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Soushi knows what he’ll find in Alles’ cockpit before they get it open.
(Of course he does. Makabe Kazuki’s voice is still echoing in his ears, I’m sorry I couldn’t be more for you, Soushi, all unbearably soft and caring, and it’s— it’s—)
(He wonders if it was like this for Kazuki, too, back then.)
Still. Even knowing exactly what to expect in his heart, it still punches the air from Soushi’s lungs to see the baby curled up in the cockpit, half-hidden in that guy’s synergetic suit and surrounded by crystals. It’s all that Soushi can do to scoop him up - awkwardly, shakily, because he doesn’t know how to hold a baby and his hands won’t stop trembling and he’s desperately afraid of accidentally letting one of those crystals cut the baby - and pull his Alvis coat tighter around the both of them.
Anything else is… anything beyond that is…
He’ll work on it. In the meantime, Soushi holds onto that child for dear life, and glares at anyone who might take him away, and doesn’t actually register any of them.
Eventually, they end up in an Alvis meeting. Soushi had begrudgingly allowed the baby to be taken from him for a medical exam, and then he’d been ushered into this meeting. The only things actually keeping him in his seat are Miwa and Maya-san bracketing him on either side - Miwa radiating concern, and Maya cold and steely-eyed and not letting a hint of emotion through now that they’re back in Alvis - and the live feed of the baby’s cot in the medical bay that’s currently playing on the screen on the wall.
“We’ll need to decide what will happen with him,” someone says. Soushi isn’t sure who it is, barely able to focus on anything but the live feed, and it takes him a few moments to even register what’s been said. Whatever is being said isn’t important, not really, just—
Wait, though. No. That is important. It’s important that they understand that—
“No,” Soushi blurts out. “He’s mine.”
The room goes quiet, all eyes suddenly on Soushi. In any other circumstance, he might be embarrassed at the sudden intense focus, but right now…
“He’s mine,” he says again. “I’ll look after him.”
The others are trading glances, now, and there’s a hesitance there that Soushi absolutely does not like. That isn’t right, because Soushi knows what’s right and it is that child being his.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea…?” someone asks, all gentle concern, and Soushi all but bares his teeth at the speaker. “I mean, it’s just— you’re not even an adult, that’s all, and—”
“We’ll help,” Maya cuts in, her tone flat. Soushi has never been so glad for her in that moment, even as some small, possessive part of him resents the idea of his needing help.
(He knows, logically, that the concern is right. He’s only a teenager, and technically he’s not even that. He’s not equipped to look after a baby.)
(But he has to. He has to do at least that much.)
With Maya’s offer on the table, at least, there’s less opposition to the idea. Nothing is confirmed yet, though, and people are starting to look toward the head of the room, and—
Oh.
Soushi hadn’t thought about Fumihiko, not really. He turns, now, and meets the steady gaze on him, and tries not to feel quite so horrendously guilty about what he’s asking for right now.
(Fumihiko looks as though he has aged ten years in as many hours. Soushi is horribly, guiltily aware in this moment that the man has just lost his son, and that Soushi is attempting to claim ownership of what’s left of him. After months of professing to hate said son.)
(But he cannot do anything else. And Fumihiko is no Esperanto, and Soushi cannot communicate with him like that, but words are just as impossible - even if they didn’t have an audience, there are no words that would get across the desperation with which he needs this last piece of Makabe Kazuki - and so Soushi can only stare across the table and will him to understand. To please, please understand.)
Eventually, Fumihiko closes his eyes, and sighs.
“You all know my son,” he says, and he sounds so, so exhausted. “I’m not going to insist on separating Kazuki and Soushi, whatever the circumstances.”
Nobody has any argument for that. At any other time, Soushi thinks it might feel like a victory.
Right now, though, it doesn’t feel as though anyone has won anything.
(He hopes, at least, that Makabe Kazuki has found his counterpart beyond the horizon. Whatever his relationship with that guy, he needs someone to have come out of this happy.)
The next stumbling block is the baby’s name.
Soushi absolutely puts his foot down when they try to name him Makabe Kazuki. They’re not doing that. They’re not. Absolutely not.
“Soushi, I…” Miwa starts and then trails off, looking awkward and embarrassed. “I know you didn’t get on with Kazuki-onii-chan, but—”
“No,” Soushi snaps, and he can’t— he can’t express how much he resents it, that even Miwa assumes it’s because of that. How hurtful it is, that even she would think that of him.
(He can’t express it. But he can feel it, sharply and strongly, and they’re both Esperanto, and she flinches back a moment later says that now she’s feeling it.)
(Good. Soushi doesn’t like hurting people, and hurting Miwa usually comes with a side of sick guilt because he’s hurt her enough already. But right now, he’s hurting so much himself that any extra pain is more than he can physically take without needing it to spill out of him, so— so, good. Good.)
“It’s not that,” Soushi insists.
Nobody looks convinced, but they do at least look willing to hear him out. Which means that Soushi has to get it right, while they’re listening.
He stares down at the baby - back in his arms, now, and he feels like he’s starting to get the hang of holding him - for inspiration. It’s him that this is about. Not about Soushi. Not about Makabe Kazuki. This child, who’s— he’s relying on Soushi to argue for him, right now, even if he’s too small to know it yet.
“It’s— it’s too big,” he says, slowly. “That name. Makabe Kazuki is— he’s only little, it’s too much for him. One or the other is fine, but Makabe Kazuki is… he was too much. It’s too big, it’s too heavy.”
Soushi looks up, meeting the eyes of the others in the room again, and he can see the beginnings of understanding.
(And, following that, of guilt.)
“I— I understand why I was called Minashiro Soushi,” he feels the need to add on, “And I don’t… it’s not like I blame anyone for it. Nobody knew— I was new, nobody knew what - who - I’d be, or what it would be like with that name, or…”
He trails off, trying to gather his thoughts again.
“I wouldn’t change anything now, not for me,” he insists. “Minashiro Soushi is who I am. It’s mine, even if it was his before. But…”
(But he’d had to fight for it with everything he’d had. He’d dragged the name into his own, scrabbled his identity into place, clawed out a place in the world for him and him alone. He wouldn’t change it, now, but…)
(But the baby in his arms is so small. He doesn’t deserve to have to do that. He’ll have enough of it anyway, Soushi is sure, without having his entire name belong to a dead man. Least of all someone who’d been so… so much.)
(Minashiro Soushi had been a difficult name to live up to, before he’d made it his own. Makabe Kazuki was— in the privacy of his own mind, Soushi can admit that Kazuki is - was - a fantastic figure. For such a tiny baby, it seems like his legacy would be insurmountable.)
“What do you think we should call him, Soushi-kun?” Maya breaks into his thoughts, her voice quiet but firm. He’s incredibly grateful for it, and nods just barely to her.
“I don’t know,” he admits. “But I think… I think one or the other is fine. Makabe, or Kazuki, just… just not both.”
He looks back down at the baby in his arms again, feeling the other eyes in the room going to Fumihiko once more.
“Minashiro Kazuki,” Fumihiko says eventually. He sounds just as exhausted as when custody was being debated, and he doesn’t say any more than that.
Maya is the one who breaks the silence, saying, “Kazuki-kun would like that, I think. He would have liked that.”
(Makabe Kazuki would have liked that name for himself, Soushi is pretty sure, because he knows enough, by now, about his predecessor to know that much. But he’d never gotten the chance. It makes sense, in a way, to at least give the name he couldn’t have to this child.)
(In another way, Soushi thinks maybe it’s an even heavier name to bear than Makabe Kazuki. But it’s— well…)
(Minashiro Kazuki will be Soushi’s responsibility, just as Soushi had once been Makabe Kazuki’s responsibility. And maybe Makabe Kazuki had been… afraid of overstepping, or maybe it really was just a case of not knowing who or what Soushi was going to grow to be, and that’s why Soushi hadn’t taken his last name. But Soushi is a solid example of what this baby is going to be - his own person, come hell or high water - and he is, besides that, willing to admit that he’s selfish and possessive and that it feels right, to have that tie between them.)
“Minashiro Kazuki,” Soushi agrees, quietly, and so it becomes.
The little Kazuki is a calm and easy baby, which is good. Because Soushi doesn’t actually know what he’s doing, and there’s only so far that researching at every available moment - and sheer bloody-minded stubbornness - can get him. But Kazuki sleeps through the nights for the most part, and barely cries, and seems entirely content most of the time so long as Soushi holds him at the same times every day. He behaves himself when Soushi is at school, Maya reports, and only starts to fret if Soushi is home late, or takes too long between getting home and coming to pick him up.
“You’re too agreeable,” Soushi mutters to him at one point, watching the little Kazuki’s face immediately smoothing out of its little wobbly, tearful-looking pout as soon as Soushi scoops him out of his cot. He’d had to shower when he’d gotten home from school, and in the fifteen minutes that had taken him, Kazuki had started to fuss in tiny, barely-audible whimpering sniffles. And now Soushi is here, and everything is fine again.
“It’s just like that guy,” he adds, and then, “Gross. Don’t be so easily pleased when you’re older.”
(Because it seems like an easy way to get hurt, and Soushi will protect this child with his life. And because it hurts, because— because that guy really would have been happy with just Soushi coming home to him from school, wouldn’t he? Except that Soushi had never… he’d never gotten that far. And then he’d run out of time, and the fact that he can at least make this Kazuki so happy isn’t… it doesn’t help. Not really.)
The little Kazuki is also… not an Esperanto.
They’d wondered, obviously, whether he would be. Soushi is, and so it had seemed logical that he might be.
But there’s nothing. Miwa and him have both verified it, independently and together; Minashiro Kazuki is utterly, entirely normal in that respect.
And it’s sort of disappointing, in a way that Soushi wouldn’t have expected. Because he sort of… now that he’s used to it, now that he knows what it means, Soushi likes being an Esperanto. And it would certainly be useful, he’s pretty sure. Learning things is so much easier when you can take shortcuts like that.
Although maybe that’s just like that guy, too. Because Soushi mentions it - and definitely doesn’t whine about it - to Maya once, and she just tilts her head and gets that distant-but-penetrating look of hers and says, “Kazuki-chan will just work for things, the same as Kazuki-kun. That’s all.”
(Which is unfair. It’s not like Soushi doesn’t work for things, he just also grasps every opportunity that comes his way. Sometimes opportunities happen to be shortcuts.)
The disappointment about Kazuki not being an Esperanto lasts, as some vague and small thing, until Makabe Kazuki’s birthday.
Because that’s the day that— it…
It’s not just the grief of the other islanders. Of Miwa, or Maya, or Makabe Fumihiko, or of anyone who’s ever lived or worked alongside Makabe Kazuki - which is, as it turns out, basically everyone who’s ever lived on Tatsumiya, because that guy was just like that. That grief is oppressive, yes, but any Esperanto can block that out. Soushi could have blocked that out easily with his own feelings, if Kazuki had needed it.
It’s… it’s his own grief, really. Because maybe he wouldn’t have been able to block out the general mood with his own feelings, after all.
He ends up holed up in his room with the lights out, sat back against his pillows and curled forward over Kazuki. Kazuki, who can’t feel any of this. Kazuki, who’s just leaning back against Soushi’s chest and waving his little hands at the glow in the dark stars that Soushi had stuck on the wall, his eyes wide in the darkness as he coos and babbles to himself contentedly.
“Stupid,” Soushi mutters, pressing his face in against the top of Kazuki’s head. He smells like lavender shampoo, and he waves his arms even more excitedly at the contact, practically vibrating with it.
(Soushi is stupidly, hopelessly attached. He has been since the moment he saw him in Alles’ cockpit, and the months between then and now have only made that more true, and that’s why— that’s why—)
“Stupid,” he says again, and he doesn’t even know any more whether he’s talking about himself or Makabe Kazuki. His eyes are burning, though, and he hates it, and he tugs Kazuki closer and tries not to sob because—
“I won’t leave you,” he tells Kazuki, “Not ever. Not for anything. Not even if you want me to.”
Because he’s angry, isn’t he? He’s buried it, these past months, poured everything into the baby Kazuki to avoid thinking about the original Kazuki. But now it’s Makabe Kazuki’s birthday, the first one since he’s been gone, and so many people are thinking about him so much and Soushi— Soushi can block things. He can. He knows how. But it isn’t working, not today.
Because he’s angry.
(Angry that Makabe Kazuki had let go, when he so clearly wanted— if not this, because Soushi isn’t a baby anymore, at least something. He wanted to be Soushi’s parent, didn’t he, but he’s gone.)
(Angry that he’d spent so long hating Makabe Kazuki and then so long pretending to still hate Makabe Kazuki that he’d never reached out. That he’d never made him realize that— that maybe, Soushi would have wanted him to stay.)
Soushi only registers that he must have squeezed Kazuki enough for it to be uncomfortable when he feels him wriggling against the hold, making little whining noises. He unfolds himself immediately, making to apologize - because even if Kazuki probably can’t understand it yet, it still feels important - when Kazuki twists in his lap to reach up and pat at his cheeks where they’re wet from tears.
“Baba.” Kazuki pats at Soushi’s cheeks again, and then frowns in the dim room and tugs instead, so that Soushi is forced to lean in closer. Once he’s close enough, Kazuki… well, he’s either trying to kiss Soushi’s cheek but hasn’t worked out the art of closing his mouth for that, or he just wants to taste the tears. With him not being an Esperanto, Soushi has no way to actually tell.
(There is this, at least, that makes Makabe Kazuki’s absence a good thing. Soushi will tell himself that tonight, just as he does whenever the hurt becomes too much; that it is worth the loss of Makabe Kazuki, for gaining Minashiro Kazuki.)
(It’s true that Soushi wouldn’t give up this child for the world, but that they couldn’t have both existed together. It’s true that Makabe Kazuki gave him a gift by leaving, even if his absence in itself wasn’t the gift that he probably thought - that Soushi had let him think - it was.)
(It’s true. It is. And maybe if he reminds himself of it enough, there will be a day where the scales finally balance and it stops hurting so much. There has to be, eventually. Somehow.)
(He does not, cannot, wonder how many times Makabe Kazuki told himself the same thing before the end.)