notes— Part of a reincarnation au I'll never write, set during the final samurai war (Battle of Shiroyama). Excerpt from 25 Lives by Tongari.
lost in translation
;;
when we meet as adults, you're always much more discerning.
i don't blame you. yet, always, you forgive me—
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[ Kagashima Prefecture ; Kyūshū, Japan ]
1877
They twirl as they fall. Beautiful, Gray finds himself thinking, even as they die. Through the air on the light breeze, carried in a quiet dance until the reach the ground, the pink flower petals flutter around the garden and light up the air with a lovely sweetness.
He keeps himself from reaching out to touch one caught in her hair. She looks out across the water, her back to him. You'd look at her and think she was admiring the garden; and admirable it is, with rich greens and delicate reds and the deep reflected blue of the koi pond as a centre.
But of course, she is not.
Her hand is tense on the stone of the shrine, though, and her back is straight. Her shoulders are hunched. He wants to step out, wants to hold her, protect her, even just take a little of that weight from her shoulders and onto his — but he knows she won't let him. Out of a sea of impossibilities, it is the only one that he cannot bring himself to resent. He smiles softly; because the way his heart breaks, this pain, this injustice, is all too—far too—familiar. It has, after all, been his faithful friend these many years.
When she finally speaks, it is in a voice as reserved as she can manage. Just one word. "When?"
"I leave tonight," he answers. He isn't as good as she is at masking the pain and he can hear it himself — hear the bitterness, the hopeless anger, the exasperated amusement at the irony of it all. "I leave tonight," he says again.
You will not come back, she doesn't say, but he can hear it in her silence, he can read it in the soft line of her neck as her head lowers in understanding. I won't see you again.
No, he agrees silently. Not in this lifetime.
She nods, an act of finality, and the flower petal falls from her hair. He stares as it flutters to the ground, seemingly unaware even of its own death; happy just to, in that moment, fly. Beautiful, Gray finds himself thinking, even at the end.
.
.
—as if you understand what's going on and you're making up for
all the lifetimes in which one of us doesn't exist
and the ones where we, just barely, never meet.