[fic] small gods
Title: small gods
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairing: Raki and Kamakiri mostly
Word Count: 2745
Summary: In which none of the Shandian children are happy, but Raki holds it together better than most.
This was supposed to be a birthday fic for serrende but since it's so late I think I'm going to call it a "I'm really glad you exist!" fic.........
I really enjoyed writing this! I'm always obnoxiously stuffing pieces of headcanon into fic, so to be working with a minor character like Raki, who leaves so much room for invented history and interpretation, was a nice change of pace from trying to accommodate the comparative universes worth of canon that the Strawhats come equipped with. Also, I have never written Skypiea fic, which is abhorrent of me. So thank you for the prompt!
At twelve, Raki is taller than all the boys her age and Kamakiri is the only one who doesn't want to bring her down. For that, she secretly allows herself to be thankful, even though her mother had said you should never eat pity no matter how hungry you are.
But hunger rises up from the ground every time she walks onto the field, summoned by the disdain of those armored boys in her squad. Rises into her like a ghost of her truer self until she's heavy with her own weakness and her grandfather's rifle becomes a crutch, the only thing that keeps her from bowing.
But it might not be pity, she rationalizes, wiping the sweat from her brow as she picks her way to the bench. Because when Kamakiri smiles up at her, it's not the same bone-white, steel-jawed smile he gives the boys. A smile that cages his tongue and that's pity, she recognizes, because he needs only words to cut them yet gives them the honor of his blade.
The other smile, the one for her, might be genuine. She could tell for certain if she could see his eyes behind his red-tinted glasses (they're supposed to help his vision; his eyes are sensitive to the sun so high up, and it's only because he's Kamakiri that he avoids the bullying). She wants to believe his eyes are brown, like his skin and like the Vearth they don't stop dreaming about.
Still, it's better not to risk it. Pity is a fast-acting poison, and kindness as well--it blunts your sharp edges, makes you soft. More of her mother's words to swallow, and they settle like stones in her gut.
Training has ended for the day and she has a new bruise blooming along her cheekbone, probably, and her left palm has been scraped raw. She drags her fingernails across, feels the skin catch. When she goes home, her mother will be proud to see her. That should be enough to sate her hunger and dispel her ghost, she tells herself.
She takes a seat in the perpetual shadow of Giant Jack, her grandfather's rifle laid across her lap. She wipes it down, practiced motions a ritual. It's temperamental, antiquated compared to the sleek new death in the holsters of the white berets, but it's been her truest ally.
She bites back a "hello" when Kamakiri sits next to her on the bench. He's wielding his new spear, the one whose history starts with him alone, and again she feels the hunger spike.
Not long ago, Kamakiri's father came home from a raid on Upper Yard with a massive bough tied to his hunched back, his wings flattened under its weight. In the days that followed, Raki had watched that precious bough slowly transform into a spear at his calloused hands, runes etched into the shaft for glory and vengeance and wrath, for prayer. Mortal armaments.
When he presented the spear to Kamakiri--my hope, he calls him fervently, my son, my son--it was with a reverence that made her heart rise to see it. Kamakiri is still small but the way his father kneels before him makes Kamakiri seem colossal.
The spear should be too big for Kamakiri, it was meant for him to grow into and to carry throughout the years his father gave him to live, but already Kamakiri wields it like he was born to it--and with a name like Kamakiri, she wouldn’t have expected anything else.
And my name, she thinks, her hands slowing. What comes of mine?
She does hear her name then, and her head snaps up. The rising susurrus of the other boys, her reluctant comrades, comes towards her from across the practice field, and she goes stiff with dread.
She had thought they'd leave her alone today. She had done well in training, hadn't she? Hit every target, made her bleeding hand into a fist, cornered the hunger within herself until it cowered and offered up its belly. That was the rule. Prove her prowess and they'll let her walk among them untouched for another day.
She curls her fingers around the barrel of the rifle to hide their shaking, lets her hair fall to shield her face, doesn't let them see the blood in her cheeks.
Kamakiri murmurs, "Don't let them get to you."
His words are laid gently at her feet and she picks them up slowly, one by one, before she can think not to; her eyes narrow and the world sharpens.
"As if they could," she fires back, forgetting that she is not supposed to speak to him, forgetting, almost, that he is the most dangerous boy in the squad, that he is a godling in his home and she is still only a girl. "I dare them to try."
Her voice is jagged where it broke in her throat, and she uses it to cut. She's learned to weaponize her fear, and desperation rallies just as well as courage. If they push, she'll push back harder, until they are against the wall with their heads bowed, break their noses on her knuckles. She's done it before, and it left her shaking and sobbing afterwards, alone under her bed so her mother might not hear, but she will not be prey. It's not what she was named for.
The other boys do not challenge her now, with Kamakiri beside her testing the point of his spear with deliberate nonchalance.
If love is the same as hunger, she might love him, and if love is the same, she won't give in. She hates him for thinking he needs to stay, for the way he commands respect just by existing when she has to hold aloft a raw Skypeian heart and drink the blood from its arteries, before they will call her one of their own.
"Worry about yourself, shorty," she spits, more bitter now than anything else, and that's the best venom she's got at twelve.
She waits defiantly for the backlash. She's seen him launch himself at boys twice his size for smaller transgressions, and she welcomes the chance to prove she's not afraid of him no matter how many bones he breaks and how easily. That she will never be hungry enough for his pity. She imagines a foreign pulse inside her fist, erratic and faint; she imagines thirst and liquid iron.
But Kamakiri only shrugs, immune because he is named for anger and for power, and nothing hurts him. He digs his toes into the barren not-Vearth and asks conversationally, "How're you gonna fight, with your hair all over the place. Get yourself killed that way."
It’s familiar ground he's challenging her on, and she can sound fierce and brave, just like she's practiced. You speak of yourself dying for Shandia, dying young. Your people go four hundred years without a land to call home, growing roots gnarled and starved, and you learn along with all the other children that there are worse things than death.
"I could shoot you through the heart with my eyes closed." The words come on their own, clear and whole, clean shots. She shakes her hair from her eyes and glares down her nose at him.
"Don't got to do that," Kamakiri says, shrugging again, leaning his spear against a shoulder.
His glasses are too big for his face, making him look bug-like, though she must be the only one in all the world who thinks such things. Everyone else is too afraid and his own father cannot see past his potential for war. But she's seen Kamakiri in his father's arms, how small he is despite how his father builds him up to be something he can worship.
Kamakiri says, soft, "I believe you, Raki."
She bites her lip and looks away, shoulders rolling forward as she holds herself. There's blood smeared across her arms from her scraped palm but Kamakiri says nothing about it, doesn't offer to bandage it for her. She thinks maybe he isn't poison after all.
She stands and, against her better judgment, allows him the space to say something else. But he only pushes his glasses up and grins at her, easy, and when did that sight become so familiar, when has she started waiting for it? She must be weaker than she lets herself believe.
She breathes in, fills herself up. She leaves the safety of Kamakiri's company behind and she takes care not to run.
Alone, boldness is her armor, brittle and ill-fitting though it is, and not half as warm as Kamakiri's inexplicable smile. Her grandfather's rifle at hand, her head held high. Her blood is on the practice field too; she has as much a right as anyone to spill it for home.
In the long shadow of Giant Jack, the boys part silently to let her pass.
Raki is thirteen and trying for reason. For days, Aisa had started to cry whenever Kamakiri came close; they should have expected this.
"You shouldn't," Raki says. "Chief will--"
"I don't care," Kamakiri roars, slamming the butt of his spear into the rough floor of the hut. His thumb presses over the rune for prayer and his eyes dart to her and back to the floor. He spits out an apology but doesn't meet her gaze again.
She takes two breaths and uncurls her finger from around the trigger of her rifle.
"I'm taking him home," Kamakiri says. "You don't have to come but-- will you?"
She's good at saying no to him, always has been, but this time she folds at the rawness in his voice.
"Sure," she concedes. Stops herself from reaching out. "I'll... well, I'd like bring Aisa back some more Vearth, too."
He nods and she leaves him alone to the preparations, closing the door softly behind her, putting spirits to rest. It's dusk before he emerges again, and she notices the beads around his neck are gone.
She takes one end of the litter and they turn silently towards the trees.
They return to the village the next day, at daybreak, and Kamakiri laughs helplessly into his hands, which are holy and dark with Vearth. She watches him, half afraid the grief will rise like the sun in his chest and obliterate him.
You can't give in, she wants to tell him. Did you know he worshiped you?
The pouch at her hip is heavy and still warm.
The boy with the wild red hair is waiting for them. Kamakiri falls to his knees, head in his hands, and Raki thinks fiercely of Aisa and her curse, of how her earliest memories will always be of loss.
Wiper is a born leader, which means he is also a bully. Kamakiri adores him, sighs at the relief that comes of devoting yourself to someone instead of having to live up to your own devotee.
Raki, at sixteen, despises him.
"He's got big shoes to fill, is all," says Kamakiri, who has finally grown as tall as she has. He will be taller than her within the year-- but she's more clever with the dials and her accuracy is second to none, and she has endured more than Kamakiri can ever know as the lone girl in an army of glory-driven boys, and that makes her steel.
"Imagine that kind of pressure, you know?" Kamakiri continues. "Being Calgara's descendent."
"Don't make excuses for him," Raki grumbles. "Just because you're his friend."
"I'm your friend, too."
"You were my friend first. Doesn't that count for something?"
"Sure," he says, pitching his voice low. "'Course it does. But Wiper's different."
"How?" She knows the answer but she wants to hear Kamakiri say it, wants him to give her ammunition.
"He's our leader." Kamakiri sounds confused that he has to explain this to her, as if Raki is asking why they have wings, something so basic and inherent. "He's of Calgara's line. I'd die for him. Wouldn't you?"
She's ready for this. He's grown predictable.
"No," she says. "Why would I die for Wiper when we don't even die for the gods anymore?"
"Because he isn't a god," Kamakiri insists, opening his hands. "Because of what he stands for."
She shoves him, hard and without warning, and he takes three steps back. She snaps, "We all stand for the same thing, Kamakiri."
She has not cried for years and she won't start now, not because of Wiper or stupid Kamakiri. Why, when they are no less mortal than she? Tall Shandian girls with rifles slung low on their hips and blood underneath their fingernails do not cry over boys. Her mother used to tell her this. Her mother raised her to be above this.
Kamakiri avoids her eyes, drums his fingers softly along the edge of his newly polished jet board and Raki almost slaps it out of his hands in frustration. Over the years, since his father's passing, Kamakiri has also grown calm and still, and Raki is still adjusting to this new boy.
"Kamakiri." She drives his name into him like the knife it was intended to be.
He winces and she feels triumph.
"Yes-- you're right, of course," he says slowly. And then, "That means I'd die for you too."
She wants to punch him, break his glasses and blind him. She cannot understand. If he is so eager to offer up his life, she will bleed it from him, drink until her cells know nothing else, until she has taken everything he ever was and woven it between her vertebrae--and Wiper will have nothing of Kamakiri because she will keep him safe this way.
She hasn't learned how to respond to sadness; her mother never taught her.
"You're missing the point." She feels defeated and her spine threatens to curl. "I don't want you to die at all." Honesty is a new weapon.
When they were born, their parents put nostalgia in their names, in the back of their soft, infant throats. Raki. Kamakiri. Names that make your throat tighten. Try it. Raki, her mother would say like an incantation, so she could die with the shape and weight of defiance in her mouth.
Their people have been homesick for centuries. When she met Kamakiri, felt his name rasp her throat for the first time, she knew Kamakiri's mother also meant for her son to be angry and righteous and brave--so that he would have the strength to bear the homesickness endemic to his people. So that he could rise up to be his father's last hope.
But their anger has fallen from them over the years, since they've grown too big for anger to cradle. And without anger, righteousness and bravery have invited the homesickness in to warm their hearths instead.
And now all she does is want. She is bitter with it. She wants great, impossible things. She wants to go home. She wants peace. She wants her people to stop aspiring to death.
She wants the two of them to finally outgrow the nostalgia in their names, to win back Upper Yard for the Vearth they need to put down newer, stronger roots. She wants that more than anything.
Kamakiri is suddenly close. "I don't either, you know," he says, rubbing the back of his neck.
She pushes him away and regrets it immediately. "Don't what?" she asks to draw him near again. It doesn't take much; he has always stayed close to her.
"Want to die." He turns away, and from this angle she can see a sliver of the world he sees, behind his red-tinted glasses. "But I still would, Raki."
You're a child, she wants to sob. We are children. God, she thinks to pray, but she has never known a god to be merciful or good.
Instead she says, "I got new jet skates yesterday. Want to race?"
In the end, Gan Fall was never their savior. They do not believe in gods. When he falls to the one with lightning at his fingertips, they do not grieve; they are instead renewed.
She follows Wiper, who she fears will sink them into the blue sea before he can take them home. But he has Calgara's blood searing his veins and Calgara's spirit stealing the breath from him, and that is still something that matters.
Kamakiri's smile is small and thankful. Raki pretends not to see it.