2021-03-03 - Sweet Temptation ~ A Gift
| Title: Sweet Temptation ~ A Gift | |
|---|---|
| Summary: Mikoto wished her Lord Brother would attend her birthday party. He sent her a gift, instead. His well-wishes are a complicated thing, for her; their implications even moreso. How does her Lord Brother intend on harvesting the suffering of Tokyo, now Mikoto is gone..? | |
| Who: | |
| Where: Tokyo Tower | |
| OOC - IC Date: 2021-03-03 - 2015-11-07 | |
FOR MY ADORABLE LITTLE SISTER
HER MOST PRECIOUS TREASURES
VIOLENCE AND VICTORY
OST: Yuki Kajiura - Obsidian Lord ~ Sweet Temptation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtgdbO-1nrs
Atop Tokyo Tower, on those rungs too high for the viewing-platforms to reach, a girl takes a piece of cardstock from her pocket. A finger trails its edge, as if she dare not touch the bold strokes of those intricate words. She has not brought them out for a few days now; she knows they'll bring down her sunny mood. They waited, patient: she knows equally she can't avoid them forever. Her brow knits, a hesitant beginning, unsure. "I..."
The box was opened from the inside. The box with the spider. The spider's leg, all bound like a pinky in fate-red string. A gift.
A gift which made her whimper, which made her scream, which abjured all her lesser efforts. A gift which pressed her to summon Miroku, to follow the path prescribed the HiME. Defeating Orphans with her Child... so, why did it feel so different when she did it, compared to Georgia and Tithonus? Her friends were so worried...
But she did it. She did it. She won, with Miroku, the power her Lord Brother gave her.
Perhaps that triumph really is his conceptualisation of kindness; the kindness they were shaped in. Not a cruel trick... not a lie. His own type of effort. Is it possible? Mikoto has to wonder. He didn't have the help she did, and they grew up on the same mountain... wasn't she that twisted up, when she first came here?
(Oh, she wants it so badly, some reason for this offering which is not cruelty layered over cruelty, a twist of the knife hid behind a warm smile. The simple explanation is written in her screams, and she cannot stand to think it, the idea that this demon who is her dear Lord Brother only wants to hear her wail. She still wants to believe... she can save him.)
The reason why she would afford him such charity is writ plain, on the card.
She was so afraid he was angry. She was so afraid, and paradoxically she is more, not less, to read such a warm message. It means she is not beneath his notice. He still thinks of her. He still loves her..? Some part of her is relieved and she knows it is the sick part, the part too wounded, but it tightens her throat and it tightens her chest. A glance over her shoulder, before her eyes return to the card. She is afraid of him.
She is not just afraid of him.
His adorable little sister... oh, it's a familiar construction. She heard words in that fashion so often when he was pleased with her, warm and affectionate and gentle. She reads it and can hear it in his dulcet voice, and it aches. It is an audible pain, whimper hummed through her lips. It hurts because she knows he was not truly gentle, not then and not now - but still she thinks the thought, even as she remembers the terrible feeling of too-cold legs on her skin, all over her, too many and too much. She knows he hurts her, again and again; still she loves him, inexorable. Still that warmth in their heart, to read his praise. Still.
Still, she knows to be wary of his soft words. He can so effortlessly invite her to violence, in much the way she invited violence in her friends and enemies in the world prior, long before she knew why. The manner of Minagi is temptation, sweet and disarming. She knows, she knows, how easily his well-wishes could be another deception, redirection, annihilation.
But, "... it's precious..."
A hand presses flat on her undecorated chest as she looks away, as she thinks: is it forgiveness? To name these precious treasures, after they shattered the pendant he gave her. All these things of hers are precious, under his gaze. All these things...
Her stomach knots, to read the words, again. Violence. Victory. Her lip twists in anger, made complex by grief. That's what she is to him, isn't it? Someone who grasps triumph with bloody hands, the ultimate expression of his strength, delivering scream-bathed success to him.
It's all twisted up and wrong.
"It's not!" She yells, denies - even though she likes to win, even though she is so good at fighting - oh, her shoulders sag with the volume of her voice as she adds, concedes, "... it's not just that." She has so many treasures. She loves her friends, and she can make people smile, and she makes friends with every cat she meets, and she can crack an egg to two perfect halves, and she catches fish with her bare hands, and... and... and she is so violent, and in her violence, victory.
She hums through her lips, and shakes her head, because she told Natsuki, didn't she? She doesn't want to do whatever it takes. She doesn't have to, any more. She doesn't have to, so why?
But she keeps coming back to those words, that phrasing. A gift. Gifts are wonderful things; gifts are the beads at her left braid, the singing fish proudly mounted in the kitchen; a sword-cosy for Miroku at night, a phone-cosy to make it easier to find it in her bag by the texture feel; freshly-grown catnip to make sure all her friends visited, help to look her best. Gifts are delicious food like strawberry-steak daifuku or tuna-filled crepes or a parfait cake. They're a special day, and artwork hung on the wall with all the happinesses she never truly wished to shatter. Nimagai!
But that's what gifts are like in Tokyo. There's... another kind of gift.
She knows the difference, of course. Her friends have helped her too much for her not to know. The very first gift her Lord Brother gave her, the gift she claimed was so precious for so long, it didn't just lead her to him. Her terrible pendant, a choke-chain about her neck... it bound her to him, so tightly she could not think to disobey. That is his idea of a gift; that is where she started. Gifts which hurt to receive, which innervate horror... old, old gifts.
That Orphan which terrified her so effortlessly, which made her second-guess what was real, which made her feel so helpless, which drove her to such desperation that she invoked her ever-hidden Child...
... he gave that battle to her. A gift, just for her. Violence... and through Miroku, victory.
It all came from him, alpha and omega, the beginning and the end.
Mikoto pales; at once the artful hand swims in her vision, for a dazed moment, before she shakes her head. "Uh-uuuh," she whines, verbally, to the sword-case beside her. Her eyes scrunch shut, in a blink which lasts too long. "... Nagi told us. People controlling Orphans... turning them to their own purposes. Using them to attack." She gulps, audibly. "... anyone can do that." 'Anyone,' in her metric, only really encompasses Alyssa Searrs; but if it were possible for Alyssa to do that, would it not be theoretically possible for anyone else?
Her face is quite white, perfectly horrified, as she looks down at the card. "... I left... and Lord Brother didn't have anyone left to fight for him... so now he feels like he's gotta take advantage of Orphans..?"
A hundred fins like a millipede and a face all jaws, and it would have eaten her whole, had Ai not exploded it inside to out. A vast leviathan, fishing-line tongues which morphed so easily to crossbar pincers in the wounding, requiring not only help but the old habits of use and utility. A hundred-hundred things like spiders, ten legs and one eye and a barbless stinger whose burning venom gave way to such nostalgic weariness.
All those recent Orphan attacks... it's her fault...?
... that's the conclusion her guilty mind reaches, immediately, heedless of Kozue's warnings. Their power structure was unusual in Dark Fall, after all; she was the prime executor of his executions. Just her... and Miroku. They didn't have monsters to harvest suffering for them. And he didn't have any other Generals to help him. Did he? ... she can't entirely remember. But she feels sure enough. She doesn't remember any help at all.
(She fails to wonder what he did before he retrieved her.)
She left, she concludes, and he still needs to torment Tokyo... so he's riled up the Orphans, just like SEARRS did, back then.
"I gotta tell them..." Mikoto says, but the words come hesitant, thumb pressing against her fingers at the edge of the cardstock. She knows her friends need to know what he's resorted to, now she's gone; she can't possibly guess what he's planning, but she remembers the way he smiled, the glowing words he used to describe their pain. They're on different sides, and he believes he's right, too. And with his attitude towards enemies, they might even end up...
Mai was there with her, when they asked Nagi about the Orphans, so long ago. She has the same information about what HiME ought to do to people who exploit their fatebound foes - and Mai couldn't ignore it, back then. The thought of Mai fighting him... it's too much to bear. No matter WHO won that fight--!!
Mikoto cries out, and fiercely shakes her head, whip-whippy-whip her braids against her cheeks. She reads the words again, as she thinks: maybe she's wrong. Maybe there's some other explanation. There must be some other explanation. Some strange coincidence, or... or...
No, it couldn't be. She can't let herself believe that this was mere coincidence. His actions are deliberate. She has to believe they're deliberate, not some trick played by her mind, associations drawn where there ought to be none. He meant to do what he did!
But she isn't smart like he is, was never raised to be smart like he is; this is what she thinks, eyes trailing over those complex kanji written with such a sure hand. So... maybe she's missed something.
Maybe if she just... reads it again...
