As Things Should Be

-30- Resolve

(Uhhhh I definitely need a warning here. This is about to get sad. Some people don't have plot armor and it's traumatizing. Just... be warned. Also, I do promise there's a happy ending. I promise you there's a happy ending! Not a bitter-sweet ending, a happy one!)

"Taratta, ratta, ratta, ratta, ratta, ratta ra."

It was a familiar rhyme they'd sung dozens of times in the garden. The t's marked their footsteps on the stained wooden floors. They sang in hushed voices, hardly signing at all but speaking the familiar cadence. Sumi's voice shook as she recited it, clinging to Miku's arm, but it kept them all moving. Naho swayed her head back and forth with the rhythm as she sat in Miku's arms. 

"Hop jump jump," Miku let herself bounce on her feet as she hummed the tune. The nursery rhyme was comforting and offputting all at once. It reminded her of home but echoed in the fortress like a bell. Their voices didn't harmonize as nicely here as in the summer sun. They couldn't even think about skipping around each other and holding hands, she was holding onto Naho almost too tightly, fearing that her arms would turn to jelly and she'd drop her injured friend. 

This wasn't home. There was no safety. No warmth. It was cold, empty, and lonely... but she didn't want to think about that, she focused instead on the song and the airflow around them.

"Pyokko Pyokko dances," Naho managed to crack a smile aimed towards a nervous Sumi. It made the other girl smile a bit wider as her voice grew slightly louder.

"Red shoes on its feet," Sumi recited, pressed up against Miku's side. Miku smelled the air once more and found it just as stale as it had been when they'd entered this place. She couldn't smell the outside air but she could smell... other things.

Sickeningly sweet things, akin to melting candy and maggots. It was easy to shove the smells aside as she was surrounded by Sumi and Naho who both smelled of wisteria, fresh laundry, and medicine. 

So along they pressed, all three trying not to jump at every creak of wood or shifting of rooms. Doors slammed randomly around them, and entire rooms flew by in the distance, soaring up and around like puppets on strings.

"Ratta, ratta, ratta-ra," they all finished together with a little skip before beginning the rhyme anew. 

"Sosora, sora, sora, the rabbit's dance," Naho began once more.

"Taratta, ratta, ratta, rat-" All three girls started the rhyme, but it was Miku who stopped first.

Her lips froze, then her tongue, her legs, her arms, her heart; it all froze.

Because... because... she knew that presence. She knew that smell; death. So much death, bloody and desperate death. It was different from the slayers who died in the butterfly estate of their wounds. Their deaths smelled at least slightly peaceful - this deathly presence, this harbinger reeked with the residue of fearful final moments.

The biwa strum was what made Sumi and Naho stop.

She could feel it. Those red eyes. They bore holes in the back of her neck making everything stand on end from her nerves to her blood. For a moment she was far younger, learning the true definition of fear for the first time. That fear was right behind her.

She turned because Akaza had taught her to never let her opponent have her back, it left her too open. She turned because Inosuke had told her to face everything head-on, no matter how her heart pounded. She turned because she couldn't just stand there.

He, however, could just stand there; the monster so much of her family could not name. He stood there with porcelain skin and blood-colored eyes, like a pillar of misfortune and Miku knew so many things at once.