Work Text:
Most didn't seem to believe Kūkaku when she said that making fireworks was delicate work — they simply did not think the temperamental Shiba was capable of something that required a cool head and precise fingers. What, do they think I just pull fireworks out of my ass?
She kept her breathing slow and even as she gingerly spooned the carefully-measured gunpowder mixture into a tube made from thick paper, painted with eye-catching colors and patterns. The production of fireworks was a specialty of the Shiba clan, owing in part to the availability of the required materials in West Rukongai — that, and, well… the Shibas really liked Big Booms.
Somewhere along the way, it had become her way of keeping the memory of… a lot of the family alive.
A tiny Kūkaku sat on grandfather's knee, watching as wrinkled hands assembled fireworks with the skill of a master.
Kūkaku frowned and shook her head, before sticking a fuse in the tube and sealing it off. When dealing with fireworks, one couldn't let themself get too deep in their own head, lest they start making mistakes.
"Sis!"
Kūkaku jolted, nearly flipping the whole table and everything on it. She caught herself at the very last second, then slowly turned to the door.
Ganju was standing in the doorway. He was at that awkward, early teenage stage, his face still retaining some of that boyish softness while he shot up a few inches in height what felt like nearly every damn day. In a few more years, he would be the spitting image of the siblings' dad, and that was just… weird to think about.
Dad had a big grin on his face as he carried his youngest child in his arms, the boy barely old enough to string two words together.
"What, Ganju?" Kūkaku said, narrowing her eyes at him.
"Uh, um," Ganju sputtered, suddenly sheepish under his sister's hard glare. "Bonnie got out of her pen again…"
Kūkaku was hardly surprised — the previously sweet and gentle boar had turned into a demon after Kaien… well, after Kaien.
"She knows where the food comes from, she'll be back," she told him, turning back to her work table.
Kaien laughed as the piglet ate turnips straight out of his hand with the voraciousness of an animal three times its size.
She quietly constructed three more fireworks before she threw a glance over her shoulder. Ganju was still standing in the doorway, his eyes downcast, biting his lip and fidgeting.
"What is it?" Kūkaku asked.
Several seconds passed before Ganju answered, "Um, today's—"
"I know what today is," Kūkaku interrupted harshly. It was the anniversary of their brother's death.
Ganju flinched. "Are we… gonna do anything?"
Kūkaku glanced back down at the half-finished firework in her hands. "Tell you what," she said, nodding at the pile of completed fireworks. "Grab a few of those and take 'em outside."
Ganju brightened. "Okay!" He grabbed an armload of fireworks and hurried out of the room.
Kūkaku shook her head, the ghost of a smile on her lips. She stood and grabbed her haori off the back of the chair, pulling it on — even in the middle of spring, the nights still had a chill to them. She blinked, giving the haori a double-take — it was the only one of her mother's still left.
"Good job," mom whispered in Kūkaku's ear after she slugged a boy in the jaw for grabbing her breast, before draping her favorite haori on her daughter's shoulders. "Come on inside, it's cold."
Sighing, Kūkaku swiped a cord of fuse of the table. She then exited her workshop, headed down the hall, up the stairs, and outside. Ganju was on his knees in the grass, sticking fireworks in a little circle of sand created with Seppa. His tongue poked out from the corner of his mouth as he arranged the fireworks in what he must have thought was an artful manner.
Kūkaku would have preferred to use the cannon their ancestors built, the great Fire Wave Cannon… but it was currently rotting away unattended, along with the rest of the ancestral Shiba home the two siblings had been chased out of years ago. Kūkaku dreamed of one day having her own cannon — she even had a name for it, the Flower Crane Cannon — but that wasn't in the cards at present.
She nudged Ganju aside, and a few minutes later, they had a veritable rat's nest of fuse connecting each firework. It wasn't the prettiest thing ever, but… Shibas. Big Booms. You know the drill.
Once she was certain her little brother was at a safe distance — and he complained about not getting to do the honors, shut up with a single glare — Kūkaku snapped her fingers, a flame appearing from her thumb, no bigger than what one would find on the end of a candle. She ignited the end of the fuse, then hightailed it to Ganju's side.
"This one's for you, big brother," she whispered.
The two siblings watched with anticipation as the flame travelled down the length of the fuse… then lamely fizzled out before it could split off and ignite the fireworks. Kūkaku and Ganju glanced at one another.
"…What just happened?" Ganju whined.
"The fuse must have gotten wet," Kūkaku told him, stomping back over to the mess of fireworks. "Did you sweat on it?"
"It's freezing out here, sis!" Ganju said, wrapping his arms around himself in an attempt to illustrate his point.
Kūkaku squatted down and examined the fuse. "You're a sweaty kid."
"I'm not a kid, I'm a — man," Ganju insisted, with a voice crack that could not have been more perfectly timed.
A bark of laughter escaped Kūkaku as she lit another flame, holding the fuse steady with her right hand. After several failed attempts to relight the fuse, she turned her head in Ganju's direction. "Go inside and get another fuse, I think this one's—"
"Kūkaku!"
(Years from now, Kūkaku could look back on this night and tell you two things — one, her last attempt to light the fuse before she gave up most likely had been successful, albeit delayed, and two, grandfather was probably doing backflips in his grave at her flagrant disregard for fireworks safety. In fact, the only good thing about the incident was that it fast-tracked the construction of the Flower Crane Cannon.)
She heard it before she saw it, that telltale whistling and popping of fireworks, the sound deafening this close. The pain, she didn't feel immediately — at first, it was simply just a numbness in her right arm. Then, the smell hit her nose — a rank mixture of gunpowder and burning meat. Finally, she whipped her head around, where she saw how the delicate bones of her hand had splintered, the way her skin had been charred and blackened, the mangled flesh, and the sleeve of her mother's last haori in flames.
--
Kūkaku woke to the sound of crying and the feeling of a deep, dull ache in her right side.
She slowly opened her eyes, greeted by a blurry, candlelit room. Blinking a few times, her vision cleared, eyes wandering from the futon she found herself lying on, to the figure sitting next to it — Ganju, his hands on his knees, his head bowed, and his shoulders shaking.
"Ganju," Kūkaku said, her throat painfully dry.
Ganju's head shot up, his cheeks wet with tears. In that moment, he wasn't a teenager, but that little boy who had just lost his big brother, all those years ago.
"Kū… Kūkaku!"
Before Kūkaku could even get a single word in, Ganju's mouth was going a mile a minute, explaining how Koganehiko legged it into town to find the local healer while Shiroganehiko carried Kūkaku into the house, before Kogenhiko returned with the bewildered healer slung over his shoulder.
"And… then…" Ganju's words slowed to a crawl. "Your arm…"
Slowly, Kūkaku turned her head to the right — her arm had been amputated halfway between her elbow and her shoulder, leaving a bandaged stump. Her memory of everything after the fireworks went off was blurry, but she could vaguely recall Koganehiko and Shiroganehiko both having to hold her down, Ganju gripping her left hand to the point where it might break, and the sound of a saw against bone.
Her head falling back against the pillow, she exhaled a long sigh. "Well, shit."
A moment was spent staring at the ceiling, before Kūkaku eyed Ganju. He held on to a stoic expression for all of two heartbeats, before his face crumpled, the tears returning with full force.
"I… I thought…" he blubbered, scrubbing at his eyes. "I thought you… and, and, and after… after big brother… if you…?" A sob escaped him. "I… I couldn't…" He hung his head, lowering his voice to a whisper. "You're… all I've got left."
Kūkaku reached up with her left hand and placed it against Ganju's arm, gritting her teeth against the pain that flared as she did this. "C'mon, no more crying, Ganju," she said. "You know it'll take more than this to kill me."
Ganju nodded, wiping the tears from his cheeks.