Disclaimer: These characters ain't mine. Got that, slavering lawyers? Just so we're clear. You keep cashing your cheques and I'll just sit here at my keyboard.
Continuity: I wrote this right after completing Firsts (FFN id: 3307669), so it can be considered a kind of sequel to that, but can also be taken as a fic in its own right. If you haven't read Firsts then you're not missing anything vitally important and can still enjoy this one. Unless you think this one is crap, in which case … I can't think of a way to end this sentence that doesn't sound either arrogant or facetious, so I'll just end it by saying that reviews are INCREDIBLY WELCOME!
A/N: My last fic of the year. Not bad, considering I thought I'd have to give up writing fanfic when I started my teacher training course in September. On a (tenuously) related note, the Youtube trailer for The Beginning of the End (http (double slash) www . youtube . com / watch ? v (equals sign) - 5vA9jBjFXI) is possibly the best cinematic experience I've had all year. If you like the Original Dragons (and by that I mean Chase, Wuya, Guan and Dashi) then I suggest you watch it.
Feedback: Reviews are still INCREDIBLY WELCOME!
Silent Screaming Blur
© Scribbler, December 2006.
Is it too late to remind you how we were?
Not our last days of silent screaming blur.
-- From You Could Be Happy by Snow Patrol © 2006 Polydor UK.
The first night Dashi spends alone is worse than the first after he left home as a boy. He keeps reaching out for the warm body that isn't there, and lays rigid until the small hours, replaying events to figure out where he went wrong.
He won't mention it to Chase or Guan, but he blames himself. He, above all others, should've seen this coming. He should've been able to sense the change in her, the sharpening of her gaze, the hardness growing like a cancer in her heart. In his mind's eye he can see Chase trying to explain to their followers the reasons for what happened, breaking things down into smaller words.
There aren't any smaller words. There are only big ideas that consumed them all, and which Wuya eventually wanted no part of.
She liked the adoration, but never up close. She preferred people at arm's length – a safe distance.
Not him, though. Not Chase and Guan, but most especially not him. Dashi loved – loves – the feeling of being appreciated. He likes being admired. Wuya always claims it's a throwback to leaving home so young; more often than not she'll fling the accusation at him that he's still a little boy trying to prove to daddy that he's worth something. She's hurled thousands of insults at him over the years, but that's her favourite.
His left arm instinctively lifts, pauses, and lowers. He turns onto his side to face the wall, but it doesn't help. All he can hear are the groans of the wounded and the restlessness of those sharing his quarters. All he can see is Chase's expression, stuck somewhere between a glare and disbelief, and the way the fire cast such severe shadows across Wuya's face.
All three remaining Guardians have allowed people into their quarters tonight. It's too hot and there's not really enough room, but judging by the fidgety movements in the dark, nobody is sleeping. They'll have to rebuild the temple. Not all of it burned, thanks to Chase, but a good portion is ruined. Guan is already talking about stone this time. He's channelling his helplessness into something constructive, the way he does.
The temple was originally constructed by monks who started following them midway through last century, and took decades to go from sticks of wood to an imposing homage to their powers. Dashi's vanity likes the recognition, even though he knows they should've kept questing for Darkness to smite. At the time it'd felt like they deserved the rest.
It took Wuya less than a night to raze it to the ground.
Perhaps that was when the rot set in; when they set down roots. A moving target is harder to hit, and a nomadic Guardian of Light harder to corrupt.
Wuya was always the first who wanted to move on, to visit new places; and the one least likely to make allowances when they acquired followers. She honestly couldn't understand why they wanted to follow the four Guardians, and while she liked the respect, she viewed the humans like cattle waiting to be corralled. To her they were dumb beasts she, Guan, Chase and Dashi were charged with looking after, just as they looked after Dojo. You couldn't reason with them. They were too stupid and bogged down in their brief mortality to understand the scale of the Guardians' duty.
Of course, Chase Guan and Dashi were also human, but somehow Wuya never equated them with the ponderous sect of monks who clung to their ankles. The Guardians had transcended their humanity; they were more than human.
Dashi remembers how she used to stay awake at night arguing with him, claiming they should leave the monks behind to fend for themselves. He remembers the way her voice would raise, the way she stood so mulishly; neck bent, hands fluttering like caged birds. He remembers the shouting, the defiance that turned to frantic lovemaking that forestalled any real resolution.
Perhaps he should've conceded more. Perhaps he should've seen what they – what he – was doing to her.
Hindsight throws everything into sharp relief, and he can see the distraught look in her eyes when he, Guan and Chase told her they wanted to stay here a while. He can see the way her appearance changed ever so slightly the more they mixed with humans.
They didn't grasp it as a concrete thought, but the three men had sort of missed mixing with people on a basic level. It reminded them where they came from and what they were fighting for.
Wuya, on the other hand, hated it. She didn't want to be reminded that she was once weak and helpless. Her appearance reflected this. She grew her hair long and allowed it to tangle. Her canines started to indent her bottom lip. Her ears, which were always pointy, suddenly seemed even more so.
She went out often, sometimes with them, sometimes alone. Those travels took her far from home in search of Evil, to places even Dashi would think twice about going. She thought nothing of throwing herself into battle against impossible odds, and fought monsters, sorcerers, witches and other enemies of Light with an almost crazed ferocity.
Wuya is part demon. Nobody knows if it was a parent or some other ancestor whose blood pumps in her veins, but that part of her came to the fore more and more as her frustrations rose. It altered her appearance and made her wild. It made her temper flare more often, and far more tempestuously than when they first became Guardians of Light. It made her keep from home for days, weeks, even months in her pursuit of enemies to defeat.
Yet she always came back. The human part of her, the part that fell for Dashi so long ago and followed him into Guardianship, forced her to return to the temple where she was so unhappy.
And yet …
Dashi wonders whether Wuya would've turned from them had he been more attentive. If he'd compromised more, would she have been so miserable? If he'd noticed the changes in her when they started, would he have been able to do anything about them? Was there a point where all this was preventable?
Wuya's loyalty has always been taken for granted – by everyone. She's a Guardian of Light. She is the Dragon of Earth. The Four Guardians, unique in their quest and powers, have become a loose sort of family. She was saving the world alongside Dashi, Chase and Guan before the monks were even born.
Sleep isn't going to come tonight. Dashi rises quietly, trying not to disturb his roommates. He slips on his clothes and leaves through the window. A few quick swings and he's on the roof of his quarters, looking out across the remains of the temple.
The rows of newly dug graves are a jagged reminder of how the Wuya he knew has changed. The Wuya he grew up with would never take an innocent life. Her feral childhood meant she hated bullying more than she hated Evil, and was quick to defend those who couldn't defend themselves.
This new Wuya can do things Dashi never dreamed of. She's learned more on her travels than he – than anybody – realised. She can cast spells like a witch. She can fly like a harpy. She possesses the superhuman strength of draugrs, and the knife-like nails of a jikininki. She can throw bolts of green energy to complement her already potent elemental powers.
She can look right into Dashi's eyes, smile, and blow him a kiss while ripping a person's heart out.
Dashi shakes his head. He's never felt loss quite like this; not even when he returned home to show his parents what their son has amounted to, only to discover they died of fever three years after he ran away from home. This goes deeper than even that.
He loves Wuya. It's a deep-seated, unspoken kind of love, developed over centuries. it's a love that paralysed him and let her escape after her crimes. He loves her so much that it became second nature, and he took her love for granted, just as he did her happiness.
He was so caught up in making a home here that he overlooked how she didn't agree with him. He respects the sect leader and so ignored her arguments with the little man. He ignored that man's barbed comments on how four is an unlucky number because in his language the word for four sounds like the word for death. He ignored how Wuya bristled and stayed away from the temple far longer after these arguments. He even ignored Chase and Guan when they came to him with concerns over Wuya's sanity. Wuya was fine, he told them. Wuya was just as happy as them to be here, teaching these monks, who so clearly needed their guidance. And no, it had nothing to do with his selfish love of admiration. Nothing whatsoever.
Dashi couldn't ignore it when she threw the sect leader's body at him with 'four' carved into his throat.
Betrayal tastes like putrid fruit.
Regret and guilt taste worse.
Dojo's cage sits, smashed, in the middle of the courtyard. They don't know where he went when Wuya released him, but Dashi alone knows that the little dragon stole his latest project before leaving.
The Shen Gong Wu were to be Dashi's gift to the world. Living amongst the monks has made him realise that the Guardians can't be everywhere at once, and so he set himself to creating vessels of power that ordinary humans can use.
Wuya hated the idea. Her magic is so bound up with who she is that the idea of sharing it must have felt like he was giving away part of her. Maybe she felt like he no longer needed her if he was creating 'deputies' out of ordinary humans. It was probably the straw that broke the camel's back.
Dashi wonders if she knew what Dojo would do once she released him. Dojo's reaction to the Shen Gong Wu was something of a surprise to all who had to cage him – almost like the madness of hares in Springtime. It's been wearing off, though. A few more days and he may have been able to sit right next to the Fist of Tebigong without trying to eat it. Instead, he fled the temple with a bellyful of magical artefacts, smashing buildings and breathing fire as he went.
They'll have to find him, but later. How much damage could he do compared to what's been done already? Right now Dashi and the remaining two Guardians are more concerned with triage and counting their losses – reconciling themselves to the deaths of their friends and followers.
And Wuya.
"I will bring you back to the Light," Dashi promises under his breath, all hint of arrogance gone from his voice. Chase, Guan, or the leader of the small Xiaolin sect who follow them would be surprised to hear this tone from him.
Dashi refuses to think of what might happen if he can't, but he avoids the word 'promise', though it looms somewhere in the thoughts ahead. It's a good, purposeful word in this time of uncertainty. The trouble is it's accompanied by a simpler, nastier word: How? It also trails words like 'forgiveness', 'murder' and 'treachery'. After all, Dashi is not the only one she betrayed.
"I will bring you back to me."
There are times when Time itself pauses, and you realise you're standing on one of those thresholds where history takes a deep breath and decides what to do next.
Dashi is too caught up in grief and self-recrimination to notice this pause.
"I will bring you back," he murmurs, over and over, like he can will things back to normal; or maybe invent a way to reverse time itself so he can go back and do things differently.
Brain whirring, he stays with his hand on the smashed cage until the sun peeks over the horizon.
It's a new day.
It's a new world.
It's a new everything.
Fin.
Please don't let this turn into something it's not All that I keep thinking throughout this whole flight
I can only give you everything I've got
I can't be as sorry as you think I should
But I still love you more than anyone else could
Is it could take my whole damn life to make this right
This splintered mast I'm holding on won't save me long
Because I know fine well that what I did was wrong
-- From Make This Last Forever by Snow Patrol.
Draugrs: A draugr is a corporeal undead from Norse mythology, believed to live in the graves of dead Vikings, being the body of the dead. All draugrs possess superhuman strength, the ability to increase their size at will and the unmistakable stench of decay. Some draugrs were gifted with immunity to the usual weapons. They were also noted for the ability to rise from the grave as wisps of smoke. The draugr slew their victims through various methods including crushing them with their enlarged forms, devouring their flesh, and drinking their blood. Animals feeding near the grave of a draugr were often driven mad by the creature's influence. It is said that the draugr, even when defeated, would come back, requiring heroes (the only ones able to defeat them) to dispose of the body in unconventional ways. This may be related to the traditional practice of killing vampires seen in other cultures.
Harpies: In Greek mythology, the Harpies ('snatchers') were flying death-spirits best known for constantly stealing all food from Phineas. The literal meaning of the word seems to be 'whirlwinds'.
Jikininki: In Japanese Buddhism, jikininki ('man-eating ghosts') are the spirits of greedy, selfish or impious individuals who are cursed after death to seek out and eat human corpses. Often, jikininki are said to look like decomposing cadavers, perhaps with a few inhuman features such as sharp claws or glowing eyes. They are a horrifying sight, and any mortal who views one finds himself frozen in fear. However, several stories give them the ability to magically disguise themselves as normal human beings and even to lead normal 'lives' by day.
-- All info courtesy of Wikipedia.