You've probably never heard of the original fic this is from.-----
She had failed.
There was no amount of spin-doctoring she could produce to salvage the situation. No smart rhetoric, no selective truths. When she returned with the rest of her army to the empire of Makai, she would return with her forces dwindled and wounded. Thousands, no, millions of shocked faces would turn to her, asking for an explanation.
And Shinki would have to say, with a straight face, that the great army of Makai had been defeated completely in the attempted capture of Chireiden.
There would be an uproar, inevitably. The people of Makai were proud, as came naturally when your nation's army was one of the land's mightiest. Hearing that they had been routed - by a petty nation of drunkards and psychics, no less - would raise all sorts of questions. If no explanation was given, there would be riots, revolution within the streets; if the full truth came to light, and she revealed Higan's part in their downfall, the cries for war would begin again.
The second option was unfortunate, but compared to the former there was no doubt in Shinki's mind that it was the way forward. Perhaps her army was not fit to fight, and perhaps a campaign against the Yama was as yet beyond her capabilities, but the promise of final vengeance would be enough to please the masses. Besides, in the end, it would only be temporary - they would return, and next time Shinki would have that satori queen begging her for peaceful surrender.
She would likely refuse the terms, unless they were thorough enough to prevent any risk of later rebellion. Chireiden had been enough of a nuisance this time around - she was not willing to take any further risks.
She wondered how Higan would respond to this turn of events. Where was the neutrality which the Yama were so fond of? How would they punish the traitor Eiki Shiki, who took off with her own army to dispense her so-called justice? She would be stripped of her rank, perhaps relieved of her duty as a shinigami entirely. Maybe they would even go so far as to strip her of her immortality and leave her to die.
She wished she could witness that moment. She felt she deserved at least that single instant of satisfaction - the instant where Eiki looked her in the eye, her resolution shattered, her morals torn asunder - as payback for what had happened here. What gave her the right to decide what was right and wrong in a time of war?
Tragedy was inevitable. It was a fact she did not ruminate over, for fear that it would dampen her morale, but she had committed many a sin. The people of Chireiden would mourn tomorrow, for their fallen armies, their nobles and their queen. They would be left to face rule under a mere child, without so much as an advisor remaining to guide her. The city was in ruins, and it would take months if not years to rebuild.
But such was the way of war. The way of life, even. Those who suffered tragedies and were compelled by them to change the world around them - they were the strong, the powerful, the truly brilliant. Those who simply sat idly while everything they held dearly burned, weeping about how they deserved better or how life was so unfair? They deserved what they got.
Shinki was her own best example. Her life was no idyllic fantasy, was it? Makai did not reach its full strength unaided, it had been an empire built with her own blood, sweat and tears. Her childhood was unpleasant, her adolescence strifeful, her adulthood a constant toil through the duties of an empress. But in spite of that, she had fought onward, and made her dream a reality! Makai was the proud and mighty nation she had always wished it to be, bowing its head to no force!
The world was filled with millions of people and millions of dreams. There was no way each of them could be fulfilled, was there? For one dream to rise up and become real, another had to die. Anyone who claimed otherwise was simply naive. There was no perfect utopia where everyone held hands and sang songs of love and peace. You either earned your happy ending, or had it taken from you by someone with the will to fulfill theirs.
And things had changed since the days she started on this campaign of conquest. She had a daughter now, a child who she loved with all her heart. If she could dream of a world where her nation had no enemies to fear, was it that much more to ask for a world where Alice could rule in peace? Perhaps it was a dream Alice had not realised yet, but if given the choice to go through the same cruel life that her mother had lived she would almost undoubtedly refuse. So Shinki took her daughter's dream and looked to fulfill it. Perhaps she would not understand now, but when the time came to declare her the new empress of Makai she would surely realise. All of it, all of these atrocities, all these wars - they had been for her sake, a mother's way of protecting her child from the harsh world that threatened to engulf her.
At least, that was the belief that had kept her running all these years. But there were times when she faltered, times she couldn't let the people of Makai see. There were days when she looked in the mirror, and saw a dead man staring back at her, clawing at the glass and screaming curses in languages she didn't know. Sometimes, when she was distracted, Shinki would look down and see her hands stained in red, but even as she dipped them into ice-cold water the stain would not budge. Yumeko would find her looking at her palms in panic, before embracing her from behind and telling her that everything would be alright.
She wondered how she would cope with those attacks now.
They had told her not to bring the body along with her, for fear that it would be too painful. But that was exactly why she had brought it - being near her hurt, but to disregard her entirely and wipe her from her mind would be an outright injustice. Shinki took a step into her caravan, looking down at the body that had once contained her proudest creation.
Perhaps 'body' was the wrong word for it now. Yumeko's mind was dead, so what was lying there may as well have been called a corpse. It simply stared up at the ceiling, eyes glazed over, not moving in any way. It would not feed itself, tend to itself, or display any signs of emotion. It would never have Yumeko's smile, or her soft touch, or those beautiful red lips that whispered words of adoration into her ear. She would not even refer to the creature lying on the wagon floor as Yumeko - it would be a disgrace to the dead.
From deep within her heart, there was a violent urge to place a pillow over the creature's head and hold it there until its pitiful attempts at self-preservation came to an end. She hated it with every ounce of her heart, feeling that every breath it took was a heresy against the soul that had once inhabited that body. But at the same time, looking at that face, that innocent, naive face, every ounce of anger in her body melted and turned to sorrow. Even if she knew there was nothing there any more, she couldn't bring herself to hurt the creature that had once been her servant.
"...I am sorry. I failed you, Yumeko."
What else could she say? To let this sort of atrocity happen, Shinki had let her down. Yumeko had placed her absolute faith in her god, and it had led her to this pathetic state. Shinki fell to her knees and wrapped her arms around the body, lifting it up off the floor. It made no attempt to respond, staying flaccid and cold even as Shinki held her with all the affection she could muster.
What would she do with her when they returned to Makai? Could she bring herself to kill her? Perhaps not. But was it right to keep her alive, even when everything that had made her Yumeko was long-since gone? Again, perhaps not. It was not a question she could answer now. She was still in the throes of mourning; her judgement was too poor to make a decision like that. Later, perhaps, when the nightmares of today had settled down.
Shinki rose upward, leaving the breathing corpse on the floor. She took a moment to look into its eyes, silently praying that something remained. She looked for a hint of recognition, a spark of life, anything to prove that Yumeko still lived inside of that body.
She found nothing.
It was a slow and solemn walk that Shinki took to the back of the caravan. She passed a few lesser servants, keeping her head down as she walked by.
She could not let them see the great goddess of Makai shedding tears.
-----
An hour to make their way through the tunnels, the general had said. It certainly hadn't felt like it from her perspective.
Makai had principles when it came to prisoners of war. While the rest of their army rested in wagons and caravans, the captives were made to walk alongside them, tied to the wagon in front and forced to maintain pace. If they wanted rest, they would be forced to sleep as the vehicle pulled them along, waking them up with bleeding knees and teary eyes.
Utsuho Reiuzi had no intention of sleeping. That was a minor victory she did not intend to offer the people who had burned Chireiden to the ground without a hint of remorse. When her legs grew tired, she flew above the ground until she was fit to walk again. Her hands were clasped together, tied to the caravan of Shinki herself - as her new servant, it was only fitting.
She was well aware that she could spend all the time in the world lamenting. Chireiden was as good as dead, she would likely never see what remained of it, and she had been rejected completely by the one person whose love she treasured the most. She had only embraced this feeling of utter solitude once before, in the days when she'd scavenged the dead to feed herself without a family to look after her. It had taken an act of immeasurable kindness to lift her from that sorry state and bring light back into her life.
She could hardly expect to receive the same miracle twice.
"Still perky, I see."
A voice called down from the caravan in front. Utsuho didn't need to look up to know who it belonged to. She made no effort to respond, simply focusing on the act of keeping up with the pace.
"Reiuzi. You are my servant now, and that means that when I speak to you I receive your absolute attention. That is part of the agreement you made, and I expect you to keep to it."
Agreement? She had agreed to sacrifice her life as payback for the girl who'd saved hers. If she'd known that Koishi wanted nothing to do with her anymore, she'd have gladly let her go instead.
Or would she? Could she honestly have let her life debt go unpaid, even if its owner no longer cared for it? She couldn't say that with any strength, either. Even if the Koishi of the present disregarded her, the Koishi of the past had given her a home and happiness for years. That was a service which she had to honour and repay, no matter what.
"Must I reach down there and pull your head up myself? Look at me."
And now she had sold herself into another service, which she had no choice but to honour whether she liked it or not. Utsuho finally offered her new master a response, lifting her head upward and looking her in the eye. It hurt to even think of this monster as her master now.
"That's better."
Shinki looked down at her with a smile. Utsuho simply thought that she was smiling out of satisfaction for receiving obedience, but something about that didn't fit.
Like the fact that Shinki's eyes were watering.
"It seemed unfair to simply leave you to yourself for the entire journey. If I'm to make you my servant, I can hardly start with such a bad impression, can I?"
Her voice sounded like it was on the verge of breaking. Utsuho was taken aback for a moment - was this really the same woman who'd watched with pride as her army slaughtered the people of Chireiden? The invincible goddess of Makai?
"...I want you to tell me a story, Reiuji. Tell me about your old master."
Shinki sat on the edge of the caravan, as close as she could get to Utsuho. The hellraven was unkeen on answering as she bit her lip.
"My old master is gone. She is no longer the girl I would have given my life for."
"But what was she like before? Tell me."
Was this some sort of sadistic game? Was she trying to make Utsuho recall the happy days of old, the days she would never experience again? She was afraid that this was a trap, something out of spite in an attempt to break her.
But still, orders were orders. Utsuho would stay loyal, even if her new master was the enemy of her old one.
"Koishi-sama...no, Koishi. She insisted I call her that. She never seemed to conform with the whole system of nobility the other satori loved so much. We yatagarasu were the common folk, and they were regal in comparison - we weren't meant to be treated with respect. Koishi wasn't like that."
Shinki nodded occasionally as Utsuho continued. Her eyes were starting to water up again.
"She took me in when I had nothing, simply out of a desire to do the right thing. She brought me into a new home, and she introduced me to Satori-sama and Orin as well. She showed me love and affection when I had no-one left to receive it from. Without her, I would have died a straggler feasting off the bones of the dead."
She felt strange as the words continued to force themselves out of her mouth. She was afraid the experience would hurt, force her to remember the Koishi who would never care for her again, but if anything the opposite was happening. It was as if she was offering the old Koishi a rememberence - a burial, almost, a chance to put those memories of her to rest and come to terms with the fact that things had changed. She was saying more than she had intended to, but she couldn't bring herself to stop.
"I loved Koishi. I loved her with all of my heart. I would have given everything I had for her sake."
And she had. She had fulfilled her life debt and repaid her master in the only way she could - by sacrificing herself in Koishi's place.
Not that it had meant anything.
"Hm, I see. It sounds like you had a wonderful master."
Shinki spoke without spite, without anger. She seemed genuinely touched by Utsuho's words, taking a moment to wipe her eyes.
"It must have been painful to lose her. Am I right?"
Utsuho nodded wordlessly. There was a moment of silence between the two, both of them looking into each other's eyes. There was something in the eyes of the goddess that struck at her heart; something that pierced the shell of loneliness she had locked herself in.
Understanding.
"Reiuzi. Come closer for a moment."
Utsuho stepped off the ground, allowing her wings to carry her. She flew forward, until she was right next to Shinki. The goddess looked down at the ropes tying her to the back of the vehicle, running a finger down their length.
They silently came undone, falling to the wooden floor in a dozen pieces.
"Come, let us sit together. I feel we could both use each others' company."
Shinki helped Utsuho onto the caravan, placing an arm around her shoulder. Maybe the rules spoke loud and clear about protocol when dealing with prisoners of war, but to hell with the protocol. She had written it, so she could decide when to make an exception.
Utsuho didn't realise it until the journey was halfway done, but she was following her new master willingly. Not simply out of a need to follow orders, but out of a genuine urge to comfort her. Yumeko had been a fine soldier, and it was clear that the goddess wasn't quite as strong a person as she'd like people to believe.
Today was a day to mourn, for both of them. The servant mourned for her old master, and the master mourned for her old servant. Neither would claim that today was a happy day.
But being in the presence of another who understood the pain helped to dampen the blow a little.
-----
Ruro, if I've somehow screwed everything about White Rose up with this, I'm sorryyyyyyyy ;_;
