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Hyakkimaru doesn’t move for a long time.
He feels distant, disconnected, elsewhere. As if he’s dreaming, except none of Hyakkimaru’s dreams have anything on reality. His dreams are dark, blank, comforting; reality, in contrast, is a mess of noise and color and horrible sensations. He is aware of the world as if from far away—the slick feel of blood dripping down his face, the cold weight of Mio’s body, the awful heat of the fires searing his skin.
The fires are still burning, Hyakkimaru knows. He cannot see them but he can feel them—the merciless blaze, the unnatural warmth. He can hear it, too—the crack and crumble as it eats away at the temple, sending stone toppling and old wood aflame. The soldiers had not stopped at Mio. They had not stopped at the children. They had invaded this sanctuary, this place of peace, and they had burned it all to the ground for no other reason than that they could.
He wants to cry—and maybe he is crying, but at the moment Hyakkimaru can’t tell. There’s so much blood on his face, and he feels wound tighter than a spring— a pressure behind in his eyes, twisting in his throat, strangling his heart. Hyakkimaru can barely breathe. When he hugs Mio to his chest and stutters out her name, each syllable tears at his throat.
He’s learned of pain. He knows what it’s like. Burning fires and the gut-wrench of having to say goodbye. But this— Hyakkimaru has never felt a pain quite like this.
What is he supposed to do now? Hyakkimaru doesn’t know. He just—he doesn’t know. He feels lost, stuck, trapped by the very idea of moving on. Jukai—he wants Jukai there. He wants… Jukai would know what to do. Every time Hyakkimaru killed a ghoul, every time someone came for help too late, Jukai knew what to do for them. He would kneel in the earth and dig until the bodies were hidden from view, and so surely, then, that’s what must be done—
But Hyakkimaru doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want to do it. He doesn’t want to move. Some part of him wants to stay here forever, kneeling on the ground, until the fires die out and he can pretend nothing happened. Some part of him thinks that if he stays still long enough, in this hazed state, maybe he will wake up and find that he really is dreaming and everything will be alright after all. Maybe, maybe, maybe.
But Dororo is still beside him, gripping tight to Hyakkimaru’s clothes, and Hyakkimaru already knows he cannot stay here forever. If he’d been alone— maybe. Maybe. But Dororo is here too, and their words still echo.
She didn’t lose!
Mio didn’t lose. She’s— gone, but she didn’t lose. All dead, but the seeds in Dororo’s hands glow gold to Hyakkimaru’s vision. She took it back. Everything she said she would do. She took it back, despite everything.
You can’t lose either.
Neither of them, Hyakkimaru knows, ever really wanted to fight.
He breathes, or tries too, gritting his teeth past another scream. His ears still ring from the backlash of his own voice. His every breath is ragged in his throat, and he feels— fragile, glass-like, shaking as if he’s fallen sick all over again.
But Dororo is still by his side, still clinging to his sleeve, and so Hyakkimaru finally forces himself to move. He lowers Mio’s body gentle to the ground, slow and careful. The blades in his arms are still unsheathed, and he can’t bear the thought of hurting Mio worse than she has already been hurt. If he cuts her now, after all this—
Just the thought makes Hyakkimaru want to cry again. He can’t see her. He can’t see her. He’d watched her and tried to understand why Dororo was crying, only to see Mio’s shining white soul flicker and flare and then—
Gone. Gone, just like that.
She’d still been singing, Hyakkimaru thinks, and he places Mio on the ground and rocks back and forth on his knees to keep from screaming himself hoarse.
But Dororo is still here, and they are tugging at his sleeve, refusing to let him go. They whisper at him, that quiet word they’ve started using instead of Hyakkimaru’s name. “Aniki.” Brother. They say it again and again, pulling at his sleeve. Quiet, in a way Dororo never is. Choked. The word is almost a question.
“Brother?”
Hyakkimaru rocks forward. Then he lurches up to his feet, staggering instead of standing, stumbling against the uneven ground. Dororo goes quiet. Their hand falls away from Hyakkimaru’s sleeve.
The fires are still burning. He can see the gold in Dororo’s hand—the rice paddy seeds. She didn’t lose. But she’s still gone.
Hyakkimaru breathes, and breathes, and breathes, and tries not to scream. His eyes are hot. His chest hurts, aching and sore. The blood on his face has started to dry, and he can feel it crack and crumble off his skin. Human blood. Human men. The soldiers, people instead of demons, their white souls flecked with red. He’d killed them all except for one.
“Brother?”
Hyakkimaru breathes. Then he turns, stumbling again, and walks away. Away from Mio. Away from the burning temple. He keeps going, searching for a place free from the blood and bodies. The dead—he can’t see them. He trips over their bodies more than once. Some are soldiers. Some… not.
Don’t, Hyakkimaru tells himself. Don’t, don’t, don’t. Don’t what, he doesn’t know—but he still repeats it. Don’t.
Finally, he finds it. A place free from death—from fire—untouched by the blazes and the blood. His arms are still unsheathed. The blades are slick. Hyakkimaru kneels down, his knees grinding into the dirt, and tears the blade through the soil. They will dull badly from this. It will take hours to get the edges sharp again. But Hyakkimaru doesn’t care.
Dororo kneels beside him, and for a moment Hyakkimaru thinks—he thinks Dororo will stop him, maybe. Like they stopped him from killing the soldier. Don’t become a monster. Don’t.
Dororo doesn’t stop him. They don’t even speak. They kneel beside Hyakkimaru, and then they start digging too.
Hyakkimaru bows over the earth and hears the fires crackle. They are dying too, now. Soon even the flames will be gone, and all that will be left is—nothing. Nothing. No temple. No family. No Mio.
Just the graves.
Hyakkimaru kneels in the dirt, in the ashes of a home that once kept safe seven children and one brave soul unlike anyone else Hyakkimaru has ever known— and finally starts to cry.