Archive of Our Own ^beta

Yoji Uruha, always chasing after people.

It starts when he’s young, when he’s a kid with more talent than he knows what to do with, a prodigy with no idea what that even means. His parents don’t know what to do with him and never have. They foist him off on the first person who shows interest; Itsuo Shirakai, master of the newly invented Iai White Purity Style. Shirakai’s no bleeding heart; he wouldn’t take in some unwanted kid just because somebody should, but as soon as he sees Uruha with a sword in hand he thinks, Yes, I can do something with this.

Shirakai intends to make Uruha into the same kind of swordsman that he is – brash and unflinching, laughing in the face of those who look down on him – but to his surprise, Uruha flourishes into a swordsman of his own making. He takes to Iai like a duck to water and he adds something of himself into his style. He is graceful and elegant and more than that, he has fun. When Shirakai puts the sword in his hand Uruha’s heart swells with excitement and he delights in the movements of his body, in what he’s capable of. He spins and he darts forward and back, dodging to the side, feinting and ducking and leaping into the air. Uruha slices through targets and when Shirakai shoves his other students at him he defeats boys and men with years of experience on him like it’s nothing at all. They call him prodigy and they ruffle his hair. Uruha beams at them. He’s a gracious winner, and people like him for that.

It's nice, to be liked. He’s too young to put it into words, but though it makes him happy to win, it makes him happier for his opponent to shake his hand and tell him that he did well. Still, though, he wants to be good. He wants to be the best.

But that’s easier said than done.

Prodigy though he might be, he isn’t the greatest of Shirakai’s students.

That honour belongs to another; Seiichi Samura.

Uruha noticed him from the moment he came here, the way he held his katana with an easy grace, the way he moved and fought and danced through the forms of Iai like it was nothing to him. Samura is four years older than Uruha, a teenager when Uruha is just a child. Shirakai’s an old man, but Samura’s close enough in age to him for Uruha to think that maybe – just maybe – he can catch up to him.

When Uruha’s been at the dojo for a while, for a few years, and when he’s beaten every student that Shirakai’s thrown at him, Shirakai puts him up against Samura. Uruha is twelve and Samura sixteen. Uruha’s grip tightens on the hilt of his katana. A wooden one, for practising. Samura holds his down at his side, letting it dangle like he isn’t even aware that he’s carrying it. There’s a casualness about him that Uruha can’t fathom, but he tries. He takes him in, wavy dark hair flopping messily over his forehead; rumpled shirt half unbuttoned beneath his jacket; unlit cigarette hanging from his lips. Samura takes the cigarette and tucks it behind his ear.

Then, he strikes.

It’s over in seconds.

Uruha keeps his feet, just about, but he drops his sword and he knows he’s lost. His chest is heaving and his clothes are sticking to the sweat on his back. He gapes at Samura, at the one person who’s managed to defeat him since Shirakai brought him here. How? How did he do it? Uruha shakes his head and stands up straight, pushing down his disappointment and thrusting out his hand to shake Samura’s.

Samura takes it, a bemused smile on his face.

“You were really good,” Uruha says, remembering all the times his own defeated opponents were kind and polite to him. “Thank you for sparring with me.”

Laughing, Samura shakes his head. He lets go of his hand and puts his cigarette to his lips, lighting it and closing his eyes when he takes a drag. Uruha doesn’t know what a cigarette tastes like, but by Samura’s reaction he thinks it must be really good. It doesn’t smell nice, but Uruha leans in to breathe it anyway. It’s bitter and stings the back of his throat. It’s like a punishment. Samura smiles again, kindly.

“You’re not so bad yourself,” he says. “Especially for twelve.”

Uruha nods. He knows he’s good, but he wants to be better. This is all he has; his parents didn’t want him and Shirakai looked at him and saw only one thing. What else is there? Friends, a newfound family, a purpose – all of it stems from this one thing, and here in front of him is the pinnacle of that thing. Wherever Samura is, that’s where he wants to be.

He just needs to catch up.

“Can you teach me?” Uruha blurts out. “Show me how to—how to be more like you?”

Samura laughs, a rasping laugh which tells Uruha that he probably picked up smoking long before he should have done. He watches the way he takes the cigarette from his lips, the way he holds it loosely between his index and middle fingers, with the same easy grace he holds his sword. Uruha puts all of himself into his fighting but to him it seems as though for Samura, it’s only a part of who he is. Is that what he needs to do? To be like him?

“I don’t know if I can show you that,” Samura says, and when Uruha’s face crumples he holds up a hand. “But,” he continues, “I can train with you, if you’d like?”

Uruha nods, maybe a little too frantically. Yes, he’d like that. He’d like that very much.

*

Uruha doesn’t know if he and Samura are friends. Is that possible? Samura’s not only older than him, but he’s so much more than him. He feels like someone standing at a distance, standing on top of a mountain that Uruha can’t climb, no matter how hard he tries.

Shirakai’s happy for Samura to teach Uruha what he knows. It’s one less student for him to teach, and he can focus on yelling at the others who aren’t quite as good. Uruha thinks he enjoys that part the most, whipping people into shape. He likes to teach a lesson, not teach lessons.

Samura, though, he isn’t like that. Uruha is determined to learn everything about him, so he watches him with wide owl eyes whenever Samura’s at the dojo, which isn’t all the time, because he has parents and a family who love him and who are proud of him. Uruha sort of likes that, though, that Iai White Purity Style is merely a facet of Samura’s being. Samura thinks it’s funny that Uruha stares at him so much and calls him a nosy nuisance, though he doesn’t say it with any sort of malice. He talks about himself with the same ease he does everything, answering Uruha’s questions breezily when they take breaks from swordplay. His family comes from humble origins and he’d like a better future for them, he says. He took up smoking in school when he was only a little older than Uruha. Peer pressure, he says with a bark of laughter. Uruha isn’t sure exactly what peer pressure is, but he nods sagely like he does and tries to snatch the cigarette from Samura’s hand, wanting to try it for himself. Samura laughs again and dodges easily. What, did Uruha really think he could match his speed? He pouts and Samura elbows him. He tells him that his girlfriend’s trying to get him to quit anyway.

Uruha asks question after question about his girlfriend, Inori, and talking about her is Samura’s favourite topic. He paints a picture of a fiery spirit, someone who puts him in his place. She has a smart mouth and a venomous glare, and Samura’s putty in her hands. One time she was mad at him, and so Samura walked to her house in the rain and threw pebbles at her window for twenty minutes until she finally came to the door. She’d already forgiven him, she said, but she wanted to wait until he was soaked through before she told him so. Uruha likes this story. He likes Samura’s devotion and Inori’s playfulness. He doesn’t know anything about romance, or love, but he thinks that what the two of them have must be something special. He wonders if he’ll have something like that, someday.

In fact, he asks Samura if he thinks he will.

Samura looks at him oddly, and Uruha’s cheeks flush pink. Maybe it’s a silly question for someone his age to ask. He’s thirteen now, and maybe boys of thirteen don’t ask about love. Still, he asks it, and Samura answers.

“You?” he says, smiling, fiddling with his crinkled shirt collar. “Yeah, I think you will. There’s someone out there for you.”

“How do you know that?”

Samura shrugs. “Because you deserve it,” he says simply. “To be happy with someone. Live a long life. All of that stuff.”

“So do you,” says Uruha.

Samura laughs as he taps the ash from his cigarette. “Sure, Uruha,” he says.

But as much as Uruha likes to question Samura about anything and everything under the sun, most of their time together is spent training. Samura finds enough time to devote at least an hour each day to training Uruha, and unlike Shirakai – who started out by wanting Uruha to emulate him – he encourages Uruha to be himself. When Uruha twirls like a dancer Samura shows him how best to keep his focus on his target while he does it. When Uruha flicks his cloak up like fluttering wings Samura shows him how best to time it to be a distraction to his opponent. He finds the best parts of Uruha and amplifies them, hones them, brings them to life. He shows Uruha how to be Uruha.

The years pass like this. Uruha turns fourteen as Samura turns eighteen, forever trailing behind him as he reaches adulthood. Though he’s improved in leaps and bounds he still feels like the little kid who looked up at him with awe, and he suspects that he’ll always feel that way. Samura is appointed as the assistant manager of the dojo, training more students other than just Uruha.

Uruha’s still the prodigy, though. When he’s sixteen he attains his certification, the youngest ever to do so – though that’s not all that hard when so few have done it in the first place. Shirakai hangs his name up on the wooden plaque beside Samura’s, the two of them hanging as a pair, Samura behind Shirakai and Uruha behind Samura. He traces the characters of his name, Yoji Uruha, liking the way that they’re smoothly carved into the wood. This is who he is, and he isn’t sure what more he can be.  

But does he need to be anything more? Isn’t it enough that he’s happy?

Because he is happy. When he has a sword in his hand he feels complete. When he feels the cold fingers of the wind carding through his hair, lifting his cloak, chilling his skin. When the sun shines down on him or the light of the moon glimmers on the damp grass. When his muscles ache from a hard day’s work and when he’s so tired that he can barely keep his eyes open. When he strips out of his sweat-stained clothes and sinks into the warm water of his bath with a sigh of relief. This is the life he has, and he’s content with it.

The only thing that he doesn’t have, and the only thing that is left to want, is to catch up with Samura. Somehow he thinks that he’ll always be chasing after him. He doesn’t mind that so much; having a goal is good, he thinks. He wonders if there’s anyone else in the world who knows what it’s like, to be so good but not quite good enough.

Then, just after he’s achieved his certification, Uruha meets Natsuki Misaka.

*

Natsuki Misaka, with silver hair and a temper like a storm. He turns up at Shirakai’s dojo with his brother Ibuki, and Uruha quickly learns that they’re quite the double act. They have something of a reputation, he learns from the other students’ hushed whispers. Ibuki smokes with Samura, laughing as loud as a thunderclap. He wears a jacket over his bare chest with some slogan on the back that Uruha doesn’t quite catch. Ibuki Misaka commands the attention of any room he’s in; when he walks through the dojo, all eyes are on him.

Except for Uruha’s.

Uruha watches the little brother, wearing a similar jacket and an expression that tells people not to fuck with him. He has two piercings on his lip, silver like his hair, and they catch the light. Uruha’s intrigued by him, by this kid only a little older than he is, who’s made a name for himself as both a fighter and something of a delinquent, but more than that he’s intrigued by this person who seems to have something to prove.

Samura leads Ibuki to Shirakai’s office, and when Natsuki tries to follow he tells him to wait outside. They have to talk business, he says. Natsuki huffs and storms outside to stand in the cold air of the cloudy afternoon. Uruha follows him, slipping out on silent feet.

“You’re Natsuki,” he says when he finds him leaning against the wall of the dojo with his arms folded and his shoulders tense.

Natsuki lifts his head and glares at him. “Who the fuck are you?”

“Yoji Uruha,” says Uruha. He plasters his best smile on his face and adds, “I just got certified in Iai White Purity Style.”

“Whatever,” says Natsuki. “Leave me alone.”

Uruha is unfazed by his attitude. Natsuki is renowned for his skill – apparently, because Uruha doesn’t actually pay all that much attention to what goes on outside of his own little world – and he’s about the same age as him. What Uruha saw when Natsuki came here was a friend, or someone who could be a friend.

He thinks that they could be friends because they would understand each other. Uruha chasing after Samura and Natsuki chasing after Ibuki. He saw it right away; this is someone who is a mirror of him. They should be friends, he thinks. It seems right, and Uruha thinks it should be easy. People like him, after all. Why would Natsuki be any different?

“So, you fight with your brother?” Uruha says brightly.

“Did you not hear me, asshole?” snaps Natsuki, taking a sudden step towards Uruha that surprises him enough to have him staggering backwards. “I said, leave me alone.”

“I thought we could be friends,” says Uruha, lifting his hands in surrender, steadying himself.

Natsuki narrows his blue eyes, bright like a flash of lightning, and shakes his head. “You thought wrong,” he says, and shoulders roughly past Uruha before he can respond.

*

It’ll take more than a little hostility to put Uruha off, though. The Misaka brothers stay at the dojo for a couple of days, and Uruha is determined in his efforts to become Natsuki’s friend.

“We’re the same age, after all,” he says one morning, after they’ve eaten breakfast and Natsuki is waiting in the hallway for Ibuki to get out of bed. “We might as well be friends.”

“I don’t need friends.” Natsuki looks him up and down, disgust on his face. Uruha isn’t offended; he knows that it’s a mask. He knows that Natsuki’s putting on an act, probably because he’s had to. Fighting alongside Ibuki Misaka – Natsuki couldn’t be anything but tough and unshakeable. There’s no room in that kind of life for any sort of vulnerability. He didn’t get the same chance Uruha did; to simply be himself. Natsuki’s opponents never ruffled his hair and told him he did a good job when he beat them. If they were still conscious enough to say anything then the hadn’t done his job.

All of this Uruha has picked up from the other students and from Shirakai and Ibuki’s whispered conversations, lingering outside the door of Shirakai’s office. Uruha’s good at eavesdropping, though he tries not to do it often. But he did it now because he wants to know Natsuki, and it seemed a good way to get a leg up.

“Sure you do,” says Uruha. “Everyone needs friends.”

Natsuki rolls his eyes. “Let me guess, you have lots?”

“Well, yeah,” Uruha says, thinking of all the students in the dojo, students who greet him warmly and ask him for tips and share their snacks with him. “Wouldn’t you like that?”

“Sounds like my worst nightmare,” Natsuki says. He gives Uruha something that might be a grin but seems more like a snarl. “I have my brother,” he continues. “I don’t need anyone else.”

“I’d like you to be my friend.”

“I’d like you to eat shit and die.” Natsuki lifts his chin defiantly. He doesn’t have his brother’s stocky build; he’s leaner, his face more delicate. His hair lifts a little when he does this, charged with static. He projects his sorcery like the weapon it is.

Uruha wrinkles his nose. “Rude.”

“Damn right.”

Uruha leaves him for now, sensing defeat. When he tells Samura about how he wants to befriend Natsuki, he laughs and pats him on the shoulder. He tells him that he’s a good kid, but it might be a hopeless cause. According to Samura, Natsuki’s prickly and unlikeable and mean. Uruha wants to defend him, but he can’t exactly deny that he’s exactly what Samura says he is.

Except unlikeable. Uruha doesn’t think so; Natsuki has walls up, and he’s pretty nasty, but that only draws Uruha in because he wants to know why he’s like that. He’s sure that there’s something beneath that angry kid with something to prove.

Still, it would be easier if he were warmer. If there was a little glimpse of sunlight through the storm clouds.

In the end, Uruha’s attempts to befriend Natsuki fail. He doesn’t say goodbye when he leaves, but Ibuki tousles Uruha’s hair and tells him, Keep at it! Uruha nods and says that he will, whatever that means. He tries to say goodbye to Natsuki and gets a middle finger for his trouble.

Samura tells him not to worry about it, so Uruha doesn’t. This isn’t the end, he thinks. There will be more chances, because he will meet Natsuki again.

He’s sure of it.   

*

When Uruha is seventeen, war breaks out.

He doesn’t actually know much about it until he’s called to Tokyo. He knows something is wrong – he isn’t completely ignorant – but it seems like a faraway problem, something that can’t touch him in his isolated little world. He listens to the news reports on the radio and watches the special broadcast on the television about the island, about this mysterious place which appeared in the ocean out of nowhere. Everyone is shocked by this, but not Uruha. He assumes it must be sorcery, that maybe the people of this island had kept it cloaked for all this time.

Sorcery is something which is talked about openly at the dojo, but out among the general population it’s spoken about only as a whisper. Uruha’s been trained as a sorcerer for as long as he’s been trained as a swordsman, though he’s always been taught to never rely on it as a crutch. His sorcery is the reason for the markings at the corners of his eyes, which look like makeup but which never come off. With spirit energy being so intrinsically linked to Iai White Purity Style, being skilled enough to control it is essential as a student of Shirakai’s.

Another thing that keeps Uruha’s attention from the war is a distraction named Kiri Shirakai. The granddaughter of Itsuo Shirakai, her parents sometimes bring her to visit, and she took an immediate shine to Uruha. He doesn’t know why she would, but whenever she comes he’s happy to keep her entertained so that her parents can have tea with Shirakai and Samura. He hears them laughing and catching up inside while he puts a wooden katana in Kiri’s hand and watches her whack the leaves from the bushes until he’s laughing as well. Privately, Uruha’s certain that one day she’ll beat his record for the youngest to get certified in Iai. Someday he’ll see her name on a wooden plaque, hanging beside his own.

Kiri has just left with her parents on one of these visits when Samura comes to fetch Uruha and takes him to Shirakai’s office.

“Tokyo?” he says when Shirakai tells him where he and Samura will be going. “What for?”

“Didn’t you notice there’s a war on?” Shirakai barks at him.

Uruha’s cheeks grow hot with embarrassment. “Yes,” he says. “I noticed.”

“Things are going badly, some ass from the government says,” Shirakai says with a dismissive wave of his hand. “They need more fighters.”

Some of the students have left the dojo to do just that, Uruha knows. Sorcery, once a thing to be hidden away, is becoming something sought out. “I’ve heard that,” Uruha says.

Shirakai and Samura both pretend that he knows what he’s talking about. Samura clears his throat; though he’s not smoking right now, Uruha can smell the cigarettes on him. “It’s bad,” he says. “We’ve been losing, despite the Counter Sorcery Land Forces. But now—” he grimaces and trails off. He clenches and unclenches his fists, and Uruha realises that his nails are bitten short, something he’s never known Samura to do before. “Now,” Samura continues. “Now we have something. A new weapon.”

Uruha nods slowly. He wonders if this has something to do with the last trip that Samura took to Tokyo, a few weeks ago. He said it was personal, something private to do with his family, but Uruha thinks now that that must’ve been a cover so that he wouldn’t ask questions. “You’ve seen this weapon?” he ventures.

“I have,” confirms Samura. “And now its creator wants to meet you.”

*

Uruha packs lightly. He assumes it won’t be a long trip, because what would the creator of some powerful weapon which could change the course of a war want with him?

He asks Shirakai to tell Kiri that he’ll see her soon. He says goodbye to all of his friends, assuring them that he’ll be back before long.

Then he and Samura head for Tokyo, and Uruha truly has no idea what exactly it is he’s in for.

*

A man capable of harnessing a substance which kills everyone else who touches it. A man who can tame that substance and bend it to his will, forging it into rippling silver layers of metal like a frozen wave. A man creating something which nobody thought could be created. What kind of man is that? Samura tells him more and more on the journey, driving with one hand loosely on the steering wheel and the other holding his cigarette, elbow resting on the open window.

Kunishige Rokuhira, this man’s name is. Uruha pictures a man larger than life itself, big and scary and wreathed in shadows. He pictures a horror; a warmonger. He pictures someone with darkness in their heart.

He tries not to let his nerves show. Samura doesn’t notice; Uruha’s never been nervous before. But now he’s tense and he’s clenching his jaw so tightly that his teeth ache. He isn’t the only one who’s been brought here. There’s a room full of prodigies, of young talent. Uruha’s eyes skim the crowded room and he thinks he catches a glimpse of silver hair and lightning eyes but he can’t be sure, and then he forgets anyway because someone is striding up to him, a man with a bright, sunny smile on his face who looks delighted to see him.

“Uruha,” says Samura, grinning as he claps a hand on the man’s shoulder. “This is Kunishige Rokuhira.”

Rokuhira doesn’t take Uruha’s hand or introduce himself with any sort of formality. Instead he slings an arm around him and pulls him into a rib crushing hug, laughing when Uruha squeaks in surprise.

They’re going to be here for a couple of days, and Uruha knows already that everything has changed.

*

He keeps meaning to try and talk to Natsuki – though he and his brother visited the dojo a few times since Uruha first met them, he still hasn’t managed to become his friend – but he never actually gets the chance. And if he’s being honest with himself, he sort of forgets to try, because Kunishige Rokuhira isn’t what he expected at all.

For one thing, he’s barely older than Uruha himself. He’s a goofball and a jokester, and a total idiot. He makes bad puns and laughs uproariously at them even when nobody else does. He wears t-shirts with silly slogans on them, with track pants and mismatched socks. He looks like a college dropout, like he should be lazing on the couch and playing video games until late into the night. His hair is messy and he needs to shave. Maybe those things should make him unappealing, but Rokuhira is the opposite. He’s magnetic. When he talks to Uruha it’s with kindness in his eyes, deep and warm like the forge he’s known to be the master of. He doesn’t just make polite conversation, he listens.

“Tell me about Iai,” Rokuhira says when he’s having dinner with Uruha and Samura, the three of them sitting around a low table, having bowls of noodles. It’s very casual, but Rokuhira has a lot of say in how these things go.

“Me?” says Uruha, pointing to himself.

Rokuhira laughs, throwing his head back. “Yeah, you!” he says. Samura smiles and shakes his head, still thinking of Uruha as the silly kid who wants to be like him.

“Well, you pour your spirit energy into—”

“Wait,” Rokuhira says. “I don’t mean what it is, I mean, what do you think about it?”

Uruha shrugs. “I like it.”

“How come?”

“Well, I—uh. Hm.” Uruha pauses, considering. Rokuhira doesn’t push him. He waits patiently for Uruha to find the answer, leaning forward when he begins to speak so he can really take it in. “I think it’s fun,” Uruha says. “When I use Iai I feel so—so light, I guess. Like the wind. It makes me feel like I have wings. It’s not a chore, or something I have to do, it’s just… it’s what I do. It makes me feel like me.” As soon as he’s finished he feels his cheeks grow hot, embarrassed by his own earnestness.

There’s no need to be embarrassed, though. Rokuhira nods like he understands, the slightest smile creeping onto his face. “I like that,” he says. “That it makes you feel like you.”

“I guess it’s sort of like forging, for you?” Uruha ventures. His voice has jumped up an octave; for some reason, he doesn’t know how to behave around Rokuhira. Samura gives him a sympathetic look.

“It’s exactly like that,” says Rokuhira, delighted. “Y’know, I wasn’t trying to forge the blades, really.”

Uruha’s eyes widen. “You weren’t.”

“Nope.” Rokuhira leans back and grins. “I was just seeing what would happen.”

By now, Uruha understands what he’s here for. These new weapons are called the Enchanted Blades, and Rokuhira – at the behest of the government – is trying to find people to wield them. People who will give up their sorcery and make a contract with a sword instead. Samura’s been chosen as one of them, and learning that did not surprise Uruha. Of course he’s been chosen; the best of the best, why wouldn’t he be? Ibuki Misaka has been chosen, too, and so Uruha gets why Natsuki is here. It’s the same reason he is; to chase after someone.

He likes the story behind the forging of the swords. He likes that Rokuhira was forging just for the pleasure of it, and that he didn’t set out to create a weapon. It makes it more beautiful, Uruha thinks, and he sees why Rokuhira understands him because of it.

It’s nice, to be understood, but it’s a little scary as well. When Rokuhira look at him a shiver runs up Uruha’s spine. He sees him. He sees right through whatever’s on the surface and right down to his core. He wonders if it’s like that for Natsuki, too; if Rokuhira’s penetrating gaze can see through even his thick armour.

The following day, Uruha is chosen.

“Uruha,” says Rokuhira, pointing at him. “This blade suits you.”

It isn’t formal, but that’s to be expected. Uruha also can’t hear anything after that because his heart is pounding so loudly that it drowns out everything else. This blade suits you. Sweat drips down over his skin and he can’t contain his excitement. He’s going to be a wielder just like Samura, and he was chosen by Rokuhira. Two people who seem so far away, so above him, and he is one of them.

He thinks he manages to squeak out something grateful, and when he follows Rokuhira out of the room he forgets to look back and check on Natsuki.

*

At some point, someone – Uruha doesn’t remember who – tells him that Samura is worried about him, when they head out on their first missions.

Uruha is baffled by that. What does Samura have to worry about?

As soon as Uruha took hold of Kumeyuri and felt the thrum of its magic against his skin they understood each other. He poured his spirit energy into the sword and its energy crept into him in return. Kumeyuri twined itself around his heart and became a part of him. When he explains this to Rokuhira he nods approvingly and Uruha grins, proud of himself. They have a short training period to learn as much as they can about the blades and then they’re off to war.

It isn’t hard. Not really.

Maybe it should be. It isn’t that Uruha is heartless; the opposite, in fact. He feels a twist of agonising sympathy when he thinks of the young soldiers of the island, no different from himself, but he kills them anyway. He has to, after all. It’s a matter of survival. The country will fall if he doesn’t, so he does. He tears through the battlefield because there is no other choice. He cuts them down because that’s what Rokuhira gave him this sword for.

Though it quickly becomes apparent that his skills are far more suited for stealthier missions, and he’s okay with that. He gives the battlefield over to Ibuki and Samura – Samura sees every battlefield – and he retreats to the shadows. He does well. Uruha takes a lot of prisoners, knocking them out rather than killing them. Some people praise him for this; some grumble about resources. Uruha shrugs. He does what he’s told.

The best times are when he gets to hang out with Rokuhira again. It’s not as often as he’d like, because he’s so busy, but sometimes their paths cross in the big army camps, the cities of tents, or the retaken bases. There Rokuhira is always as kind to him as he was when they first met, asking him earnestly how he is, checking on him and Kumeyuri both. He takes the sword out of its sheath and runs a hand over the rippling blade, and he praises Uruha for taking such good care of it and Uruha swells with pride.

He meets others as well; the men and women of the Counter Sorcery Land Forces. Togo Shiba and Soshiro Azami are the stars, Rokuhira’s closest friends, both with fearsome reputations in their own right. Natsuki, too, has joined the Land Forces. Uruha bumps into him in winter, when he’s wrapped up warm and Natsuki is wearing short sleeves, as if he can defy the weather itself.

“Natsuki!” Uruha says, delighted.

Natsuki stops in his tracks and glares at him. “You,” he spits.

Uruha gulps. This is beyond his usual prickliness and Uruha knows why. He didn’t get an Enchanted Blade. Kuregumo went to his brother and Kumeyuri to Uruha. Natsuki’s been left behind. Uruha is sympathetic; he knows that he himself would have been devastated if Samura had gone off to be a wielder without him, but at the same time he wouldn’t have blamed another for it. Rokuhira made the choice; he would never question that.

“I hear you’re a captain now,” Uruha says, hoping that if he can offer praise like an olive branch then Natsuki will take it.

Natsuki doesn’t even bother to insult him in reply. He shakes his head, then turns to walk away. Uruha lunges forward and grabs his shoulder, but when Natsuki tenses and he feels the crackle of static he lets go before Natsuki can electrocute him. He steps back, trying to hide the hurt on his face, and Natsuki leaves without looking back.

Something similar happens whenever they meet. Uruha tries his best, and Natsuki pushes him away. He claims a lack of respect, or that Uruha’s annoying, but it’s as plain as day what the real problem is.

Ibuki isn’t the only one who left Natsuki behind.

*

Japan was unprepared for an army of sorcerers equipped with Datenseki, but the islanders are unprepared for the Enchanted Blades. In a matter of months the tide has been turned, the battles becoming slaughters and the enemy pushed back again and again.

Uruha can smell the salt on the air when they take the coast. It’s over, or as close to over as to make no difference.

There will be a treaty, he’s told, but when Samura tells him this he turns away from him. He looks out of the grey sea, shining in the morning light like the metal of their swords, and he asks Uruha if he thinks they can go back.

“To the dojo?” asks Uruha. “Sure.”

Samura shakes his head. “What did we do to you?” he says.

Uruha shrugs. He doesn’t know what he means. Nobody did anything to him. Rokuhira put Kumeyuri into his hand and told him to use it, so he did. They told him that they had to win this war or Japan would fall, so Uruha fought. They told him to survive, and he survived.

Maybe it’s harder for Samura, Uruha thinks. Black feathers hovered above every battlefield, every twisting line of the front. He saw it all. Maybe that makes things different. Uruha’s fingers trail over the hilt of Kumeyuri. What else was he supposed to do but this?

They take a boat over to the island for the signing of the treaty. There’s been politicking that’s beyond Uruha’s knowledge, but even he can feel the tension in the air. Most of the wielders stay inside, hiding from the biting wind and the choppy waves, but one of their number stands at the prow, dark hair lifting in the wind, gazing ahead at their destination.

In the end, there is no treaty.

There is only Malediction.

*

“I don’t get it,” Natsuki says, sitting heavily in the plastic seat beside Uruha’s. He has a paper cup of coffee in his hand. He didn’t bring one for Uruha. “Ibuki’s gone off the rails, too.”

“Samura didn’t go off the rails,” Uruha says softly, keeping his voice down because this is a hospital, and he’s already earned a couple of irritated glances from the nurse here because of how panicked he was when he came.

“Was it because he had to give back the sword?” Natsuki gulps his coffee and hisses in pain; it’s too hot. “But you’re still normal. Well, y’know what I mean.”

Uruha closes his eyes and puts his head in his hands. But then when he closes his eyes all he sees is the blood, soaking through the bandages draped over Samura’s face, and the doctors shouting and the nurse shoving Uruha out of the way. He sees Shiba putting a hand on his shoulder, looking at him kindly as he steers him to this chair, where Uruha’s been since then. Samura’s still in surgery, Kamunabi doctors operating on his ruined eyes.

Shiba was the one to find him. Uruha isn’t sure how he knew to check on him in that moment. Now he’s gone to find Inori, Samura’s girlfriend who waited for him to come back from war only for him to mutilate himself only weeks after coming home. He lifts his head and glances at the door. She isn’t here yet.

“Why are you here?” Uruha asks Natsuki. He doesn’t like Samura and from what he understands, things have been bad between him and his brother, too.

Natsuki looks at him and blinks. Then he stands up, scowls down at him, and shakes his head. “Never mind,” he says. He dumps his half empty coffee cup directly into the trash and kicks the door on his way out.

What was that about?

Shiba and Inori arrive not long after, and Uruha puts it out of his mind.

*

Samura is left blind by what he’s done to himself, and through her furious tears Inori swears to stick by his side no matter what. Uruha wonders what it would be like, to be loved like that. To have someone see you so damaged, so broken, and to take your fragile heart and love you anyway.

His heart breaks, just a little bit, that Samura can’t see how beautiful Inori looks on their wedding day. But he can’t see her cry either, when she surreptitiously wipes her tears away on the back of her hand. Uruha cries as well. He can’t help it! It’s a lovely ceremony, and it tugs at his heart and gives him a feeling he can’t quite put a name to. Then the ceremony is over, and the celebration begins.

Ibuki drinks too much and Natsuki watches him, clenching his fists a little tighter each time he splashes beer onto the tablecloth. He won’t talk to Uruha when he tries to make conversation, and eventually he storms off when Ibuki trips over his own feet. Uruha hears from another guest that he called a cab and went home.

It’s left to Uruha to get Ibuki back to his house. He covers him with a blanket when he collapses onto the couch, and he washes the dishes and takes out the recycling before he leaves.

Poor Samura. Poor Ibuki.

With nowhere else to go, Uruha heads back to the only place he knows; Shirakai’s dojo.

*

Uruha wishes that he could see Rokuhira.

He knows he can’t, though. The last time he saw him was when he handed Kumeyuri back to him and they all said their goodbyes. Rokuhira’s been spirited away somewhere, to some place where nobody can find him, where nobody will ever lay their hands on those weapons again.

It’s for the best, but that doesn’t mean Uruha can’t miss him. He misses being seen. He misses being listened to. He misses Samura, too, but he’s busy with his family. Still, though, there’s an emptiness in his heart where these people used to be, and it aches. He aches. The students have not returned and the halls of the dojo echo with his soft footsteps.

On the bright side, Uruha has Kiri to keep him company. Her parents were casualties of the war, so she’s come to live with her grandfather. All she wants is to be like him – to be like Uruha and Samura too – and though Shirakai won’t let her, what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him. Uruha teaches her what he knows when he’s not around. Kiri sings his name and whacks him on the shins with her practise katana, and Uruha adores her.

Sometimes he heads back to Tokyo and he visits Ibuki. He cleans the house and he prods him to talk, but Ibuki isn’t very talkative. He tells him stories of Kiri and occasionally he gets a belly laugh out of him, the way he used to laugh. He asks after Natsuki and Ibuki says that these days his little brother is too busy for him. Uruha insists that it’ll be okay and he tries to make him believe it.

He doesn’t know if these visits are doing Ibuki any good, but at least he can take out the trash.

*

Samura comes back.

Uruha doesn’t question him. He seems like he doesn’t want to talk about it, and if Uruha’s being honest with himself he’s happy to be a little less lonely. Shirakai isn’t the best of company and Kiri’s just a kid, so it’s nice to have his old mentor back. They spar just like old times and Samura’s kicks his ass, but it isn’t the same. Uruha tries to make it the same, but Samura’s even further removed from him than he used to be. His walls are up and Uruha can’t break through.

He asks him if he’s okay. Samura says that he’s fine. He asks if he can help and Samura says he wouldn’t understand. He doesn’t even give him the chance to try. Uruha never sees him smoke anymore, but sometimes he sees him playing with a cigarette, twirling it in his fingers. He wears sunglasses now, to hide the scars over his eyes.

On occasion, Uruha has to visit the Kamunabi headquarters. Whenever he’s there he makes sure to visit the training rooms to say hello to Natsuki, not that he’s ever happy to see him.

“Samura went back to the dojo, I heard,” he says one day.

“Mhm.” Uruha leans against the door. Would Natsuki get drinks with him? He doesn’t think so. It’s lonely though, at the dojo. But what would he do in the city? He doesn’t want to be a soldier again, and he doesn’t know what else to do. The wielders’ heroism is dying down and now there are mutterings about them, venomous and hateful.

“He’s weak,” says Natsuki, twirling his katana, flexing the muscles of his arms. “Just like my brother.”

One upon a time, Uruha thought that he and Natsuki could understand each other. Now he isn’t so sure. Now Natsuki’s just another person beyond his reach.

He remembers Inori at Samura’s bedside in the hospital, the determination in her voice when she promised to stick with him. He remembers Samura telling him that there was someone out there for him, and the memory of it leaves behind a bitter taste as he wonders if maybe he was wrong.

*

When Kiri’s old enough, she leaves the dojo to join the Kamunabi. Samura leaves too, and doesn’t tell Uruha where he’s going or why. Shirakai leaves because he wants to go and live in the woods. Sure, Uruha tells him. Good luck fighting bears. Shirakai laughs and tells him to lock up on his way out.

Of course he can’t stay. What would he do, sit alone among the gathering dust? He’d be like a ghost, and Uruha has never been a ghost. He’s always been alive, and he won’t let himself fade away in some neglected little corner of the world. 

With nowhere else to turn, Uruha heads for the city.

He rents a small apartment far from the Kamunabi headquarters – he doesn’t want to bump into anyone he knows – and he tries his hand at living a normal life.

A normal life.

Yeah, right. On his first day at his first ever job it all goes wrong. It’s a small café, and despite his lack of experience they’ve agreed to give him a chance. He spills a cup of coffee all over the floor, then a customer recognises him. Uruha smiles, ready to be polite and modest because he assumes that praise will be coming, but they spit at his feet and call him a murderer. The café owners gently tell him that they are not interested in hiring him after all. Uruha understands.

He gets a job at a theatre, sweeping after the shows are over, tidying the place. Then he gets promoted to set decoration when they realise he has a steady hand. Then someone notices his grace, his lightness on his feet, and they put him in the show. He finds that he likes it. More than that; he loves it. It’s just like when Shirakai handed him his first sword and he began to learn who he was.

Oh, he thinks. This is what I was supposed to do.

Night after night the spotlights hit Uruha and the markings by his eyes don’t matter because they’re either covered by makeup or they’re a part of it. He wears elaborate costumes and delivers his lines with heart. He puts his whole self into it and he thinks that he can do this forever.

The other actors become his friends. They don’t know who he really is; he’s learned to keep his identity a secret, but they like him. They invite him out for drinks. He has a couple of flings with other actors, casual relationships that mean nothing. He dates around and laughs about it with his friends. He sleeps with strangers and enjoys it. He still makes a point to visit Ibuki when he can, but he lets himself get lax with it. He doesn’t like seeing his old friend – someone he fought a war with – turn on himself like he has. So instead of supporting him through it he simply looks away. Natsuki still visits, so it’s okay. He sees him sometimes when he goes to headquarters for whatever reason they happen to summon him for and smiles, relieved, when Natsuki complains about his brother. How his house is untidy or how he’s lazy. It means he’s still there, and that means things could still be okay.

One day, when the crowd is applauding and the lights dim as the curtains close, Uruha grasps something. He’s happy. He has a good life, a bright, sparkling life, and yet he can’t help but think of the few things still out of reach.

*

The knock at his apartment door sounds ominous, which is silly, really. How can a knock sound ominous? But it does, and when Uruha walks over he knows in his bones that everything is about to change.

Two agents from the Kamunabi stand there. They tell him to pack a bag. Something has happened, and the wielders may be in danger. Uruha packs lightly. A change of clothes, his toiletries. They usher him into the back of a car and drive away.

Something is wrong, but Uruha never could have predicted what it is.  

*

“A group called the Hishaku killed him.”

The words seem to come from a million miles away. Someone gasps; sobs. It might be him. Someone knocks over a cup and lukewarm tea wets his sleeve. That might be him, too.

“They stole all the Enchanted Blades.”

The young Kamunabi captain is saying these things to him, but Uruha doesn’t understand.

“They’ve already killed Misaka, the bearer of Kuregumo. They’ll come after each warrior contracted to the Enchanted Blades so they can use the swords they stole.”

Everything goes dark. Uruha thinks he must have been blinded – his eyes have been cut out, like Samura – but no. He has simply collapsed. He’s collapsed because Rokuhira has been killed, and how can that be? Such a bright light, so warm and welcoming, snuffed out like it’s nothing. Fifteen years. It has been fifteen years since Uruha last saw him.

He said goodbye, when he handed Kumeyuri back to its rightful owner. It wasn’t supposed to be that kind of goodbye.

“The Hishaku…” he mumbles.

“If they’re able to wield the Enchanted Blades, this country will be destroyed!”

The Kamunabi captain is passionate about this, but Uruha is just numb. Is this what Samura felt, what Ibuki felt? Is this why they did the things they did? He feels nothing at all. He feels like a husk, hollow. He was supposed to be alive. He was supposed to take joy in things. That’s why he was chosen.

What now, though? What now?

“This country you fought so hard to protect!”

Uruha knows he’s making a spectacle of himself, sobbing like this. He knows he should lift his head and be brave, but he can’t. He feels heavy, leaden. He doesn’t have the strength to sit up. He doesn’t have it in him to be the warrior this captain claims he is.

“I won’t let that happen.”

He’s determined, sure of himself. Uruha remembers what that was like, to have fire in his heart.

“This time, I’ll protect you!”

Now Uruha does lift his head, and it takes everything he has. “This time?” he says, his voice hoarse. The captain’s face swims in front of him, a blur of blonde hair and golden eyes, bright against the black of his uniform. “What do you mean?”

“You protected us during the war,” he says. “So I’ll protect you now.”

Uruha sighs, weary, too weary to explain that he’s no hero to a kid who was too young to know the truth. He stands, legs shaking, and he finds his way to his room and lets sleep carry him off into something that resembles relief.

*

The name of this Kamunabi captain is Fushimi. He’s twenty six years old, and he’s a pain in the ass.

At first, he seems like he’s going to treat Uruha with kid gloves. He brings him jasmine tea and cut up fruit for breakfast in the morning, and he crouches beside his futon and tells him to take all the time he needs. Later he comes and collects the untouched dishes and doesn’t admonish Uruha for not eating. He brings him lunch and dinner. Uruha eats a little bit of soup and Fushimi doesn’t press him to eat more. The next day is the same, and the day after that. A week passes, then two.

Uruha spends most of his days lying in bed. Sometimes he gets up to shower and brush his hair, not because he wants to but out of some vague sense of shame because of how Fushimi must see him. He eats a bite of fruit, a spoonful of soup, a few pieces of curried chicken. It all tastes the same, like cardboard, the rice turning gluey in his mouth. He watches his cheeks grow gaunt in his reflection and the circles beneath his eyes darken and deepen. He tries to recall the feeling of a sword in his hand, of dancing of stage, of joy and wonder and love for life itself, and he can’t find it.

This isn’t you, he thinks. This isn’t Yoji Uruha.

What would Samura think of him now? The kid who stuck out his hand to shake his when he beat him in a fight, who chased after him like he could catch the wind? Though Samura will be dealing with this too, the loss of his friends, whatever other pieces of himself fell away in the years since they’ve seen each other. Is he locked away, too, in some fortress? Has he started smoking again or does he simply take a cigarette from the pack, hold it loosely for a moment, and return it?

And what would Rokuhira think of him now?

Nothing. He would think of nothing, because he’s gone.

Uruha can feel himself slipping away, the life he relished in lost to him now. He reaches for it and it’s too far to take hold of, but he doesn’t have the energy to chase anymore.

But that is just at first.

Because Fushimi, for all his tender caring, his soft words and his gentle manner, does not let Uruha lose himself. When two weeks have passed and Uruha is resigned to his fate, Fushimi marches into his bedroom, wrenches open the curtains, and tells him that they’re going to bathe.

“Bathe?” Uruha says, squinting against the brightness of the sun.

“This is an onsen,” Fushimi says, marching over and standing with his arms folded. “C’mon, you can’t shut yourself up in here forever.”

Whenever Uruha’s dealt with members of the Kamunabi before, they generally speak to him formally, with a degree of removal. They think of him as something out of legend and they act like it. Uruha doesn’t like it, not exactly, and the way that Fushimi is speaking to him now is so different from that that he’s too surprised to argue. He rubs his eyes and nods.

“Okay.”

*

That first day – that first time when they bathe together – Uruha doesn’t take very much notice of anything. He follows Fushimi and drags his feet, walking like a zombie or a tired toddler. He keeps his head down and grunts when they pass by people and they try to talk to him.

Through the halls and down the stairs. Outside through sliding doors and onto a deck. Onto the wooden steps at the back of the building. Down. Down, down, down. It’s autumn and chilly but as they descend it grows warmer. The air is thick and humid.

Down, down, down.

His limbs are heavy. He doesn’t feel light on his feet the way he used to. He remembers that seventeen year old boy who danced on top of the snow, a stranger to him now. The man who stood before an audience and brought a story to life, gone. In the haze of the hot springs he sheds his clothes and steps into the water, letting the warmth of it envelop him. He leans back against the stone and closes his eyes and he thinks that if he could just sink a little lower, let the waves lap at his mouth and nose, and if he could just let go, then it would all be over.

Does he want that? He, who found such pleasure in living? Who kept his heart and his sanity when everyone else seemed to lose theirs? But what else does he have if not that? Who is he if not the Uruha he was before?

The splash of Fushimi stepping down after him tugs him back to reality. He sits beside Uruha and sighs happily. He chats inanely about how nice it is, how good it feels on his sore muscles. They’re sore from sparring with his men earlier this morning, he says. They train every day, to make sure they’re in good shape. Uruha responds only in a monotone.

When Fushimi gets out, Uruha gets out. He wraps a towel around his waist and dries himself off. He dresses and goes back to bed, and Fushimi tells him that they’ll bathe again tomorrow.

And they do.

They bathe together every day. Uruha wants to protest, but for some reason he doesn’t. A week passes like this, then two, then three. Fushimi brings him his meals and drags him down to the hot springs, and slowly – very slowly – the fog which has been clouding Uruha’s mind begins to recede.

It starts subtly. So subtly in fact that he doesn’t realise that it’s happening at all.

Fushimi yanks open his curtains with absolutely no grace as he always does, and when Uruha blinks tiredly instead of being blinded by the morning light he notices the way that the sun catches in Fushimi’s hair, golden and sandy like a tropical beach. Warm, he thinks. When he turns and grins at Uruha he thinks of warmth then, too. He has a crooked smile, a wide smile, and it brings out a dimple in one cheek.

Uruha smiles back at him.

And when they walk down together, he pays attention to where he’s going. He realises that this place has staff; the Kamunabi must have kept them on when they requisitioned the onsen. They wear white uniforms and they nod when they walk past him. There aren’t many, but they must be the ones who keep this place up and running. The guards wear their Kamunabi uniforms, though Fushimi’s shed the heavy black robes and just wears the white shirt with his black slacks.

Uruha pays attention to him, too. His blonde hair is messy, kept tamed by a black bandana. He’s an inch or so shorter than Uruha, and his eyes are the bright gold of the summer sun. His skin is tanned. Every so often, he looks back over his shoulder to make sure Uruha’s still following. Their eyes meet. Uruha smiles.

As they step outside, Uruha pauses. He takes a deep breath of the crisp autumn air. Soon it will be winter, but Kokugoku Fortress will be warm. At least here it will, where steam swirls up from the water below. The pools are carved from the rock, built around where the water bubbles up naturally. Trees surround them, offering privacy. Some of the pools are tiny and intimate, and others large enough for a group. Fushimi takes him to the largest one and they undress in the small changing room nearby as they always do. Uruha notices that Fushimi leaves his clothes in a heap in the cubby, and when he takes off his bandana and runs a finger through his hair it sticks up all over the place.

The water is warm and soothing, but this time Uruha has no desire to slip beneath the surface.

“Pretty nice, isn’t it?” says Fushimi, stepping down into the water as well and taking his place beside him.

“Hm?”

“The hot spring.”

Uruha turns to look at him. Normally he just sits here with his eyes closed and lets Fushimi chatter away, but not this time. Fushimi looks even younger without the bandana, with his messy hair and bright eyes. It makes him curious; he wants to know how someone so young rose so high. He’s no Azami, but becoming a captain at twenty six is still impressive. Despite wondering, he isn’t quite ready to ask yet. Instead he simply makes more of an effort to listen as Fushimi talks. He tells him about the fortress and its grounds, seemingly sensing that Uruha’s finally here. There are gardens, apparently, and fields beyond. The place is ringed by a forest. There’s a back way out of the place which Fushimi will show him someday, he says, where there’s a path to the nearby town and the station. An escape route. Uruha sinks a little lower. He doesn’t want to think about that, and Fushimi moves on.

He mentions the names of the other guards but Uruha doesn’t take them in. The staff, too. Fushimi seems to sense then that it’s too much and he furrows his brow.

“Okay?” he says.

“I’m fine.”

Fushimi tilts his head, but he doesn’t push it. Strange, given that he dragged Uruha out here. They sit in silence for a while, and as always Uruha gets out when Fushimi does.

He goes back to his room, but instead of going to sleep he sits by the window, and he reads a book, looking out at the trees turning bronze and gold beyond the glass.

*

The nights grow longer and the days grow colder. The trees shed their leaves and surrender to the frost, except for the pines and firs which keep their grey green needles and stand stark against the cloudy sky. The weather is miserable, overcast on good days and raining an icy downpour on the bad ones, but despite that the darkness hanging over Uruha is beginning to clear.

Fushimi was the start of it. Fushimi dragging him to the baths and refusing to let him isolate himself, refusing to let him lose himself. This time, I’ll protect you. Uruha had dismissed that when Fushimi said it, but now he realises it’s true. Fushimi is protecting him, in a way. Uruha was adrift, lost in the darkness, and Fushimi was the one who shone the light to guide him back to shore. He washed up on the golden sand, tired and hurt but still here, and that’s what matters.

One day, Fushimi asks if Uruha would like to spar with him. He tosses it out there casually, as though he doesn’t care what his answer will be. Fushimi does everything like that, Uruha’s noticed. When he talks to the staff it’s like they’re his friends, and he seems to have an inside joke or two with every one of his men. Again Uruha thinks of his warmth when he watches him do this; he feels it radiating out of him, drawing people in.

Fushimi nudges him with an elbow when he doesn’t answer. “Uruha?” he says.

“Sparring,” says Uruha. It’s been a while since he sparred with anyone. Since he left the dojo, he thinks. Probably Kiri was the last person he sparred with, unless the fight scenes in his theatre shows count as sparring, which he doesn’t think they do. “Yes. Okay. Let’s do it.”

Fushimi beams at him and Uruha feels himself blush, heat tinging his cheeks. It means nothing; people smile at him all the time, they always have, but there’s something about Fushimi’s smile. It’s so bright, so dazzling.

It reminds him a little of the way Rokuhira used to smile at him.

The training rooms at Kokugoku Fortress were converted by the Kamunabi for this purpose. The floors are tatami and there are wooden practise katana on the walls. Sliding doors on one side of the room open up to a yard where there are dummies and targets; Fushimi opens them briefly to show him, but closes them again to keep out the cold.

“Do you know how to use a katana?” asks Uruha.

“Kinda,” says Fushimi, grinning again. He ambles over to the wall and pulls two down. “I trained a little when I first joined, and I’m alright with pretty much any weapon.”

Uruha’s sure there must be a reason for that, but he doesn’t ask. Instead he nods and takes the katana from him. His fingers wrap around the hilt and the familiar weight of it in his hand grounds him. He takes a deep breath. He’s ready.

They begin, circling each other on the tatami. Uruha tries to find his old lightness, tries to reach for who he used to be. Fushimi is quick, more graceful than Uruha expected, his grin reduced to just the slightest smile, his eyes glimmering with excitement.

Fushimi lunges. Uruha brings up his sword to block him and—

And Fushimi hits him anyway. He sidesteps and knocks him down, and puts the point of his sword to the base of his throat.

Uruha lies on his back on the tatami and gapes up at him. He’s too shocked to speak, but Fushimi takes the words right out of his mouth.

“It’s been a while, right?”

After that, Uruha is determined not to lose. He tells Fushimi that he’ll train with him every day, and he spends a few hours that afternoon in the room on his own, moving through the forms, reminding himself of this thing which once came to him so naturally. He quickly finds it again, his nerves waking up to the spirit energy within him and his muscles remembering what to do. And he finds something else, too; that old excitement of using a sword. He thinks of how it was to be a kid, going up against students twice his age and beating them anyway. He thinks of how right it felt to have a blade in his hand, to spin on one foot or leap through the air or slice through a target. It was fun and exciting and it made his blood run hot. It made him feel alive.

The next day, Fushimi doesn’t land a single hit on him. Uruha knocks him down and laughs, and Fushimi laughs along with him.

It becomes a new part of their routine. Uruha and Fushimi spar, then they go down to the hot springs and bathe together. Sometimes the other men will join them, watching them fight or simply joining them in the water afterwards, having trained themselves. Uruha begins to know them, their quirks and their personalities, their histories, their time with the Kamunabi. He finds himself liking them. He even stops eating in his room, and he eats with Fushimi and the men instead. It’s nice; companiable. It reminds him of the early days at the dojo, back when it was busy.

After getting beaten over and over again, Fushimi asks Uruha to teach him. More specifically, he flops onto his front and groans into the floor and pretty much begs him. Uruha laughs. He offers him a hand to help him up, then he shows him how to hold his katana properly. He notices calluses on Fushimi’s fingers when he does this and he wonders what they’re from. Fushimi notices him noticing and instead of telling him, he shows him. He opens the sliding doors to the frosty yard and before Uruha knows what’s happening he has a bow in his hand, black as charcoal, and the air smells like fire.

“Smoke,” Fushimi says with an apologetic grin. “I can make weapons.”

“You said you were pretty good with any weapon,” Uruha says slowly. “Because of this, right?”

“Right!” Fushimi turns back to the outdoors and fires an arrow. It leaves a dark tendril behind it as it flies through the air and lands perfectly in the centre of one of the targets. Uruha raises his eyebrows, impressed.

“Not bad,” he says.

“Thanks!” Fushimi lets the bow dissipate, wafting his hands around until the smoke is gone, then he closes the doors. “I can make a katana too, and an axe. Bow’s my specialty, though.”

“Maybe you can show me how to shoot someday,” Uruha says with a smile.

“Maybe,” says Fushimi, drawing out the a, singing the word. Uruha looks away quickly. They finish their sparring session and they go to bathe, and Uruha looks away then, too.

*

Four months after Uruha arrived at Kokugoku Fortress, in the middle of winter, they’re buffeted by a snowstorm. It has everyone trapped inside for a full day as the winds howl outside, and when the storm finally dies down they open the curtains onto a world turned white.

It’s beautiful, Uruha thinks.

By this point, the grieving, lifeless shell of a person that Uruha was when he came to this place is little more than a memory. He isn’t quite back to his old self – he doesn’t think he ever will be – but he’s almost there. He finds joy in things again, in using a katana and bathing in the hot springs, in having dinner with the men and in laughing with Fushimi. Lately they’ve taken to walking the grounds together when Fushimi’s on duty and he has his rounds, the both of them wrapped up warm against the chill in the air. Fushimi’s abandoned his uniform now – all of the men have – and he wears what he wants.

On the morning after the storm he comes into Uruha’s room without knocking, which is extremely rude, but Uruha hasn’t scolded him about it before and he doesn’t have the heart to start now. He doesn’t mind, really. Fushimi finds him by the window and joins him, looking out at the snow sparkling in the light of the sun. It’s a clear, beautiful day. The sky is cold and blue and endless. Fushimi puts a mittened hand on his shoulder.

“Want to go for a walk?” he says.

Uruha nods. He pulls on thick socks and boots and wraps himself up in his cloak. Fushimi waits for him just outside, a woollen hat on his head replacing his bandana. The snow crunches underfoot and they laugh as they sink into it. Nobody else has been out yet and the only prints besides their own are those of birds and rabbits. It makes Uruha feel like they’re the only two people in the world.

He doesn’t think he’d mind that, if they were.

Fushimi. He’s been trying to work out what it is about him, how he’s drawn him in so easily. He seems to do it with everyone, but Uruha wants to know why it’s happened to him. Fushimi isn’t kept at an arm’s length like his theatre friends and he hasn’t faded away like his friends from the dojo. He has Rokuhira’s warmth but he doesn’t make Uruha nervous and jittery like he did. Was that what drew him in, that he was warm like the man Uruha was so dedicated to all those years ago? Maybe, he thinks, but it isn’t that alone.

There is another echo of Rokuhira in him, though. It’s the seeing. The listening. He didn’t have to tell Fushimi that he needed someone to pull him out of his grief – he didn’t even know he needed someone to do that – but Fushimi did it anyway. He dragged him out of his room and he brought him back to life and he knew exactly how to do it even though they’d only just met. When Fushimi looks at him he sees him for who he is. He doesn’t see the wielder of Kumeyuri, some legend or myth or even hero. He sees the person he really is, somehow, this young captain of the Kamunabi.

But there’s more than that. There’s something of his own there, too. Rokuhira was always out of reach for Uruha, standing high above him, the forger of a weapon to change the world. He was like Samura in that way, the master who Uruha was always chasing after. Fushimi is different. Uruha doesn’t have to chase after him, because Fushimi is standing there and waiting for him, grinning at him, holding out a hand to pull him along.

He is a friend, Uruha thinks, and more than anything a friend is what he needs right now.

THWACK!

A snowball hits Uruha in the face and he staggers backwards, gasping and brushing it from his stinging skin. Fushimi roars with laughter at his own joke, delighted that he got the better of him after getting beaten every day when they spar.

“You asshole!” Uruha shouts.

“That’s me!” declares Fushimi, gleeful and he turns on his heel and runs. Uruha scoops up a snowball of his own and throws it, missing. He grabs another one, ignoring the cold on his bare skin as he flings it and hits Fushimi square between the shoulder blades.

Fushimi returns the favour, and it devolves into a war. They hurl snow at each other until Uruha surrenders because he’s too cold, and because Fushimi’s too good. It’s the damn bow, his aim is true every time while Uruha’s isn’t.

“Shit,” Fushimi says when he trots over to him. “Your hands.”

“Oh, I don’t have gloves,” Uruha says sheepishly.

Fushimi hastily peels off his own gloves and tucks them under his arm so he can take Uruha’s hands in his. “Idiot,” he says, rubbing the warmth back into them, into his palms and his knuckles and his fingers. “It’s a winter. Why don’t you have gloves?”

“You didn’t tell me to put on gloves.”

Fushimi rolls his eyes. He puts his mittens onto Uruha’s hands. “Wear mine,” he says.

“You’ll get cold,” objects Uruha.

“Nah.” Fushimi shoves his hands into his pockets. “We just won’t have any more snowball fights today.”

“You won anyway.”

“Damn right I did.” Fushimi laughs. “C’mon. Let’s go see if there’s hot chocolate in the kitchen.”

They do have hot chocolate, as it turns out. The cook makes them a couple of mugs and drops marshmallows into them as well, and they sit together at one of the windows, looking out at the snow blanketing the forest. Uruha sips his drink and relishes the sweetness of the chocolate on his tongue and the heat seeping through him, warming him from the top of his head to the tips of his toes.

But it isn’t just the hot chocolate that warms him. Fushimi stretches out a leg and his socked foot brushes Uruha’s shin. A shiver runs through him. No, it’s not just that; it’s Fushimi taking his hands in his and rubbing the warmth back into them, and giving him his mittens because he didn’t want his hands to get cold again.

“What are you looking at?” Fushimi says, narrowing his eyes.

Uruha’s cheeks pinken and he shakes his head, acting like he wasn’t staring at him, thinking about warmth and friendship and finding something he’s been looking for.

“Nothing.”

*

During the winter when Uruha fought in the Seitei War, he focused only on survival. When each day came to an end he would crawl into his tent, kick off his boots, and wriggle into his sleeping bag. He would fall asleep instantly and only wake when he heard the noise of the camp coming to life around him. Sleep never evaded him in those days; he was out like a light when his head hit the pillow.

Now, though, on these winter nights fifteen years later, Uruha lies awake, staring through the gap in the curtains at the falling snow. There’s some faint hope he has that the snowflakes will lull him to sleep, but it never works. It’s warm in the fortress and his bedroom is cosy. His futon is thick and soft but when he curls up beneath the covers there’s something on his mind that he can’t shake.

It’s Fushimi. Of course it is.

In such a short time Uruha’s come to consider Fushimi a good friend, someone who understands him, but now he’s starting to wonder if it might be something more than that. No, not starting to wonder. He’s been wondering and now he’s sure of it. When Uruha walks into a room he looks for him, for that flash of gold in the corner of his vision. When they clash on the tatami, their wooden blades colliding, faces inches from each other, Uruha’s heart begins to race. When they spar for hours and get too hot and strip off their shirts and it pounds so loudly that he wonders if Fushimi will hear it. When they walk together and their gloved hands brush together; when Fushimi stops and checks to make sure that Uruha’s wearing gloves.

And the hot springs. Oh, the hot springs. When Uruha sinks into the water with Fushimi he cracks open an eye and allows himself the indulgence of watching him. He takes in the muscles of his arms and thighs, his toned abs and his chest, his tanned skin. He counts each and every one of his scars and wonders where they’re from, whether they’re old or new, which was the first. His breath catches in his throat at the sight of his messy blonde hair, shimmering in the morning light like spun gold. He wants to run his fingers through it. He wants so many things, things he refuses to put a name to. Sometimes he worries that he’s just getting attached because Fushimi is here and he’s in need of comfort, but he doesn’t think so. Not when he can point out exactly what it is he likes about Fushimi, how he sees him and listens to him and makes him feel alive. How he’s warm and friendly and funny, how he brings out the life in everyone, not just Uruha. He is so much more than just Uruha’s grief.

But Fushimi’s his friend, too, and that’s what’s keeping Uruha awake at night.

This is a line he can’t cross. This is a chance he can’t take. Fushimi’s friendship is too important – too vital – for him to risk.

So instead he watches the snow fall at night, and he tells himself that it will pass.

*

The snow thaws, and the first buds begin to grow on the bare branches of the trees. Each morning, the grass is speckled with dew.

Uruha wonders if he’s falling in love.

Sometimes, Fushimi forgoes the bandana. When he does this his hair is always messy, getting in his face. He tucks it behind his ears but it’s not quite long enough to stay. He leans forward and it flops over his forehead again, and it takes all of Uruha’s willpower not to reach out and tuck it behind his ears for him. On occasion he’ll pull it back into a low ponytail at the nape of his neck, but it always falls out of the tie, too. Uruha likes it when he wears his hair like that. He likes being able to see more of his skin. He likes that it makes him look more casual, like he’s just rolled out of bed.

Uruha got up early once, waking up by pure chance. He stepped out of his room, thinking that he would have some coffee outside, and he happened to see Fushimi leaving his own room, heading for the bathroom. He wore a baggy white t-shirt, threadbare and so old that it was almost see through, along with a pair of flannel pyjama pants. He smiled tiredly when he saw Uruha and greeted him with a voice still raspy from sleep. Uruha can’t seem to stop thinking about that morning, about what it would be like to see him like that every morning.

It's even worse when they spar. Fushimi still never wins, but sometimes he manages to get the better of Uruha for just a moment. He’ll pin him down, knees on his thighs, and lean in close so that their noses almost touch. Uruha’s heart flutters and his face turns red and he shoves him away, pinning him in turn but not daring to get so near to him. Still, he can feel the heat of his body under him and he can see the heave of his chest, the sheen of sweat on his skin. He wants to press himself against him, to feel their hearts beating together.

The worst of all was Uruha’s birthday. February, too close to Valentines Day for Uruha’s liking. Fushimi and the men bought cupcakes and sang to him, and Fushimi had a smear of frosting on his chin which sat there, agonisingly, tauntingly, until he finally wiped it away.

He notices everything about him now. Everything. The tiny scar on his temple, hidden by his hair. Where did he get that scar? Uruha wants to ask him, but he hides it, doesn’t he? Nobody would notice unless they were looking, and Uruha is looking. Even the mundane things he notices; the curve of his collarbone and the hollow at the base of his throat, his long archer’s fingers, how the hair which leads down from his navel, down to where Uruha forces himself not to look when they’re in the hot springs, is a slightly darker shade of blonde than the hair on his head. The dimple in his cheek when he smiles, and his white teeth, the canines slightly pointed. The way he frowns when he’s concentrating, filling out the weekly reports to send back to headquarters. The way he rests the end of his pen on his bottom lip, taps it, thinking. The way he notices Uruha noticing him and glances up, smiling softly, not minding. Not realising, surely, what Uruha’s truly thinking.

So that’s how things stand when spring arrives, Uruha’s first spring at Kokugoku Fortress. He might be in love, and there’s nothing he can do about it.

*

Spring arrives in a burst of colour.

The grass is lush and green, waving in the warming wind. Some of the trees sprout new leaves and others the buds of flowers. They open, delicate and damp, painting the branches in white and pink. The animals emerge from wherever they were hiding; red foxes and darting silver squirrels, crows with iridescent feathers and tiny bright songbirds. Kokugoku’s gardeners begin tending the flowerbeds again and they bloom under their practised hands.

Now when Uruha wakes in the morning the sun is already up, rather than just a suggestion on the grey horizon. It surprises him the first time that it happens and he thinks, I’m still here.

Winter was always going to be the hardest season to get through, with the darkness and the long, lonely nights, but it wasn’t hard. Not when he had someone to keep him going. And now it’s springtime, the season of change and new life. He can’t help but feel a small spark of excitement deep within himself. What kind of change will it bring for him?

He and Fushimi continue on as usual. They spar together and Uruha tries not to let himself get caught staring at Fushimi’s bare chest. They bathe together and he closes his eyes when he’s in the water to resist the urge to look down at his dick. He asks Fushimi about his time in the Kamunabi and Fushimi tells him about his missions, how he got promoted, and though it starts as a way to distract himself Uruha finds that he’s fascinated. Fushimi was considered someone with potential, having joined as a talented sorcerer the moment he turned eighteen. The Kamunabi put him right in the thick of things, as is their wont to do. Night missions, perching on rooftops and tracking prey. Shooting down enemies with those smoky arrows. They rotated him between teams often to be used as support, until finally they decided to give him a squad of his own.

Uruha smiles when Fushimi tells him that they’ve named themselves the Kokugoku Steam Squad. They didn’t have a real name before, just the Fushimi Squad, so it’s nice to choose one that means something. Fushimi plans his missions like performances and executes them like a director. Uruha sits up straight, intrigued. He likes to watch from a vantage point as his men move in, he says, providing sniper support and having his eye on everything that goes down so he knows exactly what the best move to make is. He doesn’t shy away from the thick of the fight, though; that’s where the training with other weapons comes in. Fushimi will leap in with an axe or a katana and get the job done himself if he needs to. He sounds so sure of himself when he tells Uruha this, but when he’s done his eyes widen a little and his smile wavers.

He wants Uruha’s approval.

“I’m not much of a strategist,” Uruha admits. “But you must be doing something right, to be a captain at twenty six.”

Fushimi relaxes and stretches his arms up above his head. Uruha gazes at them, at the muscles of his forearms and biceps, the way his tanned skin moves over them. He must spend a lot of time outside in the summer, he thinks. The hair under his arms is the same dark blonde as the hair between his legs. Uruha looks away before Fushimi can look back at him.

It’s strange, to feel like this. Though Uruha had relationships during his stint of living a normal life, he always had to keep them a little bit removed from himself. He had feelings for the men he dated and even the ones he knew just for a night, but this intensity is something foreign to him. In a romantic sense, anyway; Uruha knows about intensity.

As if he knows that Uruha’s deep in thought and he wants to bring him back to the present, Fushimi splashes him.

“Hey!” Uruha glares at him and Fushimi sticks his tongue out. He splashes him back, and the drops of water sit in his hair and sparkle like diamonds.

*

The shifts that the guards take rotate every so often, and when Fushimi has the night shift he tends to sleep in the next morning. On those occasions, he and Uruha move their sparring sessions to the afternoon. It’s on one of these days, when the sun is just beginning to set and they’re getting dressed after a soak in the hot spring, that Uruha turns to Fushimi, an idea springing to mind.

“Do they keep any beer in this place?” he asks.

Fushimi tilts his head. “Usually we have a couple of bottles in, for when the men have a day off.”

“Want to have a drink with me?”

“Sure.” The corner of Fushimi’s mouth curves into an intrigued smile. “Sounds fun.”

Uruha isn’t quite sure what possessed him to ask. Maybe he’s missing the way he would go for drinks with his theatre friends, how they would crowd around a table that was too small, how the room would be hot and full of laughter. Maybe he’s thinking about the lonely days before that, how he wanted to ask Natsuki to grab a drink with him and didn’t, because he knew what the answer would be. Or maybe it’s something else entirely; maybe he’s craving the way the alcohol will soften his edges, bring the laughs and the words more easily to the tip of his tongue, make him brave and reckless and wild enough to do what he’s too scared to do sober.

Maybe.

They head to the kitchen and Fushimi grabs some beers from the fridge. Two bottles each. Not much, but then Uruha hasn’t had a drink in a while; his tolerance might not be what it used to be. Fushimi hesitates in the hall, looking towards the door which leads out to the deck. He turns to Uruha instead.

“How about we go to your room,” he says, then just as Uruha’s heart leaps up into his throat he adds, “Since you’ve got a balcony?”

It’s only a small balcony, but it’s big enough for two people to sit out and enjoy the evening. Uruha hasn’t used it much since the weather’s been cold, but he slides open the doors and drags out a couple of cushions for them to sit on. Fushimi passes him a beer and they sit next to each other, leaning back against the wall, looking out at the dark silhouettes of the trees against the darkening sky.

“This is nice,” Uruha says.

Fushimi nods and laughs awkwardly. “Y’know something?” he says. “I was so nervous to meet you when I got this assignment.”

“Seriously?” Uruha grins at him. “You’ve never seemed nervous to me.”

“Nah,” says Fushimi, picking at the label of his beer bottle. “I just hide it well. You were one of my heroes, when I was a kid.”

Uruha sits up a little straighter and lifts his chin. He’s preening, just a little bit. “Your hero?” he says, shuffling closer to him and nudging him with an elbow. “Tell me more.”

Fushimi narrows his eyes at him and sips his drink. When he lowers the bottle Uruha glances at his mouth, noting the way that a drop of beer sits on his lower lip before he licks it away. “Us kids in the orphanage, we used to watch you guys on TV,” he says softly. “Listened to the radio broadcasts about you. You were only seventeen when the war started. So young. I wanted to be just like you.”

An orphanage, and Fushimi joining the Kamunabi as soon as he was eighteen; Uruha understands what happened to him. After the war there were more children than there were parents, and the younger ones were adopted more easily. Babies and toddlers, not kids old enough to know what they’d lost. Fushimi would have toughed it out in some overcrowded building, sleeping four kids to a room, and left for the only place that would take him. Though to have been such a skilled sorcerer from the get-go – Uruha would bet money on him having spent some time on the streets. Gangs of young sorcerers were common in the days after the war. Fushimi could have belonged to one of them.

“I wasn’t a hero,” Uruha says. “Not really.”

“Oh, I know that,” says Fushimi, giving him a wry smile. “There were whispers after the war, and being in the Kamunabi teaches you a lot about the way things really went. Still, back then I didn’t have anything else. But I had you. And you gave me hope that I could get away from that place. So you’ll always be a hero to me.”

A kid in an orphanage, looking up to him. Uruha feels his cheeks grow hot and he drinks his beer, not knowing what else to say, draining half the bottle in one long gulp. He looks out over the edge of the balcony, then back at Fushimi. The setting sun has lit him up in a blaze of gold and his eyes look like a smouldering fire. “It must have been hard,” he says, his voice low.

Fushimi shrugs. “No harder than what most kids my age went through.”

“Can you—” Uruha pauses, not knowing if he should ask, then deciding that he will. “Can you tell me?”

Fushimi nods, and over the course of their beers he tells him what happened to him, how the small village he lived in was untouched by the fighting, until all of a sudden it wasn’t. It was during those first few weeks of the enemy invasion, when they’d lit across the country, taking and taking as fast as they could, knowing they had to act fast before Japan could mount a defence. Every adult in Fushimi’s village was killed. His mother and uncle had both been killed in the initial attack, which Fushimi didn’t see because he was hiding with his big brother in an attic. The soldiers found them, and they forced the kids to watch as they hanged the ones who were left. His father and grandparents died that day. He and his brother were prisoners then, huddling together through the cold nights, sharing food, until one day they sensed opportunity. The guards were distracted – Fushimi never found out what by – and they decided to make a break for it. They got as far as the woods surrounding the village when they got caught again, but they tried to fight. Fushimi got a knock to the head for his trouble and his brother took a knife in the thigh. When he tells Uruha this his hand goes to his temple, two fingers brushing the small scar hidden by his hair.

The guards didn’t treat them well before, and they treated them even worse after the escape attempt. They weren’t allowed blankets and their rations were cut in half. Fushimi’s brother gave up his share of the food, and though Fushimi tore up his own shirt so he could bandage his leg, the wound became infected. His brother died shivering in his arms. Not long after that the counterattacks began, and what little remained of Fushimi’s village was liberated.

He had no family left. He was sent to an overcrowded orphanage where he watched Uruha on his television screen and told himself that one day things would be okay. When the war ended he ran away from the orphanage and joined up with a gang of amateur sorcerers, until he was found and promptly returned. This happened a few times over the years, and whether he was out on the streets or back at an orphanage – he was moved more than once – he made sure to keep practising his sorcery. On his eighteenth birthday he went to the Kamunabi and all but begged to join them.

“If we hadn’t tried to escape that night, my brother might still be alive,” he says, voice little more than a whisper. “I have to live a good life, for his sake.”

To live for the sake of someone else, for his brother. Uruha puts down his empty bottle and when Fushimi puts his down too he takes his hand and squeezes. “It wasn’t your fault,” he says.

“I don’t know.” Fushimi doesn’t pull his hand away. “But whether it was or not, I can’t change it now, right?”

Then, he smiles. It’s a little more pained than his usual smiles, but it still has the warmth it always does. It has something else, too, or maybe that’s the beer talking. Maybe Uruha’s wrapped up in a blanket of alcohol, instincts and good sense blurred. Fushimi strokes the back of his hand with his thumb and Uruha leans in a little closer.

Fushimi’s eyes flick to his lips, just for a second, before he looks up again and meets his gaze. Is that permission, or was it pure chance? Uruha wants to lean in even more, to press his lips against his, to taste the beer on his tongue, but—

But.

There is always a but. What if he’s wrong? What if he’s misread this? It’s too much of a risk to take, so Uruha doesn’t take it. He lets go of Fushimi’s hand and looks back out over the balcony, where the last rays of the sun are disappearing behind the trees.

And the spell is broken.

They talk a little more about Fushimi’s time with the Kamunabi and Uruha tells him about how he joined the theatre. When Fushimi says he’d like to see him on stage, Uruha laughs and promises him tickets. It’s a light, easy conversation, but Uruha’s heart is heavy.

Later, when Fushimi’s gone and Uruha’s lying on his futon, staring up at the ceiling, he draws a circle on his palm with the tip of a finger, thinking of the warmth of Fushimi’s hand.

*

A couple of weeks after that night, there’s a sudden spell of warm weather. A few days, the forecast says, of warm sunshine and clear blue skies. Uruha and Fushimi and the men spend most of the day outside, lazing around in the grass, watching a few cottony white clouds drift by. Uruha’s content to lie back with his eyes closed, feeling the heat of the sun on his face and breathing in the scent of cherry blossom on the wind.

Fushimi lies beside him for a while, then gets bored and tries to prod Uruha into playing with him. Uruha snorts with laughter and shakes his head, so he goes to make the men play instead. Ridiculous, as though they’re kids and not a squad of elite sorcerers.

But then Uruha cracks open an eye, curious as to what they’re doing, and sees that they’re racing each other. The starting line is by one of the flowerbeds and the finish a distant tree. Uruha rolls onto his side and props himself up on an elbow, intrigued now, wanting to watch. They jostle and tease each other, and before they start Fushimi stands up straight and pulls his hair back into a ponytail, smoothing it back from his face. It falls out immediately, blonde locks flopping over his forehead as he starts to run.

He’s fast; faster than Uruha realised. He notices the way he launches himself forward and he thinks that he must be augmenting himself with spirit energy. Not bad, he thinks. Fushimi wins the first race and the second, and more hair falls from his ponytail each time he runs. He must be getting too hot, because he takes his t-shirt by the hem and pulls it up over his head, dropping it onto the grassy lawn. Uruha watches more closely now, staring over at him with his sun-kissed skin and hair shining gold in the brightness of the day. He wins the races and he laughs, nudging his men with an elbow and joking with them, playfully taunting them before winning again.

It's like something out of a story. With only a few days of this idyllic weather it seems like a little piece of paradise for them to hold onto for just a fleeting moment before letting it go, and Uruha thinks there’s a kind of magic in that. Maybe it’s just him being a romantic, but in the sun, on this perfect day, Fushimi seems like a hero to him. He rests his chin in his hands, unable to tear his gaze from him. This feels like the kind of day he’ll look back on, far in the future, though he can’t say why. It’s in the gold of it, maybe. The far-off laughter. Fushimi takes off his shoes and socks and runs barefoot in the grass. His men copy him, and they look like what they are; young men, having fun, far removed from the horrors of the Hishaku and the Enchanted Blades and the murders of Rokuhira and Misaka. Uruha feels removed from all of that too, for once. He finds himself getting to his feet and kicking off his own sandals so he can join them. Fushimi shines so brightly today, like a beacon, and Uruha thinks that he looks like something out of a myth, some old hero from a legend. Achilles, he thinks, because he’s beautiful and golden too. Fushimi doesn’t have that kind of fame, though. He isn’t like the wielders, known as household names. He doesn’t even have the renown of powerful sorcerers like Azami or Hiyuki Kagari. And besides, Uruha thinks. Achilles died young.

It's a silly thought, really. A spell that he’s under. Heatstroke. He’s thinking about heroes and memories; stories and moments to hold onto. Fushimi sees him coming over and his grin widens, a dazzling beam. Uruha’s breath catches in his throat; he realises now that Fushimi has the smallest scattering of freckles over his nose, barely noticeable, brought out by the sun.

When they start the race Uruha thinks, for a moment, that Fushimi will leave him behind. That he won’t be able to catch up with him. But then he feels the grass between his toes and he runs, and he wins because of course he wins, Yoji Uruha, the wielder of Kumeyuri, youngest ever to be certified in Iai White Purity Style. Fushimi claps him on the shoulder when he beats him by a mile and admits defeat.

“You’re too fast!” he says, laughing. “It’s not fair.”

“You won every other race,” Uruha points out.

“Well, I wanted to win that one,” Fushimi says, pouting. Uruha rolls his eyes and Fushimi slings his arm around him. Uruha is wearing a t-shirt but Fushimi is still bare chested, and he’s extremely conscious of the warmth of his skin, separated from his own only by a single layer of fabric.

The others have given up on racing. They resume lounging, watching the sun make its slow progress across the sky. One by one they head inside, but Fushimi stays with Uruha. He’s on his back, twisting blades of grass together into a clumsy braid. When Uruha asks him what he’s doing he grabs his hand and ties it around his wrist, a green bracelet. His hair has fallen out of his ponytail completely now, and it’s fanned about his head like a halo. He is so, so beautiful, and Uruha wishes that this moment could stretch on into eternity.  

Finally, Fushimi gets up. He stretches, lifting his hands above his head, and yawns. He pulls his t-shirt back on. When he stands he offers Uruha a hand to help him up, then he stares at him with a smirk on his face.

“What are you looking at?” grumbles Uruha, embarrassed.

Fushimi reaches for him, and for one wild second Uruha thinks he’s going to stroke his face, but then he plucks something from his hair; a petal, a delicate curl of palest pink.

“Oh,” Uruha says. “That’s what you were doing.”

“What did you think I was doing?” Fushimi teases. “Wait, I know.”

“You do?” Uruha tilts his head, wondering if Fushimi is flirting with him deliberately or if this agonising back and forth is unintentional on his part. “What—”

Fushimi kisses him.

He leans in and he lifts a hand to wind his fingers into his hair and he kisses him. It’s a quick kiss, lips pressed against his, and when he pulls back his cheeks are flushed. He looks almost apologetic. “Uh, was that—”

It’s Uruha’s turn to interrupt. He kisses him roughly, clumsily, hungrily. He drapes his arms over Fushimi’s shoulders and parts his lips for his tongue. They kiss in the rich light of the steadily setting sun with petals landing in their hair like confetti. Uruha hadn’t dared to allow himself to imagine that this could happen but it is happening.

It’s like he’s floating; it’s like he’s in freefall. He takes Fushimi by the hand and drags him back to the fortress, both of them laughing, stumbling through the door. Somewhere along the way Uruha loses the grass bracelet. He leads him upstairs to his room and Fushimi lets him pull him along.

When the door closes behind them Fushimi pushes him up against it and kisses him again. He doesn’t stop to question how fast they’re moving and neither does Uruha. Do they really need to? He should have kissed him that night when they had drinks together. He should have asked him to have drinks long before then. He should have realised that there was a chance instead of dismissing it outright. Fushimi wants Uruha, and he was a fool not to see it before, because wasn’t this the reason he liked him to begin with? Because Fushimi looked at him and saw him and because he knew him?

Uruha tugs impatiently at Fushimi’s t-shirt, wanting it off him, and Fushimi grins against his mouth. He pulls away and looks at him from under his blonde lashes, eyes shimmering with mischief. “I can’t believe we’re really doing this,” he murmurs.

“Can’t you?” says Uruha, because this feels like a dream, where anything is possible. Where he can get what he wants, what he’s been reaching for.

Fushimi pulls off his t-shirt and slips his hands under Uruha’s. He trails his fingers over him and Uruha shivers as he touches his abs and his chest before sliding them around to rest at the small of his back. Fushimi plants a quick kiss on his lips. “You’re amazing,” he says. “Please don’t report me for this.”

“What!?”

He laughs. “I think I’d get in trouble for kissing you.”

“Just kissing?” Uruha takes him by the waist and pulls him close, wrapping his arms around him. He wants to feel him, wholly and completely.

“Oh, you want to do more?” teases Fushimi. He fingers the hem of Uruha’s t-shirt and lifts it a little. Only a little.

“Mhm.”

Fushimi takes hold of his shirt and pulls him backwards, towards the futon. The curtains are open and the light shining through is like a wildfire, a deep, rich orange. Fushimi is lit in gold again as he pulls off Uruha’s shirt and leans in to kiss the side of his neck, his collarbone, lips brushing the big scar which curves over his shoulder. He follows it down to his chest and lower, kissing him all over, pulling down his pants and palming his stiffening cock through his underwear.

Uruha lets his head loll back and he closes his eyes, though he can still see the sun. He feels drunk with it, with all of this. He kicks off his pants and Fushimi eases his underwear down, too. It’s never been like this before. All the hookups, the casual relationships, the flings – none of them have been like this. Fushimi touches the tip of his tongue to the head of Uruha’s cock and he gasps. He winds his fingers into his hair and his hips buck forward as Fushimi takes him in his mouth. His lips slide over him and his fingers wrap around his shaft. He drags his tongue over him and flicks it over his slit and it’s all Uruha can do not to cry out. He’s aflame now, too, desire roiling hot in the pit of his stomach.

But then just as he’s about to come, Fushimi lifts his head. Uruha looks down at him, vision swimming, and meets his golden gaze. He’s a tease. Uruha groans.

“Lie down,” says Fushimi.

Uruha groans, but he nods and does as he’s told. His face is burning; he feels exposed like this, but he lies down on the futon all the same. Fushimi pushes his legs apart and kneels between them. He pauses.

“Take off your pants,” Uruha grumbles.

Fushimi tilts his head. His cheeks are red, too, and his hair is messier than ever. There’s a shine to his lips, where he had his mouth on Uruha’s cock, and Uruha can hardly believe that just an hour ago they were lying together in the grass, nothing more than friends. Fushimi hooks his thumbs into the waistband of his pants and pulls them and his underwear down. He kicks them off and Uruha’s eyes go to his cock, just as hard as his own. He wants me, he thinks, but he doesn’t have the chance to think anything else because then Fushimi’s leaning over him and kissing him again.

Uruha can taste himself on his tongue. His hips twitch upwards and their cocks brush together and Uruha moans into his mouth. Fushimi nips at him, teeth pressing gently against his bottom lip, then he pulls away. He pulls away again. Uruha groans in frustration.

“If we’re gonna do it then we have to talk about how,” Fushimi says, stroking a finger down over Uruha’s cheek, brushing his hair out of his face. The sunlight ripples in his eyes like molten gold.

It occurs to Uruha that when he lay down he spread his legs without thinking, so Fushimi could get between them. Even now he has his thighs apart, his arms wrapped around him to pull him down onto him. Though he likes it either way, generally Uruha prefers to be on top when he sleeps with people. He’s switched a few times when he’s dated someone, but when he’s had flings in the past it’s always his instinct to be on top.

With Fushimi, though, his instincts have taken him a different way. He did it automatically, lying like this. He doesn’t have to think too hard to work out why; he trusts Fushimi and he knows that he can make himself vulnerable in this way for him. He wants to give himself over to him, completely, to have him know every single part of him and to let it all be his. He wants Fushimi to lead the way, to be in control, to surge ahead and pull him along with him.

He wants to hand him his broken heart, now mending, tender where the wounds are still healing and say, It’s yours.

“I want you in me,” he whispers, his breath fluttering his hair.

Fushimi shivers. He kisses him softly. “Okay,” he murmurs.

The moment breaks – only briefly – when Fushimi has to go and get the lube that Uruha keeps in the bathroom, that he brought with him only because he shoved it into his bag without thinking when he packed to come here. He’s back in an instant, on top of Uruha, propped over him and kissing him again. He opens the lube one handedly and Uruha closes his eyes as he slicks up his fingers and reaches down between his legs.

Fushimi, the archer, precise with the movements of his hands, has a gentle touch. He circles Uruha’s hole with the tip of a finger before he eases it gently into him. He isn’t impatient, wanting to get him ready quickly so he can fuck him. He wants his time with him. When his finger is all the way in him he crooks it upwards, stroking the inside of him, feeling him. He kisses Uruha all the while, lips brushing his, moving to the edge of his jaw and his neck. As his finger grazes Uruha’s prostate he draws a sliver of his skin up between his teeth and bites down. Uruha cries out, pleasure blooming in him like the flowers on the trees outside. He’s so hard now that he can’t bear it, pre-come leaking from his cock, fingers digging into the muscle of Fushimi’s shoulders as he grabs at him.

“How’s that?” Fushimi purrs as he eases a second finger into him, teasing him more because he knows exactly how good it is. He curves his fingers and scissors them and works Uruha open, finally getting a third finger into him just as he’s right at the edge.

“Fushimi,” gasps Uruha. “Fushimi—”

He needs him so badly he can’t even put it into words. He wants to come and he wants to come with Fushimi in him. Fushimi catches his lips in a hungry kiss and pulls his fingers out, reaching for the lube again as he slips his tongue into his mouth. He slicks up his cock and guides himself to press up against Uruha’s hole and slowly, gently, he pushes into him.

Uruha sighs with relief; this was what he wanted. This was what he couldn’t bring himself to dream about in case he couldn’t have it. He lets his head loll back against the pillow as Fushimi starts to move. He’s tentative, at first; exploratory. He’s testing this, watching for Uruha’ reaction. When Uruha opens his eyes he sees Fushimi’s brow furrowed in concentration and he winds his fingers into his hair, combing through the messy blonde locks. Fushimi understands; he likes it, and he wants more. He moves faster and Uruha closes his eyes again, letting himself get lost in the moment as Fushimi plunges in and out of him, finding a rhythm and fucking him harder.

Each time Fushimi’s cock sinks into him a new jolt of pleasure goes rocketing up Uruha’s spine. He gasps and moans and cries out, already at the edge and being dragged closer and closer. Fushimi kisses him; on the corner of the mouth and on the cheek, on the side of his jaw and on his neck, where his pulse flutters, mothlike, beneath the skin. He lifts his head and props himself on one arm again so he can reach down and take hold of Uruha’s cock, hair hanging down and brushing Uruha’s face.

When he opens his eyes all he sees is a blur of gold. Fushimi’s lips are parted and he’s panting as he strokes Uruha’s dick, grip tightening as he slams into him, jerking him off and fucking him hard and fast. Uruha grabs his arms, holding onto him, and he lifts his legs so he can wrap them around Fushimi’s hips. He squeezes him, urging him on because he’s close now, so close and he wants Fushimi to make him come.

“Fushimi,” he moans, savouring the taste on his tongue, the three syllables rolling from his lips in a whisper. “Fushimi, I—I’m close, I’m gonna—”

Fushimi slams into him hard and with a cry Uruha finishes in his hand. He lets his legs drop from Fushimi’s hips and he lies back in daze, floating, heart pounding and chest heaving. Fushimi isn’t done with him yet, though; he hooks an arm under one of Uruha’s legs and hefts it up onto his shoulder so he can hit deeper inside him, and as he keeps on fucking him new waves of pleasure course through Uruha, until finally he finishes as well, and when he comes inside him he moans Uruha’s name; Yoji.

Then he gently pulls out of him and Uruha’s leg slips from his shoulder. He lies beside him, propped up on an elbow. He trails a finger up Uruha’s chest, damp with sweat, and he takes his chin in hand and tilts his face towards him so he can kiss him. It’s a deep, sweet kiss, long and slow. Uruha sighs against his lips. I love you, he thinks, but he isn’t quite mad enough to say that yet.

“Can I stay?” Fushimi murmurs.

“Please stay,” says Uruha.

It’s only evening, and they haven’t had dinner, but Uruha’s too tired to move. He lies on the futon and Fushimi goes to the bathroom, coming back with a towel so he can clean him up. He wipes the come from Uruha’s stomach and the insides of his thighs and he kisses him again. He pulls the covers up over them both and tucks himself in beside him, wrapping his arms around him and holding him tight.

“You are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” he whispers into his ear.

Uruha blushes and twists in his arms so that he’s facing him, the two of them nose to nose on the pillow. “What does this mean for us?” he asks.

Fushimi’s eyes widen and his freckled cheeks redden. He looks every bit his twenty six years in that moment, the confidence he normally wears so easily fading for a moment. “I want to be with you, Uruha,” he says.

“Good,” Uruha says with a smile, and Fushimi relaxes. “I want that, too.”

They sleep in each other’s arms that night, a tangle of limbs, breathing each other in and holding onto each other like they can’t bear to let go. Uruha has given Fushimi his heart, and he sleeps soundly in knowing that he will keep it safe.

*

It’s that easy.

In the morning Uruha wakes up hungry and grumpy and Fushimi fetches him breakfast. They eat together and watch the sun come up. Uruha asks Fushimi to move into his room and he agrees. They tell the men – because Fushimi refuses to lie to them, even by omission – that they’re together now, and they all make fun of them, teasing them playfully and making jokes about wedding bells.

They spar together as they always do, and Fushimi finally gets his second ever win against Uruha by kissing him to throw him off his game. A dirty trick, but Uruha lets him have it. Fushimi sticks his hands down his pants and jerks him off on the training room floor, then kisses him some more. They bathe together and eat together and go to bed together. It’s the same routine as before and a new one all at once.

Spring becomes summer. Fushimi turns twenty seven. They celebrate with cake and beers. The weeks and the months all seem to melt together into one long endless moment of bliss. It’s the story that Uruha thought would end, but the end never comes. Every day he smiles and he laughs. He kisses Fushimi whenever he wants to and holds him in his arms when he sleeps. He thinks about Samura in the hospital, Inori promising to stick by him. He thinks about their wedding day, how beautiful she was. He thinks of when he used to ask Samura about her, and how he used to wonder if he would ever find a love like that and Samura told him that he would.

He was right, he realises now. Always, always he was reaching for something, and now he has it in his grasp.

Fushimi draws out of him his memories of Rokuhira, gently asking and pulling back if it seems like Uruha doesn’t want to talk, but he does talk, and Fushimi listens. He listens like Rokuhira listened; hearing it all, hearing the things behind the words. He smooths Uruha’s hair back from his face and he tells him that he’s sorry he lost him, and he means it. He tells Uruha that he loves him, that he’s bright and beautiful and that his heart is so full that he couldn’t help but fall. Uruha says it back, says that he’s loved him for a long time and he’ll love him forever, he thinks.

Forever.

It seems like such an unlikely, hopeful word, but Uruha can’t help but hope. How can he not? He, who when he was given nothing but a sword managed to find joy in it? When he kept hold of himself through the war, when everyone around him seemed to unravel? When he was always, always chasing after someone, and found it in himself to keep running? Of course he has hope; hope that this magic will last an eternity, that one day they’ll be free from this place and it will paint the outside world in golden light as well, that they will be together, that Fushimi will always have his heart.

He will take good care of it, Uruha knows. It hasn’t really been all that long since it was broken, and he’d be a fool to admit that it wasn’t strained even before that. But now it is healing, and it’s a fragile, delicate thing. It’s like a baby bird, held safe in Fushimi’s cupped hands. He says something like this to Fushimi one day, about his broken heart. He says it like a joke, like it’s funny, but Fushimi frowns and strokes Uruha’s face and looks at him with such determination that Uruha feels a sudden swell of affection for him.

“I’ll look after it,” he promises. “I won’t break your heart.”

“Good,” Uruha says, laughing, and he pulls him into a kiss.

A year passes since Uruha was brought to Kokugoku Fortress, then two. It isn’t all smooth sailing; he and Fushimi have the occasional argument. The biggest one is when Fushimi has to visit headquarters, or just when Uruha’s feeling bored and restless. He wants to go with him, or he wants to go out somewhere, and he can’t. The only time Uruha’s allowed out of this place is to practise the escape to Atago Station in case the fortress falls. He savours those occasions, once every six months, when they both put on disguises and walk the routes and Fushimi makes Uruha show him that he knows how to buy a train ticket. They get coffee or bubble tea afterwards and walk home with it, and it’s the closest they come to a real date. So, they argue, but Uruha likes their arguments. It tells him that this is real, that he isn’t lost in some honeymoon phase. They’re a real couple with real problems. And anyway, the arguments always get solved in the bedroom, so it’s fine.

One day, the morning after Fushimi’s returned from his quarterly visit to the Kamunabi headquarters in Tokyo, Uruha wakes up before him. They always sleep on one futon, cuddled up together, not needing any extra room. It’s a warm, sunny morning, and through the gap in the curtains a beam of light shines down on Fushimi’s sleeping face.

Uruha leans over and studies him.

He looks even younger when he’s asleep. Fushimi has no wrinkles, which makes sense, given that he isn’t even thirty yet, while Uruha’s started to notice a few creeping in around his own eyes. Fushimi’s skin is smooth, and because it’s been sunny lately his faint freckles are out. He has a sharp jaw and high cheekbones, landing him somewhere between handsome and pretty. His blonde lashes catch the sunlight and his hair is bright and silky. Uruha rests his hand against his face, and he tries to imagine what Fushimi will look like when he’s old. Will there be lines on his forehead? Will his hair lighten to white? For some reason, he can’t imagine it. In his mind, Fushimi is forever young.

His eyes flutter open and he smiles sleepily when he sees Uruha. “Morning,” he says, voice deep and raspy and tired.

Uruha wants to hear that voice every morning. He kisses him and they end up having sex. Slow, lazy morning sex, barely moving, rocking together until they both come. Whatever their future looks like, Uruha hopes that it’s simply more of this.

*

“Well, I just have a tiny apartment – one of the Kamunabi’s units,” says Fushimi. “What about you?”

“Mine’s not very big either,” Uruha says.

Fushimi grabs his hand, laces their fingers together, and squeezes. “Bigger than a studio?”

“One bedroom.”

“That could work.”

Uruha laughs. He laughs so often when he’s with Fushimi, and so freely. They’re walking around the gardens, enjoying a sudden burst of sunshine in between the late spring showers. In a few months it will be three years since Uruha came here. It feels like a lifetime and nothing at all, both at the same time.

Somehow, they’ve ended up talking about the future. Fushimi started it, saying something about wanting to see Uruha at the theatre. Then they ended up talking about their lives outside Kokugoku, and how they could make this work between them. Uruha doesn’t know if he’ll even return to the theatre, but whether or not he does he knows that he wants Fushimi there with him. He was the one who said they should live together, largely because he’s accustomed to sleeping in Fushimi’s arms and doesn’t want to stop. He knows he’s clingy, but so what? Fushimi’s clingy too. They’re both clingy.

So they’re going to live together. At Uruha’s, probably. He’s seen the Kamunabi apartments, a couple of buildings they rent out to employees. They’re small and plain, only studios, and though Fushimi’s probably added his own touches since he’s lived there, they’ll be better off in Uruha’s apartment. He doesn’t mind redecorating a little bit. They’ve already discussed vacations they want to take; to the mountains, to the beach, and Fushimi wants to visit Fushimi Inari in Kyoto, largely because of its name. Uruha agrees, because he’s never seen it and he likes the idea of them walking through all those gates, hand in hand.

“Do you want to live in the city forever?” says Fushimi.

Uruha glances at him with a slight smile. “Why?” he says. “Got something else in mind?”

Fushimi wrinkles his nose and looks away, shaking his head. Uruha pokes him in the arm.

“Tell me.”

“It’s just, I kind of used to dream about living in the countryside someday,” he says, still looking away. “Like the village I grew up in.”

“Yeah?” Uruha tugs him closer and their shoulders bump together. When Fushimi turns to him, Uruha grins. “I could live in the countryside.”

“No theatres, though.”

“What about when I retire?” says Uruha. “I don’t want to work forever.”

“Would you really like that?”

He’s never thought about it before, but then again, he’s never given much thought to his future. He joined the theatre because he fell into it, because he didn’t know what else to do with himself. He enjoys it now, but he might not when he’s older. So why not think about the countryside? It would be like here, he thinks. Big gardens and forests of tall trees, the canopy stretching out over the sky, the sun painting woodland paths with dappled gold light in the summer, the leaves fluttering down like bronze confetti in the autumn. He pictures a cottage, something out of a children’s book. Stone walls and ivy creeping up to a roof with a chimney. A garden with a vegetable patch. Birdsong every morning, waking them up with an orchestra.

“Yes,” he says. “We could have a real house out there. Somewhere with a big bed and a fireplace where we could sit together in the winter.”

“Sounds nice.”

“We could roast marshmallows,” Uruha continues, painting a picture for the both of them. “Get food at some local market. Take walks through the woods. Go hiking.”

“Picnics, too?”

Uruha beams at him. Picnics in a meadow, the smell of wildflowers in the air. He can feel it, the warmth of the sun and the blanket beneath them. Lying back against Fushimi’s chest, feeling the beating of his heart. Fushimi’s hand on his arm, stroking his skin, or in his hair, playing with it. He imagines them feeding fruit to each other, throwing grapes into the air for Fushimi to catch in his mouth. He imagines them laughing until the sun sets, and then they kiss, and there’s no one around for miles. They have the whole world to themselves.

It's a dream, too perfect to be real, but why shouldn’t it be? As they walk back to Kokugoku Fortress Uruha tells himself that one day they’ll have that, in a decade or two, their house in the countryside, their picnic in the meadow and a world that belongs to them alone.

*

In November of that year, Kokugoku Fortress falls.

And Uruha runs.

He runs because Fushimi tells him to. He runs because he has no choice. Kumeyuri has already fallen in the enemy’s hands; he can’t allow it to be contracted, too. He has to do this to protect the country, the way he tried to protect it eighteen years ago.

And he has to do this because it’s what Fushimi wanted him to do.

So, he runs. He runs and Fushimi’s words echo in his mind. We can’t let them take your life! He hears it with the pounding of his feet. The determination, the surety in his voice. He runs to Atago Station, to find the new bodyguards, only wanting his old one.

Three years, he’s spent with him. Three years of coming to know him. Three years of training with him.

Fushimi will be okay.

Uruha has to believe that.

*

I have to live a good life, for his sake.

That’s what Fushimi said about his brother, and it’s what Uruha thinks of when he sees him at the station.

They want him to go mad. That’s why they did it. They want him to lose control, so they dragged him here and posed him like a doll, his beautiful face a mess of blood and bruises and his bright golden eyes closed. They want Uruha to leap from the train and go to him and Uruha want to go to him, but he doesn’t.

You’d better survive, or we’ll curse you!

Fushimi gave his life for him.

And Uruha has to make that count.

No matter how much it hurts.

*

When Samura confronts him, it’s Fushimi he thinks of. When he draws his sword it’s him he sees and him he hears. A life cut short too soon, and Uruha can’t let it be in vain.

His heart is broken. Along all the old fault lines and new ones too, it’s shattered, but he still can’t give up. He will take his broken heart and hold it together for now, because he doesn’t have time to break.

Even though he will lose this fight – because he never did catch up to Samura, no matter how hard he tried – he will go down knowing that he did his best.

It’s all he can do.

*

Samura kills him.

Then, he blinks, and he’s alive again.

Tobimune. It really worked; Uruha never doubted him, the man who taught him how to wield a katana, who wouldn’t let him smoke, who told him he would find someone someday. The only thing he didn’t tell him was that he would lose that someone.

But, he keeps going. He keeps fighting. He finds Hakuri and Kiri, of all people, and she’s as rude and brash and wonderful as ever. And speaking of rude and brash—

“Natsuki!” he exclaims, surprised and yet not surprised.

They fight together the way they never fought together before. Two men in their grief, finally on the same side.

Is this what it took?

It’s a thought which flickers only briefly in Uruha’s mind, because then there’s Azami, and there’s the horrible familiarity of those flowers, and all he can think is that he has to live.

He has to survive.

*

Uruha survives. Natsuki survives.

Chihiro and Hakuri survive.

Azami and Shiba, Hiyuki and Kiri and almost everyone else who converges on headquarters that day and fights in the days that follow, survive.

But there are those who do not.

Samura lays eyes on his beloved, abandoned daughter for the first time. He takes what strength he can from that, to relieve the weight of the burden he won’t allow anyone else to share. He should have time to make up for what was lost, but he doesn’t.

Iori Samura will live a long life.

And Seiichi Samura’s is cut short.

*

Afterwards, it’s Azami who leads him down to the morgue.

Much like headquarters itself, Azami is hurt, and is being put back together. His arm is bandaged and strapped to his chest in a sling. Less than a week ago it was severed in the fight with Yura. Uruha can’t believe how little time has passed; it feels like a lifetime.

And as for his own injuries – they were negligible. Cuts and scrapes and bruises. Reattached fingers, so his hand is covered with a mitten of gauze. The physical pain is nothing, though. He’s been holding himself together since he fled Kokugoku Fortress and now that it’s all over – now that the threat of the Hishaku has been eliminated – he can finally let go. He can finally let his broken heart shatter into pieces, and not have to worry about scooping up those jagged fragments and carrying them along inside him.

Azami pauses in the corridor outside the morgue. It’s cold down here. There’s dust on the floor, from the rebuilding. Uruha scrapes the toe of his boot through it, this boot that doesn’t belong to him but which they gave him to put on when they brought him back from the dead.

“Do you want me to come in there with you?” he asks, voice soft.

Uruha shakes his head. This is something he has to do alone. He opens the door and lets it swing shut behind him. The lights are on; they’ve prepared for his arrival. There are two long metal tables in the middle of the room. One is empty. The other has a body on it, covered by a white sheet.

Azami told him that they held off on the cremation for him. They preserved the body, cleaning it and suturing the wounds.

It.

Not him. Not anymore. Uruha takes one step, then another. He shivers. It’s cold without his cloak, but it was all torn up in the fighting. He hasn’t been sleeping well, and he feels weak. His legs are shaking, and not from the cold.

One of the first things Uruha asked when Azami told him that Fushimi’s body was in the Kamunabi morgue was if he could have been saved. When did he die? At the train station or before? Azami said that he didn’t know. He was dead when the medics got to the station. There was nothing that could be done. It wasn’t the answer Uruha wanted; he wanted someone to blame, someone who wasn’t already gone. But now he’s too tired for that. He doesn’t want to yell at some medic, throw a fit that won’t solve anything.

He wants…

He doesn’t know what he wants. Nothing that he can have.

The sheet is so clean and white. Crisp like the snow which fell on the fortress, when they had that snowball fight. Is this his fate now, to connect everything in the present with something in the past?

Uruha takes a deep breath, and he pulls the sheet away.

There he is. A warm tear streaks down Uruha’s cheek and his vision blurs. He blinks and blinks until it’s clear again, because he wants to see him. His beautiful face – handsome, really – with that delicately tapered chin and his sharp jaw, his tanned skin, a few freckles from summer which haven’t faded yet. It’s the freckles that get him. He thinks about lying out in the grass in the sun, feeling the warmth of his skin, smiling when Fushimi combed his fingers through his hair and threaded braided grass bracelets around his wrist. They always fell off.

He touches the tip of a finger to Fushimi’s nose, tracing the spray of freckles. His skin is cold. His hair is lank and limp, pale and sad instead of bright and golden. They’ve put his bandana on him but Uruha can see the sutured wound on his temple peeking out from beneath it. He pulls the sheet lower, and more tears fall when he sees Fushimi’s collarbone and the hollow at the base of his throat. He places a hand on Fushimi’s stomach. If he lifted up his shirt he knows that he’d see more wounds, dozens of them, death by a thousand cuts. So he doesn’t look, because he doesn’t want to remember him that way.

When Uruha leaves today they’ll burn him. His ashes will be put into an urn and they’ll be given to Uruha, because Fushimi has nobody else to claim him. In fact, everything of his has been given to Uruha. Soon enough his little apartment will be cleaned out and all his possessions will be boxed up and delivered to Uruha’s door. He will have so many things that belonged to Fushimi, but not Fushimi himself, alive and dazzling and in his arms.

He rests the palm of his hand against Fushimi’s cold cheek. No parents will be receiving the news of this son’s death. It’s only Uruha, who told Azami the full truth of what they were to each other before he begged him to let him keep his ashes. They were supposed to be together afterwards, he said. They were supposed to have a future.

But there is no future. Uruha pulls the sheet back up, and before he covers him completely he leans down and presses his lips to Fushimi’s cold forehead.

“Goodbye,” he whispers.

When he leaves, he turns off the lights.

*

Uruha puts the ashes on his bedside table. They’re not in an urn after all, but a wooden box. Then, he waits for Fushimi’s things to be delivered. He doesn’t have much. Three cardboard boxes from his apartment, and one smaller box of things scavenged from the ruins of Kokugoku Fortress.

That’s it. Fushimi’s life in its entirety; a series of boxes. Uruha puts them all in his living room, packs a bag, locks up his apartment, and leaves.

He goes to the only place he can think of. He runs back to the past.

Less than two weeks after Fushimi’s death, Uruha arrives at Itsuo Shirakai’s dojo. 

*

This place has no master and no students. It’s deserted. When Uruha opens the door he’s greeted with a cloud of dust which sets him to coughing. Shirakai’s gone; Uruha knew this. Kiri’s back on her mission to teach her grandfather a lesson, and Uruha’s staying out of it. More power to her. If Shirakai had put the blade in her hand then he wouldn’t be facing it now. Not that he is facing it, hiding in the mountains as he is.

But if Uruha can’t go back to Kokugoku Fortress and Fushimi, then this is the only home he knows. He has it to himself; Shirakai hasn’t had students in a long time, and Uruha has no intention of becoming a teacher. He came here to get away.

He airs out the buildings. He washes his bedding. He sweeps and mops the floors. Cleaning stops him from thinking too much, and so he cleans until the dojo is spotless. He doesn’t even pick up a sword until he’s been there for more than a week, and when he finally does all he does is stand there. What use is training? What is he training for? There are no more wars to fight. There is no more surviving. And who is he chasing after now? Samura is dead and gone, he doesn’t need to catch up. Rokuhira’s final act in his forge was to try and undo the damage he did. The wielders are no longer the wielders. They’re just people.

Thud.

Uruha drops his sword on the ground. The dummy in front of him remains untouched.

Because, really, what’s the point?

Life becomes—

Life becomes nothing at all to Uruha. He sleeps on a futon in a minimally furnished room and eats simple meals with food bought in the nearby village. When winter comes Uruha wraps up warm and he doesn’t bother to shovel the snow from the front path, because who would come to visit him?

Nobody. Nobody comes. He doesn’t have a cell phone but there is a landline, and Chihiro calls him on occasion. He asks him if he’s okay, if he needs company. Uruha smiles when he hears Hakuri in the background. He says that he’s taking some time for himself. That he needs this.

In truth, Uruha doesn’t know what he needs. He doesn’t think that shutting himself up here is the answer, because it’s not like this is some peaceful place where he can learn to let go. Here at the dojo he’s alone with his thoughts, and chores can only distract him so much.

On winter mornings he sits by the window and cups a mug of tea in his hands. He thinks of the snowball fight he and Fushimi had, of the cold winter nights they spent snuggled up together. He thinks about waking up and seeing flurries at the window through the gap in the curtains, and nuzzling into the warmth of Fushimi’s neck, wedging his knee between his thighs. He thinks of these things and he closes his eyes, and he tries to pretend that the heat from the mug comes from Fushimi, but it doesn’t work.

That first winter at Kokugoku, it was Fushimi who pulled him out of his grief. Who can pull him out of it now?

But still Uruha keeps on going. He wakes up every morning and he wonders why he’s even bothering, but then he remembers Fushimi jabbing a finger at him and telling him to survive. He remembers Fushimi telling him how he wanted to live a good life for his brother. Uruha sighs and throws back the covers. He lives because he has to.

Not that that’s any sort of reason. Reasons don’t matter, though; the time passes all the same. The snow thaws and spring comes and once again Uruha is dragged back into the past. Springtime was when they’d seemed so endless. Fushimi and his races, running back and forth, barefoot in the grass. Laughing, wanting the men to play with him like a kid. Hair shining in the sun, the glittering gold of his eyes. Lying beside Uruha as the petals drifted down. And then that perfect moment, when he reached to pluck a stray blossom from Uruha’s hair, and he kissed him.

It was magic, that day. Uruha leading Fushimi to his room, Fushimi’s lips on him, leaving no inch of him untouched. Uruha lying back on the futon, naked, legs spread. Giving himself over to him, completely.

So what’s left? Uruha alone, standing in the yard outside the dojo, with nobody to brush away the petals which land in his hair.  

*

It’s the beginning of summer. Fushimi’s birthday is in the summer, Uruha thinks vaguely as he sits on the front step.

Was.

It was in the summer.

He’s sitting there because it’s warm, and seeking warmth is something he does without thinking. If he closes his eyes he can pretend that the touch of the sun is the touch of Fushimi’s hand. It doesn’t work, but if he tells himself that it will work then maybe one day it’ll be true. Maybe, maybe not; it’s nice to sit in the sun, either way.

It’s because of where he’s sitting that he sees the visitor approach.

Uruha lifts a hand to his forehead to shade his face and he realises who it is, silhouetted in the light. He knows that walk, those hands shoved into pockets and that tension, tightly wound, carried in the shoulders. Silver hair and blue eyes like a flash of lightning.

“Uruha.”

“Natsuki.” He stands, feeling the tension in his own shoulders because he doesn’t have the strength for an argument, for an exchange of barbed words. “It’s been a while.”

“Seven months.”

“I meant since you came to the dojo.”

Natsuki grimaces and runs a hand through his hair. “Azami sent me,” he says, as if that explains his presence.

Uruha sighs. “Do you want to come in and have some tea?”

If he’s being honest with himself, he’s expecting Natsuki to scoff and refuse him. If Azami sent him then he’ll want to be in and out. Whatever it is he came here to say, he’ll do it right here. But he doesn’t scoff. He doesn’t refuse.

Instead, Natsuki nods. “Sure,” he says, then – only a little begrudgingly – he adds, “Sounds nice.”  

They have their tea sitting at a low table by a window, and Uruha thinks bitterly that it’s not so different than when he was taken to Kokugoku Fortress, and Fushimi broke the news of Rokuhira and Ibuki’s murders to him. Then he knocked over his tea as he collapsed in a fit of sobbing. Now, though, there’s no bad news to break him. He simply grips his cup a little tighter.

“So,” he says, “Azami sent you?”

Natsuki shifts awkwardly. He isn’t kneeling like Uruha is, he’s sitting with his legs crossed, and he’s slumped forwards a little. Bad posture. If he were Fushimi, then Uruha would correct him with a tease. He isn’t Fushimi, though. “Sort of,” he says.

“Sort of?”

“We need someone to train new recruits.” Natsuki sips his tea and his jaw tightens. Too bitter? Not bitter enough? Uruha doesn’t have anything else in to drink. “For the Kamunabi.”

Uruha looks out of the window, at the fluttering leaves of a tree. New recruits, for what? The Hishaku are gone. The Enchanted Blades are gone. The Sazanami family and the Rakuzaichi, gone. Azami is in charge now, but Uruha never thought he would simply follow in the footsteps of those who came before.

“There are sorcerers out there who don’t know how to control their powers,” Natsuki continues. “Who don’t know how to stop someone else from controlling them.”

Now, Uruha looks back at him. Char Kyonagi’s mother, the woman Hakuri told him about. They could control their powers, but not what others sought to do with them. Losing control makes people scared. Maybe Azami is doing something worthwhile after all.

But what do they need him for?

“I’m not a fighter,” says Uruha. “Not anymore.”

“The Kamunabi isn’t just about fighting.”

“Mm.” Uruha’s been gone too long to argue. He doesn’t know what’s changed. Seven months. It feels like much more than that. It hasn’t even been a year since he lost Fushimi. Last summer they were lounging on Uruha’s balcony, shirtless, drinking lemonade. When Fushimi kissed him he tasted sweet and tart at once. Uruha shivers; the tea is bitter. “I don’t think so.”

“Whatever.”

They sit in silence for a little while, as Natsuki drinks his tea and Uruha ignores his, not wanting it anymore, wondering if Natsuki will come back after he leaves today. Uruha wouldn’t ask him; he knows what the answer would be.

When Natuski’s finished his tea he stands up. Uruha does, too, to show him the door. Grief or no grief, he knows how to be polite. When he wants to be, anyway. But Natsuki doesn’t head for the door. Instead he folds his arms and lifts his chin.

“I knew him, you know,” he says.

Uruha blinks. “Who?”

“Fushimi.” Natsuki looks around the room, turning slowly. “I figured you’d have pictures, or something.”

“I don’t—they’re back at my apartment.” Uruha’s jaw tightens. “In the city.”

“I figured.”

“What do you mean, you knew him?”

“He was a Kamunabi captain,” Natsuki points out. “We worked together a couple of times. We weren’t friends or anything, but—yeah. I knew him. And I get it.”

Uruha look at him, and he looks at the room they’re standing in. Natsuki’s hair is the colour of a storm just before the sun breaks through, and this room is nothing but a hollow, dusty shell.

He doesn’t belong here.

“Okay,” Uruha says softly, in a voice which doesn’t feel like his own. “I’ll do it.”

*

The Kamunabi that Uruha comes back to isn’t the Kamunabi he knew before. The old guard has been ousted, those who survived pushed into an early retirement. None of them protested too much; not when it was Soshiro Azami who did the asking.

There’s a lot of talk about change, about how things will be different now. Azami tells him this as he takes him on a brief tour of the rebuilt headquarters, but only the upper floors. The morgue is still down below, and maybe Azami doesn’t know what to say to him if he takes him down there. That was the last time Uruha was here, he realises. The thought makes him queasy, the memory of his lips pressed against Fushimi’s cold forehead.

He staggers, puts a hand against the wall.

“Uruha?” says Azami.

“I don’t need to know all of this,” says Uruha. “About what you’re doing. I get it. You’re not the bad guys.”

Azami sighs and pats him on the shoulder. “I want our people to have basic skills with weapons, and know how to augment them with spirit energy,” he says, moving swiftly on.

Uruha nods. “That’s what Natsuki said.” Though in actual fact, on the drive back to Tokyo, Natsuki had said very little. “I can teach them.”

“Are you sure you’re ready?” says Azami, but when Uruha doesn’t answer he shakes his head and holds up his hands. “Sorry. Stupid question.”

A couple of people walk by in Kamunabi uniforms. Uruha doesn’t recognise them, though they clearly know who he is. Their voices drop to a whisper and they move on. “When do I start?”

“How’s tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow’s fine.”

“Need a ride home?”

Uruha closes his eyes and breathes out. The echo of footsteps in this place seems so loud compared to the dojo, where the only sounds were the creaks of the floorboards and the birdsong outside. “I don’t,” he says. “I’m going to walk.”

Back at his apartment, Uruha is once again confronted by dust. He manages to kill the afternoon making his place liveable again, but then he has to deal with what he left behind.

Fushimi’s boxes are still in the living room. His ashes are still on his bedside table. It’s been a long day, though, and so maybe it’s a mercy that Uruha’s exhausted. He looks at the ashes when he curls up in bed, and he falls asleep almost immediately.

The next morning, he’d awoken by the sounds of the city. He eats a quick breakfast of cereal he hurriedly bought at the convenience store yesterday, and he decides that the boxes can wait until the weekend.

It’s time to start his life again.

Or try to, at least.

*

At first, people are a little awed by him. The new recruits, the ones he’s never met before, the ones who only know him for the part he played in both wars; Seitei and the war they fought against the Hishaku. They all grip their wooden katana too tightly and they splinter when they try to let the spirit energy flow through them.

But quickly – more quickly than Uruha would have expected – his presence becomes normal. He should’ve expected it; Subaru’s out there running his restaurant like none of it ever happened, so Uruha in the Kamunabi is really no great shock. It wears off after a couple of weeks, and Uruha develops a routine. He gets up in the morning, rolling onto his side before he swings his legs over the edge of the bed so he won’t see Fushimi’s ashes. He gets dressed and ignores the boxes in the living room. He eats breakfast on the way to work. He teaches new recruits and Kamunabi veterans who want to keep their edge. He’s done in the afternoon, and he heads home.

The anniversary of Fushimi’s death takes him unawares. He steps out of his building and feels the November chill and he thinks, Oh. That’s how long it’s been. He has a cell phone now, so he calls Azami and tells him that he won’t be coming into work today. Azami tells him to take as long as he needs.

Before Uruha goes back inside, he heads to the convenience store. His feet carry him, his mind somewhere else. He only comes back to himself when he’s standing in front of the refrigerators at the back, one hand reaching out, lines and lines of bottles in front of him.

It would be so much easier, to get through the day this way. It would hurt at first, because he would be thinking of that evening on his balcony at Kokugoku Fortress, when everything was softened and fuzzy at the edges, when he’d come so close to just being reckless, when Fushimi had bared himself, shown Uruha his past. All the other times, too; drinks together at sunset, for celebrations or just because they could. Laughing together, clinking their bottles. The taste of beer or sake on Fushimi’s tongue, sharp, burning deliciously at the back of his throat. Yes, it would hurt to relive all of that, but then—

But then he could let go.

He could drink and drink until blackness closes in at the edges of his vision and he could keep going until it doesn’t hurt at all anymore, until he forgets that he’s here alone and there is a whole world out there, a whole future that they were supposed to have together that got cut short.

It would be so easy.

Uruha lets his hand drop to his side. As much as he wants to do it, he can’t help but think of Ibuki, and of Natsuki, walking up to him, lonely in the dojo. It’s picturing the look on Natsuki’s face if he found out that Uruha drank himself into oblivion that stops him. He would hate him – truly, not just the shallow hate that he’s always wielded like a weapon, but a hatred baked deep into his bones – and Uruha doesn’t want that. Not when he was the one who brought him back here.

He walks home empty handed.

Later, when Uruha’s spent much of the day in bed, staring out of the door of his room to the boxes in the living room and wondering what’s inside, wondering if he’ll ever find out, there’s a knock at the door. Uruha groans and staggers down the hall, legs stiff from lying down for hours on end.

“Uruha,” Azami says when he answers.

Uruha blinks. He wasn’t expecting it to be Azami, but that begs the question; who was he expecting it to be?

“Your place is on my way home,” he says. Uruha steps aside to let him in, and when Azami slips off his shoes he catches sight of the boxes. “I thought I’d come and say hello.”

“You’re checking in on me,” Uruha says.

Azami laughs and nods. “Well, yes,” he admits, looking around. “You know, this place is pretty small. We have some nicer units available in one of the buildings near headquarters.”

First they get him back to Tokyo, and now they want him to move. Uruha can’t think of any reason not to, though. He has no particular attachment to this place. He asks a few perfunctory questions about the apartments and says he’ll take one.

Within a week, Uruha’s moving. It doesn’t take him long to pack. A truck ferries his things over to the new apartment, just a short walk from headquarters, which will save him time in the mornings. It’s a one bedroom like before, but slightly nicer. More modern. It’s fine, he supposes. He puts Fushimi’s ashes on his bedside tables and Fushimi’s boxes in the living room.

“I know,” he says to no one, because he’s alone. “But—but not yet.”

He wishes he had photos of him. They took a few, at Kokugoku Fortress, on disposable cameras that one of the men had, but they all burned when the fortress was destroyed. He curses himself for not keeping one in his pocket, for not carrying some reminder of him with him. There is a box from Kokugoku, but he can’t open it, because what if he does and there are no pictures? It’s easier to ignore, to pretend.

One day, he gets the bright idea to print a picture of Fushimi’s Kamunabi ID. He’s in one of the offices, trying to get a computer to work, when Azami comes in to ask him what he’s doing. When Uruha tells him, he sighs, but he helps him do it. He prints off a little photo, from when Fushimi got promoted to captain. He’s twenty four, and in the photo he’s beaming at the camera. They’re not supposed to do that for ID pictures, Azami says, but they let it slide. Uruha wants to sob looking at it. He can see the dimple in his cheek, the brightness of his eyes in the camera’s flash.

After work that day, Azami takes him to a store to buy a picture frame, then they get coffee. Uruha gets the feeling that he’s being babysat, but then Azami asks him if he thinks he’ll ever feel up to going on missions. Uruha winces.

“I’m only here to train people,” he says.

“Sorry,” says Azami, sipping his coffee – black and scalding hot – and wincing. “I figured since you came all the way back here, you might—I don’t know. Have some ambition to lead a squad, or something.”

Uruha frowns. “You asked me to come back.”

“No, we didn’t.”

Natsuki said that Azami sent him. Uruha never thought to question it, but he’s questioning it now. He runs a finger around the rim of his cup and he thinks of himself back then, alone in the dojo, footsteps soft and silent in the empty rooms. Is it all that different now, though? Why would Natsuki do that, if they didn’t need him back here?

“Don’t worry, I won’t ask again,” Azami says, like nothing’s wrong. “You’re too good at training people, anyway.”

“Mhm,” Uruha hums, but he’s not really listening. He’s thinking of Fushimi, smiling for the camera, and of a break in the storm, Natsuki at his door.

*

Since he came back to Tokyo, Uruha’s path hasn’t crossed with Natsuki’s very much. He’s seen him a couple of times and said hello, but that’s about it. Usually he gets a grunt in response.

Now, Uruha is seeking him out.

He doesn’t know why. He isn’t planning to talk to him, because Natsuki probably won’t want to anyway. But for some reason he wants to find him, to look at him and think about why Natsuki came to him that day, and why he lied about it. When he’s finished with his training he takes the stairs – not the elevator, he doesn’t want to risk having to make small talk – down to the training room on Underground Level 3. He knows he’ll find him there because Kiri mentioned it to him offhandedly, that it’s always been his favourite place to train. She has a squad of her own now, too, and she’s often too busy to hang out much with Uruha. In a way he’s thankful for that. He’s not sure he’d be great at this whole hanging out thing these days.

Uruha hears Natsuki before he sees him. Through the walls comes the muffled thumping of the music he listens to, aggressive and angry. A smile touches Uruha’s lips. Natsuki has changed, but not very much.

Or has he?

The door to the training room is ajar, and Uruha pushes it just a little wider so that he can see in. Natsuki has his back to him, and despite the volume of the music, he’s wearing headphones. A shelf of logs hides the machine which fires them from view; he’ll have no reason to look at the door.

Uruha leans against the frame, and he watches.

He’s seen Natsuki train, all those years ago. There was such an anger to him, a furious need to prove himself. Though Uruha never got the chance to see him train after he joined the Kamunabi, and after Ibuki was murdered, he suspects that if he did he would have seen more of the same. Anger, down to the bone. Anger at Ibuki and Rokuhira and Uruha, anyone who dared to leave him behind. Anger at the Hishaku, that they would take his brother from him before they had the chance to be the Misaka Brothers again. A part of him is expecting to see that same anger now, despite what they both went through when they fought the Hishaku.

But, he doesn’t.

When Natsuki swings his sword he isn’t swinging it like a brute, slicing through the air like he can decapitate the wind itself. He strikes fast, like lightning, pivoting on the ball of his foot to let the momentum carry him forwards. When he cuts through the log he doesn’t rattle the bones of his arms, doesn’t hurt himself for the sake of strength. He trusts in his own power and that’s what gives him the clean hit. The two halves of the log fall to the floor and Natsuki spins rather than staggers. It’s beautiful, Uruha thinks, the way he fights now.

It's beautiful, and it reminds him a little of the way he fights.

He wonders if he’s simply returning the favour by being here; if Natsuki’s been watching him. Or maybe he hasn’t, and this is something he’s pulled up from his memories, something he hung onto for all those years.

Though Uruha thinks that Natsuki’s been at this for a while – and the evidence is the split logs littering the floor – he doesn’t seem tired. His skin doesn’t shine with sweat and his breathing is steady. He looks like the warrior he so desperately wanted to be. Uruha tilts his head as Natsuki squats by the log he just cut and runs a finger over it. He narrows his eyes and gives an almost imperceptible shake of his head. Though the cut looked excellent to Uruha, clearly Natsuki isn’t satisfied. He isn’t angry about it, though. Back when they were teenagers Natsuki would have yelled and taken his anger out on someone, and kept on going, making the same mistakes over and over, forcing his way through the problem rather than think.

He has changed. Instead of unleashing his fury on the logs Natsuki stays squatting, considering, and when he stands up he walks slowly over to the machine to load it again. He takes a deep breath, centres himself. When the log shoots out he swings his sword, and it cuts through the wood like butter.

This isn’t the man Uruha once knew. Oh, there is still anger in him – Uruha’s sure that he still has that chip on his shoulder – but it’s lessened now. Softened. Time or blood has eased it, even if only a little.

He can’t help it, really, when he starts to compare. When was the last time he paid such attention to someone, took them in? Natsuki is shirtless and his torso is crisscrossed with scars old and new, a lifetime of fighting written on his body. His muscles tense and flex as he trains, his physique familiar, those toned muscles and that lightly tanned skin. He isn’t quite as tanned as Fushimi was, but still more so than Uruha. He shouldn’t be doing this, Uruha knows that, but it’s too hard not to. They do look alike. Natsuki is taller, though that might just be his shoes. His hair is different, and his eyes. His lip is pierced. But still, archery and swordplay work similar muscles, and Uruha can’t help but remember the days when he showed Fushimi how to hold his katana, how to swing it, how to move like a dancer.

Fushimi was sunlight and Natsuki is a storm. Uruha wonders if he would ever want to spar with him. He decides not to ask. When Natsuki pulls off his headphones and runs his fingers through his silky hair, inadvertently fluffing it up with static, Uruha turns and leaves.

*

That night, Uruha stares at the photo of Fushimi. He’s put it on his bedside table, with the ashes. It’s lit up by the moon, which makes his hair look more white than blonde. But the smile, though, the smile is there. Uruha’s pillow is just a little damp beneath his cheek, because a few tears escaped before he managed to blink them away.

When Samura confronted him at Senkutsuji Temple, Uruha told him that he couldn’t throw away the gift that Fushimi gave him; that he allowed him to live, for just a little bit longer.

He still can’t throw it away. And he won’t, not ever. Still, though, when he looks at the photo – at that bright smile and the dimple in his cheek, his golden eyes and messy hair, the youthful hope painted on his face – he thinks that he should be here. It’s not right, that he isn’t. It’s not fair.

All Uruha can do is go to sleep, and dream of the future they imagined together.

*

Uruha’s tidying up the wooden katana after a class where he taught some of the existing Kamunabi members how to better control their spirit energy when putting it into a weapon. He’s in an odd mood, because Kiri joined in and he pulled her up to the front to be his assistant. She was as brash as ever and he laughed a lot, and the class was fun. He felt light and happy, and when it was over and everyone filed out of the room his gut twisted. Kiri waved and said goodbye and he had to swallow the lump in his throat. How can he be happy, when Fushimi isn’t here? Fushimi wanted him to be happy, though. He wanted him to live, and isn’t being happy a part of that?

It's a betrayal and not a betrayal, both at once, and he doesn’t know how to feel. He heads out of the building, head down, trying to work it out, and because he isn’t looking where he’s going he walks right into Natsuki.

“Watch it!” Natsuki snaps.

“Sorry,” Uruha says tiredly, stepping back and holding his hands up; surrender. He doesn’t have the energy for Natsuki to hate him right now.

Natsuki looks him up and down. It’s winter, so Uruha’s wearing his cloak and he has the collar pulled up high. Natsuki’s wearing a jacket not unlike the one he used to wear, and a stripy scarf. “What is it?”

“What?”

“Something’s up.” Natsuki shoves his hands in his pockets. “What is it?”

Uruha shakes his head. “I’m just tired,” he says, which is true enough.

“Hmph,” grunts Natsuki. “Didn’t you move recently?”

Uruha points with ungloved hands – cold hands – down the street. “Into one of the Kamunabi buildings.”

“Me too,” says Natsuki. “I live in the next one over. Might as well walk together.”

It’s an olive branch, in a way. Uruha nods and they set off, hands in pockets, eyes ahead. They don’t talk as they walk. Uruha glances at Natsuki, snatching sideways looks at him. The sun is setting early because it’s winter, and his hair catches the rich light in flashes of gold. Even his eyes seem warmer. A bad idea; Uruha’s comparing again. He looks forward, and less than ten minutes later he’s at his building. Natsuki pauses just briefly enough to lift a hand.

“Bye,” he says. He doesn’t wait for a response, and Uruha watches him leave. His building is just a couple of minutes from his, and he’s surprised he hasn’t seen him around. Maybe that was purposeful, but then what changed today?

Sighing, Uruha heads up to his apartment, and the boxes and the ashes that wait for him.

A new routine somehow emerges from this. Uruha doesn’t do it on purpose, and he doubts that Natsuki would be so deliberate, but almost every day they seem to bump into each other as they leave the building. The only exception is when Natsuki’s squad is out on a mission, and Uruha usually hears people talking about it when that happens. If he doesn’t, then he waits for a couple of minutes at the door. If Natsuki doesn’t show up, he leaves.

They never exchange more than a few words. Sometimes they don’t talk at all. It’s nice, the silence, and Uruha can’t quite put his finger on why. Maybe it’s because he likes having someone beside him, but there’s no pressure for him to unload. Natsuki isn’t expecting him to share his troubles. He isn’t expecting him to share anything.

As well as walking with Natsuki, Uruha keeps watching him. Not every day, and not keeping to any particular routine. He doesn’t want to get discovered, because even if Natsuki’s less angry these days, that’ll surely provoke him. He can’t help it, though. He just—he wants to see him. He wants to look at him.

And yes—he wants to compare.

Because they are similar. Sharp jaws and high cheekbones. Rippling muscles and smooth skin, marred only by the scars. Bright eyes and messy hair. This is going to lead to disaster, he knows it, so one day he tries to focus on the differences. Natsuki’s hair is silver to Fushimi’s gold; cool to his warmth. His eyes are a bright, electric blue while Fushimi’s were the colour of honey, or dappled sunlight. He fights differently, because he was taught by his brother and then the Counter Sorcery Land Forces, while Fushimi was brought up by a ragtag group of street sorcerers when he wasn’t being sent back to the orphanages. But then that gave him a wildness in his fighting, and Natsuki has that too. There’s some of Uruha’s grace in both of them; Natsuki from seeing him train – as well as Samura and Shirakai – and Fushimi from Uruha’s teachings. He watches Natsuki, and he compares him to what he’s lost, and then when he gets home he picks up his single photo of Fushimi and stares at it, and thinks of what’s missing. The dimple; the smile; the freckles. He strokes the glass with the tip of a finger.

How can he think he could ever be replaced?

Uruha forces himself to stop for a while. It’s weird anyway, and the last thing he wants is to get caught when he’s lurking outside Natsuki’s training room. Kiri sometimes goes to talk to him; she could easily catch him, and he knows her well enough to know that she wouldn’t keep such an excellent piece of gossip to herself.

She even prods him about just walking home with Natsuki. “Are you guys friends yet?” she says, taking the prodding quite literally and jabbing him in the arm.

“I don’t know,” says Uruha.

“You hang out every day.”

“I wouldn’t call it hanging out.”

Kiri rolls her eyes and scoffs at him. “Then maybe you should.”

She’s teasing, as she usually is, but it proves to be something of a portent that day. It’s a rainy evening at the tail end of winter. Natsuki has his hood up and Uruha has an umbrella. They’re walking home as they usually do, when all of a sudden Natsuki pauses. It’s only for a moment, but it’s enough that Uruha looks up, to see what made him stop.

It’s a bar.

They must have walked past it countless times, but for some reason it caught Natsuki’s eye. They have string lights in the window, and Uruha doesn’t remember seeing those before, so maybe that’s what made it so noticeable. Natsuki stays quiet and keeps walking, so Uruha reaches out and taps him on the shoulder.

“Want to grab a drink?” he says.

Natsuki shrugs. “Fine.”

The bar isn’t big and it isn’t busy. They sit on stools and each order a beer. Uruha swings his legs and Natsuki hunches over. He doesn’t say a work, and neither does Uruha. He thinks that this will be just an extension of their walk, something done in total silence, but when they’ve finished their beers Natsuki signals to the bartender to bring them two more.

Uruha’s tolerance is nothing now. He drinks his second beer too quickly and he can feel it immediately, the slight slowing of his reactions, the thing that stops him from saying whatever comes to mind flickering and fading. He swivels on his stool, an elbow on the bar, and pouts at Natsuki.

“What?” Natsuki says without looking at him.

“Why do you hate me so much?” he demands, petulant.

“I don’t hate you.”

Uruha grumbles and tries again. “Why did you hate me?”

“Because,” says Natsuki, narrowing his eyes and glaring at him, “I think you’re an asshole.”

“Just because I call you Natsuki?” Uruha rests his chin on his hand. “What’s so wrong with that? I called your brother Ibuki.”

“You called him Mr Ibuki,” says Natsuki.

“We were the same age.”

“I’m older than you,” says Natsuki. “And Azami’s the same age as me, but you never called him Soshiro.”

He’s got a point, Uruha supposes, but Azami was a colonel even back then, and too intimidating for Uruha to really talk to so informally. He was never going to call him by his first name when everyone else called him Executioner.

Though that was never really the reason, no matter how many times Uruha’s tried to explain it away. “I thought we could be friends,” he says. “I thought you might understand me.”

“And why’s that, Uruha?” Natsuki says with a sigh, putting too much emphasis on his name. He takes a long drink of beer; this clearly isn’t a conversation he wanted to have.

“Because we were the same,” mumbles Uruha. “I was always chasing Samura. You were always chasing Ibuki.”

“Chasing.” Natsuki shakes his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I wasn’t trying to disrespect you,” says Uruha, but after a pause he adds, “It was funny, though, when you got so mad at me.”

“You’re a pain in the ass.”

“Were you seriously happy when you thought I was dead?” Uruha says. Kiri told him this; that Natsuki had said Good riddance when he heard about Senkutsuji Temple, but that he said it through gritted teeth, and went straight to the training room afterwards. Uruha knows as well that he’s jumping ahead, going from when they were kids to just before the attack on headquarters, but he’s going to blame the beer for that.

“Yes,” Natsuki says immediately. “You were a thorn in my side. You still are.”

“We should’ve been friends,” complains Uruha.

Natsuki pushes his half-finished bottle away. “You need to go home,” he says, too firmly for Uruha to argue.

They slip off their stools and head for the door. When Natsuki hands Uruha his umbrella, he pauses, scowling and looking out at the rain. Then it passes, whatever it was, and they leave. Uruha doesn’t think much of it until they reach his building. He feels decidedly more sober now, and a little embarrassed for so easily blurting out what he was thinking.

“No,” says Natsuki.

“What?”

He turns away, rain landing on his hood, dripping down his back. “When you asked before if I was happy when I thought you were dead,” he says. “The answer’s no. I wasn’t.”

“Oh.”

“Next time we grab a drink—” Natsuki turns back to him and fixes him with a venomous glare, “—you’re only having one.”  

*

And so Uruha and Natsuki start having drinks together.

They don’t talk much. Not at first, anyway. But little by little the words start to come, because Natsuki asks Uruha what he meant when he said they were both chasing after people. Uruha picks at the label on his beer – the only one he’ll have, sticking to Natsuki’s rule – and he tells him that everything Samura had seemed to come so easily to him, that it was like he was miles and miles away from Uruha and all Uruha wanted was to reach those dizzying heights. It was the same with Rokuhira, he said. To see these people with something that he didn’t have – he had to keep chasing after them. He had to keep trying.

He tells him that he thought he saw the same thing in Natsuki. It was so obvious that he had something to prove, he says. To Uruha it was as clear as day that when Natsuki looked at Ibuki he was looking at the person he wanted to be.

“They were all on pedestals, though,” Uruha says quietly. “They were chasing something, too.”

Natsuki has listened to it all without interrupting. Uruha watches his face, looking for the anger which comes to the surface so easily, but this time he can’t read him. His eyebrows, a darker grey than the silver of his hair, are furrowed. He pulls his sleeve up over his hand and rubs at the ring of water his bottle of beer has left on the bar.

“Why’d you never just say that?” he says. “Instead of the whole, we should be friends because we’re the same age thing?”

“You’d have gotten mad about that, too,” Uruha says with a shrug. “I just wanted to be your friend, Natsuki.”

“Mm,” grunts Natsuki. Uruha’s a little surprised that he didn’t get mad now. Saying that he was chasing after his brother – if he’d said that even last year then Natsuki would have told him where to shove it. Called him names, glared at him like he wished he was dead.

Time has changed him, Uruha thinks. He saw it when he watched him train and he can see it now. Instead of letting his anger out right away, taking everything as an insult, Natsuki’s considering what he’s saying. Considering that maybe Uruha and the rest of the world isn’t out to get him.

“You really pissed me off, y’know,” he says.

“I know,” says Uruha. “I didn’t know back then, though.”

“Idiot.” Natsuki swigs his beer. “Fine, then.”

“Fine what?”

Natsuki looks at him sideways. When he stops frowning, the ghost of the line between his eyebrows remains. Just like the scars left on his body from his fights, his anger has marked him, too. “We can be friends.”

“Oh.” Uruha blinks at him. He can’t hide the smile which tugs at his lips, so he turns away. “Good. Great. Uh, thanks.”

“Whatever.”

They finish their drinks in silence, and when Uruha glances at Natsuki, he sees that on his face too, is the slightest little smile.

*

Natsuki and Uruha. Uruha and Natsuki.

Friends.

It only took them two decades. Two decades and too many deaths to think about. Too many scars and too much hurt, but they finally did it. Uruha broke through the armour and Natsuki let his anger slip through his fingers like fine sand.

Their drinks become a common occurrence. Not every day, and they only ever have one, but at least once a week they stop by that little bar with its string lights in the window and they sit side by side on the stools. Uruha always swings his legs and Natsuki always sits hunched over. One of these days Uruha will summon the courage to correct his posture, to tell him to sit up straight, and Natsuki will either huff and hunch over even more or he’ll listen, but he’ll pretend that he isn’t listening.

Sometimes they talk and sometimes they don’t. When they talk it’s usually about the easy things; Natsuki’s missions, or how Kiri’s doing. They poke fun at Azami and Shiba. Uruha tells Natsuki how the new recruits are shaping up. Things like that. Things that are easy to talk about. Winter passes and spring comes, and when the icy sidewalks thaw Natsuki sheds his jacket and goes around sleeveless again. Uruha thinks it’s still too cold for that and he teases him, calling him a show-off. Natsuki’s cheeks turn pink and he tells him to fuck off.  

Uruha feels the warmth in his own cheeks. He turns away, looking from Natsuki in the low light of the bar to a shadowed corner instead.

There’s a day in the middle of spring, the smell of new life perfuming even the air of the city, when Natsuki isn’t waiting for Uruha at the door. That’s odd, because Uruha didn’t think he had a mission today. Instead of leaving by himself, Uruha decides to go and find him. He trots down the stairs and along the corridors to Natsuki’s training room, and instead of playing voyeur like he’s done in the past he knocks on the door. He’s in there; Uruha can hear the music. It stops when he knocks, and Natsuki winces when he sees him.

“Lost track of time,” he says. His skin shines with sweat and his bare chest heaves as he catches his breath.

“I can wait,” says Uruha.

Natsuki nods. He turns back to the room, then glances over his shoulder at him. “Do you want to train with me sometime?”

Uruha’s breath catches in his throat. He remembers when Fushimi asked him to spar, throwing the question out there like a casual thing. How he beat him that first time and never again, except for that one other time when he fought dirty and kissed him. Every day they trained together, wooden blades clashing, or grappling each other to the floor. He remembers the roughness of the tatami against his skin or the feel of Fushimi straining against him to get out of a pin. Then they would strip down and bathe together and Uruha would have to try not to stare at him until he stopped trying, and he always stared at him, and they kissed in the hot springs and dragged each other to bed.

“I don’t know,” Uruha chokes out. “I—I’m not sure.”

“That’s fine,” Natsuki says, nonplussed. “Go wait upstairs.”

That’s far more gracious than Uruha would have expected. The old Natsuki never would have taken that so well. But then again, the old Natsuki never would have asked. Uruha takes the elevator back up and he sits down in the lobby to wait for Natsuki, and by the time he comes and finds him Uruha’s managed to steady himself.

He doesn’t just want a drink tonight; he needs it. He doesn’t say this to Natsuki, but he suspects that he can probably tell by the way he signals to the bartender for a beer before he’s even taken a seat. They don’t talk much that evening; Natsuki tells him a bit about an upcoming mission he has, to check on suspicious activity in some shady part of town, but he doesn’t say anything about Uruha turning him down for a sparring session.

Oddly enough, that makes Uruha want to do it. Maybe because it makes it seem like less of a thing, that he offered and thought nothing of it, that he hasn’t brought it up again. Uruha picks and picks at the label of his beer bottle until the bartender takes it away from him and pours it into a glass so he can’t make any more of a mess, and he thinks about it when he gets home, too.

Fushimi grins at him from the photo. He wanted him to train because it would help to pull him out of his grief as much as it would keep him in fighting form. Uruha’s keeping his skills sharp when he trains the new recruits, but sparring with someone on his own level is different. And it doesn’t have to mean anything.

The next day, he and Natsuki are halfway down the street when Uruha turns to him.

“I’ve thought about it,” he says. “I’d like to train with you.”

Natsuki shrugs. “Whatever,” he says. “Come by when you feel like it.”

Typical. Uruha wants to laugh, but he restrains himself. He gives it a couple of days, then he goes down to the training room and Natsuki shows him in. They won’t be cutting through any logs today; Natsuki puts away his katana and grabs a couple of wooden ones, and with little preamble they get right into it.

Natsuki almost gets the better of him at first. Uruha’s become used to making his movements very deliberate so that the people he’s training can see what he’s doing, but that won’t fly in a real fight. Still, he’s Yoji Uruha; he adjusts quickly. He and Natsuki spin and sidestep, dodging one another’s strikes and lunging in for the kill. Their blades clash, over and over. The room echoes with the sound of it and they swing for each other before springing back, reassessing, and striking again.

On and on it goes. Uruha grows tired and tries to hide it; so does Natsuki. He can see it, his reddening cheeks and the way he scowls, getting more and more frustrated. Uruha is anything but frustrated, though. His muscles ache and it’s a good ache. He’s missed this. He’s missed it so much.

“All those new recruits have made you soft,” Natsuki taunts.

“Soft?” Uruha shoots back. “You still can’t land a hit.”

“I’m going easy on you.”

“Oh, that explains a lot.” Uruha laughs, spinning and striking, dancing and trusting his movements to carry him through. “Show me what you’ve got.”

“You couldn’t handle what I’ve got.”

“Try me!”

They trade more blows and more jabs, blades whistling through the air, and Uruha wonders if one of them will ever scrape a win.

Eventually, though, when they hear the footsteps of the night guard making the rounds outside, they call it a tie. Natsuki is more reluctant than Uruha to do this, but he has no choice. Neither of them will give even an inch, and Uruha is absurdly happy to discover that Natsuki has caught up to him the way he always wanted to, even if he never would have admitted it.

He clasps his sweaty hand in his and beams at him. “Great fighting,” he says. “It was—it was beautiful.”

Natsuki’s face turns even redder. “Fuck off,” he says, but his heart isn’t in it and he’s trying not to smile.

When they stop at the bar for a couple of well earned beers, Uruha tells Natsuki to sit up straight. He grumbles and he rolls his eyes, and he sits up straight.

*

What am I doing?

Uruha lies on his back and stares up at the ceiling. That was flirting, wasn’t it? Back in the training room, and at the bar? When they had their drinks they kept at it, making those little jabs until they were done, and when they walked home Uruha elbowed Natsuki and grinned at him, and when Natsuki smiled back—

It stirred something in him. Natsuki’s smiles are so rare, especially this kind. It was a real smile. He showed his teeth, and he smiled with his eyes. It wasn’t a smirk or a baring of fangs. It was real, and Uruha liked it.

More than a year has passed since Fushimi died. It still feels too soon. He hasn’t even opened those fucking boxes, and here he is flirting with somebody else. He didn’t even think about it. He wasn’t trying to flirt with him, but the words just came out, because it was so easy. Sparring together; drinking together; walking together – all of it was easy, and it felt right. It felt like where he was supposed to be.

And Uruha doesn’t know how to deal with that.

So, he does the only thing he can do. He decides not to deal with it.

*

It goes on for a while, this thing that Uruha doesn’t want to deal with.

The trees blossom and the petals fall, replaced with new leaves, delicate and small and as bright on the branches as tiny green gems. Uruha keeps walking home with Natsuki and they sometimes get drinks. Sometimes Uruha forgets himself and he teases him, and Natsuki teases him back, and flashes a smile, and Uruha’s heart turns somersaults in his chest and flutters away like a moth desperately beating at a closed window to reach the moon. They spar occasionally, but there is no routine to it. Natsuki never asks him to. Every so often, when Uruha has a spare moment, he wanders down to the training room on Underground Level 3 and Natsuki lets him in, and Uruha gets lost in the joy of fighting, that old joy that he first found as a child.

Natsuki’s found it, too. Before it was rage that carried him through, but Uruha can see the pure exhilaration in his eyes now when they train together, the love of it. It makes him happy to see that in him, this new Natsuki who can let himself live, but now the problem is that Uruha’s the one who can’t do that. That’s why he keeps it to a minimum, these sparring sessions, but he can’t seem to give them up completely.

There are those occasions too, when Uruha walks downstairs to the training room but he can’t bring himself to knock. Instead he watches through a crack in the door again, like he used to, as Natsuki slices through log after log and music blares out from his headphones. He likes that Natsuki has his back to him while he does this, likes to watch the flex of his shoulders and the stretch of his spine, the long lines of his limbs. He watches, for a little while, then slips away, like nothing happened.

He can’t keep dancing around it. As much as Uruha wants to avoid thinking about what this is, he knows. When he lies in bed at night, on his side and gazing out of the window at the gleaming lights of the skyscrapers all around so he doesn’t have to look at Fushimi on his bedside table, he whispers it to the moon, to himself. You have feelings for Natsuki. As if breathing those words into his pillow will make it somehow easier to deal with. He doesn’t know when the feelings took root. Was it only when they sparred, when they traded blows with their swords and their words? Or before that, when Natsuki came to find him at the dojo when nobody told him to? Or was long, long ago, before any of this, before the war, back when they were young, no more than a couple of kids with their hearts set on triumph?

Maybe that’s why he can’t deal with it. For something like that to lie dormant in him and for him not to realise – it’s unthinkable. Uruha has always believed that he knows himself. But he didn’t know that. And what about Fushimi? No matter when Uruha’s feelings for Natsuki – seedlings though they might have been – first stirred in him, there will always be the shadow of Fushimi hanging over him. More than a shadow; Fushimi is the sun, dazzling and golden and blazing bright in the long grey fog of Uruha’s grief. He was everything that Uruha needed life to be, poured into the shape of a man.

That’s the problem, really. Uruha isn’t over Fushimi and he never will be, so how could he be with somebody else?

*

If Uruha could stop and think – really think – about what Fushimi would tell him to do, then it might not be so hard.

But he can’t. How can he, when he can’t even open the boxes?

*

It’s raining one morning, when Uruha walks to work. The skies are blanketed with a thick grey cloud and the sidewalks are wet with puddles. He hunches beneath his umbrella and listens to the pitter patter of the drizzle coming down. It’s a day like any other day, though a little cold for the beginning of summer. Soon enough it will be Fushimi’s birthday. Thirty one, when he was dead at twenty nine. Not long ago it was the anniversary of that beautiful spring day when Fushimi ran through the grass and plucked a petal from his hair and they’d finally plummeted over the edge, kissing and sleeping together and becoming something new. When that day dawned Uruha had come home from work and fingered a loose piece of tape on one of the boxes, the one of Fushimi’s things from Kokugoku Fortress, and he’d almost opened it. He’d given the tape a tug, and it had started to come away, but then Uruha smelled the slightest hint of smoke and his eyes had stung with tears and he couldn’t do it.

He will find the strength, he keeps telling himself, but not yet.

The rainy day has Uruha feeling maudlin. At noon he wanders out to get lunch from a café and the rain is getting worse, coming in a downpour now. His feet get wet, so he has to kick off his boots and his socks and spend the afternoon barefoot while they dry by the radiator. It makes him miss the rainy days at Kokugoku, curling up under a blanket with Fushimi, tucking himself up against him. If they walked out in the rain and his feet got wet then he would shove them into Fushimi’s lap so he could rub the warmth back into them. They would drink tea or hot chocolate and it made the rain a nice thing, an excuse to be close to each other, not that they ever needed one.

When the day comes to an end Uruha pulls on his socks and shoes and he waits for Natsuki, tapping his umbrella on the floor. Outside the cars speed through the puddles and pedestrians leap out of the way. The lights seem brighter against the clouds. Far off there’s the distant rumble of thunder; a storm is coming.

Natsuki doesn’t greet him when he finds Uruha by the door. They fall into step beside each other, Natsuki with his hood and Uruha with his umbrella. They walk down the street, dodging the puddles, heads down. There’s a flash of lightning and Uruha glances at him, watching the way his hair shines so brightly that for an instant it seems white. Then comes the thunder, deep and angry. Uruha ducks into the bar and Natsuki follows.

“Long day,” he says, wedging his umbrella into the holder by the door.

Natsuki cocks his head to the side and frowns. Uruha can see him doing the math in his head, working out the date, working out if this means something to him. He gets no answer, though, and doesn’t press it; he assumes it must be something private. But the truth is that today is no more special than any other day. It isn’t the anniversary of anything, Uruha just doesn’t feel right. It’s the storm, he thinks, the pressure of it, the warmth because it’s summer and the cold because it’s raining. He can feel the electricity in the air and when Natsuki pulls back his hood his hair sticks up all over the place from the static. He must draw it in, Uruha thinks, the power of the storm.

They sit down as they always do and Uruha orders sake with his beer. Natsuki raises an eyebrow.

“Sorry,” Uruha says quickly. “I know you don’t want me to.”

“Just watch yourself,” says Natsuki, but when the bartender comes back over he orders some for himself, too.

The sake burns. Uruha squeezes his eyes shut and he feels it at the back of his throat, hot and fragrant and acid. It hurts, and he likes the hurt. He opens his eyes and blinks, and when he looks at Natsuki he sees him with his face scrunched up as well, and he laughs.

“Don’t make fun of me!” Natsuki snaps, glaring at him and blushing.

Uruha smiles at him. He’s cute when he blushes, he thinks. “I wasn’t,” he says. “I laughed because you made the same face I did.”

“Yeah, right.” Natsuki rolls his eyes. “This weather sucks.”

“I thought you’d like it,” says Uruha. “You know, because—”

“Because there’s lightning, you think I like getting pissed on by the rain?” Natsuki swigs his beer and snorts with derisive laughter. “No thanks.”

“Point taken.”

“You are such an ass.”

“So you’ve said.”

Natsuki smirks at him and Uruha curses himself for falling into the back and forth so easily. His heart is already racing and the alcohol isn’t helping. It’s like that evening on the balcony, when the lines between what he should and shouldn’t do seemed blurred, when throwing caution to the wind seemed so tempting, too hard to resist. Can he resist now? Natsuki orders more sake. Just one more, he says. Because it’s raining and even though it’s summer it’s a little cold, and the sake burns hot. They drink it and they finish their beers, and when Uruha slides off his stool he staggers a little.

“Watch it,” grunts Natsuki, but he catches him, a hand on his arm.

“Oops,” Uruha says, trying to make it funny that he’s tipsy, but he doesn’t need to try because Natsuki isn’t mad; he’s tipsy as well. He’s still blushing and he snorts with laughter at Uruha’s clumsiness, an ugly snort, and it makes the both of them laugh.

Natsuki’s laugh. Uruha can’t help but grin at the sound of it. While Fushimi laughed easily and often, Natsuki’s laughter is a rare thing. It’s a little like Ibuki’s laugh was, bellowing and loud, bubbling up from deep inside him. Uruha like the sound of it, like a thunderclap.

Outside the storm is in full force and the wind is so strong that Uruha doesn’t want to risk opening his umbrella. Natsuki keeps trying to pull his hood up and it keeps getting blown back down. It makes the both of them laugh. Uruha suspects that Natsuki’s smiled more tonight than he has in his whole life and he thinks that it’s a wonderful thing. The both of them are buffeted by the rain as they walk, their hair soaked and plastered to their foreheads. Natsuki’s has darkened to the grey of the storm clouds from the water and it sticks up when he runs his fingers through it. He looks wild and messy; they both do.

And Uruha feels wild. The walk has sobered him up a little but there’s still a fire burning in him, from the sake and from everything else. From Natsuki. Love and loss and want and hurt are all tangled together, too many strands wrapped around his heart to ever pull apart, but right now he finds that he can take hold of one of them, the one that tells him to live. He takes it, grasps it tight, and holds on.

He wanted you to live, Uruha thinks, and when they stop in front of Uruha’s building and Natsuki turns to him he grabs him by the front of his jacket and kisses him.

*

Natsuki tastes like beer and sake and a summer storm. His hair is wet and his skin is cold but his lips are warm. When Uruha’s lips crash against his he kisses him back without a moment’s hesitation, and all Uruha can think is, It’s so different. Where Fushimi nipped at him and smiled against his mouth Natsuki is tentative, almost shy, and it’s only when Uruha desperately probes his lips with his tongue that he opens his mouth and melts into him.

They stagger backwards into Uruha’s building and Natsuki pushes Uruha up against the wall in the lobby.

“Uruha,” he gasps, pulling back. “What are we doing?”

“Kissing,” Uruha says simply, cupping his face in his hands and pulling him close. “Come back to my place?”

“Okay,” Natsuki whispers, and again; “Okay.”

They stumble upstairs, stopping to kiss at every floor. Uruha’s teeth clack against Natsuki’s piercings and they laugh at their eagerness, their hunger for each other. They all but fall into Uruha’s apartment, and as soon as the door swings shut behind them they’re shedding layers. Uruha’s cloak and Natsuki’s jacket; their shoes and socks kicked off haphazardly onto the floor; belts unbuckled and cast aside. Uruha closes his eyes so he doesn’t see the boxes in the living room and he takes Natsuki’s hand to lead him to bed. They’re lit by flashes of lightning, their gasps and moans muffled by the thunder.

Uruha pushes Natsuki down onto his bed and kneels over him, pulling his shirt up over his head. He fingers the hem of Natsuki’s and slides his hands up under it. He runs his fingers over his muscles, the planes of his abs and the curve of his chest, and he thinks of how he watched him, how he couldn’t drag his eyes from the flex of these muscles, from the grace of his body. When Natsuki takes off his shirt Uruha puts his lips to his skin and kisses his scars, the old ones and the new, lips brushing over the ridged tissue. Natsuki’s fingers wind into his hair and he pulls it loose from its tie, letting it fall about Uruha’s shoulders in a damp and silky tangle. They both smell like rain; like the storm.

“Natsuki,” Uruha says, then pauses. “Misaka.”

“Don’t,” groans Natsuki. “It’s weird, you calling me that.”

Uruha grins. “Natsuki, then.” He kisses him and Natsuki slings his arms around him, pulling him down on top of him, and when Uruha straddles him he can feel the hard press of his cock against his thigh. Uruha’s growing hard, too. It isn’t just the alcohol which burns in him; it’s desire, and want, and the fact that he has missed this. When Fushimi died Uruha thought he would be numb forever, but he can feel this.

“Have you done this before?” Uruha murmurs.

Natsuki grabs his hair and yanks his head up. “What?”

“Ow,” complains Uruha. Natsuki lets go. “Don’t pull my hair.”

“Did you seriously ask if I’ve had sex before?”

“I meant with a man.”

“Fuck you.” Natsuki glowers at him. His hands drop to Uruha’s hips and he squeezes. “Yeah, asshole. I’ve done it with a man.”

Uruha’s worried that he’s ruined the moment by asking that, but then Natsuki’s hands drop from his hips and lifts one to brush the hair away from Uruha’s face, tucking it behind an ear so he can see him. “How do you want to do it?” Uruha asks. “Which way do you like it?”

It’s an awkward question and Uruha cringes, but Natsuki shrugs. “Which way do you like it?”

Uruha sits back on his thighs and looks down at Natsuki under him, considering. He’s generally preferred to be on top, with Fushimi being the only exception. And what about now? Could he do that again, give himself over in that way? He doesn’t know. With Fushimi he bared his soul to him, handed him his broken heart, and he knew that Fushimi would hold it gently while it healed.

This isn’t one of the times when Uruha can compare the two. It doesn’t make this any less special, for it to be different.

“I want to be on top,” Uruha says.

“Good,” says Natsuki. He grabs Uruha by the wrists and he pulls him down so they can kiss again.

Then it’s more fumbling as they wriggle out of their pants, Uruha propped on an elbow and Natsuki lifting his hips. The fabric is damp and they have to peel it off themselves, discarding pants and underwear both on Uruha’s bedroom floor.

Uruha lowers himself tentatively and his hard cock brushes Natsuki’s. He moans into Uruha’s mouth and Uruha drinks up the sound of it, and he wants more. He does it again and Natsuki gasps. Uruha’s tongue slides against his and he nips at his lip and reaches down between them to take both of their dicks in hand, thrusting against him until they’re both slick with pre-come and he can feel the burning need in the pit of his stomach.

A flash of lightning blinds Uruha for a second before they’re plunged back into darkness. He reaches for the drawer of his bedside table where he keeps a bottle of lube, which until now has been used solely for Uruha to touch himself and pretend that it’s Fushimi. He forces that thought out of his mind and sits up again to pour the lube into his hand, slicking up his fingers as the thunder roars outside. Natsuki is lit up by the light of the city, flustered and raw, with messy hair and wanting eyes. His lips are parted and swollen from kissing and his chest is heaving the way it does after training. He looks beautiful and needy and undone.

Uruha leans down again and kisses him as he spreads his legs. Uruha gets between them, nudging them wider with a knee, and he reaches down into the cleft of his ass to finger him. He does it slowly, and it’s hard because Natsuki looks so good and Uruha is so hungry for him. Starving. He pushes his tongue into his mouth and eases a finger into him, almost unable to believe how tight he is. Natsuki moans and Uruha crooks his finger upwards, stroking the inside of him. He finds his prostate and presses his finger into it and Natsuki whines, and it’s such a delicious sound that hearing it alone is almost enough to make Uruha come. He eases another finger into him, working him open until he can get a third in as well, and he has to stop kissing Natsuki then because he’s gasping too much, whimpering and whining and making noises that Uruha never could have imagined he would make. Natsuki, stoic and angry, letting Uruha see him like this and hear him like this. His heart swells with affection and he kisses him at the corner of the mouth as he pulls his fingers out.

“Uruha,” Natsuki groans, slinging an arm over his face. “Hurry up.”

“Shh,” whispers Uruha. He pulls his arm away so he can look at him and smile. Natsuki glares back but Uruha disarms him with a kiss to the forehead and he snorts with surprised laughter. He reaches for the lube again, wobbling on one arm as he slicks up his cock and guides it to press up against Natsuki’s hole.

When there’s another flash of lightning which lights Natsuki up in a blaze of silver and blue, Uruha pushes into him. He goes slow, easing himself in inch by inch and watching Natsuki’s face, his eyelids fluttering and his head lolling back. When he’s all the way inside him he props himself over him on both arms again and kisses him, softly and deeply, trying to convey everything he feels through that kiss. He doesn’t know if Natsuki understands but he kisses him back anyway, gripping his shoulders so tightly that Uruha thinks he’s going to leave a mark and lifting his legs to wrap them around his hips. He crosses his ankles over the small of his back. He squeezes him and Uruha starts to move, testing his rhythm and relishing the feeling of Natsuki, so tight and hot around his cock. When Natsuki whines into his mouth he speeds up, going faster and faster until he’s thrusting hard, plunging in and out of him and getting noisier himself. He can’t help it; first he gasps and then he moans, louder and louder. Natsuki feels so good and it’s been so long since he felt like this, since the blood ran hot in his veins like fire. Lightning forks down from the sky outside and Uruha feels it running up his spine. With every thrust he can feel himself getting closer to the edge; he knew he wouldn’t last long, not after so much time had passed. He shifts his weight onto one arm again and reaches down between them to take hold of Natsuki’s cock. Pre-come leaks from the head as Uruha jerks him off, his grip tight as he strokes up the length of him and brushes his thumb over his slit. One of Natsuki’s hands finds its way into his hair and he cards his fingers through it, then grabs it tight enough that it hurts. Uruha bites his lip; he likes the hurt.

“Uruha,” gasps Natsuki. “Uruha, shit, I—I’m gonna—ah, Yoji—”

When he comes he cries out so loudly that Uruha can hear it even over the thunder, and he clenches his ass around Uruha’s cock, tight enough that Uruha cries out too. He lets go of Natsuki’s dick and buries his face in the crook of his neck and thrusts hard, slamming into him over and over until he’s at the brink and he’s falling, Natsuki’s legs dropping from his hips as he finishes inside him.

Uruha can’t move at first. He’s exhausted and his legs are shaking. His heart is pounding and the blood is roaring in his ears. Finally he rolls off Natsuki and flops onto his back, breathing hard and staring up at the ceiling.

It was good. Really good. Uruha closes his eyes and breathes in and out, waiting to come back down to earth.

“Uruha.” Natsuki prods his arm and Uruha’s eyes flutter open. He turns to look at him, vision swimming before he comes into focus. “Want me to go?”

“What?”

Natsuki shrugs. He’s leaning on one arm, cheek pressed against his knuckles. His hair is sticking up all over the place. “If you want me to go, I’ll go.”

Uruha groans and covers his face with his hands. He would have liked more than half a minute to think about all of this, but that isn’t how Natsuki works.

Despite that, Uruha finds that he doesn’t really need to think about it at all.

“No,” he says, rolling onto his side and reaching out to take Natsuki’s hand, lacing their fingers together, rubbing his palm with him thumb and smiling tiredly. “I want you to stay.”

*

The next morning, the storm has broken.

Rays of warm sunlight, honey bright, shine through the curtains and wake Uruha. He blinks, tired and aching and happy, and he looks over at Natsuki asleep beside him.

They didn’t talk much last night, beyond Uruha saying that he could borrow his toothbrush. They cleaned up and went straight to sleep. Uruha stretches; he was worried he might have some regret about last night, some lingering guilt, but there is none.

Just because he isn’t over Fushimi, it doesn’t mean he has to torture himself forever. Especially because Fushimi never would have wanted that. The life he lived was a full life, however short it might have been cut, and he had to live it for the sake of his brother, his family. When he gave his own life it was so Uruha could live, and Fushimi would be furious if that life was one he wasted, lost in his grief, doing nothing except trudging through the days.

Uruha shuffles closer to Natsuki. He leans on one elbow and looks down at his sleeping face. They really do look similar, he thinks. The high cheekbones and tapering chin, the sharp jaw, handsome and beautiful at once. But Natsuki has faint lines on his forehead, a deeper one between his brows. There are creases at the corners of his eyes and dark circles beneath them. Uruha wonders what Fushimi would have looked like at Natsuki’s age, if his wrinkles would have appeared in different spots. He thinks as well how he never could imagine Fushimi as an old man, and whether it was some kind of sign.

Natsuki’s eyes flutter open and he glowers up at Uruha. “What are you doing?”

“Watching you sleep.”

“Creepy.”

Uruha snickers and rests a hand against Natsuki’s cheek. “You look nice when you’re sleeping.”

“Whatever.”

“I’m going to take a shower.”

“Whatever.”

Uruha showers quickly, rinsing his hair and scrubbing himself down. He feels lighter than he’s felt in years. He wraps a clean towel around his waist and when he comes out of the bathroom he sees Natsuki lying on his side, scowling at the bedside table. Uruha winces; the ashes and the photo. Natsuki’s eyes flick up to him and he points at them.

“Is this the only photo you have of him?” he asks.

It wasn’t the question Uruha was expecting. “Uh, yeah,” he says.

“It’s okay, you know,” he says. “If this—if us, if it was just—”

“It’s not,” Uruha says quickly. He sits beside him on the bed and rests a hand on his hip over the covers. “Natsuki I—I want to do this again.”

“Sleep with me?”

“Be with you.”

“Oh.” Natsuki blinks. He runs his fingers through his hair, something that Uruha’s come to understand he does just to have something to do with his hands. “Alright, sure.”

“You’re such a romantic,” laughs Uruha.

“Shut up,” says Natsuki, trying to sound all venom, defanged by the slight smile playing about his lips. He grabs Uruha’s arm and yanks him down on top of him, and he kisses him in the golden light of the summer morning.

*

In many ways, things between them haven’t changed.

Uruha’s grateful for that. It’s easy, to be with Natsuki. They walk home together like before, but now Natsuki comes back to Uruha’s apartment instead of continuing on home. They sleep together and Natsuki stays the night, and he grumbles when Uruha grabs him and pulls him into his arms, but he lets him hold him. After a few days of this, when they pause outside Uruha’s building, Natsuki asks if he wants to go to his place instead. Uruha accepts.

Natsuki’s apartment fascinates him. It’s bigger than his own; two bedrooms instead of one. The smaller second bedroom has been converted into a gym. Uruha takes his time with the place, walking around as Natsuki complains, inspecting it, taking it in. He likes it, likes seeing the way that Natsuki’s chosen to show himself in the way that he lives. It’s not excessively decorated; he has the basics of furniture, but little pieces of his personality do shine through. Big stacks of CDs and vinyl records. A new sound system and an old fashioned record player. Posters of bands that are unfamiliar to Uruha. Photos, too; photos with Ibuki when they fought together as teenagers, photos with his squad in the Kamunabi, with Kiri and Azami. Family photos, the Misaka brothers as children. Uruha studies them all, grinning when he finds the rare few where Natsuki’s smiling. Usually begrudgingly. After half an hour of this Natsuki drags him to bed and Uruha fucks him hard, and afterwards he plays with his hair until he falls asleep, lost in thought.

When he gets home the next day, Uruha finally unpacks Fushimi’s boxes.

He told Natsuki that he was going to do this, and Natsuki asked if he wanted him there. He didn’t take it personally when Uruha said that he didn’t, and that’s why Uruha finds this so easy; Natsuki understands. He understands what it is to lose someone so crucial, so vital to who you are, and he understands that something like that doesn’t just pass.

Most importantly, Natsuki understands that Fushimi will always be a part of Uruha.

It’s the weekend, when he unpacks the boxes. He starts with the ones from before, the three from his old apartment. One of them is full of clothes; spare uniforms and casual clothes, pyjamas and workout clothes and everything else. Uruha sorts them quickly, placing piles on his couch. The Kamunabi uniforms he’ll return to the office. Most of the rest of it, he’ll donate, but he chooses a few things to keep; some comfortable pyjama pants and track pants, some t-shirts that he can wear as pyjamas, an archer’s chest guard. There are a couple of bandanas; he’ll keep those, too. After that box is done, Uruha takes a break to have some tea. That wasn’t so bad, he thinks. Maybe it would have been worse a year ago. Maybe it would have been worse before Natsuki.

The second box contains household things. Kitchenware; plates and mugs and things like that. Blankets and bedding. Batteries, CDs, random pieces of his life. Uruha keeps the CDs and a couple of blankets and throws the rest away.

That one was easy. It’s the third box which turns out to be the hardest.

Personal items. Uruha almost sobs when he pulls out the photos. Pictures of Fushimi with the Kokugoku Steam Squad – before they were named that – and ones with his friends. Uruha recognises Hagiwara and Kashima from the Kamunabi. There’s an old, crumpled one of what looks like Fushimi as a child, along with another boy who looks a bit like him. His brother, the one who died. In the photo his arm is around Fushimi’s shoulders, and he has the same crooked grin. Uruha will keep that one and frame it; he’ll keep all of them.

Uruha takes a break to go out and buy picture frames and some plastic storage containers. When he comes back he decides to get it over with; he’ll open the box from Kokugoku Fortress.

He rips off the tape before he can think too much about it and he feels dizzy when he smells the smoke. How can it still smell like that? Is he imagining it? Uruha shakes his head and peers inside. It’s much smaller than the other boxes. There are only a few things inside. First is a bandana; it’s not the one he wore the day he died, but one of his spares. It’s identical, and when Uruha presses it to his nose he tells himself that he can smell his hair. Wishful thinking, he knows. Beneath the bandana is a snow globe which Uruha remembers he had on his desk in his office. Or rather, it had been on the desk when he got there. It’s a little model of Mount Fuji. Uruha doesn’t particularly want it, because it wasn’t actually Fushimi’s, but he decides that he’ll keep it anyway. It’s cute. Under that is a sheaf of papers from his desk; unfiled reports. They can go in the trash. Uruha lifts them out and his breath catches in his throat.

There, at the bottom of the box, is a single photograph.

Uruha picks it up carefully; the edges are singed. He doesn’t remember when this was taken or who took it, but it’s what he hadn’t dared to hope for. A picture of the two of them, standing at the top of the wooden stairs leading down to the hot springs, Fushimi’s arm around Uruha’s shoulders while Uruha makes peace signs with both hands. They’re laughing. They’re happy.

He clutches it to his chest and squeezes his eyes shut, feeling the sting of tears. How long would he have gone without finding this? Uruha sets the photo down on the table and he calls Natsuki.

“This evening,” he says. “Come over?”

“Yeah,” says Natsuki. “Want me to bring dinner?”

“Okay. Whatever you feel like having.”

Natsuki hangs up, and Uruha spends the rest of the day turning this apartment from the place he sleeps into a home. He puts the clothes he intends to keep in his closet. He puts the ones he’s going to donate into one of the plastic containers. He spreads one of the blankets over his bed and another over the couch. He puts the CDs by his stereo, along with the snow globe. He makes sure all of the pictures are framed and he puts them on the walls along with his own photos. Uruha moves the printout of Fushimi’s Kamunabi ID to the living room and replaces it with the picture of the two of them at Kokugoku Fortress. It will be nice, he thinks, to look at it sometimes and think of how he was happy then, and how he’s found happiness once again.

Lastly, Uruha moves Fushimi’s ashes. He puts them on a side table in the living room, with some incense and the photo of Fushimi with his brother. He’ll put flowers there too, when he gets a chance.

Natsuki comes over just as the sun is setting, with gyoza from a nearby restaurant. He hands the food to Uruha and immediately inspects the place, and when they sit down to eat he grabs his hand.

“It took me ages to deal with Ibuki’s things,” he says, looking down at their twined fingers.

“Natsuki—”

“I couldn’t even set foot in his house.” He shakes his head and sighs. “The Kamunabi dealt with his body, with the blood, but—I still couldn’t. The thought of going there, that he wouldn’t be there, I—I know it’s not the same, not exactly, but I get it.”

Uruha nods. He lifts their hands and he presses his lips to Natsuki’s knuckles. “I know you do,” he says. “Thank you.”

“Thank you?” Natsuki frowns. “What for?”

What for? Natsuki really doesn’t understand just how much he’s done for him. Uruha smiles and closes his eyes, leaning into him and resting his head on his shoulder. “Everything, Natsuki,” he says. “Everything.”

*

“He hated me at first,” Uruha says with a laugh. “He said he had his brother, so he didn’t need friends."

"He hated you when you guys ran into each other at headquarters, too,” Hakuri points out.

Chihiro kicks him under the table, but Uruha just laughs some more. The two of them have come to Tokyo to visit everyone here, and it’s been nice to catch up. It’s been two years since Fushimi died, two years since Samura cut both him and Chihiro down at Senkutsuji Temple. Chihiro seems so much older now, at twenty. He’s grown into himself. Uruha thinks that he looks like Rokuhira, and he thinks as well that Rokuhira would be so proud to see him now.

The first thing he asked was how Iori was doing; Uruha hasn’t seen her, but he’s sent her emails and they’ve spoken on the phone a few times. He told her stories about her father, about how he wouldn’t let Uruha snatch his cigarette from him and how he told him what he knows. He told her what Samura said about Inori, how she made him wait in the rain that one time. That made her laugh.  

She’s doing well, Chihiro says. She doesn’t live too far from them, and they hang out pretty often. Chihiro’s followed in his father’s footsteps and he’s a blacksmith now. Hakuri’s training to be a teacher.

It makes Uruha glad, to see the next generation so happy.

“You’re happy, right, Mr Uruha?” says Chihiro.

Uruha smiles at him. “Yes,” he says. “I am.”

*

The weeks pass and then the months. On Uruha’s birthday he and Natsuki rent a movie and watch it curled up under a blanket. It’s a horror movie. Natsuki pretends not to be scared and spills popcorn everywhere when the monster makes him jump.

Uruha laughs and Natsuki gets mad at him for laughing, but he’s only putting on an act. Uruha kisses him and Natsuki’s anger vanishes in an instant. Earlier that day he gave him a gift; a new vase, blue like the summer sky, for the flowers Uruha likes to put by Fushimi’s ashes.

When Natsuki gave that gift to him, Uruha knew he loved him. It came with no preamble or explanation; he simply gave it, and knew that Uruha would understand. So simple, but so perfect. Natsuki sees his love for Fushimi and he accepts it. That’s more than Uruha ever could have asked for.

So he kisses him instead of watching the movie, popcorn scattered over the floor, and when Natsuki gasps out his name Uruha whispers it into his ear, “I love you.”

And even before Natsuki says it back, Uruha knows he loves him too.

*

On the third anniversary of Fushimi’s death, Uruha takes the train to Kyoto.

Natsuki didn’t object when he told him he was going. He just told him to wrap up warm, because there’s been a cold snap, and he told him to take gloves. Uruha will be back by the evening; he set off early, to get there at about ten. He’s brought a backpack with a thermos of tea and a big bottle of water, along with some snacks, but that’s it.

When Uruha arrives, he heads straight for Fushimi Inari.

It’s beautiful. The sky is grey and overcast but that only makes the red of the torii gates seem brighter. He walks beneath them after making a small offering at the entrance, pausing occasionally to glance at the view around him, at the trees and the water, at the foxes with their keys and jewels, at Kyoto spread out below. The air smells crisp and clean here and Uruha breathes it in, letting it energise him.

Someone told him once that you shouldn’t walk in the middle of the path, because that’s for the gods. Uruha keeps to the side, but it isn’t the gods he imagines are walking here with him. If there’s anyone falling into step beside him it’s no god; it’s Fushimi. The thought makes him smile. Fushimi would love this place, the magic of the gates, racing up the path. He would love the trees overhead and the foxes. Uruha can see it, Fushimi pointing to one of the statues and saying, Look, it’s me!

It takes him three hours to walk to the top, with the ghost of Fushimi for company.

The view is beautiful.

Uruha opens his backpack and takes out his thermos. He drinks his tea. He sits down on a bench, wanting to remain in this moment for a little longer. It’s November, so it’s quiet. Nobody else wanted to hike up here in the cold, it would seem.

He’s glad. It’s nice, to have the place to himself. To be in his own little world. He folds his arms and shivers, wanting to be here but not sure how long for. It will be hard, he knows, to leave.

The reason he came today, on this anniversary, is because it’s been three years, and that means he’s been without Fushimi now for longer than he was with him, and that measure will only grow larger as time goes on. It’s an odd feeling; three years is so short, but Fushimi feels like such a huge part of him. He has accepted now, that there is a piece of his heart – of his soul – that will always be his. Uruha gave it to him, after all. He handed him his broken heart and said, It’s yours, and Fushimi kept it safe for him until Kokugoku fell and it shattered once again.

And Uruha swept up those jagged fragments to carry with him, even though he thought that they could never be put back together, not for a second time. He kept on going because Fushimi gave his life for him, and he couldn’t throw away that gift, even if he didn’t know how he could possibly live again.

He should have had more faith in himself. From when he was young, when he first picked up a sword, Uruha has always been full of life. He has always been full of love, and now that his heart has begun to heal again he finds himself thankful that as broken and wounded and tender it might be, it beats on still.

“Thank you for giving me this,” he whispers to the wind, closing his eyes, a smile on his face. “I promise I’ll make the most of it.”

A breeze ruffles his hair and Uruha shivers again. He rubs his hands together and groans; he forgot his gloves. He shoves his hands in his pockets to try and warm them and finds something stuffed in there. Curious, he pulls it out, and when he sees what it is, his smile widens.

The gloves he forgot. Natsuki must’ve slipped them into his pocket. Uruha pulls them on as he stands up and takes one last look at the view.

Then, he sets off for home.