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The aftermath of the war is messy, disorganized, and downright exhausting.
All Kenma wants to do is sleep, feeling drained from the sheer amount of magic he'd expended during the battle. Someone has to take charge, though, and without Hajime— who had disappeared, seemingly without a trace, when Oikawa had been defeated— that responsibility falls to Kenma.
Granted, Shouyou has taken to doing most of the public speaking. Kenma stays in a hastily-pitched tent in their equally-hastily-assembled camp and relays plans and strategies to Shouyou, who runs around to pass on messages and gather information about the damage and state of the city. It's mostly clean-up efforts right now, so the majority of his work is determining what needs to be cleared out first. They'll need to deal with the politics of the situation later, but for now it's easy compared to the effort it took trying to out-strategize the demon king himself.
Kenma still finds himself nodding off while Shouyou is gone, hood pulled up over his head.
He must be more exhausted than he had thought, though, because when he blinks his eyes open again, his hood is down and there are fingers running through his hair.
He jolts upright and immediately feels a tug on the back of his hood. "Relax."
The voice is all too familiar, and Kenma can feel the tension bleeding out of his tired muscles even as he tries to put up a fight. "Kuro," he says, because there's no one else it could be. The voice, the casual way he brushes his fingers against Kenma's ear, the traces of magic that curl around Kenma like a warm blanket— it has to be Kuroo. The chuckle he gets in response all but proves it.
"Don't worry, everything's fine out there," Kuroo tells him. Kenma doesn't have the energy to pretend to be surprised at how easily Kuroo reads him. "You've planned enough to keep everyone busy for days, and Shrimpy is keeping everyone away from your tent so you can sleep."
Kenma frowns. "How did you get in, then? Shouyou wouldn't have let you in." Kuroo and his smuggled information may have been instrumental in them winning the war, but aside from Kenma, nobody knows about it. Nobody will, either— Kuroo had been insistent on that, despite Kenma's protests.
"That's a secret," Kuroo tells him, playful but evasive. Kenma doesn't question it. There's enough magic in the air that he can tell Kuroo used his power in some way or another, and beyond that, he's just glad for the comfort. He puts his head down in Kuroo's lap, forehead bumping against his hand until the older mage takes the hint and starts playing with his hair again.
They don't speak for a few moments, and Kenma studies Kuroo through half-lidded eyes.
Kuroo had been presumed dead when the final battle had concluded and he was nowhere to be found, cloak torn and trampled by the gates to the castle. Kenma hadn't been fooled— Kuroo was far too strong of a mage to have been killed by their little ragtag army. He would have felt something through his own magic if Kuroo had died, too— their own energies so irreversibly intertwined that losing Kuroo would have decimated the strength of Kenma's own magic. His magic hadn't suffered therefore Kuroo wasn't dead, but the sight of Kuroo's cloak all muddied and abandoned had still sent a sharp pang of worry through him. After all, the fact had remained that he hadn't known where Kuroo was. Not dead didn't mean safe, not when there were plenty of angry townsfolk that would be after his head because of his allegiance with Oikawa.
He's here now, though. His hair is wilder than usual, dirt and dried blood smudged across his face, but he's here, and as far as Kenma can tell, he doesn't have any life-threatening injuries.
He looks young, like this— too young to have been roped into this war, just like Kenma and Shouyou and Kageyama. Like Oikawa. He looks tired, too, like all the life has been drained out of him.
It's a far cry from the imposing figure that had greeted them at the castle gates and promptly put half of their forces out of commission— unharmed, because he's Kuroo and he wouldn't dare hurt a crowd especially when he knows that Kenma might be among them, but rendered unable to fight with broken weapons or whatever other countermeasures Kuroo had thought of.
Kenma finds that he prefers this Kuroo to the one from earlier.
"What're you looking at?" Kuroo asks, finally, as if he hasn't been acutely aware of Kenma's gaze the entire time. Kenma is familiar enough with his too-sharp observation skills to believe that Kuroo just noticed, but he appreciates that he was given time to stare uninterrupted.
Instead of replying, he sits up and reaches for the cup of water by the door. Shouyou had pressed it into his hands as they'd set up their temporary camp and insisted he drink it, and he'd refilled it in his periodic returns to the tent. Kenma was grateful for it now, tearing off a relatively clean corner of his own robes and dumping some water on it.
Behind him, Kuroo makes a questioning noise. Kenma wrings out the scrap of cloth and turns around to start cleaning off the grime on his face. His own expression is scrunched up with a single-minded focus. When Kuroo complains, with a "Kenma? What are you— hey, hold on—", Kenma just shushes him.
(To his credit, Kuroo does go quiet, allowing Kenma to tilt his head and wipe away the dirt and dust. Kenma tries to pretend that he isn't shaken by how pliant Kuroo is underneath his hands, how he seems so inherently good sitting here in front of Kenma. Kuroo tries to pretend that he can't feel the tremors in Kenma's hands.)
He does a good enough job to see that the dried blood wasn't anything to worry about, at least. There's a cut on his cheek and he's got a split lip, but neither of those things mean that Kuroo is in immediate medical danger.
It's a relief.
He slumps against Kuroo's side when he's finished, leaving the fabric on the ground next to his staff. Kuroo doesn't say anything— he just wraps an arm around Kenma's shoulders and pulls him closer.
Kenma leans into the contact for all of a minute, and then leans back to punch Kuroo in the arm.
"Where did you go?" He asks, and his voice doesn't sound angry like he had planned— it sounds small, and borderline terrified. "What are you planning to do now?"
Kuroo seems to have been expecting all of it, sooner or later. He still groans at the punch, though, rubbing his arm where Kenma had hit him— not that hard, because Kenma has relied on magic instead of physical attacks since he was kid, and because he doesn't really want to hurt Kuroo anyway, but hard enough to convey his frustration.
Kenma waits for him to stop being dramatic— really, the punch wasn't that hard— and scoots away to face Kuroo, pulling his cloak tighter around himself to make up for the lost warmth.
"If I had stayed," Kuroo starts, voice flat, "or if they knew I was still alive, you would have been roped into some sort of expedition to hunt me down. So I disappeared for a bit. I know it wasn't part of the plan, but I'm sure it made things a little easier, didn't it?" It sounds rehearsed, like he had known Kenma would question him and been prepared for it. "I don't know what I'm going to do now, though," he admits. "I can't exactly make any excursions into the city. Maybe I'll hole up in the forest for a bit. I've always liked it there, and I had a couple places where I used to hide from Oikawa."
There's a small smile on his face now. Kenma hates that he can't tell if it's genuine or if Kuroo is putting on a facade for his benefit.
"You could stay," Kenma offers, keeping his voice carefully neutral. They've talked about this before— argued and fought about it. "I can clear your name, we have all of the evidence. You can help with the rebuilding."
Kuroo's smile falters and Kenma already knows what his answer is going to be.
"I can't do that," he says. Kenma hates that he can hear the regret in his voice, clear as day. "Even if I helped you in the end, I did my fair share of damage in the beginning. I'll only make things more difficult. You can handle the rebuilding just fine, Kenma— you're doing a good job already. I'll be alright." He lifts one hand, waving his fingers. "I've got a little magic left in me. I can handle myself."
Kenma frowns.
He has never killed anyone. This, Kenma is sure of. Kuroo’s magic is drawn from someplace far darker than Kenma's own, and he had struggled to control it for years, tearing up buildings and villages and land, but Kenma is certain that he had never killed anyone. He doesn't think Kuroo would be able to look him in the eye, if he had. Still, he knows that Kuroo's magic had caused some destruction. He knows that Kuroo fears causing any more harm. There are people like Kenma, and anyone who remains from the village that they grew up in together, that would forgive Kuroo in a heartbeat, especially with Kenma’s testimony about his aid and his intel— people who remember a Kuroo that tripped over himself to help people, and stopped to pet the stray cats on the side of the dusty paths; people who looked at Kenma with equal parts pity and grief after Kuroo disappeared and reappeared as Oikawa’s right hand man. Still, there are plenty more people that look at Kuroo and only see their own villages torn to the ground.
Kenma knows that it would be cruel for both parties to make Kuroo face all of those people.
He isn't offering for Kuroo's sake.
He can pretend all he wants that he's doing it with Kuroo's best interests in mind, and Kuroo will believe him because Kuroo thinks he's good and a lot less selfish than he actually is, but Kenma doesn't want him to stay because it'll be easier for Kuroo, since that isn’t true in the slightest— he wants him to stay because Kenma wants Kuroo by his side through all of this.
They've been on opposite sides of this war for so long, and now that it's over, he wants Kuroo at his side. He wants it more than anything.
As adept as Kuroo has gotten at reading him, he doesn't seem to have figured that out quite yet.
Kenma won't ask him directly, of course. Out of the two of them, Kuroo is the one who is truly selfless— it's ironic, Kenma thinks, given their positions, but it's undeniably true. If Kenma asks him to stay, pleads with all the desperation and longing that he feels, then Kuroo will drop everything to be by his side, at whatever cost.
He doesn't want to take advantage of that selflessness. He wants Kuroo to choose to stay.
(He knows it won't happen. He can bring it up every time they meet and make sure Kuroo knows that the option is there, and Kuroo will never choose to take it, not as long as there are people who will see him and only remember the destruction he brought.)
"Okay," Kenma says. He wants to argue again, to tell Kuroo that he would be more helpful staying here, but even he knows that it wouldn't necessarily be true. Besides, Kuroo is giving him a look that begs Kenma to just let it slide— he looks uncharacteristically vulnerable, right now, and Kenma knows that arguing will just wear them both down more than either of them can handle. "How long will you stay tonight?"
This, at least, seems to be something that Kuroo can answer without looking like he's forcing the words out. "A little while longer. An hour or two, at most." Kenma knows that Shouyou will be back to check on him at some point— Kuroo will be gone by then.
Kenma can't ask him to stay longer. Judging by Kuroo's apologetic look, he doesn't need to say it aloud.
"You'll see me again," Kuroo promises. It's not much, but Kenma knows he'll hold on to that promise. "You should go back to sleep. You'll need the rest, and you're still tired."
Kenma wants to protest— he gets precious little time with Kuroo to begin with. "Am not," he says.
Kuroo levels him with an unimpressed stare. "Are too."
"Am not," Kenma insists, but he's proven wrong in a matter of minutes, when Kuroo simply guides him back down until Kenma is practically laying in his lap and Kenma has no energy left to fight off the motion. It quickly becomes impossible to stay awake when Kuroo's hands begin combing through his hair again.
When he wakes up, it's to Shouyou shaking him awake.
The only remaining proof of Kuroo's presence is a lingering trace of his magic— faint enough that Kenma is the only one who would be able to sense it, let alone recognize it.
Kenma doesn't look for him.
He gets caught up with rebuilding. Reconstruction and city planning are all done with the help of Shouyou and Aone and any citizens in proper condition to be helping. He gets roped into helping sort out the politics of the war's aftermath too, and he detests it all, but it needs to be done. The princess is still recovering, but once they've set up a proper infirmary, he visits her there to talk about what's going to happen to the kingdom now that Oikawa is no longer ruling it.
She's kind in a way that's almost familiar, looking at him like she understands a lot more about him than she lets on. It makes him squirm, the first few times, but her personality reminds him mostly of Shouyou— bubbly, bright, albeit less recklessly confident— and sooner or later, he no longer tenses up whenever she greets him. They could even be considered friends. It's not a word that Kenma uses lightly, but she's insisted that he call her Yui— "You saved my life, Kenma-kun, I think we're past the need for any formalities,”— and he doesn't expect her to maintain any sort of royal persona around hin, so perhaps that's good enough for now.
Between the skilled healers tasked with helping the princess and Kenma's own abilities— although those were utilized with a word of caution because his specialty isn't in healing despite his affinity for lighter forms of magic— Yui is back on her feet in a matter of weeks without much issue. They take to meeting in a mostly-intact part of the castle while the rest of it gets rebuilt. Kenma brings pastries from a nearby bakery and Yui brings him all the maps and records and former decrees that he requests.
It keeps him busy— it stops him from thinking about other things, like the faint, lingering traces of magic that's not his own in each nook and cranny of the castle walls, and hiding places deep in the forest— and he appreciates the quiet company that Yui provides.
Kenma's experience from travelling through the land’s many smaller towns and what he knows about the inner workings of running a kingdom from Kuroo's tales paired with Yui's royal upbringing and knowledge of the kingdom's history make them a formidable team. Together, they make plans to restore the kingdom to what it was before Oikawa's reign, and Yui begins delegating some of the smaller tasks to various townsfolk that are willing to help out, stepping into her role as a leader almost flawlessly.
Despite how impressed he is, Kenma is glad that he gets to see her behind closed doors, looking less like the princess everyone knows her to be and more like the Yui that he knows— determined and sweet and not that much older than him, certainly far too young to be running a kingdom. It’s intimidating how easily she can put on a brave face to address the public when Kenma knows and sympathizes with just how much pressure she feels.
He’s proud of what they've accomplished, though, whenever he makes his way through the district surrounding the castle and sees all the mostly-finished buildings, listening to the lively bustle of the marketplace that's quickly coming back to life. He's not one for idle chatter or big crowds, but there is something undeniably heartwarming about the way that the citizens are rallying together to make sure that nothing is being left out of the rebuilding efforts.
It's strange, though, to be working in a place that's so stagnant. It isn't as though Kenma is being locked up somewhere, but he's used to being on the move. Everywhere he'd been in the past two years as part of Shouyou's party was merely a stop along the way, and before that, he had kept himself on the move and never stayed in one place for too long. The last time he’d stayed somewhere that didn’t feel temporary was the village he’d grown up in, and he hadn’t thought of that place as home in years— not since Kuroo had left.
There is nothing temporary about this, though: the castle, kept in good shape despite it's most recent inhabitant (or maybe because of it, he thinks, from what he knows about Oikawa from both Kuroo and Hajime), and the study where he and Yui meet. It’s slowly but surely becoming Kenma's in a way that makes him feel restless and calm all at once. He has extra clothes, here, and there's a cat figurine carved out of wood and messily painted— a joint effort from Shouyou and Tobio— that sits on the desk, which in turn is slowly filling up with sheets and sheets of his notes and plans.
"You know, this room used to belong to the previous Royal Advisor," Yui tells him one night, when they have abandoned strategizing in favor of digging into the apple turnovers that Kenma brought with him that afternoon. "It's yours for good, if you'd like."
There's a hopeful look in her eyes that Kenma pretends not to see.
They haven't quite discussed this yet.
Kenma has, admittedly, been skirting around the topic, and Yui has graciously let it slide thus far, but he knows that she wants him to stay here— as the Royal Advisor, apparently.
A good portion of the castle staff is back or waiting to return once things are mostly rebuilt— they had been displaced but not killed, and the Michimiyas had been kind enough that many of them are willing to come back.
(Kenma supposes that, with the current state of things in the rest of the kingdom, a steady job in the castle sounds like heaven. Despite their efforts, it's still far from perfect out there.)
There are a handful of positions still unfilled, though— the people who would be closest to the princess herself, and a good chunk of the guard. Kenma doesn't think it'll be difficult to replenish the kingdom's forces, nor does he think that's going to be necessary, but as for any advisors or strategists… well, he's been avoiding that particular conversation. He doesn't even know what to say. He hasn't made any concrete choices or plans regarding what he's going to do in the long term, but he’s been toying with the idea of a cottage in the forest, quiet and hidden well enough that he’d have to rely on his magic— and Kuroo’s magic, the connection between them— to find it.
Yui is still looking at him expectantly, though, and he doesn't have the heart to brush her off when she looks so earnest. He can at least be honest with her and tell her he's still thinking it over.
"I- thank you." He says it slowly, haltingly— still trying to untangle the words in his brain before he says them, "but I don't think I can stay."
It surprises him, how easily he says it. It hadn't been what he had planned to say, after all, but he finds that it's true. He doesn't want to stay. Yui is wonderful, and he's proud of everything they've done, but Kenma has only truly wanted one thing for himself and that thing is too far outside the castle walls for him to be able to stay here.
Yui, for the most part, doesn't seem nearly as surprised as Kenma about the words that had just come out of his mouth. "I figured you would say that," she tells him. "You'll always be welcome here, though."
"Thank you," he says again, and it's more genuine this time. "I won't be leaving anytime soon," he adds, and he can see the way that Yui relaxes at the assurance. He's learned over the time that they've spent together that they're more similar than he had initially thought, and he isn't cruel enough to let Yui finish putting this kingdom back together on her own. He'll wait for things to fall into place, oversee the things that he won't risk entrusting to anyone else, and then after everything is back to some semblance of normal, he'll take his leave.
Worries seemingly dealt with for now, Yui reaches for another pastry, splitting it in half and handing one piece to Kenma. "What are you planning to do?" She asks, purely curious now.
"Well," Kenma begins, and this time there's no hesitation or surprise in his own voice when he says "I was thinking of exploring the forest."