no preamble i'm just giving you a fucked up pig that runs past where the cherry blossoms are because of course that's where she is.
You are sitting in the garden of your childhood home, in a little village that you've grown up in. You are six years old, and your father has been away for a year, though you're not sure why. It makes you sad, sometimes, when you think about it. Your mother is gone, and the village takes turns making sure that you aren't starving, but for the most part, you're just alone, making up stories and playing with the stray dogs in the village. It's lonely. You're very lonely.
So when your father returns after that year, and he gives you a smile that borders on manic, you don't notice how it looks. You're overjoyed - father is back, and maybe this time, he won't leave. Maybe this time your curse won't drive him away. You can be good this time. You will find a way to make sure that you don't hurt him or anybody else ever again. Maybe he's forgiven you for what happened to your mother.
He doesn't even wash up, when he returns. He comes straight to the garden and smiles widely at you, and says that you should come with him to the cave in the mountains behind the village. He has a surprise for you, to make up for the fact that he hasn't been home. You don't really hope for much, but. A toy would be nice! Maybe a kite, or something that the two of you can play with together.
Your father brings you to the cave. You make sure your long black hair is out of the way, ready for whatever the surprise is.
But he barely even pays attention to you as he strides into the cave. He goes right to the altar in the middle, constructed out of stone, and he flicks through a book, and he mutters. And you take a step forward because you're unsure. Maybe you should help? You take another step forward, and then - out of the book swirls something dark and hideous, a black and rotting creature that has no shape at first as it crawls out. It drips out of the book, and your father turns and starts to walk away.
You're confused - you're a little scared, so you say, "Father?" and he ignores you, and so you look back at the shadows that soak down out of the pages, and you see it is growing teeth. It is watching you with bright blood-red eyes, and when it meets your gaze, it licks its lips.
You stumble back, and you start to cry - you are six years old, and this is the scariest thing you've ever seen - and you turn and race after your father. This isn't what he meant, right? This can't be the surprise - but he pushes you to the ground and sneers at you.
"You are a cursed child," he spits, and you stare up at him from where you're crumpled on the ground. You reach for him. No, it - no, this time, it'll be better. This time you won't bring ruin to everybody around you, you promise, you will find a way to be good, but he just shakes his head and keeps walking. "Your life brings nothing but disaster to us all."
You stand, shakily, and run, but something grabs your leg, and you scream as the monster drags you back. Your father leaves.
"At least if you die, I can bring her back." And the light from outside vanishes as the monster pulls you towards it's mouth.
But as a child - a child who hasn't grown up just yet, a child who hasn't forsaken emotion and the joys of living because you know that you aren't allowed those anymore - you don't want to die. You want to play outside, and you want to make friends with the other children in the village, and you want your mother back, and you want your father to love you, and you don't want to die you don't want to die you want to live --
The sleeping calamitous fates, violent urges, and unyielding spirit within you burst their bonds all at once. They are your unseen shield, your invisible blade, and they are all that your frail form has to protect yourself. You have a dagger that belonged to your mother. Instinct has you cut open part of the monster and it wails, and you run to hide. Your next attack is with fangs and claws; you swear to tear that wretched creature before you to shreds — to prove that you, and not it, are the cruelest evil that stalked the darkness.
For days, your life-and-death battle is one without end. Hunter and hunted switch places many times, the conflict locked in stalemate. Sometimes it rips at your skin and sometimes it just chases you when it finds you. Sometimes you beat it back just enough to find some time to rest. But you are exhausted. You can't sleep. You're hungry, and you're thirsty, and everything hurts, but you don't want to die. You refuse. You won't. But there's only so much that your tiny body can handle, and eventually, you collapse. You're afraid. You know it is coming, the monster, with its snakelike body and hungry maw. But you can't find the strength to continue.
And that's when the tide changes.
A vivid icy light pierces through the dark like skyglow, showing the path to the future. A crystalline object falls down from nowhere, into your hands. You look down at it shakily, trying to breathe. You know, instinctively, that this will allow you to wield ice. That you can use this to decide which monster will live, and which will die.
You pull yourself to your feet one more time. You wipe the tears away.
It's the last time you ever cried. It's the last time you felt anything at all.
Wow! This is! sure fucking something! Unfortunately, we both are going to fling memories back and forth to one another and then chat about it afterward. DOUBLE THE CONFUSION AND DEPRESSION.
Once the lil piggy rushes by, Shenhe gets this memory to go along with her own. Daddy issues? :) Yes, of course.]
sorry she just has to sit down for a second. she does! on the ground if she has to.]
... What? [let's just. start there. both of these, the fact that she saw her own memories in 4K HD and also what she assumes are his just makes her brain want to shut off entirely.]
[Not Shenhe and Matsui both having to take their breakdowns on the ground. IT'S FINE.
He probably shouldn't be this shocked, but here he is, being shocked as hell. It's... curious. It's wild. To experience things from someone else this way. And that isn't even touching what he saw.
After a moment, he moves over and kneels down in front of her. If anyone here can straighten back up from something like this, it'd maybe be him (and Buzen).]
[it's alarming how same hat they are sometimes wheeze]
... I don't understand what I saw. [she's not sure what clones are or if that was true or what was going on there and also she doesn't know what to say about her own thing so. this.]
[she brings a hand up to rest on top of his, lightly.]
... If I ask, it is only fair that you can ask, as well. [a beat.] You are... I don't know what they meant by clone. Or not a clone. The clarification.
[He is looking at her, but then looks slightly away.]
We grew up in different eras and with different people around us. The times in which we were raised has given us different personalities. But our bodies are duplicates.
We found out after what you saw... that he was trying to destroy all the humans with a virus. I thought... there was a better way, but in the end... I will be exactly like him, I think. I have already become like him here with what I've done.
Worse perhaps since he had been killed before he could.
After he died, he was reborn again as a child, and now he is my son instead of my father. Grandfather took him to raise. And it will be my duty to impart to him last words, a reminder not to forget our hate for humans.
she thinks that over, for a long moment. there have been so many examples of why humans deserve to be hated, in her life. the biggest monster she's ever met was her father. she thinks about how many people here that she's met have not quite been human, and how they'd been treated.
she frowns.]
Do they deserve it? [hatred. she just wants to know his opinion.]
There really isn't much else for him to do but patiently wait for her to decide what she wants to say. He isn't the type to wander off like an edgy boy anyway.
But likewise, it takes him a bit to respond.]
We think they do. [Which does not explain anything, so he adds:] We are... a race of people from China long ago.
We could commune with animals. We gave the humans their prophecies, and we protected the humans from the destructive ones. We became priest and priestesses.
...But an emperor's advances were rejected by one of the priestesses, and he became so offended he had all of our people killed. Only one managed to escape and ever since, we have vowed to watch every one perish.
[the way count d has like, the same backstory as the swords but also rang. knives-ass motherfucker]
... It surprises me, sometimes, how awful humans can be. [it feels like there are so few that are good people, in her experience.] I can't say I wouldn't have done the same.
I have no other answer to give you, Miss Shenhe. It does not matter what I want. My father left me with a reminder as he died: that hope is useless. And I will give the same reminder to my son later.
It's our duty... to not forget until the last human is gone.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
w4, MONDAY
no preamble i'm just giving you a fucked up pig that runs past where the cherry blossoms are because of course that's where she is.
:tadafrog:]
no subject
Wow! This is! sure fucking something! Unfortunately, we both are going to fling memories back and forth to one another and then chat about it afterward. DOUBLE THE CONFUSION AND DEPRESSION.
Once the lil piggy rushes by, Shenhe gets this memory to go along with her own. Daddy issues? :) Yes, of course.]
no subject
sorry she just has to sit down for a second. she does! on the ground if she has to.]
... What? [let's just. start there. both of these, the fact that she saw her own memories in 4K HD and also what she assumes are his just makes her brain want to shut off entirely.]
no subject
He probably shouldn't be this shocked, but here he is, being shocked as hell. It's... curious. It's wild. To experience things from someone else this way. And that isn't even touching what he saw.
After a moment, he moves over and kneels down in front of her. If anyone here can straighten back up from something like this, it'd maybe be him (and Buzen).]
I'm not sure... I'm sorry, Miss Shenhe.
no subject
... I don't understand what I saw. [she's not sure what clones are or if that was true or what was going on there and also she doesn't know what to say about her own thing so. this.]
no subject
Though he probably understands it theoretically more than what she'd be able to understand of his. He reaches out to gently touch her upper arm.]
It... was memories, I think. You don't have to say anything. [If she didn't want to talk about it.] But... you may ask.
[No reason to run and hide now. They're out there.]
no subject
... If I ask, it is only fair that you can ask, as well. [a beat.] You are... I don't know what they meant by clone. Or not a clone. The clarification.
no subject
His lips thin, though he doesn't look sad exactly so much as he looks resigned.]
I'm a replica of my father. It means... I'm not my own person. We are the same. Physically at least.
no subject
no subject
We grew up in different eras and with different people around us. The times in which we were raised has given us different personalities. But our bodies are duplicates.
no subject
no subject
We found out after what you saw... that he was trying to destroy all the humans with a virus. I thought... there was a better way, but in the end... I will be exactly like him, I think. I have already become like him here with what I've done.
Worse perhaps since he had been killed before he could.
After he died, he was reborn again as a child, and now he is my son instead of my father. Grandfather took him to raise. And it will be my duty to impart to him last words, a reminder not to forget our hate for humans.
no subject
she thinks that over, for a long moment. there have been so many examples of why humans deserve to be hated, in her life. the biggest monster she's ever met was her father. she thinks about how many people here that she's met have not quite been human, and how they'd been treated.
she frowns.]
Do they deserve it? [hatred. she just wants to know his opinion.]
no subject
There really isn't much else for him to do but patiently wait for her to decide what she wants to say. He isn't the type to wander off like an edgy boy anyway.
But likewise, it takes him a bit to respond.]
We think they do. [Which does not explain anything, so he adds:] We are... a race of people from China long ago.
We could commune with animals. We gave the humans their prophecies, and we protected the humans from the destructive ones. We became priest and priestesses.
...But an emperor's advances were rejected by one of the priestesses, and he became so offended he had all of our people killed. Only one managed to escape and ever since, we have vowed to watch every one perish.
no subject
... It surprises me, sometimes, how awful humans can be. [it feels like there are so few that are good people, in her experience.] I can't say I wouldn't have done the same.
[but.]
Do you want to do this?
no subject
...
[He frowns gently and glances away.]
It is something... I cannot run from. It is a duty always to be mine. While I live, when I die, and when I'm once more reborn. It will always be mine.
no subject
That is not what I asked, Count D. [she is unfortunately just like this.]
no subject
I have no other answer to give you, Miss Shenhe. It does not matter what I want. My father left me with a reminder as he died: that hope is useless. And I will give the same reminder to my son later.
It's our duty... to not forget until the last human is gone.
no subject
Hope is not useless. [she says, firmly.] I don't understand this reasoning. You do not want to be like him? So don't.
no subject
It is... not quite so easy as that. But I... understand what you're trying to say, and I thank you.
no subject
Hmph. [she peers at him.] You are the one not making it easy.
... Nahri is just as stubborn. The world is full of minds I can't change.
no subject
And what about you, Miss Shenhe...? What if we wanted something different for you?
no subject
Like what? [she seems surprised. like, what else is there.]
no subject
To be happy.
[He will just say it.]
To know you can show your happiness.
no subject
Oh. [...] Do you want that?
[she knows that her team did, but.]
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)