Chapter Text
Yuichiro Hyakuya had not been blessed with patience. Talent? Yeah, he believed he had that however much Shinoa insisted he didn’t. The ability to kick butt? Sure, he had that by the truck load. But patience? Nope.
Yu wanted to get stronger, no, needed to get stronger because how else was he going to rescue Mika from that bastard Ferid? He understood now that this wasn’t a thing that could happen overnight. To get stronger you needed to train. You needed to maximise your ability to use your demon. You needed to ‘shut the hell up and listen to your damn teacher’ as Guren had said.
And Yu was fine with that. Really, he was. Guren was annoying bastard and he neglected them to no end because apparently he ‘had better things to do than babysitting a bunch of snot-nosed brats’. But he was crazy strong so if there was a person to teach him how better to kick butt, it was this guy.
That was the problem. After much pestering, stupid Guren had finally promised to set aside time to train the three black demon series users personally. He had even given them dates, times and places and had the nerve to tell them all to be on time or else they’d get jack squat.
The first date on the list had been yesterday. Guren hadn’t shown up. Later, Mitsuba’s sister had informed her that there had been an officers meeting, followed by a war council, which gave the lazy piece of shit an excuse for not showing up. It sucked and Yu had gone to bed disappointed, but he was sure that the next day, Guren would show up and teach him something awesome.
He hadn’t. There were no meetings today as far as anyone in the squad knew. And the man was definitely not out on a mission - he’d promised to keep the week free to train them after all. Yet, an hour later than the time he’d told them to be here, there was still no sign of the Lieutenant Colonel. And frankly, when he did show up, if he even bothered, he was in for a world of hurt.
‘Where the fuck is he?’ Yu growled as he paced the length of the wall.
Kimizuki suddenly stood.
‘I’m not wasting any more of my time here. It’s been an hour twenty – he’s obviously not coming.’
Yoichi started to protest, reached out to grab Kimizuki’s arm. ‘He’ll come – I’m sure he has a good reason for- ‘
Kimizuki regarded him over his shoulder. ‘Good reason or not – the only way he’s coming now will be if we go down there and drag him here – and I’ve got better things to do than hang around here with you.’
Yoichi deflated.
Yu scowled. It wasn’t like he wanted to spend time with Kimizuki either. He wanted to train and that was all. He curled his hand into a fist and almost told him as much, but then it occurred to him: the pink haired bastard had a point.
‘Okay then,’ Yu said breaking into a grin that could be considered evil even by Shinoa’s standards. ‘We’ll go get him.’
Yoichi started, ‘Yu, I really don’t think-’
‘No. As much as I hate to admit it, Kimizuki’s right. He’s kept us waiting way too long and he’s gonna train me whether he likes it or not – if I have to drop kick him in the face for it.’
‘Because that’s worked out so well for you in the past, Yu,’ Shinoa commented, smiling like she already knew the future. She didn’t. Yu was going to prove it.
‘You got any better ideas?’ he challenged.
She gave him a long look, then merely sighed. He didn’t think so.
Full of purpose, Yu spun on his heels and headed in the direction of the main building, flashing a determined grin as he noticed Kimizuki was following.
‘Just make sure at least one of you idiots comes back to let us know what happened,’ Shinoa shouted after them.
Yu gave a dismissive wave over his shoulder and turned to Kimizuki,
‘Are you backing me up?’
Kimizuki pushed his glasses up his nose and smirked. ‘Hell no. I just want to see you get your ass handed to you.’
Yu snorted, a slow grin spreading across his face in anticipation of the butt-kicking he was going to give Guren right in front of Kimizuki’s functionally challenged eyes. He clenched his fists, readying them as he and Kimizuki headed towards Guren’s office.
The closer they got, the more the anticipation was like the itch of chicken pox – so damned bad that even when you were told you’d be scarred for life if you did, you still couldn’t resist scratching.
‘Oi, Yu-’ Kimizuki began as Yu impatiently swept around the corner to the corridor Guren’s office was on.
… Only to slam straight into something outside of the door. The next thing he knew, his butt was landing on the floor with a thud and a sharp sting to the tailbone.
‘Ow! What the-’ he began.
Mito Juujou stood over him, struggling to right the boxes in her arms. In spite of her small size (he’d always privately thought she was mostly hair), she remained standing. Yu was disappointed that he’d been the one to take a tumble even before she spoke.
She glared down at him. ‘You need to watch where you’re walking. A soldier should always be aware of his surroundings.’
‘Hey, you walked into me too!’ Yu retorted, getting to his feet.
Kimizuki kicked the back of his knee to make it buckle. Yu rounded on him with a glare.
‘Is the Lieutenant Colonel in his office?’ Kimizuki asked with a straight face, ignoring Yu completely.
Mito’s eyes widened. Then her eyebrows furrowed and her gaze lowered. When she replied, her voice had lost its edge and become softer, solemn. ‘You haven’t heard then?’
Both Yu and Kimizuki simply looked at her.
‘He’s... not here. He was rushed to hospital last night. I’ve been tasked with clearing his office out,’ she finished quietly.
She wasn’t looking at them. Her teeth were digging into her bottom lip. With a muffled, ‘Excuse me,’ she brushed past Kimizuki and disappeared around the corner.
Yu knew those signs, had seen them many times on the faces of the people who worked at the orphanage. And the situation had always been the same. That was the manner of an adult telling someone that their parents weren’t coming to get them.
Yu’s heart leapt into his mouth; his stomach dropped. All he knew was that he was suddenly running in the direction they had just come, and Kimizuki was still following him.
-
Kimizuki had just managed to rein in the force of nature that was Yuichiro Hyakuya before he barrelled any more unsuspecting officers out of the way. Through a combination of having a good grip, being realistic and using tough love phrases, such as, ‘If he is dead then he’s not going to get any deader in the time it takes to let everyone else know’, he’d managed to get the tempest (or ten pests because he might as well be for all the shit he put Kimizuki through) to calm.
But like the wind, he couldn’t be quelled for long.
Yu was already slamming his hands on the hospital reception desk before the poor woman had even noticed him.
To her credit, she didn’t seem startled. ‘What seems to be the-’
‘Guren Ichinose,' Yu panted, leaning entirely too close to the receptionist’s face, ‘He’s here, isn’t he?!’
Kimizuki was about to reach out for Yu’s shoulder to pull him back a bit and give the lady some space, but Yoichi got there first. Yu didn’t even seem to notice Yoichi’s hand on his arm.
‘He is,’ the woman said, her eyebrows furrowing slightly. Yu released a sigh, his shoulders falling like he was puppet whose strings had been dropped, all previous tension gone as though this meant that Guren was okay.
Kimizuki said nothing, but shared a split second look with Shinoa. He knew better that anyone that stable and alive didn’t necessarily mean well. Anyone in hospital certainly wasn’t okay.
Yu was leaning forward on the counter again. ‘Can we see him?’
The woman shot him down immediately. ‘I'm afraid the lieutenant colonel isn't up to visitors right now.’ As if to signify that the conversation was definitely over, she picked up a pile of folders and began rearranging them.
Yu’s shoulders dropped again, this time for entirely different reasons. ‘B-but-’
Mitsuba stepped forwards. ‘Look, we've come all this way and Yu is really worried so please, if you could just let us look in on him, even if we don't go inside...’
The woman looked up from her papers, expression blank, eyes irritated. ‘I'm sorry, but the rules dictate that we can admit only family outside of visiting hours and then only under exceptional circums-’
‘I am family!’ Yu cut in.
Kimizuki did not like where this was going.
The woman raised an eyebrow. ‘What relation are you?’
And here it came. Some embarrassing speech about how the military was their family now. In the eyes of the general public, that would never hold up. Especially when it came down to the relationship between a new recruit and a member of the top brass. In this lady’s shoes, he’d be calling bullshit too. In fact, to be fair, even in his own shoes, he privately called bullshit sometimes when Yu spouted all this idealistic family stuff.
He'd better get ready to say something to bail the idiot out. Somebody had to. Maybe Shinoa would pull rank or something.
‘I-I'm his... son,’ Yu’s voice cut in.
Kimizuki almost choked on his own spit. A wide-eyed Yoichi patted him on the back automatically.
The woman raised both eyebrows this time, setting down her files and folding her hands on top of them. In clipped tones that told them purely and simply that they were wasting their time by daring to give a crap about one of her patients, she said, ‘The Lieutenant Colonel is 24 years old. Judging by your stature and uniform, you are certainly no younger than 14, making the Lieutenant Colonel, 10 years of age at the oldest at the point of your conception.’
Yu, whose eyes had widened in horror the moment he realised the words he had just said, now looked determined. This did not bode well. This did not bode well at all.
‘But I am,’ Yu said, and sounded so adamant that Kimizuki foresaw disaster. And if Yu was going to get banned from a hospital as well as from the shop around the corner, Kimizuki wasn’t going to go down with him this time.
Yoichi came to Yu’s rescue. ‘He's adopted.’
Kimizuki eyed him with silent interest. The innocence in Yoichi’s eyes left no room for doubt. And sure enough, the woman wavered. Obviously there was something too scarily honest about the way Yoichi looked when he lied for someone else. She knew she wouldn’t win this one, so it was better to look for someone else to end this fast.
She turned her attention to Kimizuki with a hurried sigh. ‘And I suppose you were adopted into the Ichinose family too?’
Joke was on her. ‘No,’ Kimizuki said seriously. ‘Shiho Kimizuki. My sister, Mirai Kimizuki is upstairs, in JIDA Intensive Four.’
The woman seemed taken aback. ‘Oh. Of course. Go right through.’
So shaken was she by this development and Yu's disgruntled tapping of the desk to get her attention back on him, that she didn't even notice Yoichi slipping around the desk behind him.
‘Look, I'm not lying,’ Yu was saying. ‘Please. He's my family and he's really sick. Just let me check he's okay.’
From their vantage point by the stairs, Kimizuki could see the woman's shoulders deflating. Silently, he urged Yu to keep going, keep playing the family card and messing with people’s emotions to get his way as usual. Although it wasn't like he cared or anything.
He looked over to Yoichi, saw the set of his jaw and the focus in his green eyes. For a moment, Yoichi's gaze met his and understanding passed between them. They both knew what they’d have to do if Yu couldn’t get his way.
Kimizuki felt a pang of guilt, apologised to Mirai in his head, then took it back as he imagined what she might say. She'd want him to find Guren for Yu instead of visiting her. She was always too selfless.
Finally, the woman threw up her hands and said, ‘I'm afraid I really can't let you through.’
Just as Yu was getting heated, Shinoa pushed him aside, holding out a silver disk in her hand.
‘Sergeant Shinoa Hiragi,’ she said. ‘They're with me. Could you tell us what room the Lieutenant Colonel is in?’
Whatever word the woman had been about to say died with a croak in her throat. For a moment, she simply looked at the pocket watch Shinoa offered with her lips slightly parted and her eyes wide and disbelieving. And then she shook her head and waved Shinoa, Mitsuba and the troublemaker Yu through – though not without glaring at him as he passed.
As she neared the stairs, Shinoa spun on her heels. ‘Oh, I don’t think I heard – which room did you say?’
The woman scowled. ‘He is staying in the JIDA wing. Ask the nurses at the station up there to direct you.’
-
This was hell. There was no other way of describing it. What had happened in the meeting room was nothing in comparison to this. Sure, he’d traded an organ and a part of his soul to get rid of the pain, but with that choice came a world of discomfort – and worse: boredom.
Guren Ichinose did not like hospitals. They smelt like piss, shit and sterile hell. He’d suffered many hospital trips in his lifetime so he should be used to it, and he was. But in reality, this experience just served to make him hate them more.
It was always fine when the injury was fresh and needed treating. With the pain dulling his mind, he’d suffer any unfortunate smells, uncomfortable trolley beds and downright painful prodding. But once he was dosed up on painkillers and back in one piece? No. Not today, nor any other day for that matter.
There were a million and one things he needed to be doing instead of this and for once in his life, Guren would rather do all of them than spend another ten minutes stuck in this whitewashed room, bundled in scratchy hospital blankets, in a gown that didn’t even cover his ass.
He turned over violently with a little hiss of irritation, attempting to pull himself further up the bed that Shigure refused to let him put in the sitting position.
Sayuri was there with her hands on his shoulders in seconds. Damn it. ‘Guren-sama, please settle down. You must relax and recover while-'
Guren swiped her hands from his shoulders, ignoring her hurt look in favour of arguing. ‘That’s bullshit - I'm fine. They released me faster when I got stabbed.'
Shigure supplied, ‘That’s because you discharged yourself before anybody could protest. You’re terrible.’
Guren’s eyes flicked in her direction. She stood just far enough away that he couldn’t see her unless he sat up – which Sayuri wasn’t about to let him do. Still, he could imagine the disapproving look on her face.
‘Because I was fine! Like I am fine now. I'm all for getting a day off but I wanna go home to my own bed damn it, not here where it smells of blood and piss and-’
All Shigure gave him by way of reply was a disinterested; ‘Complaining will not hasten your departure.’
‘It’ll hasten my departure alright,’ Goshi muttered.
‘You’re an asshole,’ Guren griped, folding his arms over his chest and pouting as Sayuri moved to readjust his blankets.
Goshi was unaffected. Raising an eyebrow, he replied, ‘You must have rubbed off on me.’
And then salvation. Panicked voices shouting in the corridor. A disturbance. Something to sort out. Somewhere in Guren’s mind, it occurred to him that hearing things like that ought to worry him. But he shook that thought away. Dealing with shit like this was his job. Besides…
His eyes flicked over to the chair by his bed. Shinya’s eyes were still closed, his jaw slack, his lips parted. The soft sound of his breathing had been the only constant in this room since Guren had become lucid enough to consider himself as properly inhabiting it. Shinya was asleep. Still sleeping. In spite of the way Guren’s squad had been coming and going. And it occurred to Guren that he wanted Shinya to stay that way.
Not because the idiot had stayed up with him all night or anything. Or because he looked knackered. Just because if woke up, there would be one more moron in the room to annoy him into an early grave.
‘Shigure,’ he said.
Shigure’s reply came from somewhere near the door. ‘Yes.’
Beside him, Sayuri tensed. Ready to defend him if they were under attack. Which was pointless because he could absolutely defend himself at all times. Guren inched himself higher on the bed, transferring weight to his elbows to get a better look at the door.
Without turning her eyes from the door, Sayuri pushed him back down by the shoulder.
And then he heard Goshi’s voice. ‘Shh! People are sleeping,’ he berated. ‘What do you think you’re doing.’
And a very familiar voice muttered, ‘Sorry. I just heard… so we…’
Yuichiro Hyakuya. The misfits. The rag tag group of demonic children, human experiments and that one Sanguu girl, who was probably the only one of the bunch who understood how to follow instructions. There were multiple sets of footsteps, so it was safe to assume they were all there. But why would they come looking for him? He wouldn’t admit it, but his mind was still fuzzy.
Oh yeah, he’d promised to train them. Suddenly, Guren felt very tired. He let his head fall back onto the pillow and stared up at the ceiling. Well, as a first task following his release from hospital, he’d rather be training the brats than dealing with Kureto, he supposed.
‘What Yu is trying and failing to say, is that he was so beset with worry for his dearly beloved father that he-’
Father? The fuck?
‘Shinoa!’ Yu suddenly yelled, and Guren’s train of thought was lost. ‘That was just-’
‘Shh!’ Goshi berated again.
At least someone was looking out for the peace. Good Goshi. Guren knew there was a reason he put up with the annoying bearded man.
‘If you’ve come to see Guren, come in and be quiet,’ Goshi finished. ‘Shinya-sama is sleeping.’
Guren closed his eyes. Bad Goshi. This betrayal would not be forgotten. Maybe if he just kept his eyes closed, they’d give up badgering him and go home until he could train them. Yeah, that sounded like plan.
Five sets of footsteps entered softly.