Work Text:
Yashida Mariko is forty four years old the day she murders her husband. She did not murder him nine years ago, when she first found the bruises he left on their son under the pretense of “discipline” and “training”. She did not kill him a year ago, either, when he nearly disowned him for being a mutant. She did not kill him when he slapped their daughter at the dinner table. She did not kill him when he broke her son’s arm. She did not kill him when he began to yell and berate her in front of strangers, when he ceased to bother to hide his violence against her from their children. She thought, he is escalating. She thought, one of us will be dead before Natsuki is grown. But he was her husband, Mariko did not kill him.
And of course, Mariko did not kill him when it all began. She had thought of it, lying there in her wedding bed, raw and aching. She had thought of killing him and her father both, with her future stretching out in front of her, infinite, and yet impossible to imagine continuing for long. She thought of it then, and she has thought of it every day since.
A month before Mariko murders her husband, her father dies. It’s a heart attack, natural causes. There is, of course, a thorough investigation made by Mariko’s husband and all of their board members and associates. There is an even more thorough investigation done by Mariko more quietly. But by all appearances there was no foul play. It’s not unexpected. Her father had been having heart trouble for a while. It isn’t unexpected, except that no one ever expects someone like Harada Shingen to die.
Mariko’s husband inherits, of course. He convenes a meeting with their inner circle. He sits at the head of the table, and Mariko sits near him, a little behind, a little apart. She is the good little wife, meek, dutiful. Her bruises are covered, but the one on her cheek is swollen badly, and there is only so much that contouring can accomplish.
There is something undignified in being a battered woman in one’s forties. One imagines them young, tragic, beautiful. It is easier, perhaps, to imagine a moment, rather than a life. Mariko imagined it that way, certainly, when she herself was young. Old enough to be no innocent little girl, old enough to know better, to have chosen, as she thought, with her eyes open. Old enough that she could have chosen to leave her father and the husband he chose, and her whole world, educated and worldly and experienced and capable of landing a job almost anywhere she wanted. But she had been young still, and she had made that choice as though her fate belonged to a moment, as if she would be that tragic young woman forever, or else dead. And now she is still here sixteen years later with two children and a husband she has not killed and a life she cannot leave even if she chose to.
Mariko’s husband is not a businessman, and he is more a thug than a true crime lord. So Mariko does not have high hopes for this meeting, and neither, she assumes, do many of the others. Still, they listen respectfully. Trouble, if it comes, will come quietly.
It begins innocently enough, if such things can be innocent. Mariko’s husband makes a few less than respectful remarks about her father.
“Shingen had no entrepreneurial spirit, no vision,” he says, “What we need now is the boldness of youth!”
As if he himself isn’t well over fifty. They are about to run headlong into bankruptcy. Mariko wonders how much she could do to stop it, and how hard she is obliged to try.
“We need to expand,” he says, “Tradition is all well and good, but confining ourselves to only certain types of business is just leaving money on the table.”
“What, exactly, do you propose,” one of the more highly placed and bolder of the advisors asks.
Human trafficking. That’s what Mariko’s husband is proposing. He argues for it reasonably, as such things are judged. With Madripoor in such disarray there is an opening, and a criminal enterprise with as deep roots and deep pockets as Yashida could have an advantage in gaining a foothold. She does not remember, afterwards, what exact words he uses. She feels as if her mind is buzzing, a ringing in her ears.
Clan Yashida has been far from blameless, over the course of its long history. Mariko, though she has been sidelined since her marriage, has been far from blameless herself. Still, there are things which they have never done, a baseline of honor which they have upheld till now.
Mariko has not murdered her husband for herself, and she has not murdered him for her children. But everything she has done she has done for the legacy of her family, for the weight of history and tradition which she has committed herself to all her life, body and soul. For Clan Yashida, there is no choice to be made. She must kill him.
Her face remains blank as it always is, but she cannot help the small straightening of her spine, as certainty forms within her.
She watches the faces of the others in the room. None of them show their feelings easily, but Mariko knows how to observe. She marks which of them are dismayed, which are angry, and which of them approve. She notes, also, the way that a few of them glance between Mariko and her husband, the disgust and the pity in their eyes. Mariko wants no one’s pity, but it will be useful later.
The next evening, as she prepares her husband’s dinner, she considers how strange it is. Mariko knows everything there is to know about her husband, every one of his moods and preferences, his deepest hopes and dreams, what passes in his petty, selfish mind for beliefs. And yet, after sixteen years of marriage, her husband does not know her at all.
Mariko’s husband dies in his sleep. The cause of death is poison, and everyone knows it, but no one knows who killed him. No one suspects Mariko. She was careful, of course, but that isn’t why. No one suspects that Mariko was capable of murdering her husband. If she had been, she would have done so long ago, after all.
Yashida Mariko is forty four years old the day she murders her husband. The world is opened up before her again after sixteen years, filled with choice and infinite dangers. She is responsible for two children and a criminal empire. She knows she does not have the power to hold any of them, not really. But for the first time in sixteen years she has chosen to do what she knows to be right. Mariko’s father is dead, and so is her husband; she bows to no one. She will continue to choose, and she will continue to follow her honor. She knows she doesn’t have a chance, but that will never be a reason not to fight, and when death comes for her she will face it head on and unashamed.