[ aph ] set me free from this cage
set me free from this cage
japan/taiwan
(we are broken, we are lost, we are doomed.)
.
The first time he tried to invade her nation, he remembers hearing her screams the most. She had been an almost-adult then; still a child, with her rounded face and wide smile, teetering on the cusp of adulthood. She'd wanted to grow up so badly, wanted to fight, because being a child simply was not acceptable in their world.
China hadn't been there when she'd hobbled out into the shore, her feet wrapped in bandages, bones deforming and breaking each second. China hadn't seen the fiery determination that contorted her face, despite the jolts of pain she'd certainly felt through each step. China hadn't been there when she went right up to him and beat her fists against his chest, screaming at him to leave.
But China had been there at the very last minute, when his army had debated on striking, to take her away.
And she'd crumpled into him like a ragdoll, limbs playing puppet to his puppeteer. A polite, blank expression immediately slid in place, and she fell into another role.
It was another persona, another person - one that China made her to be.
.
1895
Countless invasions have led up to this point.
Taiwan drifts into his house, every bit the porcelain doll she looks like, back straight, fingers intertwined. She bows deeply upon seeing him. Japan does the same in return, but never removes his gaze from her. "Japan," she acknowledges quietly.
He says, "Ilha Formosa," and she stills upon hearing the old name.
"Just Taiwan will be fine," she says curtly, eyes cool on his. Something flickers in her eyes - the muted fire she has been trained to suppress, the other her she has not let it out in years.
"Of course," he agrees politely, hands clenching in quiet frustration from within his sleeves.
She is a ghost of the nation she once was.
.
"I will not be like China," his fingers wrap around her wrist, and she stares at him for a long moment before responding.
"I fail to see his relevance in our conversation," she replies, then walks away.
But she'd understood. He knows she did.
.
"A model colony?" Japan stands, lips pressed tightly together, stretching and stretching and stretching until it appears to be a thin line. The tea cup shakes as his leg bumps into the table. "I don't -" he closes his eyes, briefly, composing himself, "I do not recall agreeing to this."
His Emperor keeps looking out the window at his new land. "Why do you think we took her in the first place, Honda?"
.
"You're changing my culture?" Her voice rises in pitch, to decibels he never knew existed. The calm, composed face crumples and panic flickers in her eyes. Taiwan's eyebrows draw down. She steps away from him, stiffly. "I will not be like China," she quotes, and maybe she imagines the pain that flashes on his face, then, but it has been there.
"We need you to be perfect," he says instead. Japan watches the anxiety overwhelm her for all of two seconds before leaving her behind.
He does not want to see her break.
.
1899
"No, Japan -"
His hands hover over her feet. Taiwan's eyes are wide, and she pushes against his shoulders twice; they are feeble attempts compared to the strength he knows she possesses. "If you do not want me to," he says carefully, "then I won't."
His gaze flies down to her feet. Slowly, he runs his fingers over the bandages and up around her ankles, ghost-touches that whisper gently on her skin. Each touch burns. She shuts her eyes, and he only images what she is seeing. Her head dips down and then lifts, a single nod, and not once does she open her eyes when he unwraps the bindings.
When he finishes, she withdraws her legs, hiding them beneath her dress. She flinches when he touches her wrist, but leans into him. "They will heal," he promises quietly, "Just give it time."
.
He hears her running after him. Soft, light footsteps, ones that he could recognise almost instantly. "You're avoiding me," she calls out accusingly. Her tiny hands wrap around his arm and force him to turn around. He does not look at her. He cannot, after what she'd said, because she is still a child and he simply cannot - cannot even begin to comprehend her words.
She favours him over China, he knows. But when Japan looks back and compares their actions together, when it comes to her, he does not know what the difference is between them. China has shaped her into the nation he wants her to be. Japan has done the same.
The guilt pushes his breath from his lungs. "I do not have time for this," his voice dips but he does not mutter; no, he enunciates clearly, something ingrained in both him and Taiwan, something they learned from China.
"Is this because of what I said? I don't regret it, you know. Not one word." Of course she doesn't, he thinks. When she is with him, he does not restrict her actions or speech to age-old traditions and manners; he lets her be free, and maybe this is where his fault lies. They are not friends, or siblings, or anything of the sort, but she is his - his to control. And he has forgotten that.
"Taiwan -"
Her hands move up to cup his face. "I'm not a child, Kiku," she whispers, tries to make him see her, but what she doesn't realise is that he does see her. He sees the blossoming smile beneath the polite upturn of her lips, he sees past her stiff formalities, he sees her, just her, and it scares him.
"What if I loved you?" He knows that he looks terribly awkward, as he always is when it comes to matters such as this, but manages to compose himself enough to say, "But you don't."
"But what if?"
She smiles sadly, and he tries not to hate himself for putting that expression on her face. His hand moves up to take her hands off, but they move down instead so that he can kiss the palm of her hand. He closes his eyes. "You don't know what you're talking about, Ilha," but his hands linger over hers for three seconds too long.
.
1937
There is a boy Taiwan acquires a certain fondness for. He is young, still in grade school, and he is also the only one able to support his family - like so many others in her nation. Japan knows this because he has heard her talk about the boy endlessly, and has seen him running towards her. He sneaks into the gardens nearly every day to bring her a flower, the kind that sprout seemingly out of nowhere.
And then he is drafted.
Japan does not think about the boy, but he knows that after the first recruitment wave was over, she would come to him. That she would care, much more than she should, as if she was his mother.
"Japan, Japan, please, they're - they're just children, you can't do this to them -" Refinement forgotten, she grasps the edges of his kimono, gasping out tiny breaths. He tries to close off his expression for both their sakes. He does not think he would be able to deny her if she caught the slightest weakness in his expression.
"This is a war," he tells her, voice brusque and nearly harsh, "We cannot afford to lose."
.
1945
But he does lose the war.
Japan tries not to think that he has lost everything, because he knows that Germany is so, so much worse, that he has not spoken in days, that he refuses to answer any letters or call - but there is the stench of rotting flesh everywhere he goes, and he cannot get it out of his head. There is a giant, aching hole in his nation, one that will never be filled, and he breaks at the sight of it.
But he cannot lose her. If he loses her -
"Japan. Hon - Kiku," her voice leads him out of the darkness and brings him back, as it always has.
"Ilha," he says, because he has never stopped calling her that in his mind. "It's - it's over. I cannot -" keep you, he finishes in his thoughts, but he does not dare voice it aloud, because he knows what her reaction to such a comment would be.
"What - what do you mean?"
When he looks at her, he is startled to see that her face has lost nearly all of her baby fat; that her cheeks have sunken, if only a little; that she is much smaller than he remembers, and it sends warning bells ringing dimly in his head. He cannot let her go back to China, not when she is like this, but the words slip out against his will.
He expects the loss of warmth that comes when she leaves.
.
When China comes to pick her up, the first thing that he looks at are Taiwan's feet. Japan notices this and hopes that she doesn't, but the raw pain that whips across her expression only tells him that she does. They were a measure of her beauty, but Japan thinks that she looks better when she's not limping everywhere.
He nods at China, his former teacher, but his eyes drift shut as soon as he sees China go out the door. Suddenly, something slams into him, nearly knocking him to the ground; his eyes snap open and he gets a mouthful of hair. "Thank you," she whispers, for some incomprehensible reason, because he has not given her anything worth thanking.
He thinks of telling her to be safe. Of telling her that he can still visit her, that it's not the end; they will see each other again, eventually, on friendly soil.
In the end, he says nothing at all.
.
1947
For an immortal, two years is not a long time. Perhaps a blink of the eye and a decade will go past, but two years - two years is not long. So when he is on his annual, reluctant visit to China (something about diplomatic relations and he did raise you, Japan) it does not feel like it has been weeks, months, since he has seen her. But there she is, in all her imperfection: her eyes swollen and her hair a tangled mess, and she looks as if she had not slept in, well, an eternity. She is frighteningly thin, as if the stress had gotten too much, and her collarbone juts out in a way it shouldn't. This is what China has done to her.
The surprise that flickers in her expression is extremely short-lived as she tries to storm past him, "Where is he? Where is that bastard?" He lunges forward a half-second too late as she runs into China's house, down each hallway, calling for him until Japan catches her around the waist. She crumples at his touch, her sobs tearing through him. He hasn't seen her look this devastated in centuries.
"He isn't here," Japan informs her, once she'd stopped screaming, "I've been waiting for hours, but - but I do not think he'll be back anytime soon."
Taiwan inhales, shakily, her hands still wrapped tightly around his forearms for support. She doesn't exhale for a long, long time, and it seems as if she would fall apart once she did.
"Thirty thousand people," she breathes. "A massacre."
Japan fits the puzzle pieces together and sighs. He wonders if it is terrible, that he cannot find it in himself to feel sorry for the people she'd lost. Bitterly, he thinks of his own losses, and stops himself before he begins to measure them against hers.
She shuffles her feet back slowly. Drags them across the floor. Holds herself together. Japan watches her walk out the door, and it isn't until he hears it click that he runs out after her. It is cold outside; the wind lashes at his cheeks and he feels as if his toes are going to fall off, but none of that matters.
His hand ensnares itself in her hair and the other presses her to him and he kisses her as if it weren't the first time.
.
1952
"Do you think it'll last?" Taiwan nods at the official papers, the parchment that holds their signatures, and folds her arms together.
Japan makes a noncommittal noise. "That's rather… pessimistic of you to say," he comments, his eyes sliding towards her.
She shrugs very slightly, not making a bigger move than that, for China is still in the room and she still has to keep up pretences. China ends up leaving first, although not without trying to hug Taiwan. She returns it, stiffly, and Japan wonders what he says to her. Then he leaves, and Japan ignores the bittersweet smile China gives in their direction.
"I don't think it will," Taiwan says later, and it takes Japan a long time to figure out that she was answering her own question.
.
20XX
"It feels strange," she whispers. He thinks that she's referring to her new independency, but then she touches her feet. Japan's eyebrows draw together.
"What do you mean?"
"I just -" her eyes close and she rocks back. Then her head tips up to look at the sky, her hair falling over her shoulder, and she almost smiles. "That I can walk normally. That… that I have my own house. It's kind of lonely." She looks at him, then.
"… Is that your subtle way of asking me to live with you?"
Her laughter bubbles through her throat; it makes him smile, but the happiness fades as quickly as it came. Something slides in front of her expression; she has an ancient sort of weariness about her, one that he mirrors on his own face.
Slowly, her head moves to rest on his shoulder. "No, no, I think I'm good, for now. Besides, you never know when a country might try to invade you. Even if it's someone you trust."
Japan stiffens.
"I will not -"
"Won't you?" He hates the way she's looking at him, now, like he's the child. Then he wonders when, exactly, she grew up.
"You never know," she repeats, and stretches her unbound feet in front of her.
--
Timeline:
1895 Taiwan is turned over to Japan.
1937-1945 Japan recruits Taiwanese for the war; volunteer or by force disputed.
1945 Japan surrenders WWII, turns over Taiwan over to China.
1947 Massacre of about ten thousand to thirty thousand people. It was an anti-government uprising which was violently suppressed by the government. Referred to as the 2-28 incident.
1952 Peace treaty between Taiwan, Japan and China.
a/n: disclaimed. many apologies for any historical/political mistakes i'm sure i've made. and thank you for reading!
japan/taiwan
(we are broken, we are lost, we are doomed.)
.
The first time he tried to invade her nation, he remembers hearing her screams the most. She had been an almost-adult then; still a child, with her rounded face and wide smile, teetering on the cusp of adulthood. She'd wanted to grow up so badly, wanted to fight, because being a child simply was not acceptable in their world.
China hadn't been there when she'd hobbled out into the shore, her feet wrapped in bandages, bones deforming and breaking each second. China hadn't seen the fiery determination that contorted her face, despite the jolts of pain she'd certainly felt through each step. China hadn't been there when she went right up to him and beat her fists against his chest, screaming at him to leave.
But China had been there at the very last minute, when his army had debated on striking, to take her away.
And she'd crumpled into him like a ragdoll, limbs playing puppet to his puppeteer. A polite, blank expression immediately slid in place, and she fell into another role.
It was another persona, another person - one that China made her to be.
.
1895
Countless invasions have led up to this point.
Taiwan drifts into his house, every bit the porcelain doll she looks like, back straight, fingers intertwined. She bows deeply upon seeing him. Japan does the same in return, but never removes his gaze from her. "Japan," she acknowledges quietly.
He says, "Ilha Formosa," and she stills upon hearing the old name.
"Just Taiwan will be fine," she says curtly, eyes cool on his. Something flickers in her eyes - the muted fire she has been trained to suppress, the other her she has not let it out in years.
"Of course," he agrees politely, hands clenching in quiet frustration from within his sleeves.
She is a ghost of the nation she once was.
.
"I will not be like China," his fingers wrap around her wrist, and she stares at him for a long moment before responding.
"I fail to see his relevance in our conversation," she replies, then walks away.
But she'd understood. He knows she did.
.
"A model colony?" Japan stands, lips pressed tightly together, stretching and stretching and stretching until it appears to be a thin line. The tea cup shakes as his leg bumps into the table. "I don't -" he closes his eyes, briefly, composing himself, "I do not recall agreeing to this."
His Emperor keeps looking out the window at his new land. "Why do you think we took her in the first place, Honda?"
.
"You're changing my culture?" Her voice rises in pitch, to decibels he never knew existed. The calm, composed face crumples and panic flickers in her eyes. Taiwan's eyebrows draw down. She steps away from him, stiffly. "I will not be like China," she quotes, and maybe she imagines the pain that flashes on his face, then, but it has been there.
"We need you to be perfect," he says instead. Japan watches the anxiety overwhelm her for all of two seconds before leaving her behind.
He does not want to see her break.
.
1899
"No, Japan -"
His hands hover over her feet. Taiwan's eyes are wide, and she pushes against his shoulders twice; they are feeble attempts compared to the strength he knows she possesses. "If you do not want me to," he says carefully, "then I won't."
His gaze flies down to her feet. Slowly, he runs his fingers over the bandages and up around her ankles, ghost-touches that whisper gently on her skin. Each touch burns. She shuts her eyes, and he only images what she is seeing. Her head dips down and then lifts, a single nod, and not once does she open her eyes when he unwraps the bindings.
When he finishes, she withdraws her legs, hiding them beneath her dress. She flinches when he touches her wrist, but leans into him. "They will heal," he promises quietly, "Just give it time."
.
He hears her running after him. Soft, light footsteps, ones that he could recognise almost instantly. "You're avoiding me," she calls out accusingly. Her tiny hands wrap around his arm and force him to turn around. He does not look at her. He cannot, after what she'd said, because she is still a child and he simply cannot - cannot even begin to comprehend her words.
She favours him over China, he knows. But when Japan looks back and compares their actions together, when it comes to her, he does not know what the difference is between them. China has shaped her into the nation he wants her to be. Japan has done the same.
The guilt pushes his breath from his lungs. "I do not have time for this," his voice dips but he does not mutter; no, he enunciates clearly, something ingrained in both him and Taiwan, something they learned from China.
"Is this because of what I said? I don't regret it, you know. Not one word." Of course she doesn't, he thinks. When she is with him, he does not restrict her actions or speech to age-old traditions and manners; he lets her be free, and maybe this is where his fault lies. They are not friends, or siblings, or anything of the sort, but she is his - his to control. And he has forgotten that.
"Taiwan -"
Her hands move up to cup his face. "I'm not a child, Kiku," she whispers, tries to make him see her, but what she doesn't realise is that he does see her. He sees the blossoming smile beneath the polite upturn of her lips, he sees past her stiff formalities, he sees her, just her, and it scares him.
"What if I loved you?" He knows that he looks terribly awkward, as he always is when it comes to matters such as this, but manages to compose himself enough to say, "But you don't."
"But what if?"
She smiles sadly, and he tries not to hate himself for putting that expression on her face. His hand moves up to take her hands off, but they move down instead so that he can kiss the palm of her hand. He closes his eyes. "You don't know what you're talking about, Ilha," but his hands linger over hers for three seconds too long.
.
1937
There is a boy Taiwan acquires a certain fondness for. He is young, still in grade school, and he is also the only one able to support his family - like so many others in her nation. Japan knows this because he has heard her talk about the boy endlessly, and has seen him running towards her. He sneaks into the gardens nearly every day to bring her a flower, the kind that sprout seemingly out of nowhere.
And then he is drafted.
Japan does not think about the boy, but he knows that after the first recruitment wave was over, she would come to him. That she would care, much more than she should, as if she was his mother.
"Japan, Japan, please, they're - they're just children, you can't do this to them -" Refinement forgotten, she grasps the edges of his kimono, gasping out tiny breaths. He tries to close off his expression for both their sakes. He does not think he would be able to deny her if she caught the slightest weakness in his expression.
"This is a war," he tells her, voice brusque and nearly harsh, "We cannot afford to lose."
.
1945
But he does lose the war.
Japan tries not to think that he has lost everything, because he knows that Germany is so, so much worse, that he has not spoken in days, that he refuses to answer any letters or call - but there is the stench of rotting flesh everywhere he goes, and he cannot get it out of his head. There is a giant, aching hole in his nation, one that will never be filled, and he breaks at the sight of it.
But he cannot lose her. If he loses her -
"Japan. Hon - Kiku," her voice leads him out of the darkness and brings him back, as it always has.
"Ilha," he says, because he has never stopped calling her that in his mind. "It's - it's over. I cannot -" keep you, he finishes in his thoughts, but he does not dare voice it aloud, because he knows what her reaction to such a comment would be.
"What - what do you mean?"
When he looks at her, he is startled to see that her face has lost nearly all of her baby fat; that her cheeks have sunken, if only a little; that she is much smaller than he remembers, and it sends warning bells ringing dimly in his head. He cannot let her go back to China, not when she is like this, but the words slip out against his will.
He expects the loss of warmth that comes when she leaves.
.
When China comes to pick her up, the first thing that he looks at are Taiwan's feet. Japan notices this and hopes that she doesn't, but the raw pain that whips across her expression only tells him that she does. They were a measure of her beauty, but Japan thinks that she looks better when she's not limping everywhere.
He nods at China, his former teacher, but his eyes drift shut as soon as he sees China go out the door. Suddenly, something slams into him, nearly knocking him to the ground; his eyes snap open and he gets a mouthful of hair. "Thank you," she whispers, for some incomprehensible reason, because he has not given her anything worth thanking.
He thinks of telling her to be safe. Of telling her that he can still visit her, that it's not the end; they will see each other again, eventually, on friendly soil.
In the end, he says nothing at all.
.
1947
For an immortal, two years is not a long time. Perhaps a blink of the eye and a decade will go past, but two years - two years is not long. So when he is on his annual, reluctant visit to China (something about diplomatic relations and he did raise you, Japan) it does not feel like it has been weeks, months, since he has seen her. But there she is, in all her imperfection: her eyes swollen and her hair a tangled mess, and she looks as if she had not slept in, well, an eternity. She is frighteningly thin, as if the stress had gotten too much, and her collarbone juts out in a way it shouldn't. This is what China has done to her.
The surprise that flickers in her expression is extremely short-lived as she tries to storm past him, "Where is he? Where is that bastard?" He lunges forward a half-second too late as she runs into China's house, down each hallway, calling for him until Japan catches her around the waist. She crumples at his touch, her sobs tearing through him. He hasn't seen her look this devastated in centuries.
"He isn't here," Japan informs her, once she'd stopped screaming, "I've been waiting for hours, but - but I do not think he'll be back anytime soon."
Taiwan inhales, shakily, her hands still wrapped tightly around his forearms for support. She doesn't exhale for a long, long time, and it seems as if she would fall apart once she did.
"Thirty thousand people," she breathes. "A massacre."
Japan fits the puzzle pieces together and sighs. He wonders if it is terrible, that he cannot find it in himself to feel sorry for the people she'd lost. Bitterly, he thinks of his own losses, and stops himself before he begins to measure them against hers.
She shuffles her feet back slowly. Drags them across the floor. Holds herself together. Japan watches her walk out the door, and it isn't until he hears it click that he runs out after her. It is cold outside; the wind lashes at his cheeks and he feels as if his toes are going to fall off, but none of that matters.
His hand ensnares itself in her hair and the other presses her to him and he kisses her as if it weren't the first time.
.
1952
"Do you think it'll last?" Taiwan nods at the official papers, the parchment that holds their signatures, and folds her arms together.
Japan makes a noncommittal noise. "That's rather… pessimistic of you to say," he comments, his eyes sliding towards her.
She shrugs very slightly, not making a bigger move than that, for China is still in the room and she still has to keep up pretences. China ends up leaving first, although not without trying to hug Taiwan. She returns it, stiffly, and Japan wonders what he says to her. Then he leaves, and Japan ignores the bittersweet smile China gives in their direction.
"I don't think it will," Taiwan says later, and it takes Japan a long time to figure out that she was answering her own question.
.
20XX
"It feels strange," she whispers. He thinks that she's referring to her new independency, but then she touches her feet. Japan's eyebrows draw together.
"What do you mean?"
"I just -" her eyes close and she rocks back. Then her head tips up to look at the sky, her hair falling over her shoulder, and she almost smiles. "That I can walk normally. That… that I have my own house. It's kind of lonely." She looks at him, then.
"… Is that your subtle way of asking me to live with you?"
Her laughter bubbles through her throat; it makes him smile, but the happiness fades as quickly as it came. Something slides in front of her expression; she has an ancient sort of weariness about her, one that he mirrors on his own face.
Slowly, her head moves to rest on his shoulder. "No, no, I think I'm good, for now. Besides, you never know when a country might try to invade you. Even if it's someone you trust."
Japan stiffens.
"I will not -"
"Won't you?" He hates the way she's looking at him, now, like he's the child. Then he wonders when, exactly, she grew up.
"You never know," she repeats, and stretches her unbound feet in front of her.
--
Timeline:
1895 Taiwan is turned over to Japan.
1937-1945 Japan recruits Taiwanese for the war; volunteer or by force disputed.
1945 Japan surrenders WWII, turns over Taiwan over to China.
1947 Massacre of about ten thousand to thirty thousand people. It was an anti-government uprising which was violently suppressed by the government. Referred to as the 2-28 incident.
1952 Peace treaty between Taiwan, Japan and China.
a/n: disclaimed. many apologies for any historical/political mistakes i'm sure i've made. and thank you for reading!