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Yuzuriha is scared.
Confused, terrified.
Her palms layered in the grit of stone dust. Her knees shake. Bright pink at the caps and blooming yellows and purples from the rough terrain. Her weight held only from the adrenaline prickling her spine.
A man stands in front of Senku — but Yuzuriha doesn't think he looks much like one, not in truth. He's more like a boy. A boy masquerading as a man. His armor his muscles, his charisma his blade. But those are blankets — covering his mind. A daydream wish, a world only a child could think was possible.
"You know," the man speaks. His tone wistful, almost even glad. Yuzuriha finds it pungent. Each soft spoken word like a fine razor to the raised hairs on her neck. He tries to quell the unease, to make himself approachable, understandable.
But a razor is still a razor, even when sheathed.
"You might have been my first real friend."
And there is history here in the makings. A book still ripe with crisp pages, four pages are filled with a millennia to go. But Yuzuriha thinks, that perhaps. The story of the new world starts with these two.
And she is nothing but an orient detail, standing dumbly above a bubbling spring and gunpowder. Helpless to watch as Senku's sardonic smirk softens into something sad. His teeth dry from harsh breaths, throat clawing with longing.
"Maybe." And Yuzuriha wonders when myth becomes history.
"It'll be painless." Tsukasa she remembers is his name. Dipped in molasses and written with fear. Taiju spoke of as something to be feared yet awed.
Senku spoke like he was a rival, but now. Recalling his words, and a tilted head to the clear blue sky. Yuzuriha thinks Senku might've known Tsukasa more. Spent more time with him, it had to be the case considering their reason for running. For Senku to learn the tales and omens of his lies.
History isn't the truth, just what the winner says it is.
That horrible spear is twirled with expertise, coming to hover almost placidly in front of Senku's nose. Yuzuriha's stomach sinks as it catches the light. Glinting clean and pure.
Senku is the lamb to be slit, Tsukasa will be the one to do it.
And she will be their witness.
"No." Senku gives the pointed end a slap, knocks it out of his orbit. Like he's done a thousand times before with her and Taiju's friendly touches — but this isn't friendly. This is death, a rebellion cleanly and quickly severed before it is war.
A scream builds in her throat, but only a strangled mewling sound comes. Too faint for either boy to hear, both boys too lost in each other to care.
"If you're going to kill me." Senku steps forward, a pebble rolls over Tsukasa's bare feet. The one that is wild, untamed. That feels the spring's heat underneath the surface warming his dirty soles.
Senku's shoes aren't much better, but he is clean, as one can be in this primitive world. With a glint in his carmine eyes that spoke of ruthless intelligence, a bitterness as his eyelids narrowed, blocking out anything that wasn't the two of them.
"Then you're going to be a man about it." He closes the space between them — and Yuzuriha wants him to stop. To run far away from here. To take his place on the mantle, but her death wouldn't mean anything. Not to this stone world, not to Tsukasa who looks at Senku as if he is something to be revered. But rejects him all the same.
"You're going to look me in the eye and feel my heart stop."
A hiss curled behind fangs. Tsukasa's nose wrinkles, an impregnable force that has been hairline-cracked. Yuzuriha thinks she sees something inside of his already broken mind disintegrate.
Senku's breath comes in short, ragged beats. His stiff neck pops as it cranes to keep Tsukasa's apex eyes on him.
There is a longing between them, a bridge that was never crossed over three thousand years ago. Now too decrepit and untrustworthy for either to take the first step.
I can mend it. Yuzuriha thinks, desperate and frenzied. I'm good with my fingers, let me fix it.
Tsukasa's throat bobs with swallowed spit. As if he is trying to stave down bile and vitriol. Senku looks calm, silent fury hidden as well as he hid every other part of himself.
Tsukasa hand swallows Senku's entire throat, finger tips touching as he makes a perfect ring around lean, pale skin. The digits flex, uncork themselves just to reattach. Each stroke of skin like fire and brimstone. Hell, where Tsukasa will surely rest after he has culled the unworthy to keep him company in the afterlife.
Silence is hardly ever quiet. It is an insistent noise. A buzz in your skull that never leaves — an eternal companion when it is dark, and you are a lonely little thing.
Tsukasa's bicep flexes, lifting Senku to the tips of his toes. The scientist's lips curl, gnashing bunny teeth that would never touch a lion's pelt.
Yuzuriha's eyes slip close. Because she is lonely, and she is scared, and she is confused.
"We could've been great." Tsukasa whispers.
"Tough shit." Senku spits.
There is a brief second, fragile as a bird wing. Where two lips connect — hidden from Yuzuriha's closed eyes as the silence is yet to be filled.
It is a gentle kiss, an apology. An unwanted promise of a future one does not believe in.
All Yuzuriha hears is the sickening crunch of bones being broken, the thump of a dead body.
And her own scream.
"Where is Senku?" Suika chirps. Eyes blinking behind the glasses of her melon helmet.
"He's off to the woods." Kohaku notes absentmindedly, bringing a hammer down on a collection of ore until it was fine powder. "Again."
She grunts, partly from exerting strength, partly in frustration.
Senku had been doing that a lot recently, wandering into the thick forest of Ishigami Village to forage in the snow. Each reason as to why always had something to do with science things Suika didn't necessarily understand, but she knew that Senku was smart, and that she liked him, and she trusted him.
"If that idiot keeps going out there he's going to wake up a sleeping bear." Magma huffs, curls of white air puffing in front of his mouth. "Though, if he did…"
"Don't get any bright ideas, Magma." Kohaku's lioness glare cuts to Magma, as sharp and cool as finely chiseled ice. "You still wouldn't be village chief."
Magma grumbles something under his breath, adult words that Suika wasn't allowed to say yet. But the little girl only giggles at their antics, accidentally breaking the tension as Kohaku glances down fondly at her.
"Why don't you go see if you can find him? If he has woken up a bear come straight to me so I can save him. Okay?"
"And if there isn't a bear?" Suika wonders aloud.
"Tell him not to spend so much time out there, it's cold and we don't need his skinny ass freezing to death either."
Suika puts her feet together with a straight back and gives her strongest salute to Kohaku. "I'll be making myself useful!" She sings.
And with that, she bundles her legs in her melon helmet and bounces off to find their chief.
All in all, it isn't hard. The forest has always been Suika's playground. If anyone knew it better than her she would be surprised.
That, and. Senku's footpath in the snow makes it extra easier. They're only lightly covered by snowfall but still perfectly visible — especially with her newly acquired glasses — and Suika toddles along. Humming to herself and wishing she would've brought Chalk along for his sense of smell.
"He sure went out a ways." Suika crouches, when she's followed Senku's footsteps for ten minutes and there still is no sight of a strange head of blond-green hair.
Suika only barely acknowledges the oddity of it. Lost in the childish giddiness to spend time with someone she likes, to be proven useful in making sure Senku is okay on her small but incredibly important mission.
Continuing her trek, Suika barely notices when the footpath stops being two. And becomes four.
"Four? But Senku didn't leave with anyone from the village." Chrome and Kaseki had been there when she left, so had been Gen. Unwillingly dragged into their antics with tears in his eyes, Kohaku and Magma had been the ones she last spoke to before her mission. And all of the other villagers as well had been preoccupied with assigned tasks — even Ginro had been working under Kinro's stern eye.
Fear lances through Suika as quick and hot as a lightning bolt. "Did Senku really wake up a bear?! I have to make sure—! I have to save him and be useful!"
But…
"There's only two." Suika mumbles to herself. "Do bears walk only on two feet? No, not all the time. Gah! Senku! Why did you have to come out so farrrrr!"
She only allows herself a moment to sulk before Suika's resolve becomes as hardened as steel. Her tiny legs parting wide as she makes her deceleration for all of the forest to hear: "don't worry Senku! I'll come find and save you!"
Bundling along, bouncing off trees. Suika notes when the footpath becomes fresher, Senku's footprints distinct against the large ones that followed beside him.
"He's close." Suika thinks, in between excitement and fear. When a noise catches her ear — barely hidden by the blanket of snow and her helmet.
"-Kasa…"
"Senku!" The girl gasps, pushing all her might into one last incredible bounce — eyes flicking every which way and then some for her favorite scientist and chief.
What she sees isn't a bear, but almost something worse.
"You can't keep coming out here." Senku's arms are crossed over his chest. His body posture would seem languid to those with fuzzy eyes, but Suika's eyes are healed by her glasses. And so, she notices the tightness in his arms, the foot that digs into the snow that's surely slowly becoming soaking wet. And the small twist to his flattened lips.
Suika doesn't know if it's fear or anger, or both.
Ducking under a brush of greenery that hadn't been stripped bare of its leaves, Suika watches as the man who could only be Tsukasa from Senku's descriptions, towers over him with ease. Chestnut hair dancing in front of the cracks in his face that marked him as the same kind as Senku.
"I'm not hurting anyone." Tsukasa replies, calm. Suika hadn't thought much of what Senku's greatest foe would sound like. If she had to guess — she would've assumed like Magma. Gruff and growly, his intentions in the tone of his voice even if he didn't betray them outwardly.
But Tsukasa sounds nice. Pleasant, like Ruri when she recounted the hundred tales.
Senku growls. Thumb pressing between his pinched brows to soothe a brewing headache. "We're enemies, Tsukasa. The people of Ishigami Village are—" Senku's features contort. "They're my people. You being out here could hurt them."
Suika felt so warm she could melt the snow. It's not that Senku was uncaring, cold. But his affection was often lost in translation, forgotten because of the grueling work he put them through.
But Senku was one of Ishigami Village's people, as they were his. And Suika needed him to be safe.
Tsukasa frowns. "Then tell me to stop."
"What?" Senku grunts flatly, eyes still closed where he massaged his forehead.
"Each time I come out here. You follow me, escort me back. But you never tell me to stop." Tsukasa takes a step forward, and Senku takes one back. Hands now twisting at the side of his outfit that Suika didn't know to call a dress or not.
"Tsukasa…" the name is whispered, a warning. Or maybe something Suika isn't old enough to understand yet.
Tsukasa is undeterred. He herds Senku backwards until his back hits a tree, effectively pinned with nowhere to go because each of Tsukasa's arm cages him in.
Suika ducks lower, knowing she should run away and yet unable to.
"Tell me to stop coming here, Senku. And the next time we see each other will be when winter breaks."
Their breaths curl in the winter air, melding together before disappearing. As fleeting as these secret meetings. Fleeting as these two.
"When winter breaks." Senku's chin rises defiantly, even though he is the one surrendering. "This ends."
Tsukasa smiles, barely hidden by the wisps of his dark hair. "So be it."
Suika knows that Tsukasa is strong — it's the whole reason they've been preparing their arsenal of non-lethal weapons and defense measures. And she knows that Senku despite all his wit and intelligence, is rather light and weak.
But there is a power in how swiftly Tsukasa grasps Senku from the backside of his thighs to lift him. Power in how Senku's legs wrap around Tsukasa's hips. It's as much of an embrace as it is a snare.
Senku's back hits the tree again, harder. Shaking snow off tree branches to fall down below.
"Do you hate me, Senku?"
Senku stares, annoyed. "Are you going to keep asking me questions or are you going to kiss me?"
Tsukasa smiles. "Deflection."
"Keep boring me, I'll let you walk back to your knock off batman cave as hard as stone— pun intended."
"Hard as stone…?" Suika whispers to herself. Still kept hidden and unseen— especially now that she knows this is a moment she shouldn't have intruded on. It doesn't seem wise to make a threat when in such a vulnerable position, but whatever it means. Tsukasa yields with a low noise in his throat, scarier than any bear could be.
Opposing foes meet in the middle with a kiss. Soft, devouring. Not what Suika would call gentle, like when Kohaku sometimes kissed her forehead. Or when she saw the villagers embracing their wives and husbands. But it is not angry either, nor hateful.
Suika would almost call it mourning.
"Tsukasa." Senku gasps between the moments the other man's lips fall to his neck. His soles dig into Tsukasa's hips. Punishing, beckoning. The Emperor of Might meets him once more.
"Senku." He groans. Reverent yet despising. And Suika knows this isn't for her, that she's not supposed to see this.
Carefully maneuvering away, Suika quickly follows the footpath back to Ishigami Village. Where snowfall has hidden the farthest of Senku's footprints, where it will hide this meeting that was never supposed to take place.
"Suika!" Kohaku yelps as Suika's melon head hits her full force into the chest. "Are you okay? Is Senku okay?"
Is Senku okay?
"He's fine!" The girl says, too shrill to be convincing. "He was uhm- he was picking mushrooms!"
"In the… snow?" A blonde brow quirks.
"Mhm! Mhm!"
"Alright then… as long as he isn't being eaten alive." The lion girl snorts and lets Suika's dangling feet down.
"I think Senku is being eaten alive." Suika thinks to herself, grateful her pinched expression is hidden behind her mask.
Later, when Senku returns. Rosy cheeked and lips plump in a way that could not be from snow—
Well, no one really knows why Suika frets, embarrassed. When he's around.
Hyoga couldn't believe he lost.
It seemed like everything was going his way — destroying the cave, killing Tsukasa. Having Senku in his grasp to cut and carve until the scientist broke to his whims.
Because Hyoga wasn't a stupid child like Tsukasa. He knew and understood how crucial Senku was to the Empire of Might — science wasn't the enemy. Science was the perfect tool to curating Hyoga's ideal world. To maintaining it in a perfect balance.
After three days of being revived, Hyoga realized how weak Tsukasa truly was.
The realization hadn't come as a surprise. Tsukasa was a haunted thing. Haunted by the ghost of a small girl, haunted by his past life, haunted by a scientist he killed in his own words.
"Ishigami Senku… is alive."
Those words hadn't sparked rage like he thought. At being outwitted, for a threat long dead coming to rise once more.
No, what Hyoga saw was hope. Relief, repentance. Tsukasa was still adamant on his perfect world, with Hyoga and Ukyo as his right and left arms to ensure it got there.
But Tsukasa had changed after that, too. Had become tired, stopped directing his men and allowed Hyoga to. A foolish decision, now punctuated by the hole in his lung.
Tsukasa wanted to be defeated.
To be put in the ground in Senku's stead.
And Hyoga was happy to oblige.
And now here he is — on the ground, electrocuted but not dead. Ishigami Senku didn't have it in his heart to kill, that's what Tsukasa should've been for. Perhaps, what Hyoga would've been for in another life. His body twitches compulsively, numb. Yet on fire. There'll be long lasting damage for sure, but not enough to kill the threat he imposes entirely.
Hyoga will get his way, eventually. He's always been a patient man and can be a patient a little longer.
A panther waits to strike when the time is right.
"Tsukasa…" his vision isn't gone, disoriented? Yes. But not gone, and the sound of Senku's voice — weakened by fatigue, threaded with a fear that should not come for a man who had been his enemy five hours ago. Is a lull for Hyoga to glance at the two of them.
Senku crawls with his elbows, grunts as a rock jabs the meat and blood trickles lazily. While it pours from Tsukasa's wound.
"Tsukasa." Senku calls again, until he's by Tsukasa's side and with great effort lifts to his knees to assess the dethroned Emperor of Might.
"Alive…" comes the faint response. Probably the weakest Tsukasa has ever sounded.
"Not for long." Hyoga muses, but can't laugh because it'll hurt too much.
"M'gonna get you fixed up." Senku promises.
Impossible.
"I'll find a way."
I pierced his lung.
"Science will find a way."
Perhaps it could, but not fast enough.
"Senku…" Tsukasa's clammy hand cups Senku's cheek, his skin is still wet. Hair limp and tickling his shoulders. The fondness of it drives Hyoga's vision to clear itself.
Senku is crying. It's a sight Hyoga will treasure forever.
"Shut up, don't talk. When you talk I can't think and it's annoying." Nimble fingers press into the gaping wound of Tsukasa's chest, punching out a small wounded noise. His fingertips come away coated in blood.
"Senku." This time, it is said with gritted teeth.
All of the scientist's inane, hopeful ramblings cease. From a madman to a quieted, scolded child.
"I'll fix you." Senku repeats again, uncaring as the hand that once snapped his neck slides to his nape once more. Pulling him down softly with the last of Tsukasa's strength.
"Ah." Hyoga thinks, with his vision finally swallowed by the dark edges. "So it's like that."
He should've known what Tsukasa's strange grief was for.
It shouldn't have taken a kiss for Hyoga to realize it.
Mirai loves fairytales.
The little mermaid is of course, her favorite. But there are other ones she likes a lot too.
Such as: Cinderella, Aladdin, Beauty and The Beast.
Looking at her brother now, Mirai thinks if Tsukasa were to exist in a fairytale. It would be Sleeping Beauty or Snow White.
"It'll be okay, Mirai." Another small girl who had taken quite a liking to her, and who Mirai had taken quite a liking to, too. Holds her hand, squeezes it like she can squeeze out all of Mirai's anxiety and fear. "Senku is really smart, if he says he can fix your brother, then he can."
"Thank you, Suika." Mirai whimpers, a sad and terrible sound that no child should ever make.
Mirai watches as the strange man who had seldom left her brother's side unless there was an absolute need to, tends to the machine he's crafted. The one that's supposed to keep Tsukasa, safe, cold. A bed for his sleep, a coffin for if he doesn't wake up again.
The thought makes her eyes swell with water.
"Come on." An old man ushers the children and others out. "This is not for us to see."
"They're both the chiefs of their respective tribe." A blonde woman dressed in blue says sagely. "We should respect them and give them some time for their goodbyes."
Mirai has not said her goodbyes because Tsukasa says you only say that if you're never going to see someone ever again. And Mirai has been promised she will see her big brother when he wakes up — so she kissed his cheek and said goodnight instead.
It's easy to slip away when you're as small and frail as her, Mirai has always been ghost-like. Hidden by Tsukasa's shadow when their father raged.
Just one more goodnight kiss she thinks, small feet padding back to the cave. That's all, just one more. I won't ask for anything else.
"Here at the end, and you make small talk." Her big brother wheezes, a noise that should've been the calm laugh that always made her feel better.
Mirai skids to a halt, peering around the corner of the cave's entrance to see the scientist man kneeling on the ground over her big brother's bed.
"What's wrong with a little small talk?" The man mumbles, forlon.
Mirai feels her heart break for him.
"Senku… if I wake up—"
"When." Senku snaps with enough heat to warm Tsukasa's cooling body back up.
"When I wake up, will you allow me the chance to make it right? To fight at your side, for science, for you."
"Of course." Senku nods, his hand falling in the coffin. Mirai doesn't see Tsukasa weakly kiss his knuckles, but she knows it's there, Tsukasa always was so loving. "You always had a place at my side."
"How foolish… I've been." Tsukasa's voice is fading, growing weaker by the second and the seconds are fleeting.
"Yeah, you were pretty dumb." Senku snickers, hollow and empty. "But I forgive you."
If Tsukasa is Sleeping Beauty, or Snow White. Then Senku is the prince who has come to save him.
Mirai's fingers are slick against the stone entrance, but she watches with widening eyes as Senku leans into the casket. "So you better wake up, you big idiot."
Mirai has watched dozens and dozens of times as Ariel kissed Eric, but that scene could not compare to the beauty of her brother being kissed by his savior, his prince.
Tsukasa is already asleep in the moment that Senku rises, and the top that comes over her brother's sleeping body.
She wonders, hopes, that Tsukasa will knock from the inside. That he'll sit up and stretch and yawn sleepily, but he'll he wide awake. Because Senku gave him the power of true loves kiss.
But Mirai is quickly realizing that this isn't a fairytale.
Hesitantly, Mirai steps inside the cave. "Is my big brother asleep now?"
Senku jolts — head snapping over to the little girl at mach speed, red in the face but softening as Mirai draws nearer.
"He is." The scientist makes room for Mirai to sit near him, her frail arms laying atop the icy surface.
The two of them fall into a silence, not terse but not comfortable. Awkward, with a brewing sense of responsibility for this little girl who looked sourly at where her brother lies.
"Senku?"
"Yes?"
"Do you love my brother?"
Carmine eyes narrow, calculating. Then soften.
"Maybe."
A beat of silence.
"I could."
Mirai draws circles above Tsukasa, already lonesome for his warm hugs and lion pelt.
"Good, Tsukasa hasn't been loved enough."
Maybe it isn't a fairytale, but Mirai thinks that fairytale love could exist.
She sees it between Senku and Tsukasa, and knows the ending will be happy.