Work Text:
Mafuyu knows the concept of trauma intimately. It can work in many different ways. Sometimes it's sudden, a single event you can pinpoint, like breaking your arm. But sometimes it's more gradual, like overworking yourself, microtears in your muscles. They do grow back stronger, but it often comes at the price of the surrounding tissue becoming hard and stiff.
Mafuyu's heart is strong, but it's also cold and unfeeling. He's built a wall around it, one not even he can penetrate. A safe and secluded fortress devoid of pain or love. The mortar holds steady, until one day, it's approached with a chisel of song, wielded by a gentle knight with soft silver hair and piercing blue eyes.
One brick moves, as suddenly as a bone snapping.
When your arm breaks, you should set it in a cast and let it heal. Don't move it for a while, and then slowly remember how to move it again. But some people choose to keep using their broken arm, pushing through the pain and continuing to work, whether it's heavy lifting or reliving the thing that hurt one's father.
Kanade’s curse is one of both guilt and determination. They're both quite familiar with being pushed to the limit, but Kanade will choose to break that limit every time. And maybe that tenacity is why her heart is still beating.
I’ll be her rock, he thinks, and she'll be mine.
The two of them can see things in each other that they can't see in themselves. It's something like codependency, but is codependency really such a bad thing if they'd be worse off on their own?
Eventually, they'll grow away from each other, learning to stand on their own two legs. Not apart, only away. Someday they'll be able to say they don't need each other like they used to, but still want each other.
But for now, between the hours of studying and the subtle words of his mother, between the haunting music that embraces him in his dreams and the silent screams when he's awake, Mafuyu is okay with how they are.