Chapter Text
“Hey,” Dororo called, huffing as he sprinted to catch up. “Don’t go running off like that, okay? Or at least offer to carry me first, yeah?”
“I offered to carry you,” Tahomaru protested, somewhat less winded than the kid, but still a bit out of breath from running after his elder brother. It still surprised him a bit that he could sprint like that for the lengths he did and still be able to walk afterwards.
Dororo pouted, folding his arms. “Yeah, but you’ve never run with me before,” he returned, as if his slight frame could actually have added that much to anyone’s load. And of course, Tahomaru let him know as much, which made him squawk in protest. He was not that tiny, he’d have him know!
He had latched onto him, and was about to climb up him to prove his point when they realized Hyakkimaru hadn’t been listening, instead surveying back and forth between the horizon and something in the trees. They watched, tracking his motion until Dororo tugged his sleeve.
“What’s up, bro? You see something?”
“Hm,” he hummed in response, tracing his hand over a tree, then turning and weaving through a different path than the one in front of them. Dororo and Tahomaru spared each other a glance before following him.
His path didn’t always make sense to them, but they knew where he was going. He had told them before they’d set out, “Go home. See Mama.” He’d paused, forcing his hands still before continuing. “You don’t have to come.”
“Are you kidding?” Dororo had cried, bouncing on his heels. “No way I’m gonna pass up something like that! I’ve got so many stories to tell her about you—oh, unless you don’t want me to come?”
“No,” he’d watched them, expression as unreadable as in the earliest days. “You can come.” Another pause. “Tahomaru, too?”
A series of emotions had surged through him just then, and he’d felt himself struggling to keep the muscles in his face from giving away too much, even if his elder brother couldn’t see his expression. “Of course. What would you expect me to do otherwise?”
It was with no small amusement that he had watched Hyakkimaru’s eyebrows lower and his face scrunch up as if he were actually considering it. Someday, he would have to explain that not all questions needed an answer.
In the present moment, they heard the low murmuring of voices nearby. Ah, so he must have wanted to avoid the crowd. It didn’t seem that bad, compared to some of what they had walked through, but then again, if he had memories of this place, there were bound to be things he’d want to avoid.
“You must know a lot of hidden paths like this,” Tahomaru mused aloud.
“Mm,” he nodded in response. “Show you sometime.”
They walked a little farther, until they had reached the base of a small hill, before any of them spoke again.
“Hey, bro, how come you decided you wanted to see your mama now?”
Hyakkimaru stopped, his back to them as he hesitated over the words. Finally, he settled on, “Don’t know.”
“You don’t know why you wanted to go home or you don’t know how to say it?” Dororo insisted. “’Cause I can help you if you need words. So which is it?”
For a moment, it almost looked like he was going to answer, but then his head turned sharply.
“What is it, bro?”
“Is something there?” Tahomaru moved to grab the younger boy, ready to pull him away if it was a demon.
Hyakkimaru made no attempt to answer them, moving past them as if transfixed on something. A few paces later, he broke into a run.
“Bro!” Dororo cried out.
“Hyakkimaru!” Tahomaru scooped him up before he could protest, running as fast as he could in the direction his elder brother had gone.
The angle made it difficult to run while carrying him, but he managed to catch them up just in time to see Hyakkimaru veer off the path, dashing out into the field and launching himself at a large figure, who promptly dropped nearly everything he’d been carrying. His first thought was a sharp spike of worry—was this a new kind of demon?
But then the man opened his arms to catch him, his stance making him look far more like a bear than any human ought to have. The boys heard a strangled-sounding cry, “Hyakkimaru!” which only seemed to spur him even more. He threw himself against the man with such force he nearly ploughed him over, forcing him to turn to avoid losing his balance. And his brothers could only gawk as a man nearly twice his size struggled to right them, looking almost like a father twirling his child around.
“Slow down, Hyakkimaru! Slow down! Give me a moment to look at you,” he laughed, trying to peel the boy off of him, and only succeeding for a moment before he practically leaped up to pull their foreheads together, nestling almost frantically against him before the man returned the gesture, running a hand over his hair to calm him. Then he gasped, “Is this…skin? Hyakkimaru, you have skin now?”
He ran a hand over his face and neck. “You’re not wearing your bandages…This isn’t your mask, either…this is your skin!”
And Hyakkimaru might have tried to reply, but the only sounds that came from him were choked whimpers and the fragmented pieces of a phrase Dororo had taught him before they’d set out, but which came out sounding more like, “H-home, home, home, home, Mama. Home, I’m…I’m home. I’m home.”
“You can talk? You’ve gotten your voice?” he continued, pouring out words of encouragement to say more, but only getting more of the previous phrases in reply, faster and faster and faster each time as he latched on and hugged the man even tighter than before.
And maybe he shouldn’t have stared. No, he knew he shouldn’t have stared. His cheeks burned and he knew he was intruding on something immensely private, and it was probably wrong for either of them to have come in the first place except that his brother said he wanted him to. But something about the way he’d pictured this and the way it was happening…Tahomaru felt something click in his mind, something which he felt he should have put together long before this moment, and wondered how in the world he had managed to miss it before. Dororo had squirmed free from his grip. He brushed himself off as he watched, shifting on his feet and picking at his arm. He wondered if it clicked for him, too, or if he had figured it out before.
After what seemed like hours, but was probably only minutes, large fingers came up, scrubbing gently at the teen’s cheeks as he mimicked the motion in return. Then, Hyakkimaru took his hands, pulling him towards them.
They turned to the pair, their faces wet and the man’s eyes still shining.
“These, my bro—These are my brothers,” he spoke, brow pinching as he remembered the practiced words. “Dororo, Tahomaru.” He pointed as he indicated them. Then he reached back towards the large bearded man and smiled wider than they had ever seen from him. “This. Is Mama.”
In that moment, Dororo had spoken for both of them. “What?”
But the man hadn’t seemed bothered by the slip. Instead, he simply laid a hand over Hyakkimaru’s shoulder with a chuckle of, “Silly you, that’s not what I am,” which was almost too soft for any of them to hear, but which made Hyakkimaru’s brow twitch and his lips purse in an expression they had all seen many times before. He might have even argued the point, had the man not simply pulled him in once more, a quick embrace before he led them back to his home, Hyakkimaru trailing behind as Dororo usually did for him.
A fallen sign near the door, words nearly worn away from years of weathering, told him the man’s name was Jukai. The rest of the words were too scratched and faded to make out, but Tahomaru could guess. The kinds of tools he had, the amount of wooden limbs stored inside, the condition he kept the place in, the fact that he’d apparently somehow kept his brother alive before he had skin, of all things? He must have been a doctor, and a skilled one at that.
And it seemed as though he was about to ask them something, when Dororo’s stomach growled as if in protest. Blushing bright red, the boy folded his arms over his midsection, stammering out a stilted apology which Jukai almost immediately waved off. “The three of you must have traveled quite a ways. I’m afraid I don’t have much, but I can certainly offer you a meal.”
Dororo, of course, had taken very little persuasion to accept.