Title: Bricks at the Devil
Author: joudama
Fandom: Final Fantasy VII
Rating: worksafe
Warnings: ...Yuffie. GAH.
Word count: 1,240
Summary: I throw bricks at the devil, so I'll be sure to hit him.
A/N: This is inspired by the song by Sami Yusuf featuring Outlandish, "Try Not to Cry." A song I really, really love. Thanks, brain, for injecting Yuffie into it (full disclosure: I hate Yuffie).
"Rotten cotton" refers to a Chinese idiom, jin yu qi wai, bai xu qi zhong--"Gold and jade on the outside, but rotten cotton on the inside." If you've seen the Zhang Yimou movie "The Curse of the Golden Flower," this is the idiom he had in mind when he made the movie. Likewise, "treaty at the wall" comes from the four-character compound cheng xia zhi meng - "A treaty signed at the city wall," which means "accepting humiliating terms of peace under duress"--because the enemy is right there at the walls of the city about to sack you like whoa.
Oh, and Yuffie's 'name' I'm taking from the Chinese version of her name. Yes, I tracked it down, nerd points for me. XD Because, you know, I needed more or something.
For those of you who read TTYKNAP, the places Yuffie mentions--the Temple of the Silver Dragon and the Homeviewing Pavilion, show up in the next chapter. Only, I used the 'Wutai' names (The Yin Long Temple and Wangxiang Pavilion) there because it's Rude's POV and he doesn't grok Wutai, but the names via the meanings here because Yuffie, of course, does. I, um, really am going somewhere with all these, I promise. There is a method to my madness.
--
My name is Yuffie Kisaragi now.
It's because it's ShinRa's world now, and my name is one of the things that has to change--we have to adapt, follow ShinRa's way, speak ShinRa's language even in our homes. In the Imperial Court, where my father sits as a puppet and nothing more, shaming our ancestors, I must speak ShinRa's words and be Yuffie Kisaragi. My people have lost so much; all I have to lose is my name and my language, and so I'll throw them away and wear this new name and speak these flat words until the day Wutai stands again.
I stood in the Great Hall of our ancestors before I decided what to do. I looked at the painting of the first Kisaragi emperor, Kisaragi no Takenobu. We wouldn't have spoken the same language; we are Yamatan by blood but when he overthrew the Kanagawa dynasty and established ours hundreds of years ago, he moved us from the rot of Nankyo to a new city, in the homeland of the Silver Dragon.
I have never read the Annals of the Silver Dragon. I never saw the need; who cares about tales in dusty old scrolls? I know enough; I know Kisaragi no Takenobu, after the death of the great Silver Dragon, returned to Wutai and routed out the rotten cotton that the emperor had become, and moved the capital from Nankyo to the city of Wutai. I know all of the tales, know what he did. He was a great man, pushed into greatness by the cruelty of the Kanagawa. He was said to have been greatly compassionate, sometimes dropping the greens and blues of the royalty and donning the yellow and white clothes of people to leave the palace. He often, it's said, went to the Temple of the Silver Dragon and to the Homeviewing Pavilion and pray to the Silver Dragon.
But I won't. I don't see any point. The Silver Dragon didn't come to our aid, after all. I heard the whispers, that he had abandoned Wutai, whispers that His avatar had been seen on the side of ShinRa...I don't need gods anyway, especially not ones that abandon us when we need them the most. I've never seen the Silver Dragon and no one's ever summoned him; what kind of god is that?
Not one Wutai needs, no matter what my father says.
My father is useless; he does nothing but sigh and say we have lost and that is the way of it. And that ShinRa is rotten from the inside and will fall on her own, and we must simply bide our time and wait.
Wait, he says. Be patient, he says. The Silver Dragon moves, read the Annals and I will see. Patience. We are Wutai and Wutai is eternal. Wait, he says. Accept and wait. Wait!
It is easy for him to say; he never donned the white and yellow clothes to see what had happened to Wutai with his own eyes.
Which is why I did it.
I've spoken the language of ShinRa since I was young--almost as long as I've spoken Wutai. As soon as I could talk, it seemed, lessons for me began. So I speak it...but I detest speaking it in court, to my father...but I don't have a choice; ShinRa's word is law, and their law is to use their words. I was really little when Wutai fell...but I'll never forget the bitterness of that day, of the treaty signed at the castle walls. I was there. I was there and they told me, everyone told me, "Don't cry. Don't cry. Don't show them your tears."
I didn't cry that day. I watched my father, the emperor, bow to them, bow to ShinRa, and then I had to swallow everything and bow to them, too. My head had to touch the floor. I had to bow to them. Me, a daughter of Shinobu. To them! And my father...I hated ShinRa so much that day. As long as I live, I will never forget the shame of that day. I don't deserve my real name, not until I've gotten face back for that.
I hate ShinRa.
And I hated them more after I told my father I was leaving. He couldn't object to me following the footsteps of Kisaragi no Takenobu, going out and seeing the people for myself.
It was four years since the war ended, and it was terrible. ShinRa won't do anything to help us; ShinRa wants us to wallow in our shame and punishes us for having opposed it. So many places are still in ruins; there are towns and villages that were razed to the ground and are nothing but little burnt bits of earth, even now, years later. Everyone outside of the cities looks...they all look like I felt, when my father made me bow to ShinRa.
This is ShinRa's fault.
I see pictures of the rest of the world. Everyone seems happy, they seem to have everything...and we don't have anything and none of them care. We are Wutai and they hate us, so no one cares that our faces have been rubbed into the dirt and we are nothing now; that even our pride is gone.
I wandered around Wutai, seeing everything for myself and hating ShinRa more and more every day when I saw how miserable everyone was, how much we are all suffering still because they took everything from us, all of our materia, and give us nothing in return, not even one stinking power plant. But I didn't know what to do, how to fix things. I am a Daughter of Shinobu and of the house of Kisaragi; it is my responsibility to fix this, and I felt more helpless than I did when I was that little girl in her finest, about to be sent out to bow to her conquerors.
So I went to the Homeviewing Pavilion and just sat there for a while. They offered me the hall Kisaragi-no-Takenobu used whenever he was troubled. Supposedly Kisaragi-no-Takenobu would sit there and gaze out into the forest, but I'm not him; I didn't need to look at trees. No, I took another place on the opposite side and looked out the other way, towards the cities and towns that hid and protected the Homeviewing Pavilion and her secrets from ShinRa. I looked out towards the people and just thought, as hard as I could.
It was materia that built the Kanagawa and the Kisaragi Dynasties. The Kanagawa used the raw magic stones and forced the children of the Old Ones to war until they were all dead; the Kisaragi used materia.
I'm a Kisaragi to my core, and sometimes you've just got to go backwards to go forwards.
ShinRa is rotten. ShinRa's the rotten cotton, and I've got to remove it from Wutai, same as Kisaragi no Takenobu did. I have to overthrow them and bring glory and honor back to my people.
Until I do that, I'll do this their way. Speak their words, use their name. And I'll get in the inside, somehow, and take what I need to build us up to burn away the rotten cotton.
I need materia, all the materia ShinRa stole from us. ShinRa stole from us; I'll steal it right back.
I am Yuffie Kisaragi.
But one day, I will be Kisaragi You Fei again.