"...Mother?"

The sound of it, so hopeful, so broken, so utterly wrong, was a physical blow to Statera's chest. She stood frozen, a statue of Polaris light and paralyzing grief. Her frantic, strobing luminescence seemed to freeze mid pulse. The entire world narrowed to the young man before her, to the amber eyes, her sister's eyes, that were now looking at her with a dawning, desperate recognition that she knew she had to shatter.

The air left her lungs in a soft, pained rush. She took a single, faltering step forward, her hand, the one that had signed a thousand edicts with unwavering certainty, trembling violently as it rose, not to reach for him, but to press against her own heart, as if to keep it from breaking through her ribs.

"Shiro," she whispered, his name a prayer and an apology on her lips. Her voice was a frayed thread, trembling with the weight of decades of concealed truth. "I'm… I'm so sorry. But I'm not your mother." The words were agony to form, each one a shard of glass in her throat. She saw the first flicker of confusion in his amber gaze, the first crack in the hopeful illusion, and it nearly broke her. She forced herself to continue, the confession dragged from the deepest, most painful vault of her soul. "I am her younger sister. I am… your aunt."

I Know… you just look so much like her…

The final word fell into a silence so absolute it was deafening. The fissure, its inhabitants, the very universe seemed to hold its breath.

Shiro did not move. He stood rooted to the spot, the cloth he'd been using to clean his blade slipping from his numb fingers to the floor. The words "her younger sister" echoed in the cavern of his mind, a key turning in a lock rusted shut by years of trauma and survival. Fragments, sensations long buried, surged to the surface: the scent of star lotus that wasn't his mother's, but was so similar it ached; a low, resonant laugh he'd heard in a dream; a phrase, whispered to him when he was small, a secret between sisters: "Shiro, Rewrite the sky with Sta..."

His hands, which had been so steady with the blade, began to shake. A bitter, disbelieving smile twisted his lips, a defence mechanism against the tidal wave of pain rising within him.

"Her sister," he repeated, his voice low, flat, and dangerously calm. The bitterness in the smile reached his eyes, hardening the amber into something cold and sharp. The initial shock was curdling, transforming into something darker, more potent. "All these years… you were out there. Living in your crystal spires. Breathing clean air." His voice began to climb, each word gaining a sharper, more serrated edge. "Did you think of us? While you were polishing your protocols and upholding your precious laws, did you ever once think about what your laws did to her? To us?"

Statera flinched as if each word were a lash. Her Polaris light, which had stabilized into a beam of resolve, guttered again into a chaotic, silver storm of pain. A single tear, glistening in the jaundiced light, escaped and traced a hot path down her cheek. She didn't wipe it away.

"I…" she began, her voice cracking under the strain. She swallowed hard, the sound a dry, painful rasp. "I was afraid. I was a coward." It was the weakest, most pathetic truth, and she hated herself for it.

"Afraid?" he echoed, the word a venomous, disbelieving scoff. He took a step forward, his body trembling now not with confusion, but with a rage so pure it was terrifying. "You were afraid?! What about her fear?!"

His voice rose, cracking with a raw, adolescent pain he'd long since buried beneath layers of hardened defiance. The dam was breaking, and a lifetime of grief, of terror, of watching his world burn while no one came to help, erupted from him in a torrent of anguished fury.

"You abandoned her!" he shouted, the words tearing from him, raw and ragged. He took another step, jabbing a finger toward her, each word a hammer strike. "You all did! You cast her out and you left her to HIM! And you left us to HIM!"

He was screaming directly into her face now, his body shaking with the force of his sobs, tears of rage and helplessness finally streaming down his own cheeks, cutting through the grime.

"Where were you?!" he screamed, his voice echoing off the close walls. "Where were you when they dragged her away, screaming our names?! Where were you when Ryo's thugs kicked down our door and she shoved us into a closet, Aki's hand over my mouth to keep me quiet?!" His breath hitched, the memories playing like a fresh horror behind his eyes. "Where were you when they took Aki, because I was too weak to stop them?!

He was gasping now, chest heaving, the images too vile, too vivid. The final, worst memory clawed its way to the surface, and he could no longer hold it back.

"WHERE THE FUCK WERE YOU WHEN THEY BURNED HER ALIVE?!"

The final question was a raw, primal scream that seemed to suck all the air from the fissure. The image it conjured was hideous, visceral. The smell of smoke and searing flesh. The sound of a scream that was not just sound, but the very essence of a soul being unmade. The way the crowd cheered in the vison that was forced upon him in the crypt, to what felt like years ago.

It was the final, annihilating blow. Statera's last vestige of control evaporated. A wounded, guttural sob was torn from her throat, a sound of such profound despair that it was almost inhuman. Her own tears fell in a silent, relentless river. She doubled over, as if he'd physically struck her in the stomach.

"I'm sorry," she wept, the words barely intelligible, mangled by her sobs. "Shiro, I'm so sorry… I'm so sorry for not being there… For not fighting harder…. For choosing duty… over family." The admission was the most profound shame of her life. She was on her knees now, not in ceremony, but in utter defeat, her forehead nearly touching the cold stone. "I was a coward. I let them paint her a traitor and I… I just… built my walls higher. I didn't know if you existed, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, I should've looked for you I'm sorry..."

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She was babbling, confessing not just to him, but to the universe, to the ghost of her sister she felt hovering in the charged air. She reached out a hand, not toward him, but to the floor, her fingers scraping against the stone as if she could dig her way back in time and change it all.

Shiro stared down at her, this woman who was a stranger, yet whose blood ran in his veins. The anger that had sustained him for so long suddenly had a target, and in striking it, it began to dissolve, leaving only the vast, empty ache it had been protecting. The fight drained out of him all at once. His shoulders slumped. A humourless, broken sound escaped him, something between a laugh and a sob.

"Afraid," he whispered again, the word now filled with a devastating, weary understanding. He wasn't shouting anymore. The truth was too heavy for volume.

"Do you have any idea," he said, his voice dropping to a shattered whisper, each word measured and agonizing, "what it's like to watch your mother die? To see… to see the skin…" He choked, the memory too vile to give voice to. He squeezed his eyes shut, as if to block it out, but it was burned onto the inside of his eyelids. He wrapped his arms around himself, a solitary, fragile figure. "To be powerless as they take your sister? To know it's your fault for not being strong enough? To be so alone you think you might be better off to just…die?"

His voice broke completely on the last word. The strength left his legs. The defiant slum rat, the fearless resistance fighter, collapsed to his knees before her. He wrapped his arms around himself, his body folding in on itself as silent, gut wrenching sobs wracked his entire frame. Years of bottled up pain, of forced toughness, of smothering his heart to keep it from breaking, poured out of him in a helpless, overwhelming flood.

"I hated her," he confessed to the floor between them, his voice muffled and thick with tears. "For leaving us. For making a choice that got her killed and left us alone. I hated her so much it felt like a fire in my chest…." He sucked in a ragged, shuddering breath. "But I missed her… , I missed her. But every single fucking night. I dream of that day… I smell the smoke… of her skin burning, her eyes..."

It was the most vulnerable thing anyone in the room had ever witnessed.

Statera didn't see a warrior or a symbol. She saw her sister's son, a broken, lonely boy drowning in a pain she had helped create. With a cry that was all grief and no grace, she scrambled forward on her knees. She didn't ask permission; she simply opened her arms and gathered him in.

He was stiff for a heartbeat, a lifetime of survival screaming at him to push away, to not show weakness, to never let an enemy this close. His muscles were coiled steel, every instinct forged in the crucible of the slums and Ryo's tyranny telling him to shove her off, to retreat behind his walls of anger and indifference. It was the only armour he had ever known.

But the need was too great. The dam had broken, and the lonely, terrified boy he had buried years ago under layers of hardened defiance was screaming to be held.

With a sound of utter surrender, a ragged, broken exhale that was half sob, half the death rattle of his old defences, he collapsed against her. It wasn't a gentle lean; it was a total structural failure. His body went limp, his full weight falling into her arms as his face buried itself in the coarse, scratchy wool of her shoulder. He clutched at her robes, his fists not just gripping but clawing at the fabric, as if she were the only solid thing in a world that had always been liquid fire beneath his feet.

Statera gasped softly at the impact, not from his weight, but from the sheer, devastating trust of it. This was not just acceptance; it was a complete relinquishing of control. She tightened her arms around him, one hand splayed across his back, feeling the sharp ridges of his spine through the thin fabric of his shirt, the tense, knotted muscles of his shoulders that were now shaking uncontrollably. Her other hand came up to cradle the back of his head, her fingers tangling in his dark, sweat dampened hair. It was an instinctual, protective gesture she hadn't made in decades; a ghost of a motion Andra might have used to comfort her a lifetime ago.

He wept without sound at first, great, heaving shudders that wracked his entire frame. She could feel the heat of his tears seeping through her robe, a scalding brand on her skin. Then the sounds came, muffled, choked, animalistic gasps for air that were torn from a place so deep within him it seemed to fracture the very air around them. Each sob was a convulsion, a physical expulsion of a piece of the poison he'd been forced to swallow for years.

"I have you now…" she murmured into his hair, her own voice a wrecked, watery thing. She rocked them, a slow, steady rhythm that was the complete antithesis of the chaotic storm of his grief. "I'm here. I'm not letting go. Never again." Her own tears fell freely now, dripping onto his head, mingling with his. They were tears of shared agony, for the sister she lost and the mother he lost. They were tears of profound shame, for her own catastrophic failure. And they were tears of a fierce, blazing love, rediscovered and redirected at this broken piece of her family she had found in the dark.

She could feel the moment his silent, body wracking shudders began to give way to audible, heart breaking cries. The dam within him was not just broken; it was utterly demolished. He wept for his mother, for the sound of her voice, for the warmth of her embrace that had been stolen and replaced by the memory of fire. He wept for Aki, for every day of not knowing, for the helplessness that was a constant, gnawing companion. He wept for himself, for the boy who had to become a man too soon, who had to learn that he was too weak to save anyone.

And Statera held him through all of it. She whispered nonsense and endearments, a steady stream of comfort against the torrent of his pain. "Let it out, let it all out. You've been so strong for so long. You don't have to be strong right now. Just let go. I'm here. I'm here." She repeated it like a mantra, a vow, a prayer.

Slowly, infinitesimally, the violent tension in his body began to ease. The claw like grip on her robes softened, his fists unclenching to simply hold onto her. The raw, ragged sobs deepened into slower, hitching breaths, though the tears did not stop. He was exhausted, hollowed out, but the frantic, trapped energy of his pain was finally spent. He was simply present in the circle of her arms, a child finally safe enough to cry himself to emptiness.

She adjusted her hold, pulling him even closer, until his head was tucked under her chin. She could feel the steady, solid beat of his heart against her own frantic, guilty rhythm. In that moment, nothing else existed, not the watching resistance, not the political alliance, not the war outside. There was only the cold floor beneath her knees, the scratch of wool, the smell of dust and sweat and tears, and the overwhelming, sacred responsibility of holding her sister's son together as he finally, finally fell apart. It was the most important duty she had ever been given, and she would not have traded the crushing, beautiful weight of it for all the order and protocol in the world. She held him, and in holding him, she began, for the first time, to forgive herself.

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