Chapter Text
"And still it is not yet enough to have memories. One must be able to forget them when they are many and one must have the great patience to wait until they come again. For it is not yet the memories themselves. Not till they have turned to blood within us, to glance and gesture, nameless and no longer to be distinguished from ourselves—not till then can it happen that in a most rare hour the first word of a verse arises in their midst and goes forth from them."
-Rilke, Blood-Remembering
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His ex walks into the theater with a whole host of new scars, the most obvious of them fresh, and a teenager trotting loyally at his heels. Hiromi wonders whether the universe is done making him the punchline, and says instead to himself – and to them, because theaters echo, sound carries, and he's had a lifetime of projection –, "This feels like the setup to a bad joke, don't you think, Kento-kun?"
"Ken…to-kun?" the teenager mutters, presumably to himself without knowledge of how acoustics work. It seems to take him a moment to realize — or remember — that it has to be the man next to him. Hiromi doesn't look at them directly; Nanami has always been sharp like a blade, and Hiromi's the one doing the cutting, now.
"Nanamin, is that — do you know him?" the boy asks. His voice rises in surprise, or maybe panic.
"I used to," Nanami replies evenly. His voice is deeper than Hiromi remembers, quiet but carrying.
Ouch.
"That's pretty cold, Kento," Hiromi says. Loud, too, scolding. "But you were always like that, hm?"
He looks now, finds Nanami closer than he has been in years, and soemhow more distant all the same. The Hiromi of the past would have found that infuriating, or annoying, or done something embarrassing like said hello, and it's been a long time and then startled back from the scars. This Hiromi — the new one, reborn, with enough power to change what he couldn't before — only musters up a smile.
It's empty, but he stopped putting effort into that long before the Games started. And Nanami, well. A sight for sore eyes, he is not; Hiromi has earned his points fair and square, paid in blood, but even he is not so inured to violence as to be entirely nonchalant about Nanami's new look. To call it scarring like he had earlier is too generous by half, with how the skin is stretched raw pink and shiny over his skin, a breathable gauze swathing half his face rather than an eyepatch. He has to smother the knee-jerk concern, a habit Hiromi thought he'd long grown out of.
It hadn't taken long to settle beneath his skin, but they've been apart longer than they'd ever been together at this point. Hiromi thought such things happened naturally. Things pass. Not everything, but things like this.
"Not even going to disagree with me?" Hiromi asks. That is a more manageable instinct; the simplest part of being a lawyer is paring away at defenses, probing and finding a reaction. The chink in the armor. The thing that makes the witness break down, that yields proof of more and truth soon after.
Hiromi's eyes drift down broader shoulders — a welcome change, though sorcery's not done much for his own physique — and a trim waist to see that beneath his sleeve, Nanami's hand too is mottled. Not as bad as the face, he thinks, and can't quite quash the relief.
"No. You're more or less correct, after all. You wouldn't be the first to say it, and you won't be the last," Nanami says. Bitterness floods Hiromi's mouth again. He turns, spits. The gesture is crass, and he does it mostly to see Nanami flinch too, knowing he's acting like a petulant child rather than a man of his age who's probably hit the closest thing to enlightenment he can ever reach.
Nanami and the boy have stopped just by the stage now, not quite coming onto it, just out of Hiromi's range. Nanami was always smart, he knows, but this — this is practice. Several things, all of them improbable and none of them relevant to anything that's not years past, slot into place at once.
"Nanamin," the teenager says quietly. He sounds concerned, while Nanami looks unbothered. Not serene, never that; peace was something to be wrung from him after hours of work, like blood from a stone. And that's familiar, too. "Are you sure?"
Abruptly, Hiromi decides he doesn't want to know the answer to that.
"Are you here to ask a favor? I can think of just the one thing you might want, but do you really think I'd give it to you? Based on the past? A history too sordid for young ears?" Hiromi cuts in before Nanami can reply. He sounds bitter even to himself, so he laughs, and Nanami flinches from the sound. It's infinitesimal, he hates that he can still look for and find it, and now Hiromi knows where that iron control over himself had come from, the type of thing even men three times Nanami's age hadn't quite grasped.
"No," Nanami answers. Still direct and unvarnished and never quite what Hiromi wants to hear.
"Good. It wouldn't have worked. You're no one. Just another ghost," Hiromi says. It's easy; he's been telling himself this for years. Nanami had disappeared like one, after all – not one for half-measures, when he'd ended things Hiromi knew what it would mean. A clean break, Nanami had said, and had the courtesy, or gall, to sound apologetic.
A severance.
He understands these things a little better now.
"And it isn't too sordid for Itadori-kun to hear," Nanami adds. "But some conversations should be held just between adults, and he doesn't need to be dragged into –,"
"Into what?" Hiromi interrupts. "Your mess?"
"Into old arguments."
"Arguments. We never argued, Nanami." He remembers this much with astonishing clarity, the type reserved only for his worst nightmares, the widened horror in his clients' eyes, the cool apathy of a jury let out and discussing lunch, dinner, social plans, satisfied with a good day's work ruining someone's life. And, apparently, Nanami's mannerisms, the way he would gloss over conflict so thoroughly that it would never happen — the practice of a lifetime avoidance, Hiromi'd thought uncharitably six months after the fact when he realized just what happened.
Nanami inclines his head in concession. Even now, trying to smooth things over.
"And you want the points, you didn't deny it." Hiromi is empty enough now, warmed only by the blood on his hands, that he knows he has nothing else to give. But he couldn't give Nanami enough of a reason to stay before; this is a fixed truth between them.
"True enough," Nanami says. "Should I say 'back into worn paths', then? Would you prefer that, Higuruma-san?"
Some sick, Pavlovian part of him has missed hearing that from Nanami's mouth. It isn't affectionate now, and Hiromi doesn't quite understand how Nanami could carve him out of his life so thoroughly. Maybe it's his relative youth. Maybe to him, it hadn't been that important; maybe to him, those two years were far, far away in the relative past, something a mind like his wouldn't linger on, aimed towards the future as it was and not soaked in the past.
"Oh, no. No more worn paths for me. I went off the rails a bit, you see, but your thirties are a pretty good time for it. Turns out I like it," he says. He shoots the boy a conspiratorial grin just to make him squirm, and squirm he does. "Have you ever taken a bath in all your clothes?"
"Not really," the boy answers, a little confused. But not unwilling, Hiromi notes, to meet him where he's at. Nanami would never have indulged such a question himself, but he stays silent. Watching, always watching, the weight of his gaze even heavier now than it used to be. Hiromi had been flattered, those years back, to have Nanami's eyes on him. His focus. He'd wanted it with a shocking greed and clarity, like a starving man wants food, or a throat wants a knife. Nanami had been so self-assured, so steady, and Hiromi had nothing but the insufferable urge to mess him up a bit.
The surprise was that Nanami had let him. Intense, yes, and dispassionate, and always so distant, but biddable in the end.
He's grown up, now. Grown into himself. Hiromi supposes that might just be what sorcery does. After all, he's done plenty of growing, and he can meet Nanami's eyes now evenly, right above the lip of the tub, watching his hair turn to an incandescent halo from the stage lights.
"You should give it a try sometimes." To make his point, Hiromi scoops up water in the palm of his hand and lets it drip onto his head. It smells faintly of lavender — a new luxury, these bath oils, and they keep the water bearable for a little longer. They are, of course, not something anyone would pillage. Hiromi has his pick of them. He's spoiling himself, these days, but he's rotten to the core now even without such wanton indulgences.
"Itadori," Nanami begins, and Hiromi knows already what he'll say. He decides he's not having it.
"No, no, let him stay. Nothing unsuitable for young ears, right? Or did he not know all that about you. Don't feel bad," Hiromi tells the boy earnestly. He knows, too, that the rudeness must be getting to Nanami. Such things always have. "Kento over here plays it close to his chest. And I used to be a lawyer, I'd know."
From his discomfort, the boy clearly doesn't want to agree. But he can't disagree, either. Hiromi wonders what their relationship is, exaclty, that Nanami would come here with him looking like that. These Games are a death sentence, Hiromi the top executioner in this particular colony, and Nanami is here looking as if a stiff breeze would be enough to kill him. He might be standing upright from sheer power alone.
"Are you going to give us the points, Higuruma-san." Nanami isn't asking, not really. Some long-buried thing at the heart of him still wants to give this. It had once been the easiest thing in the world to spoil Nanami, because he'd asked for so little.
Even now, he asks for little, but — ha. What's the point. What's the point of any of it?
"No. I'm going to kill you," Hiromi says flatly. Because he has to say something, because he's killed already, and what does it matter when he knows what Nanami is guilty of already. He can guess — and if he can't, well. The Games are what they are. Nanami may not have started as a player during their inception, but to be in a colony, to be such easy pickings, and to be standing here still? That tells Hiromi enough.
Something films over Nanami's eyes then. Resignation, maybe, or a hardening of resolve.
"Nanamin –," the boy starts, alarmed. No, worse; he looks at Hiromi and sees someone else, something else, a different danger that Nanami's walking into without a glance back.
I can relate, kid, he thinks. Or maybe that's projection, too.
"Yuuji," Nanami says. Firm, calm, in control. It occurs to Hiromi that he has no idea what this means; he can only watch, half-greedy, half-furious, as Nanami reaches down to his thigh and pulls a blade, wrapped in a dotted length of cloth, from a holster there. Itadori looks on with something like grief — it's incongruous to Hiromi, who has only ever seen Nanami wield a knife to cook, and that less and less before the end, but why it should be strange to someone who Nanami's clearly been teaching is unusual.
The injuries, Hiromi realizes a moment later. They're new, necessitating new placement, if the same weapon. And it must be one Nanami is used to, he holds it with the loose confidence Hiromi associates with the reincarnated sorcerers, despite the youth of their faces.
"Let me handle it," Nanami says. And then to Hiromi: "I'd prefer it if we didn't do it this way, you know."
"Oh, Kento. I think we both know it's been a long time since I catered to your preferences," Hiromi returns. He stands, feeling the water sluice from him and pool and squelch from his shoes as he steps out of the tub. One, then another, closing the distance between them until he's standing just above Nanami.
It's a new view, different from Nanami on his knees, flushed and his pride wavering. The scarring, the way his nata comes up and he eases back almost gingerly into a more ready stance.
"You're being pitiful," Hiromi informs him. His voice doesn't shake. It comes out apathetic, easy. "You can't possibly think you can fight me like this."
His only answer is Nanami's eyes narrowing.
And Nanami moves only a split second after that, somehow more elegant here than across a dining table, sipping wine, fussing with the lines of his suit in the mirror. The ghost blurs and splits into two, sickening in similarity, past and present muddled in the way they weren't meant to he. Hiromi drew the line. Then, and now. And even before that: Nanami, and after Nanami, and he'd been so careful to not let the former spread into the latter like a contagion.
Then the blade comes down, and Hiromi feels the impact shudder through his body as he's flung backwards and into a wall.
Inattention costs. Carelessness kills here. He shouldn't have been distracted – but he's only a man, despite it all. How could he not be?
"Uh oh," he says, laughter bubbling up through the dust. "I forgot you had a temper, Kento-kun. But don't worry, turns out that I've got one now, too."
Hiromi straightens up. The impact probably would have put several other newly-made sorcerers out of commission. But Hiromi's stronger than that. He's powerful here, and it's a hell of a feeling to know it with Nanami staring him down yet again.
There's no making the decision for him this time. Hiromi will be the one holding the scissors, cutting the string.
It's as easy as breathing to manifest his gavel, to take a few swings and close the distance between them. Nanami gets hits in, and Hiromi can't quite get a grasp on what, exactly, his technique is — he still requires contact, he still requires his blade, but the blows hurt more than they should; it seems meticulous and precise, because it's Nanami, and then Nanami smiles.
"I can see you wondering. It's my technique," he explains. Nanami starts like the others, but unlike the others, Hiromi is interested. Despite himself. "The target is divided into tenths, and then I force a weak spot by striking at the ratio point of seven to three."
"That's…very you," Hiromi can only say.
In the background, he's vaguely aware of Itadori scrunching his face up. Well, at least that won't be his burden to explain. Or anyone's, if he can screw his head on straight.
Nanami is close enough to be within range of his Domain Expansion, and Hiromi should use it — he's not proficient at combat, lacks the strength and muscle memory and years of living, breathing, and dying sorcery that the others have. He's learned quickly the essentials of cursed energy, and made himself difficult to kill, certainly difficult to overpower, but all the same, he prefers to use his Domain Expansion as soon as possible.
Might as well get the trial over with before the execution, even if it's quick.
But now, he doesn't want to. He wants to see Nanami bleed, to touch him and bruise him and say look, here I am, you can't leave me behind. He's stepped into that world now, and he's made the small universe of these Games his own. Nanami can pry that from him like teeth.
And with the explanation, even though the next hit threatens to splinter the wood of his gavel and judders up his arm, into his spine, Hiromi begins to understand.
Nanami is trying to get this over with, he's tiring quickly — faster than Hiromi, who was never in as good shape and only has the advantage now because he's not coming into this fight injured. But Hiromi, even with the audience, is enjoying himself. More so than with the others. It got old quick, killing the weak ones. It turned into mercy.
And the strong ones, well. Some of them he found plain obnoxious. Thinking themselves the judges and executioners, all for bloodlines and a history most people have forgotten. Others were interesting to hone his technique on. Some even managed to escape him.
It occurs to him now that Itadori has done little to step in, though he plainly wants to. And it occurs to him that he's breathing heavily, his muscles aching, that Nanami is strong. Would probably have been stronger, uninjured.
But he isn't, and he's slipping up. Hiromi used to know all the patterns of his body; after devoting so long to memorising them, the rhythm of this fight comes to him easily.
And so too do the changes. But Hiromi has always been a quick learner, and a disciplined one at that. His blood sings, the gavel swings, and Nanami missteps badly enough to get caught straight across the chest and go flying. Hiromi feels it as a beat of his heart thrumming through his entire body.
Itadori cries out, punctuating the moment.
Belatedly, Hiromi realizes he's smiling. Nanami is sprawled on the stage, washed out in the light, and Hiromi strides towards him. Itadori is probably moving now, to protect his precious Nanamin — and isn't that a nickname and a half? — but Nanami doesn't need it.
He's stirring, pushing himself to stand already. Evidently there are some things he'll fight for.
"Come on, Kento. You're not just going to lie down and take it," Hiromi says, and lifts the gavel again. "Don't bore me. You were never boring."
"I aim to please, Higuruma-san," Nanami bites out. Sharper than he's ever been, perhaps than he was ever allowing himself to be, when Hiromi first knew him.
It's futile, though. Hiromi has him now. Domain or not.
"Not so clean a break after all," Hiromi tells him even though he knows better than to rub salt into these old wounds. But they've been cut anew, and he stings where Nanami's blade has carved at his flesh – he'll scar, where he hasn't before, and where he should have before. "How about that, Kento-kun. You were right. We should have sent the kid out of here."
"It was a bad joke earlier," Nanami says, nata too far to reach and Itadori bearing down like a meteor.
"What?"
"You were never that kind of lawyer, Higuruma-san."
The worst part of it is that he sounds fond. Resigned, but still fond, the way he used to.
Nanami, here, pared down to his core. And a boy carrying the type of weight Hiromi once sought to soothe.
"Leave him alone, Nanamin didn't do anything!" Itadori shouts. And then there's a body between him and Nanami, arms thrown wide, eyes bright with the sort of fire that aches to look at. It's enough to halt his swing.
"You don't know what he has and hasn't done. Everyone's guilty of something," Hiromi shoots back. He's not particularly averse to fighting someone this young — and not this youth, certainly. Danger seeps from him, it tastes gritty on his tongue.
A ghost from his past, and something screaming inside his head.
"Well, I'm guilty, too, only I did something. Not like Nanamin," the boy says. Itadori Yuuji. Sukuna's vessel, Hiromi now knows. A different case than the reincarnated sorcerers flying around the colonies, but perhaps a more dangerous one. "He's only ever tried to save people. But I — didn't."
"Itadori." Nanami sounds pained. He's sitting up now, struggling to his feet. His movements are uneven; if Hiromi finished off the boy, Nanami would be easy pickings. "It wasn't you."
"No, but it still was, wasn't it? See, Nanamin, I made the vow. I knew that it was a bad idea but I did it anyway, and." Itadori breaks off. He tries to smile, falters. This is an old grief, and Hiromi doesn't understand it. Can't understand it, why someone would do this without a trial, admit their own guilt, admit something they didn't do. He's facing death smiling, without an ounce of resentment.
"You did it for a good reason." Now this is an old argument if Hiromi has ever heard one, and it's utterly unlike the non-arguments that he and Nanami ever had.
"But I still did it, and I forgot, and everything happened anyway. It counts, Nanamin, and you can't take that from me."
Nanami looks away. Not at Hiromi, but up at the ceiling, his expression twisted. "No. But you're still a child. It wasn't a decision you should've had to make."
"I'm, uh. Not sure should really matters anymore," Itadori replies with a little laugh, too broken to come out of a teenager's mouth. Nanami must think the same thing, because he sighs deeply.
"No. But all the same, are we so guilty for the ones we couldn't save?" Nanami asks, quiet. He's talking to Itadori. He's bleeding quietly, knuckles white over the red spreading through his shirt. Hiromi feels seen nevertheless.
It's sickening.
And Itadori doesn't reply, just looks down, and, well. Hiromi can relate to that plenty.
"You can't save everyone," Nanami continues. It's like Hiromi isn't there, only he is, because Nanami wouldn't be that careless. This is for him too.
"Itadori. It was never your responsibility to save me." And this is not.
How close, Hiromi wonders, had it been? Sorcerers die like anyone else, some louder than others — but Nanami was never loud. No, he wouldn't be. But he is strong, not the strongest Hiromi has faced but his technique alone is a bad match. Some are. Some aren't.
"I'm still here, you know," Hiromi says, conversational an a way he doesn't feel. He wondered, and how he can't stop wondering. What happened to these two. What did it take, to turn a teenager into this, to make Nanami come in here and face him?
"Whoops," Itadori says with a little laugh, stilted and awkward and young. "I uh, well. Thanks for waiting?"
Hiromi somehow doubts he could have struck hard enough to end the fight in that moment. Itadori is watchful, he must be. Quick, too, and probably strong. He's confident but not overly so, and firm in his belief that he could put himself between Hiromi and Nanami and walk away.
"I could have killed you," he says anyway. And then, hypocritically: "You shouldn't get distracted like that. I was going to. I still might."
"I know," Nanami answers. His gaze is clear and steady. "Do what you want, Higuruma-san. You've always done the right thing before."
Abruptly, the fight goes out of him. Wind vanishes, his sails deflate, and he's left dead in the water once more. Hiromi fights the urge to laugh, scrubbing a hand over his face instead. He hasn't done the right thing in a long time. He's not sure he ever has.
But to confront Nanami's apparent faith in him is impossible.
"Alright," he says. Too fast, a little too manic, but better that than pure resignation. "Fine. Fine! Take the points."
Take everything, he means. Itadori's shoulders slump in relief, thanks tripping out of his mouth, the kind of sincerity that stings because Hiromi knows that even now he doesn't deserve it.
But Nanami holds his gaze, and the unscarred corner of his mouth curls up in a smile that feels like coming home.