I don't own Tenchi Muyo
No Choice
By the Great El Dober
Some things are never meant to be, yet we still strive for them, never thinking that we may be better off without them.
Chapter Four - Consequences of Success
Washu's Last Legacy
Most mothers would sacrifice anything to save their children but how many would sacrifice their principles, how many would become what they hated just to rescue their child?
And how many would go even further than that?
How many people would make a sacrifice to bring their greatest desire to birth, even if that sacrifice meant they would never live to see it?
I may not be Ryoko's mother anymore, I may not deserve that honour but I can still be the mother of her future, I can still give birth to her happiness.
And perhaps it will be a plastic world that I impose on them, a compulsory life built on feathery dreams and watery hopes, but if chaining her to contentment is her only chance of experiencing it then that is what I have to do . . .
. . . I have no choice.
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"Disease?"
The shrill shriek filled the lab with an ear-stabbing whine, the tone of the voice filled with thoughts of absurdity and disbelief.
"Yes, you have contracted a very serious illness and unless I operate now the chances are that you will die."
Washu's reply was clinically exact and unvenomed. Her alarming words came out flat, her dynamic flare sapped away as her customary passion was leased to other concerns. This was a side issue that could become a burdensome obstacle with some haughty tempers and stubborn minds.
"But that's impossible, my Royal Jurain Tree . . ." the Royal whimpers continued, every bead of fear in her soul harvested in her agitated voice.
". . . was destroyed." Washu finished flatly. There was no enthusiasm or passion in her words, these were just recited facts concerning a smaller matter for her heart was rooted elsewhere. "It can't protect you any more. Trust me Ayeka, this danger is very real."
The condescension in Washu's voice aggravated the delicate nerves of royal pride yet freshened the realisation that those prides and privileges were now void. There were no longer princesses and pirates, only people.
Here she was simply a person, just another flower in the field doomed to lose its roots, deaden its vibrant petals, wither and die. To her mortality had been a concept of battle, an issue of swords and shields and now she had to realign her thinking to accept it as a part of everyday life, a silent threat that would forever follow her.
Suddenly a thousand thoughts were born in her, an army of fear was raised up in the pit of her heart and ruthlessly assaulted her mind. Fleets of demons descended upon her soul and savaged it, erecting camps of terror and dread. Suddenly her world had become a very different place.
Her mothers, father, sister, brother, they would all die. Her royal grasp could seize whatever it wished but it couldn't keep it, not forever, someday she would have it all ripped away from her and that day could be only steps behind her. These thoughts were the ammunition for the cannons that relentlessly ignited sparks of alarm in her soul.
She tried to think, she attempted to decide on an answer and somehow escape this excruciating misery, but every time she tried to clear her mind she was maimed by another explosion of fear. There was a deeper root, a battlefield in her soul, and she couldn't touch it, she could only suffer it.
"Can I have time to think about it?"
From the lips that had launched a million regal commands limped a humble plea, the regal majesty of her grand elocution frayed into a timid mumbling by the corroding fears as they rusted and rotted her assured beliefs, the pillars of her soul.
"No," Washu declared with level calm and authority. Her voice, though detached, was a cold wall of resolution without a single crack that any argument could breach, "It's now or never. The operation is harmless today but I won't be able to carry out the procedure tomorrow."
The gradual trickling river that spawned her fears burst its banks with the torrential urgency of her dilemma. She was in danger, she knew that she was yet she still lingered in destruction's rampant path, she still stared idly at her reflection in the Scythe's blade. Why?
Pride?
Every time she thought of accepting salvation she felt the tug at her wrists, the shackles of pride and power, the chains that fed back into her own hands. Yet it wasn't that, pride was like a rusty lead crown, it was useless and only weighed her down making her decisions harder to bear but she had long abandoned it as a way of life.
Beliefs?
No. There was no written law forbidding it and her family had gained a reputation for seldom heeding taboos. No it wasn't that either, she knew that there would be no scorn or wrath to suffer, no penalty to pay, only relief and delight that she was safe.
Fear?
No, she was brave and strong, she was a valiant warrior and a future leader.
Yet this was different, this was terminal. It was like facing death in the darkness, fighting was futile and failure was certain. Yes, it was fear that held her back, the fear of standing so close to the edge that rooted her to firmer ground.
But on those comforting soils of certainty was a certain fate, an open grave awaiting her. There was nothing there for her except a cold slumber in the damp earth. Once the life froze to a stop in her veins there would be no more friends, no more family, no more laughter or tears, nothing.
"I have no choice, do I?" she asked, the timorous words torn between smudged acceptance and sought assurance.
"No, you don't."
It was the blunt, untrimmed reply of a wandering mind but also the seal on the decision, the vindicating voice that soothed the slighter fears, that cleared the path just enough for Ayeka to push through.
She took a deep breath, attempted to clench the trembling out of her hands and slowly laid herself down upon the long cold operating bed. It was a silent sign of consent and Washu asked for no more as she mechanically prepared the implements and devices that would tweak the scales of life and death. There were no soft assurances or bedside rituals, it was simply a mindless process, the chilling existence of a body whose thoughts flew far afield.
"Well could you please grant me one favour," Ayeka's uneasy whisper plunged into the silence with the same apprehension that stirred disquiet in her mind, "This is most uncommon for Jurains. Could you please not tell the others until I'm ready for them to know."
"Of course," Washu replied, her voice grim with the knowledge of the pains she knew that promise would bring her. A glimmer of humanity had been rammed into her flat voice and a shallow smile grafted onto her face as she tried to raise her own dead spirits and somewhat live up to the significance of the moment. "and Ayeka . . ."
"Yes?"
"I just want you to know that it was a pleasure knowing you," she whispered as she completed preparations on the anaesthetic. Her voice was still weary and faint but the words were no longer empty, a sense of honesty and sincerity coated them and filled them with life, "As this may be the last time we see each other."
"What!" Ayeka started, her heart skittering in panic as those words conjured back all the fears she had strived to lock from view, "You said there were no risks!"
"There aren't."
With that solemnly spoken response Washu entered the command, opened the gates and released the agents into Ayeka's body. As smooth sleep began to trickle through her veins her fearful eyes stared back at the dark shadow-clad scientist who held her life at her mercy, and just before the flame of life left them they flashed with the horrid realisation of what Washu had truly meant.
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The fresh tint of the morning light began to mature into a noon glow as it pierced through the clouds in rays like cutting ribbons of harsh light laced with the slight bite of approaching winter. It was a moment in history, the chilled dawn light shining on the eve of a new beginning, a defining moment in shaken lives observed by the respecting silence of pacified nature.
The recovering princess stood in the damp grass amidst fallen dew and falling tears. They all gathered around a headstone imbedded in the earth as it jutted out like the label of a document, the reference point of another filed soul, complete and closed.
Ayeka's weak limbs shivered in the breeze as it carried the flavour of frost, numbed under the grasp of untempered emotions and trembled with the fear they brought. It wasn't a fear that you could face, it was an internal struggle, a realisation that had invaded and conquered for it was true. The poison had leaked into her skin and it was now a part of her, a shade of the background against every thought she had was formed. It was like a rouge paint that polluted every picture her mind created, like the bloody roses that had turned the water to a morbid red. Her thoughts were like that, angel-soft clouds infected by the cough of soiled fumes. Her life had been a view from behind a window but that window had now shattered leaving her naked to face the stinging storm.
For every time she glanced at that stone it came to her like a sharp blast of frozen air, the horrid realisation that there were no longer princesses and pirates, they weren't even people, only corpse-seeds waiting to be sown. That small slab was like the seal on a life, the result of the equation, the sole product of the miraculous working of life.
Every emotion, every decision, every freedom and love, all the fruits of our lives, the sweet taste that makes us what we are, time would corrode it away until it was nothing more than a forgotten faded slab, enveloped in moss and swallowed up into the universal stretch of oblivion. That was our worth, that paltry piece of rubble was the sum of the magnificent gift of life.
In the end that was all we will ever be.
And that was the true fear that unhinged her soul. It was inescapable, no money or power, wealth or knowledge, nothing within or without her grasp would ever make her immune. She could lock herself in the highest tower, in the farthest corner of the most sheltered land but death would always be lurking behind her with one hand on her shoulder.
There was nothing she could do.
So she just stood deathly still as her faint frame was shook under the onslaught of her sister's tears, Sasami's pained face thrown into her sister's dress in search of a cure, that soft cushion of comfort to soften the blow.
She just stood there and let her plagued thoughts sift through the spiral of frightful questions. She could guess answers to most of them, or know where to seek those answers, but there was one question that lay in her mind, stagnant and unsolvable.
Why?
Why would anyone do this to themselves?
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The smoky-orange glow nestled in her palm as the ghostly glass seemed to smoulder under the touch of the white moon. She rolled it idly in her hands, its revolving form like the cycling thoughts that churned in her mind.
Was it worth it? To never see your daughter smile from under a veil of white, to never see your grandchildren laugh and play, to banish yourself from the fruits of your own future, was that a fair price to pay for certainty?
As she pondered the answer to that question she gazed through the turning glass as if she was staring through the wheel of time, as if each turn leaked a soft echo of the future, a sharp glance of what might be . . .
"That's it Tenchi, I'm sorry
but that's my final answer!"
"No Washu I won't accept it!
You can't just tell me no and
expect these feelings to switch
off, it doesn't work like that."
"But Ryoko I never meant to hurt you.
It was a stupid mistake, a spur of the
moment slip. It'll never happen again,
I . . ."
"Just shut up Washu! I don't care
what you thought, its what has happened
that matters. You're little slip has ruined
it, you've ruined my whole fucking life . . .
. . . I HATE you!"
"Do you know where Ryoko's gone?"
"No."
"Well do you know when she'll come back?"
"I don't think she will."
The bottle stopped dead in her hand, that was as much as she needed to see. She had known from the beginning that love couldn't be altered with the flick of a switch, that there would be no easy solution, that her computer would calculate no logical response because there was none. She could stop the horse from drinking but she couldn't force it away from the water, it would just stand and stare thirstily, yearning only for the forbidden fruit that could quench its desire and nothing else.
Yes, the solution would never be as simple as that, perhaps in time yes it might have worked out but time required endurance and her scarred heart couldn't stomach that anymore, it was only able to spew one last bleeding burst of reckless abandon.
Beyond all the hopes and bent perspectives she knew that one night her cold lonely bed would become too much to bear and indulgence would defeat prudence. In a flash of thoughtless gluttony the final mistake would be made. She may have been bold enough to plot the thorny path to heaven but she wasn't strong enough to walk it.
"Don't play around with my life, I'm not your plaything."
Ryoko had been right, it was unfair to treat her life with such negligence, to risk so much as if the consequences would be nothing more than a dent on a doll. There was no margin for failure, no place for possibility, the solution would have to be irreversible, it would have to be as permanent as death itself.
She looked up from the unholy tint of orange as she heard faint footsteps beginning to rise above the soft surfacing drones of the forsaken television. Each sounded step was like the tick of a clock, a countdown to exposure.
It was now or never and as she looked back down at her gleaming handful of glass she knew that she held her daughter's future in her hands. Her frost-whitened knuckles stiffly screwed off the lid. Her numbing fingers bluntly scrapped up a handful of the ghostly white tablets and swallowed them as they bulged down her throat like iron seeds of death.
They filled her with toxins and poisons, liquid gremlins to storm through her body's paths and gates like pillaging barbarians, but it also filled her with a warm assurance, a restful promise that Ryoko was safe . . .
. . . that her dream was going to come true.
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Now she lay lifelessly in the earth, her limbs drained, her body dry, her eyes rusted shut forevermore. She was at peace at last. Her rotting heart was still a casket for her the pain of a lonely woman and the torment of a rejected mother but her soul had long flew, soaring softly to the heavens and leaving all of its woes buried in the soiled Earth.
Above her emptied body stood the flower of her life, the daughter that she lost then had but never held. She glared down upon the grave with a solemn expression as cold as frozen stone, her eyes as dull as two pebbles, her expression as set and secure as the great mountains.
But this rock mask was hiding her true feelings, it was shielding the storm of confusion and emotion that boiled inside her mind like a tempestuous war between the elements. Different sides of the same clashed and an internal struggle was fought for what emotion should be first carved onto her blank face.
Yet to look at her grave stare no one could ever guess the furious emotions that were violently erupting just below the surface skin.
She wanted to hate Washu. She should hate her. She had desecrated what meant most to Ryoko, she had raped her of her one true dream and left her with nothing but fading memories of hopes that were fast dissipating like wisps of smoke into air.
She had wanted to give Ryoko happiness but all she had created was another ghost to haunt the foot of her bed, yet another sordid stain on her daughter's bruised soul. Yes, she wanted to hate her mother, she wanted to heave her soul up in disgust and hurl every once of loathing at her memory. She should hate Washu from the bottom of her miserable soul, but she couldn't, and she hated herself for not being able to.
For despite herself, despite everything she thought and felt, she understood.
Still little had changed inside her, if she were to trawl the depths of her heart she still wouldn't reap any prevailing love or unbreakable bond, but she couldn't muster the desire to damn Washu to the sorriest trench in hell either.
She paused her firestorm thoughts as they began to fizzle out and the calm of a still ocean began to wash over her and settle her thoughts onto a more pacified path.
Perhaps Washu had been right, there probably wasn't any point in denouncing the truth so perhaps now was the time to seek the truth about them. For theirs was a story without fiends or foes, just feelings and fears. They were just two broken souls trying to scrape some scrap of comfort out of their perished lives. They tried to fend of the darkness of their souls with fire. They waved that brave flame with burnt hands and gripped it even tighter when it turned round and scorched them. They were both being bitten by their only solace, being eaten alive by the only things that kept them alive. There was no way that they could harvest anything but pain from that.
And perhaps one day when she could forgive herself she would forgive her mother too.
But then a wind began to whisper in her ear bearing memories and reminders, taking her thoughts back a step and placing them in a new perspective. Something occurred to her and filled her with a stung anger.
Yes, it seemed that Washu's grand scheme had paid off because whether she admitted it or not, whether it was a calculated variable of her elaborate designs or just a pleasant background thought, a phantom promise that lured her willingly towards her own doom, whether she even knew it or not somewhere in the back of her twisted mind Washu knew that Ryoko would end up standing here like this, thinking these thoughts, thinking ever so slightly better of her.
A shiver shook her spine as if cold ghostly fingers had just grabbed her. A cold chill began to fester in her as if a frosty finger had touched her heart.
Had that been her buried desire from the beginning, was her death just a lesson, an exercise to teach Ryoko the truth? Had that been her true trophy? Was that the abject desperation that Ryoko had driven her to? It frightened her, of every thought and feeling that orbited Ryoko it was this guilt-filled notion that disturbed her most, even more than the twisting, uncertain future that was unfurling itself in a erratic flurry, even more than the reins of her life that had now slipped her hands.
She looked up to the pale cold sky, the last question driven through her mind like a frozen arrow.
'But have they slipped or were they stripped?'
She clasped her eyes closed wearily and let that unravelling line of thought fall away like a tumbling ball of yarn. She didn't even have influence over her own thoughts anymore, they just seemed to career through the whisked and whirled channels of her feelings, the hectic, mazy mess that her mind had dissipated to.
It was fearful to find your own mind compromised, to have lost control of your own essence but the true composure-peeling fear was that she could only impede these impulsive notions, she could slow them down but one end of that line was still tied to her, a thread in her, and eventually she would unravel it to its origin.
Regardless of any words or deeds the future would bring, this death had been engraved in her soul and was now as much a part of her as her pale skin that cringed in the cold. She felt threatened by this emotional coup d'etat, she wanted to rebel against herself, to take up arms and wage guerrilla war to purge her mind pure once more, but she no longer had the strength or will. Instead she just heaved out a soul-shattered breath and watched the bitter air turn it to a flurry of frost-laced cloud.
She felt more cold and alone now than ever before but as she stood there, dazed and distressed, she was anything but the exception.
He stood with a rimed bouquet of blood red roses in his hands and his bleeding heart lodged in his throat. The warm charm of a kind hearted young man had been swept from his face, he stared with the solemn manner of his grandfather, the stonewall that hid the pain of lost love and downed dreams.
'If it hadn't been days then I would still be waiting to wake up and see us all the way we were but its true, its unreasonably unexpected, it goes against the grain of our lives, but its true.
I never imagined how fragile my life could be. How could something I cared so much about could be destroyed so swiftly without as much as a whisper of warning.
It's a catastrophe in defiance of everything. It just shouldn't have happened.'
His thoughts filled his mind with the weight of mountains. He was young and the rest of his life still seemed like an infinite stretch of years, a journey ahead of him so vast that it wasn't yet worth pondering its end. Although any illusion of immortality had been truly dispelled from his mind he knew he couldn't survive the rest of his existence on faint dreams alone. If he wasn't prepared to waste his life as a shrine to someone who had never became more than a suicidal acquaintance then what would he . . .
Wait! There, could it be . . .
His head wrenched hastily round in excited astonishment, his dying spirits suddenly flourished in a blissful beat of joy.
She was there.
The sun burned in his eyes, his raised hand failing to fully shield his gaze, but he never looked away for fear that if he let her out his sight he might lose her again. For by some miracle she was standing there before him, her larger than life outline shrouded in the brilliant morning light. It enveloped her in a brilliant daze of sharp brilliance, washing the colour and texture from her dim form but the shape of her wild hair was unmistakeable as it rustled gently on the chilled breeze.
Even through a pained squint she looked magnificent, the way the rays of piercing white light embraced the edges of her eclipsing body gave her an angelic glow as she stood there serenely like a vision of holy beauty, a glorious lady of light, a gift from heaven.
For the first time in days he felt a pulse of hope in his dead heart and with an eager spring in his step he moved to meet her, to be reunited with his lost love, to wake from this nightmare and feel alive again, but as he took that step the sun's glare passed over him, the dazzling mist was lifted and the illusion was shattered.
Instead of flowing locks of red it was cyan that fluttered in the wind, instead of a second chance it was nothing but a cruel illusion, pale in resemblance, bitter in essence.
His soaring heart ruptured. His dried up soul just shrivelled away and all the joy and virtue in his life seemed to leak from him and seep away into the ground.
Yet his mind couldn't help but be filled with a prospect, a dark untapped potential. That brief moment, that short release he had found in Ryoko, could that sustain him?
No! That was wrong, he couldn't use Ryoko like that.
But it would make her happy. And those thoughts and that experience, in that order, could that be coincidence alone? Or was it a sign, an omen, a heavenly hand pointing him towards the right path, telling him it was okay. Or was that just a wishful delusion to let him bend his focus?
Did it matter?
He had lost his true love and now he felt as if any love would do, he just had to claw some comfort out of this cold world before it froze him to death. Ryoko was the only solace he had left, the only remaining thread, the last link left for him. Perhaps it was imitation, perhaps it was wrong but he no longer had the strength of mind to decide let alone defy. This would have to do for now.
A baby doesn't suck its thumb expecting milk, it does it for comfort, the warm touch of a memory soothing the stale cold of the moment. To him this was no worse.
He raised his head towards the heavens seeking an audience, a presence to bear witness to his choice so in that he could find justification, whether imagined or true.
'I'll take care of her Washu,' was his silent promise, 'somehow I think that was what you would have wanted.'
So with the actors assembled Washu's blood-scribed script began to play itself out of the limits of her mind and into reality. Tenchi walked slowly towards Ryoko as the magnetism of manufactured destiny drew them together. He passed her at first as he softly placed the roses upon the grave, the letting go and laying to rest the fulfilment of both a promise and a plan. Still kneeling he stared at the red petals, so similar in nature to his love's character, but the longer he stared at the dead cells, no matter how beautiful, it only affirmed the blunt truth that he would gain nothing in return for waiting forever hunched over a cold grave.
He raised himself up on stiffened knees and without turning he drew in a long breath of the frosty world that encased him. He tried to free his wedged heart and raw feelings long enough for him to say what he knew he had to.
"I'm sorry Ryoko," he spoke, his voice disturbing the morning silence. His words were streamed with emotions too fresh to bury. "I lost my Mom too so I know how you must feel."
He waited for a response, a recognition, anything to help him mould this delicate conversation, but none came. All that followed was a winter silence as the bridge he had tried to build between them began to fall away to dead peace.
"Grandfather says that you were there for me we she died," he continued, uneased yet undeterred, "I don't know is that's true or not, I can't remember, but I'm here for you."
As he spoke those awkward words they sounded stiffly bent as if crammed sideways into the moment. He shuffled slowly towards her with hesitation as if she was a vicious viper, just like he had days before. It wasn't a passionate flare of undying love nor did it seem a shallow pretence, it was just clumsy, lacking nothing except the very essence that made it desirable to begin with.
And it was even more cumbersome than it seemed for Tenchi was wading blindly through murky issues, he was fumbling with words and promises each trailing a train of complex consequences and delicate significance, all of which he was innocently ignorant to.
Although met with silence each oblivious word and action stirred another raw wave in the disturbed storm of Ryoko's mind. It was another violent shake of her vulnerable life that had been stripped bare and left exposed in the raw rain, each passing moment lashing her with another dose of sour sorrow.
Tenchi's hand reached out to clasp hers like the locking of a chain, the finale of every tear and thought, the purpose of their suffering. In better times it would have been an untainted moment of joy and pride but now it was marred by cold knowledge of the iron truth and instead of being a cloud walk of elation the experience was a flurry of thoughts, a furious whirlwind of guilt, sorrow, temptation and conscience.
'This is what I wanted, this is the realisation of my sole goal. This is the happiness that I suffered for, the promise that I lurched my weary soul towards. If this is the bliss I've battled so hard to grasp . . .
. . . then why does it feel so bad? Why does it feel like I'm selling my soul?'
Her thoughts were paused as his hand touched hers and held it firmly. In all her dreams and hopes she had never imagined it would feel so cold and harsh yet as she looked in his eyes she couldn't help but see everything she had been striving for. Methods and motives swept aside this was it, this was delivery of her dreams.
'This is happiness, perhaps it's wrong, perhaps it's hollow and cheap but it's still the only thing worth living for. I have nothing else to aspire to anymore. Washu had her happiness, she had her day in the sun. This is my last chance for peace, I deserve to taste contentment too. There's no reason for me to deny myself.'
Her bleak expression began to thaw to a soft smile, the ghost of Washu began to lift from her shoulders and for the first time in her memory she felt as if a time of true peace and rest was falling upon her. The trials and anguish of the past had finally amounted to something. The murder, filth and blood, the gouging, violating and pillaging, the loneliness, bitterness and helplessness, it was all finished, soon to be dissolved and healed in the years of warmth and kindness to come.
It would have been perfect, the rest would all have been forgotten had it not been for one stray thought, one small spark that soon exploded and swallowed up her serenity until it became everything, a black hole in her soul that devoured any scrap of joy or warmth that the moment may have brought.
She heaved her hand away harshly as if his touch suddenly torched her skin. The intimacy was shattered, the bond burned to ash. It was that thought that had changed her, the thought of being bonded, to be chained by someone else's doing. It wasn't how it was meant to be, it was all too similar.
'No! I won't be controlled, even if it's for my own good. I'll never be a prisoner again, not even a prisoner of paradise.
I said I'd never be your plaything and I meant it! You can't tempt me into it no matter how appealing a role you have planned for me. I won't become a slave to someone else's wishes.'
She raised her head in silent defiance as she realised the bitter reality that her mother had forged. This was the last link in Washu's chain and should she build a bond with him then she would only be finishing her mother's work, she would have sealed the final lock and completed the chain that shackled them all to their preordained places in someone else's choice of world.
'I don't care what your reasons were, I won't let you violate the future. Rightly or wrongly this has gone to far. It ends here.'
"Just leave me alone."
Those weak words where aimless, half-directed to her mother, half-meant for the rest of the world that she wished would just crumble away and let her languish in torment, but as Tenchi heard them they drove a cold blade through his heart. He was deprived of every warmth he sought shelter in, every certainty was failing him, or perhaps he was just beginning to pay for his own failings. His own hand drooped down miserably, the will and strength to hold it there drained from him. He felt broken and it seemed that every effort to get back on his feet only broke him further.
Once again faced with a fresh grave he felt like the same sniffling little boy who had whimpered for his mother to come back, who cried tears in vain and whose only wish was for the warm comfort that he knew would never come.
All he could do was drown in his gulf of sadness.
Ryoko tried to ignore the broken expression on his face as it bled a pitiful frailty from a raw injury. It would hurt her to see him like that and would weaken her already flimsy resolve. This was more of a commitment than a choice and to know how much it hurt others would only make it a greater burden to endure. Instead her eyes fled towards the grave where she could peer in silence undisturbed through respect.
It was a humble grave, perhaps it was unfitting for the mammoth genius it honoured. There was no elegant carving, master craftsmanship or anything that would strike awe and amazement into the passing eye, but true genius was in subtly and the scene suddenly awoke something long dead in Ryoko's heart.
Something stirred inside of her, it began to shift and toss in her mind like someone gently arousing from a stretched sleep. In the deep depths of her mind a sunken memory snapped its rusty shackles and began to lightly rise to the surface.
The roses.
The scarlet petals filled her eyes like burning leaves of flame, their crumpled, shivering petals filling her mind with fright as if they were bold, fluttering banners of war. The message on their unmarked skin stabbed itself into her mind. A soft light seemed to dawn on her godforsaken soul, a deeper meaning was carried on swift wings from the heavens and struck her with all the volume and vigour of divine thunder.
She wrapped her arms around herself as if a gust of bitter winter breath had just invaded the cool air. She stood there holding herself as if she had no one else to hold her, shivering like an unloved child, and the world suddenly felt colder, emptier and hollow.
Yet her hands found a strange comfort, a lingering warmth as if someone else's hands had been resting there only moments before but she knew that the tender sensations were only meagre wisps of half-forgotten memories.
And suddenly she knew what she had to do.
She looked down at the wilting flowers, the emblem of a memory and the whispered words from the past.
"Mommy."
As that soft word wound it's way down the wind Tenchi's foot halted just before treading another footfall in the frost laced grass. He had already retreated several steps away from Ryoko, his heavy heart dragging his spirits to drowning depths, but this one whisper filled his mind with sprouting thoughts, his heart with a rustle of confused hope and his mind with a disoriented disbelief.
"What?" he asked as softly as he could manage without his words falling away to silence.
"I said sorry," she softly whispered with a buckled voice, "Please come back."
Slowly he made his way back, crept softly up to her and with the lightest of touch, as if he was trying to lift a sleeping child, his hesitant, shivering hand reached out for her and with a lead heart she accepted it.
She had no choice, they had become playthings whether they like it or not and they no longer had any will to fight it. Perhaps it was wicked, perhaps the whole idea was a sin but it was no longer their own doing. They had been fashioned into two pieces of a puzzle, each making the other complete, leading each other out of the wilderness to where they belonged.
And so the chain was completed and there, hand in hand, stood the greatest testament to Washu's life and long after her inventions and work were long lost and forgotten her family line would remain. It was her eternal mark on the world. For they stood united before her paltry grave like trembling towers that shivered in the breeze, a greater monument than any King had ever been paid.
But as she stood there with a stone heart, miserable and beaten, Ryoko tried to purge that thought from her mind, she tried to drive out the whole cruel world. She just tried to find some shred of lost comfort, she waited for that warmth that she had felt on her sides to descend upon her once more but all she received were stabbing spears of guilt, shame, confusion and sorrow. His touch was no longer the sweet release she had prayed for, it was a scalding hand that blistered her skin.
Yet she knew that she couldn't reject it.
'I understand.
This isn't just about me, this about what someone has done for me and no matter how I feel about it, no matter how I feel about them I have to honour it.
You've made your sacrifice to me and I'll make mine to you by accepting it. He'll be my bleeding rose. The closer I hold him the more it will hurt but even when I feel the bite of the thorns I won't let go. I have to keep this twisted gift . . .
. . . I have no choice.'
End of Chapter Four
End of Story
Note - This will most likely be my last Tenchi Muyo fic. My writing has always mirrored my thoughts and dreams and they are beginning to turn to other things. If I were to continue writing Tenchi fics it would just be soulless. If things change then I might write another but as things stand this is the end.
Thank you to everyone who has reviewed and encouraged me during my time here.
Thanks for reading,
The Great El Dober.
