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“Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh.”
― Leonard Cohen, The Favorite Game
When Lara looks down she can see the shredded ends of her bloodied white dress. Newly healed, freshly formed in the womb of her rebirth… Lara’s legs throb with a pain so great she cannot bring herself to stand on her own yet, let alone walk, and she doesn’t care. If the price for Mari’s life is her own blood, she will gladly pay it a thousand times over.
Pressed against the front of her body, Mari’s back is stolid and warm. Her arms wrap snugly under Lara’s thighs and Lara’s arms are hooked around Mari’s shoulders. The storm has passed, but they are still anchored together like two moored ships. Lara doesn’t mind it at all. Mari’s callouses are rough against her skin, but her grip is gentle.
For awhile there, floating in the calm waters of Lake Biwa like flotsam washed ashore, Lara had been having a hard time convincing herself that everything was real. Now that she can feel the warmth of Mari’s body seep into her own, she can finally allow herself to relax.
With time to finally breathe, Lara is relieved to the point of delirium. Happy beyond every rational thought. She looks up at the clear blue sky and the accursed monolith is gone. She touches her ear and her fins are gone…
Is she a human or a mermaid? Lara doesn’t know quite yet. But Mari is alive and in her arms and her nightmare is finally over.
Her tears fall freely like the pitter-patter of warm, summer rain. Lara hiccups as she smiles and presses her face into Mari’s dark hair, then the side of her damp cheek. She breathes in the smell of Mari’s shampoo. The scent of her skin mixes with the early autumn wind and the water of Lake Biwa.
It is comforting as it is reassuring.
Here on the surface, Mari is the only home Lara has ever wanted to return to. But somehow, it’s still not enough. Her lips graze against Mari’s skin. The shell of her ear. Her jaw. The nape of her neck. Like thunder trails lightning, so do her tears.
Mari blushes and grumbles. Laughs at how much it tickles. Falters a bit in her step when Lara pecks her lips in the flurry of kisses, though the shock isn’t enough to drop her.
The first thing that Mari says with her face all red is this: “That’s not fair. I'm carrying you right now so I can’t do anything. My hands are tied here.”
Lara laughs and laughs, giddy and teary-eyed in answer. Mari has always been so stoic and even-tempered. And brave. Even in the face of her own death and here and now, in the aftermath of it, this new life. Affection pierces Lara sweetly, and her heart blooms with the warmth of all her love. Once upon a time, Lara was convinced that she would never hear Mari’s voice ever again.
You’re alive. Lara keeps telling herself. You’re safe. You’re okay… She repeats it like a mantra in her head. In the human world, words have meaning and power.
Her light, her love… All that she has and all that she is, and all that she will ever be… Lara hugs Mari tighter in her arms and in the eye of her mind, drapes her in a cloak of her protection.
“I’m sorry,” Lara says after a beat as she wipes a tear out of the corner of her eye.
The next thing that Mari says with her face all red is this: “Are you really?”
“No. I’m really, really not sorry at all,” Lara says, brazenly unrepentant.
She doubles down on the outward display of affection. Lara cannot help herself. Maybe in time, she will learn to better temper her ravenous heart, but after everything they've been through together... Now that Lara finally has a name for what she has been feeling for Mari all this time, her love spills outward like the font of a geyser. Her arms wind snugly around Mari’s neck and she nuzzles their cheeks together and giggles.
“I knew it.” It’s Mari’s turn to laugh now.
When Mari blushes, her cheeks are especially warm, Lara thinks with a smile.
And then she blinks, a little dumbfounded, because the next thing that Mari says with her face all red is: “I’m glad that you don’t regret it. That was my first kiss, you know?”
“Oh?” Lara says softly. “That was mine too.”
“You never…? With Luca?” Mari asks shyly.
“No. I tried to but… I shouldn’t have. It felt wrong. All wrong. I need to apologize to him. And break up properly this time,” Lara says.
When she chews on her bottom lip she can taste faint traces of Mari’s chapstick. “I’m sorry. Was it weird for you? Was I too sudden?”
Jittery and nervous, Lara worries her bottom lip as her eyebrows knit together.
“Well… Hm. How do I put this...” Mari rolls her eyes and huffs.
She must’ve seen something troubling on Lara’s face, because this time she actually stops walking.
Lara cranes her neck to properly regard Mari.
Eye to eye, brown to blue, Lara’s heart is in her mouth. She loves Mari more than anyone else in the world. It’s why she’s both hungry for the truth and so desperately afraid of what she will find. The monolith floating in the sky is gone, and as far as Lara knows, so are all of her accursed powers. But the memories remain with her still, as do her scars…
Overhead and in the distance is the haunting, mechanical flutter of helicopter wings. Here in the present moment, Mari is blushing again. Her eyebrows pinch together as her gaze sharpens with intent.
Lara has only ever seen Mari get so serious when she’s in a boxing ring. Never up close. Her heartbeat starts ratcheting skyward as Mari’s face draws closer. Lara is blushing now too, confronted with this side of Mari that only her opponents in the ring ever get to face.
She’s jealous of them, and awed by Mari. Captivated by the sharp beauty of her single-minded purposefulness directed straight at her, for once.
Wait a minute, Lara thinks, shrilly monologuing in her own head. At me?
Inputs and outputs and the myriad of ways it can all go wrong. Suddenly, acutely, an animal instinct takes root in her body.
Lara gets deathly terrified of dying when her brain takes the great leap of faith between all that she knows about Mari so far, and all of her own inexperience and lack of social understanding about what is going to happen next.
Mari’s hands are still wrapped around Lara’s thighs, but that doesn’t make her any less deadly.
Oh no, Lara thinks to herself in a much more timid voice as she braces for a headbutt so strong that her consciousness gets completely knocked out of her body.
What is happening? She has leapt from one trial and straight into another. Almost all of Lara’s knowledge about modern human courtship rituals have been distilled from daytime TV dramas. But it makes sense in her head (somehow) that courting Otsu Mari would include a trial by combat of some sort.
Well, if that’s what it takes! Lara thinks, summoning her courage even as she quivers in fear...
Here and now, Lara clenches her jaw tight. Closes her eyes. Quietly resigns herself to her fate like the first time they had met.
Maybe I am going to die, Lara thinks deliriously, trembling a little as she braces her body for pain, though all that meets her lips is softness.
Halfway up a grassy knoll where the clear blue waters of lake Biwa bisect the shore and the sky, Mari tilts her head and leans in to kiss Lara.
Mari’s lips are soft as they press against hers. The tip of Mari’s nose grazes against Lara’s damp, tear-stained cheek. When Mari breathes out, it tickles her skin and makes her want to smile. Lara’s heart warms again and she sighs. Is this what love is? Lara thinks, at peace with herself. It feels like home. A little piece of the world where she knows she belongs.
When Mari pulls away, Lara is a little breathless. When she opens her eyes, she’s greeted by the sight of Mari smiling softly at her.
“There. Now we’re even,” Mari says, blushing again.
And now Lara is smiling, too.
“You didn’t have to be so quick to apologize before, y’know?” says Mari. “It’s not like I hated it.”
“So you liked it, then?” Lara asks shyly, demurely dipping her head and looking up at Mari through her long eyelashes.
“Don’t make me say it…” Mari grumbles as she starts again, to walk.
One careless glance at Lara’s frowning face and she’s caving in again.
“Okay. Yes. Fine. I did. And… Um. Maybe you’ll always be a little too weird, or sudden. Or dumb. And that’s okay. I’ve always liked that about you. I just thought it was all over a little too quick, you know? For a first kiss.”
The tips of Mari’s ears turn pink too when she blushes, Lara thinks affectionately as she nuzzles into her hair again. It’s cute, Lara thinks. Mari is deadly, but she can be really cute, too. Lara sighs and her whole body unspools with relief as she relaxes against Mari’s back.
“I can’t believe I thought that you were going to headbutt me,” Lara quietly confesses. Embarrassment colors her cheeks and her words and she covers her face with her hands.
“What? Why would you think that?” Mari laughs.
“The first time we met, you punched me out of the sky!” says Lara, through hiccups of laughter.
“I had to. You were hurdling straight at me and I didn’t have any time to think. Sorry about that though, I never got the chance to apologize, before. I got too mad the next day because you threw Hal out of the window,” Mari explains. “Your cheek got all swollen too, after that. We didn’t have any ice packs so I had to use a frozen bag of peas. Gon-chan kept scolding me all night while you slept in my bed.”
“Is Lady Witch really gone?” Lara asks.
“I think so. I hope not, but… She said goodbye to me before she left…” says Mari, sniffling. “I miss her. I loved her. She was my best friend, after my mom died...”
“She loved you, too,” Lara says. Fiercely protective at Mari's show of vulnerability, her arms enfold Mari’s back in a show of comfort. “I’m sure of it. She was my aunt. I never got to spend much time with her, but I’m glad she had you.”
“Yeah?”
“Mhm. You know…” Lara’s voice cracks a little. She tilts her head forward so that her bangs shadow her face. “After everything I made you go through, I was so scared that you hated me.”
“Why?” Mari asks, softly.
“I don’t know…” Lara hiccups. And it’s the truth.
She folds herself into Mari’s body, seeking comfort and warmth. She tucks her chin over Mari’s shoulder. She lays the flat of her palm over Mari’s school uniform, against the space over Mari’s heart. The action grounds her in the moment and gives her the strength to continue. Mari’s always had that effect on her.
“I can't help it. I think I’ve always been a little scared,” Lara confesses. There’s no one around them to eavesdrop but the insects and birds. “The more I want something, the more scared I get. I’m afraid the universe will punish me for being greedy.”
Since her legs still hurt, she wonders whether Mari’s heart does too. This was where my heart pierced yours, Lara thinks as her fingers tap against the spot where her light had entered, and Mari’s light had left. She wonders about the shape of the exit wound on Mari’s back. Has her love left a scar behind on Mari’s body? Is it in the shape of an exploding star?
It feels sacrilegious. Mari died because of her love, and she almost never came back. Lara wants to do penance but she doesn’t know how. Instead, all she can do is quietly grieve the loss of their innocence. Her tears stain Mari’s lapel when they fall.
“I don’t hate you,” says Mari with quiet resolve. “I’ll never hate you. I think that’s impossible for me. And… Um. I think that it’s normal to be afraid when you want something. But there’s nothing wrong with aiming high, or dreaming big, y'know? You just need to work hard to get what you want. I don’t know if that makes sense, but it’s what I’ve been doing all this time.”
When Mari talks, Lara can feel the words reverberate like a tidal wave from her diaphragm to her ribcage, then into Lara’s own body.
“Thank you, I think that makes sense,” Lara says clumsily, unsure about the appropriate thing to say in such a situation. “I’m not good at living life like that, but maybe I’ll get better at it if I just keep practicing.”
“Yeah? I think you will.” Mari says, grinning. She tilts her head back to shoot Lara a playful, haughty look. “I haven’t let you off the hook, you know? I’m still expecting that cake when I become the best in the world.”
Mari’s eyes burn with quiet sincerity. And her heart is laid bare. Lara looks at her and it’s impossible not to smile.
Thank you for being you, Lara thinks as she turns to press another kiss against the side of Mari’s cheek. One, first. Then another. And another after that. She laughs when Mari calls her a kissing fiend, and follows-up every kiss with a silent prayer of gratitude. Thank you for letting me into your life, Lara thinks as she smiles into the side of Mari's neck. Thank you for loving me.
Their shadows melt into one as they skirt the coastline, then pull away completely. Soon, the backdrop of Lake Biwa gives way to the asphalt of city streets and the concrete skyline proper. They're bathed in copper and gold as the orange yolk of the sun gradually dips behind the mountains.
They talk about many things. Lara tells Mari the story of how she met Lady Grace, and Mari tells her the story of when she ran away from home with her brother after their mom died. Apparently, they managed to camp out in a tent along the shores of Lake Biwa for three nights before they got busted by the authorities.
They laugh, they smile, they let the silence comfortably percolate as the streetlights blink on, one after the next, guiding them back home. Lara’s eyes fix on the road ahead, and all the new routes that she can take. She's getting ahead of herself here. First, she needs to learn how to walk again. She has a lot to explain to all the people in her life too. But she has all the time in the world to figure stuff out.
When she hears Mari's stomach rumble with hunger, Lara can't help but laugh and massage her tummy with her palms. Mari shivers and grumbles, then turns an interesting shade of red.
"There, there," Lara coos. "What do you feel like eating tonight? My treat."