He supposes then, she would miss it, if he were to rip it out from beneath them. Tear the strips of magic from the soil, and the snow to trade another day; to batter away the hands of time, just a little longer. Just to prove he could, still. She would mourn the loss, as he reduced it to Babylon. He cannot stop the clock, but he could slow it with the weather that had snowed the city to a standstill. It would only be another one of the many cities he has torn through. They always rebuild; often more impressive than the last. But he'd come to Port Leiry to put an end to the legacy slick with blood. He'd known the day would come, where he had to surrender to the inevitable.
It just isn't his way. He does not bow his head, not even to time. It's no longer pride or tender sentiment. Tetsuya stands there and wonders if he still could. If there's enough power left in him, that hasn't bled out through the holes in his flesh and returned it to the earth. It'd drain the poison he turned power into, and cleanse it to be something anew. It would reduce centuries of bending the laws of nature, into nothing.
Not natural, she says. Miyazaki isn't that, either. Not for a long time.
His head tips back an inch. He doesn't think he expected to hear that she found the city to be her home. She discovered part of herself, elsewhere, so it seemed. And the parts she found in the dojo, are lessons he brought with him. From a time, and a place that wasn't this city, either. Tetsuya supposes, if he played that game of origin, nothing is where it once was.
She would miss it, if he used the overwhelming snowstorm to his advantage; if he weaponised it to buy himself time on a clock set to stop, eventually. If he turned metaphor into magic. Endless frost into freezing the hands of the clock.
But he listens, without judgement. No pity. Just observation. Acknowledgement to her confessions, bleeding out of her the same as his insides were. He feels the strain on his body with every moment he stays standing.
She feels safe, and she came back, just to warn him of a death he expected to come. It's more than a home for her. And Miyazaki wonders, for the first time in a long, long time, what that feeling is like. He has a homeland, but home? It's easily forgotten when on the path of pursuing power; limits were constricting. It's what stops every good student from ever reaching greatness. Does Nadia know the difference? Is it because she does not see herself beyond one lifetime — Miyazaki has broken sacred laws of nature, and forsaken old codes to drag himself through the ages. It had been his downfall, but perhaps the idolisation of one city is something to consider powerful in itself.
"I suppose you would miss it then." If he made it into an anchor for power. Her voice changes, and her expression turns back into worry. He does not know if she had used her power to decipher his thoughts, or whatever memories he might have let fleet through his mind. Maybe she knew he'd consider trading a city, for another slither of life. Perhaps she's yet to know the power that could come, when the well of it is torn open.
But afraid? Darkness is just another step.
Miyazaki did not expect she would mourn him in the way she describes. His mouth lifts in the corner, curious, as much as he is bemused. A fondness he hadn't foreseen; he wondered if her magic allowed her to see that as well. "And what would fear serve me as?" Not survival. More often a weakness, than it was a strength. "You saw my end, Nadia." He felt the surge of magic under his flesh, at just the prospect.
And he felt the trickle down his forearm, and wrist at flesh breaking beneath the weight of it. A hand slowly feels a blood soaked palm, with mild indifference. He tries not to allow it to drip onto the tatami. "I think you give too much credit to skyscrapers and their permanence." How could she not? She's young. What is a blip in his timeline, might be the entirety of hers. If they moved the city, or its people, is it still the same city, or does it become something anew, once ripped away from its roots. Miyazaki does not have the time to debate the philosophy of origin with her. "But your power," he shifts his shoulder, where a rotted wound has opened, and stained his skin as red as it is black. "That is undeniable. I saw that, before you left this place." She'd pulled things out of him, that people had died for. She'd done it without realising, but she'd still done it as easy as breathing. More severe in his tone, despite the whispering smile, "You should not fear it." Not what she is, or could be. He's perhaps come to realise, "That was all I needed to teach you."
The rest she would develop and mould on her own. If he did not pull the city from its foundations, then he would not see much more of what is to come.
He supposes, with the blood dripping down his hand, it does very little to her perception to let her watch him reach for a dark cloth in his pocket. He slowly wipes his palm, and the crevasses of his fingers. Not often does he digress into compliments, but Nadia has come to him, knowing how it ends. More than that. She's trying to save him, in some way. His eyes move from his hand, to her again. "You were a good student." Good enough to keep Tetsuya from the thoughts of totalling a city, on the backend of a redemptive path. "Even in loss, there is memory. You remember names you never met, do you not?" Miyazaki would not concede a fight, but he didn't expect there would be one. The one he has with himself, there is no victor. "And I expect you will remember whether we cut the hand that kills." He might face death, but that is not entirely the end.
With an unpleasant jab in his ribs, Miyazaki's face breaks its stoicism. The mask slips, as he reaches over his robe to press at the roiling anger of his magic against a body too mortal. The air trembles around him, careful as it coasts between them; threatening to slice. He considers how much he could endure before he either caved to depravity of old violence, or if he would be standing at the end, when Nadia's premonition finishes him.
He pocketed the cloth quickly, and thought about how Emperors, and Queens. Activists, and those on digital screens, still lived in the minds of thousands. Ancient things written in books, and rolling around in the minds of the many who had the pleasure, or displeasure to cross their paths. Miyazaki's stories were not ones he liked to repeat.
But maybe Nadia would tell a better version. Hers.
