Author's note: As always, I don't own the Ronin Warriors. Sunrise does.
Aftermath
There's nothing there. There's nothing left. The war took everything we had and left us hollow. We don't know how to fill that emptiness.
It wasn't always there. I know it wasn't always there. I use to be able to look inside myself and there was something there. I was there, but I'm not anymore. The fighting, the hurt, the power, it took who I had been and destroyed it, leaving me with nothing.
The emptiness I find when I look for myself isn't nearly as frightening as what tries to seep in to fill it. Bad memories, pain, fear, guilt, uncertainty, nightmares, what should have been and wasn't, who we used to be and can never be again, regret. I was never afraid of the dark as a child, only the creatures that hid in it.
I see these things try to claim us. I see it in Rowen's withdrawal from us, in the nightmares Ryo wakes screaming from, in Kento's constant moodiness, in Sage's obsessive clinging to routine. I see it in myself when I look in the mirror and find nothing behind my eyes, when I wake from dreams that leave me with nothing but the foul taste of fear and pain, and I realize I don't remember how to cry.
There must be a way to fill this emptiness, and if I can't fill it, then make it a part of me instead of something separate, something I can't control. Like my bo-staff is an extension of my arm, like a kata. Repeat the motions over and over again until the only thing that exists are the motions. The room falls away, I fall away, the motions are all that remain, my body knows what it should do, the next step, the next punch. I don't need my mind anymore. Then even the motions fall away. My body continues to move, but there's nothing. The world is empty.
This is a safe emptiness. This I'm in control of. There isn't anything that can come here unless I allow it. My grandfather taught me this. He taught me that when the world is too large you shrink your world down until nothing exists. It contracts to the room you're standing in, to the space in front of your fist, to the sound of your breath, to the beat of your heart, to…the emptiness. Your world shrinks until you can control it, and once you have that control you allow it to expand again, but the control stays.
I stop, and find myself back where I started, but in someplace new as well. I reclaim a little piece of the emptiness; a part of it filled with my grandfather's voice, a part of it filled with my own control.
The training room is dimly lit, the high windows are dark. It's late, probably past dinner time. Not that we ever sit down and eat together anymore, but there's a general window of time we still refer to as such, and someone usually cooks something.
"Cye," Sage comes down the stairs and frowns at me. "Your dinner is getting cold, and Ryo's Sloppy Joes aren't that great hot."
"Thanks, I'll be up in a minute," I smile at him.
Sage blinks at me and something pleasantly familiar passes behind his eyes. He mutters a 'you're welcome' and goes back upstairs.
The emptiness can be filled, it can be controlled, it can be made our own. But it can't be done all at once. It's going to take time. Time, work, and patients, the three requirements for anything worth having or doing.
My grandfather taught me that too.