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We’re not heroes, he thinks, then pauses, unable to finish his thought.
It was easier with the girls when they understood the implicit meaning of his words without him telling them. Because they weren’t heroes, not with the blood that stained their hands in their youth, innocent lives lost to meaningless battles. He bogged them down with his contradictory values and dragged them down to his level, infecting them with his internal conflict. Whoever lives is the winner.
We’re not heroes.
The words form around his tongue like seafoam collecting on the shore, but they’re gone long before he can bring himself to say them out loud.
Rengoku, in every sense of the definition, is a hero. He faced the Upper Moon Three all on his own and actually lived to tell the tale, not a single one of the two-hundred passengers unaccounted for. And what was Tengen left with? A mass casualty. The livelihood of tens of thousands of people crumpled into dust. Distant wails of agony that spanned hundreds of miles. The lives of those that were lost beneath the rubble and the smouldering ash press down on him like an anvil, a weight for each life.
-
“How is retirement treating you so far?”
Kyojuro crosses their swords together, one hand pinned to his back, the other one pushing his blade towards Tengen’s chin. A fair fight, as he called it.
“It’s nice,” Rengoku says. “I get to make up for the time I lost with my family.”
“Nice? Is that all?”
“Yes?”
“That might be the blandest word I’ve heard you use.”
Rengoku throws his head back when he laughs, deflecting his sword. “I mean it!”
“Of course you do.”
Tengen jumps back to avoid a strike to his legs. They take this moment to catch their breaths, chests heaving.
These sparring sessions are far too infrequent to call it a routine, so they happen spontaneously. Tengen would float an open invitation to Rengoku to his house, and the latter would arrive shortly after, bubbling with far too much excitement. This stimulation of their mind and body, they need it. Nourishment to the muscles they spent years honing, and to the discipline that is impossible to hammer out of them.
What can he say, the title of Hashira will haunt you to your grave. In more ways than the obvious.
“But if I’m being honest,” Rengoku ventures, scratching at the empty socket underneath his eyepatch. He doesn’t continue right away, pausing to gather his thoughts. Rengoku is the kind of person to speak with intention, even to make seemingly ordinary statements. He likes that about him. The fact that he doesn’t waste his breath on empty words.
Tilting his head slightly, his face breaks into a grin. “I’m so bored I could tear out all the hair on my scalp.”
“There you go,” Tengen says, smiling at him.
-
The day Rengoku wakes up from his coma is an auspicious day; bright and warm, a pleasant summer morning. The Butterfly Mansion is packed like a fish market, overflowing with the voices of people he can’t identify. Bundles of slippers are piled one on top of the other in the genkan, tossed to the side thoughtlessly. It just goes to show how wide of an imprint Rengoku left on everybody.
Muffled laughter rattles through the doorframe of the room. It feels like a sinkhole opening up beneath his feet.
Tengen twists the doorknob open before he can change his mind.
“My, my. What a noisy commotion you’ve got here,” he announces, looking around the room. He puffs his chest a little, smirking when the slayers realize (albeit belatedly) that it is indeed the Sound Hashira!--- gaping before apologizing profusely for the disrespect.
They leave and the room falls silent, like petals on the ground. And all his bravado slips from his grasp the moment he sees Rengoku, wearing nothing but a thin nightgown. His chest heaves up and down in irregular motions, pale skin accentuating his hollow eyes, and he’s connected to far too many tubes for his liking.
He’s breathing, goddammit. Gratitude is the only thought that should cross his mind.
One of Kocho’s attendants fiddles with the IV line. The poor girl’s hands shake beyond control as she fills a syringe with clear fluid, and she yelps when she catches Tengen looking at her. He can’t believe he was desperate enough to bring a group of untrained amateurs on his mission. Hindsight is a bitch.
“Let me take over,” says Shinobu, not unkindly.
“S-sorry.”
“It’s fine, Sumi. You can help Aoi make lunch for our guests.”
The girl bows to every person in the room before exiting. Tengen doesn’t bother to meet Shinobu’s cold gaze.
Makio is the first to speak, saying in her gentle voice, “You can’t imagine how happy everyone is to see you.”
Suma hands over the bouquet of flowers she insisted on bringing, and Rengoku’s baby brother accepts them as gracefully as he can with his tear-stained cheeks, unable to look at them. Hinatsuri helps set it aside for him. There’s barely any room left on the bed-side table for anymore gifts. The scent of all the other flowers is almost nauseating.
Tengen points to his missing hand, then to the patch around his eye. “Looks like we’re matching.”
Rengoku’s cracked lips curl into a thin smile, and the wave of an awful emotion collides inside him.
He shouldn’t have come here.
Not here. Not now. Not today, not today. Why’d it have to be today? He left the corps, remember? He didn't get to participate in this glory with everyone.
An electric thrill shoots down his spine at the feel of icy fingertips curling around his wrist.
“Let’s…talk,” Rengoku rasps, his voice threadbare from misuse. It tugs at his heart in the most awful way, because this was the same guy who could whisper behind ten walls of concrete, and he would still be able to hear him.
“We’ve got time, big guy.” He squeezes his knee, an empty reassurance. It’s all he has to offer.
-
At dinner, Rengoku is the perfect guest as usual, liberal with his servings and even more generous with his praise. Makio and Suma howl with laughter, endeared by his blunt yet earnest nature. Hinatsuri nudges Tengen’s knee when he falls silent for too long.
They take their teacups to the backyard, just him and Rengoku, sitting in companionable silence. The sun dips beneath the coniferous trees, a blazing orange glory stretching beyond the rolling mountains and shrubs of heather. A wild breeze sweeps their bangs away from their face. The world is an oyster the size of his backyard, overlooking ancient cliffs and snaking valleys.
“You look different.”
Tengen casts him a look over his shoulder.
“Different, how?”
Tengen can’t see him from his peripheral, but he feels the weight of his gaze all the same.
“Different in a good way. You look…” Rengoku exhales and his voice softens, twinged with a smile. He would kill to see the expression on his face right now. “You look nice.”
He closes his eye to suppress his sigh. There’s that word again. It’s boring, it’s bland, and worst of all, it’s safe.
He’s growing weary of this charade they’re playing, this monkey dance that’s going nowhere, and he feels awful as soon as the thought appears in his head because wouldn’t that make him the world’s biggest fucking hypocrite? Sitting in the backyard of the house he built with his three loyal wives, wishing upon a lucky star for the man next to him to fill in the unspoken words he wants to say, but can’t.
Once a weak man, always a weak man.
The only thing he can do is sit with the conflicts and contradictions stewing in his chest.
“Must be all the sleep I’ve been getting lately.” A non-committal answer.
“Sleep.” Rengoku chuckles morosely. “I can’t remember the last time I slept through an entire night.”
He doesn’t understand why the disappointment in his voice sounds so all-encompassing.
-
Elbows on the mattress, slouching in a stool that is far too small for him, the shadows lurking in the room enveloping his face, Tengen rests his forehead in the cradle of his clasped hands. In prayer, in absolution, it’s not for him to decide. He recounts the events of the Entertainment District to Rengoku in a single sitting, months after his first visit. A detailed manuscript of events, he leaves nothing out: not even the ugly parts where he almost forced Kocho’s untrained attendants into a battle with an Upper Moon, and made the three boys go into disguises instead. Not the parts where his desperation felt so suffocating, he started to lose sight of the mission objective, of his duties as a Hashira. And the most humiliating of all, how the only reason he was able to defeat the Upper Moon demons is because of their juniors, when he’s the one that’s supposed to look after them. Just as Rengoku did.
“I’m relieved.”
Rengoku looks down at Tengen’s hands, smiling a little. The eyepatch across his eyes still looks jarring, what with cotton bandage underneath it, smelling faintly of fresh ointment.
“Relieved,” Tengen repeats, dumbstruck.
“To hear that they are so competent now.” Seated in front of him, there’s no escaping Rengoku’s gaze. His smile widens, eyes crinkling around the corners. “I don’t have to feel so guilty about shirking my responsibilities anymore.”
-
They don’t see each other, not for a long while. No letters, no spontaneous visits. He resigns himself to a life without their connection. Who knows, maybe the other man was relishing this distance between them.
The girls are the ones that propel him into action, demanding that they are tired of seeing him feel sorry for himself. Tengen laughs in spite of himself.
He makes the long journey to his destination.
It turns out, Rengoku is a difficult man to get a hold of.
“Oh, him!” A grubby-face kid purses his lips, adjusting his basket of chopped firewood. “The new dojo master!”
Huh.
The boy’s directions lead him past the Rengoku residence, much to his surprise, and takes him to a small hill across the town. A sorry looking dojo sits on the top, with matted windows, and a bamboo roof that has seen better days.
Rengoku flings the door open. His eyes nearly bulge out of skull when he sees who knocked. “You’re—Uzui!”
Uzui does his best impression of a normal greeting.
“Hey.”
He shows him inside. The hardwood floor is damp, smelling faintly of soap. A mop and bucket lay on the floor abandoned.
Rengoku’s face turns pensive, not looking at him directly. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m sorry,” he says instead, the sincerity he’s been bottling since the first day at the Butterfly Mansion coming from the gut. “I’m sorry that it took me this long to reach out to you. I’m sorry I’ve been such a coward.”
His eyes soften. “Nevermind that now. I understand why you felt the need to retreat.”
It shouldn’t be this easy, his forgiveness.
“Let me introduce you to my little passion project.” Rengoku waves his arms around the empty room, eyes gleaming. “The owner of this dojo said he was too old to look after the place. And he gave it away for free!”
Tengen drags his finger over the grainy surface of the wall. “You’re looking for an apprentice?”
“While that would be nice, yes, I think I will start off by providing basic training to the Mizunoto slayers. Finding a successor for Flame Breathing is no easy endeavour.”
Tengen shakes his head, smiling fondly. This man and his unwavering sense of responsibility.
Rengoku’s expression mellows, inexplicably. He turns his back to him, looking out the open door. The town looks so small from up here.“If you take the train from the next town,” he goes. “It’s only a three-hours journey from your house.”
His words linger in the air, allowing time for them to sink in. Rengoku finally turns around. An expression on his face he has never seen before.
“You can join me. If you wish to.”
Tengen’s pulse roars inside his ears.
He wishes he possessed even an ounce of the bravery that courses through Kyojuro’s veins.
“Can I think about it?”
Kyojuro wasn’t a man like him. Plagued with inaction but haunted by desire.
Even so, he smiles at him understandingly. Tengen is undeserving of his grace.
“Take your time. I’ll wait for your answer.”
He casts his eyes around the room, the ghost of a smile on his face.
A room that holds a thousand promises.