[HARUKI]
It was morning. Again.
Haruki was once again standing in front of Tadashi's chambers, wanting to speak with him. They hadn't finalized their chat on his training day, and honestly, he still needed answers.
He needed approval in some way because he couldn't just leave. So here he was, at the very door that he came to every morning, having formulated the words at the back of his mind, waiting to just voice them.
The past four days, he had managed to pace endlessly before walking back without even lifting a finger to knock. It was a harsh reality he was tethering himself to, but desperation had driven him to this point.
His brother was alive.
Tadashi had ascertained it. Now he had to go and see for himself. To figure it all out. What went wrong? Why was he in the enemy camp? What he had been doing all these years.
And he needed Tadashi to have his back in this decision.
'Just a knock, Kira. It's not like you won't be seeing him at the breakfast table and training sessions as always,' Haruki thought to himself. He needed this. It was different whenever he trained with Tadashi.
He had also noticed that the past six days, Tadashi had been training him hard, like he wanted to see where the limits were. Haruki always got up regardless.
"If you're not going to knock, come in. We need to talk," Tadashi said exasperatedly from the other side of the chambers.
Haruki didn't hesitate.
Didn't wait for Tadashi to change his mind.
Oh, he had never opened a door that fast.
"Tadashi," he acknowledged.
"Your men are back from battle," Tadashi stated, not mincing his words.
He was seated behind his desk, noting something while talking to Haruki. He hadn't yet lifted his head, but he didn't need to do that for Haruki to hear the cruel truth in his words.
Haruki's breath knocked out of his lungs.
"You left them, and now they are back. Wounded. Numbers that don't match what always heads in with you and comes back before you. Just a quarter, the whispers say.
"That's the size of the original army you matched to Craenia that returned from battle," Tadashi said, finally lifting his head.
Haruki stared.
He didn't know what to say to that. They both already knew what had happened, but damn if he wasn't rubbing his guilt. Was this about guilt, or had the choice that Haruki had made had cost the kingdom?
"That's impossible," Haruki responded.
He had wanted to ask if they were really that number. If they had truly come back today. He had heard the bells, sure, but the bells had been ringing nonstop from the palace for the past six days.
It was nothing new.
Still, he should have expected this, or worse.
"Oh, really? Did you perhaps portal back to the battlefield you abandoned?" Tadashi asked.
"They could handle themselves," Haruki argued.
This time, Tadashi stared at him. Really stared. As if to ask him if that was the only response he could muster after everything. After the worst battle he had ever initiated.
"They trusted you."
"I trained them for anything," Haruki said as he walked closer.
Tadashi scoffed.
"To be ready for when you abandon them? I didn't realize that was in my manual when I trained you," Tadashi added humorlessly.
This was not a conversation that they could have been having, and yet circumstances had roped them to this point. The past wasn't pretty, and the present?
It was crueler and worse. It was terrible and knew nothing of a past that had been crafted carefully. Everything was slowly falling apart, and Haruki didn't even catch up just yet.
"To be ready for anything," Haruki insisted, as if he was going to take the weight of shame off his slumped shoulders.
"Why did you call me in?" he shifted the subject, hoping that maybe, just maybe, his time, Tadashi wouldn't tell him back off again. He hoped Tadashi understood why it was important for him to go and see Konno.
The sword was already proof, but he needed to see for himself one more time if Craenia's Konno really was his brother Daikiro Konno. Maybe he was going around in circles, hoping for the impossible, but then it had been ten years.
Ten years of avenging a death that had not been. Still, it didn't make it any easier knowing that his brother was possibly alive.
Instead, it had him with more questions than answers. More desire than what he could table, and coupled with his guilt that he was already running away from, Haruki really needed that approval from Tadashi.
"Yeah, right… you're not going after the boy," Tadashi said, and Haruki stiffened.
"Excuse me?"
"You heard me. There are more crucial things for you to do than chase after a ghost you let whip you shamelessly," Tadashi said passively, staring into Haruki's eyes.
He could see the fire in those eyes, the disagreement, and he knew what this was, one that Haruki would not take lightly. This wasn't just about going to the masked warrior.
This was about what would happen if he went.
Haruki seemed to have been thinking a lot about it because Tadashi could see the defiance in his eyes.
"I am going to find him. I waited ten years for him," Haruki argued defiantly.
Tadashi laughed.
"Waited? Is that what you were doing all this time? What were you trying to do when you started slowly poisoning yourself in bits as you waited for the final battlefield so you could join him in the afterlife?
"Is that what we call that now? Waiting?" Tadashi laughed humorlessly. This was incredulous, and the way Haruki's eyes shifted was a clear sign that the warrior didn't know what he was about to get into.
Times had changed.
Who he was seeking had changed.
Surely Haruki had to have known that by now, seeing as the brother he loved so very dearly, the one he swore to always be beside, had been the one to stab him twice for the first time in several years, no?
"Don't."
"Don't what, Haruki?" Tadashi asked, making sure to mention his name, the same name Haruki had been running away from for so long.
He had never used that name after losing Daikiro, and now Tadashi was blasting it like it meant nothing?
Haruki didn't like that at all.
He could feel his body shaking, and he hated how much this was affecting him.
"My name. Is. Kira. Kira, Tadashi. Kira," Haruki insisted.
Tadashi stared amusedly at the warrior in front of him.
Looking at him now brought memories of the twenty-eight-year-old kid he had saved from himself. Of the boy he had found curled up and unconscious because of grief.
He had nothing in his eyes back then. Not willing to fight back, just a defeated warrior who had lost everything and wanted to die. It had been the most heartbreaking sight for Tadashi in a while back then.
Because he had not expected that the boy would be that broken over his friend's loss. And he had learned over the years that Daikiro was never really just a friend.
He was a brother.
He was family.
Daikiro had been the only person Haruki had in his life.
"You can't even accept your own name, and you expect the boy to recognize you?" Tadashi stated like it was nothing.
Those words… they struck harder than they should have.
Oh, Haruki hated that, so he drew his sword.
Pointed it at his master.
But Tadashi stood still, unmoved by the sword pointed at him.
Haruki stepped forward. His aim never changed.
"He is not just a boy," Haruki grumbled fiercely.
"Oh, really now? Enlighten me, Haruki. Who is he then? Your brother? The one you swore to live and die with together? The one who didn't even recognize you? Who's been to battlefields and won, yet you didn't get so much as a letter from?
"Even despite flattening kingdoms in his name? Who is he, Haruki, huh? Do you think he also took your name like you did, because if we are talking about the same masked warrior from Craenia, then Konno is the ONLY name he goes by.
"Not Haruki. Not Kira. Not Daikiro Konno. He is just Konno," Tadashi spat, and that was the last straw for Haruki. So, he swung at his master, harshly, only stopping himself when his blade was so close to Tadashi's neck.
Tadashi didn't flinch.
Not once.
Not even when he could tell that the warrior could easily cut him down.
He. Didn't. Flinch.
"Don't call me that. Don't say his name. don't… You don't know him as I do. He is… my brother. I have to go to him. I have to find him," Haruki rambled as he stared at his arms.
He knew he was being irrational, that he was not letting logic lead as always. But then this was about someone he cared about. Someone he had met for the first time. Someone who was so scared of losing again.
Haruki was not sure what would happen to his brother this time. He wasn't sure if Konno was going to get hurt again. If he was going to be punished because he didn't kill Haruki, it was haunting him.
It had haunted him for days.
Now he needed to go and make sure Konno was alright. It was the only thing he could lean into. Because without that, he was not sure what he would be able to do, or what life he could live.
He had spent the past decade fighting the name of his brother... Now that the brother was alive, Haruki was conflicted. He just wanted him back. Why was that so hard for Tadashi to understand then?
"Do you want me to draw my sword, Haruki? Is that what this is about? You think you finally gotten to the stage when you best me and go after the ghost of the boy you knew? Are you certain you want me to draw mine?
"You do know that once I do, I won't stop, and I won't expect you to stop either. The only way you go after that boy today is if you best me and kill me. You want to do that? You ready?" Tadashi asked calmly.
Anyone would have been terrified of the target of General Kira's fury, yet to Tadashi, the general was just a boy. A kid he was determined to make into a better person. A kid he had saved for no reason at all, other than humanity, right?
Haruki staggered.
He knew what that was.
He understood what this would mean.
Yet his anger wouldn't let him pull back the sword from where it was, so close to cutting Tadashi's neck. It was the one thing that seemed so close to discussing, so why couldn't he do it?
Why was he hesitating?
What the hell was he even to make of this now?
"I can't lose him twice, Tadashi…" Haruki sighed desperately as his sword trembled in his hand. And when it slipped from his fingers, Haruki let it clang to the ground, while he leaned against the closest wall.
"I won't survive, this time," he added in defeat.