King
This one-shot was written for Tempest35 on the Animesuki forums. We were trading Raki x Miria fics, & this was my contribution. Thanks to Tempest35, Shiek927 & MisterJb for their comments.
1.
Raki does not wait till dawn officially arrives: when the east is still moodily purplish, he relieves himself off his bed – the first linen bed he has slept on in almost five years – and goes outside. He takes his sword along with him, not because there is any danger, but because it has become a stubborn habit.
The crickets give pause to their singing as he tracks out near the trees beside the buildings. He selects for himself a comfortable spot; the tree will offer him enough shade if the weather becomes too hot and he uses its ancient, swollen roots as a bumper. Here, with the scent of dew on wet grass filling his nostrils, he removes his supplies from his leather pack and eats his morning meal in silence.
In his leather pack he counts one – no, two more encrusted slabs of smoked venison still remaining. He had, after all, prepared for a very long war.
The town comes alive soon after. A hunchbacked shepherd, son of a man he once knew when he was younger, wields a twisted staff as he crosses Raki's vision with his flock, looking like a performer leading a pack of bleating circus animals. Milkmaids and women appear at doorways, their vessels unsteady with liquid. Men on their way to the fields curse at their wives, spit and throw their sticks over their shoulders like warriors eager for war.
But none acknowledge him. They do not meet his eye. They do not step within ten strides of him reclining form, making detours, as if avoiding someone with the plague. Only a stray dog regards him with any neutral interest, shaking his nose at Raki's attention and then strutting away, deciding the man by the big tree is not worthy of further investigation.
It is until the sun is blazing, perched amongst the leafy arms of trees, when someone finally approaches him. He taps his foot over the root, and Raki flickers a nod at him.
"The townspeople are starting to talk," the man says.
"About time. I was beginning to get worried," Raki shoots back.
Both men agree with the statement, their faces slipping into a short chuckle.
"No, Raki, seriously." He bends lower and plants himself beside the roots, his shoulder straddling a distorted lump in the tree's frame. "They don't believe what you told them. No amount of my persuasion and you being a local son is converting them."
He mows a hand through his hair in faux exhaustion:
"I mean, who shows up in the middle of the night with a young child and a chopped-up woman, and everything was the work of wild animals?"
In consequence, Raki understands that he does not like to lie. But, war or not, he still required a place to rest and someone to nurse his travelling companion's wounds.
"It was a lie waiting to be torn apart by rumours," Raki himself admits, aloud this time.
"And your little daughter is – unusual, you know that?"
Raki cannot help but allow a smile to edge into his face. "Priscilla, you mean? What has she been doing?"
"That girl is standing in the sun by the entrance to the town." The man blinks into a far-off distance. "And telling everyone who passes to prepare the way of the new king."
"I'm no king," Raki sighs. He stares at his sword. "Hardly a prince of peace –"
"I don't really care what you are, but tonight some of the folk are planning to discuss you staying here with the mayor. You bring bad luck, they say – that you are somehow responsible for all the burning smoke that rises from the east –"
"I'm just a beggar waiting for the keys to a kingdom – waiting for the day the poor can inherit it."
And Raki tilts his head away – towards the sun, which slices his forehead into half-shadow. He hopes this will tell the man he is done talking for today.
His friend claps him on the shoulder, a weary gesture, full of tense uncertainty. He backs away, and Raki sees that he struggles with putting in a last word, trying his best to allow the vocabulary to form in his throat, as if he is biting on an invisible spoon:
"The woman you brought in last night is dying, Raki."
2.
When the sunlight begins to slant and the heat makes wavy his vision, Raki decides it is time to walk. Instead of going back to the tavern, he moves deeper into the woods, heading to where he smells water. His sword he carries blatantly from his right hand, like a divining rod. When he does find the stream, it is a stagnant pool fed by a trickle of water. He strips and dunks himself into it, wading; the water barely covers his abdomen.
By the time he returns to the town, preparations for the evening are underway. Night watchmen try to stare him down. He settles into a pace, and enters the tavern while the attendants beginning lighting the candles and tapers.
There are women whispering at him outside the room. He knows, already, they are afraid of him and the woman in the room. He had seen them the previous night, afraid to touch or dress the wounds – and he sees them now, fearful to even watch over one whom death seems to loiter around patiently, like the shadows on the timber walls.
The room still smells of blood. Not a single candle has been lit. The basins the women used to soak their towels are still tinged with red. The window has been shut, as if to contain something hideous within the room. Raki forces it open. But the room becomes darker: the sky outside has simply given up all its light.
He spots movement in the covers. It is a signal for him to be at her bedside:
"Miria."
Her eyes blossom in the dark, irreversibly gold. Even under the sheets, he sees her right arm end abruptly in a stump. He tries not to think of the meat hanging off the shoulder; it is a reminder that he arrived on the battlefield too late.
"Miria," he says again, softly, and she responds with a jerk, her other arm shooting out to claw at air. "No. Don't."
"Raki – Raki," she mutters. "Where – are you?"
He massages her forehead; it is hot to the touch.
"I'm here, Miria. Shhh…there's only me. No one else."
"I – had another dream, Raki," she says. Her voice, though inconsistent, has lost none of the strength that made her so powerful before. "I saw Clare."
"No – let's not talk about Clare," he tells her. But he has trouble forcing himself to take his own words seriously. "What's done is done."
"But – but I could – could not – she said – said –"
Veins immediately flood her face. Raki hesitates but throws his arms around Miria's shoulders, and pulls her to him. He feels the sweaty wetness of her bare back, and his fingers outline the scars map her body. When she appears to choke, her entire body begins to tremble, her entire body giving off that ill sensation he knows is yoki –
But he holds her even tighter and says: "Shh…It's all right. I'm here – I'm here."
There is a spasm, and Miria stops shaking. He can feel the normal pace of her breathing revive, her blocked nose sniffing.
"She said she will be waiting for me in hell – she said she will be waiting with Hilda – with all the friends I killed –"
Raki does not release his grip. Sweat, or tears, begin to slip down his neck. He eases her carefully, her chin stabbing into his shoulder.
"Clare would never say that," he says. He pauses, and then utters what he knows she should have said when he first found Miria, in the ruins of the Organization's headquarters, when he had arrived too late for that final battle:
"She had already awakened.
"It was something that she would've wanted you to do."
He wants to look Miria in the face, but the mere mention of Clare disturbs him. He is not prepared, himself, to think about her. And neither is he ready, then, to absorb Miria's guilt.
"Raki – this is all –"
He holds tighter again, circling his hands around her, burrowing his face into her hair. They still smell of hemlock, of elderberry and spring in the countryside, amidst the death and ruin and dead warriors strewn like flannel seeds as far as his eyes can remember – Priscilla going among the corpses to help point out which ones were dead and which ones were going to awaken –
When he faces her, she stares completely beyond him. So he presses his face to her cheek and breathes deeply. Miria does not stir, only her chopped-off right arm squirms, ruffling the clothes on his back. He holds onto her, and she to him, as if they are the only two people left in the entire world. He holds onto her because he is, really, afraid she will disappear like the light, too.
3.
A soft wind on his fringe wakes him. It is dark, hours to go till dawn, but he can clearly see Priscilla watching him.
"Has the king chosen his new queen?" she asks, the tone of her voice laced with a high sense of wonder, as if a storyteller were narrating a story to children.
"Priscilla," he reaches out from the bed and messes her hair. "Can you feel how Miria is doing?"
The Abyssal in her small form snakes her hand around Raki's head and rests it on Miria's. She lowers it to Miria's neck, and then to the bandaged, but still bloody stub of the arm.
"She'll live," she says. "For more days."
Raki gets up from the bed; he sets aside Miria's uninjured arm, which has looped itself around his waist. He dresses in the dark, and leans on the window ledge. He looks to the east, where he knows, in the dark, dark columns of smoke continue to rise towards heaven, an eternal burning of hatred, an endless karma of wars and revenge.
"The hands of a king are the hands of a healer," Priscilla says to him.
"If they were, I would've healed myself long ago."
He takes the basin of water left untouched since the women cleaned Miria's wounds, and pours it over himself. The splash echoes the room, but Miria does not wake. As he dries himself with towels caked and dried with Miria's blood, he notices Priscilla hastily pulling the covers over Miria's bare, almost luminous skin.
"From now on, I will serve the king and his new queen," she says.
NOTES:
For those who know, "the hands of the king are the hands of a healer" comes from J.R.R Tolkien's The Return of the King.
Edited: 7 Jul 09