Work Text:
He's fine. He's definitely fine! He has to be!
The muffled noises of the rest of the refugees fluttered through the darkness of the camp like dead leaves. Quiet breathing, the rustling of fabric when someone rolled over to the other side, but the one calming sound she wanted to hear so badly just wasn't there.
Firmly, Ruri pressed her face into the mat she was lying on, shutting her eyes a little tighter, but all it did was add a few irritating stains to the shadows already dancing behind her lids. Shun was still out there, and preventing her mind from slipping into the vicious circle of worry and false assertions was more difficult than she had expected it to be. The fears she envisioned frightened her as hell, but the constant hope of seeing her brother step through the bedroom door at any moment kept driving her crazy just a much.
Ruri buried her nose a little deeper into the mat, breathing the fleeting rest of warmth that should have stuck to it. It was just a patrol - routine - and certainly not the first time Shun had returned to camp disproportionately late. But she had been awake for hours now and she lacked more than just the warmth of his body next to hers.
Don't think about it, she chided herself. Yuto was with him and Shun would definitely call for reinforcements if they ran into any trouble. But would he really? Risk putting others in danger for himself? She already knew the answer to that before she’d even finished the thought.
Swallowing a whimper, Ruri fought down the urge to jump to her feet or at least grab the duel disk at her side. She had to stay calm. Pretty much all the teenagers around her were light sleepers and they needed rest just as much as she did. The last thing she wanted to do was to startle someone who didn't deserve it. So instead, she quietly turned to the other side, pulling her legs closer to her body and trying to fade out Shun's absence as best she could.
It took Kaito three seconds to notice the signs of uneasiness right next to himself, and two of them just to wrestle down the impulsive urge to sit up and wrap his arms around the trembling body at his side. He had never been good at comforting others, and since Haruto- ... - since then he had only gotten worse.
Silently, he directed his gaze back to the ceiling, forcing himself to ignore the nervous rustling to his right. Maybe Shun would be back in the next fifteen minutes, or one of the other teenagers would wake up and take the decision from him; anyone better suited than he was. Perhaps Ruri would find a more comfortable position all by herself, in which her brother's sleeping place no longer stared at her with accusatory emptiness.
But Kaito already knew that wasn't going to happen. It hadn't happened to him either.
Another movement at his side caught his attention. Ruri tried to be inconspicuous, but he could still tell exactly where her legs were, almost feel her burying her fingers in the mat, and he noticed at the same time that his own hands were clawing at the floor as well, grabbing for something to hold on to as if he were still looking for something that wasn't there anymore. His muscles twitched and, feeling strangely caught, Kaito released the tension in his arms and let out the breath he had been holding.
The next quarter of an hour came. Shun didn’t.
And half an eternity later, Kaito concluded that six and a half years of protective instincts were impossible to outsmart.
"Try listing stuff," came the muffled voice from her left.
Ruri looked up, startled. Kaito was lying on his back, two, maybe three steps away from her - always politely leaving her room, always at a distance. His gaze was fixed on the ceiling, somewhere only he could see, or maybe focusing on one of the many stars out there that he had known by name before the sky over their city had turned to ashes and the lights had turned into flames.
"What?," she mumbled, confused, before opening her eyes in shock. She must have woken him up. "Oh no. I'm sorry for that. I did not want to -"
"You didn't," Kaito replied softly, and the tone in which he spoke instantly calmed her down. "It's okay." His voice sounded a little scratchy – as it always did lately - maybe from infrequent use, maybe just from whispering, but Ruri couldn't make out any trace of tiredness in it. He hadn't slept yet. The realization almost hit her harder than her worry of being responsible for keeping him awake. She pursed her lips, but if Kaito had noticed her grief, he must have decided not to act on it.
"Try listing stuff," he repeated instead, just as gently as before. In the semi-darkness of the room, his eyes shone like water in a pond. "Numbers, constellations ... maybe the periodic table of the elements?" He shrugged his shoulders and for a split second, the movement seemed almost embarrassed to her. "I go through the names of the cards in my deck whenever I try to relax."
Quietly Ruri rested her head back on the mat, blinking the vague shadows of her fears aside as she examined Kaito's profile more closely. The tension in his shoulder, the beating of his pulse right under his throat, the focus of his eyes.
"Does it help you?," she asked cautiously, although she had already guessed the answer. What she saw was anything but relaxed.
The corner of his mouth twitched briefly, a fleeting attempt at a smile, but even from a distance the sight looked haunted. "No." He shifted awkwardly. “That was useless advice. I shouldn't have said anything. Just forget about it," he added and suddenly there was something else, something dark in the scratching of his voice, even if it wasn't directed at her.
Ruri lowered her eyes, suddenly becoming very aware of the empty space behind her back. The place where Shun should have been. The mat under her body still felt way too cold for her to be comfortable. She wasn't used to falling asleep without her brother. And neither was Kaito.
Ashamed, Ruri pulled her lower lip between her teeth. She wasn't the only one in camp struggling with loneliness and the bitter pain of loss. If this scenario felt terrible for her already, how unbearable did it have to be for Kaito? She swallowed, guilty, before turning her gaze back to the boy, and deciding to be brave enough for both of them.
"May I lie down with you?"
It was just a question, but Kaito already tensed up before she could even begin to move. Always at a distance. Ruri could see the tendon pulsing at his neck, the uncertain twitching of his lips as he locked up the trembling breath, that had threatened to betray him, and probably many other things as well. She was almost certain that this was his request to leave him alone when his voice drifted over to her again, deep and strangely thick.
"It's okay. I-… come here."
Cautiously, Ruri moved closer. Kaito was not lying on one of the mats they had laid out on the wooden floorboards, she noticed now from up close and for a moment she wondered whether he had deliberately exposed himself to the coldness of the floor as a method to keep himself from falling asleep … or as punishment. The duel disk he owned rested right next to his hand, always in view, always within reach. Ruri slid as close as the mat would allow her, wishing she could just reach out to him and maybe catch a little more than the faint warmth of his body, but she didn't dare to actually touch him.
Proximity wasn't good. Kaito immediately felt his muscles stiffen and mentally scolded himself for being so weak as to allow himself some comfort. Being weak enough to need it.
Ruri wasn't Haruto and there were hundreds of reasons why he should have brushed her off, but he hadn't. He had already missed the opportunity the moment he had opened his mouth. Now Ruri's breath was ghosting over his chest, quietly and even, just a few inches above the spot where Haruto had used to bury his face in his side whenever he had hugged him close.
"Why are you still up?," Ruri whispered gently after a while, although she must have drawn her own conclusions long ago.
"I'm not tired."
Which was an outright lie. The days were draining him of strength he no longer possessed, and without Haruto, for whom it had always been worth to keep getting back up again and again - to try and hang in there - this fight was only wearing him down now.
Ruri blinked at him. Kaito still refused to turn his head to look at her, but he could feel the intensity of her gaze upon him.
"Do you have nightmares?"
Memories flickered through his mind, the soft images of carefree days, of walks in the park, of hot chocolate and butterfly wings and bright children's laughter, and then the sharp horrors of too much suffering, too much violence. He didn't know which of these were more painful now.
"Kaito?"
"No worse than the other kids," he finally replied. Because he was eighteen and he should have been able to carry all those responsibilities. Because it should have mattered less to him than it actually did.
Ruri said nothing. For a while she simply lay there, staring at him, and Kaito tried and failed not to think about how much he missed his little brother.
“I'm right here, you know. Shun and Sayaka and Allen. We are all here for you if you want to talk to someone."
"I know. But I don't want to talk about it. "
Talking about it wouldn't undo anything of what had happened. Neither Academia's deeds nor his own incapability. Not the panic, or the tears, or Haruto's screams that were still echoing in his ears, and -
In a desperate twinge of longing, Kaito twisted his lips into a helpless grimace.
Haruto.
"Can I- ...?" His fingers twitched, a shy impulse in Ruri's direction before he paused and shook his head stiffly. "I'm sorry, I- ... just forget about it."
"No, it's okay," she interrupted him gently. "It's fine if you do."
For an indecisive moment, Kaito's fingers paused over the duel disk at his side, his gaze locked with hers. Then he wordlessly pushed the disk out of the way to put his arms around Ruri instead.
It was an awkward hug. Ruri was delicate and soft, but almost two heads taller than Haruto, and Kaito wasn't sure what to do with her hips or his hands. He held her too tight. He could feel it in the surprised gasp that brushed against his neck when her nose landed in the collar of his coat, but he couldn't bring himself to let go of her yet.
"You won't lose me too," she promised quietly, but it wasn't until he buried his face in the wet area over her shoulder that Kaito realized his eyes were burning.
"I'm sorry," he muttered, not really knowing what he was apologizing for in the first place. The war? The hug? All those moments of weakness, that he shouldn't have allowed himself?
Ruri silently rested her chin against his collarbone. No. She wasn't Haruto and she couldn't replace what Academia had taken from him, but holding onto her was more comforting than facing the endless emptiness of his sleeping place all by himself, and maybe that was even more than he deserved for now.