Archive of Our Own ^beta

She is awakened by a sharp tug on her skin; a quiet, but firm pop. Her eyes open as she steps across the grass, padding silently over the ground. Her eyelids flutter, pupils briefly changing shape as she adjusts to the sunlight bathing her tree.  

The Dreamer stands beneath her own boughs and watches Tang Shen take her first bite of a crisp red apple, red as a drop of spilled blood. It sounds a bit like bone breaking between her teeth as she crunches and chews, although the Dreamer doesn't feel anything except for the faintest sting on one long, blue arm.  

"You're angry," she says, crossing the grass. She makes herself shorter than usual, only a little taller than the woman who's come to visit her again.  

Shen doesn't say anything for a minute, just looks out across the trees. The wind smooths across her skin, pushing hair out of her face, and in her eyes shadows dance. The Dreamer can taste the aftereffects of pain on her tongue, bitter like a rotting heart. The air tastes, ever so faintly, of smoke.  

"My son is home," she announces. "No thanks to you."  

"I could not interfere," the Dreamer says calmly. The words cut a little inside her, but she is immortal. Her inner self is as toughened to pain as her outer self is, and besides, she sees no real reason to rage over the truth. "You know this."  

Shen swallows her bite and takes another, turning the ravaged apple as if looking for pieces of her reflection. "Want one?" she asks, as the Dreamer leans against the tree beside her. The Dreamer shrugs--it's not the first time she's devoured herself or let herself be devoured.  

"We spoke," she murmurs. "The first time I spoke with one of my children in so very long, and it was when he was fresh from our murderers' bed. Was that your doing? Your idea of a gift?"  

The Dreamer shakes her head; she cannot lie, she has not ever wished to, no matter the penalty. "You've grown strong, Shen. It was your power that breached the wall."  

"Just for a few heartbeats," Shen closes her eyes. "He is beautiful, even now. If you were going to take my children's names in exchange for sending them back with Yoshi, if you were going to make them animals, could you not at least have made them ugly? Couldn't you have protected them that way?"   

She takes another bite of her apple, sharp and vicious, her hands shaking as her fingers dig into the fruit. Her eyes flash with the beauty that hurts, knuckles while against crimson. "Go on, then. Tell something about fate or the balance of the universe."  

The Dreamer leans against the tree and closes her eyes. The words scrape her, and she welcomes it, because if she considers herself beyond the criticism of even the dead she risks becoming like her brother. But even so, the words from the woman behind her want to shudder and melt, to slough away into nothing.  

"How does it feel to know what your daughter has become?" Shen whispers. "When you learn about what your precious little Kitsune has done to the mortals your family was supposed to safeguard? What will she continue to do?"  

The Dreamer does not lie. "It feels like swallowing suns and burning alive from the inside out," she tells the forest. "It has felt that way for a very long time."  

"She raped my child," Shen says.  

"Yes, she did."  

"She wasn't the only one."  

"No, she wasn't."  

"And you will not stop her."  

The Dreamer takes a breath. She has told Shen about the rules of the universe, the shockwaves an immortal's death would send, how locking Kitsune how up with her father would be asking for trouble, the apocalyptic violence that would be triggered among Kitsune's siblings once their little game has an excuse to kick into gear. But in the end, none of that's all just a covering for the plain, simple truth.  

"No, I will not."  

"You won't send me to help them. You won't let me go."  

"I won't." She worries that she keeps Shen here out of selfishness; she worries that if she sent too many souls back with their memories intact, it would become a habit. She schemes and she worries and she hesitates far more than she thought gods would, when she was young. And she hurts in ways she never imagined.  

"You talk about swallowing suns." Shen looks at her, eyes glinting dark and vicious. "I came here because my garden is in flames. I want to know what embers scorching my feet would feel like and it didn't hurt as much as my heart does, right now.  

She bites, swallows, bites, throat working as if convulsing around smoke. The very air seems to vibrate with the sound of her chewing, sharp to the point of cutting.  

"I'm going to go back soon," she mumbles, swallowing the last of the apple down. "I'm going to go back and make it pretty again, because I will not make my children walk in an ugly place if I can help it, for once in their lives. I will be strong for my family, and if I must be strong, I must be weak here."  

The Dreamer reaches out, smoothing a hand through Shen's hair. She leans into the touch, eyes bleary with exhaustion, and the Dreamer wraps a free arm around her shoulders.  

"I have you," Shen says, closing her eyes. "I hate you, I do, why are you so good about making me forget? Why are you the only one left who can help me break?"  

It's a rhetorical question, and the Dreamer does not waste time talking about the power of holy things to wound and soothe in equal measure. She just kisses Shen, letting her mouth fill with apple juice and blood.  

The bark gives under Shen's back, forming a soft surface as the Dreamer pushes her into it. Her clothes disappear under the Dreamer's touch, the Dreamer's armor disappearing soon after. The Dreamer hoists her up and Shen wraps slender legs around her waist, nails digging into the Dreamer's back.  

Tears spark on her cheeks and the Dreamer laps them away, rubbing her free hand over Shen's soft, desperate flesh. Shen hiss-sob-moans into her mouth, her hair slithering down the Dreamer's shoulder so that it seems to be clinging tightly, too.  

The Dreamer cannot give Shen's sons their old names back, not without disturbing the balance that was pushed to its limit by letting them follow him on his crusade, by giving them a second chance. The Dreamer cannot undo what Kitsune has done or stop her from doing it again. The Dreamer cannot let Shen follow her children to the other world (or she will not, she does not dare decide).  

But the Dreamer can rock Tang Shen with the kind of pleasures of her old flesh, burning her out in wave after wave. The Dreamer can sink between Shen's jelly-boned legs and offer up her own kind of worship, her own kind of weakness.  

The Dreamer can exorcise her vulnerable, hurting self the same way Shen does, be weak the way Shen lets herself be weak. She can take Shen's raking nails, digging teeth, biting words. She collects Shen's anger so they can burn together and bathes her in sensation until the ashes are washed off enough for them to breathe.