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“You’re an idiot,” Gin says.
Tachihara winces. “I know.”
“You lied to all of us.”
“I—” he swallows down the protest rising up his throat. He knows, acutely, that even if he had no choice, he lied regardless. “I know. I’m sorry.”
“You’re still a government dog.”
“No, I—” he swallows. Is he? He can’t really tell anymore. Not like this. While his blindness isn’t what makes him useless as a Hunting Dog, he doesn’t have the same sense Jouno does. He’s still learning to navigate the world again—what good is he to either the government or the Port Mafia?
“I don’t think so,” he ends up saying. Some part of him marvels at how strange it is that he’s shrinking before Akutagawa Gin, when he has ever willingly backed down before them, but the anger and hurt in their eyes he knows they hold—he imagines they look at him like he’s the worst of the worst. And he wouldn’t blame them for it, either. “I don’t know where I belong anymore. I’m useless to the Hunting Dogs and I’m useless to the Port Mafia. So—I don’t know. Really.”
Even if the Port Mafia took him back, it’d only be sustainable if the surgery was available to him. Mori is an option, but.
“Then why did you come back?” Gin demands, and Tachihara hears the sound of their daggers slotting back into their sheaths. “You’re of no use, as you say. What are you doing on Port Mafia turf, then? Are you trying to get yourself killed?”
The worst thing, see, is that Gin is using the same flat, unbothered tone they’ve always used once they realized Tachihara didn’t care that their voice was so feminine. It’s the same tone they use on everyone—the tone Akutagawa Gin’s enemies come to fear, the voice of a cold-blooded assassin who does the job they are given.
Tachihara never thought he’d be on the receiving end of it. Until he did, he supposes.
“I don’t mind if that’s what it takes,” Tachihara forces out around the claws gripping his lungs and throat. “I—I needed to tell you. To let you know. That I…”
“That you what?” their boots click on the concrete. Panic seizes his lungs, but he needs to stay calm. Gin won’t just leave him. He hopes. He hopes so, so much.
“I didn’t want to disappear,” he confesses, but he can’t—what are the right words for this? What can he say, to make Gin understand that he—that he’s always and always—without even knowing—
“I would never leave you of all people like that,” he clenches his fists at his side, breathes in and out. “Even if it’s dangerous, even if I could get killed, I needed you to know. I needed you of all people to know, no matter what happened. No matter what got in my way.”
He doesn’t even know what he’s talking about anymore. All he knows is that he’s shocked at himself, shocked that this is how far he’d go to prove to Gin—
“You idiot,” Gin says. “You knew I’d be there if anyone targeted you.”
“Huh? Well—” he did know that, didn’t he? Even if he’s realizing it just now. “Yeah. I did, I guess.”
“You’re…” Gin stops. “Tachihara, you really…”