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.
