Work Text:
Chiaki can't bring herself to look at him.
The bundle of blankets nearby stirs with quiet fussing, begging for her attention, and it makes her sick to her stomach. She already knows what he'll grow up like, how he'll follow his father's footsteps, and how in spite of it all he'll become a monster.
Her dream last night was so sharp it feels like grasping the blade of a knife to recall it, and every cry from the baby twists it a little more in her heart.
Chiaki saw the fire glowing under a dark sky, a house she'll never know crumbling into ash. She saw the shadows in the night looming over Kunishige as he drew his last breath. And worst of all she saw the empty rage in her son's eyes glowing red as he screamed until he was hoarse.
Another soft whimper from the blankets sends her running to the bathroom to throw up her already empty stomach. Never has a vision of hers been so potent, so clear and personal, why did it have to be this one. Why not the one of the Irishima talks, or the aftermath leading to the war, when it could mean something. Her head is swimming with exhaustion and memories of things not yet come to pass and fear of a future she does not want experience.
The crying hasn't slowed at all, it's getting louder, it's getting sharper. It stabs at Chiaki's mind and her hands cover her ears as she chokes out a sob of her own. What good are these visions if she can't change anything, can't stop anything. Stop the crying. Stop it! STOP!
Kunishige's voice is shouting and she feels his hands grabbing at her arms. Chiaki can't hear what he's saying or understand why his eyes are so panicked. All she sees is a dead man before her, and her heart doesn't race at the sight of him anymore. She goes limp into his arms, tears streaming down her face as nurses rush in to the room.
Her fingers are trembling as they clutch at a pillow she doesn't remember grabbing, and she watches everyone fussing around the crib that Kunishige dragged her away from. It feels like she isn't really in the room with them and for a moment Chiaki wonders if this is some sort of vision. She's never been in one like this before, a participant in her own future. Kunishige's arms are sweeping under her legs and carrying her away; she hopes it's as far away as they can get from the crying.
"I had to stop it, Kuni… I have to stop…"
He pauses somewhere in the hall - it seems he didn't have a real plan when he grabbed her just that he had to get her away. Kunishige falls against the nearest wall, sliding down with a shudder as he holds her close. They sit in silence until a doctor finds him, telling him that everything was miraculously fine. Chiaki grimaces as they detail what she had done, and when they express relief at what she had failed to do, she realizes no one will understand.
It wasn't just about the crying. It wasn't just about a melancholy the doctors said would pass. It was about a future she couldn't stand idly by waiting to come true.
They keep her baby away from her room after that, and Kunishige's visits are quiet. She doesn't like that. Where was her lively husband who moved hell and earth for her, whose eyes shone whenever he caught her attention and made her laugh. He was already dead, or at least he would be, but to a prophet what was the difference? She was already grieving an untimely death that no one knew was coming, and she wasn't sure if her heart could survive it again when it finally happens in the present.
She tries to tell him, and he shakes his head assuring her that things don't have to always come true like her visions predict. Except they always have, and they are always worse than she can fathom. He doesn't understand. He can never understand how she felt the heat of the flames destroying their home, smelled the smoke and blood in the air, choking her awake. How her ears rang with the screams of their son and she can do nothing to stop it.
The next time Kunishige visits, all that waits for him is a half coherent letter left on the pillow.
Chiaki doesn't regret leaving all those years ago. In a moment of lucidity she realized she was never in the visions, and maybe she was never meant to be. She took the opportunity to escape her nightmares, her family, her duty. To finally be Chiaki again and not a princess or a mother or a wife. For his part, Kunishige never seems to make an effort to find her and she's grateful. Though as she watches the country heal from the wounds of war, she realizes that he is conspicuously absent from broadcasts and parades and the like.
Seems like she wasn't the only one who was hiding from their regrets of those days.
She's gone as far away as she can, to a town where no one pays attention to who comes and goes. A place where the families new and old don't have any power or prying eyes to recognize her. Chiaki sheds any remnants of her old life, trying to remember what she wanted for herself before everything was decided for her.
Her visions still remind her of what she is, and no amount of medication can dull their appearances in her dreams. For the most part they are distant, impartial, about people she doesn't really pay any mind to. She sees the Sazanami family and their loathsome auction on a particularly dangerous year. She foresees an earthquake, and says nothing. The casualties aren't her fault, she tells herself. There was supposed to be a new princess after all. They didn't need Chiaki any more. Nobody needed her.
Certainly not the little boy she left behind.
Sometimes the dreams are so distant in the future she can't make sense of them. Inky blackness pouring through skyscrapers, craters left in the streets. A field of flowers blooming in the Tokyo sun between cars and streetlights. These dreams are never long enough to fully catch but they wake her in a cold sweat all the same.
She picks up gardening to distract herself. The local flower shop has a greenhouse looking for an extra pair of green thumbs, and she takes them up on the offer. She forgot how much she reveled in the smell of dirt and giggling at the tickle of a caterpillar crawling over her arm. If only her mother could see her now, hair flying free in the wind and mud up to her knees, a faint sunburn perpetually on her nose.
For the first time in her life, Chiaki feels like a bird that escaped its gilded cage, and for a while she forgets about the life she pushed away.
But it doesn't forget about her.
Today's vision feels different - its closer, sharper than any before. She recalls the sensation from fifteen years ago, and realizes what is happening. There is never a good way to gauge the exact time of when a vision is foreseeing, so it could be tonight, or tomorrow, or a month from now. But from the clarity of the dream and the pain in her heart, Chiaki knows with a certainty she never had before.
Kunishige is dying tonight. The enchanted blades are being stolen. Her son will not survive what the night turns him into.
She can't breathe, the weight of the vision bearing down on her chest and choking the sobs in her throat. After all this time she never once felt regret for her choice. But tonight she doesn't sleep, she doesn't want to see the consequences of her running away. She tried to tell him fifteen years ago, what could she do to change the course of fate now that it was upon them?
Chiaki doesn't get out of bed the next day. Or the next. By the third the exhaustion finally closes her eyes, and for a moment the universe is merciful enough to grant her a dreamless rest. She deludes herself into thinking maybe she misinterpreted the vision. Maybe she only saw him wounded in the robbery. Kunishige may have been an idiot but he was no fool when it came to his work, he would have had precautions. This is the most she's thought of him in over a decade, and she tries to push him out of her mind.
She returns to work, apologizing profusely for her absence and throwing herself into the tasks to distract herself once more. When she stops by the garden storefront for a delivery, the cashier is watching the news with a bored look. It's some broadcast about some government figure who passed away, his photo popping up in the memorial.
His red eyes meet hers through the static of the screen and she collapses to the floor as her heart shatters what little delusion she was clinging to.
In the wake of Kunishige's passing and the theft of his tools of war, the threats to the country skyrocket. Chiaki becomes numb to the number of visions she has, each one full of people she doesn't know and places she's never been. She's learned to ignore the sense of urgency they used to cause, refusing to let them tear down the peace she has found for herself.
After a few years, though, a recurring face begins to appear in her dreams - a face that had haunted her since she ran away. Over and over again she saw murderous red eyes cutting a bloody path across Japan in search of revenge. These dreams are harder to ignore, and they are growing more frequent.
A warehouse of yakuza are left smeared on the floor, and she wakes up vomiting from the overwhelming smell of so much blood and the feeling of disgust watching the slaughter this boy leaves behind without a second thought. She thinks she might try the sleeping medications again to keep her nightmares at bay.
An enchanted blade in the hands of what seems to be a madman is what her gift deems the next biggest threat, and once again the boy appears in her visions. She can't tell who the dream is trying to warn her about, their crimes equally countless and brutal. She ignores the news stories for the next few days trying to pretend her dreams are nothing more than an overactive imagination. She has a life of her own to live, one that she had sacrificed too much for to give up now.
The subsequent weeks never seem to slow down. The Sazanami auction. The theatre incident. A betrayal between allies. A hotel drowning in blood. Over and over and over she watches in horror as this boy turned monster throws himself into every fight and leaves a wake of carnage behind him.
The worst of it is the night Chiaki dreams of his lifeless face in Shiba's arms and she wakes up screaming. His face was just as haunting as Kunishige's, and she cries so hard she can barely breathe. Could she have done anything differently? Would she have even made a difference? Probably not, as she dreams of him again seemingly back from the dead and still fighting against the echoes of a war that never truly stopped.
By now even her small quiet town whispers of the city and the growing panic there. She tries to avoid the conversations when they come up. There was no relief from the constant reminders of a world she had forcibly removed herself from, but it was odd to be an outsider to it this time. Now her prophecies and visions were nothing more than a lonely window to a reality that was so far away it never felt real.
Tonight she watches her brother stab her son through the heart, and wonders if she has somehow failed them both or if this was always how it was supposed to go. The Sogas had set their destiny a millennia ago - to fight it now would be futile. From the day she had her first vision, the day they pushed a sword into a child's hands, they kept inflicting the worst of their sins onto those too young to carry the burden. To be a Soga was to suffer, and her son was no exception.
Chiaki swallows another handful of sleeping pills to stop dreaming, resenting the curse the family had thrown upon her.
When Chiaki opens the front door, her heart flies into her throat as her eyes think they are looking at Kunishige back from the dead. She stares at a face she never expected to see in person, though she knows it well from the visions that he always seemed to occupy in her thoughts.
Her son stands before her shifting his weight uncomfortably, clearly at a loss for how to start the conversation. She notices a second man behind him, recognizing an aged and tired Shiba trying to avoid eye contact with her after all these years. Pushing the young man aside, Chiaki doesn't even say a word as her hand flies through the air to leave a resounding slap across Shiba's face.
"How dare you show your face to me now, Togo."
His head remains turned where the force of her hand had spun it, cheek bright red from the impact.
"Hey Chiaki, good to see you too."
Shiba's gaze finally meet hers, and for a moment she's a teenager again, memories of a life she abandoned flooding back. Memories of her brother, her friends, her husband long forgotten and finally laid to rest clamoring for her heart again.
"You… you let him die. Why weren't you there for him?"
His eyes have a glimmer of defiance as he frowns at her before softening, his tone neither accusatory nor upset. A simple question he had been holding on to for twenty odd years.
"Why weren't you?"
Chiaki's voice catches in her throat, fists clenching at her sides as she resists the urge to slap him again. She had tried to be there for him, warning him, begging him to change his mind after that first vision she had of their family. It doesn't matter now, and bringing it up after all this time helps no one.
"What are you doing here? I'm surprised I never saw a vision of this moment dropping on my head."
Shiba seems annoyed she changed the subject but doesn't press it and shakes out a cigarette to occupy himself.
"Your prophecies were always about threats. The kid isn't a threat to you."
Chiaki scoffs and glances back over at the quiet young man waiting to the side. Oh he could be a threat - she had seen him over the years in enough visions covered in blood, shredding through corpses like paper without a second thought, his eyes dark with murder.
And yet before her is not the monster she had feared would rise from the ashes of that night, the butcher she had watched from afar in all her visions. She looks him over as the stranger he is; he has Kunishige's shoulders, though they don't stand as proudly as his once did. She sees flashes of herself, of her brother, in the curve of his eyebrow or the bridge of his nose. His face is covered in the scars of battle, but his eyes are bright with a hope the world did not manage to steal away. He has his father's perceptive stare, and his mother's weariness in the circles around them.
When their eyes finally meet, his mouth opens a few times and his hands fidget with the hilt of his sword she had been trying to ignore. Eventually he finds his voice, and he wastes it on the one word she never wanted to hear.
"Mom…."
Chiaki's eyebrows pinch together and her jaw tightens as she holds up a hand to pause whatever else he was going to say.
"I'm no mother. Least of all yours."
His face falls and his eyes glance over her shoulder to where Shiba has been silently smoking this whole time. She hears a sharp exhale and a grumble behind her, his voice almost laughing in disbelief.
"Fuck, Chiaki. You really have changed. Can you give him a chance, where's your heart?"
Buried in some grave far from here, she thinks to herself. The last thing she needs is a ghost of Kunishige haunting her life after making her choice to run away. Besides, it was too late to play the part of the happy family. The war had taken everything from them before he was even born, and they each had their price to pay for it.
"Please leave, Togo. And never come back. He reminds me too much of his father, I can't…"
The boy she left behind speaks up quietly.
"Dad always told me the same thing. That I was too much like you... I'm sorry for any hurt I've caused."
Chiaki's lips frown and she steps back into her house, bidding them a final farewell and shutting the door in their faces without warning. She watches Shiba angrily toss aside his cigarette butt from the peephole, clapping the shaken young man on the shoulder and disappearing the both of them from her life.
She slides against the door in a slow collapse as she tries to quiet the million racing thoughts in her mind and emotions in her chest. She was never supposed to be a princess. She couldn't handle being a widow. She was afraid of being a mother.
Was it so selfish that the only thing she wanted was to be Chiaki?