Sick of being used as a weapon to hurt the ones she loved. Sick of being the weak one, the frightened one. Sick of being a pawn, being a prisoner, being one tiny girl in a world so cold and brutal. Just fucking sick of it all.
Hiro pulled the bedroom door aside, carried her to the futon and tried to put her down. She held on as if her life depended on it, cold, unforgiving iron under her grip. Beneath the metal she could feel his warmth, threw her arms around it, pressed her cheek against his, wet with tears.
“Don’t let me go,” she whispered. “I have dishonored myself.” He shook his head. “I have failed my Lord. I must beg forgiveness, or seek atonement in seppuku.”
“Don’t let me go.”
She drew away and stared into his eyes, down to his mouth. She felt the hate inside, the desire for blood swelling and roiling. She shied away from that darkness, put her hand to his cheek, thumb running across the smooth expanse of skin, lips trembling. She lunged at his mouth with her own, a desperate, hungry kiss that tasted of chi and old tears. He held her tight as she pressed against the iron encasing him, wishing it were her skin, her flesh inside, sealed in cold, hard lines, safe and untouchable.
He kissed her back, just like he had in her dreams. And if she closed her eyes for long enough, maybe she would wake up and none of this would be real. Not the failure. Not the hatred. Not the severed feathers lying on the floor.
“Make it go away,” she breathed around their tongues. “Make me feel something. Anything but this.”
She sat up in the bed afterward, watching him sleep, sweat drying on her skin. She traced the line of his irezumi with her fingertips, the beautiful tiger stalking down his right arm, the imperial sun on his left. She looked down at her own arm, to the mirror image of that hateful icon on her flesh. She knew what Daichi had meant now, when he called it a mark of slavery. She considered scorching it off with a red-hot knife, blood cauterized and burning black, peeling the mark of that maniac from her skin once and for all.
But would that make her free?
She could sympathize with the Kagé all she wanted, but that didn’t make her righteous. She knew that her spiraling hatred of Yoritomo came from her own pain, not some sense of injustice at the land’s rape, the mass extinctions, the bleeding sky. From her own hurt. Her own suffering, just like Michi had
Jay Kristoff said. And as she recalled her words to Aisha, they rang false inside her head. The truth was she didn’t want justice any more. She wanted revenge. Was Daichi any different? Were any of the Kagé? They talked of liberation and revolution, but she wondered how many of them would be singing that refrain if they’d been born a Lotusman, or the fat child of some zaibatsu noble. A conscience is easier to swallow on an empty belly, simpler to swing with a broken wrist. The people who hate money are the ones who don’t have any. The people who hate power are the ones who are powerless.
Were these even her feelings? Or were they Buruu’s?
In the end did it matter?
Gods, I don’t know what’s real any more.
She pushed her knuckles into her eyes. Warm breeze caressed her naked
skin, flesh crawling with remembered goosebumps. Looking down at Hiro, recalling the taste of him. Expecting the palace guard to burst into the room at any moment and drag her off to prison with her father. At least she’d known his touch; at least she’d had this.
This was real. Right here. Aisha spoke truth: treasure your joys while you may. She looked around the room, at the pieces of ō-yoroi scattered across the floor. She picked up a gauntlet, heavy as stone in her small hands. It was black, lifeless, power cable snaking out from its cuff, ending in an open, empty mouth. She smiled with the memory of clumsy fumbling, of switches and clasps and buckles, metal clattering to the wooden floor piece by piece. Slipping her hand inside the glove, she watched her tendons stand taut with the weight. She ran her fingers across the surface, metal embossed with unreadable Guild kanji and prowling tigers. The beasts stared at her, lifeless, etched stripes across flanks and faces.
She thought of Buruu alone in his prison and closed her eyes. How he must hate me.
She wriggled her fingers inside the gauntlet, fingertips pressed against cool
iron. A dozen pseudo-tendons flexed, the hand drawing partway closed. Even without power, the raw movement of the machinery was a beautiful dance. She wondered what it would feel like to wear a suit like this, to feel its strength at her command. To be impenetrable. Untouchable.