" looking back over a lifetime, you see that love was the answer to everything " | ray bradbury |
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PLACE UNKNOWN; YEAR UNKNOWN
"Was it worth it?" He asked. Saving them, dying.
The answer was simple, it had always been simple but it had taken Onryō awhile to find it. "Yes," she said, "I wouldn't change a second of it." It was short, but they were the truest words she knew. She had loved them all and she had done enough.
"Oh, you clever boy," she said against his cheek, "go find them."
"You're different," he told her, "softer."
Onryō, wild and smiling brightly, said, "no, not softer. Better. I'm better. I think that's what happens at the end of of it all, you get better."
They were two dead things and their hearts were bitter and no amount of time would heal all of their wounds; they were passed their expiration date. But the parts of them that were still gold sang loudly into the sky, bursting out of their chests in a technicolor explosion that would shatter the bones of all who had hurt them. Time would remember.
Onryō blinked back into herself and she was alone. That hadn't changed. He wasn't the goodbye type, he just let go.
A cold gust of air swam past, but Onryō felt warm. Her bones were on fire, her chest was light and her feet carried her through the dark void into the old Tokyo that she had once known. A girl stood at the edge of world, kicking up stardust around her feet.
"Thought you'd never show," she said. Before, Onryō hadn't been able to understand a single thing the girl had been saying but now her voice touched something in Onryō, her soul translated the words and they were beautiful. They were home, the first and last one she'd ever had.
"Got caught up," Onryō shrugged.
The girl grunted, "thought Time Masters were never late?"
"Easy mistake. Time Masters are liars -- it's in the fine print."
Kane Moriyama turned. Onryō hadn't remembered her being so beautiful. She'd wasted so much time remaking Kane into a monster and there she was, as human as anyone Onryō had ever known. Kane Moriyama was so real it scared her.
Onryō wanted to say something to her, she wanted to tell her that she hadn't wasted her days. She'd spent them causing a decent amount of chaos, had left enough blood in her wake to fill an ocean, she'd traveled through time and broke the world, fallen in love more than once in a multitude of ways -- but Kane wouldn't have understood that. Kane Moriyama had never loved anyone.
"It's a long road home," Kane mused idly, "tell me a story."
"Anything you want," Onryō said -- she owed her that much.
"Something good," Kane demanded, "something legendary."
Onryō grinned; she thought of just the right story, it was the best one she knew.
"Once upon a time," Onryō began and ignored Kane's amused snort, "a group of people not qualified to be anything of any sort came together to do something impossible," Onryō took Kane's hand before continuing, "and they fucked some shit up."
