Chapter Text
All around Suo, there are members of Bofurin, dark, jacketed shapes that direct his many little brothers up and away from the debris. Many of them glance up as they walk past, recognition in their eyes, but one glare from Sakura has them all scurrying away.
They have places to be, apparently: helping his brothers in ways Suo could never, being braver, kinder, more clever than Suo has ever been. Certainly, he would have never thought to invade a place like this, or challenge his master, or win beyond all odds. He would have failed the same as he did when he first arrived, failed and lost his other eye as recompense, for attempting to disobey or protect or—
“Stop that,” Sakura gives a vicious tug on his hand. “You’re thinking too hard.”
“Apparently, I wasn’t thinking hard enough,” Suo mutters under his breath. He digs his teeth into his lower lip, and then nearly bites it clean through in an attempt to keep from colliding into Sakura. He jerks his head up from his view of their feet, shoulders squared to meet the new threat.
He’s greeted by a solid flick to the forehead instead.
“Sakura-kun, what—“
“I said to stop it didn’t I?” Sakura growls. “This isn’t helping anyone, least of all you.”
“What isn’t—“
“This!” Sakura makes a broad gesture to, well, all of him. “This whole— deprecation thing.”
He says deprecation like someone recently taught it to him, like it’s new and important, a vocab word you know you’ll come across in a test.
“You’re thinking too hard about stupid things. Nirei said when you do that your face gets all—“ he makes another sweeping gesture, this time aimed somewhere around his nose. “And that we should stop you before you think this is all your fault.”
Suo stares, practically open-mouthed. He feels a bit outraged, on the part of his classmates, as if he weren't the one to cause this problem in the first place.
“Nirei-kun said this,” he says. “Our— your Nirei. The one who I beat bloody and left for you in the cold.”
“Our Nirei,” Sakura clarifies, calm and cool until he seems to realize what he just said. His face glows a brilliant red, and he takes a blessed second away from his staring to turn and glare at an unsuspecting second year who immediately makes himself scarce. Sakura scowls harder before forcing himself to continue.
“Nirei said to stop you before you convinced yourself to do stupid shit like leave again.”
“Stupid shit like leave again,” Suo repeats, feeling all at once scraped clean and angrier than he’s ever been. “Not hurt him, or goad him into a fight. Leave. That’s what he’s worried about. Me, leaving.”
He thinks he might be hysterical again. He certainly feels like laughing even if there’s nothing remotely funny about the situation. He can’t even find his usual humor in eliciting that familiar flush on Sakura’s cheeks.
“Sakura-kun, I used his every insecurity against him. Did he tell you that? I called him weak and a crybaby. I beat him while he begged for my friendship and then I beat him again when he asked for answers. I told him every moment of kindness I gave all of you was a lie. I knocked him out the second he looked too closely at me— I—“
He drags his blurry gaze to meet Sakura’s.
“How can you want me back? You shouldn’t want me back.”
Sakura stares at him impassively before he tilts his head to the side. He looks a bit like a cat who has found an intriguing bug, suspicion and intrigue warring in his multi-colored gaze.
“Would you do it again?”
“What?”
“Would you hurt Nirei again?”
“Of course I wouldn’t,” Suo hisses, trying and failing not to squeeze the life out of their still joined hands. “I just—“
He falters.
Just what, Suo? You begged for this earlier. Begged and pleaded to come back and now you’re angry that it’s being so freely offered? He tracks the bruises along Sakura’s cheeks with a growing sense of desperation.
He’d done that. Willingly, purposefully, fought Sakura, denied his usual defensive style and attacked like a rabid dog. All those months ago he’d done worse to Nirei: blows designed not only to incapacitate but to elicit pain, begging every time that Nirei would just give up. That he’d realize he didn’t want anything to do with Suo and let him leave.
He hadn’t. Of course, he hadn’t.
Nirei may not have the physical prowess of their classmates but he had always had his own strength, and beyond that, an immense sense of empathy, especially towards those he cared about. So Suo had beaten him bloody, and still Nirei worried after him, still he looked him in the eye and asked if they were still friends.
Apparently he, Sakura, and the rest of Furin still think of him as their friend.
He swallows down the rest of his statement and retries:
“I don’t deserve this.”
“So?” Sakura says, tilting his head in the opposite direction. His hand in Suo’s is still that sunfire-hot, warmer than anything Suo has felt in months. “You get it anyway. Nirei wants you back. Our whole class wants you back. You want to come back. Your stupid brother and that asshole you call a master are gone. Who’s stopping you?”
“No one!” Suo gasps. “But you should be! I hurt Nirei. I knew hurting Nirei would hurt you! I should pay for it. If it were anyone else, you would beat them into the ground!”
Sakura gives him a dismissive once over, starting at his swelling cheek and ending very deliberately on the ankle Suo still can’t put his full weight on.
“What do you think I did to you?”
Suo gapes at him. For the millionth time today he’s stuck dumb by his captain’s directness, by a kindness he knows he’ll never be able to repay.
“Besides,” Sakura says, content enough with the conversation that he’s started pulling them towards the back gate. “You’re punishing yourself enough. I can be mad at you when we’re home. Kiryu created this whole poll for how we’re going to get back at you for this stupid-ass stunt. I think they said something about a sleepover, or camping?”
He pulls out his phone as they’re walking, squinting at it before shoving the screen at Suo. Suo speeds up to catch it.
“Do you even like camping?” He asks.
Suo huffs out a laugh, peering down at the miniscule poll he can barely see on the tiny flip phone. There is something about camping in there from what his admittedly poor vision can make out, but Suo is too focused on scrolling through his friend’s texts again to pay too much attention to anything beyond the chorus of: ‘we’ll get him back!’ that filled every message before their raid.
“I think the point of punishing me would be to do something I don’t like, Sakura-kun.”
“I think the point is to make it so that you’re not allowed out of our sight for as long as possible,” Sakura scoffs, as he makes a left just past the gate. “At this point, Anzai is going to follow you into the bathroom.”
“At this point, I’d welcome it,” Suo says, and then swallows when the words come out far too earnest. Less the joke he’d intended, and more the quiet longing nights of loneliness and pain had allowed him. He tries to summon up a smile, soothe out the tension, but when one doesn’t come, he does nothing but stare down the now stifling look Sakura throws his way. “It’ll be good to see everyone again. That’s it.”
“I think if I didn’t come back with you, Nirei would’ve throttled me,” Sakura adds, lightly. There’s a hesitance there, like he’s uncertain if what he’s saying is helping, as if he’s not the only thing preventing Suo from giving into cowardice and running. “They want you back just as much.”
Suo wants to doubt it. His actions of the past few months should have done nothing to endear him to any sane person.
Then again, he thinks, as he rounds the final corner to find a fully functional medical tent, directed by Hiragii and staffed by at least a quarter of Furin, maybe none of his friends were sane to begin with.