Archive of Our Own

It’s quiet. 

It’s quiet, after Samura has his daughter’s letter read to him by a member of the Masumi. He smiles after a moment, trying not to let it dip and curve, and devolve into a frown, trying not to let his face crumple like an abandoned attempt at origami. Of course, he can’t send her a letter back. He can’t even read the letter himself; no, he has to have it read to him, through the level and emotionally detached tone of whichever Masumi member is delivering him the message that week. Samura tries to imagine his daughter’s voice through the words, but he’s incapable of doing so - what would she even sound like now? 

It’s nearly been a year, since the Kamunabi pushed him into hiding after Rokuhira’s death. It’s nearly been a year, since he had to release his daughter into their venomous clutches, good intentions being lost in the feigned panic to try and figure out the traitor in their midst. None of them, bar Azami, maybe, realistically care about any of the sword bearer’s wellbeing; the last time he checked, Samura was another ‘hero’ of a war the Kamunabi were desperate to forget about, even if it put them in their current position of running the country. 

He may have relinquished the Tobimune, its blade drenched in the blood of those Samura had killed for the weak justification of winning a war - ends justifying the means, or something along those lines - but that crimson stain had never truly left his calloused hands. He couldn’t count the number of times he’d tucked his daughter into bed, or tried to play with her in her dollhouse, and had then promptly been violently sick as soon as he’d left the room, stumbling for something to empty his guts into. How could he dare touch her with those filthy hands? How could he deserve her? How could he live a life after what he’d done? How could he face an innocent child, who he knew adored him so (she had let him know it almost every time they had spoken, poor girl), without imagining the ones he cut down during the war? Even after she grew, and stopped being as forthcoming with affection, he could still barely stomach that he was there, with her, alive, and all those in the war, who had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time, weren’t. 

It was cruel, he knew it, to let her stay like this. Being watched, having her movements reported back to a nameless face in the Kamunabi - she was only a child, and this was the life he’d damned her to? 

Despite the tone the Masumi read her letters in, Samura couldn’t help but notice the sadness dripping into each letter as time went on. At first, they’d been composed of 

‘this happened today…’ and ‘can’t wait to see you again…’, but now, after nearly an entire year, the pleasantries had mainly dropped. Each ‘how are you?’ grew more desperate and more poignant with each unresponded letter; each ‘can’t wait to see you’ turned into a ‘when will I see you?’; each letter grew shorter and shorter as she realised he wasn’t going to reply. 

From the echolocation, he watches the female Masumi member fold the letter in two, and neatly place it on the pile of the previous ones, stacked in uniform columns, giving off gentle vibrations. The words he wants to say still on his tongue, silently retreating back into his throat. 

“Mr. Samura?” 

He leaves his thoughts inside his mind to sour. “Yes?” 

“Do you want me to contact the Kamunabi? You may be able to send a letter back.”

He stands, rubbing his scarred eyes. “Don’t bother.” 

It was pointless. He knew what the answer would be: it was the same answer every single time. He imagined that after asking the same question week after week, the Kamunabi had gotten quite tired of Samura - they probably thought they were allowing him some great freedom by even letting his daughter’s letters reach him. 

The sliding door creaks slightly as he pushes it open, stepping out into the corridor.

It’s quiet. 

It’s quiet out in the open air hallway of Senkutsuji. It’s always quiet at Senkutsuji. As if it knows it’s missing something - someone to fill the space. 

He feels the gentle early spring breeze brush against his face, blowing his hair left and right. He shuts his eyes gingerly, making the tiniest difference to the shade of darkness that was his vision, and stands there, letting the chill bite his skin, blood vessels in his face prickling as they constrict. Blood vessels. Blood. The image of spilled viscera flashes into his mind, discoloured after 16 years of residing in his memory.
Samura scoffs, patting his suit jacket for his glasses, before placing them over his eyes once found. From the weight of the air, and the carefree chirp of swallows at irregular intervals, he could tell it was late afternoon (or getting there, at least). Dinner wouldn’t be for awhile, and the resurfaced image of human intestines had only unsettled his, so there was little point in going to the kitchen. He’d only be intercepted by a Masumi member, practically begging him to cook his dinner for him. It wasn’t a matter of that he couldn’t see, he knew that, but he still liked cooking his own food. He didn’t know who he was proving himself to, but the feeling of satisfaction from neatly dicing carrots and potatoes felt similar to when he managed to bake his daughter’s fifth birthday cake without blowing the entire kitchen up (there was absolutely a gas leak in that room, and the oven actually might’ve been possessed by someone he’d killed). 

The thought takes him back to his old home. He’d had to leave in a rush, barely being able to explain what was going on to her. It was a nice, friendly little place where the two of them had lived. He remembers the two matching aprons hung up on the kitchen door, that had some ridiculous catch phrases written on them (he couldn’t remember what exactly they said, however); he remembers the quaint little garden where she’d run around in circles, stumbling around afterwards from dizziness (she’d fell into him enough times for him to know), laughing in glorious bursts - he remembers where he showed Chihiro how to cut through bamboo rolls without hesitation. 

Chihiro.

He considers trying to at least contact someone else’s child, but sighs. There’s no need to get him involved in this mess. He’s just a bit older than his own child. He’s still a boy. There’s no need, Samura reaffirms, beginning to walk towards his bedroom at the other end of the temple. If he followed this corridor, then went down a quick flight of stairs, he’d be there at just the right time to have an afternoon nap. 

There was barely anything for him to do at Senkutsuji, other than listen to birds, cook, sleep and wallow in his own misery; occasionally some nonsense letter from the Kamunabi would arrive, reiterating that this was for his safety and the risk this mysterious Hishaku organisation pose is unprecedented. Samura knew all about this ‘mysterious Hishaku organisation’. At first he’d felt a little guilty - maybe, he wasn’t quite sure - but he owes it to the world, to the people he’d killed, so he pays the letters no mind.

His bedroom door slides shut behind him, and he collapses onto his bed roll, removing his glasses. It was stupid to put them on, really, considering he wore them for a maximum of three minutes on his commute from the common room to his bedroom. His suit is going to crease - he’ll have to pester a member of the Masumi to actually let him use the iron for himself (a thought that triggers an unnecessarily loud and dramatic sigh from deep in his chest). Samura realises he forgot to close the curtains. He also then realises he forgot to go and get his clean bedsheets from the laundry room, and is now lying on a bare bed. 

He groans. 

He’s too tired for this (hence now lying down in bed). His brain is too active to fall asleep. The words ‘I HATE MY LIFE’ flash through his mind, from some song his daughter had listened to on repeat when she was twelve. When he’d tried to ask about it, worrying for her well-being, he’s pretty sure he got pepper sprayed. 

Where the fuck does a twelve year old get pepper spray from? He should’ve been stricter with what he allowed in the house - wait, was that what she said was hairs—

The revelation is cut off by a book falling off his bookshelf. What prisoner of war was haunting him now?

In reality, the wind had just picked up, and a particularly strong gust had blown against the exposed outside wall, knocking a book off of the bookshelf backed onto said wall. Not a poltergeist, not an innocent he murdered sixteen years ago: just the wind. Relief washes over him as he survives another day without suspected ghost activities killing him. What if the shelf had blown onto him? Samura shudders. Death by bookshelf via a ghost (the wind). The idea sends a chill down his spine, assisted by slight cold of his room, seeing as he didn’t have any bedding to warm him. 

Despite the harrowing, near death experience, he feels his eyes begin to shut tighter and tighter as sleep grasps at them; he twists his head to the side so he doesn’t end up asphyxiating himself in his sleep (another shudder), and lets sleep pull at his mind and quiet its incessant ramblings (death by bookshelf, ghosts etc.).

It’s warm. That’s the first thing he notices. So comfortably warm. 

He’s sat on the porch of his house, mercifully blocked from the blaring summer sun that was beating down on the ground; birds trill somewhere in the distance, children scream and laugh somewhere down the road - his own child splashes in a paddling pool somewhere just in front of him. It was her fourth birthday last week, and her (current) favourite present was the rubber ducks a family friend had gotten her - a so-called uncle, or something: Samura couldn’t place exactly who had given her the gift. His memory felt… murky. 

The two ducks float on top of the shallow water she splashes in, bobbing from side to side as her hands make contact near to them. She shrieks, picking up another toy she’d been given for her birthday. Again - who had gotten her it? Did he get amnesia within a week? How’s he supposed to thank them if he doesn’t remember which one of his… four… total friends could’ve got her it. He has friends. He has more than four friends. Daily affirmations. 

But… does he have four friends? Didn’t he have at least twelve last week? No, that was… he couldn’t place it. Who is he?

Seiichi Samura, simple enough. So he’s not got amnesia - he can remember who his daughter is, and where he is, and who he is. Everything seems clouded, as if he was viewing and thinking through twenty different lenses. A sharp pain routes through his head, and he instinctively clutches it, gasping from the sudden sensation. What the hell is going on?

Footsteps. Behind him. Coming out onto the porch. 

His daughter finally looks up from her toys, and a large grin splits her face, punctuated with two rows of tiny baby teeth. Her eyes crinkle, fires lit inside each iris from the shining sun, and Samura misses it. 

He misses her. 

But why? She’s right here in front of him. Right now. Right this moment. So why? 

His vision clouds, grows murky once again, befuddled like his mind. 

He sets the flask down on the crate with a gentle thud.

“Seems like a worldly passion to me.”

“Shut up.”

Samura looks up, a boy of merely eighteen in front of him, polishing his enchanted blade. 

They’re in a ditch. Well, a very nice, decorated ditch. But still a ditch. 

They’ve been hiding there for the past day, waiting for word from one of the many frontlines. He’s grown sick of waiting for only more bad news. 

How many people had he killed in the past few days? He doesn’t even know anymore - too many to count, too few worth remembering - this is war. That justifies it all. 

Right?

Samura’s snapped from his train of thought by the Kumeyuri clattering to the floor. 

“Ah- no! Sor—”

“Do you mind?” Samura hisses, a fierce migraine already forming behind his eyes. The small flask is still in his right hand, and his other hangs limply off the back of the chair he’s sitting on. Dim lamp light illuminates the covered ditch (because it, despite all embellishment, was still a ditch), with a few relatively small moths flocking towards the flame. 

This is a nightmare. He’s living a nightmare. He’s stuck in a ditch with an eighteen year old (who can’t sit still for more than a minute), with an intense migraine banging against his optic nerve. 

The boy picks up his enchanted blade, and sets it on a filthy wooden crate next to him, before sitting down. He looks up through the hair hanging over his eyes, and raises a finger towards the flask Samura is gripping. 

“What’s even in that?”

“You’re not having any.”

“That’s not what I asked, Mr. Samura. You’re going to give yourself a migraine—” 

Samura scoffs at the irony.

“—if you keep drinking stuff like that. I mean, with all due respect, how are you fighting after drinking that? I can smell it from here.”

He smiles, staring softly at his pupil. He supposes he could call him that. That’s a fair estimate of their relationship, if Samura had to say. “You like it?”

“No. Absolutely rancid.”

Samura laughs. It feels like cheating. He knows he shouldn’t be sitting there, laughing. The joy cracking his face in half, blurring his vision, reluctantly and briefly easing his building migraine due to the tension in his brows. He feels as if he’s cheating. Lying. Deceiving. He feels the pinch in the back of his conscience, the drop in his stomach, the hairs on the back of his neck bristle in a spectral wind. This is wrong. This is immoral. It eats away at his soul; he can feel it, oh, he can feel it deteriorating, eroding, being devoured by his sins. He can’t stand it. He can’t sit in this ditch and laugh. He can’t do it. He can’t do it any longer. 

His grip falters, eyes paling and distancing themselves. The flask slips a few millimetres out of its original position in his blood caked hands. Under his nails, in his hair, in his skin, under his skin, in his eyelashes, in his mouth, on his tongue, in his ears, in his nostrils - stuck to each minuscule hair - in his eyes. It’s everywhere. Blood clings to him, hugs him, embraces him, as if they were a key and lock. 

It sickens him. 

“Mr. Samura, are you alright?” The boy asks, leaning forwards, worry bright in his eyes. 

He absentmindedly nods, standing, almost losing his balance on the way up; he drops the godforsaken flask, blood still dripping from it onto the crate, and points to the exit of the ditch, signalling that he needs a breather. 

The boy nods, smiling. 

Smiling. 

It sickens him. He can smile? After this? The war (involving the sword bearers) is only a few months old, but has already seen its fair share of blood shed; it sickens him. His stomach turns, shifting, somersaulting into infinity, into oblivion. 

He can’t stand this. 

It’s quiet. It’s quiet in the open air of the late night, stars scattered across the sky. He can’t quite make them out. They’re murky. 

He hates the quiet. It fills in his every crack and orifice, following the paths carved by the blood that had crept inside him; he hates it, he hates it, he hates it. 

Expectedly, he doubles over, and vomit pours from his insides. He doesn’t care how it smudges across his lips as he wipes its remnants away, or the rawness of his throat from the acid licking flames up his oesophagus. His migraine has worsened, and is now thrashing against his skull. Samura groans. This is ridiculous. What if Rokuhira saw him like this? He can’t ruin his chances like that. The thought of the embarrassment causes blood to rush to his cheeks. Oh, he cannot be doing this at his grown age.

He remembers why he was throwing up in the first place, and the solemnity of the situation returns to him, after a childish loss of focus. Tears burn his eyes. Maybe they’d wash the blood out; it had congealed behind them, inside them, inside the delicate veins that flowed through them, inside the nerves, inside his corneas, inside his irises, inside. Everywhere. Somewhere. He can’t place it. Everything is… roily, cloudy, murky. Everywhere he looks is red, or unclear, or dark, or impossible, or sickening, or quiet. Tears drip out of his eyes, silently travelling one after another down his face; the stars blur above him, their constellations stumbling out of order, the moon wavers and bends unnaturally in his eyes - it would be beautiful on any other night. Anywhere else. Anywhere else on this planet, and it would be gorgeous. He’d be able to appreciate it, to laugh at the wonder above him, but he can’t do anything but sob. He can’t do anything but sob, and fall to his knees, and hate himself. He is utterly, completely, useless. 

He’s fighting a war - and for what? To sick his guts up every night? To take yet another child from their parents? To take, and take, and take, and never give back? 

Samura doesn’t know. He doesn’t know anymore. 

However, he knows of the tears flowing down his face; he knows of the shudders that violently rack his chest as he sobs and he knows of the mud smearing against his previously pristine trousers. He knows so much, while he also knows so little. He feels as if his entire life is some sort of self inflicted paradox. 

Peace. Freedom. They’re within his grasp, but the world isn’t clear - like he’s viewing it through a lens or two. His body feels separate from his mind, from his blood drenched eyes. The price - what is the price for clutching those two fabricated ideals of society? For marring their pure ideologies with his defiled hands? He reaches, and reaches, but an ideal existence is far beyond him. He knows this. He wishes he didn’t. He wishes he could live as an ignorant man, and cleanse himself of his sins through denial, but he just cannot do it. 

And Samura has no idea why.

It’s been a few months - months - and he’s already this disturbed by his actions. This war, it could on for another year, or two, or three, or ten. How much longer does he have to suffer?

He? Have to suffer?

The weight of his selfishness drops onto his shoulders, drops through his stomach, keeling him over once again. He’s knelt there, crying over his actions, heinous as they are, acting like he’s the one who is suffering. What about the families of those he killed? What about the children, and the grandparents, and the mothers, and uncles, and cousins? How can he sit there and wallow in the misery that barely even affects him beyond a moral conflict? 

His stomach revolts, and acid crawls up his throat, wrenching his mouth open and racking his body; all he can cough out of him now is bile, sickly yellow and its viscosity weak. 

It’s quiet - other than the sounds of him retching. 

He hopes the boy hadn’t heard him, how would he even explain that to someone so content in a time of war? The thought is venomous, writhing and hissing inside his mind. The boy is young, yes, but not a child. He should know this for himself already. His ignorance isn’t Samura’s issue. It’s nothing on him. Not his fault. Not his. He knows that. He does. 

But the words are still tinted with uncertainty, with concealed guilt. Samura knows that. Of course he knows that. 

There’s a lot Samura knows at this point. War has a habit of thrusting the most revolting parts of humanity straight into your face unapologetically, and he sees it all. Those parts have pushed so far into his face that they’ve fused with his body, becoming calcium, and iron, and haemoglobin - they’re parts of him now, too, and after only a few months. He can’t stand this. He can’t stand looking upon humanity any longer. 

It’ll be over soon. It has to end soon. Soon. 

Hands gently rest on his shoulders from behind him. They’re gentle, but possess a certain weight he can’t ignore. Index fingers on each hand press lightly into his collarbone, thumbs flush to the muscles connecting his lower neck to upper back. 

The sound of breathing fills his ears, each warm exhale brushing against the delicate shell of his ear, but no other noise leaves the person behind him. Difficult. The room he’s in is pitch black - a void - and he can’t see the hands that grip him. 

Two fingers, index and middle, drag up along his neck, followed by the thumb behind. They’re soft, but every cell in Samura’s body is calling them insidious. They trail up to his jaw, gently holding it underneath his stubble; each finger flattens, going flush against the underside of his head. A thumb stills behind his ear, while another travels softly to his cheek. It rubs up and down, gentle, caring. 

Samura’s head feels like there’s ants running through it. Who, exactly, is touching him like this? But, at the same time, strangely, it feels like the tender touches aren’t making contact with his skin at all, like they’re… ghostly. 

Samura shudders. He hates ghosts. 

The person behind him notices, and their touch stills. He feels their presence grow nearer as they lean in closer. Their lips rest beside his left ear, gentle nasal breaths tickling him. Their hands are still cradling his face, and the void before him seems more comfortable than the situation he’s in. 

Maybe he likes it. Maybe - but he’s not admitting that. If he ignores the unsettled feeling the connection gives him, it’s… nice: peaceful. 

Their face turns, lips centimetres away from his ear, but he can’t see them out of the corner of his eye; they’re definitely there, their breath grazes both his ear and cheekbones, and he can feel an invisible stare, but he cannot see someone stood there next to him. Their fingers move again, skimming along the stubble that lines his jaw, towards his lips; one thumb stops there, catching on his unusually soft bottom lip (they’re never that moisturised), but the other fingers and thumb continue to roam across his features: up to his eyebrows, his nose, his cheekbones, his forehead - touching everywhere. It’s almost as if this person was trying to memorise the feel of his face, each dip and ridge, each bump, each imperfection. Samura feels… known. 

The void that surrounds him seems to grow more and more distant, the pressure in the place easing off gently as Samura relaxes. He’s standing, so he feels his knees buckle slightly, just ever so slightly. 

Reflexively, he reaches up to gently grasp at the arm belonging to the hand that’s currently attached to his face. 

The hand stills, one finger curiously poking slightly through Samura’s lips. He has half the mind to bite down, or to run, just to get away. He feels like he’s being tricked, or drugged - the air is goopy and thick, as if it were full of smoke, and his movements feel lazy. 

This has got to be some form of a worldly passion.

Samura pushes the arm away from his face tenderly, expecting the fingers to claw at his countenance in a desperate effort to stay clung onto him, but he finds no such resistance, and the hand obeys, silently moving away. The person’s right hand stays affixed to his cheek, thumb fondly tracing the shadow of his cheekbone. 

He follows the hand now extended in front of him round, up their arm, to their shoulder, to their neck, to their f—

His hand dips from Samura’s cheekbone, down his jaw, resting on the side of his neck -  five fingers poised delicately over the right flank of his throat. 

A choke, or something similar, pries itself from Samura’s lips, spluttering with the shock, and his grip on his arm grows tighter, shooting splintering pain up through his nerves. It’s like an embrace. He welcomes it. 

“Yo—” Samura starts, but his words bubble and drown in the viscous environment, air bubbles floating out of his mouth upwards. He’s still wrapped around him. He can do anything here. And he will.

Five fingers grasp at Samura’s neck, crashing into his oesophagus, crushing whatever he finds underneath those delicate five fingers. Samura struggles against him, and in the altercation, the two of them collapse to the floor, a sticky and slightly elastic feeling mattress, thrashing against each other; he lies on top of him, bringing his left hand to assist in throttling the man underneath him, and Samura claws at his hands, gasping, wrenching, each limb writhing. 

It’s beautiful.

So, so gorgeous to watch. Magnificent. The pretty bruises smear across the skin of Samura’s neck, butterflying into lighter shades of purple and yellow and green. He’s right here, under him, and he doesn’t even pay any mind to his slightly faltered grip, allowing the man underneath him to release his hands from his throat. The matter the floor is made of is being kicked up onto his suit. He doesn’t care. His focus is Samura. 

He reaches his hand down to Samura’s, finding his right wrist, and thrusts it in front of him. There’s a ring-like tattoo wrapped around his right pinky. 

Ah. That’s what this is. Some amalgamation of guilt and regret, or maybe lust. 

Worldly passions. 

Samura’s pinioned to the viscid ground still, Yura above him; he eyes the matching ring on the man above him’s little finger, and scoffs. He can’t speak, lest a repeat of what happened before, and his heart is beating wildly in his chest. 

Wait.

How the hell is he—?

The man above him drawls something indecipherable, leaning forwards so that his face hangs above Samura’s.

He tries to push up, to fight him off, but he can’t. He doesn’t have it in him. 

“Night night, Seiichi Samura,” Yura murmurs, spiral eyes staring into his.

A tattooed hand crawls up his chest, up his bruised throat, and again to his jaw, spotting barely there touches against his blemished skin; he reaches his eyes, and his index and middle finger take their place above each eye respectively. And then they dip. Claw. 

Samura feels his eyes detach from each respective optic nerve, and an ancient headache comes back to haunt him.

Not only is his suit creased, but he’d now also sweat through it, meaning it had to be washed again. He just had it washed yesterday - usually the thought would annoy him, but not now. 

He’s sat up on his barren bed roll, hands gripping his knees, head hung, and ragged breaths cause his chest to convulse at random. Cold sweat runs everywhere: down his forehead, dripping onto the bed beneath him, down his neck, down his back. Tears prick at his scarred eyes, and a nervous hand comes up to tenderly feel at his neck.

No pain. He’s fine. No evidence of a strange black liquid on his clothes. It was a dream. They were dreams.

His daughter. 

Samura collapses in on himself.

He- he can’t do this. Not anymore. 

He misses her. He misses being woken up at stupid o’clock in the morning to play with dolls. He misses getting her up for school, he misses doing her hair in a different way each day, seeing which one would be her favourite (he was winging it while blind, after all). He misses cooking her dinner, making her lunch, doing her breakfast in the freezing winter cold of the morning; he misses letting her lead the way to school, he misses her dragging him through the supermarket to buy her a new toy, and he even misses the hell that broke loose when he refused. He misses buying food with her in mind, buying no-tears shampoo and conditioner from the chemist’s. He misses comforting her when she missed her mother, despite the fact she didn’t remember who she was, and was realistically only grasping at the want to be normal; he misses holding her while she cried because Oingo Boingo died in a picture book. He misses talking to the baker about her when he went to get bread while she was at school. He misses. He misses, and he misses, and he misses, and he can never get her back, get that time back, because this is what he deserves. 

This is Naraka, the result of his sins, and he’ll be here for eternity. No amount of time can outlast his crimes. He’ll be in this self-inflicted hell for the rest of his life, and in his death after that. He clutches at his head, grasping at his hair, fingertips scraping along his scalp. Tears drip onto the bed roll beneath him, but he has no energy to do anything but sit there and wait for his erratic breathing to subside. He needs a shower, he needs a break, he needs a fucking minute.

He can’t go on like this. It’s been sixteen years, and with each one passing the rot inside his soul spreads, branching out into a million new reasons to despise himself. He can’t kill himself just yet: the others are still alive, unpunished for their crimes. He has to kill them first, he has to cleanse himself of the guilt that they bring him too. 

The resurfaced memory of Uruha stabs an imperceptible blade through his gut, and it twists round and round, riling up his already precariously kept calm stomach. Before he knows it, vomit forces its way up his throat, and he has to stumble off of his bed roll in order to be sick onto the wooden floor. He falters slightly, crumpling to rest on one arm, breathing irregular and unsettled. Samura groans, not even attempting to sit up again. He must seem pathetic. 

No, he is pathetic. He’s not the victim in this almost two decade long affair. What, exactly, is wrong with him?

Suddenly, there’s a quiet knock against his door. 

“Mr. Samura? Are you alright?” It’s the largest of the Masumi members. 

Samura’s throat is raw. He can’t avoid this even if he wanted to. So, he doesn’t say anything.

“Mr. Samura?”

He sighs. “I- I’m fine.” 

The door slides open, expectedly. Samura has no idea what he looks like, but he knows he’s in an absolute state; he probably looks like some sopping wet dog unable to right its mistakes to its owner, large pleading eyes inspiring forgiveness. The difference between him and a dog, though, was that a dog will usually be let off by its owner, and Samura knows no one in this world will forgive him once his plan comes into play. He’s the unruly child, the abandoned animal, the outlier. He’s the unknown term. 

He doesn't speak, as the other two Masumi members migrate into the room, one of them (he wasn’t paying enough attention to watch the echolocations, and for some reason they were masking their scents) lays him back down in his bed, before muttering to themselves about clean clothes and bedsheets. They end up just lifting Samura out of his room into one of the many common areas at Senkutsuji, and two of them leave to clean his bedroom. He was thankful, he was grateful for them, he really was, but his throat burned, and his eyes felt heavier and heavier as time went on; his consciousness had been wavering for at least ten entire minutes, but he’d attempted to stay awake in an effort to thank the Masumi. 

He fails in his endeavour. 

None of them speak of it the next day. Nor the next week, or the week after that. The event goes completely unmentioned - he was thankful for that, too. At least now, he had actual bedding on his bed roll. Maybe that was the cause of his nightmares. Or the ghost talk. Samura shudders.

He wasn’t prone to nightmares, unexpectedly; you’d think a man with tonnes upon tonnes of self loathing to at least have one nightmare a week, but he didn’t. He probably had a nightmare once every couple of months, at best. 

He sits, eating his breakfast in the dining room. It’s a nice day: quiet, like any other, but the weather had started to warm as they marched on into April. 

The idea of asking the Masumi for a rather selfish favour had played on his mind since the previous month, when he’d gotten his daughter’s last letter - they’d dropped to once every month now. He tried to pretend it didn’t affect him too much, but he suspected the Masumi had caught on long ago: they knew him too well. 

The Masumi commander sits in the room with him, reading through something (Samura doesn’t know what, obviously, and he wasn’t planning on asking). 

His throat feels clogged, the proposition catching in his oesophagus while on its way from his mind. It’s selfish, self-serving. Or at least he feels that way. He knows this is for the best, especially for her, but he’s still reluctant about the idea (reluctant was a way to put it, sure. Samura was tormented by it).

“Can I ask a favour?”

—————-

It’s a done deal. 

Senkutsuji is even quieter without the constant presence of the Masumi. It’s strange. Even if at first, the Masumi had annoyed him with their pestering, he’d gotten used to them, and had actually grown to quite like their perpetual company; he couldn’t imagine how lonely he would’ve been without them with him at Senkutsuji, even if they weren’t perfect replacements for him.

Samura doesn’t like using them, but this is a necessary sacrifice.

His daughter deserves better. She deserves to be free of him. Life will be better for her this way, life will be easier; she won’t have the looming fear that he doesn’t really care about her in the back of her mind anymore. She’ll be free to live however she wishes, apart from him. 

Samura’s okay with it. He is. He promises himself he is. 

She’ll forget all about him, and never, ever, know who he is again. He’ll live the rest of his life remembering her. 

It’s cruel - it’s necessary. It’s what he deserves, if anything else. 

They said they’d be back by nightfall. They said it’d be done by nightfall. Has it happened already? Does she still know who she is? Questions rack at his brain, in a desperate effort to bring some sort of comfort forth to him. It doesn’t come. 

This is for the best. This is the best thing for her. 

This is for her. 

He knows it is. Part of it is for him, yes, but it’s all for her. 

He loves his daughter. She’ll never know that. 

Samura knows he cares. He doesn’t even try to pretend it doesn’t affect him. Samura’s always cared. But does she know that? Did she know that, if her memory is already gone? He remembers every single one of her letters nearly word for word, and he knows they grew more tired and impatient over time; he knows she had no idea why he wasn’t responding to her if he was apparently receiving her letters. He hates not knowing, he hates waiting and he hates the pit that’s gradually growing in his stomach. 

Does she still know who he is?

She’s tiny. 

That’s all he can say. He has a brief idea of what she looks like from gently tracing her features, but all he can really gather is that she’s really, really small. 

She wasn’t premature, no, she came perfectly on time in the middle of summer. Despite the sweltering temperatures outside, the hospital room was vaguely chilled, likely from the whirring air conditioner that made too much noise to be working completely efficiently. He thinks his wife is in the hospital bed, her smell clings to it, but she hasn’t made a single noise for a few minutes; they took their daughter away for a few tests - nothing to worry about, the midwives had assured the two of them. Though… she was pretty small. Not unhealthy, he knew that, but she was terrifyingly small.

He can’t quite describe it, what it was like to hold her for the first time, this tiny little child in his arms - his tiny little child; the imposter syndrome had nearly caused him to vomit over his own shoes, but he knew that wouldn’t be helpful to his wife who had just pushed a child out of her - he understands women’s issues, you know, and now he has a daughter. A child. 

It felt wrong to hold her. It felt like cheating. He shouldn’t have this. He doesn’t deserve this. 

It’s been just over two years since the end of the war, and it’s still horribly fresh in Samura’s mind. He’d gotten married, dealt with Uruha and Misaka getting hammered at his wedding (which ended in Uruha nearly drowning in a stream, of all places to drown in, and Misaka hosting an impromptu concert), as well as paying for the extensive sushi buffet from Subaru, that he’d offered on a friend’s discount (which, in reality, was a mere 10%. He’s not made of money, honestly). Rokuhira, obviously, couldn’t attend, but Shiba and Azami said he gave his congratulations. Maybe, in another life, it would’ve been truly nice to see them all again, and he could’ve felt that mutual love and respect course through his veins; but in truth, they all disgust him. They all act as if nothing happened - as if what they did during the Seitei War was some happy fucking accident; it sickens him. At least Rokuhira knew to hide himself away before society eventually turned on him.
The guilt and hatred had eaten away at him the entire event, only numbing once he had spent enough time around his intoxicated friends, and was forced into fifteen rounds of karaoke (fifteen. Fifteen. Rounds. Of blind karaoke. Without the influence of alcohol, it was practically torture).

Can he do this? Can he be a father? What’s he meant to say when the topic of the war inevitably comes up? He hasn’t even told his own wife half of what he’s done, how is he meant to tell his daughter?

His wife finally moves, groaning slightly as she shuffles in the bed; he goes to her side, reaching for her hand. 

Samura is now a single father. 

The divorce was quick. Simple as it could’ve been. It was for the best, they had both mutually agreed. 

And somehow, Samura ended up with their daughter. Trust the war criminal to be a good father, yes, what an amazing idea! Despite being unusual, he’s prepared for it - single fatherhood here he comes! How hard could it be? After a year and a bit of parenting with his now ex-wife’s assistance, he was practically an expert; he knows what each specific tone of cry means (for the most part), when to feed her, and when to put her to bed (…or at least, attempt to) - the man is a professional. 

In her cot, a tiny hand curls around a single finger of his; she’s grown remarkably since her birth (…as you’d expect), but Samura still can’t wrap his head around how small she actually is. He sits there, content, his current situation swirling through his mind. He can always call Uruha if he needs help, right? Or Shiba, he’s pretty good with kids (though, most of what he’d seen of Shiba handling children, was just that. He’s pretty sure he saw the man teleport a fourteen year old into a wall); though, he wasn’t sure exactly how that situation would go. Uruha had already taken to calling himself ‘Unky Uruha’, which was… just embarrassing. As much as he’d grown to despise the lot of them, they were still friends as far as any of them were concerned. Samura didn’t feel like cutting them off and being mysterious when he was now raising a child on his own. It takes a village, or something? He’d massacred enough villages in his time, so he should be fine. 

She wriggles in her swaddle, trying to stretch. She’s adorable - he’d heard the words said enough times to him, but they weren’t wrong - she really is. 

Her mother… it was rough, for her. He knows that the mental and physical toll put on her body was something he was incapable of understanding, and he tried to be as supportive as possible, but as someone so deeply tormented, it proved to be more difficult than he expected. Add the stress of a newborn on top of that, and you have a strained marriage. Samura loved his wife, absolutely, but it just wasn’t right for either of them to stay together. It was upsetting at first, especially considering their daughter, but he (mostly) overcame the hurdle. 

He liked the thought of being loved. Being known. That’s what he thought he’d had, but he was wrong; his wife knew it too, she’d brought it up countless times: how can he be known if he won’t talk about the war? 

Always that damned war. 

They were sat at their kitchen table, when she finally challenged him - the same instance she first put forward divorce. It was quiet - awfully quiet. She was fidgeting, tapping her fingernails against the wooden table; their daughter was asleep upstairs, leaving the house feeling eerily empty. 

“Seiichi.”

“Yes.” He knew what was coming. It had been brewing in both of their minds for weeks. 

“Are you ever going to talk about—”

He leaned back in his seat, “You always bring this up—”

His wife scoffed. “I don’t even know why I tr— just tell me! Just answer the question!”

“No. The answer is no.”

A noise similar to a desperate whimper escaped her. “I-” She paused for a moment. “Seiichi, I feel like I barely know you.”

The statement took him back a little, he won’t lie. He wasn’t expecting her to be so blunt, if he had to guess as to why.

“I—”

“Let me speak - please.”

He shut up.

“You never, ever want to talk about the war - not even happy memories from it. I don’t know what you were doing, Seiichi, but it can’t be that bad that I would stop loving you for it! Do you really doubt me that much?”

“It’s not about you.”

She gawked at him. “Then what is it about, Seiichi?! What is it about?!” She slammed the table beneath her shaking hands. Her voice was straining with suppressing her anger, quivering slightly. 

“I… I don’t know.”

“Of course you don’t. Apparently you don’t know anything - nothing about the war you were fighting in, nothing about the people you—” She punctuated each ‘you’ with a finger point (they’re so vicious he could feel the slight wind that picked up in the wake of them. They were also uncomfortably close to his face). “—fought alongside. Nothing! How can I even call you my husband if I don’t know the first fucking thing about you, Seiichi!” Her voice was fragile, shaky - she was trying not to cry. 

“I’m sorry.”

“I don’t want an apology! I want a husband - I want somebody I know! Who are you, Seiichi?! Do you even know yourself?!”

He can’t remember his exact reaction to this. It ended mostly as a blur of him apologising, and then agreeing to a divorce. 

Now, he’s here, alone, with his daughter. Where to go from here, what to do - they’re all questions that plague his mind, constantly on a loop. He feels as if he hasn’t had a new thought in at least six hours. 

The love coursing through his veins for his daughter is real, tangible. She’s entirely his responsibility now - that’s a scary thought in itself; money wasn’t an issue, as the Kamunabi had been paying him an insane amount of money monthly since the war ended (it was most likely hush money, but he wasn’t complaining). 

She wriggles again, stirring slightly. Samura instinctively shushes her gently. It was late in the evening, nearing midnight, and he could really do with some sleep; it had taken an entire hour just to get her to settle, and then an additional half an hour for her to drift off. He wishes he could see what she looks like. He wishes for a lot of things. 

Gingerly, he pulls his finger out of her grasp, almost setting her off (causing him to freeze and hold his breath for a solid twenty seconds), and eases onto his bed the cot was adjoined to; it feels massive without his wife beside him in it. He doesn’t really know what she’s doing now, or where she’s gone, but he hopes she’s doing okay. The last he’d seen of her, they’d awkwardly hugged goodbye and she’d gotten into a taxi headed south - that’s it. Nothing else. She was gone. How’s he even going to explain that to his daughter? ‘Ah, yes, Mummy disappeared off the face of the earth!’ He laughs at the thought, despite his misery. 

He could do with getting changed out of one of his many Kamunabi funded suits (nice brand, nice suits), he really doesn’t need a creased suit on top of a baby and the impending breakdown of his life. 

Samura peels the jacket off of him, hanging it up in his wardrobe, then throws his shirt into the laundry basket in the corner of his bedroom, closely followed by his trousers into the wardrobe. He climbs into the massive feeling bed, not bothering to put anything on, and shuts his eyes, listening to the various sounds around him. His breathing, his daughter’s, an odd car driving past outside - nothing special. Such a casual and suburban life is alien to him - the man doesn’t even know what birds are in the area, and all suburban dads know that! He’ll have to ask around… maybe at the baker’s, yes! The head baker is most definitely a father himself! He’ll know all about the birds! 

The paternal revelation fills him with pride and joy, as if he was unlocking some hidden achievement of fatherhood. If only his daughter was old enough to appreciate his development… he shakes his head, utterly pleased with himself. 

Hang on. 

Where did the pushchair go? The collapsible, state of the art pushchair he’d bought - it wasn’t in the hallway when he’d checked. He’d forgotten all about the incident: he’d wanted to go out for a walk with his daughter, in a pushchair, while blind (he’s got echolocation, he’d be fine), but the pushchair he’d spent an extortionate amount of money on wasn’t there. It even had a bottom compartment. And a rain hood. It was a great pushchair.

Whatever. It’s probably in the garage. 

He doesn’t think about anything when he does it.

He says his speech, not expecting the boy to understand. Except, he wasn’t a boy anymore. All the more reason for him to be done away with, if he still hasn’t come to the conclusion Samura came to during the damn war. 

It’s quick - he was always quicker, always better. They’d joked about it whilst sparring countless times, but that didn’t make it any less real. Using the Tobimune to deal the final blow had only been to add insult to injury, literally. The blades were curses. He should’ve known that, he was old enough.

Samura thinks of the afternoons he looked after his daughter for him. Samura thinks of the favours over the years. Samura thinks of the times during the war. Samura thinks about all of this afterwards. 

He didn’t think about anything when he killed Uruha. 

It was the right thing to do. Samura knew that. So, why does his skin still burn? Why hasn’t the blood spilled onto Uruha’s pristine white shawl seeped into his own bloodstream yet? Instead, it sits on top of him, a layer of sediment, and he’s constantly aware of its presence. He feels filthy. Overtime, the blood of those he’d slain had just assimilated into him through the pathways forged by the deaths of many before them; this… phenomenon hasn’t happened since the start of the war: blood clinging to him. It’s nostalgic, in a sick way - but nostalgia has a way of twisting true feelings. Samura doesn’t miss that war one bit. He doesn’t miss the other swordbearers, or the memories, or the challenges, or the cries, or the anguish, or anything. He doesn’t miss desperately trying to rid the blood off of his hands, only to see it dripping from his fingertips two minutes later. He doesn’t miss the fear in the eyes of those he killed; he doesn’t miss the resilience in the eyes of those who bravely sacrificed themselves for friends and family, throwing heads in front of his blade, arms protectively thrown out behind them. 

He’ll be dead within a few weeks. Once the other swordbearers are dealt with, he’s next. All he’s planned for his death is not letting it be at Yura’s hands. That’s all. 

That’s all he has to worry about. 

Yoji Uruha is dead.

It’s warm. 

The type of warm a summertime night offers, comfortable and welcoming to your skin, enrapturing it, pricking gentle goosebumps up your arms. A mild breeze brushes past her where she’s sat on the riverbank, staring up at the sky in wait, blowing her hair from side to side. 

A firework show. That’s what she’s waiting for. A bit of excitement - fun! 

She jogs every day, calmly and rhythmically, which led her to pass a flyer for a fireworks show, starting at 10pm, on one of said jogs last week. 

Her watch ticks by, approaching ten - she’d gotten there early. She got everywhere early. Force of habit. 

Kyoto’s different to Tokyo - the suburbs do things like this more often, whereas in the capital you’d be lucky to get a birdwatching event once in awhile. Leaving Tokyo was nice. A chance at escape, one she hadn’t had before. 

She tries not to think about Seiichi. She manages most days, but others… it can be difficult. Thinking about Seiichi inevitably leads to thinking about the daughter they’d had together; she would’ve taken her, if she could have. She would’ve taken her, if she didn’t have her father’s eyes. 

She loves her daughter. She wishes she’d never left, or had just been more mature and gotten custody of her in the divorce. 

Her reasons for divorcing Seiichi weren’t entirely clear; if she hadn’t said anything, they probably wouldn’t have divorced for at least another five years, and stayed in the awkward limbo that comes from tiptoeing around a serious issue - they did love each other, that was a fact, something was just… wrong. Seiichi froze up whenever it came to the war, and despite all her ‘nothing you could say would make me stop loving you’ talk, it scared her. She understands a trauma aspect, absolutely, but it wasn’t even that: it was as if an entire part of him was hidden away from her. 

It terrified her. 

He was a swordbearer, he’d killed people, yes, that she knew; he just never said that, and that’s what unsettled her so fiercely, along with the sudden change in demeanour if she mentioned another one of the swordbearers (one of his supposed ‘friends’). A cold sweat would form on his brow, his tone would ice over - everything, everything about it was wrong. She’d tried to coax at least a sliver of a war story out of him; she’d tried weeping over ‘not knowing him’; she’d tried letting her anger consume her - and nothing worked. She got an apology, or an avoidance, or anything but an answer. 

Seiichi Samura was everything but an answer. 

She wonders what her daughter looks like now; she’d be around fifteen, since summer was nearing its end. She wonders how Seiichi explained her disappearance, and when or if he did it. 

Questions, questions - questions she should know the answers to. What school does her daughter attend, which band is her favourite? Guilt envelopes her.
How many times she’d imagined having a life with her daughter… how many times indeed. A number approaching the millions, if she were to hyperbolise slightly. They’d live in a small apartment, just the two of them, and she’d cook her breakfast every morning, while the morning news played in the background. There’d be a picture of the two of them at her daughter’s high school orientation somewhere in the house - it would be perfect. An ideal life.

Instead, she’s sat on her own on a grassy riverbank waiting for fireworks to trick her into forgetting about her woes for at least ten minutes. She hopes her skirt won’t get muddy - the ground was dry when she sat down, so it should be fine. Should be. 

“Mrs. Samura?”

Her old name causes each joint in her body to lock up, going rigid. She doesn’t dare turn around - who on earth could know her by that name? An old acquaintance, maybe, someone who she hadn’t seen in years, but she didn’t recognise their voice. Was she really that terrible at remembering people?

She slowly turns her head around, only to be greeted by a child with rounded glasses. How does he—

“I’d like to speak with you for a moment.”

A firework, the first of the display, goes off, and she misses it, relying on the reflection in the boy’s glasses and the colour his face is painted to experience it. 

His eyes hurt. 

That’s to be expected, actually, considering that if Shiba hadn’t stepped in, he would’ve ’accidentally’ stabbed through his eye to his frontal lobe. Happy accident! Halfway through a war in which he’d had to lay aside his own humanity for, his hands would be naturally a little shaky, right? If his endeavour to rid himself of worldly passions (like he’d told a very, very concerned Shiba) had gone wrong, what would it matter? They’d find someone to replace him. They’ll do that anyways, right? He’s blind - his face is completely bandaged, and he’s been wavering in and out of consciousness for the past day. Surely, just surely, he’ll get sent away from this forsaken war, to spend the rest of his life coddled and broken into minuscule pieces he’ll never be able to find again.

The bandages press against his face tightly, only assisting the growing pain as he gains back his consciousness more and more - this was going to be miserable. At least he’ll get some rest. 

“You’re awake?” Someone to the side of him says.

Shiba? What was he doing here? 

Samura makes a noise (a grunt, to be exact), signalling that he had in fact heard him.
The other man, sitting to his left, explains that he’s been in a coma for quite some time: a week (for some reason, he was expecting at least nine years). He’ll never be able to see again, as he’d expected; he’ll have to stay in hospital to be monitored for at least another month, and then have biweekly check ups for a year after that, though after a few months of training, it’s back to the battlefield.

Hang on. 

What?

“You’re needed in Tsushima. Once your monitoring is finished, you’re going straight back to it - pretty rough, I know. You’ll be able to train after you leave here, they’re moving you to some temple, uh, what was it called?” Shiba drifts off into incoherence, racking his brain for the name of the temple, speaking in random bursts.

Straight back to it. Needed in Tsushima. Be able to train. 

The war is continuing, and he’s entwined into its flow. He doesn’t know what to say, or think, or do. He’s going back to the war. It’s not like he’d blinded himself in order to get out of it, he’d just assumed they wouldn’t let him fight again, and that a discharge was just an added bonus to solidifying his beliefs. Samura settles into a stunned silence, processing it all; how hard is it going to be to use Tobimune while blind? Maybe they’ll kick him out anyway, and he’ll escape that way.

“Samura.” His name curls off of Shiba’s tongue, tainted with a sense of finality he couldn’t find a reason for.

“Hm?”

“You made that eternal contract - you know what that means.”

Samura was not escaping shit. He turns to his left, presumably facing Shiba; his entire head aches fiercely, blistering pain shooting through the thin muscles of his face. He feels the stitches, running from his forehead across each eye to each cheek, tug slightly against the wrappings over his countenance. His throat is completely parched, and no amount of desperate swallowing can solve the issue, so he doesn’t even attempt to speak; instead, he very gently nods, trying his best not to injure himself further. It’s not as if he wanted to harm himself, it was just an extreme expression of his faith. 

Neither of them mention the conversation they had before Samura brought the knife to himself.

Shiba leaves shortly afterwards anyways; a nurse takes his place, keeping the number of people in Samura’s room an equal number of two. She checks his bandages, mutters something indecipherable under her breath, and messes around with something in the corner of his room. 

“You know, that man was in here everyday, constantly stressing,” she laughs as she says it, scribbling on what Samura presumed to be his chart (he heard her grab it off of the end of his bed). “You would’ve thought he was your wife, the way he was behaving - I even had to give him a sticker to get him to calm down!” She chuckles.

Samura does too. 

Shiba sat at his bedside everyday, during the war? How’d he even manage that? He could teleport, Samura supposes, wouldn’t he be—

Shiba was here. Every. Day. Despite the… incident. 

Thankfully, due to the extreme trauma he’d suffered (all the nurse’s words, not his), he couldn’t remember most of what had happened. He remembers (most of) the odd concoction that was his reasoning for brutally sidelining his occipital lobe - but what actually went down is, and he cringes at the cliché, a blur. 

Samura remembers lifting the tanto to his face, adrenaline pumping through his carved out veins, its austere steel reflecting off of the dim lamp light of the tent in their camp - a definite, unyielding answer to his woes; he remembers pushing down, feeling the blade’s edge dip into his skin, ripping through the delicately constructed cells in his face; he remembers catching Shiba’s attention, seeing the distress sublimely displayed in his eyes before blinding himself, and most of all, he remembers Shiba wrestling the knife off of him in a desperate effort to stop him, clutching at his arms and enveloping him in a grapple. His consciousness faded after a few seconds of the one-sided struggle, so Samura can only guess what happened after that. Shiba most likely teleported them to the hospital he’s now in, and kept an eye on him in order to report his status back to the Kamunabi. 

Nothing more. Nothing less. 

He wishes he was able to speak, wishes he could at least apologise for it. Shiba didn’t really seem to care though, in the grand scheme of things, though the thought that he might now think Samura blinded himself due to an awkward situation weedles itself through his idle brain. Being in the hospital bed, unable to speak or do anything substantial for an entire month, stuck with whatever ridiculous notions might come to mind, may actually become a form of psychological torture; add whatever was going on between him and Shiba on top of that, and you have a recipe for mental torment perfected. At least he’s inside, out of the winter cold. 

Despite the privileges afforded to him by being a swordbearer, he still doesn’t get to escape the harsh weather; he actually gets it worse. The regular soldiers get government mandated winter uniforms, whereas the swordbearers do not, and clothing shops aren’t exactly open on the frontlines. As a result, he is stuck to relying on the kindness of a random soldier who might notice him violently shivering and dramatically announcing how cold he is to the entire world, to give him one of their old coats. 

It’s never happened. Not once. 

One did offer him a cigarette once, though, after the dramatics had been going on for over an hour - he was fairly confident the gift was entirely just to shut him up, but he wasn’t going to complain, and he did quieten down after a healthy dose of nicotine (and a layer of tar to the lungs). 

What is he even going to do while bed bound for a month? He has at least two months of training at whatever temple it is afterwards, but he might end up falling to pieces from his atrophied muscles. Will he even be able to stand, and what about having to relearn how to navigate the world while blind?

What the hell is he going to do? 

He considers all of these things while reclined back in his hospital bed. The nurse had left the room, still chuckling to herself, leaving him completely alone; she had said visitation appointments had already been made, but not for today, so he had nothing to look forward to. He can’t even read a book, and he doubts the hospital has a radio they’ll be willing to lend him, let alone a CD player. This was going to be miserable.

It was somewhat miserable.

Samura definitely underestimated the lengths his fellow swordbearers and the hospital staff would go to in order to keep him amused. Uruha came in at least twice a week, despite actively fighting on a battlefront forty kilometres away from him, just to speak with him and update him on various goings on. Subaru made him a sushi platter from “freshly caught salmon from the great Nagara River, its mouth in the coast city of—”

“I get the point. Thank you, Subaru, I really do appreciate it,” he had said, trying to get the man to shut up.

“B-but, Samura! I haven’t told you about the source of the sesame seeds I—”

A nurse removed him from the room, leaving Samura with an extensive platter of premium sushi that he felt too ill to eat. Isn’t raw fish in a hospital a bit of a safety hazard anyways? He still hasn’t touched the thing, a week later. They’re going to have to throw that out.

Misaka also came to see him, but didn’t say much, other than that he should listen to the death metal CD he brought with him.

“There’s this really good lyric, it goes ‘thunder, thunder, lightning, thunder, café—’”

“Where did the café come from?” Samura asked, confused. He rubbed a hand against his bandaged brow, not having it in him to tell his fellow wielder that he did not have a CD player on hand. 

“Who knows? All that matters is the way it’s sung, man!” Samura geared himself up as Misaka inhaled deeply. “‘THUNDER! THUNDER! LIGHTNING! THUNDER! CAFÉ! A BOY IN A CAFÉ! THUNDER! LIGHTNING!’”

“Alright, I get it! I get it, Misaka!” Samura exclaimed, desperate for him to shut up. “You seem to know it pretty well considering you’re fighting most of the time. How do you even have the time to listen to music?”

Misaka went silent. Misaka never went silent.

“Misaka?”

A moment of silence. “…Yes.”

“You… this isn’t a mixtape, right?”

“It’s not a mixtape, it is a prophecy! It’s a CD pro—”

“That’s not the point! You made a song during wartime?! Where and how the fuck do you burn a CD on a battlefield?!”

Their argument carried on for a little while, with Misaka trying to justify the ethics of producing an entire album on CD while he’s meant to be fighting in a war, and Samura not having any of it. 

It sickened him.

He’d thrown up a few times after the visits, glad it could be chalked up to his condition. He wishes he could truly enjoy their presence, their gifts and their concern for him, but he can’t stomach it, so he continues to resent them all in secret, letting the feeling slowly poison him. It would be easier for all of them if he just relinquished his loyalty to his ideals and got on with it, and lived the rest of his life in blissful ignorance, but he can’t do that. He owes it to all of those he’s killed. 

What a silly thought, to kill someone, and to try to make the action morally right in your head by killing more people. How stupid he is. 

Shiba hasn’t visited again since he’d woken up. He’s probably busy teleporting people into deep space, in all fairness, and it’s not like Samura actually wants to speak with him now that he’s fully conscious; at least when he was first out of his comatose state, the grogginess of it still clung to him, so he wasn’t functioning perfectly. Now, any awkward conversation they may have, is in fact an awkward one, that he will most definitely remember for years to come. Excellent work from Samura! What an absolute master class in ruining a relationship. 

“Are you going to say anything, or are we just gonna sit here in silence?”

Fuck. 

The sudden speech had caused him to jump, yes, but… just how long had Shiba been there? He definitely would’ve heard him come in, or smelled him, in the least. 

What?

Since when did he know the man by smell? Of all things—

“I’m game for silence. It can be nic—”

“When did you get here?!” Samura all but shouts, turning to his left accusatively, to where the voice originated from.

Shiba laughs, but it sounds slightly strained - forced. Tension is gradually building in the room, forming a blanket over the two of them; it hasn’t been brought up, but it will be - they both sense the topic looming over the horizon.

“A couple of hours ago - you were asleep, so don’t worry about not noticing me.”

A beat.

“We both know that’s not what’s on my mind right now.”

He can see it; Shiba’s done it so many times before, that by just hearing the tone of his sigh and the faint rustling, he can see it perfectly, when Shiba crosses his legs and tilts his head back, mouth wide open. 

“Look, Samura, it’s nothing. Just forget about it.”

Samura doesn’t quite know what to say to that. Forget about it? He wouldn’t be able to forget it if he got stress induced amnesia from worrying about it for the rest of his entire life! How is he meant to just forget that!

He recalls the timeline of ‘that’: he’d entered the large tent Shiba and him shared (there was two to a tent, and they got on well, so it was no problem for them to share), and Shiba was already there, sat on the end of his sleeping cot. ‘His’, as in Samura’s.
It was atypical: Shiba was usually very strict on keeping his area to himself. He’d never even stepped foot remotely close to Samura’s sleeping cot before, let alone Samura anywhere near his. It was very, very unusual. The blade Samura had later used to blind himself was on a desk in the corner of the tent, inconspicuously laid there. He remembers taking note of its presence. 

Shiba had looked up at him when he entered; his eyes were worn, thin strands of red bright against the white of each eyeball, but other than that, the man seemed perfectly fine. He wasn’t wearing his Kamunabi uniform, but instead some casual clothes Samura recognised, as he’d seen the man sleep in them before. 

He nodded, acknowledging Samura’s presence. There was something off with him. Everything about it was strange; Shiba hadn’t even put the radio on, and he did that every single night at nine o’clock - it was half nine at that point. 

“Seiichi.”

Shiba had never, ever, in all of their time living together and knowing each other, called him by his first name. Something was absolutely wrong - and not just from him sitting on Samura’s bed. He looked down, out of sorts. 

“Are you alright?” Samura asked, tentatively, stepping towards the man sat on the end of his bed. 

He waved a hand around his face, as if he were batting away the worry growing inside of Samura. “I’m fine. Why don’t you come to bed?”

“Have you been drinking?” Samura still doesn’t know what was going through Shiba’s mind at this point. 

Suddenly, he stood, stalking over to Samura, stopping only a few centimetres away from him; their toes were nearly touching, and Shiba’s hands were limply hanging extremely close to Samura’s. 

“Shiba?”

“Don’t call me that.”

Togo reached up to cradle his face. Seiichi’s heart had nearly blown its way out of his chest, with the momentum it was gaining. Neither of them moved, and both of their breathing completely stilled. His fingers ran through his longer than usual stubble (he hadn’t been able to shave for a few days), hovering slightly above his skin. It’s intimate, completely alien to them both; they were looking directly at one another, so close that their shuddering breaths mingled with one another, so close that they could see the individual hairs that protruded from the main shape of their eyebrows. It didn’t feel real, like some sort of separate dimension the two of them had entered. Both of them were unsure of what to do next, so stayed frozen in place; people walked past the tent outside, talking about something neither of them had paid attention to. 

“Seiichi…” His hands moved again, caressing the skin of his forehead, and then moved downwards, onto the thin skin of his eyelids. Seiichi had the horrible feeling he would press down, and pull his eyes out of his head, but Togo didn’t do that. No, not quite. 

“Your eyes… They’re…”

“What?” He whispered back, terrified and confused. 

He dropped his fingers, and brought his palms to Seiichi’s face, holding his jaw in his hands. “They’re… murky. What’s on your mind?”

“Togo.”

He closed his eyes, savouring the sound of his name on Seiichi’s lips, savouring the way the two syllables of his name dripped off the man’s tongue as if it were some ridiculously overpriced honey that he was desperate to savour every last drop of. “Hm…”

Again, Seiichi asked him if he was drunk.

Again, Togo denied it - he hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol since the very beginning of the war, and that had been months ago. 

His touch stilled on Seiichi’s face, loitering on his cheekbones, fingers curling into his hair. His eyes frosted, demeanour shifting. “Do you not want this too?”

Samura jolted slightly, “I-I didn’t mean it like—”

Shiba released him, stepping backwards, face sorrowfully apologetic. He drifted towards his own cot, and slowly climbed into it, silent; Samura stayed where he had been, watching him go through the motions of going to bed, and knew he had ruined whatever friendship they had before, even if it had been previously vitiated with ‘platonic’ flirtation and tension. 

He stared at his back. He could stare at it all day. All night, but he won’t do that. He’d been considering removing worldly passions from his life for weeks. He remembered the tanto on the desk. 

And now, they’re in the present day. He’s blind, and Shiba is sitting here pretending as if nothing happened. As if it meant nothing, as if it was nothing to both of them. 

“I’m sorry.”

“Why are you apolo—”

Samura sighs, unexpectedly cutting him off. Where is this even going? To him, it doesn’t seem like Shiba actually wants to move on and forget about it, otherwise he wouldn’t bring it up. 

“Just spit it out.”

Again, Shiba leans his head back, exhaling deeply. “I don’t know what you’re expecting me to say. I just came to check how you were doing.”

Sure. 

Even Shiba himself doesn’t believe the lie. Samura hums, clearly not buying it. 

“I’m being sent to Senkutsuji with you.”

“Senkutsuji?”

“The temple I was going on about last week - it’s called Senkutsuji. Nice and quiet there.”

He nods. Shiba will be there with him… how the hell did he manage to pull those strings? The thought actually gets a laugh out of him.

“How did you manage that?”

Shiba scoffs. 

Samura is in shambles.

The responsibility weighs too heavy on his shoulders, an extreme burden to bear, one that gnaws away at his soul.

What will he call his daughter?

He regrets practically begging his wife to let him name her, pleading his case by saying he’d already thought of one; in reality, the man had no idea what to call their child.

She’d have that name for her entire life - what if she hates it? What if she changes it? He shudders in his seat. 

The nurses had started lingering around, needing to get a name on their daughter's wristband before a disaster inevitably happens. 

He’d consulted baby name books (countless, actually. He spent at least 10% of his Kamunabi funded salary on baby-related items over the course of his wife’s pregnancy), asked his wife’s parents, asked his wife, asked the baker, who asked him if he was doing hard drugs, and he’d even asked Uruha (which had not gone well - Uruha might’ve been more concerned with finding a name than he was, which was saying something). None of them had yielded any names that truly spoke to him. This was a massive deal for him, and he had to find the perfect name! This was do or die! 

Samura sits in his chair in his wife’s hospital room. She’s gone somewhere else with their daughter, but she didn’t say what for; this left him with the perfect opportunity to come up with a name for said daughter. 

Rei? No. Maki… no. Hiyomi? That was nice, but it didn’t feel right. 

What the hell was he going to do? If he can’t think of a name… no, it’s not an option - he has to think of a name. 

He racks his brain for any names he might have considered for even a second while scanning through baby name books, but comes up blank-minded. He runs a hand through his hair, trying not to let the stress and importance of the situation get to him. He’s more stressed than when he was trapped in that ditch with Uruha for two entire weeks. He never thought it’d be possible to surpass those heights.

He was beginning to despair. Who knows what will happen if his wife comes back and he doesn’t have a name for her? He knows she’s about five thousand times more stressed than him, and was relying on him to do one thing for her, after she’d just given birth. Actually coming up with a name was the least he could do for her. 

The door slides open. Judgment day is here. 

“Oh, I didn’t realise you were in here, Mr. Samura!”

For fuck’s sake.

“Uruha?” Samura murmurs, leaning forwards in his seat. What is he doing here?

“Your wife called me! She said I could come and see the baby!”

Samura groans, rubbing his face. “They’ve gone for a checkup, or something.”

He hears him pull up a chair beside him and sit down with a sigh. “So… what’s she called?”

The man nearly breaks down into tears. “I-I’m trying to come up with a name at the moment, before they come back.”

“I see! And did you look into those fortune tellers?”

“…No.”

“Ooookay! What about the flower petal pulling?”

“No.”

“Uh… the shrine visit?”

“No.”

“You at least went to her parents, right? To ask for her grandparents’ names?” 

Samura sucks in a breath. “I didn’t do anything you recommended, Uruha. Sorry.”

He shrugs. “Don’t worry about it, Mr. Samura! I’m sure you’ll come up with a name for your baby within the next ten minutes!”

Is that— is that sarcasm?

“What about a rare name? Make her stand out!”

“Kids don’t want that.”

“I wanted that! You know, my name actually means—”

They squabble for at least five minutes, Uruha arguing that giving a child an unusual name is justified because it’s always a conversation starter, and Samura telling him to shut up.

“Iori.”

“What?”

Samura hums. “What do you think? Iori.”

Uruha considers it. “That’s a great name! Iori!” He seems overjoyed - Samura didn’t need eyes to see that the man was ecstatic. 

His wife returns shortly after, tiredness apparent in her voice. He informs her of the name choice, agrees to it, and then promptly falls asleep, leaving the care of their newborn to Samura and Uruha (who was still hanging around, cooing at Iori almost constantly).

It was a nice name - he’d excelled himself. 

Iori. He repeated it in his head. 

Iori.

Her alarm goes off, shrill and high-pitched, blaring through her ears. She was planning to have a lie-in too. 

Her hand slams down on the top of it, quickly silencing its racket, and she settles back into her bed. The extra sleep is very much needed, as she’d rather not spend any more time listening to the same three news reports, all speculating and fearmongering about the new fixture of the sky. It looked like an owl to her. Weird. 

The government was doing something with it, making sure it wasn’t a threat, but hadn’t made any further comments - her mother had said they were expecting one tonight though. 

That dream. 

She’d had it again - such a strange, alien experience. It didn’t feel like a nightmare, but it carried its own unique shadow inside her mind. The dream didn’t feel like a normal one either, one that you wake up to and say ‘that’s odd’ and then move on, maybe laughing about it with friends later; it felt completely unknown and out of her control. Though, the dream did feel comforting, of all things, almost as if it were a memory, however that was impossible. She’s never seen the man in her dream before… well, she’s fairly sure she hasn’t. Somewhere, in the very back of her mind, she has a vague feeling that she does indeed know who that man is; but each time she tries to approach that thought, that idea, she feels it move further and further away from her, running into an infinite void. When she gets too close, a lock, definite and detached from any form of emotion, cracks down on her brain, shutting her out. 

What the hell was that all about? Why is there a lock in her head? 

She’s too tired to think about it. 

It was terrifying when that thing first appeared in the sky; nobody knew what was happening, people were panicking and screaming about how it was the end of the world - the entire country, apparently, was a mess. Until the government made an official statement, saying that they were investigating it, it was absolute bedlam up and down the nation.

Her mother had sat at the dining table watching the news all night after it first appeared, waiting for something. 

When Iori asked what, her mother simply responded that she didn’t know. She had no idea why she was sitting there watching the news, or what she was waiting for - or rather, who she was waiting for. 

Iori had asked her if she’d had any weird dreams too, but she hadn’t. Maybe she’s been cursed by an enemy of a long dead relative; they’d probably be on her dad’s side. 

Iori knew barely anything about her father, and she didn’t mind that. She has no want to see a man who left her mother alone while she was pregnant with her. When she was younger, she wanted to be like everyone else, and have both parents in her home, but now, she doesn’t particularly care about any of that. Her mother is more than enough for her, and she’s extremely grateful for how resilient and patient she’s been with her over the years. They only had each other, as her grandparents on both sides hadn’t been heard off of for years. 

She peeks out of her duvet to look at the picture of the two of them on her dresser. It’s from her high school orientation, just a bit over a year ago now; both of them were laughing the entire day, walking around her new school together, peeking into classrooms, testing out the running track (somehow they got away with it) - excited for the next stage in her education. 

Her mother was a solitary woman, so interacting with other parents and teachers was relieving for Iori; she spent nearly all of her time alone, whether she was at her job or home, and sometimes… it worried her. She knew her mother liked her alone time, sure, but to Iori, it seemed like she was purposefully isolating herself from the world. 

She’d tried to press her a couple of times on it over dinner, but her mother always succeeded in swiftly changing the subject, picking at her vegetables, eyes distant and voice reserved. Eventually, Iori had given up on the topic, accepting that her mother was never going to open up to her like that; maybe years of raising a child on her own had naturally hardened her outer shell. 

Iori listens to her mother moving around in the kitchen, hearing the gentle clatter of pots and pans being washed in the sink, and the gentle sizzle of something in a pan, as well as the faint repeated rhetoric of the news. Due to thing in the sky, the country was at a standstill, and even essential workers had been told to stay at home. Schoolchildren like herself were off school until further notice, and the same went for regular office workers such as her mother; public transport was in shambles, with people trying to desperately get home to their families on the scant timetabling the transport sector had laid out in wake of the incident. News anchors bickered between each other over the headlines, saying one thing, and then saying another, providing a constant stream of agitation and confusion. 

If she had to guess, Iori would say that not a single person in the nation really knew what was happening at the moment. Everywhere you looked, it was pure unadulterated chaos - until the government said something of substance, the fallout of the mass hysteria would begin to affect the country’s global standing and overall prosperity. 

Over the course of the previous day, edging more towards the evening, there’d been talk of sorcery being involved, which isn’t all that surprising. This massive thing comes and blocks out the sky, and the public are supposed to come to the conclusion that it is some bizarre astral event, and not some cabal’s freak on the loose? After all, the government must have some idea of who was responsible, even if they weren’t sure enough to inform the public of it.

One news broadcaster had started interviewing people on the street, and more than a few recalled seeing something similar in the Seitei War. She knew the basics of what happened in the war, the heroics of the swordbearers, but something like that was insane - was there really a swordbearer who’d gone rogue? Iori remembers the events of a couple of months ago when a criminal had gotten his hands on one of the enchanted blades; maybe it was just another one of those situations. 

Shouldn’t there be regulations in place of that? Iori doesn’t know the details of the enchanted blades or their wielders, but how is it possible for a random person to get their hands on one of them? How irresponsible. 

She considers climbing out of bed, to go and see what her mother was cooking, but she really can’t find it in her to get up. She may as well take the time to relax before she’s thrown back into stressing over maths tests and frantically scribbling down homework into her planner. Iori likes school: she likes walking to lessons with her friends, she likes most of her teachers, and she likes helping with cleaning - it really made her feel like she was present in her community, like she truly had a place in it. Sometimes she even volunteered at a local centre during the day. Iori liked helping people: it made her happy, filled her with a sense of belonging, and she especially loved how happy it made those she helped. Seeing the joy and fires lit in their eyes, the way their faces crinkled and folded as they grinned at her - that was the main reason she liked helping others, not necessarily personal satisfaction. 

Iori rolls onto her left side, pulling the duvet closer to her face, trying to keep the heat in; it was cold outside for November, and her mother was stingy about using the central heating, even though she refused to buy a portable heater in its place. 

She listens to her mother’s distant movements, and allows herself to drift back off to sleep, feeling the phantom of a hand envelop hers.

He’s getting a sick sense of déjà vu, and he hates it. 

He was too late. Again. 

Someone died. Again.

Chihiro miraculously survived, his heart regaining its rhythm seven entire minutes after it had stopped. Nobody really understood what had happened. It didn’t matter. 

He remembers the last time he sat in a hospital room just like this one, blankly staring at an unconscious person in a bed, willing them to wake up. That was over eighteen years ago now, before Chihiro had even become an idea. He never wanted to repeat that feeling. He hates waiting. He hates the awkward conversations that follow; he hates that he wasn’t there.

Shiba stares down at Chihiro in the bed. While he did come back from the dead, he passed out shortly afterwards, leading the doctors to be unsure as to whether he’ll wake up again, alive or not.
It took a week with Samura. A week of sitting at his bedside and practically praying for him to wake up.

Samura. 

His name is like venom on his tongue, acrid and splintering it with pain, like one of the razors he’d used to shave Samura’s face during their time together at Senkutsuji to his brain. He hates the memory - hates the unabaiting emotions still attached to it; in fact, he despises all of the memories from those months at Senkutsuji, warmth still emanating from each one, disallowing him from moving on and being able to sit in this hospital chair and curse the man. He wishes he could say he loathes him, because right now, he really should. 

He should not be having an internal conflict such as this when he’s not only killed Uruha, a long time friend of his, but also Chihiro. Though he suspected that Samura intended for the latter to come back from the dead, and Uruha being alive wasn’t technically out of the question, he’d still killed both of them, for something as petty as guilt. 

Or… was he justified?

The question plagued Shiba’s mind; Samura had mentioned it himself when they’d seen each other again, for the first time in years: their sins. None of them were innocent, that was for certain, but to go as far as colluding with the Hishaku? Even if it was just a front? He thought he knew the man better than to be sitting there trying to guess at his true intentions; at one point, Shiba would’ve said he knew Samura completely, inside and out, but now he’s not so sure.

Did he ever know who Seiichi really was?

He’d like to think he did. They spent so much time with each other during a war of all things, that they definitely know one another better than most… ‘friends’ did. Shiba has no idea what to call whatever it is between them - better not to think about it. 

It was better not to think about most things when it came to Samura. It was better not to think about anything to do with Samura. 

He tries to forget. He tries to leave it behind him, just like he did initially all those years ago. 

He remembers. He remembers it all. 

He wishes he didn’t.

He hates how he remembers exactly how the stubble of Seiichi’s jaw felt against his face, his hands, his lips; he detests how he knows the periodicity of his breathing while he’s sleeping; he hates how he can still feel Seiichi’s almost always chapped lips - he abhors the fact that he remembers all of this in the first place. 

However, despite all of this, he can’t bring himself to truly, truly hate the man. Oh, yes, he can despise himself all he wants, but not the man who had just murdered one of his long-time friends and a boy who is essentially his son. Ridiculous.

Shiba hopes he’ll wake up soon, but he dreads to think what Chihiro will think about the entire affair; he’ll probably blame himself for a million different things that were completely out of his control. He doesn’t know what to tell him about Enten, or Owl; the entire country is in chaos, panic spreading like wildfire - he wasn’t even able to contact Azami. 

He doesn’t know what to do. He’ll end up giving Enten back to Chihiro when he inevitably asks, instead of standing his ground and acting like an actual guardian to him. He’s pathetic. 

It’s useless to just sit there. He should be doing something, anything but just sitting there. Maybe he should go and get a drink, or go pester a nurse about Chihiro’s condition - anything other than letting Samura take up his mind, even if it wasn’t the first time in his life he’d let that happen. 

Shiba leans back in his chair, draping an arm over his forehead, sighing deeply. He thinks of Hakuri, who’d pushed himself to the limit just to try and save Uruha. Could Shiba say he’d ever done that? No, he scoffs - he is always too late. 

He’s too late every time. Maybe he should invest in a better watch, he weakly jests to himself. 

Not funny. 

Samura has absolutely excelled himself in the father department. Father of the Year Award is coming his way this year, he can feel it in his bones! He can almost smell its metallic twinge, feel the cold of the trophy in his hands! He can even envision it on the bookshelf in the living room - he has it all planned out. 

Really, it was a small thing, to go on a walk for a picnic, but for him, and for Iori, it meant a lot. 

He knew she struggled sometimes with only having him, and no mother; she was only little, and all of her classmates had both parents or a single mother at home, not just one dad. She didn’t get any flak for it, and he was glad of it, but she wanted to do ‘family’ things like other children did. Him being blind didn’t help. 

Iori was never going to have a normal childhood, but he could try making it a childhood she could look back on and appreciate. ‘Normal’ doesn’t always mean the best, even if it appears to be ideal on the outside, so he wasn’t too stressed about giving her a picture perfect experience. He shouldn’t be taking her chance at youth away from her by giving up. 

Iori demanded that she help him make what they would take on the picnic with them, resulting in a two hour long affair of throwing out of date seaweed at each other (…he may have forgotten that he’d bought it in the first place… for two entire months…) and trying to open packets of dried fruits that were sealed unnecessarily tight. Samura spent the entire time blocking his laughter-worn face, trying to anticipate the next ball of rotten seaweed. It was miraculous it didn’t just snap in half, in all honesty. 

It was the height of summer, just a couple of weeks after her eighth birthday, meaning the sun was blaring unforgivingly for every hour of sunlight. He’d had to buy clear spray-on sun cream for Iori, as she hated the feeling of the regular stuff (not that he blamed her, he hated the omnipresent stickiness it brought forth). 

He’d placed the full picnic basket down on the step by the front door, and was now spraying the clear sun cream into his palm in order to apply it to her face.

“Tell me if it gets in your eyes, okay?” He says, beginning to rub it onto her forehead gently. He’ll apply his own after he’s done her arms and legs. 

“Okay.”

“Have you got your hat?” Samura asks, as it was notably not on her head. As much as he didn’t want the masterpiece that was her hairstyle that day to be hidden from any possible Father of the Year Award judges, he’d rather his daughter stay safe from sunstroke, even if it cost him another Father of the Year Award nomination. Some sacrifices have to be made. 

“I left it in my room. I like my hair today.”

He cannot stop winning. Other fathers don’t stand a chance - he will end out on top! He will be victorious as Father of the Year! 

Samura smiles, stopping applying her sun cream in order to spray more into his hand. He tries to hide his happiness, but fails miserably. “W-well! I’m very glad you like it! I shall have to do it again!”

“Why… why are you talking like that?” 

He coughs. He must hide his celebrations! He continues the sun cream application in a desperate effort at not looking insane in front of his daughter. “Uhm… I just don’t want you getting sick, Iori, so you should go get your hat once I’m done, okay?”

She doesn’t say anything for a moment. “Okay.”

He beams at her, rubbing the sunscreen into her skin. 

Once done, she runs to her room to retrieve her sun hat, and they promptly leave the house, being immediately accosted by the extreme heat of the day.

There’s a park nearby where they live, though ‘park’ is a bit of a stretch. It’s more of a field than anything, but there’s a play area on the opposite end of it to their home, that Iori usually begs him to go on, even though it’s a mission away. He always lets her go. Sometimes he even goes into the sandpit with her - when there’s no one around that is. There was one time… he shudders thinking about it. A certain friend of his appeared - what was he even doing near a children’s play area? Why was he anywhere near Samura’s house? All these questions haunt him… why, just why, did Uruha have to show up when he was going down a slide five times smaller than him? With a smile on his face, no less. 

He didn’t hear the end of it for weeks. Weeks. He was tormented, day in, day out, by the knowledge that Yoji Uruha, of all people in the world, had seen him playing in a children’s park; and to really rub salt into the wound, Iori joined in on the teasing. His own daughter, betraying him like that! Like she wasn’t the one who told him to go on it! Insane! Fooled by his own daughter! He was fairly sure it was actually a plot between the two of them, but he couldn’t exactly confront an eight year old about that. 

The walk to the park was pleasant, if not anything else; a soft, tepid breeze swam through the air, brushing past their UV-protected skin, and Iori had mentioned that the sky was lovely: almost no clouds to be seen. The temperature was bordering on sweltering, and was only multiplied by the fact Samura had refused to take off his usual suit even in favour of the season - until death do us part with this cut of suit, he’d decided. At least he only had to put sunscreen on his face, arms and the back of his neck, and not all his limbs. 

If they went to the beach, would he keep the suit on? Would he swim in it? He reckons he could still execute his perfect front crawl even with the drag, but is it worth ruining a good suit for that? He does have at least five more of the same exact cut and colour… maybe he could reserve one to be a swimming suit. 

He is a genius. Sometimes it astounds him - only sometimes, as the rest of his time is spent loathing said apparent genius: if he really was a genius, wouldn’t he have thought to have stepped in during the war?

Not the time. 

The picnic basket is heavy in his right hand, and his daughter’s hand is light in his left. She’s still tiny to him, even after all these years. They’re nearly at the park, according to Iori, quickly approaching the wired gate that marks its entrance. He did remember to pack a picnic blanket, right? He’s sure he did. 

“Can we go to the play area after the picnic?” Iori asks, swinging their entwined hands forwards and backwards. 

He grimaces, but relents. “Of course.”

A pause. 

“Will you go on the slide again?” He can hear the concealed laughter in her voice.

Samura sighs, his shoulders dramatically rising and falling. “I suppose, if no one’s there.”

She jumps up, laughing, walking faster toward the park’s gate. He speeds up, matching her pace, chuckling along with her. After awhile of jogging to match her speed, they reach the wired gate, and he pushes it open in front of her, letting her go through first.

They bicker about where to sit: in the middle of the field, which will be filled with grass-snakes and bugs (Iori’s suggestions) or somewhere near the edge of one of the fields where the grass wasn’t as high and likely wasn’t full of evil creatures that were out of kill Samura (…Samura’s suggestion). In the end, Iori gets her way, and it becomes his job to stamp on the high, sharpened grass in order to create a space for them to sit (and also, to secretly check if there was anything lurking in it, waiting for an opportunity to strike - though he also didn’t want his daughter to end up bitten by something, he wasn’t just thinking self-consciously). He had in fact packed the blanket, so the two of them laid it down on the flattened area, trying to find something to hold down each edge other than the picnic basket; Samura ended up short of both of his shoes, and also his glasses, as Iori had stolen them from him in order to wear them herself. 

It was the source of great amusement for her, and she ended up imitating him for quite some time afterwards. At least he was being recognised for his cake baking efforts (‘look at me! I burn cakes!’). 

The picnic itself didn’t last very long, as Iori was gobbling all of her food at light speed so that she could see him get humiliated again - just not nice. Just plain mean. Bullied! By his own daughter! 

The same breeze as before still haunts the air, returning to graze through their hair; Samura shudders - he hates the notion of ghosts, let alone some spectral wind.

His daughter’s hand is held tight in his, and he lets himself smile. Lets himself relish in the moment - lets himself be happy, for once.

“Iori.”

He doesn’t know how to explain it exactly. It’s really just like picturing something in your imagination, or having a dream, so he technically is seeing something, but simultaneously, he physically can’t see anything. 

That’s how Owl works: whatever it sees plays directly into his mind, just like reliving a memory. Being blind actually makes it easier for him to use, as when he’d tried to use it in the war before blinding himself, the double vision had been far too overstimulating for his liking; now, he can focus on what it’s looking at and what it’s sensing perfectly. Its main function now was to watch for any of the enchanted blades being moved by anyone, whether they were Kamunabi backed or Hishaku. 

He had no real idea if Chihiro was actually dead or not, and he’d like to say he didn’t care, however Samura had found himself in a pattern of trying not to be affected by something, and then becoming extremely affected by said something. If Chihiro was dead, then that was a sore shame, but he should’ve been taught better than to utilise an enchanted blade. Though, he’d apparently never been told about the crimes he and the others committed during the war, so maybe it wasn’t all his fault. He was only young. He should still know. 

Samura tries not to think about Shiba. It was embarrassing to notice him so quickly off his smell, if he was being honest. Maybe that’s why he got out of there so quickly. Who knows? He didn’t want to stick around for a chat anyways - that’d be a waste of all of their time. It was pointless even trying to talk to the man. Pointless. 

Being at Senkutsuji had only reminded him of the time he’d spent with Shiba there during the war, and it slowly became suffocating, wringing an invisible hand around his neck, spattering light yellow, green and purple along his skin. Once walking those very halls with him at his side, his vehement personality practically echoing off of the walls of each room… it made the place seem full, almost buoyant, and teeming with life. It was the only time Senkutsuji didn’t feel quiet, and he hates the quiet. Samura wishes time had stopped forever back then, and he could’ve stayed trapped in those memories for the rest of his life, could’ve stayed enclosed in those days where even the stark chill of the winter air seemed inexplicably charged and buzzing with static. When the guilt and shame wasn’t looming in the back of his conscience, he actually enjoyed himself while there; it was insensitive, like most things Samura did, to savour that precious time away from the war - that precious time with Shiba.
He remembers everything about Togo. Everything, whether he likes it or not. During the worst nights at Senkutsuji, he couldn’t help but miss his presence beside him in his bed, reaching over to hold the space where he’d slept tight to his chest, grasping for a ghost of something that wasn’t there, and never would be again. 

He was glad to leave Senkutsuji behind, after being confined to its estate for so long. Nostalgia had twisted his thoughts on it, falsely sweetened with Togo’s company - without him, it didn’t feel like a place he could call home. It felt as if he was staying there like you would in a hotel, hyperaware that this place was not your own, and being unable to relax into it, being unable to melt into its rooms and gardens as you would if you owned the property. Senkutsuji was not home. 

Home was his old house. Home was with Iori in their old house. Where the two matching aprons hung on the back of the kitchen door were; where the over that nearly killed the both of them whenever it was used was; where she’d played in the garden after he cut the grass. Home was with his daughter. 

He’ll never be home again - he knows that. 

He doesn’t know where she is. It would be selfish to look for her. He’d vowed to not seek her out; to leave her be completely. 

Back then, that was plausible. He was held in Senkutsuji Temple, and couldn’t go see her even if he begged them to let him out. Now, it’s more difficult than he imagined it would be. She could be anywhere in the country, absolutely anywhere, from Hokkaido to Okinawa. 

Is it so bad to get one look at her? After all, he’d never actually seen her before; in all the time she’s been alive, Samura has not once known what his daughter looks like. He’d only been able to go off touching her face, and what his wife had told him, and that was it. Apparently, she had his eyes. Did he believe that? No. His wife didn’t even know what his eyes looked like before he blinded himself; she was probably saying that to be nice. She did that more than he ever thanked her for.

Samura wonders if they at least get to be together now. The Masumi commander had mentioned that they’d messed with another person’s memories in addition to Iori’s, and he’d always presumed that meant his wife. He hopes they’re together, living the life they always should’ve had. 

It’s mid morning, he’s heard it said enough times through Owl. She’d be at school by now, trusting she wasn’t home-schooled. His wife went south. The Masumi mentioned going south. 

Kyoto. 

The Masumi had mentioned Kyoto. He didn’t realise how much of that conversation after they’d returned he’d forgotten - or blocked out, he supposes. 

Was she there? Was she—

He stops himself. What will he do? What will he do if he finds her? He can’t exactly do anything about it; he’d only be making himself suffer more by seeing her. He misses her, yes, but won’t it be worse if he saw her, just out of his reach as always? Look, but don’t touch. Iori has no idea who he is, and she never will again. This is quite literally what he signed up for when he made the proposition to the Masumi commander. 

Her final letter weighs heavy in his suit pocket, directly in front of his heart. No matter what, she’ll always be near him, be close to his heart. He misses her, he misses her more than anything else in the world, but he cannot bring himself to face her after everything he’s done. 

Iori won’t remember him, but she loved her Uncle Yoji more than she loved Samura’s seaweed and mackerel onigiri (which was a bold statement to make - she used to wake him up in the middle of the night to make it. Absolutely ridiculous. Of course, he still made it for her) - what would she think if she knew he was the one who murdered him? What would she think of him: a murderer, a man who’d killed simply because that was what he’d been told to do? 

Samura doesn’t realise immediately who he’s looking at when Owl flashes an image into his mind. Some high school in Kyoto, looking into a classroom, there’s a girl sitting by the window, staring out of it, directly into the eye of Owl. He recognises those eyes. 

They’re his, after all. 

The image of her fades away, as quick as it came.  

Oh. 

It’s… bittersweet, but she’s happy, he knows she is. She’s always had more friends than he ever did, and she’s always been more caring and sensitive than him. She’ll be doing fine. 

She’s doing great, like he always knew she would.

That’s all Samura needs.