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Midorima (as he is later named) doesn't remember the details of his creation. Simply put, in his awareness he did not exist one day, and then did the next. When he later compares his story with the other three guardians, he realizes that he is not the odd one out. They had all found themselves simply existing one day without the knowledge of how or why. Midorima accepts that is merely how it works.
Midorima was created in a forest, and consequently his first memory was of opening his eyes and catching sight of the most breathtaking explosion of color overhead. It was the universe’s way of hinting towards why he was created. It was very straightforward. Midorima knew, in that moment, that the purpose of his existence would be to protect the crisp scent in the air; the brown, orange, yellow leaves spiraling down.
(He learned later that the humans gave specific names for that smell and those leaves. It differed with humans of different regions, but all their words held the same intention. They all attempted to capture the stillness of a ground covered in browning leaves and the numbness that begins and spreads through their fingers with the cold.)
This was the world that he was created into, and this was the one that he was meant to protect.
Midorima spent his first hours testing out his feet. He was watched by the other occupants of the forest as he stumbled around, trying to feel the ends of his physical body. He wasn't created as humans were, with small, manageable limbs that extended with experience. His legs felt like they stretched on forever, his arms like they were only inches from the blue sky peeking behind leaves.
Soon he learned to grab onto branches with his hands to support his weight as he toddled into a walk. Another few hours, and he no longer needed the branches. It took a few more hours before he realized that the appendages on his feet could curl similar to the way the fingers on his hands could, and that his arms could bend a bit both ways and his neck could lean all the way back so he could look straight up at the sky.
.
He learned that they had the same outward appearances as those humans they were to care for. They shared the same number and design of limbs, with such similarity that Midorima would believe himself to be of the same composition if it wasn’t for the innate knowledge that he was simply filling a shell.
He held the hands of some of the humans when they came to him. They kneeled before him, their heads bowed and offerings of ripe fruit extended before them, and he would watch as they prayed to him for his blessings. His most common visitors were the men--some old to where they hobbled up to him with canes, some young to where he could barely see the sprinkling of facial hair on their chins--all to ask for his blessing to battle. Midorima felt a burning in the pit of his stomach for the young men, especially.
“Raise your head,” Midorima told them, “Warriors do not go into battle with their heads bowed to the enemy in defeat.” The braver ones looked at him then, allowing Midorima to see right through them, at all their mistakes and successes in the past, and at their final rest in the future.
It wasn’t his place to judge. He knew what they saw in him, and he knew what he saw in them. Throughout the years of his existence he sent so many men to their deaths, torn apart by their brothers and never-friends. To him they all looked so different and so similar, like he was looking at the same man walking up to him centuries apart, with perhaps different faces or strides but the exact same set of the mouth, exact same look in his eyes.
But, regret? Impossible. It was also not his place to regret.
That was because there was something fundamentally different between them--himself and the humans. He felt it in the way that leaves falling during autumn would pause before him, suspended in the air, as if saying hello; in the way that the predators passing through the forests would blink slowly before lowering its head.
The humans had names for them. Midorima was named after the tigers that would prowl around him and bend to his touch, the ones that settled under his feet and stared beadily at the humans before them. He became the god of the tyrants.
Midorima had no opinion on this.
It was also not his place to question.
.
He knew that there were others like him. The basic laws of their universe ensured that there wasn’t a single existence created on the earth without its counterpart or companions. Therefore, he shouldn’t have been surprised when he was first approached by the other creature, shouldn’t have been surprised to see the wavering spirit crammed into a human body, much like his own composition.
“Your reputation precedes you, the West’s White Tiger,” it spoke, eyes narrowing in what Midorima later learned was amusement. Its voice, a low lilt unusual even for their kind, rattled its way through Midorima’s brain. “In the towns they speak of how elusive you are. They claim you don’t show yourself for any creature you deem unworthy of your presence. Legend speaks that you have even avoided emperors in the past.”
The tiger at Midorima’s feet rose, lips pulling back from its teeth as a low rumbling rose from its chest. The other creature smiled down at it, and it was then that Midorima noticed the thick, black snake twining its way along its shoulders.
“I cannot say I have heard word of you.”
“How rude of them.” Midorima definitely spotted a smile in the curl of the creature’s eyes. They were the same color as his beloved forest in the cusp of the cold season. “The humans address me as the North’s Black Tortoise.”
Midorima reached down and ran his hand gently along the back of the tiger’s ears, soothing it. It sat back, leaning obediently against his side. Midorima saw the prompt in the Tortoise’s eyes, and that’s what made him ask his next question.
“And how shall I address you?”
The snake around his shoulders relaxed. Midorima, although not known for his perceptiveness, could detect relief.
“My human name is Akashi. Please call me that.”
.
Akashi began to pay visits during the coldest months, during those days when Midorima feels his essence weaken in preparation for the intolerable heat afterwards. Akashi was a traveller--according to him, the only one out of their kind that wandered back and forth across the human world. Akashi had many stories about tall hills that scratched at the sky and looked to be dribbled in sugar, large areas of earth carved out and filled with only a tiny river, animals that were so enormous they could reach the tops of trees. So many of Akashi’s stories sounded impossible to Midorima.
The humans were his favorite topic of discussion. There were days when Akashi would speak of the hundreds and hundreds of humans that come to him asking for wisdom, the same way they asked Midorima for success in battle. Akashi remembered many of them in the curious way that only their kind could manage, rattling off names and faces from days and months and years ago with inhuman accuracy.
He also told Midorima about the others that were not quite human--he said there were another two, specifically, that were very similar to them. Akashi relayed them to be creatures of the hot days of early sunrises, very much unlike the two of them who are often only active during the cold days of early sunsets.
Midorima spoke less during their meetings, preferring to listen to Akashi he talked in his soft, rich timbre about people and places. There was always a strange desperation in his eye that Midorima interpreted as a border between greed and desperation, which he couldn’t understand. With time, Midorima learned that this was common in Akashi.
But he was good company, a pleasant change from the wildlife and humans that had been his only interaction before. To the two of them, who don’t pay nearly as much attention to the humans’ obsession with dividing up time into minutes and hours, Akashi came around just enough for Midorima to grow used to his presence. He always brought the large snake, wound around his shoulders where it could raise itself to meet Midorima’s eyes. Akashi claimed he brought them to bring company for Midorima’s tigers.
“They do not like snakes,” Midorima said, frowning, when Akashi shifted closer to him on the rock. The snake moved with him, its head raising in response as it drew closer to the predator by Midorima’s feet.
“They will grow accustomed to being in each others’ company,” Akashi brushed off easily. Midorima was convinced Akashi found childish amusement at the sight of gigantic tigers hissing at his snakes.
Akashi always spent up to a few weeks with Midorima, never over a month, before moving on. Midorima always let him go, staying seated on his rock but sending him away with a few polite words. One time a few human years after they first meet, he stood and walked with Akashi through the forest to see him off. A tiger padded alongside them, occasionally jumping ahead to perch on rocks with enough time to clean her paws before pacing over to catch up with Midorima.
“Where did you originally find yourself, Akashi?” he asked, after Akashi praised him on how beautiful the forest looked that morning. It was the very cusp of his season and Akashi’s, and the trees already appeared bony, the dead leaves underneath already scattered. Midorima had long learned that Akashi’s presence in the forest would hasten winter days--while he found it inconvenient and slightly frustrating, it was never any more than that. He learned, from the years before, it would be Akashi’s turn eventually, whether he liked it or not.
“Where I originally found myself? Where I was born, you mean?”
“Born is a very human term.”
Apparently Akashi’s snake believed Midorima to be close enough to scale, and reared up to place its head on Midorima’s shoulder. Midorima jumped and took an alarmed step away from Akashi, nearly tripping over a tree root in the process. He saw Akashi struggling not to laugh, and heard him continue, “It indicates the beginning of sentient existence, does it not? I would like to believe that we are sentient existences, ourselves.”
“That’s a very novel idea. However, I believe ‘birth’ implies an eventual ‘death’ as well, which I do not necessarily believe we are capa--Akashi, please, calm down your friend, I believe he’s trying to throttle me.”
“For one so preoccupied with their immortality, you do have an interesting confidence in it,” Akashi smiled, reaching out with a finger to gently turn his snake’s head back towards his own wrist. “Fair, you asked where I first...awoke, we’ll say. It was in a very cold land, very very beautiful in a manner different than what you’re accustomed to.”
“If you find it beautiful, I imagine it must be uncomfortably frigid and smothered in snow.”
“What an endearing comment. Despite your suspicions, however, there was more ice than snow.”
“How unexpected.” A falling leaf landed in Akashi’s hair, and his snake rose to swipe it off.
“The first time I awoke was aside a large river, carved right through a forest not too much unlike your own. It had been winter, of course--curious, I wonder if that renders me younger between us two?--and the river was frozen. The sun happened to have risen to its peak as well...I had been quite literally blinded by beauty.”
Midorima gave a small smile. The tiger bounded back up to catch up with them after having cleaned a paw, and rubbed her head against Midorima’s waist. He smoothed her down gently between the ears, and she blinked slowly at him in satisfaction. “And you return to it as your home when you are tired from wandering?”
“Yes, in years when I fool myself into believing that I have already discovered all there is to be discovered, and am content with laying in snow or rotting away slowly during those wretched warm months.”
They’d maintained a good pace while talking, and Midorima could soon spot the rolling flat fields spreading where the forest ended. He walked Akashi to the edge, pressing his lips gently together. “You are in pursuit of something unattainable. It shouldn’t be so unbearable for you to simply relax and listen to the humans that come seeking your advice.”
“What a very interesting and simple opinion,” Akashi said, with a smile depicting no malice. Midorima’s mouth thinned further, nonetheless.
“Are you not, in fact, searching for knowledge of everything?”
“No, you’re entirely correct.”
“I could never understand,” Midorima said. He nodded as Akashi took a step out of his forest, and almost felt the instantaneous change in the air of his forest. “But I hope that you find all that you are looking for.”
Akashi gave one last small smile before bidding goodbye to Midorima and the tiger by his side, walking away with the promise to return in a few years with more stories.
.
Midorima did not feel the same affinity that the humans did with time. He interpreted that difference as one of the most important distinctions between their kinds--he was a picture, kept as is for however long eternity proved to be, while the humans were alive, ink running off wet brushes.
And though it felt like he was simply living a neverending stream of days, he knew that the humans were changing by their decades and centuries. Though they always looked the same to him, their images began to change. Midorima noticed shifts in what they wore, noticed that their clothes became more ornate or more heavy or light depending on the year. There were changes in how they spoke as well. Words that he did not recognize and yet recognized would spill from their mouths, and they all looked very natural going about it.
“The world shifts much too abruptly,” he told Akashi one time, when it was hot and humid and they were both laying under a large-leafed tree in desperation to escape the heat. As much as he disliked the stark cold of Akashi’s season, it paled in comparison to his utter mortification with the hot seasons.
“It does,” Akashi replied. His eyes were closed and his entire face peppered with sweat. As a spirit of the extreme cold, Midorima knew Akashi was suffering even worse. Despite that, though, Akashi’s eyes still slid open and he looked over at Midorima with the faintest hint of a smile. “What, do you realize that it’s about time to start keeping up now?”
Midorima frowned. “How you can tease while looking as if you’re on the brink of death is beyond me.”
He knew that Akashi wanted to laugh but didn’t have the energy to do so. Large snakes began to gather around him, almost like a moving barrier against the heat. Midorima reflexively shifted away, and winced when he moved into a small patch of sunlight.
“Come, Midorima.”
“I do not like snakes.”
“I’m afraid you may have to overcome that. Your tigers would not help now, unless you wish to try cooling down with fur.”
“I may just join them in the lake.”
“How you can have the energy to jump around in the sun is beyond me,” Akashi said, his voice pitched in mockery.
“Childish.”
“Given that we don’t bother allotting labels to time, we could perfectly well pass as children for as long as we desire.”
“You remain a child for all of eternity, then.”
“And you as well, unless you wish to meet your end in this heat because you are too stubborn to come closer to my snakes.”
Midorima reared a bit and instantly regretted it--sweat dripped off the ends of his hair onto the ground, and he immediately felt the exhaustion from the heat amplifying the uncomfortableness of his skin. Akashi’s eyes were closed again, his chest rising and falling quickly with short puffs, but Midorima noticed a corner of his lip quirked up.
As if noticing and responding, one of the snakes turned its head from Akashi’s neck to look straight at Midorima. The way that it flicked its tongue at him made him think about the curious children that came occasionally to him with their parents.
He groaned and laid down again, shifting over so he was closer to Akashi and back in the shade. A few of the snakes shifted, coiling and uncoiling, to make room for him. Midorima felt their cool, rough skin sliding against his own and shivered unhappily.
“Why must they feel so disgusting.”
“Careful, Midorima, they have feelings as well.”
.
They were acquainted for centuries of human years before Akashi finally talked Midorima into going with him on one of his wanderings. Midorima, having felt uneasy from the moment that Akashi made him step out of his territory for the first time, was quickly growing irritated. He watched as Akashi strode ahead of him, his posture perfect even with a signature large, black snake wound every-which-way around his shoulders. Midorima, on the other hand, willed his stomach to stop squirming.
It was not necessarily that Midorima had never been outside his forest--he made trips to the village up the hill at times to converse with the people and see for himself just how quickly things changed. However, he made this trip possibly once every few decades. There was simply no need for a guardian spirit to leave a place they felt comfortable. Unless that guardian spirit happened to be the North’s Black Tortoise, who had an unusual and possibly harmful inability to stay put for more than a few human years at a time.
Midorima kept pace with Akashi, letting his eyes wander around the foreign looking shapes pushing against the horizon. They were the same mountains that he observed from within the forest, but from a different angle. For some reason, just that small shift was enough for Midorima to feel as if he had strayed much too far from home.
“Akashi, how many years did you allot for this particular excursion?” Midorima swore he almost heard Akashi snort at the question.
“Do you plan how many leaves will fall during your season? As it is, I have no intention of returning you within the year. You should meet the other two guardians at the very least. And the land they reside in is even further and further towards the south. I’ve told them a lot about you.”
“Oh,” Midorima said, utterly unimpressed and slightly uneasy at the prospect of being in peculiar unknown lands for multiple human years. “Excellent.”
“Neither likes you very much, in all honesty. Though they’re not exactly fond of me either.”
“That’s only fair, considering we dislike them equally.”
“While a fair argument, you’ll realize after meeting them that it would be ineffective. One of them is quite a large personality. I don’t fear him, but I wouldn’t appreciate spending extended periods of time with him as I do with you. The other is simply...rather unwelcoming.”
Midorima wanted to question Akashi just why he had to spend years visiting spirits that did not--and mostly likely would not--like him, but Akashi suddenly fell into a silence.
A part of Midorima knew, immediately, that Akashi was again thinking too hard about their place in the world. In his perspective, this was the worst possible thing to ponder. Midorima held a belief, in the back of their head, that their immortality would only remain so long as it stayed unchallenged.
He lifted a finger and pointed it at a plant he had never seen before. “What is that curious tree, Akashi? They don’t grow in my forest.”
Akashi looked up. He answered slowly.
“The people call it a dove tree. When it flowers, the petals are as white and delicate as dove wings.”
“That sounds very beautiful.”
“It’s lovely, but isn’t the most beautiful.” Midorima could see how Akashi’s eyes were focused again. He followed a few steps to the side of Akashi, just outside of the reach of his snake, while listening as Akashi started talking about bright red hills and colossal mountains and other things so ephemeral they sounded impossible.
.
They wandered for only a few months before they stepped onto a field of long grass and flowers, and Midorima felt the change almost instantaneously from the moment his foot touched the ground. The air, previously cool and crisp from the effect of his season, suddenly grew wet and sticky with evaporation. Midorima found his nose scrunching with distaste. Even the earth around him remained lively, hanging on fiercely to the heat from the summer, and there were unusual amounts of small rabbits and birds out and about.
“You’ve noticed?” Akashi asked. He was still walking forward confidently, parting tall blades of grass and flowers with his hands as he moved. The snake on his shoulders slid off, slinking off with a little tail flick Midorima interpreted as satisfaction.
“Of course. Is this the guardian of the spring or the summer?”
Akashi sighed. “This is the home of the South’s Vermillion Bird, who we have to blame for the hottest days.” His voice held a hint of distaste. Midorima didn’t blame him. “But believe me, the East’s Azure Dragon is often here as well.”
“They’re friends?” Midorima asked. They were drawing close to the middle of the field; he’d been scouring the tall grass for any signs of life, with no luck.
Akashi stopped and nodded. “They are like us.”
Midorima opened his mouth, about to make a side comment on if maybe if there was any reason for that coincidental similarity, but stopped when he saw someone walking towards them. The newcomer was tall--about as tall as he was, Midorima realized--and had hair a shade of burnt red complimented by a light scowl over his lips.
“Did you have to visit during the cold season, Akashi? Kuroko’s already caught a sore throat.”
“It’s nice to see you too, Kagami. May I introduce you to the West’s White Tiger, Midorima.” Midorima exchanged cautious glares with the new character, Kagami. “Midorima, this is the South’s Vermillion Bird, Kagami.”
Something on Kagami’s head shifted, and Midorima started when he realized that the peculiar fluff off of Kagami’s head wasn’t all hair. A beady eye poked out and he realized that it was, in fact a large, fat bird. Akashi’s fingers pinched insistently at the skin on Midorima’s hand after a few moments of silence, and he managed to look away.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Kagami,” he finally said. It looked like the bird was making a nest out of Kagami’s longer hairs.
“Yeah, okay, cool,” Kagami said, a pained, forced smile stretching on his lips for the briefest moment. “Now leave.”
“I did warn you how completely hospitable he was, right,” Akashi muttered to Midorima.
“Kagami, you’re being rude,” a soft voice said suddenly from Midorima’s right, making him jump. It was a shorter figure, with hair and eyes an unusual shade of sky blue. There were scattered wildflower petals and stems in his hair that Midorima had the suspicion he didn’t know about. “It’s nice to meet you, Midorima. I am the East’s Azure Dragon, but you may call me Kuroko for convenience. Now that introductions are complete, you have no other reason to be here. Please leave immediately.”
Akashi looked, finally, like he might regret dragging Midorima out for this ‘adventure’. Midorima spotted it in the smallest dip downwards at the corner of his mouth, and knew that it was there only for him to notice. “No need to worry, were simply passing through. I thought you might have wanted to meet Midorima, since he’s one of us.”
“Yeah, we already see too much of Akashi,” Kagami said. The bird on his head looked as disgruntled as its master, and chirped irritatedly at Akashi and Midorima. “We don’t care if you come by, but at least try to time it to when we’re not feeling like shit.”
“You understand that we feel equally uncomfortable during your hot seasons?”
“That is only the fault of your poor taste.” This time it was Kuroko, his expression painfully neutral and rigid. Midorima found himself regretting, wholeheartedly, this whole adventure thing with Akashi.
He shook his head. “Then we will leave. Your territory, even now, feels like it’s shriveling up under the sun.”
“Thank you for the compliment.”
As if in response the air around them became even more humid, to the point where Midorima suddenly felt like he could drink it up. “It was nice meeting you two, hopefully the next time we meet is more...favorable,” he said. He hoped that the frigid tone of his voice would dissuade either of them from ever coming close to him, especially if every place around them felt so disgustingly warm and sticky.
Midorima was the first to turn around and start off back towards the Akashi spoke up once they were a safe distance away from the field, and both of them had breathed sighs of relief as they felt their sweat cooling on their skin from the return of the breeze. “They’re usually more personable. I think it was the effect of having both of us there at the same time.”
“I’d rather not ever see them again, Akashi.”
“Good. I introduced them to you hoping that you’d dislike them so I could have you all to myself.” Akashi’s voice held a little lilt, and Midorima looked over to see a small smile twitching on his lips.
“You’re diabolical.”
.
Midorima wasn’t good with time. He closed his eyes and opened them again, and it felt like only a few minutes passed. In reality, it had been decades. He no longer felt like a pressed flower, preserved in amber, but more like a leaf being hurled in the air. Perhaps it was the illusion of timelessness that made him feel suddenly like things were moving too quickly, that he wasn’t keeping up.
He blinked, and a few trees from his forest are taken down. He suddenly had a better view of the rice paddies outside.
Another blink, and his forest grew more quiet. Not as many humans visited anymore.
He blinked again, and felt weaker.
Blink, one more time, and he opened his eyes to Akashi sitting across from him, observing him silently. He wasn’t dressed in the usual loose, clothing that Midorima had grown accustomed to seeing him in, but was in something that gave hint to the shape of his body underneath. His bright hair, previously long and loose like his own, was much shorter now, cropped close to his head.
“What is happening?” Midorima asked. Even to him, his voice sounded faint.
Akashi didn’t look him in the eyes. “Perhaps it’s time to start following human measures of time, Midorima.”
.
They were lying, nearly bare, in a shallow stream in another one of Kagami and Kuroko’s unbearable summers. Midorima didn’t say anything about the heat out loud, he knew Akashi was thinking the same thing. Neither of them brought up the fact that the summers had gradually been growing less and less uncomfortable, just like how the winters had gradually been growing more painful for them.
The humans had grown so much in the years Midorima watched over them. He looked over the treetops, sometimes, and saw towering buildings made out of a cold gray material he’d never seen them use before. In moments like those, he regretted not paying more attention to the human measure of time. It felt like only yesterday that they were tying their hair up and building vast walls and temples that scratched at the skies.
Now, they all kept their hair kept short and clothes tight. There were monster-like machines building their homes for them. Most notably, they no longer came to him for help.
Midorima turned his head to the side and opened his eyes. Akashi’s gaze was staring right into his own. The stream was so thin that Akashi had to lay in the other direction, but kept his head close to where they could still hear each other. Midorima saw his face upside down from where he was laying, saw the way Akashi’s eyes turned down and his long, sparse eyelashes glued together with water.
Akashi reached over into the little space between them with his arm, and Midorima raised his own, curling their fingertips together. Akashi’s fingers were not as frigid as they used to be.
“I wonder what’ll happen to us now,” Akashi said.
“You were the one who liked to ponder our immortality.”
“Immortality is easier to ponder when it’s ensured.”
It wasn’t fear that Midorima pinpointed in Akashi’s eyes, but was something quieter instead. “You believe that we’re not immortal anymore?”
“I’m no longer certain of it.”
Death was an interesting concept to Midorima. It was different, something he had never before thought would apply to him. But then again, maybe they shouldn’t have been alive in the first place. Maybe for them it wouldn’t be dying, but more just...fading away.
Midorima watched as Akashi twisted their hands apart and instead let his fingers slide over his eyes, cheekbones, chin, before letting them rest against his neck. He caught Akashi’s upper lip gently between his own, and reveled in the soft sigh that slips out between them.
For that moment there were no snakes, no tigers or humans, no Kuroko or Kagami; only the ticking of the clock in his head and the feeling of Akashi’s hands at his neck. This is what it felt to be mortal.
.
Perhaps it wasn’t right for him to think, but Midorima didn’t mind the change that his body was exhibiting as much as he probably should have. He sat on a low, flat rock in his forest (is it still his forest?), watching as Kagami tried persistently to climb one of the taller tress while in jeans. Kuroko stood at the foot of the tree, watching him cautiously.
“Kagami, are you so determined to test just how human you’ve become?”
“Shut up, Kuroko, I’m not gonna fall.” Kagami glared down. Midorima noticed that his hair was styled up in short style that was currently popular, just like Akashi. There was no hint that birds had ever nested in it.
(Though Midorima was no longer in any position to say anything on the subject--he had allowed Akashi to tow him, by hand, to the barbershop in the nearest town. His hair was as short as theirs now, and the loss made him feel nearly naked.)
Kagami reached back up again, swinging a bit to gather momentum before grabbing onto a branch and launching himself even higher. Midorima saw Kuroko flinch at the movement, his arms twitching at his sides. “Kagami, I don’t want blood on the forest floor,” Midorima said.
It took half the day to convince Kagami to get down from the tree, and even then he kept looking upwards wistfully. A few of the braver birds darted close to him for a split second, but chittered angrily and flew away when he reached towards them.
“They don’t recognize me anymore,” Kagami said aloud as they sat in a circle on the bank of a river running through the forest. It was the same river that Midorima had often liked to cool down in during the hot days, but that particular day’s spring heat didn’t bother him at all. The heat hadn’t bothered him so intensely for a few years now.
“Maybe it’s because you’re wearing jeans,” Kuroko said.
“You’re funny.”
Midorima started picking apart a leaf between his fingers, tearing it gently along the veins. “The tigers don’t approach me now, either.”
They sat there in silence for a while. Midorima could see Kuroko pawing at the dirt from his peripheral vision. “Do we know why?” Kagami finally asked.
“Why we’re changing?”
“Yeah. Any ideas?”
Kagami looked at Midorima. Midorima only shook his head, and Kagami turned his attention back to Kuroko. “I don’t think we matter to the world anymore,” Kuroko responded. He didn’t sound uncomfortable or sad saying it, just very matter-of-fact. “Not in the way we used to.”
Midorima heard Kagami mutter, “That’s crazy,” under his breath, but he didn’t say anything else.
“We were here for the humans. If they don’t need us anymore, then our job may be done,” Midorima joined in.
“You make it sound as if we’re disposable,” Kuroko said.
“The seasons are still continuing on as usual, even though we’re losing touch with them. People are still being blessed without actually coming to us for our blessings.”
“But the world may still need us,” Kagami pointed out.
“Or it may not.”
Midorima could tell that they didn’t like that response. But they don’t discuss it any further, passing the time instead by recalling those good old days in the past. They called on those dusty names from centuries ago, those people that had brought them all those stories asking for help, and reminisced aloud, taking turns with stories. Midorima felt like his head would burst with the amount of names and stories packed in there.
When nightfall came, Kagami and Kuroko bade him goodbye at the edge of the forest. Midorima nodded at them, watching as they climbed into the car parked at the side and drove off back on the road, towards the city lights flickering in the distance.
Kagami’s final words burned in Midorima’s ear. “We’re still waiting for you, Midorima.”
.
It’s a hard idea for him to get used to. Leaving the one place that he had called home for centuries upon centuries--it wasn’t only the place he slept and ate and grew, but had, along the line, turned into his own world. The animals there had listened to him, followed his footsteps respectfully and bowed their heads when he reached out his hands. His favorite, the tigers, were always the first by his side, and the last to leave.
Midorima hadn’t seen one of his tigers in years. He knows that they don’t listen to him anymore. They don’t notice him at all. Perhaps if they did spot him someday, they would treat him as an enemy.
It’s hard for so many reasons. It feels like his heartbeat grows louder every day, thrumming there in his chest. He had never payed any special attention to it before, but now it felt borderline obnoxious. Akashi loves listening to it though, in those nights when they’re propped up against each other on the forest floor. He always lays his head right above where Midorima’s heart is and smiles to himself, eyes focused on their intertwined fingers.
But Akashi makes it easier for him to decide.
That’s why, when he takes his first solid step out of the forest, determination in his eye, the world finally slows back down again.
.
Midorima opens his eyes. He watches the slow spirals of the brown, orange, yellow leaves onto the ground from the tree branches spider-webbing the sky above him. The sky is pearly blue, cloudless and all-encompassing. He reaches up and watches the splay of his fingers, a dash of cream against the muted colors of the fall.
“I see how you fell in love with this season.”
Midorima turns his head to see Akashi sighing peacefully on his back beside him. He’s in a long, dark coat and casual black jeans, his hands in his pockets and chin tucked into a large, gray scarf. There are leaves in his hair. Midorima closes his eyes slowly, and in some way, could almost picture the way frost used to gather around the blades of grass in Akashi’s vicinity.
But he opens his eyes. This image is still more beautiful. The sight of Akashi’s cheeks bitten red by a cold he’s still unaccustomed to feeling, eyes wide with satisfaction as he watches the sky. He looks infinitely more boyish, not at all like the jaded, staunch air he used to emit.
“I still love it,” Midorima says, and he knows its true. “But I don’t belong to it anymore.”
Akashi smiles and looks over. He reaches out, and Midorima reflexively takes his hand. “No longer preoccupied by immortality?”
“Hmm. I prefer this.”
They lay there for that day, watching the sun arc across the sky as they recount memory after memory from all those years gone by. The day is so crisp that Akashi’s laughter cuts warm daggers through the cold air, leaving Midorima snorting and smiling in its wake. The names of the humans they’ve remembered so carefully are crumbling away in their minds; every story they tell lets them put another story to bed for good. Midorima feels weightless in the aftermath.
When the sun begins to set, the forest is bathed in a homey rainbow of oranges and reds. Midorima helps Akashi to his feet and they start back to their car parked outside, hands intertwined.