[The dream is a shot of poison straight into her veins - she feels it pounding there, as a roar in her ears, as a sudden chill in the tips of her fingers, as a white-hot blur burned into the edge of her vision.
It isn't the hatred. Yukari has felt that before, staring her foe straight in the eye and feeling contempt wash over her like a wave of nausea. Nor the violence, for Yukari remembers being crouched behind rocks and trees in the battlefield, that silence, that waiting, the slow suffocation it brought.
It isn't even that love. That feeling, having something that belonged to you so much that you belong to it, that sense that it was a part of you as much as your own body. She knows that as well, feels it constantly in the back of her mind, and sometimes, under the right circumstances, she feels it welling up in her, a warmth that drives out even the smallest chill.
It's -
entire clan, Hashirama, an entire clan! Women and children and infants
- the despair, having lost everything. Everything. Done. All the love, all the cultivation, all of it. And that despite her (no, his, this was about him, this wasn't - it had nothing to do with her) best efforts it had all -
could've chosen to never fight you and stayed and it wouldn't have meant
- been worthless, in the end it meant nothing. Nothing.
Yukari thinks, suddenly: this is me. In days or weeks or decades, this is going to be me, raging at some god, uselessly, with Gensokyo gone, the border collapsed, my people scattered or dead. Overtaken, smothered by the crawling weed of humanity. That dream she'd had in Meiji 17, all of the beauty of it, nothing.
She bites down on her lip until it bleeds, to keep down the urge, which rises in her throat like bile, to scream her throat raw.]
- - -
[It is half an hour before Yukari responds to the dream. Her face is without expression entirely, but her lip still slowly oozes blood. Her tongue laps out to lick it clean.]
private
It isn't the hatred. Yukari has felt that before, staring her foe straight in the eye and feeling contempt wash over her like a wave of nausea. Nor the violence, for Yukari remembers being crouched behind rocks and trees in the battlefield, that silence, that waiting, the slow suffocation it brought.
It isn't even that love. That feeling, having something that belonged to you so much that you belong to it, that sense that it was a part of you as much as your own body. She knows that as well, feels it constantly in the back of her mind, and sometimes, under the right circumstances, she feels it welling up in her, a warmth that drives out even the smallest chill.
It's -
entire clan, Hashirama, an entire clan! Women and children and infants
- the despair, having lost everything. Everything. Done. All the love, all the cultivation, all of it. And that despite her (no, his, this was about him, this wasn't - it had nothing to do with her) best efforts it had all -
could've chosen to never fight you and stayed and it wouldn't have meant
- been worthless, in the end it meant nothing. Nothing.
Yukari thinks, suddenly: this is me. In days or weeks or decades, this is going to be me, raging at some god, uselessly, with Gensokyo gone, the border collapsed, my people scattered or dead. Overtaken, smothered by the crawling weed of humanity. That dream she'd had in Meiji 17, all of the beauty of it, nothing.
She bites down on her lip until it bleeds, to keep down the urge, which rises in her throat like bile, to scream her throat raw.]
- - -
[It is half an hour before Yukari responds to the dream. Her face is without expression entirely, but her lip still slowly oozes blood. Her tongue laps out to lick it clean.]
That one. Hashirama. Who is he?
[A pause.]
Is he here?