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Kafka doesn’t feel fear. Or rather, she is physically not capable of feeling fear. It’s simply an emotion she’s unable to experience.
It’s been this way for as long as she can remember, even when she was a small child. After all, on the planet she was born on, (Pteruges-V, contaminated by a Sellaron) the people there are all just like her, missing that fundamental puzzle piece. It’s in their genetics.
She always did want to feel fear. Hell, that goal was the whole reason she joined the Stellaron Hunters and started following Elio in the first place. He had promised her that she would be changed, and that the emotion would return to her.
Unfortunately, it’s too late now.
Kafka wanted to feel fear so that she could fear loss. So that she could stop being so reckless all the time, and realize the value in the temporary that she would one day lose no matter what.
But now…now everything has gone to shit. What is there left to fear if the one thing she knew she would regret losing is already gone? Her wife is dead. She’s never coming back. There’s nothing left for her to be afraid of, even if she was capable of feeling it.
The worst part about all of this is that Kafka knew it was coming. She had known for a long time. It was fate. It was written in the script. It was something she had seen coming for months, no, years, and yet she still willingly participated like a puppet on a string, just to chase after some stupid unattainable fleeting feeling .
Himeko’s death was all her fault.
─── ⋆⋅🕸️⋅⋆ ───
For her part, Kafka’s life has continued very similarly since the death of her wife. Her grief has been very strange.
There have been considerable changes, sure. She moved out of their townhouse, for one. Not that she even ever spent much time there in the first place, always busy on missions, but the memories held inside those walls are simply far too painful to be reminded of every damn day.
There’s also the obvious change of course, of the fact that she no longer has Himeko to talk to. No longer can she return home and hang up her coat in the ungodly hours of the night only to receive sleepy loving kisses in bed as their legs intertwine. No longer can she smell the lingering scent of dusty warmth and roses on Himeko’s pillows. No longer can she drink the bitter espresso Himeko brews every morning, even though she was one of the only people who could tolerate it. Now all other coffee tastes flavorless in comparison. It’s the little things like that that hurt the most.
Because honestly, Kafka is rather numb. Just like she’s numb to fear, she’s numb in her grief. She hasn’t cried, not once. She’s felt absolutely nothing, up till now. She didn’t feel anything when Himeko stared at her through teary eyes and promised she would be Kafka’s “Starlight” forever while she bled out in her arms. She didn’t feel anything during the funeral. She didn’t feel anything in the next few weeks as she continued living like a shell of the former woman she once was.
It’s not for lack of caring. Not in the slightest. Kafka does miss Himeko desperately, she does. It shows in the little things, like how badly she misses that disgusting coffee and tries to recreate the taste but can never quite perfect it. But she’s been so used to repressing and pushing down her feelings for nearly two decades that she genuinely just isn’t capable of processing her grief like a “normal” person. And deep down she probably does feel everything deeper, but it’s buried so far that it’s in an inaccessible part of her brain, completely closed off to both the outside world and Kafka herself.
But now, as Kafka visits Himeko’s grave for the first time since the funeral, she truly feels something strong enough that it transcends the numbness. It makes her heart ache in her chest, and this weird bitter feeling overtakes her entire being, a sour taste left in her mouth as she stares down at the headstone with a bouquet of roses in her arms that she lays down at the foot of the grave.
She’s lonely.
Extremely lonely.
The loneliness overcomes anything else she was feeling, or rather lack thereof. It goes far beyond a simple emotion, as if it’s deeply rooted in her very soul, like vines twisting around her heart and crushing it from the inside out.
Kafka has never felt more pain in her life than in this moment.
In her time as a Stellaron Hunter she’s been shot, stabbed, broken bones, fractured her wrist, dislocated her knee, and countless other horrific injuries that have felt like she was being gutted internally and yet somehow never managed to cause her permanent harm. But none compare to the emotional anguish that she’s in right now.
And Kafka has no idea what to do with this new feeling. It’s completely and utterly foreign to her. She has never felt grief before in her life, and though it makes her feel undeniably human , she hates it more than anything.
It doesn’t take long before she finds herself sinking to her knees in the muddy grass and just staring blankly at Himeko’s headstone. What can she even do? How do people “normally” grieve their dead lover, much less one who they knew was prophesied to die and that they played a part in the killing of? It’s not exactly a common situation.
Is she supposed to apologize? It’s not like Himeko can hear her. She’s buried deep six feet under, slowly decaying, and Kafka would just be pouring her heart out to a rock with a stupid epitaph etched on it saying “Blaze a trail across the stars”. It’s not actually her wife. It never will be her wife. And that knowledge is soul crushing in every sense of the word.
In truth, Kafka has always been rather alone. Not lonely, but alone.
Being a Devil Hunter from a young age on Pteruges-V before being recruited as a Stellaron Hunter left her with nobody so much as wanting to spare a glance at her. She never had a family to speak of. No friends either. Many flings and temporary partners who liked her for her charm and good looks, but never anything with any depth. Those relationships always simply consisted of both individuals mutually using each other for their own benefit before moving on in life. After all, Kafka never claimed to be a saint. She was using people for her own gain too, be it for her personal pleasure or for the script.
Himeko had been her first and only real relationship with any depth. She never expected that they would one day get married. Especially not when their relationship was so tumultuous in their early years, filled with constant petty fights and bickering.
But when Elio approached her one fateful day and gave her an offer she simply couldn’t refuse, to feel fear again if she simply joined his cause, it was the first time she ever felt like she had platonic companions. Despite the peculiar nature of her fellow Stellaron Hunters, they quickly became like her family. Or at least, what she would imagine having a family felt like.
And yes, she technically still has them. The script hasn’t yet been completed after all — and until it is, Kafka will fulfil the only purpose she has left, and she’ll stick with it until the final act is finished.
After all, what else is left for her to do? She has nobody to return to each night for. She has no reason to keep living other than for the sheer sake of life itself. Is that really enough? She’s not sure. She doesn’t fear death, but she knows that stubborn, torturously loving Himeko would want her to keep going. So she does.
It’s a simple cycle, really. Not much changes. She continues her missions as is standard. Maybe she purposefully shoots her enemies in non-vital organs before finishing them off to make them suffer just a little longer, even going so far as to steal some of Firefly’s kills. Maybe she’s a little quieter now, and takes a little longer to react with her usual teasing quips in response to whatever standard dumb shit Silver Wolf tells her about. Maybe she gets increasingly careless and starts purposefully testing the limits of her luck, diving off of buildings and blindly expecting Blade to catch her, getting just a little too close to the ground for comfort each time.
She might be dancing with death, but Kafka always did love a good waltz.
But really, not much has changed.
─── ⋆⋅🕸️⋅⋆ ───
It’s been years since Himeko’s death.
Even after all this time, she still manages to forget she’s actually dead sometimes. It happens in little moments, like when Kafka wakes up in the morning and rolls over on her side with a tired smile on her face, only to feel like she just got punched in the gut when she sees that the other half of the bed is empty.
Sometimes she reaches for her phone to send Himeko a text, only for her finger to freeze over the photo of her contact information, remembering her message will never even be seen. On those days, she listens to old voicemails from her. Unfortunately, there aren’t that many. But it’s something. Anything to hear her voice again. Anything to hear an “I love you” one more time.
Other times she sees a glimpse of fiery red hair in a crowd, or someone’s shining golden eyes, or a flowing white dress and she mistakes them for Himeko, just for a second. It somehow gets more and more painful each and every time it happens.
What she wouldn’t give for one last late night conversation, one last tender hug, one last lingering kiss. One last meal to share, one last day together, one last moment, minute, second with her.
But those are just dreams. And speaking of dreams…her dreams are like a snug warm blanket wrapping around her until she suffocates, cruel and doting, simultaneously gifting and punishing her with the best and worst thing of all: visions of Himeko in her slumbering hours. It’s like she’s plagued with them. Almost every night since her death, Kafka dreams of her.
Sometimes they’re good. Sometimes they’re of sweet memories of the two of them laughing together, dancing together, going on dates, kissing for hours, cuddling under the covers and cooking together in the mornings while classical music plays in the background.
Those dreams soothe her aching heart just a little, but at the same time are somehow more painful than the bad dreams, when she wakes and realizes it was all just an illusion, and feels that sinking feeling in her chest that weighs her down for the rest of the day.
Other times, they’re less pleasant. Filled with gruesome, gory nightmares of the day she died, or memories of some of their worst fights only weeks before her passing, usually about Himeko getting more and more concerned and upset by the increasingly dangerous situations Kafka was getting herself into. How she wishes she could go back in time and turn Himeko’s worry into fear for herself instead of Kafka. Maybe then things could’ve turned out differently.
But deep down, she knows that isn’t true. After all, her death was in the script. And the worst part of it all was that even when Kafka read the words for the first time, she went along with it anyway. She didn’t protest. Didn’t try to change things. Because after all, it was fate for Himeko to die. The way it would happen could’ve varied, sure. Maybe in an alternate universe Kafka had less to do with it, but it still would’ve happened. Destiny is ever-changing, a future course of events that can be shaped by the individual. Fate however, is linear. And Himeko’s death was fate.
And even worse than that was when she told Himeko . She wasn’t supposed to, obviously. The contents of the scripts are for the Stellaron Hunters’ eyes only. And Kafka isn’t one to be loose-lipped about much of anything, much less about the script itself. And yet…she couldn’t keep this part to herself. But the problem wasn’t the fact that she told her. The problem was Himeko’s reaction.
Because she was gentle.
They didn’t fight. Not like normal. Not at all. No screaming. No raised voices. Nothing.
No, in fact Himeko’s response was incredibly calm. A simple “I expected as much” before going on with her day. It was as if she hadn’t heard what Kafka had said at all. It was somehow worse than if she had slapped Kafka across the face and berated her for her actions, for willingly putting her into a situation where she knew she would die. But Himeko just…accepted it from the beginning. And it was awful.
Kafka frequently wonders what she would’ve done if her response had been different. Would she have gone through with it still? She isn’t sure. Sometimes her heart lies to her, tries to place the blame on Himeko instead and says that if Himeko had simply told her not to do it, then she would’ve quit while she was ahead and they could still be happy together all these years in the future, despite the whole fate issue. But fate aside, her head knows the truth. She would’ve followed through with the script even if Himeko had resisted her.
And that knowledge hurts. It makes her feel like a horrible person, tears her apart from the inside out, dissects all her feelings and forces confusing negative emotions to take up the valuable space in her mind that could be filled with anything else. It pushes them to the front of her brain, eating away at her and making her feel indescribable levels of guilt that she knows she deserves.
She deserves to be in pain.
She deserves to feel guilty.
She deserves to hurt.
Right?
─── ⋆⋅🕸️⋅⋆ ───
In another universe
Kafka is happy
In this universe
Kafka finally feels fear
She wanted to feel fear to fear loss
But now she fears happiness
Because how can she possibly be whole again
When her other half is buried
Six feet under?
