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Kazuha kisses him the night before they leave for Inazuma.
When he pulls back, the smile he wears is as delicate and sorrowful as the kiss he’d just pressed against Aether’s lips. “I’m sorry,” he says, a faint blush gracing his cheeks. “I lost myself.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Aether says, “it was… nice.” Soft. Chaste. “I was surprised, is all.”
Kazuha leans against him, tucking his head against Aether’s neck and chin. He’s warm against Aether’s side, like an oversized cat cozying up for warmth. Aether tries to reach for Kazuha’s wrist but misses and grabs his fingers instead.
He tries to drop Kazuha’s hand and forget about it, apologies at the tip of his tongue, but the bandaged fingers curl around his own.
“Even fresh blossoms scattered in a storm will meet again when the seasons have passed.” Kazuha’s expression is hidden from view. He sounds miles away. “Perhaps this is unfair to you, after everything I’ve said, but I was caught up in old memories.”
“The friend you told me about.” It’s not a question, but Kazuha nods.
It should feel worse, Aether muses, to hear him speak so fondly of another man when they’d kissed only minutes ago, but he thinks that maybe he understands.
“You remind me of him,” Kazuha says, “Brave, kind, honorable… always chasing a good fight.”
Aether thinks about his readiness to drop everything and go home with his sister, and he decides that maybe he isn’t any of those things at all.
“I’m not all that,” he protests weakly, but Kazuha shakes his head.
“You would have done the same,” he says. Then, more quietly, “you’re going to do the same,” and Aether can’t bring himself to deny it even though it isn’t justice he needs but answers.
“You’ll come too, won’t you?” Aether asks, and even though Kazuha nods, silence stretches on a beat too long, unpunctuated if only for a moment by birdcalls and cricket chirps, or by Kazuha’s placid voice, musing on the delicacies of the surrounding nature.
Maybe, Aether thinks, this is an act of repentance, Kazuha’s chance to come to terms with year-old regrets.
“I wore my Vision underneath my clothes.” The confession is warm against his collar. “I tried so hard to hide. I told myself it was better to keep my head down and hope the Raiden Shogun never found me than to have it stripped away.”
Aether nods. He remembers this story, still dense with tamped-down, muddied grief swirling amongst Kazuha’s words.
“When I first heard that he had made the challenge,” Kazuha says, his voice light, “I didn’t want to believe it. I hoped it was a trap instead, a ploy to draw me to the Raiden Shogun of my own accord as one less Vision-bearer to hunt down. But I could not convince myself, and so I went.”
He sighs. “Perhaps my greatest fear of all was the thought that my friend would choose the glory of an honorable death over…”
Me, he doesn’t say but Aether doesn’t need to hear it. He wraps his around Kazuha’s waist, dragging him up into his lap. “I’m sure that’s not what he meant. You said so yourself, didn’t you?”
“Of course it wasn’t.” Kazuha wriggles a bit until he’s comfortable and loops an arm around Aether’s neck to pet along the length of his braid. His pale features bloom under the moonlight, framing the red shine in his eyes. “Neither did he have obligations toward me. But I do not regret trying to go back for him.”
Aether hums under the gentle ministrations. “Even if it meant becoming a fugitive.”
“Even then.” Kazuha lets his hands migrate to the other’s face, cupping his cheeks as if examining golden eyes for traces of familiarity. “If I couldn’t save him, I could at least preserve his aspirations.”
Aether thinks back to the Vision, pearly and lifeless, and Kazuha’s wish for it to alight, even if it means giving away the last fragment of his friend’s existence. He imagines the reverse, a violet shine fading and burning into Kazuha’s palm, the once-vivacious shine now a wisp disappearing in the autumn breeze.
He tucks a lock of white hair behind Kazuha’s ear and asks the obvious. “Do you miss him?”
Kazuha leans into the brush against his cheek. “I do not begrudge the Raiden Shogun for administering divine punishment,” he says, “but some nights I still dream of his touch.”
He sighs, letting more of his weight slump against Aether. Even through his layers, he radiates a steady warmth, a reminder of his solidness, a reminder that despite his wandering, he will not simply dissolve into the wind. “The air has become quite heavy, hasn’t it?”
“Ah— Huh?” Aether startles, shuffling in preparation to stand, lap full of Kazuha and all. “Is it going to rain soon?”
Kazuha laughs. “No, no. The night is as clear as can be.” He doesn’t clarify, leaning forward as if to press a kiss to Aether’s forehead, but he draws back before his lips brush across the golden fringe. “Please do not misunderstand; I do like you for who you are, Aether.”
Aether grins teasingly. “So I shouldn’t be too jealous? Was that kiss even meant for me?”
Kazuha huffs, unraveling himself from around Aether’s shoulders to take both hands into his own. “You received it, didn’t you? Perhaps I would have held myself back, but… Although we’ve known each other for such a brief time and undoubtedly will part ways—”
His words fracture with a yelp as Aether pulls him forward into another kiss, harder and more desperate.
“I get it,” Aether says, directly against Kazuha’s lips. “‘Our time together is short, so let’s make the best of it,’ right?”
He smothers Kazuha’s laughter—"he said that too, once,”—with more kisses, taking as much as the samurai will give. He presses on until the two of them find themselves flat on the large stone they were sitting on, with nothing but a sheet of stars stretched over them. He reaches to tug at Kazuha’s already lopsided ponytail and finds that he looks just as lovely with his hair splayed out beneath him.
Aether knows that he’s capable of making bad decisions, all too familiar with that sinking regret when he leaves friends behind to travel to other worlds or lets himself think about how easily he let Lumine pull herself back out of his life in those damned ruins. Maybe in the days to come, this will become one of those regretful moments, shoved into the corner of his mind in all but the loneliest of nights— but right now, the only thing he can do is pull Kazuha more tightly against him as he shoves away thoughts of goodbyes.