Note: This pathetic piece of purple-prose drivel was written as an attempt to break out of some hellacious GG-related writer's block. Hopefully I've succeeded in some small part.
Oh, and I'm not Daisuke Ishiwatari, obviously.
She's only really alive when she fights.
Blue eyes, hard sapphires set in living ivory, shine with intent. Her slender figure slips effortlessly through the air currents as she dodges, her beautiful deadly weapon stretching and retracting at her will with all the sinewy grace of a striking cobra.
Eventually she delivers the mortal blow.
Regrets and dreams slip away before her impassive eyes, onto the gritty baked hardpan of concrete and aggregate in pools of deep crimson. No matter how many times she has witnessed this scene before - no matter how many times she has killed, the blood of her victims never seems to stain her. It is as if she were a goddess of war born for the sole purpose of cleaving soul from body: a Mòr Rigan who does not take the form of a crow to reap her offerings, but that of a pale remote Aphrodite with eyes like the winter sky.
She knows she is beautiful; it is a fact of life as much as the requirement of drawing breath in order to sustain life. In the same way she knows that it is both her hatred and her icy poise that give her power over the weak. Power over men. Power over him, once.
And yet... she hates herself. Almost as much as that poor half-dead shadow who once loved her, whom she loved in return for a brief time (and loathed just as fiercely).
She looks into the mirror every morning upon waking, after a fitful sleep haunted by her mind's legion of ghosts and bridges that have burned but have not yet charred into embers. Her feet do not stumble with the bleary early-morning crawl to the surface of lucid wakefulness like the rest of humanity; they slip with the faintest whisper of sound across the threadbare carpets of a hundred nameless cheap motel rooms. She never stays in one place for long - it is too risky, and besides... she has yet to really find a place in this world for herself. Her eyes meet with the eyes of the doppelganger in the mirror. Lustrous blonde hair like cornsilk, pale flawless skin, deep blue eyes. A goddess.
A murderess, she thinks bitterly, and self-loathing overwhelms her spirit once again.
She knows her life could have been vastly different. She could have remained with him. But she could not reconcile that love with her bitter hatred for what he represented: the corruption of her own soul and the erosion of her conscience.
So she sold him to his enemies and at last, for a brief blessed time, she was free. But then there was a tournament, with a strange prize, and rumors that he would be fighting, and she went to stop him... and failed. And then came the word of a Gear, one that would not harm humans... she had no interest. It lay solely in the one man she knew would be searching for this creature. She would go after him, again. And this time she would not fail. She would kill him and be free.
The more she fights the more she loses an infinitely small piece of herself. How small? How can she say? The question is like the old adage: how many angels can one fit on the head of a pin? Like the number of licks it takes to get to a Tootsie Roll Pop, the world may never know.
Sometimes, she doesn't recognize the person in the mirror. Sometimes she thinks it's better that way.
Mostly, she feels that part of herself die and she knows she has to find him. To kill him if at all possible. Maybe then she can regain her old self - if she ever knew what it was in the first place.
So she's here.
The stretch of land is empty, desolate, a dead place. Humans and Gears fought here and some of their skeletons still litter the cracked ground, along with the remains of settlements. Anyone else would find it ominous; she does not. There is nothing to fear, she thinks, from a barren field. It will be a good place; there is nothing to interrupt them or distract them.
As her gaze falls upon him now, she feels less hatred and more pity. In some ways what she feels is a large measure of relief. It's not him, not the man she remembers. He has lost himself completely - in his place is this shambling shadow who wears his skin like an old Halloween costume. His humanity is slowly peeling away.
"Millia," he rasps, and the words sound like death in her ears. Hers or his, she is not quite certain, not yet.
"I came to kill you," she says simply, but even as the words fall from her lips she knows that she no more speaks the truth than Zato is still alive. Not for a minute. Her guilt is a constant weight upon her shoulders, smothering her slowly and silently. This ruthless hunt of hers isn't just to settle old scores; it's a balm on her wounded conscience. She is no innocent, a part of her screams, perhaps as a last desperate attempt to delay the inevitable. To take his life - revenge, while sweet, will fade. His blood will forever be on her hands.
But that's what I wanted, she tells herself. His blood on my hands. One last time counts for all, and better me than anyone else.
Her resolve returns.
He smiles at her, a rictus shape that doesn't touch his eyes, and she knows there is no turning back. In for a penny, in for a pound.
After all, she's only really alive when she fights.
She lunges for him, hair unfurling, to write the ending of her story.
owari
Mòr Rigan in Celtic mythology, a battle-goddess that often took the form of a large black crow (badbh).