Continuity: End of volume 21.  Ryu has been left to fight alone.

Disclaimer:  Takei Hiroyuki owns all – I'm merely sixteen with dubious writing skill.

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Ice

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Dripping silver fire;

to cry is to feel smoldering heat growing, setting

flames to burn away the whispered,

hated,

threads of emotion and weakness within.  To

cry is to surrender all desperate,

shallow flaws and instead become numbly

perfect; release the hollows and pain to carry endlessly

on, crying to allow oneself the

claiming

of toneless peace. 

The wind takes away weeping,

leaving a hollow, scraped numbness.

I have tried

to cry now, to push away the brittle weakness

that open and deep emotion brings; cannot

cry, it seems, and I'm icing over, crystallizing with

winter chill.  This numbness

is sharp and frail, like a rusted sword, and it

will not permit me to

burn my emotions, simply holding me taut, covered in

sharp ice.  Hurting deeply, undeclared flow of

something: I'm numb and I have not yet cried.

If I cry I lose the shreds

of him,

tiny ragged threads set on fire to burn away and leave me.