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She’s beautiful.
They are women on the run, now, lurking in the darkest corners, the deepest shadows. The murk does not bother them; they are their own light, sharp to discerning eye, marking their way forward on a path known only to the two of them. Their steps do not falter as they slip away from the burn of the city behind them, the sirens wailing out through the crackling night, the distant collapse of an empty home. No one will mourn it save those that do not know the truth, and they, too, will be saved in time.
Luxuries are things not afforded to women of their sort; neither of them were under the illusion that the revolution would be glamorous. And yet where they find themselves as the night grows its thickest is ramshackle even by prison standards, to say nothing of the one from which Oboro has just made her escape.
This room is a damp, dark nothing of a thing, a rickety chair and rotten mattress pushed up against the wall, thick with the stench of rot. It is not a pleasant place to be, but it is protected–no one will come for them here on the night of such a grand escape. It is only the cracks in the windowpane that allow in the thick summer breeze, trickles of moonlight, a sickly humidity that even the night cannot dispel.
Oboro is discontent as she steps inside, but it is a feeling removed from herself, spares not a thought for her own comfort.
For Tsukuyomi deserves so much more than this, deserves the radiance of a heavenset throne, poised at the zenith of the new world she will create. This splintered chair in a filthy one-room apartment does not become her, pales in the radiance of a woman with such conviction.
And yet she is beautiful, stained here beneath the light of the moon, breathtaking in ways that shake Oboro to her core. She had not known it was possible to feel this way before hearing Tsukuyomi’s words. Foolishly, she had believed love to be a far more fleeting emotion, those doomed childhood flights of fancy, dirty little secrets, little shames that the Party of Words, misguided as they might be, had shown her were not so.
“Something wrong?”
And oh how Oboro would die for that smile, the hint of amusement in that satisfied smirk. She asks only because she knows, understands that Oboro does not care about this makeshift little hideaway so long as Tsukuyomi is here to illuminate it.
Oboro shakes her head, quick, military precise. Some habits are impossible to break; these are the ones that suit her. (It does nothing to discourage them that she feels Tsukuyomi likes these symbols of devotion, desires them a mirror to Oboro’s eagerness to provide.)
“Oboro.”
Her name in that voice, that long, fluttering drawl, as if every syllable of it is precious, as if it belongs in the hollows of her mouth. Oboro cannot remember having ever loved it so much as she does now, the blessing from a goddess made human to remake this world in her image.
But there is no time to dwell.
It is a summons.
As if bewitched, Oboro has no choice but to follow.
She crosses the room on light feet, feeling as if she is floating, this joy at their reunion a helium in her chest that might carry her off into the midnight were it not for Tsukuyomi’s gravity, a moon bright as the sun drawing even planets into her orbit, holding Oboro close enough that she does not care if she gets burned.
“Tsukuyomi-sama.”
Oboro kneels at her feet, bows her head in deference.
Her hair has fallen loose in her escape; Tsukuyomi runs her fingers through a lock of it, sending shivers up Oboro’s spine, an intimacy she has not felt in so impossibly long. She would not have allowed someone to touch her in this way, before. There had been too much to prove, a hierarchy to enforce, an aching sort of emptiness that the uniform alone could not disguise, a hunger gnawing at her ribs from the chipped teeth of her own heart.
Here, now, there is only Tsukuyomi and herself, a locked room, a perfect crime.
(…Is it so terrible a thing to fall?)
“What is it, Oboro?”
Again, her name. Tone soft, hungry–this woman has fangs, and gladly would Oboro allow her to rip out her throat with them. Oboro can hide nothing from her. She would not want to, even if her dishonesty would be forgiven.
“I wish we had met earlier,” she says, leaning her head into Tsukuyomi’s palm as it returns to tuck the lock of hair behind her ear, a boldness she cannot deny herself. How long has she been waiting for this? Locked away behind the bars of her own prison she had counted the days, waiting for her signal, knowing that this, too, was all in service of Tsukuyomi’s future, that she, too, would soon be standing beside her once more–
And yet.
“I wish you had been the one to find me.”
Tsukyomi brushes her thumb across Oboro’s cheek, a caress that turns the pad of her thumb black with remnants of ash. “You’re sweet, Oboro.”
She would have hated those words, once. They are said far too often in the cadence of you poor little thing, a condolence and condescension that Oboro snarls against with a venom that betrays the bleed of the cuts beneath, scratches oozing through the years into an iron heart, the taste of it thick in the back of Oboro’s throat.
But from Tsukuyomi’s lips they are a benediction, an affirmation of this path she has chosen. She longs for them, much the same as the woman who utters them with such utter focus. To be the object of Tsukuyomi’s attention is to be centerpiece of a banquet; even now there are times Oboro is unsure whether she can bear the brunt of her compliments.
And yet something in them is a denial, one that sends flutters of panic through Oboro’s stomach like trembling fingertips, the fear of a rejection she could not survive. There is a wavering edge to her voice she cannot control as she asks, gaze searching, begging reassurance, “Tsukuyomi-sama?”
Tsukuyomi, too, is impossibly sweet as she replies, reflected in her eyes a reality that is not their own, “If I had found you, that means you would have lost something precious.”
“I don’t care,” Oboro says, a promise, an oath, words tumbling from her the confession of a sinner to god, “Tsukuyomi-sama, my life is yours. It will always be yours. For your sake, I’ll–”
“Shh.”
Tsukuyomi presses a finger to her lips, leans in close, closer. Only a breath dares stand between them, the moonlight a shimmer reflected in the dark of Tsukuyomi’s eyes. They both smell of ash, intoxicating proof of their covenant. When Tsukuyomi next speaks, her words taste of it, a stain upon Oboro’s tongue that she would gladly bear for eternity.
“Oboro. Do you remember what your job for me is?”
To move the Tsukinone in your absence. To stand as sword and shield before you, so that none might block your way. To make your ideal world a reality. To save you, Tsukuyomi-sama–
But none of those smaller callings are the original, the siren song, the call that echoed through that sterile night and caught sharp as a dagger in Oboro’s chest, shattering her ribs and that she had kept caged within.
“To follow my heart,” says Oboro, slow, breathless. She finds herself startled that there’s any air left to breathe in this tiny room, for surely Tsukuyomi has taken it all, devoured the darkness and Oboro along with it. And yet alive still she is, proven by the flutters of her still-beating heart.
Tsukuyomi’s finger falls from her lips and Oboro finds herself missing it terribly, feeling the phantom warmth of it there still, the weight of it burned into her like desire before a beast.
“And what does your heart want?”
You, you, always you.
Her answer must show on her face–how can it not, with her truest love so close, her calling, her duty, her destiny all found in this woman before her–for Tsukuyomi smiles, satisfaction unmistakable, a form of affection that Oboro will drink up greedily, pour into her heart like a treasure to steal from in the nights where no moon shines.
“Good,” Tsukuyomi says, only then drawing back, trailing fingers long over Oboro’s arm, a parting more heartwrenching than the battle that first tore them apart. Were she not so captivated she might chase after it, reach out hands so bold and grasp onto the folds of her clothes, beg her to stay close in the ways of a child afraid of her own solitude.
But Oboro is not that girl, has not been since the moment Tsukuyomi spoke to her, through her. She is not afraid. There is nothing that might shake her now, save perhaps the fear of the moon falling from the heavens’ sky.
“In the new world,” Tsukuyomi says, turning gaze to the glimpse of the moon through the grimy windowpanes, “You will lose nothing, Oboro.”
Oboro does not understand what that means, not in its entirety. The vision that Tsukuyomi sees is still beyond her in these smaller ways, details she had not yet attuned her eyes to see beyond the radiance of the future Tsukuyomi describes.
And yet nonetheless she answers, the only words available to her–“I understand.”
Tsukuyomi’s fond breath is not a laugh but a blessing, a reminder that Oboro alone is allowed to draw close to her in this way, these near-silent secrets of their own mortality. “Good,” she says, as she always does, that familiar, reassuring refrain, “Good.”