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Title: the last goodbye
Fandom: Ninja Gaiden/Dead or Alive
Characters: Ryu Hayabusa
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Spoilers for entire game
Words: -
Summary: After the destruction of Vigoor, Hayabusa deals with his ghosts the only way he knows how - alone.
---
A dead chrysanthemum
and yet - isn't there still something
remaining in it?
takahama kyoshi
When Hayabusa first comes home (he tells himself it is only to return her Eye, he is done and has nothing else to give)--when he comes home, spring is just beginning to touch the high points of the mountain, warm breezes stirring branches budding with tiny green leaves and the pale pink of sakura blossoms. The nights are still cold and the delicate leaves are always in danger of being withered in a sudden frost, but when Hayabusa returns the breeze is warm and the ground is soft and wet from melted frost and the air gleams with little fireflies newly born.
If he lets himself think about it the irony is thick enough to cut with his sword, but Hayabusa has become very good at not thinking about things in the past few weeks, and the sight of frayed banners and forlorn headstones amid fresh shoots of grass is not as damaging as it could have been. He is a little worried about seeing Kureha's grave but even that is not so hard--he puts the Eye on her headstone and watches it wink and glitter in the moonlight and though there's a tinge of something it doesn't hurt, (he's gotten good at that too, at ignoring the heaviness in his chest and the stinging at the edges of his eyes) and leaving is easier than he thought it would be.
It's over, he had said, and he'd meant it. It's over, and he's fine, and he can start over now.
***
He originally planned to leave right away, but he is behind schedule (there's a part of him--an irritating snide part that doesn't shut up--that says as if you had a schedule to keep) and he arrives at the village later than he expected, late enough for him to decide that he should probably stay here, for just one night. He tells himself he'll leave in the morning.
(It's not over at all.)
***
A week later, the messages start coming.
At first they come speared on iris-decorated kunai. Ryu-sama, the Hajin-Mon would be honored if you would grace us with your presence, they begin in Ayane's delicate script, and he responds with I am deeply touched by your gracious offer but I have duties here I must complete and she writes The Hajin-Mon understand that you must have a great many things to do at this time and so on and so forth, though they are both quite aware that he is doing nothing at all.
Then they come tied to arrows fitted with black feathers--The Tenjin-Mon request the presence of Hayabusa Clan Leader Ryu (Hayabusa almost laughs at this--almost because he is not completely sure that it will come out as laughter) to discuss matters of mutual interest to both parties and though the paper bears Hayate's elegant handwriting the words are not his own. Hayabusa responds with I apologize but I do not have the time for such a meeting--another lie, because all he has now is time, endless time--and though he writes his messages in his own hand they are not his words either.
And one day he receives a very short letter--Ryu, we're worried--and to that he answers, I need time.
The messages stop.
***
In April (one night had turned into one week and one week became one month; he is beginning to lose track of all the ones)--in April the mountains are just shy of blooming into the brillance of spring and Hayabusa realizes that if he plans on clearing out the debris of the fire he should probably start doing it soon.
The work is harder than he thought it would be--rainsoaked wood is heavier than dry wood, he knows, but being wet doesn't stop the wood from breaking and splintering in his grasp, fat swollen splinters jabbing deep into his palms. But splinters are nothing and he ignores them; (the part of him that doesn't like to shut up thinks maybe you ignore too much and Hayabusa pushes that aside too) after three days of dragging the broken house frames out of the streets and tossing them into the woods his hands are raw and bleeding. He wraps them up in soot stained cloths--everything, it seems, is covered in soot, even months after the fire and rain and snow-and continues to clear paths that only he uses now. Every now and then he stops and gazes at the empty houses--sometimes, when the sun is low in the sky and his hands won't bend anymore he goes inside (only a moment, he tells himself) and collapses into something like a sitting position.
It is when he lies in a crumpled heap on fading carpets in fading sunlight that he starts to think about what might come next. He thinks of rebuilding the gutted homes and then he'll fill them with people, new clan members (how or where they'll come from is something he doesn't dwell on; it's not important, if you build it they will come, it'll work because he wants it and he deserves it and he knows, he knows, if you want and want and you've done everything right in the end things work out they have to) and he dreams feverish wild beautiful insane plans and then chill wind blows through gaps between the wood, bringing him back to the present. It's dark outside and the day is wasted but it's alright; darkness makes the empty scarred homes look almost normal and moonlight is more forgiving than the sun shining on the charred deadwood still in the streets. When he is finished--and it seems to him that these moments come more and more often--once he is done he walks back out to the old Clan Leader's residence, though his gait is not quite as smooth as it should be; very simple acts seem to escape him these days but he isn't sure why.
At night, in that tiny moment between sleeping and waking, Hayabusa thinks of leaving; this can't be good for you, the part of him that still worries about these things says. Tomorrow, he promises himself.
Before he falls into uneasy sleep he knows tomorrow will bring no relief.
***
The mornings are the hardest to deal with. His dreams--he never remembers what they are about but he knows all too well how they feel, how he wakes up with his heart pounding and blood racing and the awful sense of something crawling in the shadows close to him. Waking offers no relief; instead he waits for the Hayabusa Village to melt around him like an illusion, because he still is not sure that this is real. Being here, being home, and alive, and alone--with no ugly twisted things desperate to taste his blood waiting for him--it seems a dream.
So he waits, hand curled around his Dragon Sword tight enough to make his fingers ache and tear open his battered palm, body tensed and ready to rip apart the things that he knows must be waiting at the edges of his vision. He waits, the sun climbing higher in the sky, bright rays flooding the dark room and shining mercilessly through the gaping holes left in the frame of the residence.
Eventually his grip slackens on the hilt of the sword. Being here, being home, and alive, and alone--this is no dream.
***
It is the custom of the Hayabusa ninja to cut their hair on their twenty-first birthday--symbolically to indicate acceptance of the burden of shinobi life and the loss of youthful frivoloty; in reality it is because long hair is usually more trouble than it is worth. When Hayabusa had been younger he couldn't wait to be rid of it; he'd hated the heaviness of it on his neck, the way it tangled in even the slightest breeze, how it kept falling over his eyes and--most embarassingly--how his mother spent long hours combing it out and scolding him for not taking better care of himself.
On the fifteenth of June he walks to the room that once held the Dark Dragon Blade. For most ninja the twenty-first birthday occurs with little fanfare, but Ryu is of the Dragon Lineage and his twenty-first would have been the day he would be offically ordained as leader of the Hayabusa Clan. The ceremony itself would be short, with only he and his father and Kureha there; he would kneel in front of the Dark Dragon Blade and place the Dragon Sword in front of him--sheathed--and Kureha would lift up his hair (he can imagine her fingers soft and delicate on the nape of his neck--she had beautiful hands, he remembers) and shear it off with a single swipe of her ceremonial tanto. Then his father would take the Dark Dragon Blade from its display, and place it in front of him, next to the Dragon Sword.
His father would say--
"If I were to ask you, 'Where does the path to strength lie--in darkness or in light?'--what would you tell me?
He would reply--
"I would tell you, He who would gain great strength knows neither darkness nor light."
His father would replace the Dark Dragon Blade, then, and unsheathe the Dragon Sword; Kureha would hand him a new sheath, made specially for him--his only gift. He would have taken the Dragon Sword from his father and place it in its new sheath, make the blade his own. And there would be an enormous celebration afterwards, his last birthday celebration--mostly because after being ordained Clan Leader there wasn't anywhere else to go status-wise and celebrations after that were rather pointless.
Alone in the room that Kureha once guarded, (was it in this room that she received that fatal blow?--was that faded stain on the wood her blood?) Hayabusa kneels, tugging out the band that holds his thick brown hair back. It is slow going; his hair--hell, everything about him--is a complete mess, tangled and sooty and sticking out in every direction possible. He attempts to brush it out in some semblance of smoothness, tearing out the heavy knots because he has no patience to bother teasing them out. (His mother would be furious. He had been born with her hair and she'd adored it; forced him to sit down while she brushed it out until it was smooth and shining and beautiful while he squirmed and whined and threatened to get it cut so short it wouldn't even go past his ears.) Eventually his hair is beaten down into something relatively managable. Hayabusa picks up the kunai he has brought in, (no swift-cutting cermonial knife here, the cedarwood box that held it and the gold-and-green kimono he would have worn were destroyed in the raid) but kunai are not made for cutting; he'll have to hack it off.
It should be an easy thing, it is an easy thing--but he stops before the kunai touches his hair.
(This is not how he wants it to be--kneeling on floorboards discolored with the blood of his brothers and sisters, his people, wearing a simple ash-covered black gi and facing the empty display that once held the Blade that drew the blood he sits in now--and he hacking and sawing at his hair with a dulled kunai like nothing in the world is wrong with this--as if the missing Blade and missing father and missing Kureha and missing clan were all extras, little asides that he can do without.)
The kunai falls from Hayabusa's torn hands to the bloodstained floor as he walks out of the room. Outside, the sun is bright and hot and his eyes water with tears.
***
In July summer is in full swing, the mountains bursting with colors and fragrance and the air filled with birds trilling bright songs.
In July summer has yet to touch the Hayabusa Village; the scorched earth bears no flowers or grass or even weeds and taints the wind with the faint smell of flame, and the only birds that fly here are the crows.
In July Hayabusa puts his rebuilding on hold; July is the month of Hatsubon, the first Festival of the Dead after the raid. The first day of the month he writes out everything that needs to be done--making lanterns to guide the wandering spirits back and setting up the shouryoudana to welcome them home; building the frames the lanterns will hang on and cooking food to offer to the deceased--and the enormity of the task almost makes him sick. He has no idea where he will get the materials to make the lanters or how he'll chop down the trees that he needs to build the lantern frames or how the hell he will find enough food for all the hundreds of people who died, and for the first time in his life Hayabusa doubts himself, and that awful sick feeling terrifies him than anything else he's ever faced. Vigoor had been different, because in Vigoor the horrors faced him head-on and he saw death in their eyes and Hayabusa knew how death felt and he had no fear of it; he could wrap his hands around it and strangle it lifeless or sink his blade deep into its flesh and feel it go still. But this is something he cannot see and if he fails he cannot think of what will happen and--deep down--the only thing he ever truly feared was failure.
***
Hatsubon arrives and somehow Hayabusa has managed to prepare the village properly, even though the lantern-frames are made from the blackened boards of collapsed homes, and there is only one massive shouryoudana set up before the village graveyard (in the end it was too much, there were too many dead and not enough of him to make them all little spirit altars, with the cucumber horses and eggplant cows, and he hopes they understand and find their way home) and the only food he has to offer are plain rice balls and cold water.
On the first day Hayabusa carries armloads of wildflowers to the graveyard and scatters the fragrant blossoms over the dust and ash and stones that make up the mass grave he and Murai dug months ago for his people. The flowers do not stay bright for long--fallen onto black ash and soot, their colors are dulled quickly. He sighs and whispers apologies as he walks, (forgive me, I am the only one left--be patient and oh please come home until he comes to Kureha's headstone. The Eye is still there, sparkling in the bright summer sun, and he sighs again, kneeling down to place a sakura branch in front of her grave.
"I'm sorry," he says, his voice rough from lack of use. "I...I meant for this--" --he waves one arm in a wide arc, encompassing the sight of the whole village-- "I meant for it to be...better." He falls silent again, straining to hear or see or feel something--anything--that might tell him that the wandering spirits have found their way home.
Nothing.
Hayabusa leaves the graveyard, a last whispered prayer of apology leaving his lips.
***
The last night of the festival he takes out the little boat-lanterns that will be sent down the river to guide the dead spirits back to heaven. A part of him wonders why he bothers; he has spent the last two days and nights in silent prayer, trying to hear the voiceless footsteps of things that have no weight or a hair-raising tingle at his neck caused by fleshless fingers--but there had been nothing.
He'd been absolutely terrified of returning spirits when he had been younger. When he was five he had tried to stop them from coming back by stealing the cucumber horses and eggplant cows, and he'd planned on throwing the lanterns into the river when no one was looking and maybe writing Please Go Away on all the houses for good measure, until Kureha had found the vegetable animals hidden in the corner of his bedroom and told his parents about it. They had punished him by making him sleep right in front of the family shouryoudana to greet his ancestors personally. (That had really scared him to bits, because his ojii-san--who had a tendency to box Hayabusa's ears at the slightest of provocations--had died three months before and Hayabusa had been certain he would do something awful to him when he came back.)
But now he begs and prays for them to come home, his head bowed and whispering please please please come home, I need to see you again please I have done so much alone!, and he sleeps in front of the shouryoudana each night--partly to keep the crows away, partly because he is afraid he will miss something precious if he leaves, and partly because his body aches terribly from too much work and not enough rest and he cannot drag himself over to the residence without pain.
Still there is nothing, and in the evening of the last day Hayabusa sets up the boat-lanterns by the rivershore and begins to light them. It takes hours to complete--there are hundreds of lanterns, one for each lost brother or sister, and Hayabusa's hands are battered and rent open and raw from all of his labor and do not light matches easily. By the time he done the sun has set and the moon is already risen, and the river is the same velvetblack color as the night sky.
He pushes the little lanterns out one-by-one, and soon the river surface is covered with hundreds of dots of lights, mimicking the starry sky above. Hayabusa watches until the lights begin to blur and his eyes start to sting, and then he turns away and begins to stumble up the steps leading back to the village. He did not know it would be so hard to watch something so beautiful.
There is a soft pssh behind him, like the sigh of someone dying, as the first lantern sinks beneath the surface of the water, and he flinches at the sound. Then, as if following some unspoken command, the rest of the lanterns follow--not at once but in groups of two or three and it is like one terrible long last breath and it strikes Hayabusa to the heart, lodging deep inside of him and drawing blood. He slips and his hands reach out to stop him but they are aching and open and bleeding and crumple under his weight.
The very last lantern falls beneath the surface with a sad little cry, and at the sound of it Hayabusa screams in rage and pounds his broken fists against stone, staining it red. He is bruised and aching and hurting beyond belief and the heaviness in his chest and stinging in his eyes are too much to bear now and he cries because he did everything he could, everything he should, and he is alonealonealone and the tears flow like his lifeblood and hurt even more.
It is like dying all over again, and when the darkness overtakes him he is thankful for the release.
***
Skritch-skritch-skritch.
Something sharp brushes his arm. He twitches.
SKRITCH-skritch-pokepokepoke.
Green eyes tinged red crack open.
"...you again," Hayabusa mutters.
The falcon cocks its head to one side.
Hayabusa reaches out to the bird with one hand. He has some vague idea of catching hold of it. Maybe strangling it.
The falcon flaps its wings and clumsily moves backwards, giving an undignified squawk. Hayabusa pushes himself to his feet, wincing at the pain in his hands and glaring at the bird.
"If you don't leave me to die in peace," Ryu hisses, "I'll--I'll--" He reaches out to snatch the falcon, squeeze its' life out. The bird spreads its' wings and takes off, flying over to the gate. Hayabusa raises his eyes to follow it, and--
There are falcons everywhere. They perch on the gate walls, on trees, on the rotting frames of the village houses--everywhere he looks. Hayabusa walks up the last few steps, stops. He sinks to his knees, still staring. There must be hundreds, he thinks.
They contemplate each other for a moment, and then the falcons suddenly take flight, bursting forth from the village in a black and white cloud that spreads in all directions, no two birds taking the same path. Feathers fall around Hayabusa like rain and cover the scorched earth in soft greys and browns and it is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen.
When the sky clears Hayabusa lowers his gaze back to the now empty village, and notices that the first falcon is still staring at him from the entry gate. Perhaps it is simply a trick of the moonlight, but this falcon's feathers seem unusually bright; the dark feathers black instead of brown, the light feathers white rather than grey. The bird glides down to rest in front of Hayabusa, and he cannot help but notice the delicate perfection of its' claws as it settles.
"I..." He does not know where to begin or what to say. "I...forgive me." The falcon flutters closer, and Hayabusa reaches out with shaking hands to pet the silken feathers of its' head.
"I don't know what to do," he whispers brokenly.
The falcon hops back, its' liquid brown eyes locked onto Hayabusa's own. Then it, too, takes off, soaring high into the night sky and leaving the village far behind. Hayabusa watches it until it is swallowed by the horizon, and then he turns away, walking back to the silent and abandoned village to sleep.
***
The next morning Hayabusa washes out his raw and bleeding hands in the river and wraps them up in fresh white bandages. Beside him lies a sack that holds his scant belongings; the Dragon Sword lies strapped to his back. He finishes tending his wounds and looks back at the Hayabusa Village behind him. Maybe he shouldn't leave; he should, at the very least, take down the half-burned, half-rotted out houses, or clear the graveyard one last time, or clear out the remaining weapon and food stores, or--
He thinks of hundreds of falcons soaring into the night sky, none of them staying.
Hayabusa turns back to the river, to the valleys ahead, and breaks into a run, his feet light on ground, on water, never looking back.
(It is over.)
He is free.
Fandom: Ninja Gaiden/Dead or Alive
Characters: Ryu Hayabusa
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Spoilers for entire game
Words: -
Summary: After the destruction of Vigoor, Hayabusa deals with his ghosts the only way he knows how - alone.
---
A dead chrysanthemum
and yet - isn't there still something
remaining in it?
takahama kyoshi
When Hayabusa first comes home (he tells himself it is only to return her Eye, he is done and has nothing else to give)--when he comes home, spring is just beginning to touch the high points of the mountain, warm breezes stirring branches budding with tiny green leaves and the pale pink of sakura blossoms. The nights are still cold and the delicate leaves are always in danger of being withered in a sudden frost, but when Hayabusa returns the breeze is warm and the ground is soft and wet from melted frost and the air gleams with little fireflies newly born.
If he lets himself think about it the irony is thick enough to cut with his sword, but Hayabusa has become very good at not thinking about things in the past few weeks, and the sight of frayed banners and forlorn headstones amid fresh shoots of grass is not as damaging as it could have been. He is a little worried about seeing Kureha's grave but even that is not so hard--he puts the Eye on her headstone and watches it wink and glitter in the moonlight and though there's a tinge of something it doesn't hurt, (he's gotten good at that too, at ignoring the heaviness in his chest and the stinging at the edges of his eyes) and leaving is easier than he thought it would be.
It's over, he had said, and he'd meant it. It's over, and he's fine, and he can start over now.
***
He originally planned to leave right away, but he is behind schedule (there's a part of him--an irritating snide part that doesn't shut up--that says as if you had a schedule to keep) and he arrives at the village later than he expected, late enough for him to decide that he should probably stay here, for just one night. He tells himself he'll leave in the morning.
(It's not over at all.)
A week later, the messages start coming.
At first they come speared on iris-decorated kunai. Ryu-sama, the Hajin-Mon would be honored if you would grace us with your presence, they begin in Ayane's delicate script, and he responds with I am deeply touched by your gracious offer but I have duties here I must complete and she writes The Hajin-Mon understand that you must have a great many things to do at this time and so on and so forth, though they are both quite aware that he is doing nothing at all.
Then they come tied to arrows fitted with black feathers--The Tenjin-Mon request the presence of Hayabusa Clan Leader Ryu (Hayabusa almost laughs at this--almost because he is not completely sure that it will come out as laughter) to discuss matters of mutual interest to both parties and though the paper bears Hayate's elegant handwriting the words are not his own. Hayabusa responds with I apologize but I do not have the time for such a meeting--another lie, because all he has now is time, endless time--and though he writes his messages in his own hand they are not his words either.
And one day he receives a very short letter--Ryu, we're worried--and to that he answers, I need time.
The messages stop.
In April (one night had turned into one week and one week became one month; he is beginning to lose track of all the ones)--in April the mountains are just shy of blooming into the brillance of spring and Hayabusa realizes that if he plans on clearing out the debris of the fire he should probably start doing it soon.
The work is harder than he thought it would be--rainsoaked wood is heavier than dry wood, he knows, but being wet doesn't stop the wood from breaking and splintering in his grasp, fat swollen splinters jabbing deep into his palms. But splinters are nothing and he ignores them; (the part of him that doesn't like to shut up thinks maybe you ignore too much and Hayabusa pushes that aside too) after three days of dragging the broken house frames out of the streets and tossing them into the woods his hands are raw and bleeding. He wraps them up in soot stained cloths--everything, it seems, is covered in soot, even months after the fire and rain and snow-and continues to clear paths that only he uses now. Every now and then he stops and gazes at the empty houses--sometimes, when the sun is low in the sky and his hands won't bend anymore he goes inside (only a moment, he tells himself) and collapses into something like a sitting position.
It is when he lies in a crumpled heap on fading carpets in fading sunlight that he starts to think about what might come next. He thinks of rebuilding the gutted homes and then he'll fill them with people, new clan members (how or where they'll come from is something he doesn't dwell on; it's not important, if you build it they will come, it'll work because he wants it and he deserves it and he knows, he knows, if you want and want and you've done everything right in the end things work out they have to) and he dreams feverish wild beautiful insane plans and then chill wind blows through gaps between the wood, bringing him back to the present. It's dark outside and the day is wasted but it's alright; darkness makes the empty scarred homes look almost normal and moonlight is more forgiving than the sun shining on the charred deadwood still in the streets. When he is finished--and it seems to him that these moments come more and more often--once he is done he walks back out to the old Clan Leader's residence, though his gait is not quite as smooth as it should be; very simple acts seem to escape him these days but he isn't sure why.
At night, in that tiny moment between sleeping and waking, Hayabusa thinks of leaving; this can't be good for you, the part of him that still worries about these things says. Tomorrow, he promises himself.
Before he falls into uneasy sleep he knows tomorrow will bring no relief.
The mornings are the hardest to deal with. His dreams--he never remembers what they are about but he knows all too well how they feel, how he wakes up with his heart pounding and blood racing and the awful sense of something crawling in the shadows close to him. Waking offers no relief; instead he waits for the Hayabusa Village to melt around him like an illusion, because he still is not sure that this is real. Being here, being home, and alive, and alone--with no ugly twisted things desperate to taste his blood waiting for him--it seems a dream.
So he waits, hand curled around his Dragon Sword tight enough to make his fingers ache and tear open his battered palm, body tensed and ready to rip apart the things that he knows must be waiting at the edges of his vision. He waits, the sun climbing higher in the sky, bright rays flooding the dark room and shining mercilessly through the gaping holes left in the frame of the residence.
Eventually his grip slackens on the hilt of the sword. Being here, being home, and alive, and alone--this is no dream.
It is the custom of the Hayabusa ninja to cut their hair on their twenty-first birthday--symbolically to indicate acceptance of the burden of shinobi life and the loss of youthful frivoloty; in reality it is because long hair is usually more trouble than it is worth. When Hayabusa had been younger he couldn't wait to be rid of it; he'd hated the heaviness of it on his neck, the way it tangled in even the slightest breeze, how it kept falling over his eyes and--most embarassingly--how his mother spent long hours combing it out and scolding him for not taking better care of himself.
On the fifteenth of June he walks to the room that once held the Dark Dragon Blade. For most ninja the twenty-first birthday occurs with little fanfare, but Ryu is of the Dragon Lineage and his twenty-first would have been the day he would be offically ordained as leader of the Hayabusa Clan. The ceremony itself would be short, with only he and his father and Kureha there; he would kneel in front of the Dark Dragon Blade and place the Dragon Sword in front of him--sheathed--and Kureha would lift up his hair (he can imagine her fingers soft and delicate on the nape of his neck--she had beautiful hands, he remembers) and shear it off with a single swipe of her ceremonial tanto. Then his father would take the Dark Dragon Blade from its display, and place it in front of him, next to the Dragon Sword.
His father would say--
"If I were to ask you, 'Where does the path to strength lie--in darkness or in light?'--what would you tell me?
He would reply--
"I would tell you, He who would gain great strength knows neither darkness nor light."
His father would replace the Dark Dragon Blade, then, and unsheathe the Dragon Sword; Kureha would hand him a new sheath, made specially for him--his only gift. He would have taken the Dragon Sword from his father and place it in its new sheath, make the blade his own. And there would be an enormous celebration afterwards, his last birthday celebration--mostly because after being ordained Clan Leader there wasn't anywhere else to go status-wise and celebrations after that were rather pointless.
Alone in the room that Kureha once guarded, (was it in this room that she received that fatal blow?--was that faded stain on the wood her blood?) Hayabusa kneels, tugging out the band that holds his thick brown hair back. It is slow going; his hair--hell, everything about him--is a complete mess, tangled and sooty and sticking out in every direction possible. He attempts to brush it out in some semblance of smoothness, tearing out the heavy knots because he has no patience to bother teasing them out. (His mother would be furious. He had been born with her hair and she'd adored it; forced him to sit down while she brushed it out until it was smooth and shining and beautiful while he squirmed and whined and threatened to get it cut so short it wouldn't even go past his ears.) Eventually his hair is beaten down into something relatively managable. Hayabusa picks up the kunai he has brought in, (no swift-cutting cermonial knife here, the cedarwood box that held it and the gold-and-green kimono he would have worn were destroyed in the raid) but kunai are not made for cutting; he'll have to hack it off.
It should be an easy thing, it is an easy thing--but he stops before the kunai touches his hair.
(This is not how he wants it to be--kneeling on floorboards discolored with the blood of his brothers and sisters, his people, wearing a simple ash-covered black gi and facing the empty display that once held the Blade that drew the blood he sits in now--and he hacking and sawing at his hair with a dulled kunai like nothing in the world is wrong with this--as if the missing Blade and missing father and missing Kureha and missing clan were all extras, little asides that he can do without.)
The kunai falls from Hayabusa's torn hands to the bloodstained floor as he walks out of the room. Outside, the sun is bright and hot and his eyes water with tears.
In July summer is in full swing, the mountains bursting with colors and fragrance and the air filled with birds trilling bright songs.
In July summer has yet to touch the Hayabusa Village; the scorched earth bears no flowers or grass or even weeds and taints the wind with the faint smell of flame, and the only birds that fly here are the crows.
In July Hayabusa puts his rebuilding on hold; July is the month of Hatsubon, the first Festival of the Dead after the raid. The first day of the month he writes out everything that needs to be done--making lanterns to guide the wandering spirits back and setting up the shouryoudana to welcome them home; building the frames the lanterns will hang on and cooking food to offer to the deceased--and the enormity of the task almost makes him sick. He has no idea where he will get the materials to make the lanters or how he'll chop down the trees that he needs to build the lantern frames or how the hell he will find enough food for all the hundreds of people who died, and for the first time in his life Hayabusa doubts himself, and that awful sick feeling terrifies him than anything else he's ever faced. Vigoor had been different, because in Vigoor the horrors faced him head-on and he saw death in their eyes and Hayabusa knew how death felt and he had no fear of it; he could wrap his hands around it and strangle it lifeless or sink his blade deep into its flesh and feel it go still. But this is something he cannot see and if he fails he cannot think of what will happen and--deep down--the only thing he ever truly feared was failure.
Hatsubon arrives and somehow Hayabusa has managed to prepare the village properly, even though the lantern-frames are made from the blackened boards of collapsed homes, and there is only one massive shouryoudana set up before the village graveyard (in the end it was too much, there were too many dead and not enough of him to make them all little spirit altars, with the cucumber horses and eggplant cows, and he hopes they understand and find their way home) and the only food he has to offer are plain rice balls and cold water.
On the first day Hayabusa carries armloads of wildflowers to the graveyard and scatters the fragrant blossoms over the dust and ash and stones that make up the mass grave he and Murai dug months ago for his people. The flowers do not stay bright for long--fallen onto black ash and soot, their colors are dulled quickly. He sighs and whispers apologies as he walks, (forgive me, I am the only one left--be patient and oh please come home until he comes to Kureha's headstone. The Eye is still there, sparkling in the bright summer sun, and he sighs again, kneeling down to place a sakura branch in front of her grave.
"I'm sorry," he says, his voice rough from lack of use. "I...I meant for this--" --he waves one arm in a wide arc, encompassing the sight of the whole village-- "I meant for it to be...better." He falls silent again, straining to hear or see or feel something--anything--that might tell him that the wandering spirits have found their way home.
Nothing.
Hayabusa leaves the graveyard, a last whispered prayer of apology leaving his lips.
***
The last night of the festival he takes out the little boat-lanterns that will be sent down the river to guide the dead spirits back to heaven. A part of him wonders why he bothers; he has spent the last two days and nights in silent prayer, trying to hear the voiceless footsteps of things that have no weight or a hair-raising tingle at his neck caused by fleshless fingers--but there had been nothing.
He'd been absolutely terrified of returning spirits when he had been younger. When he was five he had tried to stop them from coming back by stealing the cucumber horses and eggplant cows, and he'd planned on throwing the lanterns into the river when no one was looking and maybe writing Please Go Away on all the houses for good measure, until Kureha had found the vegetable animals hidden in the corner of his bedroom and told his parents about it. They had punished him by making him sleep right in front of the family shouryoudana to greet his ancestors personally. (That had really scared him to bits, because his ojii-san--who had a tendency to box Hayabusa's ears at the slightest of provocations--had died three months before and Hayabusa had been certain he would do something awful to him when he came back.)
But now he begs and prays for them to come home, his head bowed and whispering please please please come home, I need to see you again please I have done so much alone!, and he sleeps in front of the shouryoudana each night--partly to keep the crows away, partly because he is afraid he will miss something precious if he leaves, and partly because his body aches terribly from too much work and not enough rest and he cannot drag himself over to the residence without pain.
Still there is nothing, and in the evening of the last day Hayabusa sets up the boat-lanterns by the rivershore and begins to light them. It takes hours to complete--there are hundreds of lanterns, one for each lost brother or sister, and Hayabusa's hands are battered and rent open and raw from all of his labor and do not light matches easily. By the time he done the sun has set and the moon is already risen, and the river is the same velvetblack color as the night sky.
He pushes the little lanterns out one-by-one, and soon the river surface is covered with hundreds of dots of lights, mimicking the starry sky above. Hayabusa watches until the lights begin to blur and his eyes start to sting, and then he turns away and begins to stumble up the steps leading back to the village. He did not know it would be so hard to watch something so beautiful.
There is a soft pssh behind him, like the sigh of someone dying, as the first lantern sinks beneath the surface of the water, and he flinches at the sound. Then, as if following some unspoken command, the rest of the lanterns follow--not at once but in groups of two or three and it is like one terrible long last breath and it strikes Hayabusa to the heart, lodging deep inside of him and drawing blood. He slips and his hands reach out to stop him but they are aching and open and bleeding and crumple under his weight.
The very last lantern falls beneath the surface with a sad little cry, and at the sound of it Hayabusa screams in rage and pounds his broken fists against stone, staining it red. He is bruised and aching and hurting beyond belief and the heaviness in his chest and stinging in his eyes are too much to bear now and he cries because he did everything he could, everything he should, and he is alonealonealone and the tears flow like his lifeblood and hurt even more.
It is like dying all over again, and when the darkness overtakes him he is thankful for the release.
***
Skritch-skritch-skritch.
Something sharp brushes his arm. He twitches.
SKRITCH-skritch-pokepokepoke.
Green eyes tinged red crack open.
"...you again," Hayabusa mutters.
The falcon cocks its head to one side.
Hayabusa reaches out to the bird with one hand. He has some vague idea of catching hold of it. Maybe strangling it.
The falcon flaps its wings and clumsily moves backwards, giving an undignified squawk. Hayabusa pushes himself to his feet, wincing at the pain in his hands and glaring at the bird.
"If you don't leave me to die in peace," Ryu hisses, "I'll--I'll--" He reaches out to snatch the falcon, squeeze its' life out. The bird spreads its' wings and takes off, flying over to the gate. Hayabusa raises his eyes to follow it, and--
There are falcons everywhere. They perch on the gate walls, on trees, on the rotting frames of the village houses--everywhere he looks. Hayabusa walks up the last few steps, stops. He sinks to his knees, still staring. There must be hundreds, he thinks.
They contemplate each other for a moment, and then the falcons suddenly take flight, bursting forth from the village in a black and white cloud that spreads in all directions, no two birds taking the same path. Feathers fall around Hayabusa like rain and cover the scorched earth in soft greys and browns and it is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen.
When the sky clears Hayabusa lowers his gaze back to the now empty village, and notices that the first falcon is still staring at him from the entry gate. Perhaps it is simply a trick of the moonlight, but this falcon's feathers seem unusually bright; the dark feathers black instead of brown, the light feathers white rather than grey. The bird glides down to rest in front of Hayabusa, and he cannot help but notice the delicate perfection of its' claws as it settles.
"I..." He does not know where to begin or what to say. "I...forgive me." The falcon flutters closer, and Hayabusa reaches out with shaking hands to pet the silken feathers of its' head.
"I don't know what to do," he whispers brokenly.
The falcon hops back, its' liquid brown eyes locked onto Hayabusa's own. Then it, too, takes off, soaring high into the night sky and leaving the village far behind. Hayabusa watches it until it is swallowed by the horizon, and then he turns away, walking back to the silent and abandoned village to sleep.
***
The next morning Hayabusa washes out his raw and bleeding hands in the river and wraps them up in fresh white bandages. Beside him lies a sack that holds his scant belongings; the Dragon Sword lies strapped to his back. He finishes tending his wounds and looks back at the Hayabusa Village behind him. Maybe he shouldn't leave; he should, at the very least, take down the half-burned, half-rotted out houses, or clear the graveyard one last time, or clear out the remaining weapon and food stores, or--
He thinks of hundreds of falcons soaring into the night sky, none of them staying.
Hayabusa turns back to the river, to the valleys ahead, and breaks into a run, his feet light on ground, on water, never looking back.
(It is over.)
He is free.
