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“Your brother made a mistake, and got the due punishment.” He doesn’t know what causes the words to slip from his mouth, dribbling down like drool in the middle of the night onto the pillow: unbidden and unwanted.
Mitsuzane’s eyes narrow to dangerous slits and the boy spins, drawing himself up to his full height. “Don’t,” he hisses, voice low in his throat, the suppressed growl of a wounded lion. “Don’t you dare, when it was your experimenting that put him in the way of—“
“The forest was going to choose,” Ryouma replies. “And it happened to choose your beloved Nii-san. It was a necessary sacrifice.”
He watches Mitsuzane’s tiny hands ball into fists, nails digging into their palms sharply enough to draw blood.
“This is your fault,” the boy hisses, though the tears at the corners of his eyes are obvious. “I wanted him out of the way, I wanted him safe. This is your fault.”
The corners of Ryouma’s mouth twist into a grin at the memories of Mitsuzane’s sudden grab for power, of how he’d snuck to Helheim looking for more, of how Takatora had gone and been misguided….and cut down, his lifeblood spilled to feed the alien trees of the forest.
He pats Mitsuzane on the shoulder, knowing full well the boy had a part in it all, but he does not need to say that for the child to understand, and sometimes silence is the most painful punishment.
“Of course,” he replies evenly, voice almost playful. “It was my fault, of course. I took his lockseed, after all.” His teeth show now, sharp and predatory in the mockery of a grin. He’d seen the footage, seen Mitsuzane make a grab for Takatora’s belt in the hopes to steal the device and the lock for good, had seen Takatora pitch forward in the middle of reverting to his untransformed state. The boy hadn’t realized how close their enemy was, that was all. An honest mistake. An honest mistake that cost the life of someone dear to both of them.
Ryouma felt Mitsuzane’s pride crumple as his shoulders dropped. There, that was broken enough for now. He couldn’t have the new PR head collapsing before he’d even started. He gave the other a swift pat on the shoulders, turning and leaving him with a heart full of guilt and the black-draped casket.
-
Ryouma heads to his own apartment, stripping out of his lab coat and tossing the offending garment to the ground. He hadn’t taken it off, not even for the funeral service. Takatora used to tease him about that, about the fact that he always seemed to wear it, used to challenge that he’d be the one to finally get the coat off of Ryouma’s shoulders, one way or another. He’d managed, eventually, much to both of their surprise, and by the time he’d remembered his promise to one day get Ryouma to wear something other than a lab coat Ryouma hadn’t been wearing much of anything at all.
Their relationship hadn’t been perfect: it was broken and cracked, full of misunderstandings and struggles as both tried to grab the reins. But Takatora’s love for him had been genuine, evidenced by the way the stern man would allow his eyes to soften when gazing upon Ryouma, the way his hand would brush Ryouma’s cheeks so gently as to almost be mistaken for the breeze.
And Ryouma had loved him, too, in his own distorted way. Takatora was interesting, and that had been where the original draw had come from. And then he’d come to cherish the quiet moments, the times where they were both cracked and broken and filled the holes within one another. He could still feel Takatora’s hands, how they’d always grab his whenever he finally managed to get home, no matter how late, and inspect them for cuts or injuries.
“You need your hands,” he’d say, serious as a heart attack. “You are our head researchers. Great things are going to come from your hands, Ryouma.”
And then their fingers would twine together as easily as breathing, and Takatora would lean in to kiss him once upon the lips.
This night, Ryouma stood in his doorway, hands outstretched, waiting, hoping, finding nothing in the empty air but the usual mix of useless particles.
He hated Mitsuzane, who had dared to try something so dangerous with his brother. He hated Helheim, the place he drew his own power from, the place he all but worshipped in studying. And most of all, he hated Takatora, his absence and the way that the small apartment felt fifteen degrees colder.
He had not cried at the funeral, he had not shed a single tear while standing over the casket of his friend and lover. He’d laughed, had mocked Mitsuzane and felt accomplished as the boy’s face had fallen. He’d done everything but cry: he’d demeaned his old boss, made a mockery of him and his work. He’d shrugged it off with his usual detached indifference.
But here, in the still and the quiet of his empty quarters, Sengoku Ryouma found himself incapable of running from the truth any more. Deprived of his coat or the warm arms of his lover to keep him warm, he began to shiver and tremble, sinking slowly to the ground of the hallway until he was sitting, the wall the only thing holding him up at all. The tears flowed freely then, down his sharp cheeks and off his chin, dripping off his nose and to the ground in sickening plops that sounded like rain, or like he imagined Takatora’s blood had as it trickled out from between his lips and over his face, draining down to stain the floor of the forest, pure crimson and perfect, a single river down his pale neck.
He wondered for a time where the strange noise was coming from, until his throat started to hurt and he realized he was making a high, keening noise like an animal. The keen turned into a high wail, an open lament for the dead, a song carried to heaven.
Yet no matter how loud he cried, he knew Takatora would not be there to hear.