For a Boy
I must leave.
I can't explain why, but it will be enough to say that I won't be returning. At least for a while. A situation has occurred, and I have to leave the place I have called home for the last couple of months. I won't... can't get into details, but I know you will understand.
My heart is filled with regret and something akin to pain of loss, I suppose, but because of my nature and upbringing, as you like to put it, I can't be sure of what my feelings are. I know that life will be hard, and I will miss you all, but there is nothing I can do. When life gives you lemons make lemonade, ne? Somehow, I never liked that saying. It's too... compliant, resigned, docile... all things I'm not.
I want you to know that as I leave, I leave thinking of you not as an enemy or a rival, but as a friend. We are the strangest kind of friends, true, but friends nonetheless. Even though I do find you infuriating at times, and I do love to tease you, there is still respect for you in me. I respect you, and I want you to know that much if nothing else.
I think of you not as the snobby, haughty princess you show yourself to be, but as the purple haired girl from long ago. The girl before Tenchi, Yosho, the attack on Jurai, and the worst of Kagato. That day when we made flower crowns, and our first dispute. You claimed your beautifully arranged, color coded flower crown was perfect in it's classical beauty, worthy of a princess. I said my flower crown, with many wild flowers mixed in no definite pattern, was beautiful in it's originally. We ended up trading the crowns, and though I don't know what you did with my crown, I kept yours for as long as I could... for as long as Kagato let me. He destroyed the crown on sight, laughing at my petty childhood behavior, and berating me for not killing you. The beating he gave me hurt, but killing the only person who I considered a friend would have destroyed whatever humanity was left in me.
Maybe it didn't mean as much to you, but for me it was... still is the only thing I care to remember of the experience of Kagato in my life. Those days.... I was alone and scared, as I had no one to turn to or a shoulder to cry on. Not that I was allowed to cry... the one time Kagato saw me cry I learned to never do it again. Kagato felt crying was a sign of weakness, a sign a machine was incapable of doing. That's all I was to him, a machine, incapable of thinking, feeling, choosing - capable of nothing but destruction. A tool, a toy, something he could use to do his dirty work and he could dispose of at any moment.
I believed him.
I took his words as true, and I did as he ordered. I believed I was nothing but a machine, an artificial being, as he liked to call me. I disliked killing and destroying, grief and pain repulsed me, but that didn't matter. Kagato was my master, and I had to obey him. I was nothing but what he told me I was. All I knew was pain and suffering. I never understood love. When I saw mothers holding their children, trying to protect them from my wrath, gladly giving their lives for their children, I could not understand them. I felt rage and anger for them, and I hated them and their children, because they had something I had always wanted. Then I felt sorrowful, and I wanted nothing more than to be the child in that mother's arms. To have someone to love and protect me. I dismissed these feelings as malfunctions and errors in my programing system. I assumed my mechanical existence and dismissed everything else. After all, I was nothing but a machine.
That was when I met you.
You were so perfect. Beautiful, with your long purple hair and bright ruby eyes. Someone Kagato would actually admire for a moment. He always let me know I was displeasing to the eyes. You were dressed in beautiful royal gowns, while I was wearing the rough combat suit Kagato ordered me to wear. You had a garden built especially for you, while I claimed nothing to my name. Even your name was worthy of a noble lady. Ayeka. Kagato named me Ryoko- the demon caller- a name that seemed to represent my existence.
I disliked you, but at the same time I wanted to be like you, to BE you. You were all I wasn't - beautiful, loved, innocent, free.... But then you asked me if I wanted to play, and I did. We had so much fun. I was a child, like you, not the killing machine Kagato had crafted me into. My hands weren't stained with blood for a moment. I could look at my reflection and not feel repulsion. I was carefree and happy. I felt alive for the first time in my life.
Our carefully arranged flower crowns..... It was the first time I knew that something good and beautiful could come from the hands that had killed so many. You taught me that I was not a machine - at least not entirely. I learned that I had the power to challenge my upbringing, that I could choose whether or not to kill and destroy. It was the first time I didn't follow Kagato's instructions, and although I paid a high price for it, to this day I don't regret it.
It has been a long time since then, but the image is still as vivid and fresh as if it had only happened moments ago.
Centuries later I returned to Jurai with new instructions from Kagato. This time, to make sure that I would follow them, Kagato took over my will and controlled me. I was unable to break free of him and I devastated Jurai until I gained enough power to stop my rampage. That day Yosho became a hero. Everyone knew of the great warrior who subdued the most notorious Space Pirate. Yosho knew, however, that the glory was not his. He had fought back bravely, but had been obviously overpowered. He realized he was fighting a losing battle. He would and should have perished that day, along with all of Jurai. But he hadn't.
The Pirate who had been fighting furiously relented.
I grew strong enough to toss Kagato's control aside, but I knew that I couldn't just stop fighting. Kagato would be furious... and the punishment likely to follow.... I didn't have the strength to confront Kagato, not again. I let Yosho gain the upper hand and he "controlled" me. Though I do wish my punishment had been less severe. Being in a cold, dark, wet cave for several centuries is an experience I'm not willing to go through again.
It was fate or luck that we both fell in love with the same person. Tenchi was the golden apple of discord. It hurt me deeply to think that a single man could drive such a hedge between us. Unknowingly so, to make matters worse. But I would not back off, and neither would you. We were much too proud and used to getting our own way to do so. We behaved like spoiled brats, didn't we?
For a man. A boy, really. To think that a teenage boy from some remote planet in the middle of nowhere could hold so much power over a space pirate.... When I look back on it, I feel ashamed. I let go of whatever freedom I had gained. I was a coward hiding behind a tough facade, nothing more. Even though I had gained what I had so desperately wished for, I gave it all away. I would do as he wished, be what he wanted me to be. Or I tried, at the least. I wasn't very successful, was I?
For a boy.... I gave up any chance of friendship. I thought that it didn't matter, that he would be all I needed. I lived off any crumbs of affection he gave me and held on to them, fearing I would drown into nothingness without them. But I had drowned already, long ago. I had allowed myself to become an empty shell, a doll. I had left all traces of what I had once been somewhere, and now I didn't know what I was.
Perhaps.... Perhaps I can tell you why I'm leaving. But you mustn't tell, do this for me, I only beg this of you.
I woke up and did the things I usually did. It was a normal day, an ordinary day. Nothing strange happened, nothing unusual, nothing. But when I looked at myself in the mirror... something gave. I saw myself, what I was, and then it came to me. I was nothing. There was no longer a little girl, a pirate, a lovesick girl. I was empty. I no longer knew what I was or what I wanted. I had lost anything and everything that distinguished me as Ryoko. Somehow, during my stay here I had allowed my love for one boy to rip everything else away. I stared at myself and realized I didn't know who -WHAT- I was anymore and that did it.
How could I live my life like that? What would I do if Tenchi did not love me? But I knew what I would do. I would be lost, with nothing to guide me. Tenchi had become the only thing in my life, and without him there would be nothing. And if Tenchi did chose me? I would be so utterly happy. But would it be right? I would never offer him anything more that blind love. I wouldn't fill up his life. There wasn't enough Ryoko left in me.
So I'm leaving. I don't know for how long I'll be gone, but it will have to be enough time for me to rebuild whatever shattered remains of myself I can find. I will not return until I am Ryoko again, until I can offer Tenchi (and all of you) something more.
I'm going far away, and don't even think of tracking me... I wasn't a space pirate for no reason, you know? Please tell Sasami that I'm sorry, but Ryo-ohki has to come with me. Parting from her would be too much for me. Tell everyone I love them and will miss them.
You can use whatever time I'm gone to get closer to Tenchi. It's not cheating, I left of my own will. But just know that I WILL come back and once I do, if you haven't won yet, I'll battle for him ferociously . I will do anything in my power to make him fall in love with me. I will be willing to fight as much as it will be needed.
But this time, I will not forget to be your friend.
Love,
Ryoko
~@~
So.... This had been sitting in my computer for a looooong while. It was incomplete and I finally finished it. It's very cheesy, I'll admit and rather melodramatic, but I couldn't just delete it after spending so much time on it. So I just posted it up. I know I could have gone and revised it all, making sure it wasn't as corny and more in character but I'll be thrutful: I was too embarrassed to read it all again and I'm just too damned lazy. So it will have to do.
As for the title.. I was kind of clueless and did not know what to name it. I hope it wasn't too far off.
I do hope you guys liked it at least a little bit, and if you did, please review. I would appreciate it very much, considering I don't get much mail nowadays, and I'm starting to feel very lonely.
This is meant as a one-shot and will not have a sequel, unless someone else wants to do it. I'm just not feeling up to writing more on this. So if u wanted one, sorry.
Ciao
Meztli