Chapter Text
When you take your place beside Sara on the battlefield, you can almost hear the cold, cruel laughter of fate as it dangles you like a paper puppet. You hope, for just one second, that the person you dread the most is not present among the enemies. You had heard that he was last seen in Liyue, sailing away on a pirate ship. That would have been the best-case scenario for everyone, including you.
Of course, fate hasn’t been very merciful as of late.
The phalanxes of Sangonomiya troops march closer every second. They are disorganized, clearly scrambled together out of desperation and clinging to false hope. They aren’t trained warriors; they were peasants plucked out of the dying farms on Watatsumi Island. Their weapons are of a cheaper, less refined metal. None of their strategies would be a match for the Shogunate soldiers. Especially when both you and Sara have powerful Visions.
However, you hadn’t taken into consideration that the Traveler and Beidou were among their ranks. That the Yashiro Commission was helping behind the scenes.
That he would be fighting among them.
The cacophony of men shrieking and metal clanging against metal fill the beach as the soldiers engage in combat. Water splashes beneath your feet as you charge into the fray, drawing your sword and imbuing it with elemental power. Shogun soldiers step away to let you through; resistance soldiers step away in fearing of getting hurt. No common man wants to fight a Vision bearer. Much less a tengu warrior.
Your back tingles with elemental particles, where your dark crow wings are begging to pop out. The only reason you aren't flying into the air now is because despite the chances, you want to fight the humans fairly. Perhaps even a small part of you is arrogant, thinking that they are no match for you even without your wings.
You strike down the enemies, feeling your sword cut through their armor, ripping their shirts underneath, and slicing deep through their flesh. You fight like a machine — cold, lifeless, efficient. It is easier to do your job when you shut down your empathy and stop thinking about how those men were only lowly humans, with lives and families, and homes.
There is no deterrent in your step when the resistance head strategist arrives. She’s unassuming, pretty, and pastel like a mermaid. You know better than to underestimate people by their looks. After all, you were once pretty and pastel too.
Now, you are covered in grime and blood. Beads of sweat trickle down your forehead and into your armor. The thundering gray skies add little to an improvement in your bravado. When backup for the resistance shows up, you begin to understand that this is one of those days where you will have to retreat. Opponents pour like ants swarming a hill.
“Calm as the breeze,” you hear someone say. “My lady.”
Your blood goes cold. You know that voice.
You yank your sword from a dropped body before imbuing it with your elemental powers. Despite the clamor of battle around you, you hear the wind as well as you once did, back when you were with him. It whizzes like an arrow flying through the air, right behind your back.
The whisper of an enemy. The call of an old friend.
You whip around gripping your sword and get pushed back when a heavy force clashes against it, metal versus metal.
Your eyes meet his.
Kazuha.
His gaze scans you quickly, calculated and steadily even in the middle of a battle. You know why he went after you instead of any other soldier; it is because you both have Visions and he believes in a fair fight. You wish he had gone after Sara instead. Then again, you doubt he’d ever want to look in your turbulent sights after what you'd done in Tenshukaku so many months ago.
Sparing no mercy to his friend. Defeating him. Watching from the sidelines as the Shogun sliced his body into a million fizzling pieces.
No. You wouldn’t want to face him either. Not because of cowardice but because of grief. Then again, those two abstracts come hand-in-hand.
Kazuha raises his sword again and slashes down. You duck around the path of his blade and lash out with your sword. You are both very well aware of the fact that neither of you is aiming for a kill order, just disarmament. You don’t want to kill Kazuha the same way you killed the others anyway.
After all, Kazuha has never done anything to you. It was you who had wronged him.
With a great pull of the wind, he crouches before jumping a great height, sucking you into the gust. He slams his armored feet back down with an elegant force, wrenching the sword from your grip. It splashes into the shallows and sinks to the bottom. You are now weaponless in the middle of a battle on the beach.
Keeping your face straight, you raise your hands in a fighting stance. You know Kazuha will not kill you. You know him well enough to trust him even if you are on the opposite sides of a civil war.
Kazuha then does something unexpected. He calls the wind again to flail you and lifts the butt of his sword before knocking it against your temple; not enough to cause you real harm but enough to disorient you. He places his bandaged hand against the pulse of your neck and it is so familiar and comforting that it makes you want to push him away at once. You regret telling him your weak spot so many years ago. He pushes down on your pulse and you feel drowsiness wash over you like a curling wave. You fall.
In the blurry distance, you hear Sara call for a retreat. You do not think she will go after you yet. She has taken too many losses today and cannot afford her footmen to fall more.
Kazuha is already hoisting you onto his back as he trudges through the sand. You think back to simpler times when he would carry you like this because of a foot sprain. Back then, he did it to take you home.
Now, he is doing it to take you as a prisoner of war.
Perhaps you don’t know him as well as you thought anymore.
A wave crashes against the beach and the sea salt sprinkles onto your drooping face. The shutting-down of a samurai’s body due to another samurai. Euphoric, catatonic numbness. Finally, nothing.
Pale blue light greets you when you reawaken. Your hands ache as though you’d plunged them into a wasp nest. You try to conjure an image of where you are, but it seems as though you are slumping on the porch of a shrine within the concave of a giant pink seashell. When you try to yank, you find your stretched hands tied to a brittle wooden railing. Your legs are bound as well.
“Ah, you’re awake.”
The screen door slides open to reveal a small, young priestess with pink hair and a scrawny man with canine ears trailing her.
“General Kokomi,” you acknowledge. You say it as neither a form of respect nor an insult. Just as a way to show that you know of her.
She studies you, eyes blinking slowly as if to see what to make of what she sees. It unnerves you slightly how such an innocent face is the head of a war. It’s so ridiculously absurd to think that she’s meant for such a thing.
“It’s not every day we get a catch from the other side of Inazuma,” she says finally. “Welcome to Watatsumi Island.”
“Whatever it is you want from me, I can reassure you that you will gain nothing,” you say flatly. There is no use in prolonging this conversation as if you’re here on holiday. “I will force myself to stop breathing if you think I will utter a word about the Shogunate. If you want me here to gain a ransom from my clan, you will not receive any monetary value either.”
A literal growl erupts from the depths of the chest of the canine-man. You almost want to chortle in his face. He hardly sounds like a real guard dog, merely a kicked puppy. Instead, you raise your brows as Kokomi addresses him to calm down.
“You killed some of my men,” Gorou says distastefully. “No—not just kill. You slaughtered them.”
“I do not slaughter unarmed men,” you reply. “They were armed.”
“They were Visionless,” he shoots back. “It’s not a fair fight.”
You narrow your eyes. Does he not know that all is fair in war? Those men were in your way.
“Then you should have manned up and fought me,” you say. “Instead of ordering Kaedehara Kazuha to come after me like a coward.”
“Kazuha doesn’t fall under resistance orders in battle,” Gorou says. “He acted out of his own accord.”
Your jaw locks. This does not go unnoticed by Kokomi.
She explains, “Kazuha told us that he could get us a diplomatic audience with an important member of a Shogunate clan. It’s just… we didn’t expect it to be like this.”
They didn’t expect him to bring you.
“What do you want?” you ask irately. “I have nothing to give. I operate alone.”
“Unless Kujou Sara tells you what to do.”
“And she tells me to operate alone.”
Kokomi tilts her head. “Why? The Shogunate operates in a hierarchical army. You’re from a high Shogunate clan.”
You see that Kazuha has been feeding your information to the resistance. You nearly huff. Bastard.
“The Shogunate doesn’t question orders either,” you say coolly. “When Sara tells me to work alone I do not ask for more or less.”
“Alright,” Kokomi shrugs. She nods to her general. “Gorou, please untie their legs.”
“What?!” The canine general looks like he’s about to have a heart attack. “You want me to—? But my lady, they—”
“Cannot get off this island without a boat,” Kokomi says calmly. “And if she tries to escape, there are surprises in the ocean waiting for her, lurking in the dark depths down to the wastelands of Enkanomiya.”
Her gaze lands on you. You know that she is not addressing Gorou. She is directing those words to you as a warning. You do not know if she is bluffing or not. Still, she looks like the siren type who looks pretty on the surface but had control over the sea creatures and the unforgiving waves. She had dealt a smart card, reminding you that you were at her mercy.
“But, my lady, they're a—! You know they have dangerous abilities.”
“Less dangerous now because some were taken from them,” she says decidedly.
It is there that you realize that you are missing the cool, familiar weight against your hip. The weight that had sent your body pulsing with strength, fearlessness, and raw elemental power.
They had confiscated your Vision.
You quietly breathe in and out, trying to quell the panic rising in your throat.
“That is how it feels to be stripped of all your ambitions and dreams rolled into one entity,” Kokomi says, finally addressing you. Her voice is not unkind, but there is no kindness in it. She looks you right in the eye, cold as an ocean current. “Do you feel it? The weakness your body feels right now is what your side stands for.”
You keep your mouth closed and do not speak. You will not show any member of this resistance, much less their divine priestess, just how much this had shaken you.
Kokomi’s dead eyes zone into yours.
“Do we understand each other, tengu warrior?”
Your mouth curls down. You feel your wings threaten to unfurl from your back muscles like seeds popping from the soil.
You hold it all back and maintain your silence.
Your prison cell is less of a prison and more like the interior of a seashell.
You don’t try to escape, smart enough to play by Kokomi’s rules. The prison isn’t even an ugly room, unlike the dusty horrors back in Tenshukaku. It’s like being inside an underwater mermaid cave, with glittering pink and purple shells and capiz lining the bars. But something is missing.
Dealing with the loss of a Vision was like trying to force yourself to stay sober after drinking heavy bottles of rum. It brings deep discomfort. The world tilts against your will. Your body feels heavier, like multiple iron bars have been tied to your back and you are trying to balance upright. Your eyesight blurs every time a wave of nausea passes your head.
It is like going through an addiction withdrawal. Like you’ve been denied drinking water for days. Or dying of starvation. You admittedly vomited a few times down the toilet in a struggle to adjust to the unwelcome changes in your physical and mental states. Your body needs the elements flowing through your Vision like it needs clean oxygen to breathe properly. Otherwise, you’ll perish.
People come and go to observe you.
You know they must enjoy watching you slowly go mad, driven to insanity by the same cruelty the Shogunate had dealt to the innocent victims of the Vision Hunt Decree. To them, this is fair karma for everything you’ve done to hurt them.
Firstly it is Kokomi, with her unwavering blinks and sugary voice. Then Gorou, who snarls as you quip about your elemental powers. A few soldiers gawk at you like an animal on display at a zoo. Then the Traveler and that stupid floating toddler who makes faces at you.
You eye the Traveler warily, wondering how she can remain sane wielding multiple elements without a Vision. Most people would go insane holding all that power without a harness. It’s like riding a wild horse at full speed with no saddle to steady you, ready to throw you off at any given moment. She is not from this world, explaining her predicament. You do not understand why she chooses to fight this local war when she can travel to a safer nation or hop into a prettier galaxy.
Lumine must have traveled with Kazuha on the way to Inazuma.
Her eyes study you like Kokomi’s did, trying to make something of you. You do not give her satisfaction and say nothing as you lay on your back. You wonder if he had mentioned you to her at all. He has never been one to shy away from telling even the most sensitive and personal stories that cause him great pain.
Oh, Kazuha. Poor little Kazuha. With his perfect manners and perfect powers. Fuck his pain.
So you continued to suffer alone in your prison, dipping lower by the hours. At one point you wound up curled on the floor with your head between your knees, rocking back and forth, biting your knuckles to keep from screaming. It’s ingenious, really. Kokomi doesn’t need to lift a finger to strip you apart. She only needs to deliver you a taste of your own medicine. Your whole body cramps and shivers, desperate for a hit of the elements.
You think of all the times you’ve mindlessly confiscated Visions at Baal’s command. All the times you knocked on doors and watched the terror on people’s faces when they see the Shogunate crest on your uniform. The shakiness of their wrists when they placed their ambitions and dreams in your outstretched gloved hand. Their cries were lost to the night as you left, heartless and brutal, to imbue their Vision into the statue of the Raiden Shogun outside Tenshukaku. Your suffering is justice.
And of course, Kazuha. Your nightmares always circle back to Kazuha. He is the reason why you’re in the army in the first place. Why you’re imprisoned in Watatsumi Island. Knowing that he must be somewhere in the ranks feels as though you’re being watched by an omnipresent ghost.
You wish for a rematch. You wish you could go back in time and prevent it all from happening. Wish you could go back to that night in the mountain forest and stop yourself from meeting him. Wish you could shake away how unbearable it was to think of him. How your stomach drops at the mere memory of seeing him again after months. The soldier in you has worn down and now you are left to remember who you were before the war.