A/n: Mononoke Hime is quite possibly one of the most mind-blowing, beautiful movies I have ever watched. The music is equally breathtaking. Forgive any inaccuracies. I'm just a fan who owns nothing and a hopeless romantic who loves huge metaphors. :] It is highly recommended that you listen to "The Legend of Ashitaka" when you're reading!

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Legend

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By MusicalSoul

All characters to their respective owners

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He remembered the first time he saw her, standing opposite him, sharp, boldly-marked face and shirt smeared with the scarlet blood of the forest wolf. A chilled fire burned in her eyes as she looked upon him, head held high with a pride he would never understand. In one strong hand she held her dagger, gleaming in the sunlight that crept through the branches, and in the other her mask, its fine trail of fur ruffled in the soft breeze. Behind her towered the white Moro, and to her sides stood her two brothers, their eyes vigilant and wary of him, even though the distance between them was broached by the lake. Her body had tensed minutely, and the bloodstained lips had moved as the bright eyes narrowed; the voice that emerged was smooth and low, confident.

"Leave."

They had disappeared quickly; even the wounded Moro had vanished in the space of a breath between the whispering trees. There was a bond between them that he could not touch, try as he might.

He could still recall the gleam of desperation in her gaze when she denied the fact he presented to her, pushed it away with all her being. "No," she had cried, "I'm not human—!" He had not even thought about the repercussions when his body decided to take action without consulting with his mind, so his arms had reached out and gathered him to her, holding her fast even when she struggled and stabbed and attempted to break his firm grip. And when she had finally relented and let herself rest against him, all the chaos above their heads—the enraged, lost Nightwalker rending the sky in two, pandemonium everywhere—had quieted and faded to a distant buzz; all he could feel was the small, able-bodied form fitting against his. She smelled like earth and warmth, blood and death. Sometimes he would speculate when the admiration, the wonder, turned into this. Perhaps it was when he awoke with the night breeze on his healed skin and watched her sleep for a short moment, listening to her quiet breaths. Perhaps it was when he tried to pull her from the writhing grasp of the cursed snakes and he heard her call his name, reached out for him amidst the thrashes of the dying boar and the lethal blight. Perhaps it was when she stared down at him from the back of one of the wolves, a slight tilt to her thin mouth as he promised to visit often.

She was feral; she was wildness, she was unleashed. The power that surrounded her was magnetic and mesmeric, and it drew him closer and closer until he realized the reason for his approach. In this world of ironworks and machines that belched black smoke, she was something vibrant, pulsating with the essence of life.

He was accustomed to others asking him, "Whose side are you on?" He never had an answer for those. She had asked him that too, and even for her, he could not produce a reply. Was it so horrifying, so untrustworthy, to not side with anyone? Was it wrong to defend the right? He had been sent here to see with eyes unclouded by hate, and he had succeeded. The feeling itself swarmed around him and had a place in almost every heart. It was hidden away and locked in its deepest recesses for some, and in others it was a reason for continuing to exist in this world. So, where was the harm in simply being on a side of your own? At the beginning, it sometimes seemed hopeless; but despite that, there was a determination in him, one that refused to leave even when imminent and excruciating death was at hand and the mark throbbed cruelly.

This stubbornness puzzled her. She assumed that he would bend, break and yield, just like every human: he proved her wrong by continuing to persevere, doggedly carving a path upwards when everything was toppling down. She cut him, she drove him away, she ignored his advice and bypassed him; still he followed, through fire and water and battle. He ran with the wolves and plunged into the forest without a second thought, protected her way of life and that of those in Irontown simultaneously; he stood as a pillar would in a violent storm, resistant and unwavering in resolve. Never before had she set eyes on a human like him, single-minded and steadfast. He still bore the scar he had received when she cut him a glancing blow just above the curve of the cheekbone. So much wordless observation had passed between the two, filled with meaning and fleeting looks that had much more significance than the thing humans called language.

The ironworks were well on their way now. The forest was no longer being defiled and destroyed: it would have made Moro happy. Man and beast alike worked for their livelihoods; the paths of the forest and Irontown were parallel, running alongside each other but never meeting. Kodamas flourished; sometimes the nights would echo with the endless clicking of creature upon creature as a god walked amongst them. They popped up in the crevices of the woods and rocks during the day, innocent in their activities. Sometimes the thought of comparison came over him. What if he and San were much like Irontown and the Great Forest? His day was spent in a various number of ways: if it wasn't the bellows, then it was gathering food or helping with the repairs on the buildings, taking Yakul out for rides and being so tired by sunset that he scarcely had anything to think about before his head hit the pillow of his bedroll. She used her time to guard the forest, roaming its paths like a noiseless wraith and weaving herself into its shadows and secrets, the wolves treading in her footsteps. At nights she rested and then continued her vigil well before the sun rose in the horizon and bathed the valleys and the forest in dawn's first, pearly light.

But now all of this seemed far away, for she was sitting beside him, her stare turned to the moon, which was only a slice of brilliance, a crooked crescent, but nonetheless, still radiant. She had set the mask to her left; its hair rustled against the rock they were seated on, and the gaps for the eyes looked vacant, disturbingly empty with only the gray surface of the stone to show behind them. There were only snatches of time where they could sit together like this, in one another's company, with no friends or others around them to interrupt and misinterpret. Though his lids were heavy with want of sleep, he did not want to pass up a chance to see her. She turned her inspection of the moon to him; her bony necklaces rattled as she did so, and the pale light cast shadows over her face and shone off of her hair, its odd, dark green color barely showing in the gloom.

"You are weary. Why come?"

He smiled only barely. "I came because I wanted to. I would not do so for any other reason."

"There is always a next time."

"And when will that be?" he asked, leaning forward and letting his feet slide from where he had them, no longer using them to rest his chin. "I want to take advantage of every chance I have."

"…But why?"

"Why?" he repeated, the inquiry more to himself than anyone else. "I enjoy it, being with you."

She looked away abruptly at the comment, falling silent. And then, after a pause, "I do, too. Though I do not know why myself." San's eyes glazed over, their coloring intensifying. "Spending my precious hours of darkness with a human."

His drowsy self fell to pieces at her words. "Does it matter?" The sentence drew her attention again, and he repeated it, the undertones in his voice growing stronger. "Does it matter that I'm human, or that you are a wolf?" No matter that he did not agree; that was something for another time. The gleam in her eyes gathered a tint of a startled emotion. Emboldened by this, he sat up further and looked in to her face, as if daring her to break away. "Can one not be what he wants to be?" His hands lifted, possessed by the same conviction as back then, and braced the sides of her face, her neck; if she took notice of the rough pads of his fingers brushing against her throat, she did not make mention of it. Her remaining fragments of motive and logic were caught fast in the deluge of sensitivity he caused. She could only see the thunderous brown, ablaze with the willpower she had come to recognize. When he spoke again, she could sense his breath stirring the strands of hair hanging before her face.

"What binds us to titles like human, wolf, spirit—god?"

She swallowed softly, letting the scent of iron and ash and a cleaning agent enter her nose, and then exhaled gently onto his face. "It is our choice. If I were to say I am a wolf, then I am, and none can tell me I am not."

He did not relinquish her, his lips quirking up in an unnoticeable smile. "…Are you agreeing with me?"

Closer. The smell of the ironworks was stronger. She became defiant.

"Maybe. Humans have hearts, do they not?"

Closer still, until she could almost see his whisper even if her eyes were closed and blind. "Almost all things have a heart, San." And then he angled his head and gazed at her, mutely asking for some sort of permission; when she gave it, though she did not know what she was consenting to, he bent forward and let his mouth skim against hers tentatively. It startled her, this minute fizz of pleasure that he had taken interest—it was strangely liberating to know that he had noticed her. Even if she did not know where such notions came from or where the queer philosophy stemmed from, she knew it was something definitely welcome and daunting. She jerked away spasmodically, only a little taken aback, but did not rip herself from his hands.

"What are you doing…?"

Not cowed by her question, Ashitaka gave her cheek a slight brush with his nose. "Showing to you that difference does not matter unless you wish it to."

Therefore, when the skim became a solid press of lips, she was not intimidated. For possibly the only time in her life, she let thoughts of Irontown and the forest exit her mind and followed the beat inside her person guide her, for once its rhythm not accompanied by the warlike cadence of anger. She let the drummed tempo erase itself from the corridors of her self and instead took to letting her hands part the wispy strands of hair falling into her face due to their proximity. San had never imagined this type of warmness and kindness to exist.

There was much for both of them to learn from this; as one took, the other gave, and the pair grew from each other, sturdier, securer. For those around them, it was something impressive and profound, the unofficial link between Irontown and the Great Forest: but secretly all knew that it was not much like that, either. A definition escaped all who attempted to delineate their connection and give it a shape and name. One could call them Prince and Princess, human and wolf, Ashitaka and San—however, the true name, nature and harmony lay below that, like a gift buried shallowly beneath an impenetrable ground. The forest remained ageless and unchanging, but Irontown sprawled and lengthened, widened and became heavier. Cycles continued, interlocking in their infinite chain; people changed, were replaced, and some could say that all was forgotten. A single story, though, written in ink upon a crumbling paper, sitting in a stuffy study room, waits for another reader. The scrawl is mostly illegible and riddled with mistakes common of one not trained in the written word, but it is dear beyond belief.

Rumors fly and tales circulate to this day, of flames of white passing through the forest; peculiar clacks and ticks snap in the underbrush and jump out from hollows in the groaning trees. More than once has an unlucky passerby stumbled upon an unexplained vision in the late hours: at dusk they roam and in the night they sit upon a rocky overhang and are said to walk the worn paths. Not once has an apparition been spotted alone—even the dottiest of accounts says there are two; one of them slender and powerful and its partner tall and confident.

Possibly today or the day after that, or the day after that, the parchment will catch the attention of one rifling through the relics in that stuffy study room; they will pick it up with hands smooth with comfortable life and look at discolored characters at the top, squinting at them. Even if they do not know what it speaks of, it will seem valuable to them in its meek supremacy, with its deteriorating condition.

It is the fairy-tale of an unlikely young prince and the riches he found beyond his home, of faith in a dying body and world, and the warring of two sides that were more alike than they cared to think. It was recorded by a village woman who had no interest in letters and worked just as hard and if not harder than most of her male fellows; because none took it upon themselves to preserve this splinter of fable, she worked to preserve something she knew was worth much. The legend has not breathed its last. When the reader's eyes move upward, they will find the blotchy title.

Mononoke Hime, it states.