Disclaimer: I do not own Mirage of Blaze, and I am not making any money off this.
Warning: I don't know practically anything about the time period in question, so I'm probably screwing a lot of stuff up. Try to bear with me!
Acknowledgements: As always, thanks to sabriel75 for going over this with me, even when she was so busy already! And thanks to rebelintosanity for daring me to write this. Wouldn't have attempted it without your encouragement, dah-ling!

Wages of War

“I’m sorry,” he told her. The words fell from his lips with a dead weight, wholly inadequate.

Her family was gone, entirely, and there was no excuse for it. Her loved ones had been made casualties in a war that they’d had nothing to do with, and of which they had never had any knowledge; caught in the crossfire of dead men chained to the world by endless hatred.

Collateral damage.

The words were sour in his mouth.

As for his people, they had all been a bit shaken, shocked from the numb familiarity of the fight. It had been a long time since any of them had been responsible for such a loss of innocent life. As the days progressed, they found different ways to deal with it.

Naoe was regretful, but his eyes were distant, already looking toward the next battle.

The wages of war.

Haruie couldn’t stand to dwell on it. She tried to comfort them, and herself, defensively shunting guilt and grief.

This is what we’re fighting to prevent. We couldn’t have done differently.

Nagahide was withdrawn, his face an indifferent mask.

Bad luck.

Irobe said nothing to anyone, only offering a prayer for the dead.

They had to move on. There was no time for self-indulgent breast-beating, no time for melodramatic mea culpas. The war went on, and they had to go on with it.

He had told himself these things many times. He had not intended to go to the funeral.

Useless self-flagellation.

He had not intended to speak to her.

She turned from the grave marker to look at him and he had to dig his fingernails into his palms to keep from throwing himself at her feet.

She was not weak. He could appreciate that. She had been composed and dignified during the funeral. She had not broken down and wailed, or thrown herself on the caskets, or done any of the things he had grown to expect the recently and violently bereaved to do. The tears slipped sedately down her cheeks as the caskets were lowered, and not before. Her face did not even look red or puffy now; only tired.

He felt her weariness drop into him like a stone tossed into a chasm, sending up faint echoes from the deep.

It would have been easier if she were weak. Then her endurance wouldn’t have hit him with such painful familiarity.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, because he did not know what else to say.

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa…

She looked directly back into his eyes, and for a moment, his spiraling thoughts stilled.

“I forgive you,” she said.

He didn’t react. Then, resentment rose in the back of his throat in an acid wave. She forgave him? Just like that?

Suddenly her composure seemed more like distance than self-control, as if she was peering down at him from some great, free height.

She stepped closer to him and he tensed, half-expecting a blow. But she only held out her umbrella so that it shielded him, too, from the rain.

“You’re cold,” she told him. Her eyes didn’t leave his face. He could see, now that she was so near, the gentleness behind them. As though he was the one who deserved careful handling. As though he had been made fragile with sorrow.

He did not answer.

The rain pattered on the umbrella over their heads, growing louder in the silence. She broke it again.

“Would you care to join me for tea?”

Then she smiled, and it was like the first breath of dawn after a long, airless night.

finis