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If anyone asked (not that he could think of anyone that would willingly want to engage a conversation with Slaine Troyard to begin with), he would say that he couldn’t stand Kaizuka Inaho’s presence and frankly he couldn’t see why the guy still bothered to visit, close to seven years after the end of the second interplanetary war. He had told him exactly this, several times over, but Kaizuka never seemed to hear him. Sometimes he stated that he took his overseer duties very seriously, though that had stopped being a convenient excuse after year two, when the Earth finally began to pick up from the gruesome and gaping scars the war had left. 

Week after week, year after year. 

For all he could not stand Kaizuka’s presence, he had learned to expect it. Long had he learned that there was nothing he could do that would get him to leave ; not insults, not logical reasoning, and not even outright begging. Kaizuka was here to stay, ironically becoming the only stable thing in his life, and he begrudgingly accepted it. Somewhat. 

If he ever wondered what he had done to deserve his former enemy visiting him every Thursday, then he only needed to look at Kaizuka’s face to remember. 

At first, he had thought he came back just to taunt him, to flaunt his freedom, his status as a war hero and genius general to his face. Or perhaps Kaizuka had something more nefarious in mind -the guards left them alone since his suicide watch ended and he knew they wouldn’t come running if anything happened… Couldn’t help it, years of abuse and traumatism had wired him to expect the worst of humanity. But Kaizuka Inaho was, for reasons that still eluded him, strangely decent. Which was even more annoying, because he didn’t even have a good reason to hate the fucker. Instead, Kaizuka bore the brunt of his aggression and remorse with that steadfast placid expression that made him want to claw his face out sometimes. Nothing phased him, or at least he hadn’t found what yet and by god had he tried. 

Kaizuka never expected him to talk, seemingly fine with conversing on his own ; just looking at the guy, he would have never thought he could speak so much but despite him he found the subjects interesting -never about the war and whatever befall had come between them, but documentaries and facts ranging from the interstate new regulations to a cool lizard he had seen on the way over. At first he thought the fucker was actually taunting him about their respective situations ; how he was free and lauded as a hero while he bore the guilt of a war he never started, forever to remain shackled with his remorse, and he would get so angry it would drown the apathy he felt. Perhaps that had been Kaizuka’s goal for all he knew, to snap him out of the numb realm he had fallen into. But as he got to know him more, however against his will that may be, he understood that Kaizuka wasn’t cruel. Not on purpose anyway.

For starters, he likely wouldn’t know how to. Kaizuka was dull, couldn’t take a hint to save his life, hyper-intelligent, straightforward, but certainly not heartless. However cold he first appeared to be. Even if he couldn’t understand why Kaizuka kept coming back, he learned to accept he never did it to hurt him. Certainly not to flaunt his perfect life to his face, which would have been deserved after what he did, but nevertheless still appreciated. No, Kaizuka said all these asinine things because he treated him normally, and he didn’t fucking get it, at times he hated it, hated him for not Kaizuka not loathing him back, and on others he was so fucking grateful for that chance. For two days a week he was not a war criminal, not a prisoner, not Count Troyard, not a lowly-terran dog, he was just Slaine. For lunch and afternoon he was spoken to without insults, contempt or reverence, simply like the human he was. 

Ironic, how he had begun to lose his humanity the moment he arrived on Vers, shedding remnants of it with each of Cruhteo’s hits and Saazbaum’s deceptions, until he was but a shell of scars and guilt, empty and loathed and forgotten by all, left behind like he was destined to be. Yet, he gained it back in prison, because of a one-eyed idiot obsessed with eggs and full of endless animal comparisons who had seemingly made it his one job in life to consider him like a human being. Weirdo. 

At first, he didn’t answer, even as figured out that Kaizuka would not stop treating him normally, stubborn silent from his part or not, but then the want to talk, to interact with another person took over. His voice had been raw with disuse and he surprised himself because he hadn’t heard the tone of it in months, but with each passing visit of Kaizuka it was easier and better. He couldn't say he was thrilled with the whole ordeal, but he could tolerate it. Really, it made his existence in prison tolerable as a whole. It was far from good, but he knew from firsthand experience that it also could be much worse. At least the food, while ranging from passable to inedible, was eons better than krill or a prepackaged space ration. The guards did not like him but they were content mostly ignoring him, and as long as no one hit him he could live with that. Past that awful first year, it wasn’t as though he was a difficult prisoner. He didn’t try to escape or needlessly beg or antagonize the staff, and most of all, he didn’t complain. 

All wasn’t well, nor would it end well, he gave himself no hope of release beyond death, but slowly he had learned to live with the burden. Somehow, god, or whatever was there in the universe, decided he didn’t get to die even if he wished he had, multiple times. If anything, he wasn’t a bat or a gull but a cockroach. Clung on to life despite the cosmos’ best efforts. 

Not that he would ever say it aloud to Kaizuka, lest the asshole decided to make it his new nickname. His ego already barely recovered from the bat thing as it was, and the mere thought of a seagull sent him near aneurysm now. 

Kaizuka was an enigma that he had given up trying to solve long ago. He had accepted his constant presence at the very least, even if he didn’t like it. Perhaps it was his punishment, to be condemned to see each week the reminder of all his sins, the man who bested him in every single area of life and who at the end of the day got to leave. He was past blaming others for what he had caused, but there were still some days where he questioned the fairness of it all. If he had the same chances that Kaizuka Inaho had… But that was pointless, wishful thinking that never helped down the line. His mistakes were his own, and he would atone for them however he could. 

He still didn’t know if Kaizuka’s relentless persistence to visit made it all easier, or only made him feel less guilty when he passed his nerves and frustration over him. In a way it was infuriating to see how placid Kaizuka was at his aggression, and at the same time such a relief to know he wouldn’t get punished for it. Because Kaizuka certainly had the power to make his life worse, and a lot of reasons to ; but for some unknown reason, he did not. 

While he couldn’t understand or like him, he had become expectant of Kaizuka’s existence around him. 

So when Kaizuka’s weekly visits brutally ceased, he was the first surprised by the anger and worry that consumed him. 

On the first week, he wasn’t concerned. Kaizuka had told him he had to be gone for two, three weeks at most, an obligation he couldn’t get out of. He hadn’t cared about the reason and so hadn’t asked. Kaizuka was free to do whatever he wanted without even having to tell him ; like he was also his overseer. What a laughable thought. 

On the second, he attributed the feeling of unease that lingered below his skin to the fact his routine hadn’t been disturbed in seven years. Who knew, maybe Kaizuka and his ineptitude at arriving late or going off-schedule had finally rubbed off on him. It couldn’t be anything more, and he refused to acknowledge that discomfort, banishing the thought to the depths of his mind. 

Kaizuka would come back. He always did. Perhaps he would tease him then, bat his eyelashes at Kaizuka obnoxiously and ask if he brought him any souvenirs. Like always Kaizuka would stare at him like an owl and answer something such as “Why would I do that, it wouldn’t pass security measures” or some other bullshit. 

By week three, he wasn’t exactly alarmed, per se, or at least he was getting really good lying to himself. Even on the rare occasions Kaizuka had to cancel a visit in the past, he always got one of the officers to tell him the day and hour the visit was adjourned to. Summer was starting, and Kaizuka always made sure he would stay fresh after that season where he almost died of heatstroke, unattended by the guards. The sentiment of something being terribly wrong lingered still.

And he wasn’t blind nor stupid, he knew something had happened. Despite ignoring his jailers and being ignored back, he had little alternative but to be observant. The habit had been born early from his stay at a landing castle, trying to stay out of trouble and punishments, though he soon learned the people there often didn’t need to have a reason to beat him up- and still lingered, years after. On several occasions he had seen the officers whisper between themselves, looking at him when they thought he wouldn’t notice, and usually he didn’t mind what they said behind his back but somehow he just knew that had to do with Kaizuka’s presence, or lack of thereof, and it made him want to yell and lash out. But week four began and still no one would tell him anything. 

On day 18, he started to ask around. Fuck Kaizuka Inaho for making him rupture the tentative truce between the guards and him, he thought bitterly as he got barked at rejection after rejection. 

“It’s none of your business.”

And ;

“It’s classified.”

Or ;

“Shut up.”

“Shut up !”

“SHUT UP !”

By week four he had a busted lip and no answers. Worry and anxiety had become permanent residents in his body, brewing beneath his veins and throat and stomach, and he hated feeling that shitty over someone he shouldn’t even care about, which of course did nothing to help his current predicament. Because each time he convinced himself how little Kaizuka mattered to him, no need to work himself into a panic, it only worked for about two minutes before everything else came back like a tidal wave of flotsam made of fury and hurt. He was locked in a never ending cycle of denial and subsequent anger at his failure to not give a shit. 

Prepared for that very concept or not, Kaizuka had become an important part of his life and he was powerless in the face of this sobering realization. 

Many times, especially after he got into three more fights with the guards, he wished he could stop caring. Turn off the worry in his brain, and let himself be consumed purely by searing anger at being left behind once again. By now he had alienated half the prison staff, sported an impressive black eye, got some of his meals withheld and he still had no fucking clue where in the universe Kaizuka decided to fuck off to. In all the years he had spent there, he had never thought once about escaping, but he was now seriously considering it, just to go yell at the idiot. 

They wouldn’t even tell him if he was still alive. 

He could handle Kaizuka leaving, more or less. Over the years he had tried to tell him to have a life, to stop wasting his youth on visiting a war criminal with no chance of release. It wasn’t as though Kaizuka was alone either -he knew he had a sister, friends he cared about and with his rewards for quite literally being the savior of Earth, defeating Orbital Knights who had cutting-edge technology with just some flimsy training kataphract and a dream, he was financially set for life. So his stubborn choice to come back, again and again, didn’t make any fucking logical sense at all, especially when he had now learned that Kaizuka valued logic over almost everything else. 

What he was entirely surprised to find out was that he could not handle Kaizuka dying. Just facing the perspective where someone like him, as rotten and broken as he was, got to live while Kaizuka didn’t was something he couldn’t fathom. For fuck’s sake, the guy had refused to die after being shot point-blank in the eye ; he was practically god’s favorite and at this point having Kaizuka pass away almost felt insulting. 

If he listened to the anger, he would say that he felt like this purely out of jealousy. However, if he stopped and entertained to hear what denial kept down just for a second, the last of his walls would crumble and tear to dust. Admitting that perhaps, he had learned to care about Kaizuka was also unfathomable. 

Yet here he was, angry and hurt because he hadn’t come back, when just four weeks earlier he wished he didn’t. 

Shit. He didn’t even remember what his last words to Kaizuka were, if he had any. Maybe he had shrugged or said ‘good riddance’ because he had taken him for granted and always had to lash out, knowing there wouldn’t be consequences. Proving, to the world but mostly to himself, that he could be a spiteful asshole and still have someone by his side. But… Even if he had known, what would he have said ? Apologizing or thanking him for the camaraderie, however strained and difficult he had made it be, felt somehow too empty and not enough. Kaizuka had been nothing but decent to him, and it had only enraged him further because he had always been weak for kindness, and so he couldn’t even hate him without feeling guilty. 

It would have really been for the better, for the both of them, if Kaizuka had stopped visiting years ago. He had been powerless before, more times than he could count, but this instance somehow rankled over all others. Because this was Kaizuka, the guy who showed up with the most atrocious orange ties because it made him choke in offense, someone who had become an ally, an enemy, and then something closer to a friend than he ever had. This maelstrom of resentment and concern eating at him like corroding acid shouldn’t have existed to begin with. 

Feeling sorry for himself didn’t help, but then nothing did, so he was reduced to sullenly stare at the ceiling. If he looked at the tiles and counted the cracks, then his gaze wouldn’t have to fall over the blanket Kaizuka had brought him on a cold winter, or the various books he lended but never asked for again. 

So he didn’t really see the officer approach, but he recognized his footsteps -this was the one whose left leg had been hurt during the war- because he had not much better to do than memorize everything in this godforsaken place, and he certainly heard when he banged the fucking baton over the door. It had been years since his behavior warranted such rude knocking, but he barely flinched. 

“Troyard !” the officer barked with more volume than needed, “Overseer’s here.”

For all he had been privately cursing Kaizuka for existing beforehand, he was up before he could even form the thought. Judging by the guard’s exasperated look, he also found him pathetic. He was also sure the asshole took his time making him wait for the security doors to open. With each step closer to the visitation room he could feel his heart rate increasing. 

His first thought was either Kaizuka recently had a haircut done, or gender-affirming surgery. Maybe that would explain the absence. Though, the moment he was pushed into the room and finally faced the stranger, he could see this woman definitely wasn’t Kaizuka. Her expression was about the same, but that was where the comparison ended. She barely even acknowledged his presence, beyond curtly telling him to sit down when he hovered warily near, she remained focused on the laptop and paperwork strewn over the table. 

Observing her, he couldn’t recall ever seeing her before. He met Admiral Hakkinen several times over the years and seeing some other high ranking ufe staff in the papers, but not her. Completely decked out in standard ufe uniform, brown hair cut short with stern green eyes added to a spectacular frown that made her the terran equivalent of Count Cruhteo. Especially when he tried to say something and she raised her hand sharply to shut him up, not even looking. 

Already, he didn’t like her, and only beaten obedience narrowly avoided him to dish out some annoyed snark. However much he liked to not get hit, he was still extremely pissed so he glared at her until she deigned paying him some attention. Obviously, he didn’t need to introduce himself.

“Who the fuck are you,” he growled once she stopped typing, and she looked just as irritated as he was by his interruption. Good. Considering she made him wait another two minutes before closing her laptop harshly, he didn’t regret aggravating her. Even if the guards barely tried acting as though they weren’t observing him.

“Captain Darzana Magbaredge.” He could tell the moment where she clocked his bruises that just began fading to purple, the split lip that hadn’t been attended to. But even if her frown twisted for a second, she didn’t react otherwise, and he knew then. Whoever that was, she wasn’t here to help. “Starting today, I’ve been appointed as your overseer.”

A part of him wasn’t surprised -not after the past few weeks. Another still was roaring with offense, his fingers tightly clenching the fabric of his pants. The title felt wrong in the mouth of someone else. Clearly, Magbaredge understood how poorly he received the news ; her chin was still held up high, and he recognized the defiant light in her eyes. Judging by the pronounced dark circles and the pallor of her skin, he guessed she was tired and highly stressed and perhaps like him, itching for a reason to fight. 

He inhaled deeply. Controlled the urge within him to insult her. “I wasn’t aware the position was open.” 

She didn’t even need to say it wasn’t like many people would be eager for the job, her eyebrows conveyed that just well. Even he knew that it was a career dead-end for Kaizuka with not much chances of promotions or even bonuses. Getting paid to become a glorified babysitter for a war criminal turned scapegoat really didn’t sound entertaining, so he surmised she either had been punished or forced. 

“Look, let’s not make this harder than it should,” Magbaredge sighed after a moment of frigid silence. “Neither of us want to be here, so how about you don’t become a pain in my ass and I don’t become one in yours.”

“Depends. When is Kaizuka coming back ?” The words had come through before he could think them through, but he couldn’t find it in him to care. Something was terribly wrong and no one was telling him shit. “Where is he ?”

“Classified,” Magbaredge answered automatically, though he didn’t miss the way her expression briefly tightened when he mentioned his name. Something censored, quickly concealed and painful. 

“At least tell me if he’s dead,” he finally erupted. Ironically coinciding with the anniversary date of operation earthfall, he hadn’t seen the link until a week ago, but in retrospect the connection was so obvious he was the biggest fool for not thinking of it earlier. 

During week two, Earth at long last became free from all remaining Versian colonization, definitely this time around. The last landing castle that had been resisting Empress Allusia's new reign had been defeated and seized. Even he, secluded from the world as he was, could not have missed it ; the guards had cheered loudly and late into the night, the radio on full volume, and the warden had even exceptionally authorized some alcohol. Earth had become, at the very least on paper, a free planet. Whether the peace would last remained to be seen, but with the stellar progress about quality of life and social castes Asseylum had secured on Vers, perhaps things would be different this time. He could only hope ; war had already taken his childhood and whatever little mental stability was left after his father died, it better not come back within his lifetime. 

He may have been too self-absorbed to see the connection earlier, but he wasn’t a fool. Whatever had happened to Kaizuka, it had to do with the military operation that had taken place -something that had been meticulously planned in the past few years by the ufe and version forces, joining forces for the first time (officially, apparently Tanegashima did not count) according to the radio. From there, the end was easy enough to guess. Something bad had happened.  

“He’s not.” For a moment, the relief was so strong he felt a breath he hadn’t known he had been holding escaping his chest ; his knees shook and he could feel his body slumping forward. He was the first surprised by the strength of which that relief flooded through him, but it was short lived. Magbaredge’s face remained closed and hardened, and continued, through gritted teeth and badly concealed resentment. “Kaizuka Junior is currently… incapacitated. As such, he will not be resuming his overseer duties.”

No sounds came out of his moving mouth for a few seconds ; he was mute with affront and horror. Even as he knew this was the only logical outcome, he still felt abandoned, his heart seemingly pulsating through every single of his veins. It shouldn’t be a surprise, it shouldn’t hurt this much, but it did. “Bullshit !”

He just couldn’t conceive it. Kaizuka had once visited even as he was going through a bad bout of food poisoning, running a high fever, and he was the one to call security and rat him out so the prison’s on-call physician could tend to him. Even then he had to practically bully him into going home to rest. One fucking time Kaizuka had braved a hurricane warning just to see him. Short of passing away, Kaizuka Inaho was enough of a stubborn motherfucker that had decided nothing could keep him away from his former nemesis. 

“Unless he’s dead or imprisoned, he wouldn’t give up so it better be a good fucking excuse- tell me !”

“I’m afraid that’s none of your business.” There was a warning to Magbaedge's tone, coupled with the hard set of her eyes, that again made her a dead-ringer of Count Cruhteo, save for the nose. The lack of patience and tolerance for disrespect included. Not that had stopped him before. 

“Good fucking grief, it is. Don’t you dare bullshit me any longer, he is my Overseer- has been for seven god forsaken years so all of you owe me a fucking answer !”

One thing he had forgotten, though, in his blind rage and weeks of pent-up anxiety culminating in his spectacular blowout, was that Darzana Magbaredge was not Kaizuka. Even if she remained still, with her arms crossed and an almost bored expression, she was an unknown variable. Kaizuka may have been this military genius who had defeated him and he also may have lacked a social filter that made his every word tactless, but after the war he never went for the jugular, or kicked him while he was down. Despite being in a position of power over him Kaizuka had treated him like an equal from the start, and wasn’t that fucking ironic. 

“Well,” Magbaredge articulated the words calmly and slowly, and though she did not sound like she exactly relished them there was clear intent there. “Can you conceive that perhaps, the world doesn’t revolve around you and your woes, Slaine Troyard ?”

The rest all happened very fast. It was shameless bait, yet he still took it, making a dive towards her. Didn’t know exactly what he was going to, maybe choke or claw her stupid face, but he couldn’t even finish insulting her. Next thing he knew, his arm was twisted and slammed over the table roughly. Not enough to break bone or dislocate his elbow, but Magbaredge was deceptively strong and obviously, expecting his explosive reaction. It took her no effort to hold him down as he struggled. 

“Now listen,” she hissed lowly as officers barged in the room. “This isn’t about you. Try to not get into any more trouble and maybe this whole storm of shit will be solved soon. I can’t help you if you keep being a little shit, so for Kaizuka’s sake and yours, settle down. If you want to know so badly what happened, just wait .”

Help him ? She had just fucking baited him into hitting her, and he knew it was on fucking purpose, she had been looking for a fight the second he got into the room, so he wasn’t exactly impressed with her. Right now the only thing that felt helpful was get into a suicidal fight and set the whole prison on fire afterwards, but this was perhaps the first moment where Magbaredge had been the most straightforward with him. She didn’t like him, he hated her guts back, but between all she couldn’t say because of fucking classified clauses she finally gave him some answers, or at the very least some beginning of an answer. Even if he would have liked to not get his ass beat to have those, what the fuck. He wasn’t going to argue whether he had deserved it or not, and wasn’t that Kaizuka’s fucking fault, for making him feel like an human worthy of respect, but through the sting of pain and injustice he finally had a line thrown in that sea of incomprehension. 

“We’re done here,” she let him go just as suddenly, sitting back as though she just hadn’t flattened him in two movements. 

As expected, he was handcuffed and roughly escorted out, something that hadn’t been needed in years but since this was the month where his life blew up he didn’t complain. 

Ironically, trying to fight back had helped, even if his arm throbbed and ached late for several days afterwards. 

First thing, Kaizuka was not deceased after all, and the relief was almost mind-numbing. He was still worried about him though. Fuck, he was going to kill him for making him so anxious. 

Second. That Magbaredge woman knew him. Well, everyone in the ufe, in the universe, really, had heard of Inaho Kaizuka. But she had called him junior, and so he supposed she knew him personally. 

Third, she resented Kaizuka. Had he not spent so many years observing others, be that out of self preservation or boredom, she would have succeeded hiding her bitterness but it was there. Whatever had happened back there, the ufe was highly interested in keeping it under very tight wraps. There had been no mentions of interplanetary hero Kaizuka Inaho sustaining injuries, and if he was dead after all (funny, how he now could trust Kaizuka but not the rest of the world) he was sure the ufe wouldn’t have missed the opportunity to turn him into a martyr. No better propaganda to make off a death, especially in the line of duty. He would know, there had been of course Asseylum, he had done the same with Saazbaum, and Saazbaum had done so with Cruhteo before. 

What mess had Kaizuka managed to get himself into ? He now had more questions than answers, and he was more worried than ever if possible. Not to mention, he had a new overseer, and no idea about her intentions. She may have known Kaizuka but that didn’t mean he could trust her, or forget what had happened either. She may have had her reasons -her stress and weariness were apparent, but he had always hated feeling used. 

Surprisingly, his food wasn’t withheld and he had a visit from the prison’s doctor to see to his arm, so she couldn’t be all bad. He still knew how to hold a grudge, though. 

The following days were strange ; Magbaredge didn’t come back, and as much as he wanted to personally spite her, he still decided to heed her warning and stopped antagonizing the staff with relentless questioning and insults. Of course, the damage was already dealt and the guards were back to being belligerent towards him, but he had bigger things to worry about. 

Namely that one eyed idiot who had seemingly disappeared. He tried to listen in to the guard’s conversations, the radio they often put, but the little he caught was of no use to him. Which was extremely frustrating. He wasn’t authorized to have any means of keeping up with the outside in his cell, as though he wasn’t already secluded from the world as he was, so all he could rely on was typically the news Kaizuka would bring him. Which was exactly the issue. Kaizuka wasn’t here, and it had taken him disappearing just to realize how dependent he had become on him. 

All his ideas to solve this revolved around Kaizuka. At some point he had a flash of genius and thought that Asseylum would help him. Things were still somewhat strained between them, but better nevertheless, and he knew she would listen this time. Except the only means he had of contacting her was through Kaizuka, and he doubted Magbaredge had the same connection to the Empress of the Vers Empire he did, and he felt like banging his head over the walls when he realized that. Same with Lemrina. He wasn’t a typical prisoner, and since he was supposed to be dead his rights were non-existent. Had he had any loved ones left, they wouldn’t have been allowed to visit either way. He was not allowed phone calls or letters. Asseylum had circumvented that first rule because she and her sister were rulers of the Vers Empire, but even they couldn’t visit much. Making sure Vers wouldn’t combust into flames right back into the shithole it had been before the end of the war, righting his mistakes and all the damage he had caused, took a lot of time and energy. 

Sometimes he wondered if it might have been better if Asseylum and him never got back in contact -he still had moments where he struggled to comprehend why she even did- at least he wouldn’t have felt like such a burden, or now be crushed by disappointment like he was. He had accepted his fate, had become resigned to the fact that death would be too easy and he would atone for his sins by staying alive, burdened by ghosts and regrets. Never before had he felt so challenged by his punishment, tempted to thwart it all and go against it. 

Once again, the reason was Kaizuka fucking Inaho. The man who had pulled him out of a wreckage and made him realize that even after all he had done, to countless others, to him, he was still worthy of respect. Kaizuka had changed his life over and over again ; allowing him to get captured by Cruhteo before he could even explain, then causing him to save Saazbaum and for that mercy made him witness as he shot Asseylum like a dog. Only to be the first person who made him feel human. If Trillram had hated him, Harklight had idolized him and both had felt terribly lonely. To Kaizuka he was not a dirty miserable terran or a beacon of hope that would lead Vers anew ; he was a person, made of mistakes and resilience.

In retrospect, all his insistence at downplaying and denying the important part Kaizuka had become of his life, of who he was to the core, felt fucking terrible. While Kaizuka had ruined him, he had also been the only one to stay in the wreck with him when no one else had. And it took his disappearance to realize he had been too much of an asshole, too self-absorbed by his woes, that he had never told him they stopped being enemies years ago. For what felt like the first time, he had a… calling Kaizuka a friend felt too trivial, and he was too scared to call him a partner yet, but that was what they had become in the end. 

He laid low. Stopped harassing the warden for answers. Moped and felt sorry for himself, for the most part. Worried for the rest of the time, either staring at the ceiling with anxiety like a tight corset of porcelain crushing his ribcage, or pacing relentlessly. Three times he entertained the idea of breaking out and three times he talked himself out of it ; getting himself killed wouldn’t help Kaizuka. If there was one thing he owed him, after all these years, it was to survive. 

He waited. It paid off earlier than he expected, by the end of the week in fact. Magbaredge did not visit again, not that he expected her to. The warden himself came down by his cell to give him the news. Considering he could count on one hand the number of times he had seen the man, that had to be significant. He wasn’t disappointed.  

“Kaizuka’s waiting for you.”

His speed at getting up and ready was equally embarrassing and pitiful, but neither the warden or officer commented on it, which was strange but welcome nevertheless. In spite of his nerves he noticed they didn’t take him to the glass paned chamber but a less formal visitation room, though he couldn’t very well focus on that fact. A loud thumping sound had replaced his heart ; he felt high with adrenaline and anticipation. At long last. The short trek through the corridors felt barely real ; he had to keep his fingers clenched around the fabric of his shirt to keep them from shaking. 

Which was why, the moment he was allowed inside and his eyes landed on Kaizuka Yuki, he felt like he could have almost puked from disappointment. 

The guard had to physically push him further into the room. A frigid cold had replaced his blood. 

It wasn’t that he was afraid of Kaizuka Yuki, per se. More of what news she brought. Especially when he saw the state of her. 

He did not know her, only some bits and pieces Kaizuka had told him, but he knew she was strong. Figuratively and literally, since the first and only time they had met she had come in his cell, punched him in the face and said that was for her brother’s eye and then left. Afterwards, Kaizuka had profusely apologized for this black eye, but he had brushed him off. He deserved it. Through that experience, and Kaizuka’s words, he knew she was a strong person. 

But the woman that now stood in front of him barely held it together, he could easily tell. The way she looked was more rattling than words ; her eyes circled with red, pale despite the summer’s heat, shoulders lingering with exhaustion. Dressed as though she had just come out of a funeral, which did nothing to reassure him. And, as he noticed when she sat, as though the very view of him was a relief, she was also pregnant. 

Nothing had made sense since Kaizuka had left, but he felt particularly lost and awkward. Kaizuka the Elder looked just as loss for words as him, however meager of a consolation that made him feel. 

“Is he…” He finally dared to ask when the silence got too heavy and he couldn’t bear any longer not to know. 

“No, not at all,” Yuki hurried to tell him, frantic and as it had previously happened with Magbaredge, he felt overcome with relief, but seeing her eyes water soured the sensation immediately. “But Nao- my brother isn’t doing well.”

Oh. Alright. He could have guessed as much, even if he still received the news like a blow to the heart. When, in the past seven years, had Kaizuka become so important to him, and why hadn’t he noticed earlier ? 

“What happened ?” How ironic, that he was the one asking the questions when he was the prisoner with the same relentlessness than when he had been interrogated.

“It’s…”

“Let me guess, classified.” he interrupted dryly, faced with her wince. “How injured are we talking ?”

“He’s-” Her hesitation was foreboding enough for him to brace himself. “Not in the physical sense, at least.”

“Shit.”

If it weren’t for the devastated expression on Yuki’s face, he would have nearly laughed. For all he liked making fun of Kaizuka’s sanity, he was remarkably mentally stable for someone who had escaped the war relatively unscathed after being shot in the head. He did suspect that Kaizuka’s amygdala wasn’t firing or something, with all his genius borderline suicidal plans, not to mention keep on visiting and trying to befriend the very person who had caused the loss of his eye, but unstable wasn’t a word he would use to describe him. Kaizuka was logical and pragmatic to a nearly nauseating extent. Trying to imagine Kaizuka having a mental breakdown was uncomfortable, but even though he didn’t want to believe Yuki’s words, he had no choice but to in the face of her distress. 

Though, that was the thing, wasn’t it. A lot of people, including him, would describe Kaizuka as a robot ; unfeeling and only capable of seeing the world through binary lines. Being reminded that he was a human just like the rest of them was rattling. But he would have to feel guilty about that later. For once, being angry at himself wasn’t the priority here. 

“It’s bad,” Yuki continued, and he hated how the sound of her warbling voice made his own throat close up painfully. “Really bad. I’ve never known him like this.”

He had to take a moment to close his eyes and try to deal with the world that was a little off axis. Now that he finally had some answers, he felt crushed by their weight. Kaizuka Inaho was one of the strongest person he had ever met, he had to hand that much to him. Trying to conceive him in a state of mind so dire that his sister, who notoriously hated Slaine Troyard’s guts with an enthusiasm that honestly matched Count Marylcian’s, went to tell him the news herself, was so out of touch from reality he wondered if he had fallen into another dimension.

“Is he institutionalized then ?” He could hardly believe it, and knew he was right when she remained silent. Figures. Kaizuka was a terrible patient and while he was brutally honest, he would know how to fool a system. 

“We can’t commit him without his consent, and he managed to convince the psychiatrist and a judge.” There was a twist to Yuki’s frown that indicated she was just as exasperated with her brother as he currently was. “But he was still medically discharged.”

Alright. What a little shit. Honestly, that tracked whereas Kaizuka Inaho was concerned. Doing bad enough that even the fucking ufe whose recruitment standards were subpar couldn’t ignore, but somehow still escaping treatment. Typical. But all the humor he would have usually found about the situation had evaporated. Seeing Kaizuka’s sister's frazzled state was enough to clue him that she definitely wasn’t reassured about him. It painted a picture he wished he wouldn’t look at. 

Between the two of them, he had been the one more prone towards mental breakdowns. Those early years imprisoned, where all the trauma he had been accumulating and valiantly ignoring had been free to finally come to the surface , had been rough. But Kaizuka had been there, and he hadn’t realized it until now. 

What a mess. 

“Why are you here ?” If Kaizuka was doing as bad as he was told, he didn’t doubt that his loving, doting sister would be looking after him. Not bothering to tell the one that had attempted to murder him ages ago, certainly not out of politeness. Judging by Yuki’s flinch, he hit nail on the head. 

“I need your help.” The admission was so low he almost missed it. This time, when she stared at him, she was defiant, but the determination he read in her was laced with despair. “You need to take the deal, Slaine Troyard.”

“The what-”

“That’s the wrong formulation. You have to. I am not losing my little brother after we both got through this war no thanks to your best efforts.” Now there was a hint of anger that was much more familiar than the wild, restless anguish he had been facing. “Nao won’t allow me near him. So what you’re going to do is take the fucking deal, and help him.”

“I don’t even know what you’re talking about !” He shouted back, uncaring if the guards heard them. Hell, let the whole prison know for all he cared. This family had a gift for being cryptid and harassing him. “What is your fucking problem-”

“He won’t survive without you !”

Well. She couldn’t have found a better way to shut him up. 

“For some reason I cannot fathom, my brother loves you. It may not be my place to tell but if it’ll save his life then I’ll divulge his secrets over and over again, I don’t care !” As if this couldn’t get any worse, Kaizuka Yuki was now crying openly, her sobs laced with equal resentment and distress. “As much as I hate the very concept of it, he would do anything for you. So I am asking- I am begging you to help him live.”

Quite unfairly, he couldn’t even stop and focus on what she had just revealed because she got up and much to his growing horror and confusion, got on her knees. It felt wrong over several places of existence ; to have someone like her, imploring him like she had nothing to lose, wailing with the energy only the desperate had, to have Kaizuka’s pregnant sister kneeling just because she may have hated him but she loved her brother more. 

“Please, please you don’t have to love him back. Just help him, I beg of you, he’ll live if you ask him to. He survived a war, he survived getting shot by you, so now it’s your turn to save him ! Please-” 

After this, everything she tried to say got drowned in tears and he was at complete loss himself. A part of him thought he should help her up from the cold floor, do something, anything to stop the frenzied begging litany she had launched herself in. But he was frozen like stone, unable to hear anything but that dreadful, inconceivable truth. Kaizuka loved him. 

Wrong. It was wrong. 

Perhaps it was a chance that the door opened brutally without leaving him any chance to say anything back he might regret later. As much as he wanted to get some fucking clarity in the raging sea of life-altering changes he had just been thrown in, he realized that no matter what he tried he likely wouldn’t get any more info from Yuki. But instead of the guards he was sure were coming in to take him away, he was faced with Magbaredge, Admiral Hakkinen and Empress Asseylum Vers Allusia herself, all staring in various degrees of befuddlement at the scene unfolding. 

As it turned out, this day could in fact, get much worse. 

Thankfully, the visitation room didn’t remain crowded for much longer after that unexpected entrance. Magbaredge got Kaizuka to get up, and he didn’t make out what she was saying but he didn’t know that she could take such a soothing and gentle tone. She and Hakkinen soon escorted her out, hopefully to see the prison’s physician because if Kaizuka ever learned that he had made his pregnant sister kneel and did not help her no one would find his body. 

Until he remembered that according to said sister, Kaizuka couldn’t do any of that anymore. What scared him more was that he didn’t even know what exactly afflicted Kaizuka. Could he even function ? Was he suicidal, as much as the very idea sent a cold shock to his core ? He just didn’t know, and he thought that he couldn't be more worried than he already was but apparently he was wrong. 

However much he deserved and mostly, needed to freak out about what he had just learned, he couldn’t. Once Kaizuka’s sister was out, only Asseylum remained. She was too polite and well-taught to shuffle awkwardly, but despite the differences that had separated them and the now two years since he had last seen her, he still knew her. Though he was past caring if he was being rude to her or not ; he went and sat on the tiny couch and rubbed his eyes tiredly. Screw decorum. What he had was a burgeoning stress headache and no more patience for bullshit. 

“You better have a really good explanation,” he mumbled, and after a moment he felt her sit next to him as well with a sigh. 

“This isn’t how it should have gone. I’m sorry. I should have spoken to you first, but we got delayed-”

“Oh, isn’t that convenient-”

“But what’s done is done.” Ah, so she was annoyed too. “What did she tell you ?”

“Something about a deal.” Mentioning how Kaizuka felt about him was out of the question. In spite of everything, it was intimate. Something just for him, no matter how balking he was at the concept. 

Asseylum inhaled, like she always did whenever she was about to say something they both knew he wouldn’t like, and he braced himself. 

“It’s a parole accord. Concerning your release into civilian life, on several conditions. Admiral Hakkinen and I were supposed to tell you in… less strenuous terms.”

Wasn’t that the understatement of the century. Though he didn’t even have the energy to be angry at the gross oversight in planning ; currently, his brain was blank. A release. Freedom, all relative it was. Outside. A normal life, or close enough anyway, something he thought would never belong to him since the tender age of ten. 

There was a lot he wanted to ask. So many questions. What he settled on, was an eloquent :

“What the fuck ?!”

From looking at her between his fingers, head pressed deeply into his hands, he could see her lips twitch with somewhat of a concealed smile. Bastard. But she grew serious again and he bit back a groan. Arguing about the semantics of releasing a supposedly dead war criminal was a debate they had gotten into numerous times ; he didn’t want to cause more damage than he already did, Asseylum, like it was the case since the war, didn’t agree with him, and in the end neither of their opinions mattered because he knew the ufe wasn’t that stupid. 

Apparently, here was another thing he was wrong about. 

“In the past few years, the board has come to an agreement that taking into account the circumstances, the logistics involved and your behavior, imprisonment is no longer necessary.”

“So, basically, I’m costing them too much.” It certainly wasn’t going to be because some higher-ups at the ufe grew a conscience at blaming him for a war he could have never started. 

“You know I’m not at liberty to say.”

Which confirmed everything he suspected then. Honestly, he was surprised they hadn’t decided to kill him instead. Alive, he was a liability. 

“But the situation has somewhat changed.” Asseylum continued after a moment of terse silence. “The terms we had reached agreed that provided you’d be tracked and watched over, funded at my discretion and essentially on house arrest, you’d be living with and supervised by Kaizuka.”

It shouldn’t have come as strong of a surprise, but he still felt like he had been sucker-punched. Why would the idiot ruin his life-

No, he couldn’t get into this now. Asseylum kept on speaking oblivious to the war in his mind like she so often was and his full attention was needed. He had to keep his laces tight. 

“As your Overseer at the time, he volunteered. He was the one who pushed for rehabilitation and release the hardest.” Good fucking grief, he was going to kill him. “The plan was to start the paroling process until after the last landing castle was reclaimed, but- Well. There was a tragic accident and Ina- Kaizuka is no longer fit for duty.”

This was exactly why he didn’t want to even entertain the thought of a release. So he couldn’t get any wild hope ups and then watch them being crushed. 

“Nevertheless, after some negotiations we might have reached a new agreement that would work around what happened. Same terms as before, except- Your roles would be… Somewhat inverted.” 

The judgemental silence of pure disbelief he sent Asseylum’s way had to be clear enough, because in spite of the fact that she resolutely avoided looking him in the eye she sighed and appeared almost petulant. 

“I don’t like this either but as it stands, Kaizuka is incapable of being left without supervision either.”

“Surely you’ve lost your fucking mind.” What kind of sick, twisted scenario was this. It had to be a fucking joke at his expense. 

“Look, it may not be ideal-”

“Ideal ? Fucking ideal ?? What even makes you think that I’d be more fitting of a caregiver than, I don’t know, a psychologist or his own sister ?! You really expect me to-”

“Because he’s so agitated he cannot stand her presence and barely anyone else’s ! If there’s just one chance the two of you get to recover together, then I’ll take it, even if you might hate the fact that I do happen to care about you both !

“Well you’ve got a funny way of showing it !”

“Damn it Slaine, I’m fucking trying !”

That shut him up effectively. She had never swore in front of him, much less at him. Even that first time they saw each other after the war and had ended up in a shouting match that spanned over the better part of an hour and had left each of their voices sore for a week afterwards. It had been an absolutely terrible day but it had at least cleared the air between them. Nothing could ever be the same between them, nor did he wish to go back. Neither of them could. But even though she couldn’t visit much, they had found a way to listen and forgive each other, with the understanding that there were some things that had died with their stolen childhood. 

She had been idolized and he had been demonized. Both of these had stripped them of humanity.

It wasn’t good, but somewhere in the vicinity of alright, and though he had times where he hardly believed he could be so rude, so uncouth towards her he could also sometimes think that he could live with it. Asseylum didn’t know him like Kaizuka did, but he did not mourn that anymore. 

“Do I even get a choice ?” He already knew the answer before Asseylum reacted with a wince. 

“Technically, you still do. But in the interest of full disclosure… There’s no plan B. Or C. Kaizuka said he would know how to convince you, but that was- before.”

“Little shit.”

Especially since he perfectly knew that the tiny moron would have succeeded, which made it all the more infuriating. 

“And if I happen to refuse ?” Why the fuck not, spite the ufe one last time, even if he already knew his answer. “I’ll keep rotting here and-”

“So will Inaho.” Asseylum’s voice got very quiet. “However little I’m allowed to tell you, I’m not going to sugarcoat it. Without help, his chances of getting through this are very slim. You, better than most, understand how this suffering is just as deadly than any physical illness.”

Fuck. That was a low blow, but it was the plain and ugly truth, as much as he hated to admit it. 

“What am I even supposed to do ? I’m not some therapist-” No, all he had displayed so far in his short existence was a spectacular ability to blow up his own life and take those of others. “-Or a babysitter or whatever you want to call it. I’m not. I do not owe him shit. How can you expect me to fix him ? How is that fair to either of us ?”

“It’s not.” There were some days where he missed the almost criminal naiveté Asseylum had once displayed, before ruling a planet and her sister relentlessly drilling her had hardened that soft edge he had once sought to protect. Right now it made her words all the more worse, digging and tearing into his skin like claws and seeping poison in the open wounds. “I do not have the power to promise you a better future. But for either of your sake’s, I’m just asking you to try anyway.”

She left soon after that, to give him at last some respite and time to hear his own thoughts in that crazy day, but the thing was, he already knew. He had known the moment Yuki had told him Kaizuka wasn’t doing well. As much as he wanted to keep on fooling himself, deny and claim that he did not owe him and he didn’t care what happened to the idiot, he knew . He could not give up on him, not only because Kaizuka himself never had, but also for he didn’t know what would become of him if he did. Too many regrets and ghosts haunted him already, and he just couldn’t take one more. Not when he had a choice, again, to at least try and do something that could make a real difference. 

He would take that chance. Even if the very idea of facing Kaizuka, in whatever state he was, terrified him. Even if he had no fucking clue how to help. 

Still, he wished he hadn’t been so very aware of what Yuki had told him earlier. He got that she was desperate, but it wasn’t fair to him. Or Kaizuka, for that matter. Of course it unsettled him and made him feel guilty, but as much as he wanted to remain angry at her, a part of him understood why she did so. 

Knowing Kaizuka loved him was just as inconceivable as it had been two hours ago. It was ludicrous. Impossible. Falling under about every adjective in the realm of madness that he could think of. 

He simply couldn’t conceive that someone could ever love him, much less on purpose. Much less Kaizuka Inaho, out of all people. 

But it was exactly because of that little fucker that he could see the logic behind it. Not Kaizuka’s feelings, but how they made him act. After all, if he looked at it with only the facts, it would explain why Kaizuka kept on visiting him. Why he made sure he was treated correctly. Why he would fucking volunteer to supervise him for parole. Probably really unprofessional if you asked him, but it wasn’t like anyone was going to care. Besides Kaizuka, no one had regarded him as a human here. 

It made sense. Even though just thinking about it made him want to digest his own organs out of mortification, it made a lot of fucking sense. Kaizuka always was a creature of logic, except where he had been concerned, and now he knew why. 

“I’ll do it,” he said later when Hakkinen and Asseylum came back. Kaizuka Yuki wasn’t with them, and he felt selfishly grateful for that. 

They still told him to give them his answer the next day, with the very sensible point made of sleeping on his decision, but he had already made his choice. 

No matter how much he wished he could deny it, he owed Kaizuka. There would be a time where he would freak out about the revelation of his feelings, but that wasn’t the priority. First, he had to make sure Kaizuka would get through the next months. It had to be somewhat arrogant of him, to think he had the power to do that, but Asseylum was right. He had to try anyway.

Knowing the guy like he did, he had his work cut out for him.

Maybe he also had some selfish reasons to accept. While he had accepted his punishment, he couldn’t deny that he didn’t exactly want to remain locked up until the end of his life. Being on house arrest was better than nothing at all. Perhaps it would be trading a prison for another, but at least there he could look at the sky without any cell bars. 

The process took much less time than he anticipated. One week and a half after Kaizuka’s sister visited the prison, he was scheduled to be released. On one hand, he wouldn’t have to wait, and on the other he was scared shitless, because this haste to expedite administrative matters was a testimony of how urgent the situation had become. The past few weeks honestly gave him whiplash, but he knew better than to complain. At the beginning of the month he had resigned himself to never seeing Kaizuka again and now he had a one day notice for packing what little he possessed since he was due to leave prison tomorrow. There was a dull pain below his right collarbone where a tracker had been injected days earlier. More convenient than an ankle bracelet, and less conspicuous. 

He barely slept that night. A thousand unlikely scenarios festered within his anxious mind ; that this had all been a fever dream and they would see how stupid it all was and deny him release. What if someone recognized him ? Granted, he wasn’t to have much interactions with the outside world, but the fear was still present. What if he couldn’t help Kaizuka ? Would they send him back then ?

And, most important of all ; what if Kaizuka didn’t want to be helped ? From what little he had been told, the person he had known wasn’t there anymore. He had no idea how to handle him. Weaponizing Kaizuka’s feelings for him felt terribly manipulative and he had already resolved he wouldn’t go that path. As far as he was concerned, Kaizuka didn’t need to know he was aware. Also because he had no clue or even desire to touch what remotely got close to his subject. 

Three times over, he almost got the warden called to cancel everything. Thrice, he talked himself out of it. For all he wanted to give in to his urge of being a coward, he knew he would feel even worse if he took the easiest choice. Still, when the corridor’s lights turned on with the guard’s final shift change, he felt like he was about to throw up his heart and leave it to collect dust on the floor. His entire body shook with nerves as the last preparations were made and he couldn’t bring himself to eat anything despite knowing he needed the fuel.

Prison had been his home for the past seven years. In little over half an hour, at least if everything went accordingly, he would be outside. How strange, that he hated the place and yet felt apprehensive about leaving it. All dreadful it was, prison was familiar. The outside world, changed beyond his understanding, was not. 

None of the unforeseen troubles he had imagined came true, and his first steps outside were nearly anticlimactic. All his meager belongings fit into one bag (mostly things that Kaizuka had given him, as he had realized bitterly the previous day ; a soft blanket, some books, a suncatcher for some reason) and though he still wore his blue prison uniform he felt strangely naked as he tentatively crossed the threshold. The slight breeze shouldn’t have made him shiver like it did, but its effect on his skin was unlike any he had known before. There had been a little courtyard in the prison, carefully covered, but it wasn’t the same. A cloudless blue sky greeted him, and he felt like crying. The guard behind, impatiently pushing him, ruined that moment, but savoring the open air and crunching sound the dry ground made beneath his shoes was a luxury he hadn’t experienced since before Vers and no one could take that away from him. 

As much as he wanted to go hug a tree, the sight of a car awaiting him beyond the last security checkpoint was enough to brutally bring his senses back. By god, he was not looking forward to an awkward and tension-filled car ride with Magbaredge. There was a fifty percent chance either of them might send the car into a ditch before they made their destination. Apparently it was an overseer’s responsibility, because funnily he would still need one close to make it work. Learning that she was going to be his neighbor had almost made him call off the entire thing. 

Though, unless his eyes were still struggling to adapt to the unfiltered sunlight, there were two men waiting for him instead. Both somewhat scruffy and middle aged, one wearing what had to be an non-standardized ufe uniform and the other civilian but somehow his sandals over socks stuck out more than his glasses to him. Clearly neither of them were going to win a pageant contest. Neither was he, but that was for lack of options.

While they were observing him curiously they didn’t look particularly arrogant or disgusted. Though, he knew better than most how a pleasant attitude could conceal far worse beneath. 

“Taxi’s here,” the first man quipped, though his sarcasm had no real bite to it. “We have a bit of travel ahead of us, so I hope you don’t mind listening to the entirety of Billy Joel’’s discography.”

“Don’t mind him, I’ll make sure he doesn’t sing along so it should be bearable.” The atrocious sandals guy cut off easily. “I’m Yagarai, and this clown is Marito. Nice to meet you.”

Thankfully, merely blinking was enough to convey his dubiousness. Neither men seemed to mind, but before he could even come up with an answer he was ushered into the back seat like a child while the warden settled some papers with Marito. Obviously, whatever was said there they didn’t want him to hear, with how thick the vehicle’s walls were, so he contented himself with breathing in the distinct odor of the car's interior and feeling the foreign upholstery. Not the best, but that was how deprived he had been of common sensory experiences. 

In any case, he didn’t have to wait too long either. His drivers and, clearly, babysitters got in the front and soon they were on the road. The prison quickly disappeared from view and he could hardly believe just how fast the act in itself of leaving this mind-numbing place had been. 

True to his words, the minute there was significant distance between them and the still watching officials, Marito immediately inserted a cd. Unbelievable. Perhaps this was some sort of elaborate torture after all. Three songs in, he had enough and finally spoke. 

“Why are you here ?”

“Would you rather have walked ?” Marito answered almost cheerfully. 

“I mean, why you specifically,” he said through gritted teeth. “I thought overseer Magbaredge was supposed to escort me.”

The pause was so slight he nearly missed it, as was the quick glance they exchanged which was doubly annoying because he understood they didn’t owe him any information. The fact they engaged him so casually was already improbable. 

“Captain Magbaredge had a personal emergency today, and, since we’re going to be neighbors, might as well take advantage of the situation.”

Alright. Alright. If it was a ploy to redirect his attention, then it fucking worked. He spluttered with all the grace of a newborn giraffe. 

“Since when ??”

“Since Kaizuka still needs medical supervision, whether he agrees or not.” Yagarai’s tone had suddenly lost all good-natured humor, and despite the lingering heat he felt as though someone had just dropped a bucket of ice cold water over him. “I’ll have sessions with him every two days. We’ll have to discuss of a schedule later.”

Right. Because he was the one who’d decided on it now, fuck, it still hadn’t truly sinked in. However relieved he was at knowing there would be someone to provide Kaizuka medical support, he couldn’t help but feel already strangely protective. “You’re a therapist ?”

Marito laughed at that, though Yagarai didn’t seem to find offense there. 

“Not a licensed one, if that’s what you mean. But I still am a medical doctor, and during the war I was the next best thing when it came to mental help. Amongst others, I was the one who treated Kaizuka junior over the Deucalion. It’s probably the only reason he accepted that I'd be the one interacting with him.”

“I thought he wouldn’t let anyone near him,” he frowned, because while he would believe that when he would see it, that fact had been stressed upon many times over the past few days. Again, Marito and Yagarai exchanged one of those silent looks that were really starting to get on his last nerve. 

“The situation is complicated, but while he rejects anyone associated with the Deucalion crew, since I was not even remotely involved in fighting, his reactions aren’t as adverse. Still, he wouldn’t see a specialist otherwise, and no one expects you to become one. That’s not your role.”

“Hm.” A thousand scenarios now ran through his mind. “Is it ptsd ?”

“I’m not at liberty to say-”

“If anyone says confidential one more time I swear I will jump from this moving car.”

“For patient confidentiality purposes,” Yagarai succinctly specified, though he thankfully seemed more amused than alarmed at his words. 

“Oh, like that ever stopped you before,” Marito snorted, and they both immediately began bickering about some subject he obviously didn’t know at all and if it weren’t for the loud and obnoxious way he coughed he was sure they would have carried on this weird back and forth for another five minutes. 

“Great. What can you tell me, then.” He borrowed such a dead-serious, no-nonsense tone from Count Cruhteo that the man could have been proud, on the rare days he happened to feel human emotions. So was cutting off Yagarai when he attempted to serve him another convenient excuse. “No, that’s enough bullshit. At some point you need to tell me what I’m walking into. You cannot expect me to care for him while not knowing what he’s going through and how I can help.”

“That’s-” For the first time since the beginning of this god-forsaken journey, Yagarai appeared annoyed, his tongue clicking in that manner one had when trying to remain polite. 

“-Fair enough,” Marito spoke over him again as well, surprising the both of them. “Come on, the kid has a point. Everyone’s been expecting him to be this perfect caretaker and to have him kept in the dark at the same time. You don’t have to get into the details of… that, just- he deserves to know some shit going in.”

“Fine.” Yagarai sighed, as though he could not refute the logic even if he wanted to. “There’s much that’ll be Kaizuka junior’s story to tell. But yes, there are some things you are entitled to know.”

He inhaled. Braced every single one of his bones for impact. “Is he suicidal ?”

The time Yagarai took to answer was uncomfortably too long. “Not in an active sense. He’s aware enough that his death would greatly hurt his sister and you, so he’s not likely to take any actions that would facilitate his passing. Claims he wouldn’t. But I believe he’s not giving himself any chances to live either. He refuses food and is hardly capable of functioning. That way, he’s letting himself die slowly.”

He thought he would be prepared. Had spent long hours telling himself he could handle it ; he was not the wreck that had been imprisoned years ago, he was strong enough for once to be the one who would help. A faint nausea that had nothing to do with being in a moving vehicle for the first time in years settled just as he felt his eyes water. There was the shock of the news in itself, and registering that other people knew or at the very least expected him to care about Kaizuka as well, to matter enough enough in his eyes to be one of his last threads of sanity. 

The worst was, he couldn’t even deny it any longer. This was no elaborate joke at his expense, even though he wished it was. He cared about the idiot, the meaningless anger he currently felt that only came with intense worrying was just another proof. Yagarai’s words felt like a blow to the stomach, and there was nothing he could do about that cruel truth. 

“I don’t know how I’m supposed to…” the words died on his tongue, and he hated the way his voice cracked. It was one thing to admit he worried about Kaizuka, being vulnerable in front of strangers was another. 

“Keep him alive. Sane, as much as you can. Keep him fed and make sure he sleeps. As for the rest… it’s something we’ll have to figure out.”

Easier said than done.

“Troyard.” Yagarai interrupted the panicked flow of his thoughts. “You’re not doing this alone. Marito and I are here to help. That includes you.”

“Not sure why you’d bother,” he mumbled, not quietly enough because he could feel Yagarai’s frown through the rearview mirror.

“Hippocratic oath.” Was the only answer he got to that, which he couldn’t exactly argue against. 

Despite knowing he should at least nap for a while, sleep eluded him. There was so much to see, even through the glass of a car window. He took in all the scenery, be they trees and valleys or impact holes left by the war, counted all the cows and horses he could see. 

The day was sunny and with the background singing he could have almost fooled himself that this was normal. Once he felt settled enough by the nature he had sorely missed, he gathered the courage to continue his interrogation.

He learned that Kaizuka had some medication, subject to change since they didn’t know what dosage or molecule would work for him, and he would have to make sure he took those.

“Junior is stubborn,” Marito commented. “So, good luck.”

“Tell me about it,” he grumbled. “I’ll use force if I have to.”

He was not here to be a nurse, nor would he try. Kaizuka would get better, whether he wanted to or not he would give him no choice. Somewhere in those past weeks of anguish he had realized just how important Kaizuka had become to his daily life and he did not want to go through such an ordeal again. He refused to think about the implications of that, just like he had locked Kaizuka’s feelings deep in the depth of his mind. 

There were more instructions -if alone, he was allowed to walk in a certain radius around the house but not to interact with civilians more than absolutely necessary. Groceries and supplies would be delivered weekly either by Marito or Magbaredge, who he learned had actually been their former captain on that pesky Aldnoah powered ship. In case of emergency, there were some numbers he could call but otherwise he better rely on his neighbors (fuck, this was still so weird) or himself. Hearing Yagarai explain how to handle a dissociative episode while we didn’t start the fire played over was a surreal experience. 

It was too soon to make his opinion or even begin to trust them, but so far they had not berated him or referred to his crimes. Almost suspiciously so. But he supposed that as far as ufe neighbors went, they seemed decent, and most importantly they cared about Kaizuka. That much was clear. Though he did not deserve their concern, Kaizuka did. 

*

Out of all the places he had been expecting, the sea hadn’t been one of them. Gradually, the scenery changed and he began smelling marine air. To be entirely honest with himself, he hadn’t been expecting much ; too long had he been imprisoned to even conceive he would exist in the waking world again. But a tentative flicker of hope got to him -despite a still lingering fear of water, he had always liked the beach. The sound of waves coming and going was very soothing. 

With his father’s work beckoning him over the world, they had sometimes been near the sea. But none of those places were like the one he could see now ; one was a beach covered in hard pebbles all around with seemingly permanently grey skies. The other had been white sand and palm trees. Here he could see small cliffs and creeks with weathered rock coated with lush greenery. Meteorite impacts had left pools of clear, inviting sea water. 

However charmed by the landscape he was, he was all too soon reminded of the reason he was here at all. The car slowed down over a dirt road, rolling over smaller roads and hidden paths. Marito had cut the music ten minutes ago, and he couldn’t believe he found himself missing it. Or, rather, he was dreading their arrival. 

Finally, they stopped in front of a mint colored cottage, a quaint little place that he couldn’t associate with Kaizuka. Or a war criminal, for that matter. Supposedly, it was a good location. Hidden between trees and farther enough from the sea bed to be concealed but not out of place either. 

“The lack of orange is underwhelming,” he remarked, though his stomach felt like a mess of twisted knots. “Is the sea behind the hill ? Shouldn’t you show me around where you people are staying ?”

“Troyard.” Marito’s voice was gruff yet gentle, and he hated him for it. “Quit stalling. Get inside and go see him.”

“Fuck you.”

Nevertheless, he took a step towards the house and commanded his knees to stop shaking. Somewhere in there, Kaizuka existed, changed beyond belief from the man he had known over a month ago. Already, he was off to a great start, because admiral Hakkinen was present, acknowledging his arrival with a nod. 

“Upstairs.”

Walking upwards felt like he was heading for the gallows, which was fucking rich considering he wasn’t the one who hurt here. Rightly, he guessed the right room was the one whose door was ajar. 

At least, Kaizuka wasn’t in bed. But that was the only silver lining he found. 

Just a month, and he barely recognized him. 

His hair was getting long and unkempt. He was slumped over the alcove window, listless and still like a doll. Clothes fell over him and he already looked far too thin to his liking. Even in the dim light of the fading day, his skin had the pallor of wax. Kaizuka didn’t even turn to see him, when he had always been drawn to him like moth to flame. In barely a few seconds, he already wanted to scream. No mess cluttered the room, but it didn’t do anything to reassure him. As though Kaizuka was naught but a ghost who haunted the space. 

This couldn’t be Kaizuka Inaho. He refused this statue to be what was left of the man who he had become attached to in spite of his best efforts. He inhaled, deeply, and stepped inside. 

“Good grief, Kaizuka. You’d make a clown cry.” 

Well. He really did not mean to say any of that, in fact he had rehearsed an opening sentence during the whole drive over, and still his stupid mouth had decided to hijack his brain. Perhaps he should throw himself from this window, just to get it over with. 

Kaizuka barely reacted, and while he was a man who could be the dictionary definition of placid on the regular, this kind of stupor was different. His remaining eye looked glazed over, and so devoid of life he might have been staring at a corpse. 

“You shouldn’t be here,” Kaizuka’ voice was raw with what he hoped was disuse rather than screaming, but it still ignited dying embers of anger back into a blaze. 

“Oh ! My apologies, I’ll just walk back to prison then-” he belatedly remembered that Kaizuka was born with a permanent pokerface and lack of understanding about sarcasm, though he didn’t really care at the moment. “Surprise, I actually don’t give a shit what you think.”

Kaizuka remained terribly silent, when he was never one to not argue back with him. Half their interaction back at the prison had been endless bickering with surprising familiarity that made the guard’s uncomfortable and he couldn’t believe he found himself missing it now. If Kaizuka had handled his outbursts of aggression with the utmost calm early in his incarceration he still hadn’t let himself be walked over either. 

He didn’t recognize him, and not just physically. 

“Leave,” Kaizuka ruptured the terse quiet first. “You don’t deserve to be here.”

“That’s not up to you nor me,” he answered curtly. The implication that Kaizuka thought he didn’t deserve anything left a sour taste in his mouth. “Now listen well.” 

Kneeling so Kaizuka couldn’t avoid looking at him, he channeled every ounce of determination he had felt ever since Yuki’s visit. “I don’t care if you like it or not, but I’m staying. I am not giving up on you.”

“You should.” A whisper so low he almost missed it. 

God, he wished he could punch him. Get him to react, anything but this self-loathing that held the weight of the world. Instead, he felt like he could cry. 

“Who are you,” the words could barely get past his throat. 

Kaizuka shrugged. “What’s left.”

There were many instances where Kaizuka had shocked him, through words or actions, but this one rankled badly. In this moment he couldn’t trust himself to say something he wouldn’t regret later, and so he left. Slammed the door behind him and felt like shit for it, though his current worry was not to cry. The last thing he wanted was for fucking admiral Hakkinen to see him in tears. 

“That bad, huh,” Marito grimaced when he came down at last. Thankfully that saved him the trouble from explaining. 

There was a cup of tea and cantaloupe slices awaiting him, but despite not eating since the previous night he still felt far too nauseous for food. Still, he supposed he would make a really terrible exemple for Kaizuka if he refused to eat, so when Yagarai pushed a slice in front of him he forced himself to take it. Wouldn’t help neither Kaizuka or him if they were both starving. 

“I fucked up,” he finally said once he felt like he had somewhat calmed down. No one at the table seemed to be surprised. “I’m not… I don’t think I’m what he needs,” just articulating it was excruciating. 

In spite of what he had promised Kaizuka, he now felt unsure and that stung deeply. Because he couldn’t bring himself to coddle Kaizuka ; the fucker hadn’t done so either when he was a nothing beyond a traumatized mess freshly imprisonned, but he was conscious that while it had worked in his favor Kaizuka functionated differently. 

“Don’t be so sure,” Unexpectedly, it was Hakkinen who spoke up. “Kaizuka always acted differently when it came to you.”

Fuck’s sake, either Kaizuka’s feelings towards him were an open secret amongst the ufe, or he was the most oblivious fucker on this face of the universe. Both were likely, much to his mortification. 

The clock marked 8 hours since he was out of prison, and his freedom felt like poison. By the time his… guests (if he could ever get to call this place his home one day) left, the tea was completely cold and he hadn’t heard any sound coming from Kaizuka’s room. Staying to wallow wasn’t something he could indulge any longer, so he went to take a shower, get out of that forsaken prison uniform -he swore to burn it in the future and go to bed. 

However, he wasn’t that much of an asshole, so he still went back to Kaizuka’s room and placed two cantaloupe slices on his desk. Kaizuka hadn’t moved since their conversation, and though he wasn’t asleep he showed no sign he acknowledged his presence. 

He found the slices untouched over the same plate he left them in the next morning. At least Kaizuka had moved, but hadn’t even bothered to pull the covers over him while he slept. 

Quickly, he figured out that he couldn’t trust Kaizuka to eat if he wasn’t able to actually see him do it, so he firmly sat down and watched him like a hawk. Considering they were both just as stubborn than the other, it was no small task. 

“Eat,” he would growl, trying his best to be patient and understanding and failing miserably.

“I’m not hungry,” Kaizuka would shake his head, and continue to stare at either the ceiling or out the window. Even as he would say that his stomach would growl loudly, which pissed him off even more because he could tell he wanted to eat ! Food or weight wasn’t the problem here, surviving was. Except he couldn’t take this attitude after he remembered all the times Kaizuka had stressed the importance of food on him, so here they both were. 

Back and forth they went, and no progress was made, until the third day where he had enough and decided to literally take the matter into his own hands. 

As it turned out, the solution was to spite him.

“Here comes the kaaaataphract,” if he didn’t take the most obnoxious voice to ever exist he knew he would curl up and cringe until he would die, so he gave it his all, stupid sounds and waving the fork in the air. He hated every second of this farce, but the fucker didn’t leave him a choice. For the first time since his arrival, Kaizuka reacted. Well, his stare finally turned towards him, but at this point it was fucking stellar progress. 

With a glare that screamed murder, Kaizuka snatched the fork out of his hands and actually bit into the piece of watermelon, looking incredibly pissed off while he munched on it. Meanwhile he had to bite the inside of his cheek to not punch the air in victory. Fucking typical, that it took making a fool of himself to get Kaizuka to react. 

“Look. Either you start eating again or I will treat you like a child, which both of us will hate.” He said once Kaizuka swallowed. “For the sake of your sanity and mine, take the deal.”

Not that either of them were very sane to begin with, but it wasn’t the point. When Kaizuka returned to stare at the window, still annoyed but remaining a stubborn little asshole, he picked up another piece and gave it the same treatment. The fork was out of his hands faster than he could say Aldnoah. 

“Fine.” Kaizuka regarded the poor watermelon chunk with trepidation. “Just never do that again.”

“Oh thank god.”

It was all the words Kaizuka spoke that day, but a victory was a victory. He got him to eat half a diced up slice and another one for dinner, aware that no matter how much he wanted to see him eat a full meal doing so would make Kaizuka extremely sick, so he carefully contained himself and called Yagarai to know which foods were bland enough to be slowly reintroduced. That night he went to bed feeling less shitty than usual. 

He wished he could have said that things got easier after that, but it would be lying. Of course Kaizuka remained deeply depressed and scarred by whatever was plaguing him, and though his days weren’t packed with much action he nevertheless felt exhausted. Now he was ironically knowing what Kaizuka had been going through with him, back in those dreadful first years at the prison. 

Yet, this past experience was the very reason why he got it. 

Kaizuka still had the strength to get himself to the bathroom to relieve himself, those were actually the few times in the day where he got out of his room, but not for anything else. He was incapable of washing or dressing himself, and though he did not make a mess around him he lived in a permanently shut room with dust collecting all around him. So he began his mornings with opening up the windows to let in light and air ; he kept the room clean like he did with the rest of the house, which thankfully wasn’t big and got Kaizuka to eat. And, though there were some days where he just wanted to drop him in the bathtub, he washed him. Soon he got over his own discomfort at undressing Kaizuka and passing a damp towel over him, even cleaning up his eye socket. Kaizuka did not do anything to help, but he didn’t fight him either at the very least. Like a doll, though he found the comparison morbid. Perhaps to someone else it would have been weird, but he knew he would punch the first person to make a sexual comment about the situation. He remembered a time where he didn’t even have the energy to look after his own scars and how Kaizuka had been the one to step inside, lift his shirt and apply the salve with a care no one had shown him. There had been nothing sexual in that, and so he did the same. 

Yagarai came every two days, as promised. He took advantage of the doctor’s presence to go out and explore the outside. The beach was on a fifteen minute walk, but he focused his strolls to get familiar with their immediate surroundings first. He ran into Marito the second time he did, and so got a measure of where his probation officers of sorts were staying at, including Magbaredge’s house, though once he knew the location he avoided it like the plague. 

Unfortunately, she finally remembered her overseer duty at the end of the first week, when he had the displeasure of receiving her. Thankfully, Kaizuka was asleep, like he did after each of his sessions with Yagarai but he still got them to talk over the porch. 

“Yes, he’s not dead, thank you for your concern,” Despite knowing better he wasted no time with the sass, and good, he could tell she already wanted to punch him but made a visible effort to contain herself. 

“Cut the shit, Troyard. I would have visited earlier but inconceivably, I have other important things in my life to attend to. I heard you got him to eat ?”

“Inconceivably , I happen to possess a few powers the rest of you don’t.”

Said powers were grating infantilization, but he wasn’t about to say it. He was very glad Kaizuka was still able to be horrified enough to start eating again, even if out of spite. 

“Or who knew, maybe I just cared enough to find out what would work.” He still couldn’t resist taking another jab at her, maybe because it was easy to get into a much needed argument to satiate his own frustrations with her. Kaizuka wouldn’t even react, he would feel guilty if he did that to Yagarai, and there was something slightly unhinged about Marito that he stayed resolutely away from. 

Magbaredge inhaled deeply, as though she was currently weighing the pros and cons of killing him and burying him at sea which honestly delighted him. 

“You already know that you are insufferable,” she said at last, and he grinned. “What I’m still struggling to understand is what he finds in you that has been worth all this. Taking you out on that beach would have been kinder.”

Alright. At this point he did ask for it, and Magbaredge only gave back as good as she got. Still, it hit dead center in that deep insecurity he still carried. A voice he got around to stop listening to, now rearing the back of its ugly head. Worse, he couldn’t even find a snarky comeback. Part of him wanted to try his luck at punching her again but he wisely didn’t doubt for one second she could absolutely beat his ass, and though he liked antagonizing her he knew when to pick his battles. 

“Still, congratulations on getting him to eat.” Magbaredge spat before departing, and he childishly answered with two middle fingers which only marginally made him feel better. 

By the time the evening rolled out and he was gently persuading Kaizuka to eat, he was still stewing enough for his mood to be apparent even to someone so lost in the wreckage of his own mind to notice. 

“What happened,” Kaizuka asked right as he was about to cross the threshold. 

(His next step was to get him to eat in the kitchen, but it was better than nothing.)

“Just Magbaredge being an asshole,” he groaned though inside his heart had begun beating a little erratically. Since he had arrived Kaizuka had never spoken to him out of his own volition before. “I’d hate to imagine how much of an hardass she must have been when you lot served under her.” 

He thought this had been a good sign. It had to be. But he saw Kaizuka go rigid, his hands painfully digging into the fabric of the alcove before forcing himself to take a breath. 

“She used to be strict but good, actually.” Kaizuka’s stare had gotten somewhere far away. “But since I killed her wife, I don’t think she has much fairness spared for me anymore.”

Well. What the fuck was he supposed to answer to that. 

And just like that, all the little progress he thought they had been making their slow way towards vanished. Kaizuka continued to eat because he didn’t have a choice, but less than the portions he had only just started to get used to again. He slipped into silence and he now had to carry him in and out of bed so his limbs wouldn’t become atrophied, to remind him to use the bathroom. He could tell by Yagarai’s face he also did not speak during their sessions either and though his medication was increased it felt like nothing worked. 

He was at the end of his tether, worrying too much and not sleeping enough, beginning to consider hospitalization even if that meant Kaizuka would hate him for it, when it all came to a head but not in the way he expected it to. 

Two weeks after he got to the house, Kaizuka Yuki showed up. 

In all the time he was here, she hadn’t called once -or at least, not him. Yagarai told him she regularly took news, and by the slightly harassed look on his face he could tell she was being rather insistent. For some reason, she never asked him directly, and so he had no way to know how exactly Yagarai had informed her of Kaizuka’s progress, or lack thereof. 

Apparently she had decided to not listen either way, and arrived completely unannounced, taking advantage of his surprise to pass through the front door without even a salutation. 

“Woah ! Hey,” he sputtered, scrambling to go after her. “What do you think you’re doing ?”

“Seeing my little brother,” she answered between gritted teeth. “It’s been two weeks, Yagarai’s being fucking evasive, I’ve had enough !”

Before she could let him explain how much of a bad idea it was, she went up the stairs much to his annoyance. For somebody who wanted to have news she certainly didn’t stay around to listen to them. Groaning, he went after her. With some luck that unforeseen visit would snap Kaizuka out of the torpor he was in. 

How wrong he was. 

He didn’t get here in time to hear what Yuki said to her brother, but he saw the exact moment Kaizuka clocked her arrival. Indeed, he reacted, but soon he wished he hadn’t. Immediately, Kaizuka went from listlessness to an alighted explosion, his remaining eye widening with a fear so raw it triggered his own fight or flight reaction. 

“No- Go away !” Kaizuka’s yell was terrible, and not only because he hadn’t spoken in over a week. He violently pushed himself from the bed, and of course his body gave out and he fell. Even as Yuki tried to help him, just as distressed, he tried to put the most physical distance between them. “You’ll die too !! Get out !”

“Please, Nao,” Yuki begged, nevertheless stopping her hands from reaching out. “You know you won’t hurt me !”

Kaizuka’s answering scream was what finally got him to snap out of his stupor and he got between the two siblings, not really knowing who had to be protected there just that he currently was the only sane one here and wasn’t that ironic. 

“Go,” he whispered to Yuki, as Kaizuka’s cries became whines and labored breathing. “I’ve got it, just go-”

Even if she didn’t move, he turned his back to her -she wasn’t his biggest worry because Kaizuka was working himself up into some sort of a panic attack, pulling at his own hair and not stopping though he had blocked his vision of his sister. 

Everything Yagarai had instructed him to do in these types of situations went up in smoke, and the more he tried to recall them the more he panicked himself. His first instinct had been to touch Kaizuka, but he had contained himself just in time. Crowding him would make it worse. But he also couldn’t spare the time nor attention to go phone up Yagarai and Yuki was still here and he couldn’t panic either or he would be entirely useless and this problem would just keep going on like an infernal cycle- fuck it, he would do the Slaine Troyard way, also known as impulsively act and then think later.

“Kaizuka, what is the square root of pi,” he had to repeat it three times before his question got through to him. At least the hair pulling ceased.

“Everybody knows this,” Even if his gaze was slipping again somewhere far away, Kaizuka had answered with his usual befuddlement at learning the others weren’t geniuses like him, and he would take the improvement even if that meant embarrassing himself. 

“Not me, I’m dumb as rocks,” he partly lied, because he did not think of himself as a stupid person but mathematics made him want to commit a hate crime. “If you ask me to do anything beyond additions I start crying. Come on, what is the square root of pi ?”

“1.772,” Kaizuka answered without barely taking the time to think about it, the little show off.

“Alright. Now if I multiply 1238 times 5, subtract 385 then divide by 56 the answer would be-”

“6183.125”

“I have no way of checking that so I’m taking your word for it,” he grumbled. Somewhere behind them, he heard Yuki inhale then leave the room but he kept his focus on Kaizuka. Already Kaizuka seemed to begin coming back to his senses, so whatever the fuck he was doing was working, somehow. 

Lo and behold, it did. By the fourth math problem he wracked his brain for he had Kaizuka feebly arguing about someone having too many strawberries, which considering how genuinely terrified he was fifteen minutes ago he would keep listening to him rant about a fictional strawberry freak who ‘should learn how to make jams’ over what he had just witnessed. Still, Kaizuka was exhausted, and he felt quite frazzled himself but his job wasn’t done once he had made sure he had swallowed his meds and fell back asleep. With force of habit, he tucked him in because Kaizuka was so weakened he ran cold in the damned summer and took a few minutes to assure himself that the storm was over for now, and then he had no time to waste because he still needed to look for Yuki Kaizuka. 

Thankfully, she hadn’t left, though obviously she had cried and he still didn’t know what to do about that. What he figured he could do, was sit next to her and give her a glass of water. Shit, taking care of Kaizukas had now become a reflex, what even was his life. 

So far, he had been aggressive, sarcastic or both at the same time. Right now, neither of those would help.

“I know you must be hurting and scared, but you need to understand this can’t happen again, for the time being.” He tried to word it in the most gentle manner he was capable of and braced himself for some offended lashing out that didn’t come. Hearing that Kaizuka couldn’t stand to see his loved ones near him was one thing ; witnessing it firsthand was another. Naively, he had thought it had been somewhat exaggerated, but no. Kaizuka was scared, not of them, but of what could happen and he didn’t expect to feel such a stinging hurt to see him like that. 

“I think I already knew,” Yuki admitted, her voice still warbling. “But I thought…No, I wished he was magically doing better. Yagarai said you got him to eat again, and all I could think was how I couldn’t even do that.” 

“It doesn’t work that way.”

“I know.”

“I want my daughter to meet her uncle,” He let her continue since there had been some truth to what she said to him during that last visit ; they may not appreciate each other but they had someone in common. “He’d be so awkward but he’d love her, you know ? My husband’s brother and he fight over who is going to be the best uncle. When he learned I was pregnant he immediately researched all about it and made me a huge binder. It was just as endearing as it was annoying and I’d give everything so he can make those one day again.”

He couldn’t agree more. 

“He’ll meet her. I’ll make sure he does,” he decided in the afternoon light and rising tide afar. “But it might not happen as early as you wish.”

“I hate that you’re right.”

“You can- you should call. I’ll answer and keep you updated,” he surprised himself first with his next sentence. “It’s as you said ; I… appreciate him more than I dislike you.”

If Yuki noticed his careful choice of words, she thankfully didn’t comment on it. 

“Thank you.” Heartfelt and a tentative offer of peace at the same time. There wasn’t much else each of them said afterwards. Yuki left shortly after that, and promised to let him know she would arrive back at her hotel safely because Kaizuka may not be able to see his sister currently but he would also hate that anything would happen to her. 

It wouldn’t erase the past, nor smooth over their issues. But in that moment he thought they had finally reached an understanding ; a common desire to unite for the sake of the same person. For Kaizuka, he was willing to do so. 

*

As much as he wished he could sink into his bed, scream into a pillow then sleep for twelve consecutive hours, he still had some adrenaline left and most of all, a urging need for some fucking answers. He checked that Kaizuka was still deeply asleep, and then for the first time since he arrived he dared to leave the house with his charge still inside. 

He made it to Yagarai and Marito’s place in record time. He didn’t even bother to knock or announce himself ; he went through their backyard and saw them setting the table for an early dinner outside. For some reason, that casual and domestic sight only angered him more. 

“Troyard, what’s-”

“No more stalling. I am not leaving before you explain once and for all what happened during the liberation. I cannot have a repeat of today without some answers.”

Maybe he shouldn’t have opened with that, because he had to explain himself what had happened earlier that day and that only added to his irritation but once he was done even he could see Yagarai and Marito weren’t going to fight him much on that. Even though he had been burning with curiosity after what Kaizuka had told him about Magbaredge’s wife, he hadn’t pushed because Kaizuka had gone nonverbal and despondent, and Yuki was already upset enough for him to compromise her fragile state any more but he needed some answers. 

“Sit down,” Marito’s request was more of an order than an offer, and he begrudgingly obeyed only to get what he wanted faster. “It might take a while.”

“You are correct, something did happen during that last operation for freedom. Although most of us had transitioned back into civilian lives, the Deucalion crew had been exceptionally called into battle again. Especially Inaho. He was to lead a special battlefield plan. But in the past years the enemy also developed some tactics of their own, learning from the war’s mistakes, and something went wrong . Terribly so. Although it was beyond his control, Kaizuka’s plan failed. And-”

Marito grew suddenly quiet, stumbling upon words, before abruptly leaving the table. The sliding door slammed shut.

“Let him,” Yagarai picked up, his expression pained and for the first time since he met him his exhaustion or grief wasn’t concealed. “It’s still very difficult for him. For us all who remain. As you know, at the time of the war, most of the draftees were children whom he had personally trained. That included Kaizuka and his friends. One passed right in the early stages of the conflict, but the rest of them made it out. They came back for that last mission though, to support Inaho as they always did.”

How bright the sun was, and yet he felt like he had been doused by the coldest of waters. 

“I’m not able to tell you the exact details of what went wrong. I was helping out at a field hospital. But what I know is that after a backlash explosion, part of the Deucalion got trapped underground, and 93% of its crew died. Those who survived either did so because of sheer luck or being out of range, like Koichiro and Captain Magbaredge, and others like me or Yuki who weren’t there. Out of all Inaho’s friends, only he survived. Save one who couldn’t be present for the operation, that included all of his former schoolmates and friends that served on the ship.”

It took two solid minutes before Yagarai found the strength to start speaking again. 

“Rescue only got to clear a way to the Deucalion four days after it happened. A few others survived, but a lot died at the hospital. But Kaizuka, he was- he got trapped the deepest. Four days, surrounded by his friends’ corpses and countless others. Later autopsies revealed others hadn’t passed away immediately, and though he had tried his best to save them with what little movement he could manage around the debris, there was nothing that could have been done.”

Any time he thought that this couldn’t get any worse, he was proven wrong. 

“Beyond a few scrapes and bruises, and of course dehydration and starvation, Kaizuka remained relatively physically unscathed. Mentally, he was gone. Anyone would be. Don’t get me wrong, he’s very strong, but everyone has a breaking point and that was his.”

Once upon a time, he had seriously wondered about Kaizuka’s ability to compartmentalize. For a surviving teenage soldier, he entered adulthood remarkably adjusted with the many traumatisms of war. Fuck, of course he would have a complete mental breakdown after that. Now, it all made sense. Hindsight brought a fucking clarity that made his eyes sting.

“Ever since, anytime someone he associates with the Deucalion crew, especially fellow soldiers that served beside him, tries to get near him, he thinks they will die because of him. As I’m sure you’ve seen today, he has quite the adverse reactions. So he can’t even hear that other survivors do not blame him for what happened, his guilt won’t allow it.”

No fucking wonder. Kaizuka’s fear response hadn’t been just mental but evident in his body as well, and after the week he had he had no trouble imagining him shutting down. 

“He refused to attend their funerals and even if he hadn’t I’m not sure he would have managed to get through them.” There was nothing but a sorrowful honesty to Yagarai’s voice, and just that sounded cruel -the plain truth of it.

“How- how does someone ever come back from this ?” He asked, horrified beyond any understanding. “Is it even possible ?”

“It is.”

He hadn’t heard Marito coming back. He was still standing, as though he was getting ready to flee at any given second, but when Yagarai grabbed his hand he leaned into the support with a quiet sort of despair. 

“During heaven’s fall, I lost my friend and lover. We were on the battlefield together, got caught in fire together. Not only was he the one who died and I the one who survived, but he begged me to kill him and I did. It was a mercy and the thing I will regret most until the day I will die. For years afterwards I blamed myself, and became a self-destructive mess. This guilt, I’ve carried it since that day and I know it will keep haunting me. It’ll always be a part of me. But despite everything, I somehow got through. And today I can say I’m glad I did, because while I will always mourn what I lost I also cherish what I found.”

“You got him to eat again. However unorthodox and probably the least medically recommended way, you found a way to help him through a meltdown.” Yagarai carried on when he wasn’t capable of answering. “Believe me, compared to how he was just two weeks ago, that’s huge progress, even if you can’t see it right now. You just have to keep trying.”

There wasn’t much that could get past his throat, but he knew one thing for sure. This did not change his prior decision ; if anything, it was adding to his determination to stay. Kaizuka hadn’t given up on him, and so he wouldn’t either. 

*

He left feeling fraught and mentally drained, and he certainly wasn’t the only one. Still, walking in the fading light brought back a semblance of peace, all temporary it was he cherished it. Every occasion to walk in nature felt liberating, even if he kept struggling to conceive he existed again in something as pleasant as a summer’s falling evening. 

Just as he came back, nearing their house, he felt very glad that he hadn’t listened to his urge to sleep and instead went to listen to a story that was probably going to haunt his upcoming nightmares. If he hadn’t, then he wouldn’t be here to see Kaizuka was awake and outside and heading towards the sea. 

Fuck. 

Adrenaline replacing exhaustion felt like a whip, and he broke into a run. Foolishly, he had thought the combo of calming and sleeping pill would have been enough to knock Kaizuka into rest until the next morning, but just like when he thought he had died after shooting him in the head the little fucker obviously loved to prove him wrong. 

Considering how weak Kaizuka currently was physically, he had no problem catching up and tackling him with as much vehemence than a rugby player. 

“Let me go,” Kaizuka trashed like a feral kitten, which was only one more incentive to hold him tighter.

“It won’t solve anything at all, idiot !” he spat back, and they rolled into the grass. Kaizuka tried to bite him, he clung onto him like an insistent leech, and it took five minutes of a ridiculous fighting that also had to have looked absolutely inappropriate before they each waned.

“Why do you even care,” Kaizuka finally said, out of breath and miserable. “You must know everything now. I don’t deserve to remain here, nor should I burden you any longer than I have. I’m a murderer, Slaine-”

“Tough shit.”

“... What ?” Clearly, this was the last thing Kaizuka expected from this dramatic speech. 

“You’ve heard me. What about it ? So am I,” he sighed, pinching Kaizuka’s mouth shut when he tried to protest. “No, you don’t get to call yourself that and then be upset when I do the same, moron. The point is, Kaizuka, it’s not about what we deserve. If we go there, then I don’t deserve shit either, not to be free, certainly not to even live.”

“That’s different, you were-”

“Young ? Traumatized ? Yes, and my choices were still my own. I wasn’t ordered or forced to annihilate the trident base. I didn’t do it to defend myself. I sent men and women to certain deaths. I did order the death of countless civilian lives even while I knew I was going against everything I believed. And I will bear these mistakes for the rest of my life. But there’s something that this guy once told me, you may have heard about him, brown hair, no depth perception and an unhealthy attachment to the color orange, his name starts with an I and finishes with an O-”

“I know what you’re trying to do,” Kaizuka sullenly commented.

“Exactly, so shut up and listen. Whether we deserve it or not is not the question. It’s that regardless, we can still try.” 

Kaizuka remained silent, but he had stopped trying to worm his way towards the sea. The whole situation could have almost felt casual, with them laying down looking at the evening sky and appearing stars if it weren't for the air loaded with grief and regrets. 

“And,” he inhaled deeply, “if you were to die I’d actually be very sad. I’d even cry.”

When Kaizuka still didn’t comment on that, which was fair given how he had treated him in the past, he carried on. He couldn’t be coddling but he could be honest. In the face of what he had just learned, denial had no place to remain.

“But most of all, I cannot imagine an existence without you to bother me in it. You’ve gone and done it, you absolute asshole, you fucking grew on me and believe me I was the first surprised. I am choosing to stay on purpose, Kaizuka, so you better fucking listen to what I’m saying. This - it’s all because I want to be here. Even in this moment.”

“I cannot promise you the future,” It had been long since Asseylum’s words had been inspiring to him, but right now they were a perfect match for what he was hoping to convey. “But we can try and figure it out. Together.”

“I don’t- I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do,” Kaizuka’s voice was a whisper. “How can I go forward ? It feels impossible.”

“Then you let me carry it with you. It’s like you told me, remember ? You don’t have to be alone.”

Another pause. Then a broken release of air escaped Kaizuka’s chest, and he curled his arms over his head. 

“I hurt my sister,” his voice cracked, sounding young and scared.

“I know.”

“Everything sucks. I cannot stop seeing their ghosts and I have grass in my nose and- it feels like I’m never going to be normal again.” 

Wind rustled among tree leaves, the earth kept on turning. Life kept going on whether you wanted it to. There was nothing he could say to make it any better, to stop the world from being cruel. But what he did was clasp Kaizuka’s fingers, and press them so he’d know they could weather the storm. 

Later on, he would get the both of them up. Get them back home, clean their scrapes and the dirt and grass off them. Spend a sleepless night making sure Kaizuka would rest. 

But for now, just their linked hands, was enough. 

Things didn’t get magically better afterwards. But there was some improvement, and he kept reminding himself that it was the little things that would go towards something bigger in the long run. He kept acclimating to civilian life and figuring out who he was, outside of vers or prison. Kaizuka’s condition remained stable, but though there were days where he did not speak, he managed to communicate again. He still barely went out of his room but he could move by himself again. He still ate less than he would have liked him to and he didn’t ever think he would ever be finding himself missing Kaizuka’s random bouts of statistics and information dumping but here he was. 

About a month after he started taking care of him, Kaizuka accepted to take meals downstairs rather than have to be brought food every time, only because he presented him with research over the benefits of the sun and damnit, he also had the right to enjoy his newfound freedom and dining outside would benefit them both. He wished he could have said that after that everything improved, but that was merely wishful thinking. There were still days where Kaizuka shut down or lashed out ; the aggressive behavior he was sadly intimate with, having gone through much of the same when he was ill himself, so he handled it better than the others. Kaizuka ended up confiding that he couldn’t stand the silence, but that he couldn’t speak much either, so he took to read aloud the many books the house had been furnished with, or put music on and he thought that was helping just a little bit. 

The rest, there wasn’t much he could do for. He couldn’t anticipate Kaizuka’s triggers until he witnessed those ; one time he made the mistake to phone Yuki while still in Kaizuka’s hearing range, and Kaizuka had lunged at him to hang up the phone. There was no way to know if a mention of Magbaredge or Marito was going to set off Kaizuka or not -some days were fine, others weren’t. He still had to persuade him to eat, it was harder than ever to keep him engaged in conversation. Most days he felt like all his efforts were for nothing, that he wouldn’t be able to keep his promise to Kaizuka for carrying this load together, and the next moment Kaizuka would shuffle towards another step as if he unconsciously wanted to prove him wrong. Now Kaizuka still had episodes and mostly stared into nothing, but he recently began coming down to stay with him in the rooms of the house, a bit like a sunflower. He didn’t dare comment on it for hope of rupturing the spell.

It wasn’t all positive, but it wasn’t all negative either so he wasn’t going to complain. Much. Because Kaizuka knew how to push his buttons and given he already was a stubborn little shithead on the regular, this version of him managed to be worse sometimes. 

Often he had to get away for just a second, take a deep breath and think very hard of how he understood what Kaizuka was going through. He wasn’t being depressed and difficult on purpose, but he was still frustrating sometimes. In a way, it was a good thing that Kaizuka still had the tact and delicacy of a rhinoceros, in those moments he sounded like himself, if it weren’t for the way he criticized what he cooked and read. Honestly he was temperance in the flesh for not chucking a book at his head earlier. 

“Alright,” he said on one such day, snapping shut the poor book with much more energy than necessary. “That’s enough. We’re going on a walk.”

Recently, and after some more talking with Yagarai, he started to think of ways to help Kaizuka further now that he had regained bodily autonomy (he still had to remind Kaizuka to wash, to brush his teeth, but he did it by himself now and Yuki had cried when she heard then blamed it on the pregnancy hormones) and was more aware of his surroundings. 

Kaizuka shrugged, because he truly didn’t have the energy or strength to care about most things. While he understood, he also remembered the many times where Kaizuka had insisted for their weekly chess matches (or rather his weekly chess trouncing) happen outside and for them to help attend to the prison’s garden and hadn’t taken no for an answer, no matter what. He channeled that same spirit by practically throwing shoes at him. 

“I wasn’t asking,” he said, lacing his own shoes and wondering if his pockets were big enough to carry water bottles and sunscreen. “Physical activity has been proved to be beneficial to the vascular system and mental health. So you and I are going on that stupid mental health walk if that’s the last thing I ever do.”

“I don’t want to,” Kaizuka shrugged again, and that was it, he was going to use that sunscreen to draw dicks on him. There was a difference when Kaizuka was too far gone psychically that he literally couldn’t do anything and when he could and was being uncooperative that he had learned to recognize.

There wasn’t a wheelchair in the house, so he got the next best thing. Five minutes and carrying the equivalent to a potato sack if those could be sentient and capable of insulting him, and he had Kaizuka in the wheelbarrow Marito sometimes used to bring them fresh produce, water bottles thrown over his stomach. Moving it around was grueling, and he wisely decided against going to the beach, but he had built up some muscle in the past few weeks so he managed nevertheless. 

“This isn’t very comfortable,” Kaizuka commented. 

“You can still get up and walk,” he answered between gritted teeth, and as predicted Kaizuka remained moody yet unwilling to improve this situation for the both of them. 

Once more, he was extremely thankful they lived in such a remote corner with not many people around because he was certain it looked like he was carrying a corpse. The only downside to living remotely with not many people meant that he knew those who did, and since he decided against going to the beach he had no choice but to pass in front of Yagarai and Marito’s place. 

Working on the vegetable garden he kept, Marito had the good instinct to immediately head inside, but he heard him laugh all the way over and beg Yagarai to go and see. Kaizuka seemed to have accepted his fate, his hands resting over his stomach as though he was getting ready to take a nap. At this point he suspected he was staying inside the wheelbarrow out of spite and desire to see him struggle. 

(Which, he would never admit out loud, but it was good. If Kaizuka had the strength to annoy him again that could only bode well, even if that meant he had to sacrifice his nerves in the process.)

“Uh,” Yagarai eloquently remarked once he had gotten out to see what the problem was. 

“Nothing to see here,” he said between two furious gulps of water, out of breath. He took advantage of the slight rest to slap some sunscreen over Kaizuka, who tried to fight him off but since he had insisted on remaining inside the wheelbarrow he was cornered. Maybe he should have been concerned about how this would all appear to Yagarai, but by now he had stopped caring about his ego. 

“Take a picture !” Marito wheezed from inside the house. Kaizuka and he both tensed, but to his relief nothing happened, though he made sure to cut the conversation short once Yagarai had taken the damned picture. Indeed, Kaizuka seemed to breathe easier once they had gotten farther on the road. 

It wasn’t that he didn’t agree with the stance that Kaizuka shouldn’t be completely cut from his old life, as the rigidity would only get more and more detrimental over the long run. But having seen how debilitating those episodes were, he couldn’t help but wish he had some power to make them stop altogether.

Goddamnit, he really had gotten protective of him. If only his teenage self could see him now, he’d probably hurl. 

They, or rather he, the wheelbarrow and its bitchy occupant took the scenic route through the small forest. At some point Kaizuka let his arm drop so his fingers could touch grass, and he instinctively slowed down. The weather was perfect ; sunny but with a little wind thanks to the sea, so the heat wasn’t unbearable either. Though his muscles ached he felt all the tension from earlier bleeding out of his body, and immediately decided to get Kaizuka and him out more before summer would fade. He was already walking the days where Kaizuka had his therapy sessions with Yagarai, but he had noticed the way Kaizuka had relaxed since they had left their house. 

The cliffside was beautiful, though he resolutely stayed away from the edge. He firmly planted the wheelbarrow into the soil, ungracefully unloaded Kaizuka over the ground and sat down to listen to the waves and drink some more. There was a forgotten apple in his pockets and he convinced Kaizuka to eat the other half of it.

“Slaine,” Kaizuka asked out of nowhere. “Do you still believe the sky is blue because of the water reflection ?”

If he didn’t know any better, he would have thought Kaizuka speaking while he was taking a sip of water was a coincidence, but unfortunately for his trachea, it wasn’t.

“Oh, my god,” he coughed, wiping at his dripping nose furiously. “Shut up.”

“Not so long ago you told me you thought the north star was the brightest one, so it’s plausible-”

“If you keep going I am letting you take the wheel and go ask the fishes what they think of rayleigh scattering.”

A few minutes into their bickering, he realized that this was the first time in what felt like years rather than the months it truly spanned over, that they had interacted like this. For a painful moment he was reminded of the before, and how he hadn’t even known then just how he would miss those instants until he lost them. For a minute they were simply bantering on a brilliant afternoon like no war had touched them. 

Not that he expected Kaizuka to revert back to the person he was before that last battle. Better than most he knew that trauma was a life-altering force ; he was not who he was before the second interplanetary war and nor would he be again. Even if he wished he could have taken away Kaizuka’s suffering, he knew that he could not erase or ignore it. This was the reason he didn’t try to be always positive or upbeat ; he wouldn’t know how to begin with, and he certainly wasn’t going to pretend everything was fine and Kaizuka would heal easily. 

Trauma was ugly, and healing always took so much longer than hurting, that was one of the most unfair aspects of it. 

He could not get Kaizuka back to who he once was, nor did he want to. What he could do, was to be beside him like Kaizuka had been, and help him find himself in the wake of a scorched and shattered earth. 

When the sun started to become lower on the horizon, he decided to get them back home. But to his surprise, Kaizuka got up by himself and took the handles of the wheelbarrow, starting on his own the way back. 

“I don’t want you to get sunstroke,” Kaizuka simply said, once again managing to surprise him like he always did. 

Stunned, he had to shake himself and actually follow Kaizuka because he was the one who knew the way back, but for the first time in months, he felt something close to hope. 

*

For one step forward, there always seemed to be one backwards right after. Kaizuka began talking more but just as he did the ufe decided to unexpectedly drop by and try to convince him to attend some event for a publicity stunt of some kind or at least attend an interview to satiate the media’s frenzy about the earth’s hero's silence over the liberation. The meeting ended with him kicking and cursing out several high ranking ufe officers and telling them that since they chose to completely disregard his and Kaizuka’s literal doctor medical opinions he wouldn’t bother giving them any reports. Considering how badly Kaizuka had shut down, it took a phone call from Hakkinen apologizing for him to reconsider. 

Apparently, Marito had found extremely funny the manner in which he had gotten an admiral to apologize to him after he insulted half of his colleagues and their mothers, so much that he sent them an entire homemade toffee cake. Seeing the sweet treat draw Kaizuka out of his own mind gave him an idea, which was just as ambitious as it was stupid, but an idea nevertheless. 

He needed to find something in which Kaizuka would have the energy and want to do again, and so far not even the promise of utterly destroying him at chess had worked. He got Kaizuka to go on stupid mental health walks, as they called it now, but there wasn’t much else yet. He had ruled out knitting because Kaizuka, despite being a prodigy pilot, had a surprising lack of coordination when it came to certain trivial things. Same with a lot of other creative hobbies, which did not help. 

Only, he now remembered Yuki had told him that Kaizuka loved cooking and was excellent at it. With hindsight, he looked back at the moments Kaizuka had sometimes bought a dessert to prison, and they had always been so delicious he never even suspected they were homeday, simply thought they had been bought at a bakery. 

Now his goal was to get Kaizuka to cook again. For Kaizuka’s mental health’s sake and also, a little bit for both their stomachs sake because he couldn’t say he was anywhere near astonishing. The stuff he made was decent enough, but given how Yagarai had stressed the importance of good meals on the brain, they definitely weren’t going to help anyone enjoy food again. Not to mention he had already run out of ideas within his skill set and he was circling back to the same meals and getting tired of his own plans. 

The problem was, he couldn’t just force Kaizuka. That wouldn’t work and be counterproductive to any progress. Though, he always could nudge him a little. 

One good thing was that Kaizuka now gravitated towards him, following him to the rooms he occupied within the day even if he still had trouble doing things for himself. Sometimes he saw him pick up a book but he noticed he hadn’t finished it and often stayed stuck on the same page. That included the kitchen. 

That day, he set up to prepare dinner like he always did, silently begged any culinary gods listening and the stomach of his future self for mercy upon the crimes he was about to commit, and then put the tomatoes into the microwave. 

Immediately, he was aware of the way Kaizuka’s gaze zeroed in on him like a sniper. Because he had lost shame ever since he set foot in this place, he carried on and dolloped a few generous spoonfuls of blueberry jam over the lentils he was cooking. Behind, Kaizuka had completely given up pretending he was reading and had a faint choking sound. Next, he grabbed the most expensive piece of meat they had, and seared it until it became a charred portion of something vaguely edible that was closer to dry volcanic rock than steak. Dumped the tomatoes on it, and since he didn’t want to ruin a disaster, he grabbed wasabi flakes and sprinkled some on top of the unholy mixture. 

“Bon appétit,” he smiled, and Kaizuka looked at him as though he had just chopped up a human leg, cooked and seasoned it in front of him. 

The only flaw in his plan included that he would be forced to eat his creation as well, and just as he thought it was awful. 

“I like the umami,” he lied, because despite the foul taste he hadn’t forgotten his mission. Kaizuka, who had some survival instincts left after all, refused to even taste at all and they ended up nourishing off some fruits that were blissfully still untouched by his madness.

He didn’t expect Kaizuka to cave so easily, but by the next morning when he accepted having eggs for breakfast and he got the grenadine syrup out instead of the olive oil, he found the pan being batted away from his hands and forbidden from cooking ever again. Kaizuka made them breakfast with a lasting scowl, muttering under his breath something about eggs, grenadine and the geneva convention. Good thing he was so busy fixing them a worthy breakfast and cursing him that he couldn’t see him grin like a lunatic. 

Three days later, Kaizuka stopped in the middle of the salad he was preparing and pointed a celery stick at him. “I know what you did,” he accused, and it was a testament of just how bad things were that he only noticed his obvious ploy now, but he wasn’t about to shit on the results nonetheless.

“Me ? I did nothing wrong, ever,” he shrugged easily enough, because Kaizuka was glowering at the deception but he hadn’t stopped what he was doing either. 

Yuki hadn’t lied, Kaizuka did cook like a god, on the days he could. While he did not complain about fixing their meals on the moments where Kaizuka still could barely get out of bed or his own head, he also did not mind not having to worry over cooking as much. Dividing the chores was easier on either of them, and he did notice Kaizuka ate a little bit more and better. Maybe it did say something about his cooking abilities, but he could take the slender. 

*

Summer slowly blended into Autumn, the days colder and shorter, but he savored each of them nonetheless. Even when they weren’t easy, he knew better than to take for granted what he had. Shifting seasons gave him time for introspection, and often he wondered what his life would have been, if his father hadn’t decided to take them to Mars. If the war had never happened. What would his life have been like ? He thought he may have liked painting, but he didn’t have much time to spare towards exploring any of that right now. All he had was questions that would remain unanswered. Would he still have become bitter and traumatized ? Would he have died fighting alongside the ufe like so many terrans did ?

Would he have still met Kaizuka Inaho ?

There was no way to tell. But strangely, as he looked at him bathed in golden light, he thought that if what he had gone through meant that in the end he would be by his side to help, then he would do it again. Everything he had told Kaizuka was the truth ; he was here to stay, in the good and the bad, even if often the bad prevailed and he had moments where he questioned if he had been too presumptuous in his promise to others. Yet he definitely noticed by going forward with himself Kaizuka seemed to follow. As if to look at him, enjoying the salty marine air gave him more strength. And wasn’t that a thought, to realize he was capable of inspiring, helping someone, without manipulating or hurting them. 

If he had gotten his wish and died all these years ago, back when he screamed at Kaizuka to give up on him, to leave like all the others did, then today neither of them would be here. Theirs had been a path drenched with blood and scars, yet they had somehow become as valuable for survival than air to each other. Kaizuka had once been the worst thing to happen to him in his life, and now he had been one of the best. Come what may, he was determined to be the same. To let Kaizuka understand that holding on might mean the chance of seeing a better day. 

This wasn’t about deserving. It was about trying. 

The call finally happened towards the end of November. In the late morning, an exhausted voice over the phone telling him news he knew will be an equal source of joy and sorrow. 

“Your niece was born last night,” he said to Kaizuka, because he did not have the right to hide this from him, nor did he want to. This was something he would face one way or another. “Yuki is doing fine, she told me to assure you.”

He was on a first name basis with her now, this was the world he lived in. But it was something inconsequential as he witnessed Kaizuka’s shoulders sag with relief and yet grief was right behind to take hold. Many times he had been the one to reassure Yuki that her brother hadn’t forgotten or was mad at her, just as often he had to explain the same to Kaizuka. How different and alike they could be. 

“She also told me that if you want to go see her, then she’d love to.” However hesitating he was about delivering that last part, it also felt wrong to not include it. If he hadn’t, Kaizuka would have believed she may have come to hate him for not being present for her daughter’s birth. And now that he had, he saw him become tense. 

While he had hoped for the contrary even as he knew how unlikely that would be, he had expected the reaction. Kaizuka had come a long way since the day he had arrived, but as he was still explaining to the ufe, he still wasn’t anywhere near full recovery, if that thing even existed. A loud noise still made him see Asseylum’s head get shot and he still had trouble to get Saazbaum thanking him out of his head in those moments.

“I can’t,” Kaizuka’s exhale was painful to hear. “I just…”

“I know,” he answered, because he didn’t need to hear a justification. “I already told her so.”

It was a discussion he had many times with Yuki as she was getting near her due date. It wasn’t for lack of want on Kaizuka’s end, this much was clear, but his body and brain were convinced that being in their presence would bring his sister harm. As much as he was working on it with Yagarai, the change wouldn’t happen in one finger snap. He knew that Yuki hoped that hearing she had given birth would switch something inside Kaizuka, he could understand on some level but he also knew that sadly, life did not work that way. 

Kaizuka remained on his chair long after the end of their discussion, forgoing what they had planned for the day and not even answering him, but he didn’t insist either way. Some moments he knew Kaizuka needed to be alone with his grief. Conflicting emotions were a pain to deal with, he did fucking know so he let him be, taking over dinner preparations and making sure to include eggs because he had correctly guessed Kaizuka was more likely to eat something he knew and liked. 

He got Kaizuka to eat, even if in silence. He got him to brush his teeth. He did not expect him to speak or emote, something Kaizuka wasn’t known for doing on the regular already. 

But the loud music startling him out right at the edge of deep sleep, this he hadn’t expected at all. 

“What the fuck,” he said, mostly to himself and the ceiling. His first thought was that someone had broken into the house. That would have been a more likely scenario than to find Kaizuka in the middle of their living room, music blasting through the speakers chains and what had to be all the alcohol collection they had over the table. 

“Slaine !” Kaizuka beamed, looking entirely like he had already gotten a head start on whatever was happening in there. “Come and have a drink !”

Since months ago, he had been repeating that the supposedly ‘locked’ and ‘foolproof’ place where they had kept the alcohol and other sensitive supplies wouldn’t stand a chance against Kaizuka. The guy had more or less been the reason the ufe managed to resist so long in the war and come out as victorious as they did, he could probably unlock the damn thing with his eyes closed. But as usual his remarks had been dismissed, since apparently the liquor were all very expensive gifts from various generals and politicians that would be a waste of money to throw or donate. 

They said that, and so now he was the one who had to deal with Kaizuka who had decided this was the cocktail witching hour. 

“What is happening ?” Maybe this was all a dream. Maybe he just had to go back to bed and pretend reality didn’t exist. 

“We’re doing cocktails,” Kaizuka explained with the utmost matter-of-fact tone, obviously not even taking in consideration the fact he could refuse. Fuck’s sake, he had even gotten ice, juices and syrups out, meticulously rimming the edge of a glass with sugar. 

The difference between the Kaizuka of this afternoon and now gave him whiplash. If anyone had asked before, he would have never thought Kaizuka was a happy drunk, but here he was, whistling. 

“I call this one ‘I’ve caused the deaths of all my friends’,” Kaizuka presented some unholy concoction that judging by scent alone had more alcohol than juice inside. 

Good god. Nevermind. 

“You should workshop the title,” he said instead of the ‘this is insane’ that threatened to get past his lips, sitting down. “It’s a bit long.”

If he was somebody sensible, he should cut whatever the fuck was happening here short. But it had been a day ; and whether Kaizuka was reaching a new point into mental breakdown or not, reason and sensibility would wait until tomorrow. He served himself some of the expensive looking vodka and limoncello. 

“Alright. This is ‘I murdered my adoptive father’,” he clinked his glass with Kaizuka’s, hardly believing himself. 

“Sorry ?” Kaizuka offered, once they had each drank. 

“Don’t be, he was an asshole.” 

They created a few more, such as ‘backfiring plan’ (champagne and cream) and ‘this piece of shit red planet should have been left alone’ (red curaçao, whiskey and rum), from ‘Inko sacrificed herself so I could live and I wish she hadn’t’ (blackberry liquor, a lemon wedge on red wine with a lot more ice than it should be allowed) to the unanimous ‘fuck aldnoah’, which included about everything alcoholic they had on hand and was so foul just one sip made him lose vision hearing, speech and touch right at the same time for two minutes. Even Kaizuka refused to touch that one afterwards, and he was a lot drunker than him. He had the thankful foresight to pace himself and never finish the many glasses that now littered the table.

By the time they had reached the end of a compilation of Céline Dion’s greatest hits, Kaizuka was so intoxicated he didn’t notice he had been switching all his drinks to water for the past hour and as for himself he somehow was on the floor and his legs over the couch. 

“I picked this place for you,” Kaizuka suddenly said. “Thought you’d like the sea.”

To not answer that out of three bad experiences with the ocean and water, two were his fault’s took the utmost restraint, because Kaizuka already carried enough blame as it was to make Atlas have sciatica. 

“Here goes my proposal to move away to the mountains, then,” he answered instead. 

“I hate the snow,” Kaizuka confessed after a moment, and he could only wince at his own stupidity. Of course he did. 

“There was nothing I could do,” Somehow, despite the music and the sound of wind and waves outside, the silence between them had inescapable gravity. “No matter how much they pleaded me to find a way out, I just couldn’t. Nothing I tried succeeded. They trusted me. They came back because of me. And I’ve killed them all.”

He maneuvered his legs into a proper sitting position. From his spot on the couch, Kaizuka looked at the ceiling but for the first time, he was talking about what happened. 

“Inko died first. She was my first friend, too. She took the hit that was meant for me and paid the price. I shouldn’t, but sometimes I hate her for it. I think then there was Kakei, and I didn’t even know he had become a father. Commander Mizusaki… She stopped talking after the second day. She and Captain Magbaredge had married just a year ago. Those two classmates whose names I often forgot before - Matsuribi and Tsumugi. They weren’t even military anymore. They shouldn’t have been here.”

He didn’t dare to breathe out, for his voice felt like it could rupture the ritual that had taken place in this instant. A prophecy that couldn’t be taken back. Kaizuka spoke like a ghost, hollow and barely tethered home. 

“When Nina found out about Inko… she cried and cried. She was bleeding so much, but I was stemming her wounds. It was my fault, I shouldn’t have fallen asleep. She opened them again with her nails. Let herself bleed out. If I hadn’t been so inattentive, she might still be here today. She’d hate me, but she’d be alive. And Calm… Despite everything he was still joking, you know. His spleen ruptured and he still believed I was going to find a miracle like I always did. One minute he was fine and talking, joking around like he always did and the next he was gone. Everyone says it wasn’t my fault but it was my decision who condemned us all.”

More gently than he thought himself capable of, he took Kaizuka’s hands between his own and stilted the torture to an end. There was nothing he could say and sometimes, silence carried more than words ever could. He let Kaizuka’s nails dig into his palm and slotted his head over his knee. Perhaps the gesture was strangely intimate, but he couldn’t find it in him to care or freak out at that moment. 

“I still see them all the time,” Kaizuka’s laugh was humorless. “Isn’t that pathetic ?”

“If you’re expecting me to agree on that, then you do not know me at all,” he answered honestly. “Because through and through, and I don’t care if you don’t agree with me, I do not care if I’m being selfish, I remain glad that you’re still here.”

When Kaizuka did not answer, he lifted one of his hands to cup his chin. 

“There’s no way for either of us to know how they would feel about you now. But if they haunt you, I’ll fight them. If they wish for you to survive, to be well, then I will do all I can to fulfill those desires. Because if someone like me could make it, Inaho, then so can you.”

The fact that Kaizuka couldn’t answer once again wasn’t a surprise. But his next action did ; before he could really understand, his hands were taken and he was held by Kaizuka, close and desperate. It was an awkward angle yet his body automatically reacted ; he reached back around Kaizuka’s trembling body, curling his limbs against his frame like a snake. He didn’t say anything about the hopeless way he was held, as though he was the only lifeline in a stormy sea, or the wetness he felt over his shoulder where Kaizuka had buried his head. 

He didn’t speak at all, just reclined the both of them until they were laid down. Drifting ashore through the storm. 

*

In the morning afterwards, he didn’t know what was worse. The headache or the sheer amount of clean up he would have to do. Their living room looked like the aftermath of a frat party hurricane. 

How Kaizuka had drank more than him and still managed to appear less hungover than him somehow should be scientifically studied. Not to mention extremely insulting. While he had barely found the energy to get up to take a painkiller, Kaizuka actually woke him up by relentlessly poking him in the cheek to let him know he was drooling. 

“Last night was fun,” Kaizuka actually said, casually grabbing one of the leftover bottles. 

Obviously, he didn’t mean the last part, and seemed to pretend it hadn’t existed. He could take a hint, and give Kaizuka a grace period only because his head felt like it was being assaulted by a very insistent and enthusiastic woodpecker. 

“Mmh,” he groaned, waited until some much needed food and coffee hit his system (thankfully he didn’t feel nauseous, just hungry), squared his shoulders and took a deep breath. 

Then, he got up, grabbed the nearest bottle (some luxury tequila that had survived the second war) and poured it down the sink. It took until the second bottle for Kaizuka to react, so perhaps he was more hungover than he thought. 

“This isn’t happening again,” he firmly stated, unbothered. “And I’m not taking any chances.”

Because he had seen Kaizuka serve himself a glass when it was barely eight in the morning, and he didn’t care if the guy had a reason to, he was going to nip that disaster before it had the chance to happen. If that included washing down the sink all of the luxury alcohol in the house then he’d do it in a heartbeat, the ufe’s and Kaizuka’s opinions be damned. He had to wrestle one or two bottles out of Kaizuka’s grip and easily won because hungover or not Kaizuka still had lost all muscular strength. 

He wasn’t sorry then and certainly wasn’t when some ufe head came to complain that he had wasted millions's worth of priceless liquor, and likely hated him when he pointed out the paradox in their sentence like the shithead he was. They also really didn’t like that he pointed out that they had wanted him to take care of Kaizuka and not letting him fall into the slippery slide of addiction was part of that. 

Surprisingly, Magbaredge was the one who got them to back off. By now he was used to her sporadic moments where she did her job, and if anything since she wasn’t present enough in their lives to be a bother he just didn’t see her as someone who would necessarily help. But this time she intervened on her own and took his side, saying that after those many months and the good calls he had in the past, they should trust his instincts more. Overall, a lot more helpful than he had expected her to be, but he wasn’t going to spit on it. 

Meanwhile, Kaizuka was no help at all. He had begrudgingly admitted there was logic in his reasoning about the whole drinking debacle, but he still took it out on him. Better than most he knew than recovery wasn’t linear and that ultimately, they were bound to hit a low in the curve but by god did it test his patience sometimes. He wasn’t doing this out of obligation or for thanks, but many times he got out of the day feeling exhausted and unvalued. 

They got into the winter season and holidays, and Kaizuka seemed to only get moodier and they kept arguing over the stupidest of things. Mind-blowing, how now that Kaizuka could talk again he seemed to have found his voice for the sole purpose of pissing him off. Ambiance at home got a bit better once Yagarai had a talk with Kaizuka following a day where he cried in front of the doctor because he had accidentally overcooked dinner, only it wasn’t about burnt food it was about how he thought Kaizuka opening up to him had been good progress and then he felt like he had ruined it all right after by looking out for his health but at the same time he couldn’t give up either. 

At least Kaizuka got a lot more tolerable after that, so he conceded that maybe it was as Yagarai had once said, that there were still people who were here to help him. With his own stress alleviated, and Kaizuka thankfully went back to cooking again most of the time, he was able to take a step back and get some much needed perspective. Tired as he was, he hadn’t been able to think clearly. Kaizuka’s behavior wasn’t only because of their arguing, that part was an excuse. By pissing him off he created a perfect distraction, and he felt mad at himself and Kaizuka for falling right into it. He soon figured that one of the factors contributing to that shift was that Yuki’s calls frequency had reduced given she had a newborn at home, and though Kaizuka still couldn’t see or speak to her he worried nonetheless, and the guilt he felt at being unable to do all these things had to manifest at some point. 

The second thing he noticed, though Kaizuka was careful to hide it, worried him much more. In case he was wrong, and having learned that confronting Kaizuka without proof would be counterproductive, he silently observed during a few days. He soon got the confirmation he needed, and he wished he had been wrong. 

Kaizuka wasn’t sleeping. This time it appeared to be entirely voluntary. He was used to seeing Kaizuka catch up on sleep whenever he could, but now he saw him nap in the most unlikely of places, and he looked angry at himself whenever he woke up, startled. Then, he saw him increase his coffee intake. The final nail in the coffin was as he pretended to go to sleep, one hour and half later Kaizuka would come in to check he was sleeping, then make himself an iced coffee and keep awake. 

Fuck. And he didn’t know how long this had been going on because the little fucker was gifted at redirecting his attention when he put his mind to. No matter, this would cease tonight. 

Again, he knew that communicating on the issue probably was the more recommended way to go, but whoever had come up with that hadn’t met Inaho Kaizuka, so he would have to play dirty. That night, he went to bed as usual, making sure to deepen and even out his respiration when Kaizuka came to check, waited until he was gone to get out of his room. Making himself as little and silent as possible was a survival skill he had picked up early on Vers, and he hadn’t lost it. 

Unfortunately for his plan, the moment he placed a hand over Kaizuka’s shoulder, stealth backfired spectacularly and Kaizuka startled so bad he sent his elbow right in his stomach while his hand came to hit his jaw. So now they were both frantically flailing like two spooked animals, and he would take this ridiculous moment to his grave. 

Oddly, he found himself in the position of being the one tended to, because Kaizuka made him sit down so he could get his breath’s back while he checked his cheek and stomach. Beyond a light bruise, he would be fine. With luck, no one would know. 

“Why aren’t you asleep ?” Kaizuka angrily said once he had made sure he was fine. 

“I could say the same about you,” he spat back, and that immediately shut him up. Kaizuka was smart enough to know he had been caught. “You can’t keep doing this. Eventually it’s going to cause another kind of breakdown and it’ll fuck up your circadian rythm so bad you’ll - you already know. So why ?”

To think he once worried about Kaizuka sleeping too much, and now he had the opposite problem. Life really was an ironic circle.

“It’s worse at night.” Kaizuka finally admitted, because he did not let him flee this conversation and caught him by the wrist before he could turn away. “It’s so quiet -not even music can help. They creep up when I try to sleep. I hear Tsumugi’s rattles. I hear Nina crying. I can smell them rotting and bleeding and feel the cold of the snow over my skin. I can remember all that but I’ve started to forget the sound of their voices, and that’s somehow even worse. So please, Slaine, let me stay awake. I don’t care the cost, it cannot be more evil than this.”

He inhaled deeply. 

“I can’t let you do that.” As Yagarai had told him, that day where he had broken down, making decisions like those for his well being sucked, especially when he saw the way Kaizuka looked at him, so betrayed and angry and desperate it made his throat feel like a clump of acid leaves had become stuck there, yet he still had to. “No, listen to me. You may not care but I do. It’s exactly because I care about you that I won’t let you. But, that doesn’t mean I won’t find a solution. Come with me.”

He didn’t give Kaizuka the time to protest or lament himself any further, and took him by the hand up to his room before unceremoniously pushing him down on the bed. Kaizuka seemed about ready to comment, especially when he took his shirt off, but he was satisfied to say he surprised him with his following actions for once. He got them both under the covers, and got Kaizuka close to him like that time where they had gotten drunk. Took Kaizuka’s hand and placed it against his chest, right above his heart. And just like his own body had reacted automatically, so did Kaizuka, the tension in his shoulders melting as he tucked his head under his chin. His nails dug somewhat uncomfortably into his skin, but if he had to sacrifice personal space for Kaizuka to finally sleep then it would be worth it. 

“It’s not going to work,” Kaizuka still muttered stubbornly, his voice already drowsy. 

“Shut up.” He forcefully petted Kaizuka’s mop of hair and found it to be soft under his fingers. More agreeable than he thought. 

Five minutes later Kaizuka was asleep. His gamble had paid off ; just as he thought, using his body as pressure for Kaizuka to feel, along with the steady rhythm of his heartbeat and the warmth of his bare skin could chase the ghosts away. He didn’t regret it. In fact, he was very comfortable, more than his empty bed ever had been. 

He already knew then, that just as he had known then that he would leave prison for Kaizuka, that neither of them would go back to their former sleeping arrangements after tonight. But he didn’t lament it. 

Now that he was finally assured that Kaizuka would stay asleep, he had some time and enough quiet to think. Something long overdue was surfacing at last, and he couldn’t avoid it any longer. 

Namely, Kaizuka’s feelings towards him. He had locked that information in the depths of his mind since the day Yuki had visited the prison and for months it had slowly crept back up, until he was faced with the ordeal of introspection. To be fair to Kaizuka, if no one had told him, he would have gone on his merry oblivious way. Then, the past months had left no space for romance, but as he lived with Kaizuka he learned to recognize some signs that confirmed he hadn’t been lied to. 

Kaizuka loved him, and knowing this didn’t make him want to run like it did before. 

Very early on, he had agonized to wonder if his presence was somehow taking advantage of Kaizuka. Since he was aware but as far as he knew, Kaizuka had no idea, it all felt rather unethical. Because weaponing Kaizuka’s feelings for him to get him to do something felt wrong, even if he had to admit he was often tempted to on the days where nothing he did or said worked, but in the end he was glad he hadn’t. Regardless of what he knew or not, he would do it all over again. 

There was an answer, now. To the question he hadn’t dared ask himself for fear of what it would mean. And now that he had, it didn’t feel nearly as scary as it once did.

Just as he sank into sleep, his nose into Kaizuka’s hair, he felt at peace with himself. 

Sleeping together, in the most literal sense of the term, helped. So did the spring weather, and he was glad to know that since they were in the south the cold wouldn’t stay too long either. 

Longer walks were back on schedule and Kaizuka now accepted to walk to Yagarai and Marito’s place so he could have his sessions there. He still wasn’t capable of talking to Marito, but he could handle knowing he was near which was a huge step forward. 

Perhaps it was an effect of spring or finally sleeping well or all these at the same time, but Kaizuka seemed to become less of a ghost. Considering how he was just half a year ago, that was more than he expected but he tried to not let it get to his head. He kept on fending off the ufe, reminding them over and over that even if Kaizuka recovered their genius general was gone because it was obvious that while Kaizuka was doing better, he wasn’t apt to return to military duties, much less public appearances after what happened, and he probably wouldn’t be again even after he had grieved. Unlike the military brass, he didn’t consider this a failure. Hakkinen was oddly one of the only ones to respect his opinion and not push for Kaizuka’s return, which was unexpected. Officially, Asseylum and Lemrina had no say in ufe business, but given the connection between himself, Kaizuka and the actual Empress of Vers and her sister, their unofficial support from behind the scenes did wonders.

But it wasn’t until the first blossoms appeared he got the certainty that one day, it would be alright again. They would get out of the storm. 

The day was unremarkable by any means. The weather was getting sweet enough for them to eat outside again. Unfortunately, living by the sea meant he was subjected to his sworn enemies ; the fucking seagulls. Seriously, he did not understand why Kaizuka ever had the gall to compare him to those hell spawn maniacs that were a blight upon humanity. If martian invasion should have succeeded at one thing, it was to render these assholes birds an extinct species, but since the world had decided to spite him personally he would get no peace. And by some sort of cosmic irony, they seemed to only target him. A pair had decided to nest on their rooftop, probably to personally taunt him. At this point he would take bats over seagulls any fucking day, but Kaizuka had said that his rage only made him resemble one more, go figure. So now he had two birds and one human harassing him daily.

Such as today ; he simply wanted to enjoy his pizza. He wasn’t going to bother anyone, he felt content with life and positively starving when he came back from his morning swim. Today was also a good day for Kaizuka, insofar as there was nothing negative or out of the ordinary disrupting him. And then, for just a few seconds they had gone back inside to grab seasoning and glasses, and when he came back he found half his pizza gone. 

And a fucking seagull flying away with it, a comically large pizza slice hanging from its beak, screeching as though to tell him to go fuck himself. 

“No fucking way !”

He was so busy insulting the thrice accursed wretched thing that he didn’t notice it at first. But when Kaizuka’s laugh filled the atmosphere, and he was changed . That was… well, he couldn’t exactly say the first time. Because Kaizuka wasn’t humorless ; years of knowing the guy had proven that. Many times he had observed that his biting remarks had made him smile, and somewhere along the line that had kind of become a goal of his, to get someone so tight laced and composed to emote. Kaizuka would smile, but he rarely laughed. And he certainly hadn’t since the liberation. 

Even if it was at his expense he couldn’t care less right now, because Kaizuka was laughing and it was the most wonderful sound in the world. In this instant he sounded so young and unburdened by war and grief. Such a sight touched him more than he could articulate, and then before he knew it he was laughing too. Maybe he had lost half his pizza and would have to steal some of Kaizuka’s that was untouched (likely because he put fucking oranges slices on it, it was so fucking foul even seagulls ) but there was a world where they would both make it, and he believed in it like a basic fact of life now. 

There was seasalt in the air, he could still laugh until his ribs would ache, and there was hope. It replaced all the dread and gave him the strength to go on, like a core of diamond, unbreakable beneath the ashes. The world could be shitty but also so beautiful, if you let it be. 

*

At first, he hadn’t meant to begin his every morning with swimming. But he thought he needed to show an example of overcoming one’s fears, and he was a bit curious as well. With his father they had always been transient, never staying long enough to settle into routine or stability, and even when he was by the sea he didn’t have many occasions to swim. But the radius determined by his parole did include the sea, and so every morning when the tide was high he went there. 

By the second week the waves weren’t so scary anymore. 

Besides, he took it as an auspicious sign for both Kaizuka and him. More often than not, Kaizuka slept in, but more often than not when he came back, his skin salty and his feet still sticky with sand, he had a strong breakfast awaiting him. Sometimes Kaizuka was out on the porch, reading or simply looking at the sunrise. They would reunite around their meal, he would then take a look at the communications he had received (there was more communication required concerning Kaizuka’s health than he initially expected) and most of the time he would end up verbally sparring with the stupid ufe head of the day who still had zero comprehension. 

Today was not much different, except maybe his administrative adjacent duty gave him a headache earlier than usual. 

“It’s too early for this bullshit,” he muttered as he finished reading Lemrina’s latest communication. This really shouldn’t be what an ultra secured line is used for, he wrote back. Mere minutes later, what he got as an answer was that she didn’t care and would do what she wanted since she did secure and own the thing, which was fair enough even if it made him sigh and drop his head against the table dramatically. 

“What’s wrong ?” Kaizuka had just pushed another cup of coffee next to him. He rarely showed interest in what the ufe wrote, saying he was absolutely done working for them, but there was no point in trying to keep him away from stuff either. Especially when that had no consequences for Kaizuka. Only he was suffering in this situation. 

“Lemrina is trying to convince me to help her convince Asseylum to have an affair with her head bodyguard.” And it was so convoluted too, that he regretted being the responsible adult and having put a liquor ban over the household. Years ago, he would never have thought that he was ever going to utter such a sentence, much less to Kaizuka out of all people. How had this become his life. How.

Of course, Kaizuka stayed silent as he processed the information, frowning slightly and his face frozen as though he had just bluescreened. Understandable, really. 

“Isn’t Rayet her bodyguard ?” he then said suddenly. 

“Who the fuck is Rayet ?”

“It has to be, she’s the one in charge-” Kaizuka, as usual, ignored him to pursue his reasoning. 

“By chance, does she have red hair and looks permanently pissed off ?” Seeing Kaizuka’s eyes widen, he knew he had hit dead center. He vaguely remembered her from some of Asseylum’s visits, she did glare at him but he hadn’t really cared. At least Asseylum now had someone a lot more qualified than Eddelrittuo to protect her.

“I take it that you know her,” he blinked as he watched Kaizuka get up and pace, now fully invested. 

“She was with us on the Deucalion crew,” Kaizuka mentioned offhandedly, and he didn’t notice how crucial that moment was. 

Not the story he got about Areash, who turned out to be Versian and the only daughter of her assassin father who had known about the plot and survived. (Surely that explained why she glared so much at him. Finally, somebody who hated Saazbaum more than him.) Even if he could admit it was a bit interesting to hear, and somewhat ironic to him given she was a martian who had ended up fighting alongside the earth, though he didn’t really care much. As expected, after the war the ufe dismissed and rejected her visa because having a martian within their ranks, even if she had fought alongside them, was not tolerable now that they weren’t starving for canon fodder, and she had to go back to Vers. But no one on Mars wanted to employ someone who had defected with the terrans, so there was no place for her there either. Somehow, and quite unsurprisingly, Asseylum had pulled some strings and hired her. 

“She tried to kill Seylum, you know,” Kaizuka informed him, looking so fascinated he wondered if he should put him in contact with Lemrina so they could become gossip buddies. “Choked her to death.”

There was a silence and a pointed look on his end that meant ‘there’s only her who would hire someone who tried to murder her, that idiot’ because Asseylum had absolutely no self-preservation instinct and it was a wonder she had made it out so far. 

“Tell me more,” Kaizuka ordered, and his involvement was almost contagious. Besides, when he already struggled to retain interest in most things, he wasn’t going to shit on that progress. Even if it was to shamelessly gossip. 

It had been a long time since either of them harbored anything romantic towards Asseylum, and though she wasn’t a close friend to either of them, she was an ally. Someone who cared, and perhaps it was a shame the world hadn’t let them interact normally, perhaps it was for the better -he would never know. Asseylum was someone who had made mistakes but who wasn’t a bad person either and though he wasn’t going to protect or excuse her anymore he still wished her well. He could tell that was the same for Kaizuka as well, and a beast of jealousy he hadn’t known lived in the pit of his stomach settled and purred, appeased. 

At least having to be tormented by Lemrina meant that he had a lot of material. He would almost have felt bad for Kanclain, if it weren’t for the fact that he already knew, courtesy of Lemrina’s enraged rants, that Klancain already had numerous affairs including two other natural children from different mothers. But Asseylum unfortunately still retained the nasty habit of having principles and decency for someone who didn’t have any for her, according to Lemrina who had made it her mission to get her sister finally have someone to satisfy her. Which was more than he would have liked to know about Klancain and Asseylum’s sex life, but he suspected Lemrina was still making him pay for sending her away during the final battle. 

Perhaps that wasn’t fair to Klancain, but he really didn’t care for him. If anything, he almost appreciated the late Count Cruhteo more than his son, and the man had actually tortured him, so that spoke of how little he respected Klancain. At least Cruhteo (or Saazbaum, for that matter) hadn’t pretended to play nice. 

(And in between the lines, through that absolutely improper correspondence, he knew that Lemrina had forgiven him. She also didn’t love him anymore, but she still wished him well too. It was her way of telling him that she had mended things with Asseylum, and to not worry. She was doing well. He would take that knowledge wash over him like a soothing balm.) 

It was kind of a surreal conversation, especially when Kaizuka knocked the pad out of his way and tried to type a message to Lemrina himself because he ‘had a plan’ before he wrestled him to take the damn thing back, and in spite of everything, he knew that if he had to do it all over again just to get here he would. Such a ridiculous and hilarious moment, and it was worth every second.

Because Kaizuka hadn’t noticed, but he did. For a short moment that would be someday lost in time, Kaizuka hadn’t thought about the Deucalion and her ghosts, had mentioned her crew with fondness and without being overwhelmed by survivor’s guilt. For just that instant, the memories had been untainted. Tomorrow would perhaps be a bad day, but that didn’t mean today was insignificant. 

Of course, he didn’t mention any of this to Kaizuka, lest he remind him of the burden he carried. That moment was something he wouldn’t mention in his reports. For once, Kaizuka’s smile would be just for him to see. 

He wished neither of them had gone through such sorrow and suffering. But if that was to end up here, wrestling and laughing over who got the pad, sea salt still in his hair and feeling this free, he would go through it all over again, no questions asked. 

Change, be it positive or negative or both, happened when he least expected it. He should have known they were overdue for a shift of tectonic plates, a disruption in the nest they had built, but it still caught him off guard. 

The world caught up on a warm and bright day. Even if he was doing better, Kaizuka still had sessions and every two days he would get him to the second house by theirs, and hand him off to Yagarai. The first few times he had, he had then gone on a walk, too awkward to stay with Marito, but as the latter once said, he didn’t bite and since that day Yagarai had proven he had no empty promises, he made more efforts to interact with the man. And it wasn’t as bad as he made it out to be. On sunny days Marito showed him the gardens and what he grew there, and he sometimes wondered with a pang of hurt if that was what could have been with Saazbaum, in a sweeter world. But dwelling on it only brought sorrow, and the embers of his hatred towards the man ignited back and he’d rather keep them doused. Too long had he been animated only by rage, and now that he had seen what life could be without he couldn’t go back. 

But that day, his heart wasn’t in to kneel down in the dirt and though Marito was no doctor, he sensed his worries and instead got them inside to have a cup of tea. He brewed it like Kaizuka, and perhaps it was that little detail that made him open up. He was worried, glancing at the ceiling where he knew Kaizuka was with Yagarai. The past few days had been difficult -it took long for Kaizuka to fall asleep, even in his arms, and though the dip in his mood was, well, expected of depression, and he knew it, he still felt concern closing like a cold fist around his entrails. 

“He’s in good hands,” Marito appeased, so tranquil like he was certain of the fact, and though he struggled to believe him he felt his shoulders drop slightly. “Soma gets his way like no other. He’ll be able to get to what’s troubling your boy.” 

To not talk about that last part, because however friendly he had become with Marito he was absolutely not ready to go there yet with him and he didn’t like the suggestive way Marito had glanced at him, he diverted the attention over the first part. It worked, because Marito was ridiculously besotted, and so he got a cheerfully told story about how Yagarai offered alcohol to him, the recovering addict, and gave Magbaredge a recording of their session together. What. 

“Are we sure he should be treating Inaho ?” he asked skeptically, because he didn’t doubt Yagarai’s capacities as a doctor but he sounded like an ethically dubious therapist. What he heard in the car that day suddenly made a whole lot of sense. 

Marito had laughed, but whatever he was going to answer was lost in the sound of someone knocking over the door, and what happened made him all forget about Yagarai’s disregard for patient confidentiality and tendencies to date his patients. Magbaredge was as surprised to see him, comically freezing with one shoe taken off, so he knew this wasn’t anything planned. 

“I didn’t know you had company,” she was the first to talk, and it was strange to see her in civilian clothes, that spoke to how little he actually saw her around. It wasn’t sounding like an accusation at all, but it still rubbed him off in the wrong way. 

“Junior’s having a session,” Marito glanced up meaningfully, and at the very least she immediately understood so she still kept up with what was happening. 

Technically, he knew she did, because she was the one to take his defense even from a distance, but the fact was that he didn’t trust her. She hadn’t done anything to own his, and he wasn’t going to pretend with her. He felt for her loss, really, but he had grown fiercely protective of Kaizuka against all odds and he wasn’t going to let her jeopardize his tentative efforts to heal even if her grief gave her reasons to. He understood her absence, appreciated that she still somewhat helped, but she probably was a better captain than she was an overseer. If Marito hadn’t been here to act as his parole officer there would be no supervision from her. 

“It’s fine, I’ll go,” his lips were tight. “have Yagarai give me a call once he’s done.”

“No, wait-” 

Unexpectedly, it was Magbaredge who had stopped him, quickly lowering her voice with a wince and a guilty glance upstairs. It was probably the first time he saw her appearing embarrassed and hesitant. 

“Please stay. I… owe you an apology,” she said after a breath. 

Oh, he was so tempted to tell her she may but he wasn’t going to care for it either way, but a part of him was curious. And she had been helpful at times, the least he could do was hear her out. Warily, he sat again. 

“Ah,” Marito made a choked sound of pure awkwardness. “I’m gonna, uh, harvest my pumpkins-”

And then he fled, probably to eavesdrop while also giving them a chance to clear out the air without someone standing as an awkward witness. Not that he could blame him, the ambiance was already tense and she had come in not even five full minutes ago. Currently they were both sitting in front of tea that was getting cold, neither willing to get into whatever this was. 

“It’s just as well that you’re here today, Troyard.” Magbaredge was the first to speak out. “I haven’t been exactly honest with you.”

“Well, you’re not the first, if that makes you feel better” he shrugged. 

“Still. It doesn’t. Circumstances or not, I shouldn’t have treated you the way I did. I took over because I needed an easy assignment, some way I could still get insurance and benefits while easing my workload. But in doing so I neglected Kaizuka junior and you and, well, used the situation to my advantage. I also passed my nerves on you when you didn't deserve it, and I need to own up to that.”

Since it was the plain truth, there was nothing he could answer. But for what it was worth, he appreciated that she owned up to her mistakes and apologized. Few people had (strangely, he sometimes dreamed that Cruhteo did, which was extremely disturbing). 

“We should have had that conversation earlier, and though I don’t expect you to forgive or trust me, I hope we can work together for Kaizuka’s junior sake.” That was a nice sentiment, but fat chance of that happening- “Now that Kaoru is going to be home soon, I will be around more-”

Wait. 

“Oh, she’s getting discharged ?” Marito, who had indeed been shamelessly eavesdropping, came back beaming. 

“That’s the reason I’m here,” Magbaredge smiled, looking happier than he had seen her but he currently didn’t give a shit because- because - “In a month maximum. Then there’s the prosthesis but we’ll be able to do visits for-”

Wait. 

“Wait !” he erupted, his nails clinging to the table. He had a terrible foreboding feeling. “Who the fuck are you talking about ?”

“My wife,” Magbaredge frowned at him, defensive, and he inhaled sharply. 

“Mizusaki ?”

“Yes, but-”

“She’s still alive.” It was more an affirmation than a question, but given that he currently tried to not explode with rage his tone was hard as stone. 

“Of course,” Magbaredge confirmed again, and he closed his eyes painfully. “Why wouldn’t she be ?”

“So you mean to tell me that she hasn’t died back there, and he doesn’t know ?” he enunciated slowly, his teeth nearly audibly grinding. 

“He doesn’t ?” Magbaredge and Marito looked aghast. 

“No shit he doesn’t !” Ah, so much for containing himself. “What the fuck have you been doing ?!”

“I’m certain he was told there was a survivor when we got him out,” Marito argued, but he looked uncertain. 

“Oh, you mean in the immediate aftermath when he was so traumatized it took several people to restrain him ?” Each explanation only made him froth at the mouth more. He was furious, and didn’t know he would one day feel so incensed over Kaizuka Inaho’s behalf. “Yeah, I’m sure he registered that. Do fucking better ! Is there anyone that even tried to tell him ?” Regardless of knowing the answer, he pleaded anyway. 

Marito tried to say something, then thought better of it and his guilt was so obvious it made him want to lash out and trash the entire room. Meanwhile, Magbaredge looked sincerely horrified. 

“We didn’t… We weren’t sure she would make it out, at first,” she then admitted in a breath. “She was in a coma. Septic shock. Doctors told us to prepare for the worst and her parents and I were arguing about withdrawing life support. And even if I knew that nothing that happened back there was his fault, I was still angry at him. I regret it now.” 

“We didn’t want to give Kaizuka false hope,” Marito confessed, and on some level he understood what he meant, but he was in no state to do anything but be angry. 

“But against all odds she woke up. The day you were released from prison, actually.” Ah, well that explained some things about the day. “I don’t like using the term miracle, but she got one. She lost an arm to gangrene but that’s all ; even cognitively, she’s having a full recovery otherwise.”

“Okay.” He had to force himself to take deep breaths. “Okay. For the first part, I can understand. I’m livid about it, but I can conceive that. But for the months after ? For all this time ? What’s the fucking excuse, and it better be excellent.” 

“Do you have any idea how much pain he has been in ?” He wasn’t expecting an answer, if anything it would probably make him angrier, and in any case he didn’t give them the time to try. “He believes he’s killed them all ! Knowing that there’s one that survived would make a world of difference !” 

“You’re correct,” Marito finally sighed. “He should have known earlier. We can have Soma prepare him for the news-”

“No way. I am going to tell him right now, it’s been long enough.” When Marito tried to sensibly point out that Kaizuka still shut down whenever the crew was mentioned, he didn’t take any of it. “Full offense, but easing him into it would have worked only if he had been told earlier like he should have. It’s been months. He deserves the truth right now. The guilt is killing him. You’ve appointed me to look after him, and so that’s what I’m fucking doing. This ends now.”

Aggravated as he was, he barreled right into a confused and rather pissed off Yagarai. 

“I don’t know what is happening but if you want to shout at each other do it away from here- wait, what are you doing-” 

He would feel bad for it later, but he had practically shoved Yagarai off. 

“Fixing the shit you’ve made !”

He took the stairs three at a time and nearly sprained his ankle when he rounded the corner and threw open the office door. Kaizuka was seated, and he knew they had interrupted in the middle of a bad moment because he was staring emptily at the wall, but he couldn’t allow himself to falter. 

“Kaizu- Inaho.” That got his attention, it always did. Because for the rest of the world he was Kaizuka but when it was just them he was Inaho. He kneeled by the armchair, took Kaizuka’s hand and squeezed. “Kaoru Mizusaki is alive.”

If this situation hadn’t been such a disaster, he would have tried to word it otherwise. But the truth was what Kaizuka needed, and he watched it take hold and startle him out of the far place he had been gone. His remaining eye focused on him, now alert and widening. “What-”

“She survived,” he took a deep breath, for both their sake. “She made it out too. Full recovery.”

“No-” Kaizuka grew agitated, his usual blank face alighted with anger and distress, and he began to understand that the other idiots maybe had a point when they wanted to wait. “Do not lie -”

Shit. By some stroke of luck, he had never been wrong about what to do for Kaizuka until today, and facing the possibility of fucking up, of being the one to cause him pain was excruciating. He needed to fix this, not make it worse, and currently Kaizuka was so upset he wouldn’t listen to him. 

“Kaizuka-” He hadn’t heard Magbaredge come into the room and sure, why not make a terrible moment even worse but even as he kept his attention over Kaizuka, he saw him still but not from the rigidity that usually overtook him when someone from the Deucalion tried to interact with him. There was another sound in the room - a voice he didn’t know, a laughter unknown and distant sounding. 

Magbaredge knelt beside him, holding out her phone to Kaizuka so he could look at the video displayed at full volume. “It’s real. See. She’s here, she’s fine-”

Over the screen, a woman with short black hair laughed again. She had a missing arm and though there was grief lingering in her gaze, she looked at Magbaredge with the radiance of someone deeply in love. Someone who had been very close to death and who was so very thankful to still be here. Another video, this one of the same woman walking over reeducation parallel bars, sweating and swearing despite other voices encouraging her. Magbaredge wasn’t the one holding the camera, but she appeared often on it, the one who made Mizusaki laugh and smile most of the time. It was intimate. It was real. 

And perhaps he was witnessing a miracle of his own, because Kaizuka wasn’t paying any attention to Magbaredge or Marito, he wasn’t stiff with fear over their presence, he was staring at the videos with trembling fingers and a relief so grand he could never find the words to describe it. 

“Oh,” Kaizuka’s broken release of air felt as though a weight had left his shoulders, and then whatever he tried to say ended in a choked sob. He hunched over and hid his face, and by now he knew him by heart that he instinctively reacted.

“Leave us,” he ordered the rest of the room, shielding Kaizuka from view and thankfully no one argued against. Soon after he heard the door close, but he didn’t bother to check. Kaizuka was now clutching him as though he was trying to delay fracturing that run over porcelain, his nails digging into his forearms, and so he stopped thinking and climbed into his lap. Swung his legs over the armrests, held Kaizuka tightly and let him break within his arms. As things often were with Kaizuka, it was silent and barely noticeable, but it was here all the same. 

Later, much later, for he would be unable to say for how long they remained locked in that embrace of the statues of old, he would remember the way Kaizuka held onto him even as all he had been carrying broke free from the overflowing prison of his own making. How he held on just as closely, his lips pressing into Kaizuka’s hairline. This moment he would keep in the sanctity of his heart, because even though it wasn’t about it, still it belonged only to them.

Later, there would be explanations and apologies. Promises to do better that he could finally believe. He couldn’t hold onto resentment nor did he want to be tainted by it like he had been so many years. But that would be later. Right now, all that mattered was Kaizuka and him. Two burning stars falling in the void, intertwined and seabound. 

The past three days after that life altering afternoon saw Kaizuka mostly sleeping off the shock. As though his body had finally given out and he had been able to rest. In the waking moments he sometimes would ask in a broken voice if that had been real after all, and he would tell him that it was each and every time. He even got Magbaredge to call while she was with Kaoru, and as he expected, for Kaizuka to hear that someone from that tomb had lived and didn’t blame him at all changed everything. 

Three days afterwards, Kaizuka voiced the first request he had since he arrived. He asked to see his sister. Which, alright, he did not freak out because the last thing Kaizuka needed was for anyone to make a big deal out of it. Not that it wasn’t a big deal either, but the more normal this all was the better it would help down the line. 

Nothing was miraculously solved, but Kaizuka now could handle being near others related to his past aboard the Deucalion. Magbaredge was the one to drive them there while he made sure Kaizuka wouldn’t jump from the moving car from nerves. With him, impossible to know. 

Watching the siblings reunite was emotional. He couldn’t fault Yuki for crying, even though he did notice the efforts she made to not be overbearing. What they said to each other was inaudible but he didn’t try to pry ; he watched from the sidelines to make sure Kaizuka mentally handled the situation, because even though he had been the one to ask he had vomited of stress the evening afterwards and second guessed his decision all the way over to the point where even him had doubt. But seeing them, he now had the certainty that that had been the right choice. With each hushed word of his sister Kaizuka seemed to shed the ghostly shroud that surrounded him. And if he had to advert and wipe at his eyes and pointedly ask Magbaredge how Kaoru was doing, she had the good grace to not mention it. 

However unexpected allies Yuki and he had become, he hadn’t expected her to hug him like she did, something poignant and so very sisterly that it made him want to cry. He didn’t, and the embrace was brief, but it was enough to convey her gratitude, a debt that he would never claim because he had done all of this on purpose, not obligation. After that he knew that the last remnants of the wall that separated them had fallen. Trust wouldn’t come easily nor quickly but one day, he was sure it would. After all, they had someone in common.

He had known victory, and yet looking as Kaizuka held his baby niece for the first time, so carefully and awkwardly and still so full of wonder and love eclipsed all the previous triumph he ever felt at anything. In that moment he had felt like he had won the world, even if he did not deserve it. Also, it did make him weirdly want to have Kaizuka’s children even though it was biologically impossible, so really, how even was this his life. But the realization, however absurd it was, did not make him panic like it once would have. 

Some time ago, in the hollow of a sleepless night, he had his answer. And while he hadn’t acted on it since, too unsure of the future and what it would hold for them, but as he watched Kaizuka reunited with his family, old and new, he now had another kind of hope, taking roots within and blooming. 

*

He had expected it would take more time than it actually did, but then he had never been very good at math to begin with. In any case, he wasn’t in a rush. Kaizuka still had a long way back ahead of him, in spite of the leaping progress he made since seeing his sister again. There was a time and place, and if years had to pass before they could get there then he could easily live with it. Kaizuka was very much worth the wait. 

Kaizuka was also very good at surprising him. 

Summer had begun anew. Despite the early morning and fresh water, he still went for his morning swim. But a recent development had seen Kaizuka join him, out of his own volition, and that action spoke louder than words. It was looking to be a peaceful day, bright and warm. They were going back towards the shore, but had stopped to see the rising sun over the waves. Water lapped over his stomach. There were no kataphract debris around. Just the sea and the sky, pink and red clouds. Just the two of them. 

“Slaine, there’s something you should know.” Kaizuka had been observing him now, and though he was usually rather hard to read he had no problem understanding what this was about. “It’s not fair to you. All these years-”

“I already know,” he cut him off, smiling softly. In the morning glow Kaizuka’s skin was gilded with caramel. Reaching for him was an instinct. “Even if I didn’t, my choice would have been the same.” 

He kissed him with the softness of the sun. He was kissed with a care he had never been shown before. Kaizuka’s lips tasted of salt and just for that moment, everything was right. 

Then, because life could still ruin the most romantic of moments, a big wave rolled over them and threw them off balance. They ended up with kelp all over themselves, a seagull splashed him and he cursed, and Kaizuka laughed, unfettered, and he knew then. Everything would be alright in the end. Between them. Around them. 

There would be a world where he would get to explore all of Kaizuka’s skin, to invent kissing and to love and be loved. They would bicker and argue and laugh and be themselves, all the good and the bad. And he couldn’t wait for it. 

“Ready ?” he asked Kaizuka, carefully taking into account how he had been pinching relentlessly the skin of his wrist for the past ten minutes. 

“No,” Kaizuka answered honestly. “But if I don’t go now I never will.”

He smiled, and took advantage of the tinted windows of the car to kiss him one last time before they climbed out. Even if the press wasn’t supposed to be aware and carefully kept away by some distraction Hakkinen pulled and he may have been wearing an aldnoah disguise but they still had to be careful. 

They hadn’t picked the day of the liberation itself, because too many eyes would linger on the cemetery they were at, and Kaizuka wouldn’t have been able to shoulder the day anyway, but the survivors had still arranged something significant afterwards. Especially for Kaizuka, who would for the first time visit the graves of his friends, nearly a year since their funerals he hadn’t been able to attend. 

He kept their fingers laced all the way to the others, and if Kaizuka heavily leaned on him no one commented on it. They were a small group, some faces he knew (Yuki, Yagarai and Marito) or had recently gotten to know (Magbaredge and Mizusaki, who also was recovering. She and Kaizuka were talking a lot, and it appeared to help them both immensely) and some he barely recognized like that grouchy red haired bodyguard who bumped her shoulder into Kaizuka and said something unintelligible to him but got Kaizuka’s own shoulders to relax afterwards. Rows and rows of alabaster graves succeeded themselves, until they were arrived. To honor the dead and those who had survived them alike. 

Kaizuka shuddered despite the sunny day, and got closer to him, pressing his head into the hollow of his neck. He leaned on him just as much, and hoped he conveyed through contact what couldn’t be spoken. Judging by the way Kaizuka breathed more easily, he got it. 

They had talked about that day. About how hard it would be, both the wait and the day itself, the aftermath that would be sure to hit hard. And so they each knew that no matter what, they wouldn’t go through it alone. And it was a comfort not to be. Even if the ghosts would still linger, some days worse than others, they were both braving the storm hand in hand. 

One day, Kaizuka and he would emerge on the other side, still scarred from the war and still healing. 

It had never been about deserving, but about trying. Again and again.