Chapter Text
It was dark.
An audience hidden in shadow, watching. Judging.
It was cold.
Cold like their faces, accusing. Condemning.
Waves lapped at a shore.
Water bursting through the doors, raging. Consuming.
The Act was over.
Who was she without it?
Furina had failed.
Furina had failed.
Her nation, her people, were lost to the sea. And it was all her fault . Because despite being quite literally made for it, she hadn’t been a good enough actor to convince them. All those years watching trials, studying and making laws, and yet when her own trial came Furina somehow failed so thoroughly she managed to get herself executed.
Pathetic.
She remembered a sharp pain in her neck. She remembered dissolving into Hydro energy, slowly fading away, too consumed by sorrow to care. She remembered being relieved that she wasn’t cursed to remain trapped on her throne, dwelling on her failures for eternity. Even if she deserved to.
Furina had not expected to ever regain consciousness.
Distantly, she heard the sound of footsteps on sand. A gasp. Faster steps, approaching quickly. Something warm lifted her up, a hand (was it larger than usual?) on her bare skin feeling for a heartbeat. Strange. Furina was pretty sure dead people didn’t have heartbeats.
It seemed whoever held her had found one though, as they breathed a sigh of what Furina thought was relief and suddenly she was enveloped in warmth. Whoever held her started moving, bringing Furina with them.
Well, since she had a heartbeat and seemed to be able to breathe (albeit barely), she wondered if she could…
Furina opened her eyes.
She was greeted by a night sky adorned with a strange, broken moon, and the pale face of a woman. Who was definitely larger than usual.
Or perhaps Furina was smaller.
Wait.
Furina took stock of her body. Or more accurately, she vaguely cast some part of her attention in the direction of her limbs, while the rest of her remained consumed by guilt and grief, but it was still enough.
A small, hysterical bubble of emotion rose in Furina’s chest, forcing out what would normally have been a part-laugh, part-sob (a sound she was all too familiar with) but in her current state came out only as a weak cough. Dimly she was aware it had caught the woman’s attention, silver eyes meeting her own, but Furina felt somewhat disconnected from whatever was going on there.
She was alive. (She was also a baby, but that was too much for Furina’s already overwhelmed brain to handle so she would just ignore it for a bit.) Aside from failing her Act, failing Mirror-Me, and failing her entire nation, Furina had also failed to die. Of course she would. She couldn’t seem to do anything right today.
(Some part of her was happy about this. Not all of Furina had wanted to die. The rest of her felt guilty for being happy about anything right now, and pushed that part of her down.)
Furina sank back into her sorrow, letting her awareness fade. She did not want to face the world today. Or ever again.
Time passed in a blur. Furina vaguely noticed voices, and being passed to another person’s arms. A light was shone in her eyes (not particularly pleasant, but she was far beyond caring). More voices. The words were not unfamiliar, but Furina felt no need to listen. Why bother, when the Act was over? She didn’t have to do anything any more.
She closed her eyes. The cost of that freedom was much too high.
Something poked at her lips. Furina ignored it. It went away.
A hand rested on her forehead. Furina would have ignored it, if the hand were not accompanied by a… sensation. It felt like someone was scanning her soul, searching her very being for information.
Furina, on pure instinct, pulled back, a tinge of panic washing through her. No one can know, she thought desperately. Please, NO ONE CAN KNOW.
The Act may be over, but the Act was also Furina, and it would not die so easily.
In the back of Furina’s mind, she felt something stir in response to her panic. It washed over her being, pulling her further away from that searching presence. Eventually, the intruding sensation receded, and Furina felt herself relax.
Whatever it was that had protected her remained, coiled around her mind in a comforting embrace.
Furina let herself fade into unconsciousness.
There were more voices. Furina was getting tired of voices. Why couldn’t they just leave her to her grief?
Someone else was holding her. Some part of Furina wanted her to open her eyes again, to see who it was. The rest of her was too busy drowning in sorrow to do anything.
The part of her that wanted to look was insistent. Furina opened her eyes.
It was a man. He had a warm smile. Furina had met a lot of people like that. They had all died.
The woman with the silver eyes came back. Then she left. The man kept poking at her mouth insistently with something. Furina eventually recognized vaguely that he was trying to get her to eat.
Her people would never eat again.
Furina wasn’t hungry.
The sounds of a crying baby drifted to Furina’s ears. Maybe she should have been concerned. Or annoyed. She was too tired to care.
The silver-eyed woman held her again. She was also trying to feed Furina.
Furina wasn’t hungry. She wished they would just let her grieve in peace.
The man with the warm smile held her again. He was still trying to coax a bottle into her mouth. Furina was tired. She closed her eyes.
The man stopped trying.
Furina drifted off to sleep.
Furina’s cheek felt warm. The rest of her was cold, but her cheek was warm. Why?
She opened her eyes. She was in a crib. Someone was beside her. A(nother?) baby. The baby’s hand rested on Furina’s cheek.
Furina was cold. The hand was warm. It was comforting.
Furina didn’t deserve comfort. She had failed.
She let the hand stay there anyway.
The silver-eyed woman was trying to get her to eat again . She was speaking to Furina this time. Furina realized the woman was begging.
Furina wasn’t hungry.
(She was. The pain in her heart was simply distracting her from the pain in her stomach.)
Some part of Furina had had enough. The same part that protected her from the searching presence earlier. It coiled softly around her mind, gently pushing Furina’s consciousness back to sleep. Furina didn’t fight it, sinking down into her sorrow.
When she resurfaced, it seemed little time had passed. The silver-eyed woman was still holding her, but seemed happier now. Furina supposed that was good.
Just because she was suffering under the burden of her grief didn’t mean she wanted others to be miserable as well.
Furina’s failure had caused enough suffering for several lifetimes.