Chapter Text
Mizu, with her face clean and her sword sheathed, contemplated her eyes in the reflection of the pond in which she was washing. After having defeated and ensured the death of all the fallen belonging to the army of a thousand claws, she washed her hands and feet trying to get rid of the blood that had crusted over where she had touched them.
As the water fell from her bare, tense arms and reached her trembling fingers, Akemi's screams kept echoing in her head like howls from a deep cave, when she let her father's guards take her, when they lifted her onto their horses and she looked at her with betrayal and something more heartbreaking in her eyes, when she let her go believing that she would be much better off than in her company, that she would be well cared for, being prepared for a man that even Akemi didn't know.
Why didn't those cries of her name fade as quickly as other wails she'd provoked? Why did her heart pound unevenly when she remembered her face?
Perhaps it was the will and strength Akemi demonstrated during the attack by Hamata's men, the sharp yet endearing fury she used to fuel her courage. When she refused to let Mizu be killed as she lay weakly on the brothel floor, she wielded her small knife, a storm quelled, filled with beautiful thunder and lightning.
Mizu generally didn't use metaphors or words to describe her impressions, she was anything but a poet or even a human, but Akemi stirred her brain like sand, ever since he saw her for the first time in Kyoto and when she recognized her in the house of peculiarities he felt a strange pull in her guts. She associated it with her disgust and ease of judgment, really hating everyone, however that feeling in her stomach didn't looks like dislike or repulsion, it was a sudden and abrupt, inexplicable commotion, that seemed to pull her neck towards Akemi.
Their hands touching as she offered her the warm sake, the emotions reflected on her face like ripples in water, and then her body on Akemi's as she tried to attack her and Mizu pressed her to the ground while the princess complained about a engagement that had been lost from the start. All the time, there was an inexplicable yet persistent burning in her chest, like a hammer on hot steel or the eternal flames of the Swordfather's forge.
When she let herself be taken away from her, the pull tightened like the strings of a koto or a bow, her breath even caught, and the words that left her lips...
Take her away... She's better off this way...
Then the disappointment in Ringo's eyes, the poisoned words, and the intent to silence through suffering what her heart and soul were yelling, were the trigger for the sickening tremor that erupted all over her body. The overflowing reservoir of memories that had been projected into her head throughout the battle, acting like a treacherous, burning coal to fuel his body and his sword, mingled with the fresh memory of Akemi's eyes and face, her calm voice in the chambers, and her screams from the back of a horse.
She felt so, so much, so many things inside her, so much anger for her life as a demon, for the life that her blue eyes opened to see, for the betrayal and helplessness before the open wounds left by her husband in what seemed like another life, so much anguish and sadness for the hidden and protected desires that burned and turned into ashes, fear and hatred for what she had become, she detested the skin she lived in, the eyes that showed her a world so empty of hope and loyalty, of affection and love.
Everything that her had never allowed herself to do, not even in her weakest and most feverish dreams, exploded like gunpowder behind her eyelids.
She shuffled along, tears streaming down her face, her throat feeling as tight as if she were being strangled. As she climbed the mountainside to a tributary pond, invisible burdens piled up on her shoulders, pushing her down to the ground. The sky fell upon her, and the earth opened up to swallow all of her.
She fell to her knees on the shore of the tiny lake she barely made it to, her body convulsing in ugly gasps of tears and everything hurt, the scared, rejected girl she once was cried for her loneliness and her lost home, cried for the affection she so hungered for, cried for the love she could give and receive, for the friendship offered to her in handless arms and the weakness she has never been able to shake off and was not allowed to.
A whore who sold her soul for a disgustingly cold world was all she was, everyone she met took from her, tainted her with their ice and left her to be devoured by vultures.
"Sorry!" she cried, her voice hoarse and worn. "Forgive me... Ringo... Akemi, I'm so sorry." "I'm so tired..."
After washing herself with clenched teeth and unsteady hands, she lay down in a nearby cave whose mouth faced the banks of the pond, with her back straight on the ground she closed her eyes and waited for sleep to come, maybe if she was lucky she wouldn't wake up, or maybe if there was some god who took pity on her soul she would wake up in a world where her life was worth something, to someone and to herself.
-
When she opened her eyes the sun had not yet begun to rise and the cold that surrounded her drew its mist in the air, she had to move, she felt hot and cold at the same time, her blood would boil and then freeze inside her body.
With her dreams plagued by Akemi's voice and beautiful face, Mizu, in a fit of feverish madness—as she described it to herself later that day—took up her katana and retraced her steps to Mihonoseki. All the fighting and exhaustion of her body over the past few hours left Mizu with a tiredness in her head such as she had never felt and her limbs three times as heavy, because in her drunken state, induced by a bravery that terrified her and a desire that rose like a small ember among extinguished coals, she stole a horse from one of the houses in the village that still had their corpses in the streets and headed back the road that the soldiers who took Akemi had taken.
If she remembered correctly after so many blows to the head, Akemi had been promised to the Shogun's son, she didn't know which one, she didn't care, all the men had the same faces. Akemi wasn't going to be just another woman of a rich nobleman had to please himself, not if Akemi herself had anything to say about it, and Mizu would make sure to uphold the princess's opinion and word.
Mizu didn't quite know what she was doing or what she would do when she arrived in Edo, but she would never regret it. Fowler would die by her sword one day when the time was prepare for; she just had to get to Akemi first. And whatever the princess decided, she would be free to take whatever path she chose. Mizu would give her that.
He spurred the horse, gathering speed. "Wait for me, Akemi. I will make your destiny yours."