Aviantei
By: Aviantei
Part Fifty-Six: Mercy
Ivy stared up at a cloudless sky, squinting against the brightness of the sun. Grass poked at her palms, the back of her neck, and through the fabric of her shirt. She didn't even need to look around to recognize where she was. That faint melody of the elements was present, the mix of plants and the hum of earth, accentuated by notes of the pond a bit farther off. The sweet aromas of various flowers washed over her, and tears started to well up in her eyes.
She'd been dead so many times that it wasn't hard to recognize she'd once again been reduced to nothing but a soul amongst the entirety of the Great Spirit. The difference between now and all her training in the past was that she hadn't been launched into a hell for the sake of fighting her way out. No, this was an ordinary commune, a place where souls could come to rest without any torture while they waited for reincarnation to reclaim them.
It was the sort of place that Ivy had never thought she would deserve to be at, let alone one that was filled with nothing but kindness.
This is home.
If she sat up, she knew she would see it. The small little house where she'd lived for not even a year, still in one piece. The garden that her father had tended to with so much love. The painted decorations along the porch crafted by the hands of her mother. The mountains in the distance. None of it would be tainted by the memory of smoke and fire and ash. It would all be as it had been, and she'd be able to stay, and that was what scared her more than anything else because, even after all of Ren and Lyserg's kind words, she still felt like she didn't deserve that much.
"You shouldn't sleep the day away, our little sprout."
Teardrops rolled down Ivy's cheeks as she sat up. Standing not too far away where her parents, looking the exact same as they had when she'd left the house to pick flowers in the backyard. Her father was the shorter of the two, with his hair falling long down his back, while her mother held herself tall and proud, her own hair almost cut to the line of her skull. Both of them were smiling, as if they were glad to see her, and Ivy gave in and pushed herself onto shaking legs to run toward them.
"Mǔqīn…! Fùqīn…!"
Her mental state impacted the shape of her soul, and Ivy was a little girl again, clinging to her parents. Their comforting aromas of kitchen spices and oil paints hit her with such intensity, and they both wrapped their arms around her, swaddling Ivy between them as she cried, free and without inhibition. "I'm sorry," she said, the words muddled by snot and tears. "I'm so sorry—!"
"Shh," her father said, hands running comforting circles around her back. "There's nothing you need to apologize for, Ivy. You didn't do anything to us that needs apologizing."
"But I… I…"
"You've lived a life that may not have been the best, yes," her mother said, pressing a soft kiss to the top of Ivy's head. "But you're allowed to make mistakes, because you're able to learn from them. You made sure you were still alive and that you could seek happiness, and that's all we could have ever wanted from you."
Happiness. The word had come back to her. Making decisions that were true to her heart—was that part of happiness? Could she still seek those things and be that selfish when her existence and actions had caused that same happiness to be stripped away from others?
"Mǔqīn, Fùqīn," she said, staring down at the ground as the question that had been stuck to the depths of her soul for the past eight years crawled its way out of her throat, "did you ever regret…taking me in?"
"Of course not."
"Never."
The words shook her heart, attempting to shake the fear and doubt away, but it didn't feel right—it didn't feel like enough. "What are you even saying?!" Ivy shouted, pulling herself back from her parents' embrace. She'd shifted again, her soul once more taking on the form of a teenager, balled fists, defensive posture, and all. "I'm not a little kid anymore; you don't have to coddle me! If you hadn't taken me in—if I hadn't forced myself into your lives, you—you wouldn't have had to die!"
The whole time, she'd blamed Ander for it. He was an easy target as the executioner, and it had been simpler to mark him as a target for revenge. But it didn't change the facts: that Ivy was the reason he had come, that Ivy hadn't been able to defend them, that Ivy was the reason they were dead, even when they treated her with nothing but kindness. If she'd never started treating them as her parents, if she'd never run away from the Lon estate in the first place—
A gentle hand rested on her shoulder, and Ivy looked up to see her parents both standing close again, genuine and subtle smiles on their faces. "You didn't have any control over that situation," her mother said. "We made the choice to take you in, Ivy. You didn't force a thing on us."
"Besides, if you're saying it would have been better for you to stay in that place and be tortured, I'll have to disagree," her father added. "Every child should get to know love and kindness. I just wish that we could have shown that to you a bit longer. But you didn't make the choice to kill us. You didn't take the actions that made it happen."
Ivy could feel herself shaking, the emotions rippling through her like electricity jumping through a wire. It all just sounded like pretty words, like an improbable instance. But looking at them closer, Ivy understood that they weren't lying to make her feel better. They'd never blamed her, though they would have had every right to. The fact that their spirits had moved on right away instead of staying behind showed that they'd died without any regrets, rather than not wanting to see the child that had served as a harbinger of destruction.
Every child should get to know love and kindness.
But what about Hao? For not the first time, Ivy realized how little she knew about him. What had happened one thousand years ago that had made him become so fixated on destroying humanity? He'd just talked in the briefest of moments about his previous lives, save for when he was explaining a shamanic technique or elaborating on something he'd learned as one of the Patch. Everything else was a great unknown that Ivy had always seen it as beyond her station to ask about.
"I can't say here," she whispered, fearing her parents' reactions, though she had no need to. They would still smile. "I'm so glad that I got the opportunity to talk to you, to know you're alright." To know that you don't hate me. "But there's someone else who needs my help, and I've left him waiting long enough." Someone else who needs to understand love and kindness.
"Don't you worry about us," her mother said. "We know that this isn't where you belong, little sprout. In the future, when it's your time, you can come back to visit us."
"But for now, we still want you to live and be happy," her father added, reaching out a hand to ruffle Ivy's hair. "So go on ahead. Do what you need to. Just know that we still do and will always love you."
"I love you, too." Ivy choked on the words, but she had to say them again. "I love you. Thank you. Thank you so much—"
She pulled them both into a hug, holding for no longer than she could without fearing that she'd never let go again, and then stepped back. She understood enough about the Great Spirit to know that this place was one of many societies and that travel was possible between them. Was it just a matter of will and determination, as so many other things within death were, or was there something special you had to do first?
Ivy stared up at the sky, as if it would tell the answer to her, but then a shape in the distance started to take form. It was too dark and too dense to be a cloud, and it took several minutes of it drawing closer for Ivy to recognize that it was a steam train, chugging across the sky on invisible rails as it approached where Ivy stood.
"Ka-san," came Kaede's voice from on high, "come on. Everyone's going."
"Yeah, time to make the save delivery of the Principessa!" Issebella shouted, leaning out the window with Kaede at her side. "All aboard!"
Ivy let out a watery chuckle before she wiped her eyes. And then she raised her hands up to the sky and let Issebella and Kaede pull her up and into the procession that would take her to the place she needed to be.
I hope you're ready, she thought, because we're going to save you whether you want us to or not.
"Are you sure this is as far as you want to go?"
Ander stood on the ground, wind whipping through his hair as the train of souls passed by up above and then slipped out of sight, moving onto the next society. He knew that something important was about to happen, and maybe even something that he would regret not being there for. But that place wasn't going to be one where he could do any good.
"If I went, I'd just be in Mèi-Mei's way," he said.
His conversation partner's tail twitched, but the small bipedal cat dressed in a coat and bowler hat still nodded. "I have to wonder if that's truly the case," Matamune said with a contemplative hum. "But considering that I also have people that I'm not ready to talk to yet even though I should, I suppose I don't have much room to criticize."
Having heard the bare bones basics about Matamune from the Asakuras, Ander could at least guess that the cat spirit was talking about Hao. "You know him best out of all of us. Do you think this will work out?"
"If there wasn't even the slightest chance, we wouldn't be here to talk about it still." It wasn't any sort of guarantee, though. Matamune's whiskers twitched once in worry. "Even so, I'm choosing to believe in Yoh. It's not quite as substantial as going myself, but it's better than sitting around and fretting, isn't it?"
Ander found himself nodding, still thinking about his mother's words. To Lon Aishe, the power of connection was an undeniable thing. And in the current battle, they didn't have just the affection of a younger brother on their side, but Ivy would be there as well. Two bonds with that much care in them would at least be something close to enough, and then there were the dozens of others with them.
If Hao can't even recognize that much when it's front of him, then we were done for from the start.
"Fair enough," Ander said, looking once more at the sky before sighing. "Thanks for bringing me here so I could make sure Mèi-Mei's alright. I…I'm ready to go wherever it is I would have gone without out you."
"Very well."
Matamune reached up his paw, and Ander took it with his hand, fur meeting skin. Ander closed his eyes, and there was a flip in his stomach, and the two ghosts vanished from the society without a trace that they'd ever been there at all.
Hao couldn't understand what was happening.
He'd done it. He'd become the Shaman King and obtained the power of the Great Spirit. It had taken him three lifetimes and one-thousand years of suffering, but he'd at long last accomplished his goal. The ability to destroy all of humanity was within his reach. The last thing in his way was the foolish ideals of his younger brother and the other members of the Five Warriors, but they shouldn't have stood a chance against the absolute power he'd obtained.
And yet he couldn't banish them from the Shaman King's society.
He couldn't make them fall, no matter what display of ability he deployed to destroy them.
He couldn't crush their belief that everything would work out in the end.
More impertinent souls had wormed their way into the heart of the Great Spirit: The Five Warriors' families, the other participants of the Shaman Fight, the X-Laws, Gandala, ghosts he'd never seen before, Hao's former followers. Luchist even had the gall to ask Hao to resurrect all the people he'd killed, and the rest were even willing to stay with him after he'd left them for dead, betrayed their very expectations of him.
"Opacho will stay even if Hao-dono says no."
The sight of her small body falling towards the black hole he'd created was enough for Hao's heart to waver, and the Over Soul collapsed into a harmless nothingness before she could even get close to being harmed. Hao felt his breath heave through his chest in ragged gasps, with his mind overwhelmed by hundreds of thoughts that were no doubt his own but felt like foreign beings.
Why? Why won't they all just go away and leave me alone? I've made it this far. I don't need— But I don't want to see Opacho hurt— Why am I—?
"Overwhelming, isn't it?"
A—
Aviantei stepped forward from the train, cradling Opacho in her arms. He hadn't seen her since they'd parted ways on Tokyo's beach, but she seemed to look lighter, less hesitant. The look on her face was a combination of empathy and happiness.
"Once you start getting hit with all the thoughts, you start to doubt yourself," she said. "You can't tell if what you're feeling is the truth or some convenient lie. It's not easy, having your worldview overturned. You don't want to believe it, so you keep lashing out and denying it, fighting the change that's happening inside you. It's scary, huh?"
Hao couldn't form a proper retort, and Aviantei gave Opacho one last squeeze before letting her small body float upwards towards the assembled others. Aviantei proceeded forward, not backing down from the distance between her and Hao.
"It's just so much easier to push your own thoughts and ideas onto other people, isn't it?" Aviantei continued, her voice growing louder. "You just couldn't be honest about it, could you? That you were unsure. That's why you never once told me that you knew the entire time how I felt about you, because then it would be easier to pretend like it didn't matter, and you could just go on doing whatever you had planned, huh?" The words had grown to a shout, and her face twisted in anger. "Screw you! I'm not going to enable your stupid little game of denial anymore. The reason you can't kick us out is because you don't want to! So just admit that you're lonely already, dammit! Stop all your bullshit whining and let other people help you! Ovanteo!"
To the others present, that last word wouldn't have meant much. Everything else would have paled in comparison to the ribbing she'd just put him through. But between the two of them it was something important, a name that could only be spoken when you understood where it came from and the pieces that went into it.
She had seen him.
When did she hear it? he wondered. It shouldn't have been surprising, considering her own capability, her position as Aviantei. She'd always possessed the same sort of name as him. Just when did the elements tell her? How long has she—
"She's right, of course," said Gandala's Sati. "Somewhere inside your heart you must've wanted this. You wanted someone to bring her back."
Ivy nodded. "That's why you sent me to the society where I could see my parents again, right?" she asked, and his expression must've been one of disbelief. "Oh, please, Hao. I never would've felt confident enough to go there on my own. But you at least gave me what you thought you couldn't find because you understood.
"You wanted to see your mother again, didn't you?"
Hearing it put in words was a like a sword slotted between the ribs, and a reminder of how ridiculous he was. Even after everything, after obtaining all the power he had—he still wanted to see his mother, like—no, as a child that had gotten lost. And yet, if he was to believe what Ohachiyo and the others were saying (what he knew to be true, even if he didn't want to admit it), then it had been his own fault that he'd never found her, because he'd been pushing her away this whole time, just like every other person he'd ever brushed aside.
But the world and his very being were changing.
Ohachiyo was back.
His heart had shifted.
He could no longer read minds.
His mother was before him.
Yoh called him Nii-chan.
And he decided—
"But for the time being, I'll only watch attentively how you all try to fix everything before your time runs out."
That should be time enough to pull himself together. That should be enough for him to determine what it was he wanted to do—because there were still five-hundred years to come before his time as Shaman King would be over. And so, with the power granted to him, he returned those who had died at the hands of his slaughter to the world of the living.
"If you make me go back with everyone else right now, I'm going to be pissed."
Aviantei stood before him, the last revivable soul still remaining. She'd propped her hands on her hips, and, for the first time that Hao could recall, she'd bothered to glare at him, any and all respect she may have paid to him as her master now melted away. Without being able to hear her thoughts anymore, it was hard to tell how much was genuine and much of it was a front, but Hao still felt very certain of which one it was, and a wry smile slipped onto his lips.
"Aren't you already?"
"Damn right," she said, and then plopped herself down on the ether of the Shaman King's society to sit before him. "And I wouldn't recommend putting me in an even worse mood." She steepled her hands together, leveling Hao in a look that just dared for him to argue with her. "So, Hao," Aviantei said, emphasizing her lack of any sort of honorific whatsoever, "let's talk."
[Author's Notes]
Chapter title is taken from the Dave Matthews Band song of the same name. I use a lot of DMB tracks on my personal playlist for this story, so if you ever wanna know what I was listening to while working on this, it was likely them.
Thanks going out to Monstertrainer for the favorite since last chapter! I super appreciate it.
Meanwhile, I'm just stunned that we've finally made it this far. We're at the end of canon baby - let's see where it leads us, yeah?
Next Time - Part Fifty-Seven: "Live." Please look forward to it!
-Avi
[05.15.2021]