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The sea winds whipping in Mizu’s face were bracing and crisp, but his lungs knew only smoke. It had been weeks since he boarded the ship from Edo, and several more since the fire finally died out, yet the taste of ash still lingered on his tongue. He frequently woke during the night in a panic and could only calm himself by climbing up to the deck and breathing in the salty air until his nostrils burned. It wasn’t so much the memory of the fire’s deadly power that overwhelmed him, nor the fear of burning alive. It was remembering the feeling of inhaling smoke for days and wondering where the particles coating his lungs came from, what — or who — mixed together in his breath as nameless victims of the conflagration. On those nights, when the only crew member awake was a navigator who barely noticed him, and his only other witnesses the wide expanse of stars, Mizu gripped the railing and wondered what it would be like to throw himself overboard, join the scores of dead who piled up in the carnage he had started.
A blood sacrifice to his revenge. As much as his mind fought back, he couldn’t deny that Fowler’s words rang true. The fire — Mizu’s fire — had raged through Edo for three days. The winds had been fierce but dry, spreading the flames across the capital, engulfing entire streets and easily catching those trying to flee. Mizu didn’t know how many died, but — thousands. Probably more. And the storm that finally helped extinguish the flames turned out to be no savior, just another agent of destruction. Displaced families froze. Those who didn’t get buried in ash found themselves trapped by feet of snow, freezing or suffocating or starving. Mizu had been lucky. Or maybe he really was just too stubborn to die.
While what was left of most buildings was char, the white of devastation was what drew Mizu’s eye. The grey-white of raining ash. The brutally pure white of late spring snowflakes. It taunted Mizu, reminded him of everything he hated about himself… of the second part of Fowler’s condemnation. That’s your white half showing. He had pushed the thought out of his head in the moment— it was a distraction from his mission, meant to throw him off so Fowler could gain an upper hand — the words had begun to haunt him. Mizu tried to push them down whenever they surfaced, but with long days at sea with little to do but keep up his training and bear Fowler’s company enough to learn bits and pieces of his strange language, the effort was futile. He knew that to carry out his mission to the end, he would have to face it — the full truth of what he was. (Either that or throw himself overboard, but Mizu wasn’t a coward, and besides, he still had three white men left to kill.) And as much as he wished he could excise his white half from his body and soul, it was a part of him.
Maybe it was his male half showing, too. Mizu had been a terrible woman. He wasn’t quite a man, either, but maybe this distance from absolutes allowed him to see more clearly. He had felt and embraced the pull of destruction and violence. He had taken, used, without remorse. How many people had he killed, even before the conflagration? Maybe some god was keeping a tally, but Mizu had certainly stopped counting years ago. And what did it mean to be a man except to realize your desires at the expense of others, to take and give nothing back?
No, that couldn’t be all.
Mizu thought of Swordfather — his compassion, his wisdom, his discipline and determination and skill. He was a true master of his craft, but his success came from learning to work with and respect the elements instead of trying to dominate them. (He, of all people, knew that nature could not be tamed.) He didn’t seek fame, though he had earned it, nor glory; and despite his creations, Mizu had never seen him show violence or even lose his equanimity. But most of all, Master Eiji had taken him in and showed him kindness when everyone else would have been content to watch him starve and die. Because of him, Mizu had lived. Because of him, Mizu had come to know love.
He remembered Ringo, so earnest and kind and pure of heart. He was ambitious but humble. He didn’t work to boost his own ego, yet even though his nature (or perhaps his learned method of survival) was to please others, he still had self-respect and dreams and would work tirelessly towards the life he wanted to live. Ringo came across as naïve, but Mizu was aware of his past and knew that his optimism and willingness to see the good in people was an act of sheer defiance and bravery, after the lifetime of violence and social ostracism he had endured.
Even Taigen sprang to mind. The man was stubborn as all hell and grated on Mizu’s nerves more than anyone he could remember, but somehow, Mizu had come to admire him. He lived by a set of unshakable values and truly did seem to care about honor outside of mere recognition (though if Mizu had to hear about Taigen’s honor again, he might strangle him.) Yes, Taigen had been a vicious bully as a child and was still a pretentious prick when they met again at the Shindo Dojo, but in the past months, Mizu had witness him grow and soften. His vendetta against Mizu had somehow transformed into an inexplicable loyalty… to Mizu, of all people. He had jeopardized his own life multiple times for a person he had, not long ago, not even viewed as human. Taigen was living proof that people could change.
There were good men in the world, and Mizu was under no delusions that he was one. (Good didn’t serve his purpose.) But a quiet part of him that felt suspiciously like hope held tightly onto Madame Kaji’s words from when he departed Mihonoseki and whispered that maybe, after his revenge was complete, he could learn to become one, too.
Tragedy and violence had made Mizu into an onryō, a creature of destruction, hell-bent on vengeance at whatever cost. Mizu no longer knew where he ended and the demon began, or if there was no beginning and no ending to this pain and anger raging inside him. When he killed his final mark, would the onryō die, and what of Mizu would survive? Revenge wouldn’t make him whole; fulfilling his purpose inevitably meant losing it, and what does a person even do after avenging their own existence? He didn’t know how, but if this quest of revenge didn’t culminate in his death, if the onryō within him finally found peace, Mizu would have to rise from another pile of ashes and become something new.
He didn’t allow himself to dream of it; his life was secondary to his purpose, so the idea of death didn’t bother him. But Mizu had spent over two decades razor-focused on a single goal; he didn’t know how to live without one. This path of greatness Mizu was on, as Ringo might call it, was littered with bodies and had very few ends, all of them blood-soaked— surest of all his own soul. The stain could never be washed out, but if Mizu made it to the end, to a new beginning, perhaps he would begin to bother with goodness.