A Little After The Dream (Breath of Fire IV, Fou-Lu/Mami) Title: A Little After The Dream Author/Artist:dogemperor Rating: 15+ Warnings: Hints of dragonsecks (not explicit), (canonical) character death, (canonical) major mental breakage of char, flashback-fic, potentially major plot spoilers, songfic, writer is new re this fic thing so pls to be forgiving of teh suck :p Word count: 3580 *not* including afterword Prompt: Fou-Lu/Mami: living together - forget the war and live a peaceful life Summary: Even the Endless dream...and even their hearts break when those dreams are dashed. A/N: This is actually a plot bunny I've had in my mind for...gods, almost the better part of seven years (and my inner Yorae Dragon refused to shut up when we saw this prompt). I *hope* this is a semblance of what the requester wanted; at any rate, I hope people enjoy. This *is* ultimately a sad story, but it's about the only way I can write this and remain "true to the little god-emperor in my head"; Fou-lu's story *is* an incredibly tragic one.
Due to some of the author's notes being potential spoilers re the story, there is a separate appendix at the end.
I dream and I wake up and you aren't here And I begin to look for you and I realize and I smile just a little And my fingertips remember the warmth that's vanished away And I want to hear your voice and I want to touch you but I can't
Yes, but the world Is always so beautiful It seems so strange that you alone aren't here
Soma forest
It had been a foolish dream, he realised now. Foolish indeed.
The fact that it had been such a deep desire of his only made it even more painful.
The broken man--at the center of what appeared to have been some sort of *explosion* that would appear, to an observer from our world, to have been distinctly thermonuclear in nature--clutched a bell, the sole reminder of a dream he had held.
A dream that would never be his.
And a dream denied is always the most painful.
. . .
600 years ago--in the court of the Muuru Emperor
The court annals--which meticulously detailed the events that would lead to the foundation of what would become known as the Fou Empire--they recorded everything of the miracle that was said to be the nation's salvation.
The old ruler, he was dying and without heir; the nation had torn itself asunder in fear and many a warlord had come up hoping to carve off a chunk of the lands.
Desperate men do desperate things; he called upon his court advisors, eventually finding someone who--whilst not exactly having the true means of summoning mastered by those in the East--was, after fits and starts, able to find a way to call one of the Unfading to the world of mortals. In a ritual of their own making, one was pulled across.
They did not know, at the time, that their version of summoning was imperfect; that the dragon had been torn asunder in space and time and had survived at all solely by the fact it was one of the Endless. (This would only become apparent, ironically, several years after the one pulled across "died" and two other failed attempts were made.)
Shortly after the one they named Fou-lu was summoned and given the title of Son of Heaven--one which would be very literal indeed in his case--the Muuru Emperor died, the nations were united...and a scant ten years later, Fou-lu himself would appear to pass on, noting his revival in a future time.
The Court Records of the First Emperor record this; they even record how the Muuru Emperor begged Fou-lu to unite the people as one, to bring peace to the lands...and how the God-Emperor agreed to this.
The records fail to record one thing, though.
Fou-lu had never really wished to be an emperor.
Yes, he did agree to it; it was, however, more of an obligation--a duty--rather than as something he truly desired. He was emperor not because he wished to be--rather, it was as a sort of filial piety to those who brought him across, came to him weeping on how their sons were dying in the wars. It was less of a desire for world conquest, and more of him attempting (as best he could) to do what a god should do for its people. A sense of noblesse oblige--he was a being of great power, so he had a great responsibility.
It was, ironically, after his reawakening--when the regents he put in place saw themselves above the very gods, and were trying to slaughter him as an unpleasant reminder of a geas between gods and men even as they claimed his name and blessings on their atrocities--that he had his one glimpse, his one taste, of a life where he might not be forced to wear a leash of jade.
Because the time we were together Was real This world the two of us lived in Is beautiful
Sonne Village
The first thing that he remembered, after being struck down, was pain. Pain and then cool water, gentle soothing, a voice he could barely understand (partly because of the accent--he was still unused to the way the language had changed, and even then he had been educated primarily in the formal and archaic courtly speech rather than in the common parlance) and partly because of being rather addled by the fall.
The few things he caught in that time was her name, Mami--which he was so injured as to not be able to say--and a sense she genuinely cared for him.
. . .
Over the next two months, Mami gently nursed him back to...well, Fou-lu wasn't 100% by any means, but he was no longer the mass of pain and burns and the occasional broken bone by any rate.
He also started to associate, inwardly, Mami with gentleness, kindness, caring--he feared for getting her involved. He could all too easily see the Empire descending en masse to the town--he'd rather not get her in trouble.
When he got back to Chedo, everything would be alright. But now--it was too dangerous. Too dangerous, and she was too innocent.
One day when Mami was in the fields, he made to escape...the few people he'd seen, they didn't need to be involved in this.
The "escape"...well, needless to say, this did not go as planned. In retrospect, this was a fortunate thing.
The first thing that Fou-lu discovered upon exiting the old cottage was a child asking if he was the one Mami was "shackin' up" with...and then promptly asking him what "shacking up" was.
This--and the proceeding angry rant from a man about how they "didn't take kindly tae strangers"...was the first revelation the former God-Emperor had in Small Town Relations:
As soon as someone knows something potentially juicy, it spreads throughout the town in ten minutes.
Mami fortunately got him out of this situation--and even now, Fou-lu was touched by what she did next.
The man (who was apparently her landlord and whom seemed to manage most of the small farming community) was quickly fed a line that the "stranger" was no less than her cousin Ryong, who'd been injured in combat (and was a bit addled in the brains as a result), and that she was caring for him--with a definite look of "And I dare you to say a damned thing about it".
After he'd been marched back, he was admonished to stay in and rest. All the same, though, it was something she didn't have to do...and this touched him, in a way he had never known before.
He'd had people serving him, as subjects.
For the first time, he began to know Mami as a sort of friend...and, over time, as far more.
. . .
The green of the trees stretched into the skies and carried the song of the wind And it was so warm and overflowing with light I began to cry
Eventually, Fou-lu found out just how long he'd been there--some months--and that the Empire had apparently not stumbled upon this area yet.
Mami still wasn't entirely fond of letting him walk about in the village alone (so as to keep tongues from wagging), but as he'd help out at times, the people (landlord excepted) began to think of "Ryong" less as a stranger and more as folk.
One of the ladies praised him for being "strong as an ox" in helping carry her cart laden with the harvest back. One of the elderly gentlemen taught him how to fish, so that occasionally there could be a little meat in with the rice Mami would prepare.
And Fou-lu himself, for the first time since he had been summoned across from elsewhere...he felt a sort of freedom.
The people of Sonne were--even if simple country folk--fundamentally honest. There were none of the court intrigues, none of the backstabbing, none of the interminable politics and talk of war and attempts at justification of war and the slaughter of men.
Even the occasional animosity from the landlord (who himself held suspicions that "Ryong" was in fact not Mami's cousin) wasn't hidden--it was overt, and this was oddly refreshing.
And as for Mami--she was everything that court ladies and concubines could never have been. Honest, simple, caring, she was what she was and that was a farm girl who helped everyone out, never had a harsh word, and when she *did* fuss it was mostly because she *worried* about you. There were no court intrigues, no political schemes, no marriages of convenience; Mami was, well, kindness and salt-of-the-earth Mami.
Fou-lu, for his part, was definitely finding the simplicity of country life to his liking. Even with the war, even with life being hard--one of the farmers had lost a good portion of the lettuce crop to the local wildlife--they were happy, far more happy than he'd seen folks in Chedo.
He wondered, for the first time, if it was possible that he could stay here forever--to be "Ryong", not some vaunted "God-Emperor". To stay here with Mami, where they could live together and where the most immediate threat would be whether the rains would be too light or too heavy or whether the crops would be mauled by rabbits.
Where he wouldn't be seen as a God or an Endless--but just as the "odd feller who helps out in the fields".
There was definitely an honesty to country life that was all too missing in the palace and its courtly intrigues...an honesty that Fou-lu, for his part, was finding far more to his taste.
. . .
A short time before he'd been forced away--it felt like just yesterday to him, though it had been at least a few weeks previously--, Fou-lu had decided to share some of his story with Mami...but in the form of a legend. (He had the memory all too fresh in his head of what that betrayer Yohm had noted--that his very name caused a vibration in the world pointing to him. He'd not risk these people being caught in the crossfire, pulled into that conflict, if he could help it.)
As he told his story, his thoughts turned ever more to how, in truth, what the Muuru Emperor had asked so long ago was an impossible task.
Getting humans to cease war, to be as one--this was as impossible as herding cats or counting all the grains of sand in the great deserts to the east. Surely the old one had known this...
At one point, Mami interrupted--"I dinnae ken what ye be talkin' about...but I can't stand tae see you so sad..."
She kissed him...and, for a wonderful moment, the memory of how he'd been ripped from all he had known, literally been ripped asunder, melted away.
Kisses led to passion, passion led to lovemaking, and for the first time in his long life Fou-lu knew someone besides his own astral twin who could be rightfully described as a soulmate.
And it was this night that he decided:
To hell with the Empire, the human world, and its intrigues.
He would stay here, in Sonne, as "Ryong". The world would go on, as it always had; men did not need gods, and would do what they would despite all the divine intervention in the world.
He, for one, would remain here in this isolated farming community with Mami and the others.
He was far happier eating the simple food here--the rice-balls, the porridge--he saw with what care Mami made this, and to him this gave it more flavour than the most sumptous feasts back in Chedo.
He preferred the simple farmer's clothing to the horridly fancy myeonbok he was forced to wear in the palace (which required the assistance of multiple court ladies to don)--it was more practical, and felt more comfortable despite being of rougher fibre.
More and more in general, he honestly felt that Sonne, not the palace, was home--because the one person he cared about as much--more, honestly, than himself...was here with him.
He was happy--and as long as he had Mami, he would always be happy. All was right with the world in his eyes.
Sonne, a week ago
Dreams, alas, often have all too much a case of reality intruding. It was, ironically, an act of kindness Fou-lu did--and revealing too much of what he was--that caused the dream to end.
When the "Volcano God" at Mt. Yogy threatened the town--the most serious thing he'd seen the people react to, there was a great fear--they might have to abandon the town during the middle of harvest season, or sacrifice their crops or worse...
"Ryong" decided to have a friendly chat with this "God" (which, in fact, turned out not to be a "god" at all--merely a lesser spirit which had drawn off power from the Endless being in the world), put it down...
...not realising, entirely, that the act of putting down a purported god is not exactly something one expects of anyone, not even the shamans and medicine-folk who would sometimes do rituals to call for a great harvest.
To their credit, the folk--for the most part--still saw him as "Ryong".
The landlord, alas, still had his animosity--had heard rumours the Empire was looking for information about "strange spiritual occurences".
In small towns, things get around. The town ladies warned Mami that there were apparently Imperial army men going for her house looking for "Ryong"...Mami barricaded the door, begging Fou-lu to escape through the old, cracked stove...
At one point, Fou-lu begged her to come with him. Mami reassured him she'd be okay.
As he fled, the townsfolk helped him along--begged him to escape and quickly. Partly for not wishing more trouble on themselves...but also for not wishing trouble on him.
. . .
As he fled, Fou-lu still held a dream in his heart.
If We mayhaps may make it to Chedo, claim the damndable throne...We shalt release her. Release her, take her our bride, then we shalt abdicate, and live simple. Men hath no need of gods, and it be verily impossible to keep them from fighting amongst their own.
Let the lot of them damn themselves; at least me and mine shalt be safe, and we shalt live apart from them. Methinks the old soldier who liveth in the woods near the Zhinga Mountains hath the right idea...
If he could get to Chedo, get the throne back, it'd be alright.
He could set everything to rights.
It would be alright. It would have to be alright.
Surely the Empire would not be so dishonourable to kill her.
As long as he could get back to the capital, she could be freed, they could make their escape, all would be right with the world.
This thought kept him going. He entertained walking in, releasing her, embracing her...
Until the Carronade, a weapon he himself had forbidden use of because of the taint it left in its users and in the land...until that damndable thing was fired.
And Fou-lu saw with horror just who had been used as the "ammunition".
The bell--a tiny, trifling thing, probably obtained from some door-to-door merchant or medicine seller or whatnot as a child, and the closest thing that would have passed for "fancy dress" in Sonne...the bell, and its tinkling, tolled of a dream crushed underfoot.
Tolled of an abomination that should never have been created.
Never used.
And this was an abomination of a particularly twisted sort.
. . .
The Carronade had been banned long ago by the God-Emperor--even research into it theoretically--because of the particularly horiffic manner of how it operated.
Such things had been known even in the past--in essence, it was a type of "mononoke generator"; that is, it relied on the connection that its "ammunition" had with whatever it cared the most about--the land, a particular person--and *twisted* this into a terrible weapon indeed, poisoning the land, driving the very spirits mad, based on this connection and the sacrificial victim's suffering as they were sent to oblivion as the warhead of essentially a magical nuclear device.
In his time, Fou-lu had forbidden this because the very concept horrified him--people did gain an energy from it, but it was a twisted energy, as twisted as the land that would result from its use.
The fact the very empire he founded had used that thing horrified him.
It was the knowledge of who had been used as the sacrifice, though--and why--that ultimately destroyed him; not any hex.
The one person Fou-lu had loved--had ever truly loved...had died in terror and pain because of him.
Mami died horribly...because they had loved each other.
She was tortured and her very soul rent asunder because they loved each other.
And worse yet, the very love they had between them--the hope they had that they could live together in peace, without having to worry about man's intrigues or wars...
...it was literally their love that had been the reason she was destroyed.
Just like the small creature when he entered the forest--one which had been driven mad by the very force of the Endless' existence and which was ultimately becalmed by him--she had died because of him.
Because of what he was.
...and it was then, at this moment, that the God-Emperor lost his mind and lost faith in humanity.
Yes, but the world Is always so beautiful It seems so strange that you alone aren't here
I dream and I wake up and you aren't here, but The world the two of us lived in Shines so brightly
It is said that the paths of Endless and mortals are incompatible; the Endless, being of great power, sweep other living things along in their own lifestreams, being great and strong currents in the flow of existence.
Fou-lu had known this--known this--and yet he had hoped that things could be different.
The stories of the Endless never mention that they, too, hold dreams--of living like mortals, of times when they do not have to wear the jade leash of being emperors and live in the cage that is called godhood. (For it is, in fact, placing a being on a leash and putting it in a cage to call it a god--it geases them to the ultimate form of noblesse oblige if it is a kindly god, and incurs them to terrible wrath if not.) The mortals--Those Who Fade--are, for their own part, unaware of this, and therein lies much of the tragedy when the Unfading interact with them.
The moment of Mami's death--and the realisation that for a god the dream of living as a mortal is ultimately unattainable without becoming mortal one's self--it was at this moment that the God-Emperor went from "kindly" to "terrible wrath", from a being who dreamed of "slipping the leash" to panicking and being choked to death by the binds of deity.
He was trapped--trapped by what he was, horrified by the knowledge that he pulled others into his own fate, and...despite being a god...being utterly powerless to stop this.
Humans could no more change their nature than fish could walk upon the firmament...and neither could he, and their natures were on a deep and fundamental nature as incompatible as oil and water.
...and he had brought death to the one mortal he cared more about than anyone he met or had ever met...simply by his existence, by caring about her.
It had been a foolish dream, to give up what he was, to pretend that he was just a mortal and to live among mortals and to live with Mami and to be free of human foibles and politics and the treacheries of men and their political games.
But it had been his dream, the fondest he had had--that year in Sonne was the happiest time he had ever known in his thirty-score years, a time of innocence and honesty and caring and being cared about and never having to give a damn about anything else.
He didn't have to be a god or a ruler. He didn't want to be a god.
He could just be "Mami's Ryong". They could live a simple life, where the concepts of gods and mortals didn't exist--simply the constants of the flow of the seasons, the harvests of the crops, and the way they cared for each other.
The constants of Mami's smile, the way her bell would go "tinky-tink", the appreciation she had when her Ryong would carry a heavy load for her--even the few times she'd get wonderfully stubborn by insisting he rest.
He had wished for this more than anything. Living with Mami for the rest of her days had been a dream of his--if not in Sonne, then in the palace--somehow, somehow, she'd be with him.
...and the dream had been ripped from him, and his heart and sanity with it.
He held the bell that had always announced her comings and goings--the bell she wore in her hair. In a way, that bell had almost been an extension of who she was.
He felt the leash of jade tighten; the panic of knowing he was trapped and so long as mortal and Unfading One co-existed, he would not be freed from this hell.
He held the bell...and gave a hiccuping sob for a dream.
A dream that, he now bitterly realised, was an impossible thing.
The sound of the loser's footsteps is always... The sound of the loser's footsteps is always sad He spits and sneers, clenching his fists And someday, the fading sounds of crying...
fin
As Breath of Fire is a semi-obscure fandom, I felt some afternotes would be appreciated for those unfamiliar with the fandom (especially re some of the not-strictly-in-game resources touched on).
There are some aspects of this story that are from canonical sources, though not all are directly from the game itself. The mention of the Muuru Empire and details re the working of the Carronade are from the Breath of Fire IV artbook, specifically the "Deep Knowledge" section (the mention of "300 years" is actually a typo in the artbook). The mention of Fou-lu helping out, fishing, etc. is in part from the game but also in part from an ongoing manga adaptation of BOF IV being published in Comic Blade Avarus that has been officially sanctioned by Capcom (and is the first new BOF-related item in some years).
The song is actually the English translation of Yume no Sukoshi Ato ("A Little After the Dream") which is the end-theme for BOF IV; it is suspected among many in the fandom that the song may be about Mami, or alternatively may be about Fou-lu. (In the BOF IV soundtrack, there is actually a bit of an omake at the end that is canonically supposed to be Fou-lu singing, further lending credence to both theories. It is that little bit of omake I included at the end.)
The term myeonbok is the Korean term for the emperor's formal court dress; this term is used in part due to the extensive Koreanisation of names in non-Japanese versions of BOF IV (and some Korean place names do show up in the Japanese version). There *is* a fair subset of fanart showing Fou-lu in traditional imperial dress (a particularly well-done example being at the Japanese fur and BOF fansite Living Edge), and canon concept art of Fou-lu in "everyday" imperial court garb exists in the BOF IV artbook (the lower right-hand pic with the headdress; there's a beautiful fanart by SPB inspired by this here). (Examples of "everyday" imperial dress in Korea exist here for comparison--even the everyday clothing seems to have been a pain. :3)
Just to let you all know I'm not pulling all of this out my arse. :3