Even though the focus of DtS isn’t happy, even though most of the characters die…Tarrok and Reme don’t. They get a happy ending. And it was slated out in the obvious that they would be happy from the start.
It has a lot to do with the relationship between Tarrok and Vixa. She was, after all, the one who told people to find him and bring him back to the castle. Enkou had mentioned that he had a brother; mentioned where he lived before.
First, it has to be understood that Vixa was in pain, and that she was bitter. She sought out Tarrok to bring him there, not just because she felt obligated to care for him, but because she was hoping for someone sort of like Enkou, who she could talk with. She was seeking out a person who knew him just as well as her, to sit down and have an intelligent talk about the man she loved; she wanted to find some closure in words to replace the closure that was impossible for her to get by any other means than revenge.
Instead, she got a boy who resembled her before she went on the journey with Enkou; naïve, trusting, goofy, wild, free-spirited and quite oblivious. It scared her a bit, and it saddened her. It was difficult to see what she was reflected back, and to see that he was incapable of the kind of communication she really wanted. It was painful; and that was why her treatment towards him became so harsh. Not that she didn’t care- if she didn’t care for him, she wouldn’t have told him to enjoy time with Reme in Uskoli’s village, she wouldn’t have had him and Reme wait back at camp while she went to her last battle alone. She didn’t want him to die- part obligation, part her real feelings.
More than all was that she could perhaps feel some of the happiness that she had grasped reflected back with him and Reme. Though the love they had while she was living was childish, and was clingy at its base, she could see that they were happy. It was her only chance to feel what she had felt with Enkou- by diffusion.
A lot of selfish motivation, but that’s Vixa for you.
It did well for Tarrok though. Reme proved to be a lot of what he needed. They make a sweet couple. She is every bravery he lacks, and he is every strength she can’t afford in her fragile bones.
They also serve to show that, even though the world they live in is full of struggle, and is full of sorrow, that two people can survive together and rear a family. They go so far as to lift the most broken soul – Oozora, who has held feelings of loss and failure since he was a child, and who had to raise his sisters like a father since he was 21, and lost both of them and his own son. They did much around them. Neither of them lost their vitality; Tarrok still jokes often, Reme still smiles brilliantly.
Other than my secret pairing, Tarrok and Reme are my strongest romantic pairing in the DtS line. Because they can take joy in such a world, because how they can let it affect those around them…I regret nothing at all about their relationship.
…Except maybe the fact that they still both need a bit more fleshing out, hehe.
…and, as Rhen reminds me often, especially in, “how the hell do they reproduce together?”
I felt this was important.
Oh, and don't get me started on my secret pairing, k. >i >