There was a story she held somewhere in the back of her memory. She was not sure if it was a real memory, or even her memory, but it was there all the same, lurking behind tired files on Goku and on countless battle tactics, all overlaid with the same programmed revenge revenge revenge system she had come to ignore.
There was a story somewhere in the back of her memory: one that reminded her that when she had first realized she had feelings for it she had been set to kill it. It was not for fear of weakness. She was stronger than almost any being on the planet and absolutely capable of seizing it from within and turning it inside out. Kuririn was a thorn, an image that flickered behind the clear–cut rules of reality. With little effort she could bring him to his knees, she knew, screaming for mercy, stricken and pale in the shadows of day and night and day again.
There was a story somewhere in the back of her memory that reminded her that she did not believe in fantasy. She did not need it, nor did she want it. Still, the beach always held a certain magical quality to it at sunset, and when the quiet voice rose beyond the creaking of the porch swing ("Ready for story-time, Goten?") she found herself folding her legs and settling down in midair to listen.
At first the nights had been both cloudy and rainless. As time went on, however, and his stories became more and more elaborate and lengthy, sometimes spilling over into other nights, she found herself coming more and more, a moth to candlelight. She would listen to him speak of dragons and knights, of swordsmen and wanderers, of all things fantastic and beautiful and unreal, and would hate him with all the passion of one who is being coaxed into believing what has long been construed as a lie. She tired of the conflicting sensations that resulted from her hearing his laughter and seeing his smile, and would hide with penumbrian expertise and despise him. Through that anger she could stay sane long enough to wait until his next bedtime tale began, and there she would be appeased, as if him sacrificing his time had been a sacrifice for her instead of his sleepy-eyed charges, and would watch the way his own eyes roamed the sky between the chapters; a dreamer's gaze.
There was a story somewhere in the back of her memory; one that reminded her of the screams and the weeping of children. She remembered how she would kneel among the terrible beauty of the war waged and won, and scoop up the ashes in a delicate hand, allowing them to trickle through her fingers and catch in the creases of an un-callused palm. She remembered the terror of the hunted, and the thrill of being the huntress, and would miss it like a babe did the breast of its mother and a wolf would the light of the moon. She remembered…
And then she remembered the stutter, and the wide eyes, and the look of naked incredulity come the touch of her lips. And later, the hesitant smile, and the faint flush at his cheeks; but for all that she detected no innocence in his eyes. Perhaps that was why…?
And even through the memory of the terror of the children and the supplication of their mothers, and the howling of infants in the cradles and the crash of ki; the feeling of bones crunching beneath her hand, of blood streaming between her fingers; she remembered it, and she missed it as fiercely as she loathed her desire; and in her pain felt the desperate need to make others feel it –to make him feel it—until their hands were just as stained as hers were.
There was a story somewhere in the back of her memory, but she could not for the life of her remember why.