No Choice Chapter 2
I don't own Tenchi Muyo.
No Choice
By The Great El Dober
Chapter Two - The first step (A step too far?)
The rain falls not in sheets nor in buckets but in drops, each one
plunging a dizzy dance through the vast dark sky, each one whipped and stumbled in the
same harsh, bitter winds, yet each one different, separate from the rest.
The world is much the same, we all live under the same sun, we are all
ailed and healed by similar means yet behind each closed door, contained in each moment of
privacy is a different world. Every wall is a divide, every barrier a border, every turned
corner or opened door a doorway to another world where what you left behind no longer
exists.
There are countless worlds that have passed beyond your reach, thousands
of sights you'll never see, millions of words you'll never hear and scores of acts that
you will be powerless to stop, or even know occurred.
Nowhere is this truer than in Washu's dark world, one of the most barren
and desolate of all.
The light streamed down from the heavens like vibrant waves of warmth
pooling through the windows and sailing smoothly through the air before splashing its cups
of colour and comfort on the border door, the threshold between a house in Okayama and a
far different world.
The door stood tall and firm like a soldier on guard, the defence line
of Washu's world. It faced vigilantly outwards, its back turned to the barren darkness and
relentless misery that it shielded. Beyond that doorway lay another world, a lawless land
with alien technologies, boundless possibilities and a solitary ruler. With her world's
weapons at her feet Washu could do anything she wanted, she could commit any crime,
indulge in any sin, all in sanctuary of her own private playground.
And yet the outside world let this pass, the birds still sang their
rehearsed songs, the sun still climbed its designated path and life was settled into a
gentle tranquillity. Whether they were silenced by their powerless futility or by their
trusting faith in Washu's morality, no soul was shaking at the thought of Ayeka walking
into Washu's lair unaccompanied and unarmed.
No one suspected anything.
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"Mum! Mum where are you?"
"In the kitchen dear," the comforting, familiar hum of
Washu's voice answered distantly, both in body and tone. It was a muffled call, faded by
the walls that stood between the hall where Ryoko searched and the kitchen table where a
preoccupied hand flipped yet another page of one of the books that had been pulled from
the disordered spine of spines that lay on the shambolic table, each in turn to be
examined through the focused yet engrossed, spectacle gaze of Washu.
"Hi Mum!" the young girl greeted as she burst into the
room with a leap of vigour and untamed life, "I've got a present for you!"
It was with these curious words and the potential of where they may
lead, that Washu finally relinquished her reading and turned her eyes to the smiling child
that stood before her with a bright expression of excitement, colour and something else, a
hidden root, something more fragile yet also more compelling . . .
. . . hope?
As Ryoko's young golden eyes looked up at her high mother, her hands
hiding behind her back, her lips painting an endearing smile, there was an innocence and
frailty in her gaze. Although her sitting mother's eyes were on a level equal to her own
Ryoko was still looking up, up at someone so close yet so far, a foundation to her life
whose abilities and interests were as far from Ryoko as the vast sky was from the ground,
and it was from this lower ground that Ryoko looked up from.
In Ryoko's naïve mind her mother was something set apart from the
rest, something special. She seemed like a glorious Queen, emanating sheer magnificence,
endless achievement and a less understood yet realised sense of chaste virtues. It was
these admirable merits that made her special, that made Ryoko perceive her mother as being
better, on some superior plane. In truth the young girl had been woefully wrong but the
sum of her limited experiences had led her to believe so and in turn left her striving for
an acceptance and attention that was not always there for her.
"Here," she animatedly chirped as her small arms swung
around from the shelter of her back, "I picked some flowers for you!"
As Washu's touched eyes rested upon her gift the content drumbeat of
her heart was thrust into a sudden blast of raw, ripping shock. It trembled with a
thunderous chorus of distress, anguish and a small flavour of pride.
Ryoko's tiny hands grasped a posy of roses, a picturesque collage of
blossomed reds, a selected offering, the deep red petals highlighting the intimacy of this
personal gesture as they blended with the rich tones of Washu's hair. Yet Washu's heart
quaked with horror at the sight of it, for as her child held out her token of love she
grasped the thorny stem with a fastened fist as the same deep, intimate red oozed through
her small fingers. The blood stained roses, coated by the pricked punctures of her
daughter's extending hands, filled Washu's soul with a pulsing, protective, parental
instinct but also with a sense of honour, an appreciation for this sprained sacrifice.
Yet it was the parental impulse that dominated, it was the sword and
shield that came out.
"What have you done to yourself!" she spluttered, with
raw, confused tears sending quakes through her throat, her urgent words like thrusting
arrows wavering in their path yet bearing piercing tips. The enchanting books were cast
aside as Washu leapt from her chair, her frantic movements and watering eyes imploring her
daughter to stop this senseless pain.
Yet all she appeared to do was cause more.
Ryoko's bright young stance suddenly shrank into a timid shadow, her
glorious smile descending into a fearful face of confusion, her broken smile a symbol of
her shattering hope. Her flinching hand dropped the tarnished roses, letting them fall
like dying comets, spearheaded with a vibrant face of colour and trailed with a tail of
red.
"I'm sorry Mum," she stammered, whipping her pierced palm
into view as the small wounds began to miraculously heal themselves, "but it's okay,
see its all better now, its okay."
"That doesn't mean its okay to hurt yourself," Washu
insisted with a flaring passion and uncompromising finality. Her voice struck with the
bold projection and overpowering energy that had enraptured and electrified countless
lecture halls in her glorious past but as Washu looked into the tearing eyes of her
intimidated child it became shamefully apparent that she wasn't on a podium delivering a
vigorous sermon, she was on her knees comforting a confused young girl.
"Its okay darling," she soothed in her most tender tones,
letting streams of warmth and love flow smoothly into the calm waters of her soft words,
"I just don't want to see you hurt."
"But you don't like the flowers," Ryoko responded,
despondence weighing her words with grave sorrow and heavy shame until they hung
mournfully like her downcast face, "They're ugly, aren't they."
"Oh no," Washu assured, a shallow innocence grafted to her
words, a half-hearted truth that would pass unflawed in Ryoko's unripe mind, "I
appreciate them, it was a lovely thing to do. Thank you."
Then to fulfil the meaning of her words and to preserve the thin
illusion she had wrapped around her daughter like a warm blanket, she delicately fingered
the bloody flowers from the floor and carried them to the table, tonging them carefully
with her fingertips as Ryoko's deathly red blood smeared her skin.
The other hand had the far easier task of removing some old flowers
from a vase on the table, some ceremonial token of attending something or other, a formal
gesture with no warming significance or value. They were replaced by Ryoko's bleeding
roses, stark vessels of earth shattering emotion delivered with every glance. Washu
watched as the gored stems were lowered into the crystal urn, its glass walls as clear as
the water it held, and imagined that this would be the laying to rest, the end of the
matter.
She was wrong.
She watched as the roses, stained in blood, in turn dyed the
life-giving water to a sickly shade of light red, a tinge of death. Nature's gifts now
rested in the poisoned water that glimmered with the hue of the evening sky, their
magnificence and attraction corrupted by their fouled surroundings. The gesture of love
was now twisted, every time she would look to appreciate her daughter's gift she would be
faced with the harrowing distress of seeing her child's blood.
Yet she couldn't decline the loving offering, she couldn't discard
the fruits of her Little Ryoko's sacrifice. She had to keep that reminder of pain, despite
the sorrow she would have to treasure those blood stained roses.
She had no choice.
Washu reopened her eyes letting that warm glimpse of the past slip back
into the vaults of her memory. Her wistful stare focused past the constellation of
displays around her, past the black sea of darkness that enshrouded her domain, even past
the dreary cell of reality and through the trail of time, back to her garden of Eden, the
lost paradise she could never return to. The sweet memories of her past were so cherished
and clear yet it had been civilisations ago. Life had changed so much since then.
The world now seemed like an inverted realm, an alternate, twisted
version were black was white, family was stranger and her warm home, once a hive of colour
and joy, had become an empty, meaningless husk, barren, dark and lonely.
The hunter had now become the hunted, it was now Washu that sought
approval and praise from her daughter, it was the mighty scientist that now stood on lower
ground and the timid child that now sat on the throne of worship.
The roles had been completely reversed.
That was why it would be okay, that was why Ryoko would be able to
forgive. Just as Washu saw glimpses of her prime mirrored in her flowering daughter, Ryoko
would surely see her faded reflection in her infantile, withering mother.
Yes, Ryoko would understand, she would . . .
"Washu! Where the hell are you!"
"Ryoko?" Washu gasped softly, the word escaping her numb lips
as softly as a sigh yet the gentle word was only the rim, the soft surface of titanic seas
brimmed with emotion. Her racing heart was careering down slippery slopes, dashing towards
hope and fear, anticipation and apprehension, pleasure and pain.
For as she watched her daughter storm down the causeway of light in a
relentless one man march, her heart warmed with delight at the prospect of her presence
but it also cowered for cover, for the shadowed outline of Ryoko's lowered eyebrows, the
vicious glint in her narrowed eyes as the dotting displays flickered like winter stars and
the stone stern expression threatening from her face, it was clear that despite the
prospect of her presence there was no potential for peace.
"What the hell are you playing at Washu?" Ryoko speared her
acid words with deadly fury through razor fangs like those of a spitting snake,
"Think you can lock yourself away from us all, well you can't hide from me so since
you won't answer to Tenchi then you'll just have to answer to me instead. What have the
hell have you done to Ayeka?"
Ryoko's blazing passion seemed strange, almost out of context and
contradictory, but even she, the princess' archrival, even she had been disturbed when she
had seen Ayeka sprawled there face down on her bed as if she had drowned in her covers.
She had not moved or responded, she had barely breathed.
The sight had ripped through Ryoko's bravado defences and struck her
like a hammer to a bell, the rippling vibrations filing every thought in her mind, every
time she tried to drive it out another wave brought it all back. She felt a sense of guilt
and failure for she had secretly strived to avoid injuries like this. It had been the thin
line she had lived on, throughout all the stormy fights and perilous play it had been her
private mission to prevent pain and now her heart wept with a sense of neglected
responsibility and meaningless efforts, efforts that were once glorious personal triumphs,
now nothing but faint ghosts buried in vain.
But beyond all those things, the deepest blow, the real storm that
brewed in her enraged heart had been the torture of enduring Sasami's tears. To look into
the small girls eyes and no longer she the warm greetings of her cheer or the fresh breeze
of her happiness but to instead witness the dark depths of her confusion, of her anxiety,
her fear. Her shimmering eyes amplified her torn emotions, her deep pupils seemed like
bottomless pits, a downwards spiral frantically searching for answers that weren't there,
it was this never-ending, solutionless dread that filled her tearful eyes and whimpering
voice.
It was like a raging cauldron out there, furious thoughts and boiling
emotions electrified the air with a blistering tension sustained by frantic raised voices
full of holes, lacking basic confidence or the sweet elusive assurance their unsettled
souls craved. Ryoko couldn't bear it, she seemed to absorb their collective frustrations
like a sponge and in truth she had only volunteered to storm the lab so she could ring it
all out over her mother's head. Secondly, more important but far less intense, was the
notion that 'informing' Washu would bring some actual competence to the table and this
whole nightmare could end.
In the core of her heart she never truly expected what followed.
"I can't tell you that," Washu whispered in reply, her shamed
words sounding more like a guilty confession than a simple statement.
"Oh my God, you've really done something haven't you?" Ryoko
gasped, the fiery vigour drained from her voice and replaced with a subdued whisper, the
fading sound of her dying insight and the small spark of a far more sinister replacement.
But as time moved on and her disillusioned question was met only with a downcast silence,
Ryoko's volatile temper burst back into life in a thunderous explosion of blazing words.
"God damn it, you're such a fucking idiot! I know that you're trying to get on my
good side but this time you've gone too far. If you've done what I think you've done . . .
do you even know what will happen?"
"But you don't understand," Washu persisted with a yearning
plea in her words, the true texture of her emotions flowing free in her distraught voice.
Despite her fragile soul, wormed with distress, she bravely opened her arms, surrendered
her precious defences and exposed her heart, much like Ryoko had only hours before, as she
moved forward to embrace her daughter, to soothe Ryoko's obvious frustration with her
gentle love like the peaceful lyrics of a lullaby. Her touching gesture was led by the
soft promise, "Its okay, you'll see, it'll all be okay."
"Don't touch me!" Ryoko stabbed, her words impaling the tender
flesh of her mother's heart as her snapping hand slapped the warm outpouring of love into
a raw winter of rejection.
"You're nothing but a child Washu," she barked viciously, her
last shreds of patience caving in, her last thoughts of restraint dissolving and her
temper incensed by the embarrassment and unease the exchange had caused her, "You're
just a burdensome child trying to mimic a role you can't understand. Well if you want to
play Mummies and Daddies then that's fine but don't play around with my life."
And then her hellstorm tirade began to drizzle away, a fresh silence
carpeted the tense air as Ryoko searched deep into her mother's eyes, surveying the
damaged her barbed words had inflicted. In those deep pools of green she saw the violent
fires, her mother's heart set alit, being slowly scorched in a ravaging inferno of ill
chosen words and runaway tempers.
Ryoko was a destroyer, eons of carnage had structured her life, she
wasn't a healer, she lacked the words to douse her mother's anguish. All she could offer
was closure, to seal the matter, punctuate the point and hope that time would soothe the
damage.
"Don't play around with my life," she repeated, an iron tone
of stern severity toughening her bold words, "I'm not your plaything."
It had been a pulled punch, the soft allusion to her daughter's horrid
past as a helpless captive could have devastated Washu's frail soul but the subtlety
allowed her to filter the meaning out, to ignore what may have been meant. Yet with that
Ryoko drew the line, she turned around and with composed, controlled steps fled back down
the trail of light. Her intended escape from uncertainty and frustration had only infested
her with more doubts and questions, fears that struck deeper, suspicions that lurked in
darker territories and problems that were broader, bolder and unsolvable.
Washu made no final attempts or pleas. She was in a motionless trance,
set in a statue stance by the numbing whirlpool of emotions that swirled in her, blurring
her thoughts, dispersing her composure and fading her feelings until everything became a
single sensation, a searing perspective of the moment that smouldered in the core of her
soul.
She simply watched as Ryoko left, she watched as the soft illuminations
cast a magnificent glow on her daughter's tall, firm form, she listened as each striding
step sliced through the silence with a bold definition, she admired as Ryoko filled her
with a yearning pain, a forsaken suffering but also a wholesome pride. She imprinted that
memory, that warm felling to her memory like a proud emblem to a banner and, with a
wounded arm, raised it high above her head. It was her reason to continue, it was all she
had.
"Don't worry my little Ryoko, it's going to be all better . .
."
Her soft whispers barely scratched the surface of the air as they
petered through the vast chambers of the lab, the charged arena that had once again become
nothing but the bleak vessel of a lonesome life.
". . . its going to be all better."
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The world is much like the falling rain and we are much like the falling
drops. We are all spiralling towards a universal fate, we are all destined to hit the
ground . . .
. . . just some sooner than others.
End of Chapter Two
Note - Thanks to everyone who sent invaluable feedback to the last
chapter. I was just having a real tough time writing. In fact if I hadn't got that
encouraging feedback I probably wouldn't have written again.
Thanks.