Chapter Text
Heat.
So much heat, and smoke; and the oppressive miasma in the air filled with such choking, consuming hatred and despaiRrAgEaNdHATE…
...
Ayumi couldn't breathe. She couldn't breathcOuLdNtBrEaThEcOuLdNtBrEaThE!!!
…
...Stop.
...
Stop it! Please!
No!
Please…
...
...Please, please stop!
I can't-I…
… …I...please… …stop… … …no… …more… … …
Blood...
So much blood...
...
...She was drowning, swept away by a river of blood, flowing out over her hands...
...
Pain…
...Darkness...
...
Heartbreak...
...
Loyalty...
...Love.
...
…Grief...
(Faces, lying still next to the ground.)
...
Her mother's face, close enough to touch.
Eyes unseeing.
...
(Eyes GONE MiSsInGsToLeNtAkEnRipPeDOuToFTHEIRSKULLS!)
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...Grief.
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Guilt...
(My fault. My fault myfaultmyFAULTitsALLMYFAULT!!!)
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(Monster.)
(You're a MONSTER!)
...
(Murderer.)
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(Abomination!)
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(How DARE you.)
...
“...YoU MuRdErEr.”
Ayumi didn't remember much about that night.
Oh, technically she recalled all of the events of it; she just didn't actually remember them.
She knew what happened that night. She just didn't remember it happening.
Doctors said it was Post-Traumatic Stress.
Caused her brain to basically shut down on any memory of the events that drove her dormant.
That was fine.
(Remembering wasn't something she really wanted to do, anyway.)
Knowing what had happened was bad enough. Seeing the aftermath was just as bad.
Remembering sounded like the thing she would probably enjoy doing least in the entire Elemental Nations.
(All she could recall of that night was a nightmare.)
Not that she had many feelings about what happened.
Not that she had many feelings at all.
(Not since that night.)
Most of those she did were attached to the scrambled, fragmented nightmare of what happened. They were bad feelings.
(It was much better when she just didn't feel anything.)
That said, she didn't quite feel nothing altogether. She had memories of feelings; lingering ghosts of emotion that she clung to fiercely.
(Not all of them.)
Some of them were associated with parts of the nightmare; the feelings they evoked if she tried to think about them made her panic. So she let those go, even if she would have liked to keep them.
(She couldn't remember kaa-san's face.)
There were other things, though.
Simpler, less complicated emotions; many pleasant memory associations that she clung to in order to taste the impressions of feeling they retained.
Peacefulness, joy, happiness, delight.
(Love.)
She remembered love.
(Most of all, she remembered Nii-san.)
