Chapter Text
Tahomaru was well aware that he often let his emotions get the better of him. It was what had prevented him from being able to see past his mother’s haze of depression, and what prevented him from fully becoming the proud lord his father wanted him to be, even if he would never admit it out loud. On the other hand, it was what had let him become so close to Hyogo and Mutsu, rather than distant as a lord would normally be to his retainers. He liked to think he was better off for it.
But then, it was also what had allowed his father to manipulate him into fighting his brother. Instinctively, he had understood it had been wrong to sacrifice someone who had no say in the matter, even if it would ensure their land’s survival. If he had been stronger, he would have said as much, in the words he wanted to say, rather than the words he had said. He had managed a part of it, he thought. He had managed enough.
And just like that, his father had turned it around, telling him he was letting his own feelings cloud his judgment, demanding to know, “Will you sacrifice this land just so you can remain innocent?”
It hadn’t been just that. He knew it hadn’t. When he had found out about his brother’s sacrifice, a cold fear had grown inside of him that if his father could sacrifice the firstborn he had barely known, there would be little to stop him from sacrificing anything else that might stand in his way. That while Tahomaru was useful now as an heir, it was always a possibility that could change. But that had been a purely emotional reaction, too, he had told himself. He was simply not thinking things through.
After all, the demons would protect their land and ensure its survival. And so on that reasoning, he had convinced himself it was his brother who was the demon, that it wasn’t his place to question something that worked simply because it happened to be his own flesh and blood paying the price for it. If it had been anyone else, he wouldn’t have questioned it. Sometimes, the only way to survive was to make that difficult choice and hold yourself to it. That was what his father had been trying to tell him.
And so he had clashed swords with the demon boy, and lost his eye as a price for rushing in.
As he lie bleeding, hardly feeling the bandages wrapped over his eye, and hearing his mother on the other side of the screen, fighting either to live or to die, crying out in delirium for her sons not to kill each other, he’d known he had been a fool.
That deal hadn’t stopped the crab from devouring villagers. It hadn’t stopped mudslides and droughts, or skirmishes with other clans. As much as he’d tried to tell himself it was all recent, it had only started happening when the demon boy had begun to reclaim his body, he’d known it couldn’t be the case.
The first incident had happened years ago, before Hyakkimaru could possibly have begun his hunt. And then there was the question of how he could have even known to hunt the demons, let alone gotten the weapons he needed to do so. Try as he might, he had only been able to come up with one reason: when demons get a taste for human flesh, they keep eating.
He hadn’t spoken to his mother before he left. She had been unconscious at the time, and he had slipped into her room and rested a hand on her forehead, whispering a promise to return once he’d found his answer. Hyogo and Mutsu would tell her later, if she survived and they could remain.
In some ways, this was better, he told himself. If he had spoken to her, he was almost certain the doubts churning inside of him would have swallowed him whole.
Of course, he would have thought that in the time he’d traveled with his elder brother and the little imp, that any lingering doubts would have long since banished themselves. Instead, they simply found new forms and kept eating at him. It was almost laughable, really. One type of demon eating at his brother, and another kind entirely eating at him. But he liked to think he could survive it.
Still, there were times, sometimes even days, when things would get bad. Tahomaru would feel phantom pains in his ruined eye, and sometimes he could ignore it. Other times, his mind would supply the snap of a blade shattering and the rush of anxiety, the crushing humiliation of losing in front of his father’s army. From there, it would only be seconds before his legs turned useless and he would crash to the ground, sucking in air and pressing at his eye to staunch the bleeding he knew wasn’t happening.
The first time it had happened in front of him, Hyakkimaru hadn’t understood what was happening, only that his younger brother was afraid of something, and he had reached out to comfort him only to be met with a harsh shove and a scream of “Don’t touch me!”
As he had come out of that panicked state, all he could think of what that it was all just so stupid, that his stupid emotions just kept coming up and getting in the way at the worst possible moments, and now they were going to tear down everything they had worked so hard to build up between the three of them, and they would be back to where they had started, if not worse because of the violence between them. And what was he supposed to do when that happened? He'd practically burned every other bridge he'd had to choose from in coming here.
Sometime in there, Dororo had tried to explain things to Hyakkimaru, as much as an eight-year-old could explain that kind of thing. In some ways, that just made it even worse.
But to his surprise, his elder brother had crawled over to him that night, with a whisper of, “Tahomaru?” There was something just the slightest bit amusing about feeling their positions reversed, but he would have been lying if he’d said that he felt anything stronger than relief that he hadn’t ruined everything. Even if it was tainted with some gnawing fear just below it.
“Hm?” he’d responded, wondering why he couldn’t make himself say more.
Hyakkimaru had sat for a moment, visibly struggling with the wording. “Tahomaru,” he started again, face screwing up as he concentrated on the words. “Hurt. Scared. You…” His hands shook, and he gripped the fabric of his clothing to stifle it. “I hurt you?”
It took him a moment to try and guess just when he meant. Something else he had learned was that his elder brother didn’t have much of a concept of verb tenses. It was easy to forget, since there were some he had started to understand, but past tense was a lot more ambiguous with him. Still, he figured he could assume on this one. “Today? No.” He really didn’t want to talk about this now, and he would have preferred not to spell it out.
“But before?”
Tahomaru bit the inside of his lip. That damn aura reading was really not helping with this. He could lie, sure, but he’d just pick up on it when his stupid emotions gave him away. “That’s neither here nor there at this point, is it.” It didn’t matter, he told himself. It happened over a week ago, at least.
He seemed to think about it for a moment, brow pinching just the slightest bit. Or perhaps he didn’t understand the expression and was trying to work out what it meant.
Suffice to say, it thoroughly shocked him when the next words out of his brother’s mouth were, “Sorry. I was…angry. Dororo, scared. I worry.”
And how to respond to that. It would be so easy to tell him he wasn’t looking for an apology, that besides, an apology wouldn’t fix his eye or stop his mother from stabbing herself or make his damn stupid emotions shut up and let him make a rational decision for once in his life, even if he’d probably only understand about half of it, maybe a bit more. At least, he’d get the point of it, if nothing else.
But at the same time, he’d also given him a way to end the conversation without shutting everything down. “You worry a lot for the kid, I bet.” He was already tiring out. It would be easy to push him to the point of being too tired to speak.
He gave a small nod. “Dororo finds trouble. Demons. Monsters…” There was a pause as he searched for the next phrase, never quite happy with any of them and even seeming a bit distressed over it. If it wasn’t late enough that he would probably wear out and just go to sleep, Tahomaru would have felt a bit bad over it.
But then, Hyakkimaru continued instead, wooden knuckles shaking against his hem. “You, too. I worry…for you, too. I hurt you, then. Scared, now.”
No, not scared now. Just raw. Raw and not ready to have all this stupid crap he’d tried for years to push down come back up in the worst possible way. It wasn’t even just about the injury at this point. If it ever had been.
“Help you. How?” Another pause, tongue working out the sounds. “How. Do. I help?”
Now that had almost drawn a laugh as he heard his own words repeated back to him. “I’m surprised you remember that,” he couldn’t resist commenting. Hyakkimaru had been so overwhelmed that day, he was honestly surprised he could remember anything from it. He wouldn’t have wanted to.
Hyakkimaru continued, undisturbed by his remark, and started to reach a wooden hand towards him before thinking better of it and setting it against his own cheek, tapping it with the opposite hand once, and then pointing to Tahomaru. “This…is bad?”
“No,” he had answered almost immediately. “Sometimes,” he revised.
“When? When scared? How do I help?”
“I don’t know,” he answered, sounding much shorter than he felt and wishing that he could have given any other answer but the one he had given.
A brow pinched together, but Hyakkimaru seemed, not happy with the answer, not satisfied, but at least he seemed to accept it. He tapped the hand resting on his cheek once more. “This is bad, now?”
A small spike of worry shot through him at the idea of those sheath-hands near his ruined eye, and he struggled to swallow it back. He hadn’t had a problem with it before. There was no reason to have an issue with it now.
“No…” he started, already knowing what a bad idea it was. It had helped him before, and if he was honest, he really didn’t want to lose it. “No, but…with this one.” He reached out, taking his brother’s right hand and bringing it to his left cheek. “This way.”
His heart pounded and he felt himself shaking as his elder brother leaned their foreheads against each other. It’s not the same, it’s not the same, it’s not even on the same side. And then there was that slight, side-to-side motion, a silent reassurance that everything would be okay. They weren’t yet, but they would be. Maybe. Eventually.
Tahomaru bit down hard on his lip, forcing his hands from his ruined eye to grip his brother’s back. This was fine, it would be okay. And then those damned stupid emotions welled up again, and he felt his brother’s free hand come up to his back, tracing tiny circles over his shoulder. This was fine, he would be okay. Not now, but eventually. Maybe.
A small part of him realized it was the second time he had cried himself to sleep against his brother. An even smaller part wondered if it would become a habit.
Sometimes, it would help. Other nights, he would fall asleep and dream of things that made him wake in a cold sweat, but that he would never remember after. Sometimes he could let his brother and Dororo near him, let them sit on either side of him, nuzzling against his forehead and…whatever it was Dororo did, tracing patterns on his back or simply sitting with his weight against him…until he could breathe normally and walk on shaky legs.
Other days were worse, and they would simply sit by him, not facing him, and not within striking distance, until he could come out of it, letting him walk beside them, but not touching him. Hyakkimaru still messed up from time to time, still tried to reach for him on the wrong side or at the wrong time, but Dororo could usually tell when he was about to and could help him figure out when he should or shouldn’t. Most of the time, he simply said, “Let him reach for you first, okay?”
Over time, they had started to work it out. They had started to figure out what worked and what only made things worse, and when it worked and when it only made it worse. He would never stop hating those days, Tahomaru was certain, but it gave him comfort, at least, to know that when his demons came for him, no matter their form, his brothers would not sit by and let him be consumed.