THE LIFE AND HARDSHIPS OF HISAU MAIYA.
Author Notes:
Well, here's my first non-Puella Magi fan fiction, sort of…I just had a very bad day, and now someone will have to pay! Just kidding…or not…
Be warned, if you expect a Kiritsugu/Irisviel pairing or are a fan of their ship, stop reading right now as it might end up blown up and sunk in a Kiritsugu/ Maiya navy, I just feel more personality in Maiya (no! It's not a joke!) and feel she was a better match for Kiritsugu as they were in the same field (same thing happens with my Gwen Stacy / Peter Parker shipping, personal preference, nothing personal) so you've been warned.
／人◕ ‿‿ ◕人＼／人◕ ‿‿ ◕人＼／人◕ ‿‿ ◕人＼／人◕ ‿‿ ◕人＼／人◕ ‿‿ ◕人＼／人◕ ‿‿ ◕人＼
Dogs of War Arc.
Chapter 1 – Famine.
The sun was unbearably hot that day, or maybe it was only her body, which was on the verge of collapsing due to lack of food and sleep, it was the sixth night already that she tended to her six years old brother who was laying in a pile of straw while she cleaned the useless stump that had become his leg after he had stepped upon a hidden mine last week.
She had been collecting logs along with him in the nearby bushes when suddenly a loud explosion startled her and made her fall to the ground thinking they were being attacked again. The explosion had been so strong and so close that it had left her dizzy and with a beeping sound in her left ear. Feeling soft moisture on her ear, she probed it and found it intact, albeit with blood pouring out of it, which scared her, getting deaf would be the last thing she would want in the state they were, not noticing an attacker or a bomb going off could prove fatal.
For a moment she felt compelled to just stay there in the ground and rest her tired body, despite the unbearable hot of the sun over her, just a little bit of rest…, but the screams of pain of her brother startled her and forced her to move. Gathering her resolve, the girl crawled on the floor trying to locate her brother. She still wasn't sure they weren't attacked so she chose to do it as softly as possible; the soil was rough as it hadn't rained in weeks and the hard and broken ground left wounds and scratches in her elbows and knees, but nonetheless it was better than getting a bullet to a vital organ and dying an agonizing death, most of the time…
Resisting the pain the girl slowly made her way until she managed to get into contact with something soft, flesh, soft reddened and raw flesh which elicited a moan of pain upon contact. The girl felt the warm blood tainting her hands and she stared upon the prone figure of her brother that now had a missing leg, from his foot up to close to his waist. He was staring at her with tears in his eyes, pleading…"please, don't let me die…I'm scared…" between sobs, repeating the same phrase again and again, it was obvious he had been left in shock after the explosion. So am I, very scared, thought The girl upon listening to her brother's pleading, still it had only been a mine from what she saw, which was good for them as that meant they would survive for another day, just one more day of life…that was their luck. Taking her brother's small figure in her arms and raising him by the armpit, she lifted him with effort and carried him home. He was surprisingly light as he was mostly flesh without any meat nor muscle in his body, only bones, but to her, he felt almost as if she was trying to lift a ton. Somehow she managed to force her small and weak body to move forward carrying his brother's weight till she arrived home and collapsed from exhaustion. That night they wouldn't have fire with which to cook nor light their home, not that they had any food to cook, nor something they could call a real home…
Banishing those thoughts and coming back to reality, she opened the stained and dirty bandages on his brother's leg, she liked to call them bandages, but they were little more than a used piece of her pants, which she had shredded in order to stop the blood flow. After opening it, a strong smell surged from her brother's wound making her gag in reflex. She wanted to vomit at the sight of the rotten flesh and the worms slowly crawling out from his dark and putrescent flesh.
"I'm going to die, aren't I…?" whispered her brother staring at her with sad and hollow eyes. It was the only logical outcome, they had no food, let alone medicines and seeking a doctor was a dangerous 3 day voyage to the nearby town in order to find if he could make an appointment, let alone thinking of paying it. The girl wanted to tell her brother the cold truth, yeah you're going to die, but something inside of her felt that doing so would mean admitting he was beyond saving, so she instead said "no, you're going to be fine, I promise." while staring at his hopeful face and trying to not flinch while lying. She had become very good at keeping herself steady, then again, it might have been due to the responsibility of taking care of her 6 brothers, and pretty soon a toddler.
"Now, let me clean your wound" said the girl steadying herself and preparing for such an unpleasant task. She felt her legs quivering and her stomach trying to double over, either due to the strain of maintaining calm and not show repulsion at what she was about to do, or due to the hunger.
"No! Please! It's going to hurt!" answered her brother to that, pleading for her to not do it. The girl hated hurting her family, but what other option did she have? Let him be consumed by worms?
"Don't worry, I'll be careful this time" said the girl softly, trying to comfort him.
Taking away another piece of her pants which now were so ragged to have become closer to shorts, and dipping it in a mixture she had devised from a cactus, no easy task, as the marks in her hands due to the needles showed; but in the end it had been worth it, the plant's water would serve to help her brother's wound, even if only temporarily. And so, she proceeded to clean his leg, taking away the rotten flesh and the worms when she could, doing her best to ignore her little brother's screaming and pleads for her to stop. It's for your own good, I have to do it, she reminded herself while trying to hold back the tears.
When she was finished, she decided to rest among a pile of straw in the corner of the room. The house was mostly made from old wood which had eroded over time, built both by her and her mother's efforts. The entire structure felt as if it could collapse any moment and during rain, which was so scarce to almost be considered a miracle, it tended to flood and get everything wet. She stared at her mother.
Her mother was a strange figure to her, she earned their daily living by selling her body to the officers, but that also resulted in lots of pregnancies, which meant more mouths to feed. Her brothers were most half-brothers; she had been born from an unknown man that she never got to meet and abandoned, saving herself from abortion only due to a lack of medical personnel to perform it and ensure the patient lived afterwards…
Right now her mother was in a corner, staring at empty space, a piece of weed hanging on her limp hand, she had been smoking that crap again to stave off the hunger…not that it wasn't that uncommon in the town they lived in. She herself had tried it every once in a while in order to forget the pain and hunger. It never worked.
She breathed a little of the stale air in the room, a wind that smelled strongly of rot, sweat and excrement, product of the well they had excavated in the wall next to her where they tended to their primal urges.
That night her mother hadn't been able to find customers, given that she had been deteriorating quickly, her flesh having become sullen and wrinkled due to stress and lack of food, along with them not being able to bath for days due to lack of water, meant they wouldn't eat again that day…The girl closed her eyes and let out a soft sigh, she didn't know how long she would be able to endure that. Looking at the sleeping figures of her brothers, cuddled together in a corner was the only thing that kept her from taking the easy way out, they were all younger than her, she didn't know by how much as she had lost track of her age a long time ago, maybe she was eight, nine, possibly fourteen, she had no idea, for all she knew she felt like she was eighty years old, tired, very tired of it all…but all she knew, which wasn't a lot, was that they needed someone to take care of them.
She hoped she would be able to someday take them out of their precarious lives, maybe when she was old and attractive enough to sell her body like her mother, she would be able to earn enough money to buy a trip somewhere, in a far away land. The girl constantly fantasized about living a better life, well fed, not having to worry about getting captured by "the enemy" or dying due to a mine like many of the people she had met. Such a thought gave her hope, it was the only thing she had.
She didn't know how long had it been since it all started, for all she knew her country had always been on war. They lived in a forgotten land in the middle of nowhere, with a very hot and deserted landscape, the only things there were cactus, the unbearable sun and small patches of greenery which appeared every once in a while. She still couldn't understand what the people were fighting for, maybe it had been a stupid misunderstanding, maybe it had been a matter of survival, all she knew was that they lived in a small community close enough to one of those green patches and under the protection of the Red Hands, a clan that managed and ruled over the whole place and demanded tributes and sacrifices from the people in exchange of their protection. Any person that disagreed was instantly killed, or if they felt like it, tortured for several days before finally being left in the middle of the desert, mad and broken, to die of thirst and hunger.
The girl usually had to hide whenever they came to her town as they also had a liking of taking over little girls they liked for their enjoyment until they ended dead, their carcasses as decoration in their caravans.
The other option was to flee the town and if by some miracle they managed to survive the hot desert, they'd end in the town of the Black Banner, an organization that constantly made war to the Red Hands and anyone associated with them, vicious criminals with lots of firepower that trafficked weed and other decadent luxuries across the towns in the dessert, feared and reviled due to their penchant of eating human flesh. It was even rumored there was a vampire among them that ruled the group with an iron fist.
Two sides of the same coin, either way they were royally screwed. Still, that was life for her, and she was willing to brave her way until she could find a better future for her and her brothers…
／人◕ ‿‿ ◕人＼／人◕ ‿‿ ◕人＼／人◕ ‿‿ ◕人＼／人◕ ‿‿ ◕人＼／人◕ ‿‿ ◕人＼／人◕ ‿‿ ◕人＼
End Notes / Rant:
Guess I wasn't kidding after all…believe me, it was a really awful day…
This story will be mostly centered on the character of Hisau Maiya from Fate Zero as I always felt she had so much potential to expand upon and she was a very mysterious and interesting character. Will try to keep this mostly canon but will deviate a little, I already know how this will end.