Chapter Text
The world always seemed quieter after a massacre.
Not peaceful – never that – but emptied, hollowed-out, like a cathedral after its last prayer. Smoke curled from shattered rooftops, drifting toward the bruised evening sky that had forgotten how to hold stars. The smell of blood lingered heavy over the ruins, metallic and sickening enough to make even seasoned soldiers falter.
Guren Ichinose walked through it like he belonged in the wreckage.
Boots crunching broken glass. Sword tip tracing a thing line through the dust. His breath barely visible in the cold air. He wore exhaustion like armour – something thick and unyielding that kept people from getting close, or maybe kept him from looking anyone in the eye long enough to see what he had become.
He didn’t know anymore.
“Guren!”
Shinya’s voice cut through the dead air – too bright, too alive for a place like this.
Guren didn’t stop walking.
Shinya Hiragi jogged up beside him, brushing aside a strand of sliver-blond hair matted from sweat and combat. His uniform was torn at the shoulder, smeared with blood that mostly wasn’t his.
“You left the squad behind,” Shinya sighed, breath wisping through the air.
“You were all safe.”
“You didn’t know that.”
“Guren didn’t look at him. “I assumed.”
Shinya let out a soft, humourless laugh. “You assume a lot when it comes to your own life.”
Their steps fell into an uneasy rhythm. Dust swirled around them. Silence settled again, but not comfortably – not the kind that rests between friends or comrades.
More like silence stretched across a fault line, waiting for someone to step wrong.
Shinya finally broke it. “You’re limping.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re bleeding…”
Silence.
Shinya inhaled slowly, patience thinning but not breaking. “Guren…you don’t have to-”
“You don’t need to worry about me,” Guren snapped.
He regretted the sharpness instantly. The words cut harsher than intended, slicing through the fragile space between them.
But Shinya didn’t let the wound bleed where Guren could see it. He rarely did.
“I don’t care what you think I need,” Shinya said softly. “I worry anyway.”
Guren’s grip tightened on his sword.
That was the problem.
That was always the problem.
He didn’t deserve those words. And Shinya didn’t deserve the person he had said them to.
“Let it go,” Guren muttered.
“I can’t.”
“Try.”
Shinya exhaled, long and weary, the kind of breath that carried unspoken things – fears, truths, confessions. The kind Guren never let him finish.
“You’re impossible,” Shinya murmured.
“And yet you’re still here.”
The words slipped out, bitter as the unspoken truth that hung between them. Guren hadn’t meant to say them; he certainly hadn’t meant for them to sound like accusation or plea, but somehow they managed to be both.
Shinya stopped walking.
Guren took 2 more steps before he noticed and turned around. Shinya stood there in settling dust, expression unreadable in that way he got when he was putting his walls back up – ones Guren had been tearing down without realising it.
“Do you want me to leave?” Shinya asked.
His voice was steady. Too steady.
Guren swallowed hard. “I didn't say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
A muscle in Guren’s jaw twitched. “Shinya-”
Footsteps cut him off. One of the squad members jogged towards them, breathless and dirt-streaked.
“Commander Ichinose! Hīragi! We found survivors.”
Shinya’s eyes flicked away first and that was the moment Guren allowed himself to breathe.
★★★★
Two children, one teenager, and an elderly man who clung to Shinya’s sleeve like a lifeline. Guren watched Shinya kneel beside the smallest child, brushing dust from her hair, his voice soft enough to soothe even the trembling ground.
He was good at this – gentle in ways Guren couldn’t afford to be.
Shouldn’t be.
Didn’t deserve to be near.
When Shinya finished comforting the children and directing soldiers toward shelter points, he approached Guren again.
“You okay?” Shinya asked.
“You already know the answer.”
“You’re right,” Shinya murmured. “I do.”
He studied Guren for a long, quiet moment.
Then – very carefully – he reached out, brushing a streak of blood from Guren’s chin with the edge of his sleeve.
The touch was soft.
Too soft.
Pain flared under Guren’s ribs, sharp as a blade sliding between bone.
He stepped back.
Shinya’s hand froze halfway in the air, suspended like a question Guren refused to answer.
“Don’t.” Guren said firmly.
Shinya lowered his arm slowly. “Youre hurt.”
“You don’t need to fix it.”
Shinya’s voice thinned, edged with something brittle. “You say that like I have a choice.”
“You do.”
“No,” Shinya whispered. “I don’t.”
Their eyes met.
The world around them faded in and out like a dying heartbeat.
Guren broke first, tearing his gaze away. “We should return to base.”
Shinya didn’t respond.
Not for a full three seconds – long enough for Guren to regret looking away.
Then Shinya turned to follow him.
And if his footsteps were quieter than usual, Guren pretended not to hear the difference.
★★★★
Even with the fires dying behind them, the night pressed heavy, as if the sky itself sensed the distance widening inch by inch.
Guren led. Shinya followed.
Not at his side this time.
Behind him.
Like a ghost.
Like someone rehearsing how to disappear.
When they reached the tents, soldiers greeted them with nods of respect. Guren answered curtly, Shinya softly. They moved like parallel lines – close but never touching, destined to never meet.
Guren entered his tent.
He didn’t expect Shinya to follow.
He also didn’t expect Shinya to stay outside, standing in the shadows between torchlight and darkness, staring at the canvas like it held all the words he couldn’t say aloud.
Finally Shinya spoke.
“...Guren?”
The voice was barely above a breath.
Guren’s hand froze on the clasp of his sword sheath.
He didn’t turn around.
If he did, he might not survive it.
“Yes?” he replied, voice steady in a way he didn’t feel.
A pause.
A long terrible pause.
Then –
“Never mind.”
Footsteps retreated.
And Guren let him go because stopping him would mean reaching out. Reaching out would mean wanting. Wanting would mean hurting Shinya more than he already did. And Guren made that mistake too many times to feign ignorance.
He sat on his cot and exhaled, lungs and heart aching for different reasons.
He titled his head back, staring up at the tents ceiling.
The silence pressed against him like hands.
You should have said something, a small voice whispered inside of him.
Something like:
Stay.
Or, don’t walk away.
Or, I don’t want you to go.
Or – truthfully –
I need you.
But those were comforts. And comfort was a luxury Guren had never been allowed to keep.
So instead he whispered the only truth that mattered, the one he never said where Shinya could hear.
“Even though you're killing me, I need you like the air I breathe.”
It wasn’t comfort.
It wasn’t confession.
It wasn’t enough.
But it was all he had.
And outside the tent, in the dark cold air, Shinya stared up at the starless sky and whispered a truth of his own.
“You keep breaking me, Guren… and I keep letting you.”
Neither of them slept.