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.