#seeing him all off balance from the anesthetic has brought back some uncomfortable memories of when we had the kitten with fip

[aminta]

lmfao all this stress over watching him and helping take him to the vet and now keeping an eye on him with the surgery aftercare I feel like ive aged 50 years 💀💀💀💀

[sunbrights]

fic: brick by brick (4/10)

fandom: danganronpa characters/pairings: fuyuhiko kuzuryuu, peko pekoyama + the SDR2 survivor squad. kuzupeko. tags for other plot-relevant characters will be added on AO3 as chapters are posted, yadda yadda. rating: m summary: They meet again, after the Neo World Program has torn them to their foundations: hope, despair, and the yawning debt of their history, waiting to be answered. It's up to them to rebuild, from the ground up, no matter how difficult the work or unfamiliar the tools.

No one can lay the mortar of your recovery but yourself.

read on AO3

She is sixteen.

Zipping herself into the surfboard case is a simple, practical maneuver. She has hidden herself this way before, in tighter spaces and under more pressing circumstances. Saionji won’t wake for at least another ten minutes. The young master has always been meticulous.

The anesthetic used to subdue Saionji was his. The candy now cupped in Peko's left hand is his, as well. The letters, the bat, the staged crime scene. It is all his plan, and she is only another piece in it.

(The flimsy plastic mask laid out next to Koizumi’s corpse is not his. It is hers, brought from the supermarket.)

She doesn’t need to close her eyes. The case is well-made and zips completely; there is no stray light peeking through the cracks. She does anyway, for the sensation of it, calming and centering. The most difficult part is still approaching, and she must be prepared for it. She has been a sword, and now she must be a shield.

(He told her not to come, and she did not listen.)

She can hear the ocean clearly, waves spilling over the sand just beyond the walls of the beach house. She lets the sound absorb her focus, and ties her breathing to it: slow rush in, slow rush out.

She is a tool.

She has only ever done what her young master wished of her.

It is impossible for her to will anything, when hers is only an extension of his.

(Please let him be safe.)

Saionji wakes, in groggy increments. She staggers to her feet, breath quickening into panic, and fumbles with the door of the closet. It swings open. The smell of Koizumi’s blood has begun to grow putrid in the heat of the room.

She screams.

Peko’s heart beats an unsteady rhythm in her chest. It isn’t painful, but it is uncomfortable. She curls her body forward, chest held in, and she is not in the surfboard case at all. She is upright, knelt on the floor of her cottage, hands folded in her lap. It is early morning, her time for meditation. She is alone.

Who screams?

She is sixteen, and the scream is Saionji’s. She is twenty-one, and the scream is her own. To her ears, they sound the same. She isn’t sure.

Someone knocks on the door.

The sound is harsh. It jostles the pieces of herself back down from wherever she lost hold of them, and they reassemble themselves in her skull, jagged and ill-fitting. She flattens one hand over her mouth.

(The blade carved through half of her outer ear, clipped her glasses off her face, and sliced through the ends of her bangs on one side.)

“Yo, Pekoyama.” Owari’s voice is clear and serious. She only waits a handful of seconds for a response. “I know you’re in there. I ain’t goin’ anywhere, so you might as well come out.”

Peko finds her feet. She goes to the door; Owari is waiting for her on the other side, arms folded into sharp points across her chest. Despite Peko and Souda’s best efforts, she has lost weight.

“C’mon,” she says. “I got what you need.”

*

Owari’s exercise routine is comprehensive: half cardio, half flexibility and strength training. She practices it three times a day, one session immediately after every meal, each lasting an hour or more.

(Peko always suspected it was unhealthy. “You wanna try to convince her, be my guest,” Souda told her once. “She wouldn’t listen to me.”

She hadn’t listened to Peko, either.)

It’s too early for this to be part of her regular schedule, but Owari leads her down to the beach anyway. She walks in silence, arms behind her head, and Peko follows three steps behind her.

“We’re going to miss breakfast,” Peko says.

“Eh, It’s fine. Not like it's goin’ anywhere.”

“Owari.”

She groans. “You’re worryin’ too much! This ain’t about that, okay?” She stops short in the sand, long enough for Peko to catch up to her. “Do you want my help or not?”

She doesn’t, not particularly. “If we don’t meet with Souda the way we agreed, then—”

Owari doesn’t listen. She jogs a short distance down the beach, kicks her shoes off, and squares her feet in the sand. She cuts wide grooves in with her heels, and Peko understands: it’s to give herself better traction and leverage in an initial attack. She curls both hands into loose fists and lifts them to her chin.

Peko says, “No.”

Owari must have not even considered the possibility of that response. “What?” she demands. “Why?!”

“There’s no reason to,” Peko answers, and leaves it at that. “We should leave. Souda will be looking for us by now.”

Owari doesn’t move. “Bullshit,” she says. “You think that’s gonna work on me? You’re a damn liar, Pekoyama.”

Peko’s legs burn, just from standing.

(The blade split her left knee from the back, entered through the joint and shattered her patella on the exit.)

“None of these guys get it,” Owari goes on. “Hinata and Sonia and Kuzuryuu… They all want it to be in your head. But it’s not. It ain’t the same for you and me.” Her eyes drop to the sand, and her forehead creases with concentration. She struggles to find the words. “It’s… You wake up, and it’s like nothing works anymore, y’know? It can’t be you, ‘cause this ain’t your body. You’re not… you. You get what I’m saying, right?”

A breeze rushes in from the ocean. It picks at Peko’s loose hair, tossing it around her shoulders and into her face. Her hands shake when she reaches up to push it back behind her ears. The right one is still there, flexible and whole, and it feels like it belongs to someone else.

“Yes,” she answers.

Owari nods. It’s subtle, small; Peko would never call her nervous. She digs her heels in deeper. “So fight me already.”

Peko looks down at her feet. In the time they’ve been talking, she has already sunk into gedan. Her palms itch. Without a weapon, Owari will have an easy advantage over her from the start.

She shores herself up. She digs her feet into the sand, sneakers and all, and raises her fists.

Owari whoops, and bounces on her heels. “Alright!” Her fists clench, bones and tendons standing out beneath her skin. “That’s what I’m talking about! Let’s do this.”

There is no formal beginning to the match, no referee or whistle or bow between opponents. There is nothing formal about Owari at all, only her bare feet and bent knees, ready to spring. All of Peko’s knowledge of her fighting style comes from what few scattered, mismatched memories she has; she can only be sure that Owari is instinctive, improvisational, and unpredictable.

Anticipation beats a quick, familiar rhythm in her chest.

Owari’s patience breaks first. She leaps, and whatever effect her malnutrition has had on her body, its impact on her speed has been minor to negligible. It's a wild, direct charge; she clears the stretch of sand between them in three long strides, and aims her elbow at Peko’s ribs.

Peko’s returning block comes up a fraction of a second too late. She catches the hit with the flat of her forearm, but not soon enough; the force overpowers her foothold in the sand, and sends her sliding back on her heels.

Owari presses her advantage. She is small, but not fragile; she plants her feet, and lays the full brunt of her weight against Peko’s unsteady balance. It forces Peko to retreat, before she falls; she slides back and to the side, which leaves her left flank wide open. When Owari swings her arm down for the obvious strike, Peko grabs her by the wrist.

It’s a miscalculation, a flawed instinct that ignores the current limitations of her body. She manages to grab hold, but her grip is weak, and her fingers shake. Owari slips away from her, and drops to knock her legs out from under her.

She sees the maneuver before it comes. In that split second, she knows exactly what to do: she can spring backwards, dodge the sweep and procure some distance, then close back in while Owari is recovering. It is a sound, reasonable strategy.

However, planning her response is not the problem; the problem is that she thinks about it at all. Her body doesn’t simply respond the way it should, the way it used to. Owari drops, her sweeping leg connects with the backs of Peko’s heels, Peko's protesting knees give in, and she goes down.

She hits the sand on her back. It knocks air out of her chest and bright spots into her vision. The sand is rough and cold under her elbows. The sky is murky and dark above her head.

The threat bears down on her. There is blood in the sand already, and it’s his, spilled from the end of her blade. The Future Foundation has them cornered, surrounded. There is a whirr of old gears and grinding metal, all around her. She wants to seize something by the throat and crush it with her bare hands. She wants every punishing blow to come to her, through her, so that he can be spared. (Please let him be safe.) She wants more desperately than she has wanted anything in her entire life.

She scrambles to find purchase on her trembling elbows, her head too heavy on her neck. Her vision swims. Her lungs burn. (The blade sinks into her side and hangs there, loose, the weight of the hilt dragging it against the bottom edge of the wound.) She will not fail here, she cannot, as long as there is breath in her body—

Arms lock around her shoulders and hoist her upright in the sand. Owari’s voice is in her ear, out of breath, “Pekoyama! Get it together! C’mon!”

(It scrambles in her head, like she’s been plunged underwater. She is— sixteen. She is nineteen. She is twenty-one?)

She screams. She thrashes. Owari’s grip doesn’t break.

“I got you,” she says, over and over. “I got you.”

*

They are late to breakfast.

Preparations for Saionji’s initial recovery are beginning to grow hectic. They are three weeks into their six week timeline, and the hotel lobby is frequently empty, or close to it. Most of the others take their breakfast to work with them, or skip it entirely.

Today, only Souda and Hanamura are still there when they arrive.

Souda leaps from his seat by the window. He charges them, hands outstretched and flailing. “What the hell, you guys,” he hisses. “I was freaking out! I was about to blow a frickin’ gasket!”

Owari pulls herself away. “You’re always freaking out,” she complains. “We’re here to eat, aren’t we? So let’s eat!”

“Don’t give me that! You were supposed to be here almost an hour ago! I thought I was gonna have to call an alarm and everything!”

“This isn’t necessary,” Peko says.

“But—”

“Owari always planned to come to breakfast,” she says. “She was assisting me with something this morning.” He glares, but it’s mostly panic and fear. His hands shake so much he has to wring them. “It’s fine, Souda.”

Her upper back aches from the angle she hit the ground. There is a headache curling at the back of her skull, and the beginnings of twin bruises forming on each shoulder, beneath her sleeves. If nothing else, that pain is tangible. It is logical. It is real.

“C’mon!” Owari says. “What do we got left, huh?”

Breakfast is oatmeal, the same as most days. Hanamura has to warm some of it back up for them, which makes the consistency thick and sluggish. It is what it is.

“You’re really not letting me do my best work like this,” he sighs, when Owari snatches up the bowls. There are only two, one for each of them.

Souda sits with them, even though he must have already eaten. He draws his feet up into the seat, his knees under his chin. He’s at least calmed enough to not be shouting, anymore.

“I convinced Kuzuryuu to take his back,” he tells her, after a minute or two. “I didn’t want him to get all bent out of shape over nothing. If- y’know, if—”

“I understand,” she says. “... Thank you.”

“Don’t be thanking me yet.” He clenches and clasps his hands, then tucks them in the pits of his knees when they won’t stop shaking. “We still gotta get through today without everything going to shit. I haven’t been back out there since Hinata discharged you, you know. I dunno what we’re gonna find.”

She gets halfway through her breakfast before the remainder starts to look unappealing. She scoops up another bite, and balances her spoon against the rim of the bowl.

“Remember,” Souda is saying, “leave the door locked. Don’t open it for anybody, no matter who it is. Even if it’s Hinata, or- or me, or anybody. I don’t care what Kuzuryuu says. Just wait until he comes back with the key.”

“I understand,” Peko says.

Owari eats her entire bowl, for the first time in weeks. She scrapes the edges of it with her spoon when she’s finished.

*

The front door of the old building is locked today.

(Hinata has spent almost all of the past three weeks in the simulation room, bent over the main computer; she imagines there isn’t time for him to spend picking open the lock on the door. It’s for the best. Souda is too agitated already for there to be more laid on top of it.)

She knocks.

Fuyuhiko looks tired, when he swings the door open for her. His hair is mussed on one side, and the angle of the early morning light curves shadows under his eyes. “Hey,” he says, like he’s surprised to see her. “Uh, hey. C’mon in, we’re almost ready to go.”

“Souda wanted me to tell you he would be late this morning,” she says, when she steps past him into the hall. “He needed time to go back to his cottage.”

He shuts the door behind her. The deadbolt snaps into place more forcefully than it needs to. “Great,” he says, rattling the knob. “Fucking of course he did.”

“It isn’t his fault. Owari and I were late as well.”

He looks up at her, and then back down. “Yeah. I, uh. I noticed that.” He tests the knob again, and then the deadbolt a third time. “Was- everything okay? With Owari, I mean.”

“It was fine,” she answers. “She was helping me with something, that was all.”

It’s a transparent lie. Even without him looking at her, she knows that. But he does eventually, and when he turns to face her the lines of exhaustion in his face are more pronounced. The light in the hallway is limited; it will always make the shadows look more extreme.

“Right,” he says.

It’s a nice thought, getting to know one another again.

In practice, it is uncomfortable.

“So, hey.” He pulls the walkie-talkie off of the back of his belt. “Since Souda’s taking his sweet-ass time, you and me should sync up. Then we can get out of here as soon as he decides to make a fuckin’ appearance.”

She’s unfamiliar with the settings of the walkie-talkie; she keeps hers on her for emergencies, but has only used it once or twice in the time she’s had it. He shows her a fat dial on the top edge of his receiver, and twists it around to select channel six.

“So we can talk without anybody sticking their nose in,” he tells her. “And so that nobody else has to listen to us talk about how many bottles of meds there are all day.”

She copies him. Her fingers tremble on the dial. He doesn’t say anything about it, only waits the extra seconds for her.

When she’s ready, he holds his receiver up to his mouth and tests the connection. “How’s that?” he says, in crackling stereo.

His test is clear enough. She doesn’t need to, but she lifts her own receiver anyway, thumb on the button. His eyes crinkle at the corners in a way that warms her chest, grooves in his face that lighten it instead of darken it.

“Good,” she answers, and her voice reflects back at her, staticy in his hands.

*

The plan is straightforward: Souda assesses the hospital’s electronics, Fuyuhiko assesses the supplies, and Peko remains in the old building to relay stocking information for either or both.

“Remember,” Souda tells her, “keep the door locked.”

“And try not to go bored out of your skull,” Fuyuhiko says. “I’ll buzz you when we get there.”

They leave, and she waits, alone in the old dining hall.

Owari was right: the smell is musty, a little sweet with wood rot. It comes mostly from age and water damage to the building, as far as she can tell, and not any of the supplies. The storage itself is done with care, precision, and a somewhat eclectic method of organization.

She understands why the others may struggle to follow it. It's a non-standard, value-based system, rather than one based on type, name, or size. It’s designed to be confusing— or rather, common sense to those familiar with it, and inscrutable to everyone else. It was a hallmark of Kuzuryuu Daichi, the young master's great-great-grandfather.

Peko recognizes it immediately.

(She was instructed to learn it for an assignment concerning an indiscrete senior member employed at one of the clan's storage facilities. In truth she learned it much earlier than that, from the young master’s bookcases.)

He has repurposed it for the needs of the island, but the general concepts are the same. It only takes her a few minutes to parse the structure he’s designed, which leaves her with at least twenty minutes more to wait before he and Souda arrive at the hospital.

The whole building groans under the weight of the wind.

(The blade sunk into her right shoulder, perpendicular to the bone, then gouged backwards to her scapula. The tip broke the skin of her chest. She could see it, gleaming dark with her own blood.)

She counts left on the shelf of pain medications: nine over, and three down. When she nudges between two of the boxes there, her fingers find a skinny paper bag, the mouth crumpled and folded over. It’s just over a quarter full with almonds, tossed in cinnamon sugar.

Something swells behind her sternum.

She is seventeen, and he sneaks sweets when no one else will see but her, when it’s just the two of them, alone in his dorm room.

She is sixteen, and he waits on the beach while the rest of the class swims in the ocean, his hair gleaming beneath the tropical sun.

She is nineteen, and he looks at her—

The feeling skews cold and nauseating in her chest.

She refolds the lip of the bag more securely shut, and puts it back where she found it.

In the back of the room is a row of boxes, the brothers and sisters of the one left at the foot of her bed. They are not hidden, but they are squirreled away on a less-prioritized end of the young master’s organizational structure. They’re in alphabetical order: Koizumi, Komaeda, Nidai, Saionji, Tanaka, Togami, Tsumiki.

At the end, laid haphazardly aside, is an eighth: Kuzuryuu.

He tried to fold it closed, but the flaps are flimsy with age and use, and have since slipped open. The contents are still cast in shadow, from this distance, but the light catches on something metallic, gleaming gold.

(He’d had an heirloom revolver that he carried with him always, plated in gold from grip to barrel. He’d stepped over his father’s corpse to get to it. He’d shown it to her, smiling, soaked in blood. “Finally.”)

She doesn’t touch the box. It isn’t hers to interfere with. She turns her back, and then she is nineteen, feeling the warm swell in her chest when he looks at her, a splatter of hours-old bloodspray on his face, drunk on the despair she brings him.

Some days it is her defiance that does it. Others it is her obedience. His tastes change with the moment, the temperature, the direction of the wind, but she always knows what they are. She knows him, and he knows her. They are always in perfect, crumbling sync.

Some nights, she bends over him while he sleeps. She hovers the edge of her blade next to his throat, and considers the ramifications of killing him, not for the first time and not for the last.

It licks at her, blurs the edges of her vision, just the idea. To feel failure spill warm over her fingers. For the sword to turn against its wielder, that final, unspeakable betrayal, and then simply clatter into the dust, useless, unwanted, forgotten— her heart races. It’s indescribable.

Once, he wakes up before she can decide. His good eye flutters open, bleary and unfocused, and then he says her name, soft on her cheek. He tilts his chin back to give her more room.

He wants it, too, that surge of despair. If she dug her blade down half an inch, less, they could fall into it together. For a split second, they could give each other what only they can give, and it would be— everything.

The receiver on her belt crackles.

“Peko,” he says. “You ready?”

Her fingers are shaking. She fumbles with the button too many times, and it crackles again, “Peko?”

She manages it. The connection opens, and she breathes in. “I’m here. What do you need?”

*

The work itself is simple. He tells her what the hospital is currently running low on, she reports back what they have available, and between them they try to plan how much to allocate to support Saionji without running their reserves too low.

He is thorough. She’s never known him not to be. It isn’t only a matter of numbers, supply in and supply out; he weighs the relative needs of the people awake, takes into account likes and dislikes, and tries to predict the patterns of Naegi’s shipments— months of experience she has no concept of. He has spent a lot of time with his classmates.

“Hang on,” he tells her more than once. “I gotta switch off this channel for a second.” He asks the others questions, Sonia and Hanamura and, without much success, Hinata.

She thinks he may be used to doing the tabulation by himself. At one point he opens the connection and keeps it for several minutes without stopping.

“We should do more than just refill the pain meds. They didn’t help you or Hanamura much, but with Saionji it’s gotta be different, right? I mean- maybe. I don’t fuckin’ know. I need to ask Hinata, I guess, but it’s sure as shit not gonna be a bad thing if we have more meds than less.

“We should double-check the clothes we have in storage, too. If the plain stuff’s all we got, whatever, but she can’t go around trying to wear a kimono on day one. Better if we can head that off at the pass. Pillows, too. The ones we got over there are shit, but the ones here are even more shit, might as well at least swap them out.”

She follows the wall of the shelf while he talks, and marks off the corners of boxes with a permanent marker: pain medication, changes of clothes, spare pillows and blankets.

“Yo, Souda,” he calls, static surging around his volume, “what did you say you needed again? I know I packed some of the shit you cleaned up last month. If we’ve got enough to have some left over, you should just fix it up now. Whatever the fuck it is. I don’t want these things crapping out while she’s still in here.”

“Dude,” Souda says in the background. “You might w—” His voice clips at the end when the connection cuts out.

A moment later, it cuts back in. “Shit,” the young master says. “Sorry, Peko. I wasn’t... I can start over.”

“What does Souda need to repair the hospital equipment?” she asks. “There is a box of spare capacitors and a box of stripped copper wire.”

“Oh,” he says. “Uh.”

“It’s the capacitors, Pekoyama!” Souda calls. “This guy always forgets!”

“Understood.” She marks the box with her marker, and starts compiling her formal list. “Is there anything else?”

“Damn.” Even filtered through the walkie-talkie, the young master’s voice is warm. She cups the receiver in both hands, alone in the old dining hall. “Alright, then. Yeah, I got more for you. You ready?”

She is.

*

The young master comes back to the old building alone, at the end of the day. Souda found more wear on the hospital equipment than they anticipated, and stayed behind to evaluate and repair it.

“I’m gonna hang back here a while longer,” he tells her, when she meets him at the front door. He has a tall, red thermos tucked into the crook of his elbow. “If I can get this wrapped up today it’ll put us a whole week ahead of schedule.”

The sun is low behind him. The last amounts of warm color in the sky are beginning to bleed away; it’ll be dark sooner than later.

“Is there anything I can help with?” she asks.

His face changes: a downward pull of his mouth, a bunching around his eyes. She doesn’t know what it means. “You’ve been stuck in this dump all day,” he says. “You can take a break, you know. You don’t have to stick around.”

She thinks about the cottage, the darkness, the silence. She thinks about the box still at the foot of her bed, with Pekoyama written on it in neat, blocky letters.

“I’d like to,” she says.

The suggestion makes him uncomfortable. She’s learned to read that, at least, in the slight hunch of his shoulders. Still, he says, “Alright. Let’s do it.”

They start by pulling all the supplies they identified during the day. It takes time; the cache is meant to last Saionji, Hinata, and anyone on watch rotation the entire time she’s hospitalized. They have the approximate timeline of her long-term recovery Hinata provided, but even that is susceptible to variation.

(Hinata had told her that her own stint in the hospital was much longer than projected. There were some variables he couldn’t account for before someone was awake, he said. Even still, there had been supplies left over.)

They lay all the supplies out on the floor, to be counted and packed. She kneels when they’re ready, but the young master hovers, next to the shelf of plain t-shirts.

“Hang on,” he says. “I got one more thing I need.”

He counts out the same pattern she did on the opposite shelf: nine over, and three down. He reaches between the stacks, and pulls out a single packet of instant coffee.

“Hospital’s the easiest place to get hot water,” he explains, not quite meeting her gaze. “And we’re gonna be here for a while, so...”

“I understand,” she says. “It’s convenient.”

He sits cross-legged on the floor with her and unscrews the lid of his thermos. “At first I thought this was why Hinata kept breaking in here,” he tells her. “You should see him whenever we get more in. Bastard would demolish a month’s worth of the stuff in a day if I let him.”

She watches him tap the packet directly into the water. It dissipates in a rich, dark cloud. “Is that why it’s hidden?”

“Maybe at first.” He screws the top back on and swirls it carefully, one-handed. “He’s never taken any, though. And I don’t think it’s because I managed to pull a fast one on him.” He shrugs. “Guess I’m just used to having it there now.”

“I see.”

He’s patient with the coffee. He lets it steep, and doesn’t shake it. When it’s been long enough, he holds the thermos out to her. “You can have some,” he says. “I mean, if you want. I only have the one, uh, thermos, so we’d have to- to share, but��”

She looks down at it, and then back up at him.

“What?”

“Nothing.” She takes it from him; the metal is warm enough that it radiates up into her wrists. “Thank you.”

The exchange is complete before she’s even fully processed his question. He raises his eyebrows, and— he has been making a concerted effort this entire day. The onus is on her to do the same.

“I thought…” It’s always been a delicate subject. She searches for the correct phrasing. “I thought there might be an additional step,” she decides. “That’s all.”

“It’s instant, Peko,” he says. “Ain’t that many steps.”

“Yes, but…” She unscrews the stopper, and the smell wafts up to her, warm and, more importantly, bitter. “It’s… black.”

The confusion on his face smooths into understanding. He bends to inspect the open box of pain medication in front of him, but not before he flushes, warmth in his cheeks. “So? So what? I like black coffee.”

It’s there again, the old, familiar swell in her chest. “I see,” she says, as delicately as she can manage. “I made an assumption, I apologize.”

His nose wrinkles distastefully. “Don’t apologize for something stupid like that, I…” He sighs. “Fuck, who am I kidding? I’m not drinking that shit for the flavor.” He holds a hand out to her. “Can I have some?”

She lets him have it. He takes a quick gulp, even though it must still be too hot. “You should rest if you’re tired,” she says. “I made a list of everything you asked for. I can finish packing.”

“That’s not gonna happen, whether I’m here or not,” he answers. “Might as well use it for something.”

He holds the thermos back out to her, and she takes it, just to hold. She doesn’t need the caffeine, but the warmth of it soothes an ache deep in her forearms.

(She tried to catch herself on her hands when she fell this morning, and was unsuccessful. The blade stabbed down from above and split the bones of her wrist, pinning her arm to the ground. She isn’t sure which it is.)

He starts to tap through the box, a loose count of bottles, and the circles under his eyes look deeper and darker now than they did this morning. He must have been sleeping poorly for days. The wrongness of it strikes at her gut.

“Is it Saionji?” she asks.

He looks at her, but it’s brief, flickering. He’s quiet long enough that she begins to think she overstepped. “No,” he answers finally. Then: “Well, sort of. It’s not just her.”

“I think I understand,” she says. “The uncertainty is…”

None of the words that come to mind seem to adequately fill the blank. Most of them feel like she’s belittling what he’s going through, words like 'difficult' or 'challenging' or 'worrisome.'

“Shitty,” he offers.

“Yes,” she says. “That.”

He doesn’t laugh. It’s just a quick exhale, a puff of air through his nose, but it eases something in her all the same.

“I don’t know what’ll happen,” he says. “She probably isn’t gonna want anything to do with me. Nobody’s gonna blame her for that. I’m sure as shit not. But you…”

He stops. The words hang between them, ominous and heavy.

She cuts them down for him. “I was punished,” she says. “You were not.”

“Peko.”

“It’s how Saionji will see it.”

“No, that’s not what I—”

He turns his face away. He inhales deeply, and exhales slowly. He’s gone so rigid she could almost mistake it for physical pain.

For her, the memory is either distant and intangible, projected on some far away screen, or otherwise it is here, it is her, invasive and overwhelming. But he has always held things so closely, felt them so intensely, more than anyone she has ever known. There is no detached lens for him to view it with.

Even a child would never make a mistake so simple.

“I’m sorry,” she says softly.

“... It’s fine,” he says. His voice is hoarse. “Come on. We gotta get this thing packed.”

They do. They work together in silence, counting, sorting, and packing supplies into sets to be taken back out to the hospital. It is methodical, repetitive work, but never to the point where her mind can retreat and her muscles can take over. She is too aware of him across from her, hunched and anxious.

Halfway through, he stops.

When she looks up, his head is low. He has a package of neatly-folded clothes in his lap, tucked inside a sealed plastic bag. He clenches it in both hands until it crackles and whines under his nails.

His shoulders are trembling.

She sits up on her knees, and reaches over; she lays one hand on the package, and the other over his wrist. His head snaps up, and she looks into his face, his skin ashen and his eyes red-rimmed. He’s tired. He’s been sleeping poorly. The punishment was hers, but the burden still weighs on him, heavy and unrelenting.

She wants to take it away from him. It is her responsibility. It always has been.

His grip on the bag loosens; she eases it out of his hands, and sets it aside.

He says, “Peko?” so softly that it slides like a feather down her spine, ticklish and strange.

She should explain herself, but the words aren’t there. She doesn’t know what the explanation is. Instead she only looks at him, and he only looks back.

The moment is like a polishing cloth, swept across the front of her mind. She is smooth, silent, without ripples. There is no pain, no intrusion. Her muscles find their voices again, the most familiar they’ve ever been, and they draw her forward, a boat drawn by the stream.

She braces herself against the floor, and her wrists and elbows hold steady under her weight. Her breathing slows, even as her heart races. (She is quieter this way.) Close enough, and she can see where his iris is hazel and where it is green. Closer, and the line of her nose aligns with his, a hairpin in a lock, lifted open from the outside.

“What are you doing?” he whispers.

She stops. The sound demands her mind, and her mind demands her attention: on the quavering quality of his voice, the tense lines in his face, the tightness of his body language.

It’s a flinch.

He’s afraid.

The realization crashes like a stone into still water.

“I’m sorry.” Her chin jerks back. “I don’t know what came over me, I—”

“Peko,” he whispers, and it’s the same. Quavering. Afraid. It pulls her back down, through the noise. “Please.”

He hasn’t pushed her away. He hasn’t touched her at all. They’re still close, her partially in his space. He looks up at her, stricken, trembling with barely-restrained emotion, and she can only be honest: “I was going to kiss you.”

His breath fails him. He sucks in another. “Why?” he manages, strained, like it’s yanked from his throat.

Why?

It had felt correct. It had felt like nothing at all. She searches for the right words to describe the blank, purposeful feeling she craves so much, and finds that she can’t, now that it’s again just out of reach. She’s reminded of Owari, struggling to articulate the discomforting disconnect between her body and her mind.

She can only be honest. “I don’t know.”

It isn’t a satisfactory answer. She hadn’t expected it to be. She can see his indecision in the rapid flicker of his gaze across her face. “You don’t have to do this,” he tells her. “Just because I… Before, I…”

He wishes it didn’t happen. Therefore, it did not happen. She still thinks about it, though, how it was abrupt and clumsy and warm, how he had tasted a bit like salt from the ocean. She had felt so numb and he had felt so much; for a split second it had been like a flood finding equilibrium. He had been calm, sure, soothed, if only for that moment.

She wants that for him again.

“I don’t have to,” she agrees, and stays where she is.

His other eye squeezes shut. He swallows, throat bobbing.

“... Do you want me to stop?” she asks.

He doesn’t look up at her again. His brow pinches down, and then he whispers, “No.”

The calm, still canvas of her mind is gone. It’s replaced by the wild beating of her heart and the uncertain churn of her thoughts. She isn’t sure what the angle should be, or what she should do with her hands, if anything. She can feel the little breath he takes and holds, when she leans in.

She grounds herself to the floor, nails curling against hardwood. She cants her head right, to best accommodate his bad eye. She stretches over the final inch, and touches her lips to his.

It’s brief, trembling, a little cold.

He lets out his breath, a slow exhale that resolves into her name, soft against her cheek. It draws her down, or pulls him up; her head is so cloudy and the distance so small that she can’t be certain if it’s either, or both.

They kiss again, and it’s firm, steady, warm.

He’s so warm. Just the feel of him this close chases the chill from her bones. He presses forward, mouth hard against hers, desperation and stress and anxiety— then softer, melting, like catharsis.

She can do this. She can be the thing that soothes his aches and calms his heart. She’ll do it gladly. She would scatter all his negative emotions against the surface of her if it meant giving him a moment of relief.

The young master’s lips part from hers. She feels them curve only because she is so close, nothing but a breath of space between them. It’s the first ghost of a genuine smile he’s had since she met him again, and it burns like a bright, glowing candle in her chest.

She can be what he needs.