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When Takeda wakes, he snaps immediately to full awareness. Keishin has seen him in action often enough to recognize it, as languid as his movements still are. Takeda surveys the room — not that there’s much to see, concrete and steel and a drain set into the floor. They’d been snatched while on leave in their off-duty blacks, which is a mercy at least. There's nothing to tell their captors exactly who they are.
“Morning,” Keishin says, low. It might be morning. He knows what’s expected of him, so he rattles it off. “No sign of our captors. No natural light. I was out too, but we’ve probably been here four or five hours. At a guess, we’re underground.”
Takeda nods. He sits up, stretching; Keishin’s eyes snap to the pale skin the movement bares at his wrists, the sliver of belly. It’s — it’s not proper, the way he feels. Not normally, and certainly not now. But Takeda is rumpled by unnatural sleep, and his voice is quiet and just for Keishin.
“Good morning.” He doesn’t say anything else.
Keishin wavers eventually. “Commander—”
“Ittetsu,” Takeda says, firm and quick.
It makes sense. They don’t know who Takeda — Ittetsu — is; it’s better if things stay that way. Still, Keishin flushes a little with it. “Ittetsu. What should we do?”
Ittetsu laughs, light and seemingly unburdened. “We wait.”
Perhaps what happens next is predictable. Three men enter. Their leader monologues, as one does, about using them as an example for their people — rats, the lot of you, pretending to be an army. Asks questions, increasingly loaded. Ittetsu sits and watches them, mild as ever; Keishin watches him from the corner of his eye instead. When they grow angry with the lack of response, the leader nods at Keishin, and his men step forward. Keishin braces himself.
“Wait,” Ittetsu says. “Take me instead.”
“Ittetsu,” Keishin whispers. It fits unnaturally in his mouth. Ittetsu shakes his head, a silent command.
The leader’s laughter is an ugly rasp. “You?” Keishin knows what he sees: Ittetsu’s soft. Small, for an officer; wide-eyed and unassuming. “It’s less fun breaking down a boy than a man, you know.”
Ittetsu ignores the barb. “Take me instead.”
The leader considers them, pinning Keishin under his incisive gaze. Searching for weakness. He nods; his men haul Ittetsu unceremoniously to his feet, and they’re gone.
Keishin’s paced the tiny cell for hours; he’s strained his ears for any sound, guessing at the raised voices of interrogation and the dull thump of blunt impact. He’s run through strategies and come up empty. He’s stumbled back when Ittetsu becomes audible, a string of curses stretching into a scream that truncates as sudden, awful silence.
They return Ittetsu to him more wound than man, dumping him unceremoniously on the floor. Keishin rushes to him as soon as the door slams shut.
“Business as usual,” Ittetsu rasps, smiling. Even his voice is mangled.
“You should have let them take me,” Keishin says. His heart is in his throat. He doesn’t know what to do, here, other than listen to Ittetsu, as he always does. Following orders, except that Ittetsu needs care, and he doesn’t know if he can offer it. “I’m just a lieutenant.” Unsaid: I trust you to find a way out of anything. Unsaid: my life matters less than yours does, to me.
Ittetsu raises a bloodied hand to Keishin’s hair, tucking it carefully behind his ear. “I couldn’t have.”
There’s nothing more to say. Questions teem in his mind, but Keishin tucks them away behind the heaving mass of his concern and fear and devotion. Assesses Ittetsu, as much as is possible with no tools; tears his undershirt to pieces with his teeth, cleaning and binding what he can.
It’s remarkable how quickly a map can be made of a man: here’s where they hurt me. Here’s how. Keishin unearths each story with trembling hands and Ittetsu lets him. Ittetsu watches him. Silent and weary; somehow undefeated.
“You’re not just a lieutenant,” Ittetsu says. “You’re not just anything.”
“They’ve shown their hand,” Ittetsu murmurs, hours later. It feels late. The light in the ceiling is as bleak and bright as ever on grey walls and grey floor and oxidising red and the bundle of black fabric that is Ittetsu, lying carefully on his more intact side.
Keishin shifts. “Have they?” Ittetsu’s always been the brightest mind he knows. Perhaps — he doesn’t want to think this — perhaps it was good that it was him, if he’s gleaned anything that may help them.
Ittetsu hums. “Things will come to a head soon. It’s not a long game they’re playing.”
“I hope not.” Keishin can’t — it’s not his first time in captivity, but he can’t do this. Can’t sit and let this happen. He chokes back something which might be a laugh or a sob, dropping his head into his hands.
“Keishin.” It’s the first time Ittetsu’s called him that. His fingertips skim Keishin’s knee.
Keishin can’t do anything but uncurl from his miserable hunch and reach for Ittetsu’s hand. It’s cool in his.
“I trust you,” Ittetsu says. He looks at Keishin steadily; his face has begun to bloom purple-green-blue. “Do you trust me?”
The answer comes easy as breathing. “Always.”
Something like relief passes over Ittetsu’s face. “Save your strength,” he says, gentle and sure. “When the fighting starts — and it will — I’ll be counting on you to get us both out of here. Can you do that?”
There’s no other answer he can give. The question is a precipice; Keishin steps over the edge. “I can,” he vows. “I promise.”
There, in the vacant light, too incisive for any shadows or secrets — there, with him. Ittetsu draws the conviction out of him, every last straining inch, like it’s easy.
Ittetsu’s hand tightens in his. “Good,” he says. “I’ll look forward to it.”
Like it’s easy. Like it’s inevitable. Ittetsu shuts his eyes. Keishin keeps his open, and waits for the future to arrive.