Only Fourteen
She was one of the bravest people I have ever known.
You were only fourteen.
No. She was *the* bravest.
Sometimes you had a child's idealism. But you taught me…
All I can do now is try to live up to what she began. Try to prove myself worthy of what she told me. She told me I was stronger than her. I'm not that strong. Not yet.
You taught me how wrong I was.
She died for justice. I told her there was no justice, told her in a childish battle, told her as rain streaked the skies. She cried out to me that it was the way of her people to fight.
How could someone so young have died for war?
I believed war was stupid. I still believe that. But through this war I'll realize her hopes.
How could you have held on to that ideal? How could you have known yourself so clearly?
What was it in her? How could she have been so strong? Especially when everything was falling in shreds around us. She was strong. She remained Meiran.
I still don't know myself, even through all my trying.
She knew what she was, and she knew what was right. She knew what was justice in her mind and she set out to fight for that.
You didn't understand me either. There was no one in the world that did.
She set out to die for that.
Yet you tried to show me what was important to you. A wild bet, deciding to trust me with that knowledge.
She cried in anger, but never in weakness. She died in showing me her strength. She was not displaying it. It was always there. But I couldn't see it until that moment. I was bitter and cynical. I still am.
The knowledge of ideals, the knowledge that idealism is sometimes all people have to carry them through life. Ideals of…justice. Justice, integrity, and the beauty of inner strength.
Meiran tried to show me that life was beyond poetry and books. She took the quiet scholar and wrested him into a warrior. Willingly or otherwise.
I just wanted to stay with my books, Meiran – Nataku. I couldn't understand what you took for granted. I couldn't understand you. I could understand my books.
I had thought I bested her, once upon a time.
I don't know yet if I'm glad for my awakening. I don't know yet. All I know is that the blood on my hands is there. And knowing – realizing that – caring about that - that makes me weak.
But I hadn't, not really.
Weakness is an impediment to what I'm searching for. Through this twisted war, I must find something. I need to find justice and integrity. I need to know that they're here.
She was Meiran. She became Nataku. An immortal soul, an immortal memory. All I have left to fight for. All the ideals I've taken on, represented, entombed in your visage.
But then again, that's what you died showing me, isn't it? You died showing me that those things existed, if one looked hard enough. Goddess of War, my Goddess…what I look to when I need to find strength again.
She smiled when she died. I remember that smile, all beguiling sweetness, deceptive vulnerability mixed with passionate strength. I remember her weight on her shoulder. I told her to get off of me.
She became Nataku. She died to become Nataku.
I remember her field of flowers. It was a beautiful, endless field. My idyllic dreamscape. She died where I had dreamed dreams of no consequence; dreams which in a flash burned into foolishness.
You saved the flowers.
What were flowers to someone like her? Flowers, just soft, delicate, useless things. Flowers like useless people.
I tried to fight. You showed me what war was, forced my eyes open. Just in that dramatic way you did everything.
Flowers, like what I had been.
You never dreamed. You acted. You knew what was right, and you fought for that. That's why you stay with me, in me, guiding me.
She was always so strong. Fighting for what was right.
Nataku, I…I want to be as strong as you. I miss you.
But am I weak?
Missing you. Is that a weakness? No. You wouldn't say so.
I am stronger than what I once was.
You wouldn't say so, but I would. Missing you makes me ache. I could have saved you.
The world falls around me. All I can do is strike back. Fighting, because I remember her. Stubbornly, insistently strong. That was just her, that was just her way of being. A state of unconscious grace in herself.
You wouldn't have liked that much, though, wouldn't you? You wanted to prove yourself to me, didn't you?
All I can do is try to capture the echoes of what she was. I can't replace her. I'm not sure if I want to.
You've done that and so much more.
I hope I don't disappoint her. Not after she put so much faith in me.
So now, I'm the only one left…It is up to me. I must decide the meaning of justice.
I will find her justice. I will find it, and then I will give it to her.
Justice will be mine. And then justice will be yours.
She was only fourteen.
Fourteen and stronger than the world.