Work Text:
Honesty has never been Madara’s strong suit. He’s used to hiding behind an exuberant, overbearing personality—it’s practically second nature to him at this point. Deflect, deflect, deflect and if that doesn’t work, poke and prod at the weakest spot he can find until the direction and flow of the conversation are changed. Usually, it’s enough to guarantee his true feelings remain as mysterious as ever. However, even he isn’t immune to the genuine observations that occasionally come from one Morisawa Chiaki.
This, however, doesn’t explain why he’s somehow standing under the striped grey-and-white awning of a tokusatsu figurine shop, holding a ladder aloft whilst the aforementioned Morisawa Chiaki balances ungainly upon it as he adjusts the fallen sign in his grasp.
“Then Kiryu asked me what he should get for his sister for her birthday, but I’m an only child, so I really wouldn’t know and—Oh! Mikejima, you have a sister, don’t you?”
The ladder wobbles as Madara tenses, just once, before he forces his body to relax. The mention of Maguro will do that to him nowadays. “Why do you ask? Does Chiaki-san want a cute girlfriend so bad he’d even settle for my sister? But I can’t allow that, sorry! I might be a mama, but I am also a good nii-san, and that always comes first.”
“Haha, that’s good!” Chiaki smiles, boisterous as usual, burning ever-bright, uncaring of the almost-jab Madara threw at him. “You must really care about her. It’s nice that she has such a kind and loving older brother.”
‘Kind and loving’? Who is Chiaki fooling? Madara is none of those things, not anymore. Maybe once upon a time, when the world was kinder and Maguro smiled more. But those were the fleeting and stupid dreams of a childhood long forgotten, and all Madara can think about is how much it hurt when Maguro cast those final words of hatred upon him. There was no sign of love in that house to begin with—apart from what Maguro showed him, of course—and without Maguro, there was no reason to stay any longer. He would have gladly fought for her, yet she had turned her back on him and so he had left it at that. “Chiaki-san always sees the best in people, huh?”
“Well, there’s a lot of good to see!” Chiaki agrees enthusiastically. Madara wonders how he can still be so positive even after everything. Madara wishes he was a little more like Chiaki. Maybe then he would have been able to save Maguro. “Actually, Mikejima, you don’t talk a lot about your sister…”
Madara closes his eyes briefly. “Hm?”
“I mean, it’s not necessarily a bad thing,” Chiaki adds hastily, always considerate. “I just found it strange that Kanata talks more about your sister than you do…but you’ve always been a pretty private person, so I never thought too much of it. Still, isn’t it lonely…?”
Madara hums. Kanata talks about Maguro? Why? They were never that close to begin with, and the rift between them worsened after everything Madara did. “Chiaki-san is too kind… Always worrying about me. But it’s all okay, you don’t have to worry about Mama~.”
Chiaki smiles, buoyed back to his perfect sunshine-y self. He stretches up a little further, trying to push the awning aside so he can pin the sign back up. “I can’t help it, haha! I always have to worry about my friends. Anyways, I’m nearly done! So…how about after, I treat you to something as thanks for helping me? We could—ARGH!?”
The ladder shifts slightly, a testament to how off-balance this conversation has caused Madara to become. He attempts to straighten the ladder, but it’s already too late as Chiaki tips over backwards, right into Madara’s thankfully waiting arms. “Chiaki-san should be more careful~.” Madara sing-songs, heart hammering in his chest. He shouldn’t have gotten distracted, shouldn’t have let the mention of Maguro catch him off-kilter.
Chiaki looks up with rosy cheeks, a sheepish expression on his face. “Ahaha… Sorry about that!” He wipes the non-existent dust off of Madara’s shirt as he wiggles out of the hold. “W-well, I’m done so we can just…go now…?”
“Alright,” Madara agrees, because he knows what it’s like to lose face in front of someone you wish never saw your mask break. Chiaki doesn’t deserve something so humiliating. He’s content to pretend otherwise, to pretend that the both of them aren’t rattled. He pushes all thoughts of Maguro out of his mind. “Let’s go.”
If there’s anything Madara’s learnt about the intricacies of one Tsukinaga Leo, genius composer, after being friends with him for so long, is that whatever you think Leo is going to do is always completely and entirely wrong.
“Mikejimama~!” Leo cheers, running full-tilt before tossing himself into Madara’s arms. Madara drops the book in his hands immediately, used to this sort of routine. “You’re here!”
“Leo-san~!” Madara smiles, catching Leo around the waist and spinning him around. “Yes, I am! Were you looking for Mama?”
Leo hums his agreement, a pen tucked behind his ear and a sheaf of papers scattering around him as he moves in Madara’s grip. He’s then gently deposited on the floor, as Madara crouches to pick up his fallen book. “Yep yep~ I wanted some advice, and Mama is the smartest person I know~!”
That’s the thing about Leo, always honest. Just like Chiaki, he sees the best in everyone. And, just like Chiaki, Madara knows he will inevitably hurt Leo. It’s not that he wants to, no, but it’s just a fact of life. Things never end up well for the people who get close to Madara. He shakes his head. Things like that don’t bear thinking about—not in Leo’s presence. “Alright, what did you want from Mama?”
The thing is, no matter how much of yourself you hide away, someone you care about will pick up on it. Not because it’s visible, but because they know you so well and they hate to see you hurting and hiding. The thing is, Leo doesn’t know about Madara’s past—or maybe he does, Madara can never tell just how much of Leo’s intelligence is devoted to secondary pursuits, because it doesn’t matter who Madara was, just who he is—but no matter what, he’d never see Madara differently. The thing is, Leo and Madara are two sides of the same coin at times; it’s why Leo can pinpoint exactly what will push Madara’s buttons, because he knows Madara can never get angry at him.
“It’s about Ruka-tan” Leo says, seriously. The most serious Madara has ever seen him, really, but even Leo doesn’t mess around when it comes to his family. “She says it’s okay, that she doesn’t mind, but I’m her onii-chan. I need to tell her that she doesn’t have to take care of me, I need to.” He looks at Madara with desperate eyes, beseeching him to understand.
And Madara does, because that’s how he feels about Maguro. He left her by herself—abandoned her, in most senses of the term, in that stupid fucking house where there was no love for anyone except their God, not even their children; a son too flighty and rebellious, a daughter too sick and sullen.
“Leo-san,” Madara says. “Why are you asking Mama?”
Leo tilts his head to the side. “Isn’t it obvious? We’re going to fix Mama’s problem too.”
Shit, Madara thinks. This was not part of the plan. Leo is stubborn and persistent at the best of times, but Madara honestly hadn’t expected Leo to bring this up. It’s an unspoken rule; that Leo can ask anything of Madara except for truthful answers about his past. “Haha, but Mama doesn’t need help?”
Drop it, Leo, he wants to say. He really, really wants to say. He holds his words, used to keeping the ugly thoughts sealed away before they spill over, exposed to the world. You don’t know what you’re talking about. You and your sister have mended those rifts, the cracks that came between you two. You fixed what was broken, taped it up and glued the pieces, you’re one big happy family. I don’t have that luxury, I can’t change what’s unfixable. I ruined her life with my own two hands; gave her false hope, broke her heart and disillusioned her to the ‘greater good’. Maguro hated me, hates me, will always hate me.
I mean nothing to her.
“You might think that now,” Leo warns, almost as though he can read Madara’s thoughts. There’s something written between the lines here and there, and it’s such a strange reversal of their usual roles that Madara wants to laugh, maybe, or cry. Leo the siren. Leo the red light. Leo the warning sign. “But you may end up regretting it later."
Of course, because the universe hates Madara, the next person to bring it up is fucking Kanata.
Kanata never knew Maguro—never really wanted too—but he knew of her. Knows of her. Present tense. Kanata offered to pay for her hospital bills, even, with the Shinkai Cult’s money. Madara had wanted to refuse, angry and ashamed, but had accepted it in the end. He’d had no other choice, penniless and newly removed from the Mikejima bloodline.
Kanata, with his lilting voice. “‘Rogue’,” He calls out. Madara wants to ignore him. He can’t. So he doesn’t.
“Kanata-san,” He stretches out the words, drawing it out in a way that he knows people hate. “What’s wrong?”
Kanata pouts at him, annoyed as usual by his antics. “The ‘nurses’ at the hospital are getting ‘confused’. You don’t go and ‘visit’ Maguro at all.”
Get her name out of your mouth, is the instinctual response Madara wants to give. He reins it back in, bites his tongue. It’s not fair to be angry at Kanata, it isn’t his fault. Madara and Maguro breaking apart was a result of the beliefs forced upon them by the Shinkai Cult and reinforced by their parents. Kanata had no say in the matter—he never did. “Kanata-san is talking about strange things again~?”
It’s a cheap shot to take, Madara won’t deny, but Maguro is a sore spot to have brought up in the first place.
“That was ‘rude’.” Kanata says, slowly. He’s still…piecing together what it’s like to be human, the differences between a ‘boy-god’ and ‘just a boy’. Chiaki helps with this, Madara knows. Chiaki is overwhelmingly normal, a beacon of hope and light in the fucked-up darkness of their life in a way Madara could never be. “She is still your ‘sister’.”
“She doesn’t want to see me.”
The response is meek. Kanata raises an eyebrow. What happened to the Madara who charged forwards carelessly, threw caution to the wind. “When have the ‘wants’ of other people ever ‘stopped’ you?”
Kanata’s words stay in his mind for a lot longer than Madara wants to admit.
When have the ‘wants’ of other people ever ‘stopped’ you?
It might sound rude, or cruel, to anyone who doesn’t know him but coming from Kanata, it was actually pretty sound encouragement. Practically telling Madara to get off his ass and go visit Maguro, to stop dithering about broken relationships and get to fixing them.
Before he can stop himself, Madara finds he’s already mounted Baby-chan and the roads he’s passing are familiar sights. The route to Maguro’s hospital is something he’s practically memorised, despite never having come to visit her himself. What can he say except that he likes to keep tabs on his family, make sure she’s being treated well? Plus, he’s vetted this hospital—ended up in a bed here a couple of times too—and the quality is top-notch.
The nurses know him, or maybe they only know of him. Maguro’s ‘deadbeat’ older brother, who might not be such a deadbeat after all, considering he sends money like clockwork every year without fail. And it’s no cheap task! Being a semi-successful idol in two units is useful in more ways than one; it pays really well. It’s the least he can do, to be honest.
Despite the late hour, the hospital is still buzzing with lights. Silhouettes of doctors and nurses weave past, casting shadows through the windows. Visiting hours are well over, they have been for a while. All his dithering has done nothing but make this more difficult for him. Madara almost turns tail and runs.
Almost being the keyword.
He hesitates on the steps, takes a casual circle around the perimeter of the hospital. He can’t yet bring himself to enter, to bare himself vulnerably to the nurses who will then know him as ‘Maguro’s brother’.
He stops underneath what he knows to be Maguro’s room. He’s paying for her stay at the hospital, after all. Fourth floor, with a window facing the west. Room number sixteen. Madara catches sight of a tree, sturdy and tall, as it leans against the hospital’s bricked-up walls. Its wide branches probably brush against the window ledges. Madara wonders if he could climb it, then resolves to try anyway.
It’s just like how he used to scale trees for Maguro’s amusement when they were younger, he thinks, climbing the winding sakura branches to peek his head in through Maguro’s window. She’d laugh, carefree and happy and excited to see her big brother. She probably won’t be laughing now. Stupid nostalgia.
As he climbs, he thinks. It’s not a long climb, so there’re not a lot of thoughts filtering through his mind. Most of them revolve around whether Maguro would like him, the way he is now. She liked him before, when they were young, and then he broke her heart and shattered her dreams and left her, sick and shaking, in her hospital bed. He’s…different, now. Better, but not quite. Not yet. He’s trying, though. Trying to be better, because it’s what Maguro would have wanted even though he has no goddamn right to think about what she wanted—no, wait, it’s what she wants because she’s still alive—Madara’s been a shitty brother, all those years haven’t fixed anything wrong with him—and there’s still blood staining his hands and his knuckles are raw with remnants of violence.
He’s reached the sill before he knows it, perched awkwardly on the outwards jut of wooden panelling. Madara braces himself for what he’s about to see and…it’s Maguro. It’s Maguro and she looks the same as she did all those years ago, yet she looks irreversibly changed at the same time.
The first thing he notices, slightly distorted through the glass, is her hair. It’s shorter than it used to be, choppy and falling to just above her shoulders. When she was little, she wanted her hair long—like the one princess with long hair trapped in a tower from her storybooks. Madara was her prince, her rescuer, her only link to the outside world. They would spend hours upon hours playing, and Madara would braid Maguro’s hair for her, the two of them discussing what styles she might like to try once she was discharged from the hospital.
It’s surreal, seeing her like this. So much of her is different now. Unrecognisable, to him. No more is the Maguro who wanted long hair and smiled more freely. She looks severe and tired, dark circles under her eyes and a tight line to her mouth. If he knocked, even once, she would hear. She would hear him and look at him for the first time in a few years.
It hits Madara then, as he balances haphazardly on the windowsill of the hospital room, that the only thing separating him from Maguro is a thin sheet of glass. It’s not bulletproof, it’s not shatterproof—in fact, he could break it with a single flick of his wrist—and that is a terrifying thought.
And this is a terrible idea. Why is he even considering it? She doesn’t want to see him anymore—she made that clear when he left. He should leave now and spare them both the pain of reliving a childhood filled with the constant looming threat of death. Maybe he should start small; shoot her a text and ask for permission—provided she hasn’t blocked his number. Because Madara is a coward when it comes to the things that matter, and he knows that if he leaves now, he’s never going to close the widening gap between them. But that doesn’t change anything, so he turns to go.
“Hey. Don’t move.” The command is direct. Madara freezes, not making a sound, because even after all these years he would never deny Maguro anything. “I know you’re out there. Why don’t you stop hovering like a weirdo freak and come inside?”
He doesn’t want to. He doesn’t know how Maguro will react. It scares him, that unknown. But it’s unconscious, his need to take care of Maguro. He thought he might have lost it—that older brother’s urge. Apparently, he hasn’t.
The window is unlocked when he slides his nails under the frame to slide the window open from the outside. This strikes him as unsafe; anyone could get in the same way he had, and Maguro would be defenceless… He squeezes through, makes a mental reminder to install a lock the next time, and lands on his feet with nary a stumble. Maguro hisses out a sharp breath. Madara looks up, hair flopping into his eyes, a deer in headlights.
“Onii-san…?” Maguro breathes, and she looks…younger, somehow. There’s a light in her eyes, and she looks happy to see him for a moment, like she did when she was little and he clambered in through her window, before everything comes rushing back to her and the light flickers out. “What are you doing here.”
It’s not a question. Madara isn’t good at being honest but he would do anything for Maguro and so he tries. “I came to see you.”
Maguro scoffs. “Okay.” She’s so clearly distrusting of him that it hurts. She crosses her arms over her chest.
“No, I’m serious, Maguro, I’m—I’m sorry.”
She laughs, brief and cruel. “Right. Right. Of course you are. Sorry, sorry, sorry, that’s all you ever say. Do you even know what you’re sorry for?” Her face contorts into a brief snarl. Madara opens his mouth, then closes it. Maguro rolls her eyes. “I don’t even know what I was expecting. No, wait, I do. But I won’t get it with you, will I? You can leave now.”
Madara hesitates. He doesn’t…understand, not really. He doesn’t know what she wants from him. He’s so used to being different things for different people but… “Maguro, please, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I ruined your life, I’m sorry I gave you false hope. It was all my fault, and—”
Maguro’s face scrunches up in a way that precedes tears. Madara aches to comfort her, but he knows she would hate it if he did. The two of them are the same, too proud to admit they’re in pain even when it shows on their faces.
“I’m not angry because you ruined my life,” Maguro begins, slowly. “I’m angry because you left me.”
“What?” Madara blinks furiously, trying to make sense of her words. “Maguro…?”
“Are you deaf? I didn’t care about the wish. It sucked, yeah, but I got over it. And then you know what happened? You left. You didn’t even have the decency to tell me. You left Shinkai-sama,”—here she winces. Madara hasn’t used that term of address for Kanata in a long time but old habits die hard—“and I didn’t care but you left me. Mother had to be the one to tell me. Mother. And I didn’t believe her at first, I thought ‘oh, there’s no way onii-san would do that to me’. So I waited, did you know that? ‘He’ll come back for me, he will’ is what I thought. But you never did.”
“I…” Madara hesitates. What does he say here, that will fix Maguro’s hurt? They’ve both had years to stew in their feelings, in Madara’s guilt and Maguro’s anger. Neither are unfounded. But maybe if Madara hadn’t let his cowardice rule him, they could have resolved this and fixed the chasm between them. “I wanted to take you, I did. It would have been impossible, though. I was on my own. Barely able to take care of myself, how could I have subjected you to that pain?”
“I wouldn’t have cared,” Maguro sniffles. “As long as I was with you.”
“Maguro…”
“Shut up!” She wipes at her face with her hands, desperately trying to conceal her pain. “I d-don’t want to hear your excuses.”
“I thought you might hate me, for that.” Madara says, conversationally. This is the only way he knows how to comfort her, by pretending not to see her falling apart. It’s the only courtesy he can offer, because as much as he wants to gather her in his arms and wipe away her tears, he’s not sure he’s allowed to. “I ruined your life, didn’t I? What kind of bad older brother did I have to be, to allow you to go through such pain?”
“Stupid…” She begins. “I know you didn’t mean it. I saw how excited you were. And…you used your wish for me. Not for yourself. I think… Well, you were a pretty decent older brother back then. A-anyways, you should leave now, before the nurses come.”
Back then, she says. Madara hears, before you left me. The accusation is still there, fired like a bullet point-blank, straight through his heart. “Right…”
His gaze darts around, desperate for something to say; a last goodbye, maybe, before he notices some posters stuck up above her hospital bed. They’re posters of idol groups—she has one of RYUSEITAI, because of course she does. There’s one of AKATSUKI too, alongside a few of Ra*bits. And there, tucked in the corner but still visible, is a MaM poster. It’s covered in doodles, little hearts and stars, and a few stickers and oh, God, she has a poster of him in her hospital room.
“Is that…” Madara gestures, his signature smile nowhere to be found. “Me?”
Maguro gives him a wide-eyed stare as though she’d forgotten the poster was even there to begin with. Then; “No, of course not. That—that guy is MaM, the idol. MaM is… He’s cool and smart and amazing. Not like you, my stupid idiot brother.”
“Right,” Madara says again, but he can’t help the grin that spreads across his face. “If you say so~!”
“S-shut up!” Maguro screeches, throwing her pillow at him. Madara catches it with ease, already halfway to the window, and throws it back. “Get out, get out, get out!”
Perched on the window, the only bridge between his past and his future, Madara makes a split-second decision. “Bye, Maguro. I’ll see you soon?”
“I don’t care!” Maguro harrumphs. “Just get out!”
And so Madara does, but he thinks he can see just a hint of approval in his baby sister’s eyes. Good. He may not have won her forgiveness yet, however he can tell he’s on the right track. I’ll see you soon, Maguro; he looks up at the moon and vows, and I’ll be a brother you can be proud of.