Vampire Princess Miyu Fan Fiction ❯ Dreaming In Shadow ❯ Dreaming In Shadow ( One-Shot )

DISCLAIMER: Kyuuketsuki Miyu is the property of Kakinouchi Narumi. The italicized excerpts are from Rinbu no Mori, and are the property of Kawai Kenji.

Dreaming In Shadow

Renn Ireigh

I am the Shinma and she is the Hunter and one day we will meet and one of us will die.

I say "die;" if it is I who loses, then I will not die but merely be returned, but I have no such scruples and if she loses she will die and never live again unless those stories one hears about vampires are true. But she was given a reprieve from the traditional bindings of vampires so all of their supposed immortality might well be absent in her as payment for what she does not have.

It is not so much for the human souls that I leave my world, but rather for living. One cannot live in a world of darkness, or rather one can, but one cannot live to one's fullest potentials in such a shadowed world. Red-colored trees bearing fruits made of glass - each glass fruit is a soul, a soul locked away. One cannot live when one's soul is imprisoned. I want to live. I want to test my capabilities in a greater battle than one-on-one. I want to be one-against-the-world. I want to be free. I want to live.

Can a Shinma live in such a world?

Yes.

Unless the Hunter finds me first.

Because she is not just the Hunter but also one of us. She is Shinma as much as I am and she knows the weaknesses that, as Shinma, all of us have. She compensates for her weaknesses with her vampiric ways, which we cannot do, but we compensate for them on our own and that is the challenge for her - to reach past that compensation and to burn us from the inside and out so that we may never leave Darkness again.

We cannot return her to Darkness, though I am sure that I am not the only one who would like to do so. She takes away our joy of living and so we would like to take away hers and to show her what it is like to live our lonely existence.

For the truth is that we are just like her only just a tad different in superficialities. She takes blood to live and we take souls. She lives forever and so might we. We are both persecuted by what we perceive as our own kinds. But we can't think about our similarities too hard because we have to rationalize our destruction of the other somehow and because we are the same as she we cannot rationalize if we admit it because it would be murder of our own kind.

Shinma do not believe in murder except in other Shinma. It is not murder to take a human soul; it is just as the Hunter takes blood or a human takes meat. It is what we need to live. It is not murder for a human to eat pork or the Hunter to take blood because that is what they need to live and so it is not murder for a Shinma to take a soul because that is what we feed off of. That is what we need.

Perhaps I am too softhearted towards the Hunter. Perhaps I am dreaming in these shadows of something that can never be when we all share one world together without one locking up the other and without these silly social rankings. I am a loner. I could live without a social hierarchy such as we Shinma have and if I could than so could others. We could all co-exist if we could put aside our differences but that will never happen so I should purge the thought from my mind or it will flash back in the middle of my battle with the Hunter and then where will I be, reminded of how we are all the same and why am I killing my own kind? She will sense the weakness and she will use it to her advantage and I will return to the Dark and never be able to escape again because my soul will be imprisoned into that little glass fruit and never never never again will I live.

Her golden eyes - they are strange and yet beautiful. They are only golden when she hunts us. Lit in gold, they do not shine so as a reflection of happiness but rather as an expression of her grief at what she is and what we are and what we make up together and why we are this way. When they are their normal auburn color she is not vengeful as she is now. Or rather she is, but such feelings are buried deep inside her. She is not the Hunter until night falls. During the sun's time, she is Miyu.

During the sun's time, I am still Shinma, but I do not look as I am truly. The same is with her.

We are the same, really, just the same all of us.

I see her sitting atop the Torii gate kicking her legs back and forth as her own Guardian stands beside her and between them is the weaker pink Shinma. They are all Shinma and they kill Shinma so that they can fulfill destiny. Destiny is an evil thing and has been used too often to rationalize killing.

Truth is its opposite. Sometimes. Maybe. Sometimes destiny is truth. Does that make it any less of what it is and what it is used for?

I kill and she kills and we all do so to live but the others die. There might be another way but we don't know it yet or maybe we do but don't admit it. But it's almost senseless, for Shinma to be enforced to serve Shinma when really he cares deeply and only uses the enforcement as rationale for staying. It's almost senseless, for Shinma to aid Shinma in killing Shinma. We're all one kind! We're brethren! We're different but the same!

I look at her and she looks at me and she knows what goes through my mind and nods ever so slightly as acknowledgement that what I think is truth but we both know that we can't change it, not the Hunter and the Shinma and the Protector and their Friend together. It is four against millions that will never comprehend because they do not want to comprehend.

She has to send me back but she does not want to because she has known this all along, how stupid it is, how senseless it is, and that we're all just the same really only just a little different. She hasn't wanted to send any of us back except maybe Lemures because he was the only one who wronged her and hers personally. The others were fighting for their lives and doing what they were meant to do just as she is doing now. She has to send me back, it is her duty, and she will do it, but she doesn't want to has never wanted to will never want to.

She has to.

I look at her and she looks at me and we all look at each other, Shinma to Shinma to Shinma to Shinma, Miyu to Larva to Shiina to me, and nod ever so slightly because we all understand and they never will because they do not want to. We understand because it is in our nature to understand and they will not because they have blocked that part of their nature and will never reclaim it.

She doesn't want to send me back has never wanted to will never want to but she has to has always had to will always have to because that is her purpose was her purpose will always be her purpose and she doesn't want to say it has not wanted to say it will never want to say it but she does has will and cries inside cried inside will always cry inside because she knows knew will always know that it doesn't have to be this way and that it only is because the others will never understand.

"Into the Darkness, Shinma!"