Work Text:
Riou possessed an innate tendency toward skillful muscle memory. He learned well and the lessons sunk in deep. Although age was definitely a factor, there being a certain ease of learning inherent to the young, Genkaku gauged the boy as having a natural predilection for full-body physical activities. He had balance and grace (qualities not compromised by his near-silence).
Trained by different hands, he could have been a sportsman or a dancer. But Genkaku was a martial artist. This and the tea ceremony were his only arts that could be rendered separate from that of war. Here was his legacy.
Nanami made up for other potential deficiencies in her learning style with greater gumption that any student Genkaku had ever taught. While Riou tired but rarely bored of repeating a technique over and over, Nanami fought through her boredom with determination to learn and improve. She was noisy and seemed to grow noisier to fill Riou's quiet pauses.
It was good for children to have siblings, Genkaku thought. Furthermore, he was old and was unlikely to live to the point where either child was likely to have a fair chance to find anyone else with whom to share their life.
Jowy was slowest to learn the ins and outs of any given move, but once he had the knack for it, he was quickest to turn it toward creative applications. Not having expected to acquire any pupils outside of the bounds of his own children, his mere continued presence initially took Genkaku by surprise. However, the more he learned of Jowy's circumstances, the more the dojo came to sound like an appropriate place for him.
Jowy had a touch of that urban cunning. It reminded Genkaku of Han. The same went for that tremor of learned distrust; unlucky in family.
Two students and then three and each one brought a greater happiness to the others.
Every year they grew a bit taller, stronger, swifter, older. Every year Genkaku felt himself...not shrinking, perhaps (he wasn't so old as that), but bending a little...not weakening or slowing, but losing stamina. He was aging with the added speed of stress weighing on him every time someone glanced at him and his children with disdain or whispered more unhappy rumors.
"Borderers are not trusters," he had read. As symbolic a decision as it had been to settle in Kyaro, there was truth in this.
-----
Riou had grown in his tonfa handling skill through the years, but the veil of quiet that clung to him had never receded. The experience of fighting when his life was on the line was teaching him things his adoptive father had laid the groundwork for (though the fiercer the war raged the more Riou understood why Genkaku could never have borne telling him directly). Direst would be if he were to fight his dearest friend.
Observing things silently it was easier to study them.
It was also easier for the people around him to put words into his mouth.
When Nanami spoke for her brother, sometimes she stumbled. They weren't always of one mind when she might have initially supposed they were. But if she tripped up, she had no desire to leave things in a tangled mess. Riou's true thoughts and feelings were important and she would fight to give him a chance to air them.
When she threw her body into his cause, the efforts tended to be less mixed. Her days were busy, so she trained on into the night. When Riou grew weak or faint, she carried him. A big sister could be a shield.
It wasn't as if Jowy hadn't considered other ways before deciding the path he would walk (to peace via Hell, via Highland) was the right one. No peace was forever, but hadn't his life til now been lived out in what was essentially an extended ceasefire? Hadn't poor Master Genkaku's life and death been proof that the City-State's self-involvement trumped any interest in true concordance throughout the region.
A man with few advantages needed to seize every one available to him. Each new ally and skill was like a rung on a ladder he built as he climbed (up? down?).
Three students. Three branches grafted onto the same tree- but that didn't ensure they would grow the same way; would put forth the same fruit. They had been coaxed to grow in a particular manner, but they were not bound and forced. Their innate natures would show.
Three students. Three arrows shot from the same bow- but they didn't guarantee they would all fly straight; would all hit the same mark. They had been taught a way of living, but it was just one potential path. They would each make their own way.
Even apart their bonds bound their hearts.
-----
When the decisive moment came, Riou took blows, rather than gave them. He listened to everything Jowy had to say- his reasons, his remembrances, his pleas. He stood, warding off the hardest impact of each strike, seeking reconciliation and not the smallest shred of revenge.
Was it harder for people or for runes to reunite, putting aside their differences? Was the one necessary for the other?
Sitting back, tired, against the rocks of the cliff, Riou worked with rune and bandages to tend to Jowy's physical wounds. Jowy, by merely smiling, did much to salve the scars Riou held inside.
The war had strained and stretched Nanami's patience in all sorts of ways. Some she had learned from. Other potential lessons, she thought, were just too unfair and so she refused to let them dye her view of that world that darkly.
It was the good kind of patience that brought Riou and Jowy back to her, back to the dojo, to Kyaro, their home. And the good sort of patience had also led her to treat herself carefully in the face of her injury.
The strength of her heart redoubled that of her body and she gripped them tight.
Master Genkaku had lived on after his moment of undeserved disgrace. And Jowy, certainly he didn't feel absolution was what he deserved, but that was hardly going to stop him from craving it. What was it about runes and borders and best intentions that drove friends apart? Because he had never wanted to lose Riou and Nanami in all this. He hadn't wanted to drag them into the muck of whatever means justified his noble ends either, but-
Back at the dojo after a week of healing, near-silent on the boys' end, he rose to practice. The siblings joined him.
There were many silences between Jowy and Riou, but Riou's eyes were gentle and Jowy's softened at their gaze. The quiet wasn't uncomfortable.
"Maybe we should travel some," Nanami said, "While we're still young. No one bothered the dojo while we were away before and not everyone was feeling really kindly toward us then. We could go soon before anyone realizes anyone but me's been back."
"I'm not standing under any waterfalls with you for the sake of training," Jowy said, but he smiled.
"Well, we're not going to slack off, but training wouldn't be the point."
Riou nodded, agreeing.
There were waterfalls crashing through some of the hills where they traveled, but the three young sojourners passed by, pausing only to fish or splash and wash up in the shallows.
There were nostalgic fields and forests where grass and leaves crunched beneath their feet; there were foreign caves and taiga and deserts with plants and creatures they had never seen.
They went by traveling names, but if ever their martial arts prowess was seen and brought them praise, they were quick to credit the source of their skill- the school of Genkaku (they would pass it down one day).