions she’d got herself through by saying she didn’t have a choice. She dreamt of Signora. She dreamt of death.
This time, when she awoke, she wasn’t screaming. She was panting, and sweating, and gasping for air, sure, but she wasn’t screaming.
Unfortunately, however, when she turned on her side, Raiden was already awake, watching her.
“Sara-”
“It’s nothing,” Sara quickly interjected, but she couldn’t even fool herself.
“Sara, talk to me.”
“I-” Her voice threatened to shatter. “I can’t.”
“Please; I’m worried about you, Sara.”
Sara swung herself off the side of the bed once more. “I’m going for a walk.”
Raiden quickly grabbed her wrist, stopping her. “Don’t, please. Stay with me, Sara.”
Sara’s hands started to tremble in the woman’s grasp. “I shouldn’t- I shouldn’t be this,” and she gestured down to herself.
Raiden pulled her close, Sara’s legs finding their way back onto the mattress. “What you are is perfect, Sara. I promise.”
Sara bit her lip. Raiden could see it trembling.
“You don’t have to talk about it, okay? Just lay with me for a while.”
Raiden laid back down, resting her head against the pillows, and spreading her arms wide for Sara, but very purposely not pulling her down. After a moment, an internal war waged with herself, she did as she was asked, letting arms drape over her, and she found her face near Raiden’s chest. Raiden carded her fingers through Sara’s hair, playing with loose strands, and ruffling the feathers hidden underneath, as she tried to calm the taller woman.
She had seen Sara cry before, a small handful of times, actually, but none were like this.
An open mouth sob ripped its way out of Sara’s throat, practically a scream in and of itself. Her whole body shook, violent tremors being sent through every part of her, and Raiden could feel the loose shirt she wore becoming covered in snot, and tears. Sara’s whole world went black, though, if that was because her eyes didn’t work, or because she was pressed so hard into the other woman, she didn’t know.
She could feel her fingers going numb, as she gripped tightly at the fabric of Raiden’s shirt. She could feel her toes get cold despite being under sheets and blankets. She could feel her teeth tingle, her ears ring, that ever present feeling of being trapped by ice, tiny shards pressing against her lungs.
Raiden was muttering something above her. Something soothing, and comforting, surely, but Sara couldn’t hear her over the sound of wails, and sniffs, and cries.
It took a while for Sara to regain herself. A long while. Even then, she wasn’t what she would call composed, just slightly better at speaking and listening. She was still crying, and she was still shaking, but that was at least something, right?
Raiden’s hands had long moved from Sara’s hair to her back, rubbing up and down as soothing as she could. She pressed her lips to the crown of head, holding her as tight as she could.
“It’s okay,” she told her. “It’s okay.”
“I- I was just- I-” Sara tried to speak, but was less than successful.
“Shh, it’s okay; take your time.”
Sara breathed in as deep as she could, doing her best to fight back the shakes and sobs and tremors, and exhaled slowly, measured in order to regain her balance.
“I was d-dreaming about- about- a- ab- about-”
“I’m here; I’m here,” Raiden said, letting her nails trace down the sweat soaked skin of Sara’s back. “What were you dreaming about, love?”
“It was-” Sara took a deep breath, and immediately started rambling, speaking dizzyingly quick. “Childhood, and my father, and blood, and death, and running, and so much ice, and-”
“Shh,” Raiden cut her off. “You’re here now, right?”
Sara sniffed, and then nodded, small and hesitant.
“It’s gonna be okay; I promise.”
Raiden took Sara’s arms, which had been so desperately clutched at her own chest, and spread them open wide, wrapping them around her, and placing her hands on her back.
“Take a deep breath for me, okay?”
Raiden exhaled in, and Sara did the same, matching the rise and fall that her hands had now found.
“I can’t claim to be the best at this,” Raiden started. “I was little more than a soulless robot for many more years than I wish to count, but I know about trauma, what it does to a person. I’m here.”
Sara’s shoulders shook with each breath she took. “I- I just- Why?” She heaved out. “I can’t- I shouldn’t-” and the sobs came back, violent in the way they stole her breath, her words, her vision.
“It’s okay,” Raiden said, once again pressing her lips to the top of Sara’s head. “It’s okay. No one heals immediately. Have you really ever had time to just sit, and be, and heal, Sara?”
Sara shook her head no.
“Then heal. Take your time. I’m here; so many people are here for you. Go at your own pace, love.” Raiden brought a hand to Sara’s chin, lifting her gaze, and finally viewing the tear streaked cheeks of the woman, her scrunched and red face. She kissed her, with as much love as she could, not worrying a single bit about any of it. “No matter how long it takes, I’ll be here.”
Sara didn’t stop shaking, then. She wasn’t even sure if she could, but she certainly became more still. The violent tremors in her hands lowered into a faint buzz, and the ringing in her ears worked its way down to a gentle hum.
Raiden brought her hand to Sara’s face, brushing the corners of her eyes with her thumb. She wiped away all of it, wicking tears, and cooling the heat under her skin. All the while, she peppered her face with kisses. Her forehead, her temples, her cheeks, her eyes, her lips, everywhere she could, she expressed her love, her patience, her care, the best way she knew how.
Sara sniffed once more, and tucked her head back where it was, shifting slightly to avoid the mess she had left.
“Are you feeling tired?” Raiden asked her, ever so gently, ever so calmly.
Sara shook her head no.
“Even still, lay with me for a while, okay?”
And lay with her she did, soon falling into a dreamless sleep.