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It’s raining, and there’s a child crying outside.
Tighnari can barely hear it over the rain, the thunder, and the way it echoes in his sensitive ears. But there must be some sort of animal instinct he has from raising Collei, because he can hear the crying of a child.
He doesn’t usually go out whenever it’s lightning like this; heavy rain, sure, but not thunderstorms. His rangers don’t hold it against him—hell, most insist he stay inside. He’s not afraid of it, not exactly, but something about it…
He exits his hut anyway, and successfully makes it down the bridges without slipping. He squints, and he spots a certain bright blue color over at Shirin’s hut. It looks like Kunimitsu, and he’s suddenly much more interested.
When he gets closer, he’s finally able to see what’s going on. Kunimitsu is, for some godforsaken reason, holding a small child, who is wailing and crying like there’s no tomorrow. Shirin is trying to take him, likely to give some kind of medical attention, but the toddler has a tight grip on the fabric of Kunimitsu’s clothes, head buried into his neck.
Tighnari can’t help thinking to himself, is this how all children gravitate to Kunimitsu? But then he thinks about that one occasion in the city where he’d made a different toddler cry whilst looking for their mother. He’d looked disgusted afterward, but Tighnari wonders now if perhaps he had more so been disgusted with himself.
“What’s happening?” Tighnari asks, voice barely heard over the rain.
Kunimitsu acknowledges his presence without a scowl to be seen, which is remarkable. “I found him hiding away in a tree trunk. It was after the storm started. I didn’t see any injuries, but…”
The child may be deeply sick, and being left alone in the forest isn’t a good sign. Parents are always careful with their children out here, where it’s so dangerous. This isn’t the first time a child has been left to the rangers, but Tighnari is unsure whether he’d just gotten lost or been abandoned.
“I’m trying to check him over, and get him some new clothes and everything, but—“ Shirin shouts over the storm, nervous and tired. “—he just won’t let go of Hat Guy.”
“Here, just come in with him,” Tighnari says, ushering them all inside. If they stay outside the medical hut too much longer, they’ll all have hypothermia. Well, save for Kunimitsu… “We’ll figure out how to unglue him later.”
Kunimitsu has to hold the child while Shirin and Tighnari dry him off and check him over, moving his arms to different positions in order to let them work around him. For his part, he’s being very patient with them—even the toddler, who still hasn’t stopped crying.
Tighnari tries to soothe him as best as he can while Shirin gathers her supplies. Talks to him in a nice quiet voice, and while it does stop the screaming, it doesn’t stop the tears streaming down his face. Kunimitsu eventually stands up and starts walking circles around the hut with him, staring blankly ahead.
“Where’d you find him?” Tighnari asks, and if it’s actually to get information or to keep Kunimitsu from zoning out, he doesn’t know.
“Somewhere between here and the city.” Kunimitsu pauses, sighing a little. “I didn’t see any injured parents around or anything.”
His voice is gravely and detached, but it seems to settle the child a little. “He likes the sound of you talking.”
Kunimitsu looks down at him. His expression has remained carefully blank this entire time, maybe a little frustrated, but now he just looks tired. “What’s your name?”
The child doesn’t respond, simply sniffling and staring up at him. They engage in a staring contest for a moment before Kunimitsu sighs and looks away, continuing to pace.
Eventually, the walking lulls the child to sleep, and Shirin is able to detach him from Kunimitsu and settle him into one of the beds. He’s uninjured, and likely won’t have more than a cold come morning. She yawns, carefully hiding it behind her hand, but it doesn’t escape Tighnari’s ears. Injuries are very common during the storms, and she’s been on shift all day. Her last patient, one of the rangers, had left and retired to their hut probably right before Kunimitsu arrived.
“You go to bed.” Tighnari waves her away. “I’ll watch him. And wake you up if anybody else comes by.”
“Are you sure, General Watchleader?”
She must be really tired if she’s reverting to that title. Tighnari sits down and gets comfortable to make a point.
After she leaves, he looks to Kunimitsu. “Thank you for bringing him in. Our only spare beds are in here if you’d like to sleep.”
It’s a formality, and Kunimitsu raises an unimpressed eyebrow before taking his own seat. Truthfully, Tighnari kind of expected him to make out into the storm again. Weather doesn’t usually deter him, and even though Kunimitsu is a mean guy, Tighnari doesn’t consider him the type to leave a child out in a storm. He does, though, kind of expect him to leave afterward if there’s no personal connection. Then again, it only started lightning a little while ago.
As if to remind him, a loud burst of thunder and lightning ring out nearby, and Tighnari flinches, ears flattening.
Kunimitsu glances at him. He doesn’t seem like he’s going to say anything for a moment, just look at him with blank eyes. He seems to be searching for something, even when Tighnari looks back at him with a confused expression.
“Are you afraid of lightning?” He finally asks, voice low.
Tighnari tilts his head. Out of all the questions, that’s not what he expected. “I wouldn’t say I’m afraid of it, just… uncomfortable.”
His lichtenberg scars had long faded since the day of his injury, and as a Forest Watcher, Tighnari can’t afford to be afraid of any type of weather condition; it's the rainforest, for goodness sake. He can, however, admit that whenever he goes outside during lightning, sometimes he can fool himself into thinking his hair is standing up, just as it did before he got struck. Sometimes, he will imagine the ringing in his ears that happened afterward.
Kunimitsu is quiet again, finally deigning not to bore into Tighnari’s soul with his eyes. Instead, he stares ahead at the wall, which isn’t much better. He doesn’t seem well today.
Tighnari’s wondering how to ask about it when Kunimitsu speaks up again. “Is it for a specific reason?”
Again, Tighnari is caught off guard. He considers how to respond. “I’ve always been uncomfortable with storms. It’s the ears,” he says, gesturing to the top of his head. “The vibrations are amplified, and I can hear all the echoes and such.”
Kunimitsu nods slightly.
“…But I suppose part of it has to do with an injury I received a few years ago.” Tighnari doesn’t really go around telling everyone about it, but he’s also not one to hide his effects unless he believes it may worry someone badly. And Kunimitsu is not a worrier, just strangely curious. “I was struck by lightning.”
It’s quiet again, for even longer this time. Tighnari can’t blame him; it’s hard to reply to a revelation like that. No amount of feel-bad niceties will do anything, and Kunimitsu is not one for niceties either.
Which is why it’s really weird whenever he quietly says, “I’m sorry.”
For some reason, a deep pit hollows out Tighnari’s stomach. Maybe it’s the display of actual emotion he’s seen from Kunimitsu today. Maybe it’s the dissociated way he was acting earlier compared to now. Maybe it’s just talking about the lightning strike in general. He can’t place it.
“Nothing to apologize for.” He gives his natural response anyway, the one he tells to everyone. “It’s not like it was your fault.”
An odd sense of something like déjà vu, but not quite, compels him, probably from giving this statement so many times to well-meaning individuals.
Kunimitsu crosses his arms and leans back in his chair. “Sure,” he says, after a moment.
Tighnari blinks, trying to puzzle through the miniscule amount of information Kunimitsu has given him. The lightning strike was due to a ploy by The Doctor involving the Electro Gnosis they’d used to create the mechanical god. Kunimitsu should have nothing to do with that. Unless, maybe…
“What’s going to happen with the kid?” Kunimitsu asks, glancing over to the bed.
Tighnari has a hard time catching back up to the conversation, looking between them both. “Ah. You said you didn’t find any parents. Usually, standard protocol is they stay here for a day in case their parents stop by, and then we take them to the city.”
“Do you think anyone will come for him?” He asks, in a tone that sounds a little tentative compared to how he usually speaks. Tighnari frowns.
“…In cases like these, they’re either runaways or have been abandoned.” He sighs. “He’s a bit too small to be a runaway.”
Kunimitsu breathes deeply, despite the fact Tighnari knows he doesn’t actually need to breathe. He wonders if it’s calming, anyway, for him to do that. “Yeah. He is.”
Tighnari feels a little restless, or maybe nervous. He’s never seen Kunimitsu like this before, and he’s very unsure how to navigate it. He thinks of Collei, of her different phases as she slowly got used to living in Gandharva Ville. There was a phase near the beginning where she’d lash out, scream, yell, do anything to anger anyone in hopes that everyone would push her away or show their ‘true feelings’ toward her. After a long period of time passed where no one treated her any differently, maybe even kinder, she stopped being aggressive. Instead, she closed in on herself.
Maybe it was guilt from all the pent up anger she’d let out. Tighnari is sure that some of that was present. More than likely, a lot of it was from the time she spent working through her trauma in a space she realized wasn’t going to hurt her for doing so. She went through a lot of episodes, staring at blank walls for hours and regarding everything with a strange, sad, yet emotionless feel. Tighnari remembers feeling helpless then, too. There wasn’t much he could do to get her out of it other than let her ride through it and be there when she crashed. Sometimes, if she seemed comfortable enough, Tighnari would ask about it and let her talk.
A lot of the time, though, whenever she asked him questions during this time, he’d turn around and ask her the same thing. Every menial question. It allowed her to learn more about others and the world, but also feel more grounded in herself. If she didn’t know her favorite color, she could think about that instead of her endless trauma. At least, that’s what Tighnari hoped.
“Are you afraid of lightning?” He blurts out, and can understand the confusion that dawns on Kunimitsu’s face when he turns his head.
He does think about his response, though, which is nice. Tighnari doesn’t think he’s afraid of it, but he also can’t think of another reason he wouldn’t be leaving by now other than the child in the bed. And that seems like an even stranger conclusion. Maybe he reminds him of Durin?
“No, not exactly,” Kunimitsu replies, slowly. “Why?”
“Just wondering.” Tighnari shrugs. “You asked me.”
Kunimitsu blinks, then turns away again. “I suppose I did.”
“Is it the kid, then?”
Tighnari hears the hitch in his breath even when his expression remains unchanged, and feels a strange satisfaction. Got him, he thinks, and then immediately feels a little bad for it.
It’s quiet for so long that Tighnari thinks Kunimitsu isn’t going to reply, so he feels a little more guilty. “You don’t have to tell me. It’s none of my business. Anyone would be worried about a child that small.”
“No, it’s only fair.” Kunimitsu breathes out, almost a sigh. “You told me about your injury.”
“Sure. Because I wanted to.”
“Hm.”
It quiets again. Thunder booms once more, and Tighnari had almost forgotten there was a storm happening. He looks over to the child, who is unbothered and sleeping peacefully, all curled up. He wonders how Collei looked when she was that small.
“I just… want to know if his parents show up,” Kunimitsu finally says.
Tighnari nods. A valid reasoning, even if he’s sure there’s more to it with Kunimitsu. “If you want to leave, you can. I’ll be sure to let you know.”
Kunimitsu hums understandingly, but makes no move. Tighnari wants so badly to ask more questions. Was he similar, as a child? Abandoned, with no one around? Did someone save him, or did he have to crawl his way through like Collei did? Tighnari never gave up his theories about him being subjected to The Doctor. Then again, had Kunimitsu ever been a child at all, in the normal sense?
Tighnari is first and foremost an academic. He eats poison to further research, for god's sake—he likes learning and he likes to think about the what-ifs. He thinks his theories tend to be pretty good as well; his early graduation speaks of that. It’s just… nothing ever sounds completely right with Kunimitsu. Like he’s missing a significant piece to the puzzle.
They don’t talk again the entire night. Tighnari retrieves some work to do—setting up a new unit for Collei and checking the Forest Watcher schedules—and settles in. He gets pretty zoned in on his work, so he doesn’t make an effort to speak again. Kunimitsu doesn’t either, but he mainly just sits in the chair in the same position all night, like a porcelain doll. It’s a little scary, to be honest, but Tighnari is used enough to Cyno and Alhaitham.
The storm doesn’t let up until the early hours of the morning. The boy wakes up soon after the sun rises, and he seems ready to start crying again until he sees Kunimitsu. Tighnari leaves again to make him some easy food, and he comes back to see Kunimitsu sitting on the bed with the child, who has now taken his hat and spread it across his lap, messing with the various charms. Kunimitsu gives Tighnari a slight glare, and he’s a little offended until he realizes he’s definitely sporting an amused smile at the other’s expense.
After the boy eats, Shirin comes to check him over again and she and Tighnari take a walk outside, far from the hut, to discuss the boy’s options. It’s there that it happens.
Tighnari’s ears pick up the woman’s shouting before she appears in the trees. “Help! Please!”
“Calm down,” Tighnari tells her, rushing forward to help. He quickly roves his eyes over her to check for injuries, but finds none besides the occasional scratch on her hand, which is normal in the forest—especially for someone digging through the brush. “What happened?”
She falls forward into his arms, sobbing and catching her breath. “My son—we lost him in the storm last night. Is he here? Did anyone find him?”
Hopefulness spreads through Tighnari. “Brown hair and brown eyes? With a gray shirt?”
It’s a very broad category, so Tighnari can only hope it’s the right brown-haired, brown-eyed kid with a gray shirt when the mother shouts, “Yes! Yes, that’s him!”
Tighnari leads the woman up to the medical hut, where Kunimitsu is still sitting with the boy. The child jumps up immediately upon seeing his mother, running to her. She’s just as fast, picking him up and holding him close to her chest. “Misagh! Oh, Misagh, I’m so sorry…”
Shirin gets her a glass of water while the two reunite. The woman has all but fallen to the floor, clutching her sobbing child. At least this time, he’s sobbing for a more-or-less good reason.
Once the two of them have both calmed, the woman drinks her water with one hand while combing through her child’s hair with another. “I’m so sorry, I— We live on the outskirts of the forest, and you know how children his age get when they learn how to run. They want to go everywhere!” She takes a deep breath, and a sob comes out with her self-deprecating laugh. “By the time we noticed he had made it out, it had started lightning outside. My husband— he’s sick right now, and he said if I went to look for him, it’d be a death wish for both of us. I’m not the most hardy.” She sniffles, wiping her eyes. “Thank you for finding him.”
“Actually, you don’t have one of our rangers to thank for that,” Tighnari says with a smile. He gestures to Kunimitsu. “My friend here was out on an errand and brought him here when he found him.”
The woman instantly whips toward Kunimitsu, who has been trying to blend in with the wall. It doesn’t work so well, considering he’s primarily made up of blue. “You found him? Oh, goodness, thank you. How can I repay you?”
“You can’t,” he says, and then immediately winces. “I mean, don’t. I don’t need anything.”
The woman stands, handing off her water and patting her son on the head before immediately pulling Kunimitsu in for a hug before Tighnari has the chance to stop her. She mutters into his ear, but Tighnari’s own ears are able to pick it up.
“You saved my child’s life,” she says. “I’m sorry I cannot repay you. You have a very kind soul. Your mother must be very proud of you.”
Kunimitsu doesn’t hug her back, but she isn’t dissuaded. She simply pats him on the shoulders and goes back to her son. Kunimitsu’s eyes are wide and confused, and his mouth slightly open like he wants to say something, anything, but can’t.
A loud chorus of barking echoes outside, all the dogs bouncing off of each other as Amir gathers them up. Shirin glances outside and smiles, leaning down to the boy. “Would you like to see the dogs before you leave?”
The boy, Misagh, nods excitedly. His mother smiles even wider, taking her boy’s hand, but turns him around to Kunimitsu again. “Say bye to the nice young man, Misagh.”
It’s now that Tighnari realizes he hasn’t heard the boy speak since they found him. But Misagh looks up at Kunimitsu with a smile and wave just as cheerful as his mother’s and says, “Bye.”
Tighnari doesn’t expect Kunimitsu to respond, but he looks over anyway. His hat is still laying on the bed, and he looks inexplicably younger without it. Or maybe it’s because there’s no furrow to his brow, no angry frown or bored eyes. Kunimitsu looks… sad. He’s good at hiding it, Tighnari will give him that, but there is a certain something to his eyes that give his otherwise blank expression a sense of melancholy.
“Bye,” he says, returning Misagh’s wave with a slight raise of his hand.
The woman gives everyone her happiest nod and thanks before taking her boy to leave with Shirin. Tighnari is left alone in the medical hut with Kunimitsu, and he’s not entirely sure how to deal with it.
“She was nice,” he settles on.
Kunimitsu puts his hat back on, and it’s like it gives him his anger back. His face is turning rather complicated, like he doesn’t know what to feel. “She lost her son in a thunderstorm.”
Tighnari blinks. Is that what he’s upset about? “Every parent makes mistakes. I did the same thing with Collei, once.”
“You did what?” Kunimitsu asks, looking remarkably offended, and Tighnari is almost worried he’s about to be on the receiving end of a fight. Good to know he’d even defend Collei against her own guardians, at least.
“Granted, she was a lot older.” Tighnari can laugh a little now, recalling it, but he’d been scared out of his mind when it happened. “It was actually for a reason similar to yours. A mother had reported their child missing during a storm, and she went looking for them. She found her, but they had to take shelter and she had to defend her from a horde of monsters. That’s how she got her Vision.”
Kunimitsu’s face takes that complicated look again, a mix of confusion and contemplation, among a lot of other things. Tighnari continues anyway. “It wasn’t my fault she ran off. Could I have locked her in her hut and watched to make sure she didn’t leave? I mean, yeah, but that would’ve just made things worse. And I couldn’t predict that she was going to run off, anyway.
“The mistake isn’t what makes us. It’s what we do afterward.” He gestures outside to the mother and the child. They walk over to the ledge to watch Misagh play with the dogs. Amir’s loud laughter echoes off the buildings. “She came here as fast as she could whenever the storm stopped. And her husband was right; just because someone found her son doesn’t mean someone would find her if she got into trouble. Now they know he can run off rather quietly, and act accordingly. Do you get it?”
Kunimitsu doesn’t answer for a while, instead opting to watch as Misagh and his mother finally walk away. She waves up at their hut, and Tighnari waves back and smiles for the both of them.
“I guess I do,” he finally says. He sounds petulant, but there’s a note of sincerity there.
“It’s alright. Now you and Collei can bond over saving small children,” Tighnari tells him. For someone like Collei, who hadn’t been saved as a child, saving another one gave her a great deal of self-confidence and trust in herself. He hopes it’s the same for Kunimitsu, and that he catches the underlying meaning.
Instead of anything pertaining to that, he says, “Collei got a Vision. Not every child is that lucky.”
Tighnari gives some sort of bitter laugh. “No, they aren’t. That’s part of why I cherish her everyday. Even when Eleazar was present, even when she was terminal.” He pauses. “I know I could have lost her that day, but that is always a chance. You never know when it’ll happen. No one can account for every possibility.”
Kunimitsu hums, and it seems like something approving, if not still contemplative. “You’re a good guardian.”
A rush of awe and happiness passes over Tighnari, because he doesn’t think he’s ever heard a compliment come from Hat Guy’s mouth. Not even to mention what he said. It’s a nice feeling, for sure. Then, he thinks back to what the woman had said to him, just a little bit ago. Your mother must be very proud of you.
I just want to know if his parents show up.
Tighnari is first and foremost an academic.
It might be because of the all-nighter, because Tighnari doesn’t usually consider himself an emotional person. But he has a very sudden urge to cry.
Kunimitsu wouldn’t like that. In fact, it may just make it so he closes up again, detaches himself and runs away. Tighnari knows how to deal with a person like him. If he goes too far, everything will reset. You have to take baby steps. He can’t cry here. And he can’t cry when Collei wakes up, because she will cry too. Cyno will be back tomorrow. He’ll cry then.
So he takes a deep breath, pushes it all into a neat little box, and sets it away for later. That is one of the many differences between him and Kunimitsu, he thinks, is that Kunimitsu does not set his emotions and trauma away for later. He pushes it all into a junk pile and hopes it never returns, but it all will at some point. Tighnari’s just glad it was with him, and not with someone who would freak out more, like Kaveh.
He takes another deep breath and settles back into his body. “So,” he says, “am I your first ever compliment?”
Kunimitsu immediately shoves Tighnari away, spitting his usual vitriol as he stalks off, and Tighnari can’t help but laugh as loud as he can. He walks the opposite way after saying goodbye, to his hut, but something tells him he won’t be getting sleep after his impromptu night shift, even after all the hours he stayed up. He has a lot to mull over.