A/N: Written for the Mix it, List it Competition, word prompt #48 – flesh, and for the Game-Verse Boot Camp, word prompt #024 – face

The True Story Hides in the Dark Where No-one Looks

It was the story they always blew out the fire for.

Their Obaa-san preferred it that way. It hid the scars permanently etched into her face, and let the monotone roll between their ears, unblemished by whatever her eyes or expression or twitching fingers might add. They were free to add their own embellishments, think the fallen angel she'd killed had been nothing more than a monster too far gone, think the boy she'd abandoned had been a rival and nothing more, think the woman she'd betrayed had been an authority figure that had fallen into the wrong and deserved the fate eventually handed out to her –

But that wasn't the case at all. It was only the story everybody else told, and her own voice became lost in it. It was foolish of them: she was the witness, the perpetrator, the hero and the criminal who knew the story from beginning to end and the blood and the mud mixed in. But they hadn't liked her version. They'd changed it until she could only tell the lies they'd weaved from truth or face the same fate she'd given them.

So she gave in, played their little political game so kids like she had been could remain woefully ignorant, could be trained up to be the executioners, the suicide bombers, the child guerrilla soldiers – whatever they needed, when the world spun out of control again. And that game meant she settled down, married a boy who looked just like Koh and she was sure they'd surgically corrected him for her benefit, as though to say: "see? He's not dead at all." And she smiled, hiding fangs in her mouth, and went along with it all because she'd fought and lost to stay alive and she couldn't throw it all away now.

So she married the fake and crafted her own façade to match, and they had children swept away into the system she hadn't managed to shake at all and now it was too late for her to do so, and they had children as well and those children now crowded at her feet, listening to idealistic tales that hid the mud and blood covered truth underneath, eagerly awaiting their chance to enter the system too.

Because the fire was out and it was dark and they couldn't see the tearing eyes she had to tuck away elsewise.