Chapter Text
hearts are too complicated, touma decides.
emotions, hearts, thoughts - all of it, all of it. none of it really makes sense. and that’s what makes it lovely and awful and confusing.
touma wants to hold kento. touma wants to help kento. touma’s scared of hurting him more. touma doesn’t know what to do .
kento isn’t asking for help, that’s for certain. he’s not asking for much of anything, and touma knows why - knows that whatever shadow took hold of him in those thirteen weeks changed kento more inwardly than outwardly, stripped him of the spark touma had held close.
even if things had calmed down, even if they had passed into a future not yet seen, a future they had carved through holding hands and pressing forward together - simply covering the scars of the futures passed doesn’t make them go away.
kento doesn’t speak much, doesn’t even really seem to move much. he eats, he sleeps, he’s surviving , but it seems almost painful for him. like he’s breaking and reforming with every step.
so touma wants to help. it’s a trademark stubborn feature of his, really. no matter if it’s a promise not spoken aloud but one he made in his heart, it’s still a promise he wants to keep.
i’ll save you, kento .
kento’s finally calmed down enough to stay with them. it still feels like he’s too far away, even when they’re barely feet apart. like kento isn’t just the swordsman of shadow but made of it himself, incorporeal.
touma doesn’t know if that’s because of his own wavering heart or because kento looks at him with a haunted look whenever touma tries to reach out.
kento doesn’t like to be touched anymore, it seems. touma and daishinji had carried him into the northern base after a particularly rough battle (touma still doesn’t understand why kento protected him like that. the last thing touma had expected was that, when they had practically been enemies - the last thing touma wanted was to see kento hurt in his arms again, but that was what had happened). though it was only moments between kento waking up and his eyes closing again, but the hollow look in those eyes - they were nothing like the eyes touma remembered.
it had been thirteen weeks between kento’s death and his return. in that time, he had slipped through touma’s fingers too many times. another mistake repeated, another person he failed to save, no matter the words kento had left him with that night.
so of course touma wanted to grasp that hand he had missed tighter, tighter. he just couldn’t bring himself to, in fear of breaking it.
touma’s being selfish, probably. ever since the calibur armor dissolved around kento, leaving him collapsed on the floor of northern base, touma has wanted to hold his hand again. it’s selfish, he knows that, there’s more important things, but all he could think of - all he can think of is a hand falling before it can pinky promise, a hand trapped in swirling darkness no matter how hard touma grips it.
the two of them were in the same room, tonight, a consequence of that rough battle and kento’s injuries - and touma having volunteered to make sure kento didn’t get any ideas about leaving in the night. he couldn’t watch over kento for as long as he wanted to - the weight of the next battle already pressing down hard, a weight touma doesn’t know how to deal with except for pressing onward and fighting - but for tonight, at least, they were close.
close in proximity, though not much more.
kento wasn’t still, when he slept. touma’s memories, though clearer than they once were, weren’t vivid enough to remember if he had always been like that. it couldn’t have been the exact same, not really, not when kento seemed so tense, fidgeting just a little too much to be truly resting.
in some darker corner of his thoughts, touma was actually grateful for the restlessness. he had seen far too much of kento being cold and limp and still.