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It had to be Corrin to bring him the news. That damned princess who had dragged his brother’s soul into an inescapable pit of despair when they were only children, only to return now and throw all of Hoshido into chaos.
"Saizo, I'm so sorry. Kaze...He...He fell," she whispered. Red, puffy eyes suggested a long spell of tears before finding the courage to face Saizo.
"He....what?" The ninja’s mask hid the worst of his fears, but Saizo could feel an accursed weakness threatening to overtake his voice.
He knew those words. The part of his mind perpetually swathed in agonizing flames replayed them every day he carried on without vengeance, every time he saw the shameful scar that had claimed his right eye. They were the same words spoken to him what felt like an eternity ago.
“Your father has fallen. ”
The long lost royal sibling rambled on desperately, "There was an earthquake on the battlefield. I was standing too close to the cliff’s edge and your brother caught me, but he couldn’t hold on and he...he fell. We couldn't find the body."
"Is that all?" Saizo asked. He ignored the horror in Corrin’s eyes at his dispassionate response.
“I...Y-Yes. That’s all,” she mumbled.
Saizo vanished before her tears began to fall anew. Running away may have been disgraceful to his name and to the name of all those who came before him, but Saizo couldn’t bring himself to care. He needed to be alone. To think.
His brother had done his duty admirably. A member of the royal family lived because of Kaze’s vigilance, even if Kaze did not. Saizo should have been indifferent to the loss of a fellow ninja under such circumstances, or perhaps even proud. Kaze had honored his brother and his clan with his sacrifice.
So why did Saizo feel as sick as he had the first time he killed a man?
There was no one to hunt this time. No justice to be had. Just a cold void in the fire of Saizo’s soul where Kaze belonged. Saizo had seen it in others who lost those close to them - that desolation could spread until his entire heart cooled to blackened coal, rendering him useless to his liege.
So Saizo put love and family and pain from his mind in the way only a ninja could. There was a war to be fought, work to be done.
Unfortunately, the rest of the camp didn’t share his focus. Sympathetic looks dogged his steps, which he met with open scorn. The women in particular whispered empty words of compassion behind his back. Some exceptionally bold ones even offered Saizo the same trifles they had harassed his brother with when he had been alive. Saizo refused their gifts with considerably less grace than they were used to from Kaze, and their whispers turned nastier after that.
Good. Saizo had a reputation to maintain as the most feared ninja in Hoshido. He didn’t want to be prodded and pried at like a mangled child’s toy that needed mending.
If only his liege wasn’t as needlessly compassionate as his fellow soldiers.
"Saizo," Ryoma called quietly into the darkness of his tent a few days after the news had spread through camp. Saizo appeared instantly at his side.
"Yes, Lord Ryoma?"
"You are aware you may take time to mourn Kaze's death, correct?” The darkness thankfully concealed Saizo’s flinch. Since the news came, he had avoided breathing his twin’s name aloud. “Losing a sibling is no easy matter. I will not think less of your service."
Saizo did not hesitate in his response, "Have I performed inadequately?"
A frown tainted Ryoma’s voice, "No. But I worry for you. I remember the pain of thinking Corrin lost to us vividly, even now. I can only imagine what it must be like to lose your twin."
"You do not need to distract yourself from your duties for my sake, my lord,” the retainer insisted. “It is not worth your time."
"You will always be worth my time, Saizo. Do not forget that."
"You are too kind, Lord Ryoma. Is there anything else?”
Ryoma knew from experience he would be getting nothing more from the ninja that night. He could not force his sympathies onto the other, after all.
“No. You may go,” he sighed.
Saizo foolishly hoped that would be the end of it. With his lord having said his piece, surely no one else cared enough about the ruthless clan head to attempt prying apart his iron heart, a blackened thing welded shut through the flames of war and loss. Although the camp at large loved his brother, that love did not extend to the other twin. Their compassion would be short-lived, and he could move on in peace.
It was only a day later that he noticed Kagero staring at him while they caught their breath during a sparring session.
"What?" he muttered. He may have shared a bed with the woman in the past, but he still struggled to read the depths of her cold, calculating stare at times.
"I'm trying to place how you've changed," she mused quietly.
"I've changed?"
"Yes, since your brother's death,” Kagero confirmed. “You've tried to hide it, but something is different. The passion you found when your father died has vanished."
Saizo’s good eye closed, but he didn’t respond. She wasn’t wrong. The control it took to stay fixated on his duty had quelled his spitfire temper. It was too easy for anger to give way to grief.
"Like that. Normally you would have snapped at me, but now...It's like Kaze was the wind that fed your flames. Without him, you're merely going through the motions. That's dangerous for a ninja,” she observed.
He cringed under the mask at her thoughtless use of his twin’s name. "I won't fail you in battle," he promised.
"No, you never would,” Kagero admitted. Her eyes glittered with disappointment at his callous response. “Still, you should mourn him Saizo. Cutting your twin out of your soul like this will not end well."
The man pressed on, getting to his feet, "Are you ready to continue?"
The disappointment didn’t fade from Kagero’s face for the remainder of their match. Saizo pretended not to notice.
He heaved a sigh of relief when they finally parted ways, happy to be free from the pressure on his fraying nerves. With a little luck, Saizo would be able to slip away until most of camp had retired, leaving him to do his rounds in peace.
But lady luck was never on his side. Saizo ran straight from Kagero’s sad gaze into the one person who could tear his temper to shreds even when he was in the best of moods.
"What's wrong with you?" Orochi snapped, glaring at him. She twirled her hair as she scrutinized the ninja’s hidden expression.
"Pardon?"
The diviner’s face twisted into an angry scowl. "Everyone else in camp is too afraid to say anything. You've been acting like nothing happened."
"I'm not having this discussion with you," Saizo grumbled, turning to walk away.
"So what, now you're going to turn and run from this, too? I thought Saizos weren't supposed to be cowards,” she called after him.
He paused in his retreat. Even as he was now, his pride wouldn’t allow that slight.
"Is that all?" he hissed.
"No, it's not. No one else will say it, so I will,” she hissed. “You're a disgrace! Your brother, your twin , was one of the most beloved people in this camp. His kindness and loyalty meant the world to us, but you're acting like he meant nothing to you at all!"
The ninja could feel his heart rising in his chest. He answered by rote, "It is the duty of a ninja to lie down their lives in service."
Orochi muttered darkly, "He wasn't a retainer. We both know duty wasn't why Kaze fell."
Saizo’s fists clenched, unbidden, at his sides. "...Do you intend to keep me all day to discuss this, or may I return to work?"
"You're so infuriating!” She yelled at him, “How can you not care that Kaze threw his life away because he thought it was already forfeit? That he looked at you, the Saizo, and realized he would never be good enough to live up to the legend? That he thought he had wronged his family, so he killed himself to redeem a failure he never had to atone for?"
Each question cut deeper than the last, ripping open Saizo’s iron heart to face the sorrow he had tirelessly avoided. Even a ninja couldn’t dodge forever.
He regretted much about his relationship with his twin. The older ninja’s drive to become Saizo and live up to the memory of their dead father had spawned constant fights between them. Kaze feared he would lose his brother to the raging fire which burned in his breast after their father died. It drove Kaze to be generous with his praise towards his red-haired brother, hoping to save him from chasing that unattainable shadow, but Saizo only returned with cold critique as their father would have.
Saizo knew now that he had pushed too hard. He had ignored the worrying signs of Kaze's already self-sacrificing nature growing more dominant, each harsh criticism internalized by his brother as another failure. He pretended it was only impeccable honor and duty that drove Kaze to talk so freely about sacrificing his life. The return of their long-lost royal sibling should have ended the torment that plagued his brother’s soul, not intensified it.
He didn’t want to accept that despite his deadly speed and steel in his eyes, Kaze’s heart bled too deeply to stand alone against the world. He didn’t want to accept that he, Saizo the Fifth, was the same.
"I can't care!” The ninja finally cried, “It's too late to do anything for his demons now. He’s dead. Dwelling on it will only get me killed."
"If you don't mourn, it will kill you anyway," the diviner promised. An eerie bit of fortune or merely unwelcome advice, he couldn’t be sure.
"Leave me be, Orochi," Saizo demanded icily.
Dropping all pretense of pride, he ran. His feet took him far beyond the confines of the camp, with nothing in his thoughts but the roar of his failure and the ache of his missing twin. He felt dizzy and weak, like a sick child rather than a hardened soldier. Ultimately, his traitorous body led him straight to the ledge - the one where they said Kaze had fallen.
Unable to keep running, the ninja sank to his knees, closer to the edge than he knew was safe. The wind picked up as long denied tears began to flow.
Saizo whispered a eulogy into the cool evening breeze, praying his twin’s namesake might somehow carry it to him,"You were the better man between the two of us, brother. You were the only one who could never see it. And I...I was so focused on my duty to Lord Ryoma that I forgot my duty to you. A big brother is supposed to support their siblings when they need him. To catch them when they...they fall."
His rolling baritone cracked on the last word, unable to continue. The momentary silence drew his attention to a faint rustling off to his right. It sounded like someone was...climbing?
Cautiously, Saizo wiped the tears from his eyes and crept toward the noise, hand resting on his pouch of shuriken. The rustling and snapping of branches grew louder as the intruder drew near through the woods. A pegasus, bloody and limping, stumbled into the clearing. At its heels followed a familiar green-haired face, uncharacteristically ragged around the edges.
"Kaze.”
It was the first time Saizo had used his name since the fall, and it felt like a breath of fresh air to a drowning man.
The ninja who should have been dead blinked in surprise before speaking, "I didn’t expect to see you up here, Saizo. I would have tried to be more stealthy had I known. My apologies if I disturbed you, brother.”
"You're alive," Saizo whispered. “How?”
Kaze smiled in that distant, warm way that he had missed so much. “This mare caught me on my way down, but she hurt herself in the process. That's why it's taken me so long to return. I don't know who she used to belong to, but I wanted to repay her for her kindness if Lady Hinoka or Subaki would be willing to lend their aid."
As though something inside him finally burst, Saizo lunged forward and caught Kaze in a tight hug. He ignored the way the other man stuttered while the older ninja clutched his twin to his chest, hands trembling. The desperation in his grip surprised them both.
"Don't throw your life away like that again," Saizo begged.
Kaze pulled back so he could look his brother in the eye, searching for some sort of test. "It's our duty a ninja. You of all people..."
"That wasn’t duty,” Saizo insisted with a sharp shake of the head.
“What do you mean?”
“You pulled this stupid stunt because you felt...inadequate.” The younger ninja looked away, bowing his head in shame. “You carry too much guilt over things you can't control,” Saizo insisted.
"I could say the same of you, brother," Kaze replied gently. His eyes lingered on his twin’s scar.
"Father…” Saizo stumbled, trying to find the right words. “Father would be proud of you, Kaze. I know...I know I am. You are an asset to our family. You may be a thorn in my side at times: too kind, too compassionate, and worrying too damn much over everyone, but that's the way it's supposed to be between brothers. It's why I need you. To...balance me."
He prayed his twin would hear the sentiments he still didn’t have the strength to voice.
(I missed you. I love you. Don't leave me alone.)
"I..." His younger brother stepped back, visibly shaken. That cracked composure was all the confirmation Saizo needed that he hadn’t said enough over the years. Kaze should have known this was how he felt all along.
"Don't make me say it," the older man mumbled into his mask, blushing faintly.
Thankfully, that snapped Kaze back to his senses. He replied with a gentle smile, "I would never dream of it, Saizo. Thank you for such kind words. Your approval…” Kaze’s smile turned bittersweet. “I think I can rest a bit easier knowing I have it."
"Just don't do it again, little brother,” Saizo requested firmly. He pulled his twin into another hug as long as there was no one watching. “I need you at my side."