Prayer to the Sky
Summary: A child is abandoned on the Plains of Hamat one day. OneShot.
Warning: Spoilers. Major warning.
Set: during vol8
Disclaimer: Standards apply.
Merry Christmas to you all!
His eyes are blue.
Blue like the sky over the Plains of Hamat. Blue like the lake at the shore she once visited, when she was young and her father was still alive. Blue like the eyes of the only person she ever loved, ever wanted as her husband. But dreams don't come true. Born as the daughter of a noble and wealthy man she always knew her place in the world, always was aware of how her future would look like: marry a noble and good man, possibly a clan leader like her own father, bear his children, keep his house. Care for him, grow old with him. Perhaps her father would even have found a good man for her, a kind man, someone who understood that she wouldn't ever be able to love anyone else than the one she had given her heart to. Perhaps her father would even have allowed her to marry him, the penniless stranger, the alien man who appeared in front of their mansion one day, as if he had fallen from the sky. From a sky as blue as his eyes.
But her father had died and her uncle had found her a husband and dreams never came true.
She discovered she was pregnant one and a half months into the engagement. And she kept it a secret, the marriage being set for spring, hoping nobody would notice. Hoping her groom wouldn't notice. Of course he didn't. Good men didn't see their brides before they were officially married, it was custom in the Plains. They met through veils and walls, never talking to each other, only ever listening, and she was desperately determined to at least like him if she couldn't love him. He seemed civil and fair, not overly friendly but at least not unkind. They married a beautiful day in spring and she saw his face for the first time: a not-so-young-anymore man in his best years, with a thin, black beard and piercing, grey eyes. Perhaps he had been handsome once. Perhaps he intended to treat her well. But when he realized what she had brought into his house he was beyond reason.
He didn't kill her baby. He wasn't a monster.
But she had ruined his reputation. As her punishment, he held her prisoner. She wasn't allowed to leave the mansion, wasn't allowed to meet other people. His eyes bore into her whenever he came to her, daring her to defy his wishes, challenging her to do something – anything – to give him a reason to cast her out of his house and from his protection. And it wasn't the fact that she had no place to go anymore. It wasn't the fact that she felt lonely and sad and desperate, it wasn't the fact that she loved the view on the green hills and slopes of the Plains of Hamat. It wasn't the fact that she was used, abused and ignored that made her wish she was somewhere else, and it wasn't the fact that she had no place to go that she remained. She stayed, patiently, silently, because she had a baby to take care of.
Ryu-Sang.
A fragile child with eyes as blue as his father's, hair as golden as hers and a face so much like her only love that looking at him was more than she could bear. She did it, though. For hours. When he slept, when he wept, when he played. He was a silent child, easy to handle, eager to please, and his eyes seemed to see everything. She held him when he cried at night, fed him, bathed him, and every touch and every sound and even his sweet scent drove her closer to him. She was young – she never had thought about how it was to have a baby before - but she found herself confronted with the situation. As if someone – maybe her long-dead mother – helped her, she excelled in it. It was, perhaps, what people called a mother's love. It was easy to handle the child because she loved it. She loved it so much she would have done anything, anything, to keep it safe.
When Ryu-Sang grew older and learned to see and talk, and as she remained infertile and, through all the attempts of her husband, unable to bear another child, her husband started to hate him. She felt it, deep down, where a mother keeps her heart. She could see it in the glances he gave him, in the harsh tone in which he spoke to the child. And the boy was bright. He knew exactly something was wrong. One day she came into the room just in time to see her husband lift his fist a second time, and saw Ryu-Sang cowering on the ground, and she flung herself between them. "Damn you!" Her husband shouted at her. "Damn you, woman, for not being able to provide me with offspring of my own! He mocks me, this child of yours, proof of your infidelity! His eyes are a curse, staring at me day and night, following me into my dreams! I will rid him of these eyes, I will gouge them out so he won't ever be able to look at me through them! I swear, I will…"
She covered Ryu-Sang's eyes from that day.
And she decided something else, as well. She would pretend not to care for him anymore. She would pretend to hate him, to be completely oblivious to his needs and to his life. She would pretend to have no interest in him whatsoever. Instead, she would be a good wife, fulfill her husband's wishes and needs dutifully. Then, perhaps, he would forget there ever had been a child with the name of Ryu-Sang and those incredibly blue eyes, eyes as blue as the sky over the Plains of Hamat. Then, maybe, her child would be able to live in peace.
"Why do you hate me?"
Ryu-Sang's eyes burn into hers every time she takes off the bandages that cover his eyes. She does so only when she knows her husband is out, gone on a trip to the capital or to one of his remote tenantries, and won't return soon. She looks at his eyes and his face and his hair: the pure blue, the golden blond, the fragile bones underneath his translucent skin. He is beautiful, her son, a picture of perfection. But there is hate in his eyes, dark and accusing, and it hurts to look at him. She does it anyway, because he is her son and he is beautiful.
"What have I ever done to you? Is it because I was born?"
She tells him the truth and a lie, at the same time, and her heart aches with the agony of lying to her own child. Of pretending not to care for him. But there is no other way, no choice she has. If he is to live she will have to lose him. He never calls her mother, perhaps because he wants to punish her, never takes her hand again, never looks at her again with a smile. She cries herself to sleep on dark nights, her arms achingly empty without his thin, fragile form, and his dark eyes haunt her dreams. She wants to hold him but never will be able to do so.
"Why did you give birth to me?"
Because I love you, she wants to tell him. Because you are my child. Because you are a part of me and always will be and there is nothing in this world that will make me stop loving you. Instead, she remains silent and stares at the horizon where sky meets the plains. His warmth is so close she wants to reach out to touch him. She clenches her fists under her long sleeves which hide her hands and reminds herself of why she is doing this. Of what has to be done. There still is something left, something she has to do which she has refrained from doing until now. She still has to bring the ultimate sacrifice, has to kill her own heart to save him. She has to set him free, Ryu-Sang, her baby child. Her blue sky. She has to send him away from here. In this house, he will wither away and die, break, shatter under the pressure that is the curse she placed on him by loving him too much. She will send him away, into the plains, and pray that someone will find him who will love him as much as she does. Someone who will care for him and let him grow and live the life he deserves to live.
Please, she prays.
Let him be happy. She sends him away, abandons him on the green slopes of the endless plains. Leaves him either to die or to live, desperately wishing for the latter. There has to be a way, she thinks; if there is any God in this world He will care for her child. He will lead him home. He will make him happy. She gives him a pendant of hers and her father's sword, the last treasures she has that her parents left her when they died. The only ones, too. She owns nothing now, is the middle-aged, disgraced, childless wife of a wealthy man without any family of her own. She has no place she can go, no one she can return to. Her parents are dead. She never had any siblings. She only has this life – the life in the mansion, secluded, lonely, repetitive - and now she does not even have Ryu-Sang by her side anymore. But she does not care. It does not matter, nothing matters, as long as he is alive and safe and happy. She prays for his happiness, for a life for him, for someone who will love him the way she loves her child. For someone who will love him the way she loved her stranger, the man with eyes as blue as the sky. She prays and prays and weeps at night, her first thought in the morning for him and the last in the evening as well.
He hates her already.
She won't subject him to anymore pain. Even if she makes him hate her even more with her last action it is the last and greatest thing she can do for her child. She abandons him on the Plains of Hamat one day. And he hates her for it, will hate her in all eternity for being a mother who didn't allow him to see the sky, who hated him enough to abandon him with only an old sword by his side and a pendant he probably sold first in order to survive. He will believe she was a bad mother, never loved him enough to care for him, and she does not mind one bit as long as he is alive to believe so. The pain tears at her heart, presses a weight down on her and yet she carries on in the way her father taught her, tall and proud and her head held high because she knows it is what she has to do in order to save him. Whatever happens to her is not important, does not matter. Ryu-Sang is all that matters. It becomes her mantra, engrained into her self so deeply every beat of her heart seems to whisper it. Every beat of her heart becomes a song, desperate, pleading.
Save him. Save him.
Save your child.
The blue sky over the Plains of Hamat stretches out endlessly.