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Don’t go anywhere without me.
Let nothing happen in the sky apart from me,
-
He stops to ask himself, sometimes, if he’s running away.
If this, ink bleeding through parchment through the skin of his hands, words spilled out from the expanse of his lungs, this is how he pries himself from the grip of reality, from a world that stopped moving when it should have carried on. He sings and he writes and he lets the wind take his heart in its gentle grasp; it sings back his sorrows, whistles in the breeze.
Part of him feels lighter every time he picks the zither up, almost enough to make him think he might start to float away. If he closes his eyes, Kazuha wonders, will the wind carry him any farther than he has already gone?
But then again, it’s not like he has anything to return to.
Inazuma is a benign haunting, when all is said and done; the language and the customs carved into the very marrow of his bones, the little things are the hardest to move on from. Parts of the nation he carries with him are scattered throughout his being, always there in some form or another. With so much of his homeland already here with him, nothing remains there to anchor him down.
So he leaves.
-
or on the ground, in this world or that world,
without my being in its happening.
-
His story with Tomo begins the way that it ends: in violence, shattered beneath a starry sky.
This time it’s the victor who wears the red coat over his shoulders, concealing the soft glow of purple beneath silk cloth. The man stands over the bodies of fallen vagrants, clutching the hilt of a bloodied sword with its edge beneath Kazuha’s chin.
“Who are you?” He demands, through grit teeth and narrowed eyes.
“Just a wanderer,” replies Kazuha, voice steady.
The man raises an eyebrow. Tilts his head and, archons above, his eyes are so bright . “What’s just a wanderer doing, lazing around in a Treasure Hoarder’s camp?”
Shrugs, “they were kind enough to let me stay the night.”
“Kind,” the man repeats, almost in disbelief. Then, “let me tell you, wanderer. These few have got quite the bounty on their heads.”
“That is rather unfortunate.”
“For you, perhaps.” The impatience in his words is apparent, as is the shifting of his feet as he moves, ever so slightly to the side. Eyes, and blade, still trained on Kazuha. The sword is uncomfortably close to skin. “So tell me why I should believe you, when I could slay you right now and collect my mora just fine.”
And instead of any sort of coherent response, Kazuha opens his mouth to speak — “your eyes are very pretty,” spills out, nearly involuntarily.
The sword falters.
“Excuse me?”
Well, that’s definitely a first impression.
-
Vision, see nothing I don’t see.
Language, say nothing.
-
Beidou is the only one he tells, aboard the Crux. Kazuha isn’t sure what about her draws the tale out so easily when he’d spent so long unable to even say Tomo’s name, but it helps. There is solace in being heard, even if it’s just by the winds of a temperamental sea and its rather… inebriated captain.
Between swigs of the glass of beer in her hands, Beidou’s words are a drunken ramble. “It sounds to me like you need closure. You wanna know what he would have said to you, if he had the chance. Am I right or am I right?”
“That’s…”
Beidou laughs, slamming her glass back down onto the table. “Exactly it, isn’t it! We need to bring you back to Inazuma, Kazuha. You’re miserable out here.”
He shrugs, quiet. “I was miserable back there, as well.”
“Hm.” She leans back, looking up at the ceiling, deep in thought. A moment passes with not a word shared, then two. “Do you regret it, in that case?”
“Regret what?”
“Loving him.”
Wind catches in Kazuha’s throat.
He frowns, glancing at the captain, then to his own still-full glass on the table. He doesn't look her in the eye when he says, with certainty, “not at all.”
The pang in his chest only serves to strengthen his resolve.
-
The way the night knows itself with the moon,
be that with me.
-
Kazuha says I love you when the thought plants itself in his head, and Tomo curls his fingers into his palm. Somewhere down the line it just felt right, like this, to be hand-in-hand and still with their backs to the other’s.
Tomo’s touch is electric — literally — and Kazuha learns to crave the sparks that singe into his skin, just barely. Blood rushes to his lips, to red sunspots when he closes his eyes, it’s lightning bolts in his lungs carried away by the wind in his breath. Something between them just feels so terribly alive.
Tomo kisses him like there’s no tomorrow, like they're running out of time. And in a way, they are, bound to separate paths, an inevitability that sinks deeper into Tomo’s gut with each passing day.
They both know it when the sun begins to set, fleeting seconds that reach into their hearts to tear them apart.
Kazuha wraps his finger idly in a piece of loose red thread from Tomo’s coat, then lets it go.
“We’ll meet again,” he says.
“Will we?” Tomo doesn’t sound as convinced.
Kazuha smiles, softly, looks up from where his head rests in the other’s lap. “I believe in fate. I believe that, wherever we go, the time will come for the roads I take to lead me back to you.”
Tomo laughs, “ haah . You’re such a sap.” His fingers run through Kazuha’s hair. “But I guess that means I’ll have to make it extra easy for you to spot me, if that time does truly come.”
“It will,” Kazuha says, and leans in to kiss him once again.
-
Be the rose
nearest to the thorn that I am.
-
When he thinks of that day, he sees the vision as it begins to fade, stuck eternally in that split-second image.
Like this, he carries his dear heart in the palm of his hand, ash-grey and heavy as a paperweight. Voiceless, but resolute. He isn’t sure if the haunting is a trick of his own mind or truly something from beyond the grave, but it wisps in the air around him all the same; whispers flown in through the breeze, something like a warm embrace on his skin.
It’s comforting.
He’s used to being alone, at the end of the everything. Eras will rise and they will fall, and all else eventually crumbles to dust. Like this, he anchors himself to moments that matter, brings back the dead if only for brief flashes of time. He closes his eyes and imagines Tomo in the wind rustling through his hair. In the lightning that strikes the waves whenever a storm begins to brew.
Like this, he leaves, and a world beyond the seas welcomes him in with open arms.