From: cdavies@gpu1.srv.ualberta.ca (Chris Davies)


        They don't any of them understand why I love you.

        Seven hundred years in the Earth.  Even when I learned how to
leave my shell behind, and see this strange world, there wasn't a lot I
could see in the area around my tomb.  Yoshou rarely came around,
trusting, I guess, the precautions that he'd taken to ensure that the
horrible demon would be sealed away forever.

        Seven hundred years, and finally she started to poke around.
Everyone seems to think that you look a lot like your grandfather and dad.  
Not nearly so much as you look like her. The quick smile when you think no
one's watching you, the fluid way you move, even when you're not fighting
... these are all her.

        I never really was interested in her, though.  I watched her grow
up, but nothing about her interested me.  Maybe it was because she never
saw me.

        Not like you did.

        Is it that all babies can see ghosts, or just that you were
special?  I don't know.  Maybe "mom" knows, but I'd rather not ask.

        But one day, she brought her tiny baby -- just a few weeks old --
walking around the grounds of the shrine where she'd grown up.  And she
passed the tomb.  I was staring down, wondering what the heck she was
carting around with her, when you turned around.

        Our eyes met.

        You saw me, and you weren't afraid.

        You weren't afraid of the fierce eyes that had quelled proud space
captains of a hundred worlds.  You weren't afraid of my fangy mouth, of my
spiky hair.  You weren't afraid of the dark deeds that clung to me like a
burden of a thousand chains.

        You saw me, and you smiled.

        I wondered what was wrong, was something in the containment field
affecting my body that I felt so strange.  It was like nothing I'd ever
felt before.

        As you grew, you didn't see me anymore.  But I think that you felt
me watching, or else you wouldn't have come there so often.

        You certainly wouldn't have come there on that day.  It was cold,
I know, and you were trying so hard to be a little man, and not let the
tears come.

        But they did, and you whispered, "okasama" as you sobbed on the
floor of the cave.  You were crying because something had been taken from
you that I'd never even had.

        Why should your tears have affected me?

        They did.

        I couldn't cry.  Ghosts don't cry, and I'd never cried even when I
wasn't a ghost.  But I wanted to.  Not for her.  For you.

        I wanted to gather you to me, let you cry, and cry myself hoarse.

        But ghosts can't touch.

        But you felt me anyway.

        You grew up, coming to the cave when you wanted to be alone, to
dream.  Such simple dreams you have -- nothing at all like the ambitions
I'd held as a pirate.  But at the same time, yours seemed so much ...
brighter, better than just getting enough that I could have anything I
wanted, or making people fear me so that they wouldn't ever mess with me.

        (Sometimes when I am totally honest I admit that I owe Yoshou so
much for allowing me to meet you and for not telling you what you are
because your dreams would never have been so humble if you'd known that
there was a throne yours for the taking so thank you Yoshou but no thanks
for putting that damn sword through me twice.)

        And one day you left.  Your father had worked out enough of his
problems that he could finally let you live with him in town.  So off you
went in your uniform, a young man ready for school.

        And my heart broke.

        And not long after you came to me and set me free.

        And my heart sang.

        And you thought I was a monster and ran away.

        And my heart broke once more.

        And "Princess" started messing about, and the ditz came, and ...

        Then you were taken from me.

        And my heart stopped.

        What would you say if you knew that I curled up in a ball and
cried myself senseless when I thought you were dead?

        I didn't want to live anymore.  Even if I had stopped him,
somehow, I wouldn't have gone on afterwards.  I would have let myself fall
to earth, the caller of demons become a shooting star in the heavens.

        But you lived, and you knew what you were.  And I watched as you
stood alone and unafraid against my darkest nightmare.

        And won.

        You seem so shocked as you wake up and find me sitting on your
bed, staring at you, weary and red-eyed.  I can hardly bring myself to be
away from you for a second, so scared that this will turn into some cosmic
joke, and you will be gone from me again.

        And so our day begins.

        They don't any of them understand why I love you.

        But I think you do.


Author's Notes

        This was conceived and written in a twinkling.  I should be
working on my Ranma story, or Serena and Luna, or Sailor Moon:
Celebration, but ...

        Guess it's kind of obvious that my favorite Tenchi episodes are 5
and 6, isn't it? 

        I might do one for Washuu next, because I can isolate the specific
moment when I started to care about what happened to her.  It's harder for
Ayeka and Mihoshi ...

        The characters of Tenchi Muyou were created (originally for a
potential side story for Bubblegum Crisis, believe it or not) by Hiroki
Hayashi, and brought to North America by Pioneer LDC.  This story, while
incorporating aspects of this motion picture held under copyright by
others, is copyright 1997 by Chris Davies.

        Nobody sue me, okay?

Chris Davies, Advocate for Darkness, Part-Time Champion of Light.
"I am not a very nice person anymore." - Rand al'Thor, "Crown of Swords"
http://www.ualberta.ca/~cdavies/hmpage.html