Chapter Text
The needle does not obey well - Kiriko's fingers are used to the cold of kunai and calluses from training swords, but not to a thin beaded needle. Needlework is not her forte. But she tries.
«What are you doing here?» the warm hands of the mother lie on the shoulders. «Wow! For whom?»
«For Hanzo.»
Needlework is not her forte, but a small purse embroidered with beads looks quite good in the end. Kiriko smiles. Kiriko is pleased with herself - and the mother, throwing a curious look at her daughter, also nods approvingly. On the blue fabric, the hieroglyph «family» gleams with the facets of beads.
***
Kiriko doesn't ask stupid questions about common blood. Hanzo and Genji are much older, but having them around is something as natural as breathing. Genji drags her to play arcade games, jokes a lot and constantly comes up with new pranks. Hanzo looks at their fun with the same seriousness and sighs heavily when once again forced to disentangle them from a new trouble. Hanzo pretends that he is too old for childish pranks and too responsible for nonsense - so they get him again and again, making him finally laugh.
Kiriko loves them equally. Because loving them is an immutable axiom, and common blood is not needed at all to consider them brothers.
Because they love in response, long ago mistaking the omnipresent mentor’s daughter for a younger sister. Who can be annoying and at the wrong time, but just try to offend her with even a word.
She gives Hanzo the purse for one of the holidays - and his eyes warm when he looks at the embroidery.
Kiriko hides her fingers, almost punctured into meat, behind her back and smiles.
It was worth it.
***
The fox buries her muzzle consolingly into her palm, and Kiriko doesn't remember how to breathe. Everything around collapses.
Collapses when the head of the clan dies. Collapses when Hanzo kills Genji - kills, damn it! Collapses when her father is kidnapped.
Collapses, collapses, collapses and Kiriko chokes on the fragments of the former happy world and tries not to cry. She must appear strong in front of your mother, it’s already hard for her, she must not give your grandmother a reason to worry.
«Smile,» she tells herself, and sniffs. The fox climbs into her lap.
She really want to find her older brother and ask: «Why?».
***
Kiriko cries as she hugs Genji. Alive Genji, albeit turned into a semi-cyborg - it doesn’t really matter to her how much cybernetics he has when he jokes again and stands next to her.
Kiriko gets lost and tries to hide her awkwardness behind jokes when she sees Hanzo for the first time. She doesn't know what she wants more: to yell at him or throw herself on his neck. The chasm of more than a dozen years seems to widen when they finally meet.
Genji forgave him. Kiriko forgives too: for the death of his brother, and for the collapsed world, and for dozens of letters without an answer.
Hanzo does not forgive himself. And she does not know what to say to him, faced with a polite coldness.
«Are we still family?» she wants to ask, but the tongue does not turn.
***
Hanzo has a battered purse in his hands as he pays for coffee. Kiriko clings to him with her eyes - and freezes. The hieroglyph «family» is embroidered on the purse with beads. Now it is barely readable - awkward children's fingers could not sew on tightly and some of the beads came off over time.
«More than ten years have passed, and you still keep it?»
Hanzo also freezes, looking at the purse as if it was a traitor, and she notes that the thing was obviously handled very carefully - otherwise it would have been torn long ago, and so painstaking stitches of tears are visible in some places.
«This is your gift.»
And then, in the dark eyes opposite, something familiar and close finally flashes.
Kiriko looks at him for a long couple of seconds and abruptly takes a step forward, nuzzling his broad chest and clasping hands behind his back. A heavy hand rests awkwardly on her back, and for a moment, she almost feels like a little girl. As if there was no blood, no death, no long years of despair behind them. Only punctured fingers.
«We need to make you a new one, this one will fall apart soon,» she cuddles closer to her brother and smiles, quickly blinking away tears.
Because they are still family.