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Uruha had always thought of the sea as a peaceful thing.
He would eventually be proven wrong, of course, but when it was younger that was what it had seemed to be.
Shirakai often foisted his granddaughter off on Uruha or Samura, under the guise of teaching them patience and quick-thinking. Samura didn’t buy it; he would look after Kiri because his little brother Uruha wasn’t so little anymore, and besides, he’d always wanted a family of his own. It was good practise, and it scored him points with Inori. That was when he could still see, of course; it was when she still thought him a hero. Someone who would save the world.
Uruha, though, Uruha believed what Shirakai was saying, that it was important to learn patience through the sacred art of babysitting. So it was he more often than it was Samura who was given the task, Shirakai happy enough with threatening their safety if something happened to little Kiri. Usually he took her shopping, because it was something that they both liked (and Uruha didn’t have funds of his own, so at seventeen it was the closest he could get to having a spending spree, buying Kiri whatever she wanted with her grandfather’s money). They would get pretty cakes and pastries at bakeries and Uruha would carry all of the shopping bags, and then when Kiri got tired he would carry her on his back, too. Sometimes he acted like it was a pain, but over time Uruha found himself enjoying it more than he’d expected to.
One day, he took her to the beach. It wasn’t something they could do often; it would be a long day, but Shirakai had said that they could go, and besides, he and Samura had important adult things to discuss. Never mind the fact that Samura was only twenty-one to Uruha’s seventeen. He didn’t complain, because he liked the idea of going to the beach.
It was too cold for them to do more than paddle. Uruha and Kiri rolled their pants halfway up their shins and waded only ankle deep, Uruha squeaking at the cold and Kiri gritting her teeth, determined to outlast him. She did outlast him; after thirty seconds Uruha went darting back to the safety of the shore, still squealing, and Kiri laughed at her victory before following him. They walked along the beach until their feet were dry, picking up shells and writing their names in the sand with sticks. Then, they put their shoes and their socks back on and Uruha bought them ice creams.
They sat on a bench and looked out at the ocean. It was a cloudy day, but not windy. The sea was calm, a silver mirror of the sky above. Kiri said it looked sad – she wanted the turquoise, gemlike seas of tropical places, places that she’d seen in books and on the television – not this endless grey.
Uruha liked the grey, though. He thought that it looked calm. There were so many horrid stories about the sea. Shipwrecks and monsters and disasters, but looking out at it in that moment he could only see it as it was right then.
A thing of beauty.
“It’s okay, I suppose,” Kiri said eventually. She was bored, kicking her legs. “You really like it?”
“I think it’s beautiful,” said Uruha, wondering if he would ever be able to journey across the ocean; wondering if he would ever be able to visit one of those jewel-seas from the books. “Yes,” he added. “I like it.”
*
The next time that Uruha saw the sea, it wasn’t peaceful.
It was grey, though, again, but when Uruha looked down at the waves he didn’t see the silver mirror he’d seen that day with Kiri.
Much like the sea, he hadn’t seen Kiri in a long time, either.
He clutched the railing as the boat set sail, the up and down of it, the choppiness, the plunging as they cut through the water making his stomach churn. Once, Samura would have laughed at him as he vomited over the edge. Misaka, too. Now, though, neither of them laughed. Misaka patted him on the shoulder and Samura turned away.
They were heading for that island.
War had come from across the sea, people said. Now they were crossing that same sea to end it.
Gulls screeched overhead. It wasn’t a long journey, and they were only briefly out of sight of land. For that stretch of time – ten or fifteen minutes – Uruha looked around, seeing nothing but angry grey water melting into the stormy sky above. Even Misaka wasn’t comforted by that storm.
Uruha knew the truth, of course. He wasn’t an idiot. Maybe at first the war had seemed like a glorious thing, that someday he would he a hero that kids looked up to, who they pointed at and said, One day I want to be like him! For weeks and even months he’d believed himself to be that hero.
He’d saved a kid, a month or so into the war. He was still learning about Kumeyuri – they were learning about each other – and he’d been a little clumsy. A village was under attack; trying desperately to keep their claws in that part of the country, and Uruha had been sent along with a troop of soldiers to deal with it and probably to earn himself some respect. He’d cloaked them in an illusion and they’d done most of the saving, really, but in a final act of desperation an enemy soldier had scooped up a fleeing child, a hostage, and it was Uruha who darted forwards and stopped him from doing so.
Fushimi, that child’s name had been. Uruha had squatted down and introduced himself with a smile, and when Fushimi had asked if he could hold Kumeyuri, Uruha had let him.
Remembering that now, on the boat, on their journey to the end, made him feel as though he’d aged about a thousand years since that day. He’d been so naïve, so happy to be the hero he’d thought he would be. Now, though, Uruha knew that he was no hero.
He was still clutching at the railing, and now the island was coming into view. They were going to sign a treaty, but Uruha wasn’t sure he believed in that hollow promise. Not when he saw who stood at the prow, with darkened eyes and tangled hair, with fingernails bitten down to the quick and lips constantly moving in an endless whispered rant of hate.
No, Uruha knew the truth, deep down.
He knew that he wasn’t a hero, and he knew that the ocean wasn’t just a thing of beauty.
*
“War came from beyond the sea,” Uruha said. “For them as well as us.”
Fushimi nodded and rubbed his back, and when Uruha closed his eyes he slid his hand under his cloak and up his shirt, over his spine, coming to rest between his shoulder blades. Uruha leaned against him, resting his head on his shoulder and sighing into the icy wind. Fushimi sighed, too.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly. “For all of you.”
Uruha opened his eyes and lifted his head to kiss him, which was the only thing he could really do. Fushimi knew the truth – he’d known it already, but Uruha had told him everything anyway back when his feelings were on that teetering cusp of the thing between friendship and romance, before the final fall – but they didn’t need to talk about it. Fushimi knew what Uruha had done and he’d accepted him anyway, and some of that was because to Fushimi, Uruha would always be the man who’d saved him all those years ago.
And Uruha loved him. He hadn’t expected that; to fall in love in a place that was little more than a prison. It had crept up on him in the small things, in the checking on him to make sure he was okay and the asking if he wanted to talk; not about the heaviness in him but much lighter topics. Uruha told Fushimi about his years studying Iai White Purity Style and Fushimi told Uruha about his friends and his life back in Tokyo. They laughed about their wartime meeting, how Fushimi had held Kumeyuri in his little hands. It was in the way Fushimi brought him food and sat with him to make sure that he ate, and how he dragged him out of his room for walks and to bathe in the hot springs.
After months of that, of skimming the shallows, he’d told him about the war across the sea.
But, he’d kept it to himself when he fell in love. Or rather, when he realised that he’d already fallen. He kept it in until he was sure that it would burst out of him, and on one spring day with the trees blooming pink and white and the smell of new life on the air it was Fushimi who’d kissed him, kissed him with petals in his hair and a flush over his cheeks, and when he’d finally pulled away, breathless and grinning, he’d told him that he knew how Uruha felt and he felt the same way, and if there were any rules about them dating that they were breaking then fuck the rules.
Uruha didn’t care about rules. It was a whirlwind after that, nights spent in each other’s arms and days spent in each other’s company. They would have a future together, Uruha was sure of that, and this was just a taste.
He didn’t know how Fushimi had got permission to leave the fortress for a day, but he had done, and even though it was the dead of winter and it was freezing, with snowflakes drifting in the air and ice on the roads.
“It’s beautiful here,” Fushimi said, kissing him on the cheek.
Uruha smiled. “Yeah,” he said. “It is.”
*
It sparkled in the midday sun like sapphires and jade; blue where it was deep and glimmering green in the shallows, white waves lapping at white sand. The warmth kissed his skin and he leaned forwards so that Fushimi could rub another layer of sunscreen over his back, because he was scared of burning even though he was sitting in the shade of the big beach umbrella.
Fushimi kissed his shoulder when he was done, then ran off into the sea. Uruha smiled; his hair was so, so golden in the sun, the most precious treasure in the world. Uruha lay down on his front and rested his chin in his hands as he watched him, this lovely thing in the ocean, until he drifted off into one of those deliciously indulgent vacation naps, with liquid time and a lullaby of waves.
It had been three years since the Hishaku had been defeated.
At first, Uruha had felt a little unmoored; they had been a looming threat for so long and then a mad rush of adrenaline and anger and fighting until finally it was over, and the yawning maw of a future opened up before him instead. It was funny, as much as he’d told himself that he and Fushimi would have a future, he’d found that it had been a surprise to him that they got one anyway.
Taking care of Fushimi had kept him grounded in those early months when it was all over. He’d been so badly hurt, and he put on such a brave face that it made Uruha want to cry. He spent days and days at his bedside, stroking his hair and helping him sip water, until he’d been allowed home to recover there.
Uruha had told him that he wasn’t doing it just because Fushimi had cared for him; he was doing it because he wanted to. He wanted to be at his bedside and he wanted to change his bandages. He wanted to help him to the shower and to make him bowls of soup. He wanted to be the emergency contact listed in his information in the Kamunabi’s employee records. Fushimi had laughed at that one. Uruha had already unofficially moved in to look after him, so why not?
Now, though, they lived together in a place they’d bought together. It had a garden, and the sun shone through their bedroom window to wake them every morning. It had decimated their savings, and it was only now – a year after that purchase – that they could afford this vacation. Uruha had wanted to see the sea; to really see it, that beautiful thing which seemed like a fantasy. He wanted the ocean from the books and the movies, and Fushimi had given it to him because he always gave him what he wanted. They’d flown out here, into this dream, into their happily ever after.
Fushimi came running out of the sea, and he woke Uruha when he plopped down beside him on the beach towel. Uruha turned towards him, smiling sleepily, and Fushimi kissed him with lips which tasted of salt and the sun.