Chapter Text
your skin turns hoshidan gold within the first few months of abandoning your heritage so you can swap it out for a new – and old – one. it is just another step down the road of betrayal you have been following ever since your mouth spoke out of turn in the middle of a battlefield. you do not look behind you to see the path you have walked down because you are afraid your footsteps have already faded too much for you to ever retrace them. worst of all, the slight possibility that you could still follow them home – to that home, not this one – keeps you sane. it shouldn't do.
what is even worse to fantasise about is perhaps still being able to meld some sort of peace between the family you are forced to betray and the one you choose to, though which way round they are you become less and less sure with each passing day. you move forward without ever looking behind you and force yourself never to think about what you are leaving behind, only what you are striving for.
falling apart at the seams has been something you've done all your life so far. mostly you think being locked up in a tower for almost all of your living memory made you like this, but other times you wonder if it's just in your blood. (your dragon blood.) it is a wonder jakob puts up with you. sometimes you get so annoyed by his resilience of devotion you think it is a wonder you put up with him, but this is cruel and wrong and you know it. you feel guilty for how quickly he starts to learn to stay out of your way out of love for you, to have your swords sharpened and a cup of tea ready for when you arrive but to be far away enough to give you space when you are exhausted, which is quickly becoming all of the time.
you hate your tree-house. lilith made it in the image of the childish kamui who was naïve and excited to leave her fortress, sleeping beauty on day release, who later turned out to be spoilt enough to run away and make a life of it. you do not hate lilith, but you are not that kamui now. you are still naïve, but war harrows a girl very quickly. (it harrows boys quickly too – you see that when you look around at the dinner table, when you glance at silas and the crease between his eyebrows.)
war has made you world-weary, though you are still excited by the prospect of everything else, viewing everything but conflict with such fresh eyes – eyes that have seen more people be cut down for living on the wrong side of a border than anything else. you wish you had seen hundreds of flowers or waterfalls or something beautiful but instead the thing that repeats itself incessantly throughout your life with a weakened, cracking voice, is slaughter. it is a slaughter that not all of you can side with.
war has taught you that everybody around you is selfless, and you are endlessly selfish.
your room is furnished with selflessness. orochi writes you happy fortunes that you have a hard time believing in and you keep them littered all over your desk; she lends you makeup to daub under your eyes to hide the dark rings a little, too. a row of hayato's charms strung up above your window make a soft jingling sound whenever the breeze picks up. on your shelf you have books from azama on meditation, next to a hoshidan dictionary from azura. small paintings you and kagero have worked on together are stuck to the wall, in a single line from floor to ceiling. you close your eyes before you can seek out the coin purse from hana or the clothes from oboro.
kaden sees through orochi's makeup and offers to nap with you. kaze saves you from bandits numerous times when you are too tired to notice. takumi is distant at first, and then he starts to teach you archery under the guise that it will improve his skills to teach someone else. hinoka takes you out on her pegasus to let you feel the wind in your hair. ryoma will have long conversations with you about anything, a good listener.
rinkah teaches you to speak like there's fire in your stomach, how to talk with gravity. your trembling tone needed it. now you sway a room's attention to you with a single word, if you need it. you like it that way.
setsuna finds traps for you both to fall into for a few hours, and you don't know if she does it when she can tell you need a break, but it feels like it, and even though it's obvious each time she starts to lead you away, sometimes you follow her anyway. you sit in the dirt and stare at your feet and try to sort out your head, try to take it apart piece by piece to polish it all, patching up the holes and the cracks, like how you treat your armour. setsuna is happy to just stare up at the clouds.
sakura never asks you what's wrong or if you need help, but she starts brewing sleeping tonics for you. while it surprised you at the time, it makes sense that she would be acutely observant.
silas only ever asks once. from then on he never asks you about it again, because he is never going to force you to talk about it. he trusts you to reach out whenever you need him and proves his loyalty over and over when he comes to your room and sits with you for hours when you want company, even if you don't feel like talking. his skin has stayed nohrian porcelain and everything about him makes you ache.