Archive of Our Own

The separation of sky and sea was nigh indistinguishable. Water beneath his feet, clouds motionless in fantastical patterns that failed to catch his eye, with a single person standing opposite him against the vibrant backdrop of midnight blues and bright coral hues that faded into a bright sky behind his back.

Had his heart not already been dead in his chest, he knew it would have stopped. A warm smile met his shocked stare at the woman standing on the water's surface, just as comforting and kind as he remembered it. Tears prickled at his eyes, for he could never forget her face, but it lived once again in a place he couldn't identify. Yet he knew it for what it was, as if he would always end up here. As if he'd been here before.

Heat began to build at his back, and the breathlessly surreal scene shifted from beautiful pinks and blues to a gradually darkening scarlet, eating up the light of the sky and turning the sparkling water dark as blood with its reflection. Fire ate away the clouds, the horizon smothered by smoke, and the woman's arms opened in an invitation for a loving embrace that made his throat seize at the memories it brought.

"Kazuya!" rang sourcelessly from somewhere at his back, but he didn't move. A foreign thumping at his chest jolted him briefly, but still he couldn't rip his eyes away from the form standing in the flames, paralyzed even as a rhythmic beating sang mutedly in his ears.

Thump, thump, thump.

Her lips mouthed something from within the fire, and he knew it instantly. Never thought he would see it again, in this life or the next, though somewhere in the back of his mind he knew himself to be right. This was neither place, but a third, middling between.

"Kazuya!" came the call again, louder though still faint. The thumping grew in volume with it, hurting his chest with each beat.

Thump, thump, thump.

His mother smiled softly, and his own name once more graced her lips. An angelic face in a world of hellfire, just as it had been to him all his life since her own death. Her arms remained open. Come to me, they said.

Kazuya reached out a hand-

"KAZUYA!! WAKE UP!!"

Pain exploded in his chest, his extended hand stuttering as the other shot to the hot agony, coughing as he did. The flames roared higher, and the woman's smile grew wider, mournful tears slipping down her cheeks. He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

"Not yet," he saw her say, arms dropping as the fire engulfed her, and something inside him screamed.

THUMP, THUMP, THUMP-

The water beneath his feet gave way, and the hellfire slipped through his fingers as his heart jerked back to life.

And an angel looked down at him from the blinding white.

Kazuya's eyes shot open, met with the dim light of morning streaking through the filthy windows. He laid silent, forcing his grip to loosen on the sheets at his chest and hardly feeling the ache in his bruised palms, instead trying to focus on slowing the beating of his heart.

His once more beating heart.

Slowly he sat up, closing his eyes once more. The same dream, the same memory, just as always – yet his heart still pounded every time, as if it hadn't yet gotten used to the act of keeping him alive again despite the months between then and now. It was strong again, strong enough, even if it would take years yet to fully regain its former strength. That was what the doctors said, anyway, but they didn’t know his physicality like he did.

It had no excuses for acting up every time he remembered what purgatory making way for hell looked like.

Rubbing at his eyes in frustration, he peeled the covers away and forced his feet to the floor, the tank top following suit soon after. They both stuck to him with sweat, and his irritation at the idea of having to wash them again followed him to the bathroom sink. It was dark in this room, but he didn’t need to bother with looking at himself in the mirror, because no one he cared about impressing was going to see him anyway. He could guess how he looked.

As every day, his morning routine was set in stone – bathroom, water, stretches, kata, breakfast – and he completed it with robotic efficiency. The air outside the cabin was damp, thick and muggy with the memory of rain holding it down, and Kazuya found himself drenched by the time his short workout was completed and the campfire’s heat died down enough to cook evenly with. Breakfast was quick this morning, only needing to fry up the salted fish as he still had rice preserved from yesterday, and he ate without prayer or thanks.

There was one thing he had to admit about the wilderness, with all its sounds and tranquility: it was easy to calm himself to, concentrating on the sounds of frogs croaking from down the way and birds chirping in the trees as he ate. All up as early as himself, for they too had their morning routines and goals for each day.

His included training just shy of cracking bone, of conditioning bruised and rough knuckles to iron when they’d suffered more than enough abuse to be unfeeling, of ending each day with the idea of inching closer to his true goal. Of drilling the time away until something in his mind told him it was safe to venture out and make it his again by force.

Not safe, he almost scolded himself. Smart. He was not afraid, only biding his time. He was awfully good at that, and he would do it again until the stage was set to rend that bastard’s body to shreds this time.

So much for the calming sounds of nature. As with every day, Kazuya’s thoughts inevitably crawled back to that day, and he arrived there rather quickly this particular morning. Almost instantly, thanks to that damned dream. The day his heart stopped, when his father halted it in his chest for a second time, and he only barely made it out of the altercation alive, gasping back into consciousness with the sensation of fire in his lungs as vivid as the ones still licking at his fingertips.

The final day of the second Iron Fist Tournament, his demise set in motion by Kazuya’s own hand.

His thoughts continued as he smothered the fire and rinsed his face in the nearby creek, refreshingly cold against his hot skin. It was June now, near six months since he'd come back from the dead for a second time, and so unpleasantly sticky these days, but come the next few months the water coming down from the mountain would be much colder still.

He remembered Lee’s warnings, his face and body battered and bandaged after his own bout against the man they were unfortunate enough to call father, and his own mocking smirk as he disregarded it without thought. Remembered his own confidence, walking into that arena with the same bloodlust as the last time he faced the man, only to have his bones broken and a perfectly timed fist buried in his chest to make his heart screech to a painful halt.

Remembered her words ringing in his head, clouding his focus-

Hands splashed violently against the water, and he tore back to the cabin he’d deigned to call home for the time being. He was back out within minutes, fully dressed with a canvas tote thrown over his shoulder, the wraps bound around his fists and fingers sparing his scraped skin the texture of its strap. It had been weeks since he’d restocked, and while he could catch as much fish and game as he wanted, he wasn’t self sufficient enough to grow his own rice or manufacture a number of other disposable essentials.

It was grocery day, and he hated it as much as he had the first time.

As Kazuya made the trek to the small village in the damp morning air, his thoughts persisted. He often tried to fight them, but he was in a foul mood for many reasons, and didn’t have the energy or care to as of yet.

Kazuya gasped awake, gagging and coughing on the air as oxygen struggled to reenter his lungs, and the light blinded him fully when he managed to open his eyes. Someone cried out in relief above him, but the ringing in his ears drowned it largely out, even as soft hands helped turn him on his side while he hacked his lungs out. His mind struggled to find reason, to even form the question permeating his whole being that he was barely able to articulate, even to himself.

I’m alive?

When his eyes peeled themselves back open and looked upward, the teary face of Jun Kazama peered back, the only thing in focus as his world slowly came back to him.

“Get back!” he heard someone bark, wavering through its determination, and after a moment he was able to register the voice as Lee’s. Fighting to return to his back, Jun’s hands helped him sit up even as they shook, to have him see his silver-haired brother standing firmly with his back to them. If he had the sense about him, Kazuya would have wondered if the trembling in his fists was from the pain the multitude of bandages and gauze covered, or something else.

The answer came to him not moments later, as a low rumble he recognized far too well made it to him from beyond Lee.

“You’ll suffer the same fate as him if you don’t get out of my way, street rat,” Heihachi growled deeply, prowling forward slowly to close the distance between the four of them. To his credit, Lee didn’t flinch.

“That isn’t necessary,” he said thickly at first, his voice clearing in the way only Lee could manage to that annoyingly smooth businesslike manner.

Kazuya’s mind strained to catch up as he still fought for air, feeling every pump of his newly reawakened heart in his chest.

“I have a proposition for you.”

The village was a quiet little place, nestled comfortably at the base of a mountain that led down into the valley that Kazuya made his way out of to visit it. He couldn’t stand it very long, unbearably dinky and quaint, and with his much vaster experience dealing with nature itself, he infinitely preferred the valley to hiding himself here. In the woods, no one asked questions, and the less time he spent enduring the world of the common folk the less anyone would have the chance.

Though the stash of money he’d squirreled away in his rushed escape from Heihachi’s reach was far from depleted, he used it sparingly anyway. The skill of satiating his palette unfortunately wasn’t something he had himself, besides not wanting to bother with the time and lack of proper ingredients, so he didn’t try. And the longer he made his stash last, the better. Kazuya knew the waiting game, and although he sincerely hoped this one would be less than the twenty-one years he endured the first time, there was still no way of knowing. He had a lot of planning to do, and a lot of consideration besides.

Looking at few and speaking to fewer, he gathered his essentials in silence while his mind blazed on through the memory.

Heihachi guffawed at Lee's offer, harsh and as terrible as every time before.

"I could end you all right here, why should I entertain a word out of your mouth?"

"How about every person at this tournament seeing you commit triple homicide?"

Forcing his head up, the whirring of drones all around made it to Kazuya's ears at last. Heihachi considered Lee for a moment, still incredulous.

"People can always be silenced."

"Not everyone. Not the entire news cycle all at once."

The other man still didn't seem convinced, smiling in that way Kazuya knew to mean he was only playing along out of some sick sense of curiosity. In the quiet between, Lee turned his head and shot something over his shoulder.

"Get him out of here, Jun."

The woman hesitated, almost said something back, but then complied. Kazuya still couldn't speak, even as Jun hoisted him onto wobbly legs with his unbroken arm slung over her shoulders. The lancing pain up his sides that accompanied it had him gasping again, and she struggled to find a spot to place her other hand that wouldn't make him feel like parts of his rib cage were crumpling up into his lungs.

In the blinding pain, Heihachi's voice cut through.

"What do you propose then, little Lee?"

In the corner of his vision, something loomed, and he set his jaw rather than indulge it with a look. He knew what it was, always hovering, always lurking, never taking no for an answer and reappearing on the edge of his consciousness like clockwork. It whispered and hissed, tried to find a way in, but his walls were iron, and even when it assaulted directly it never made it through. The shadowy mass lingered, slithering after him as the street grew more populated in the rising light and a thousand whispers echoed behind its oily voice whenever it spoke.

Let me in, Kazuya.

No, he always bit back, outwardly ignoring it still. It would poke and prod, hover at a distance, scream in his head, but never did he flinch. Its twin within him hissed along with it, but he stamped it out, too. He'd spent twenty-three years fighting a battle of dominance in his own soul, and he wasn’t going to lose now that it was weakened by being split in two.

Kazuya still remembered the surreal feeling of realizing something was different inside him not long after his heart had been restarted, even after removing himself from Jun’s presence. The part that wasn’t him was quieter, calmer, and he only realized this in full when the clawing inside his skull felt duller than he remembered. Not long after, the skulking half that had abandoned him upon his short death made itself known, and the surprise of understanding what had occurred nearly had him lose to its attempt at forcefully returning. Though his heart may have been weakened, his fire had not, and he’d spent every day beating it back since. Kazuya refused to have it return to consume his mind as it tried before.

Some acknowledgement of that sudden absence had been swimming about in the back of his mind while he'd desperately tried to comprehend his situation at the time.

Kazuya never heard another word of it, Lee refusing to open his mouth again until Jun had him far away enough not to hear. Battered legs barely kept him upright, Jun's deceptively delicate frame doing most of the work in hauling him away from the bloody mats of the secluded arena.

"I've got you, just a little more," she kept saying, but he couldn't get enough air to feel like he could reply if he wanted to. Felt like if he stopped thinking about it, the heart pounding laboriously in his chest would cease beating again by itself.

The time between her dragging him to the infirmary and crawling back to consciousness at Lee hurriedly flinging a door open was blotchy at best, and Kazuya couldn't fully remember if he tried. But he remembered the stilted tone of his brother as he spoke.

"We need to leave, now."

Hoisting up the rice bag to his shoulder, Kazuya barely spared the woman at the register a second glance, though he could feel her eyes scrutinizing him the whole time. He had a couple more stops to make, more out of a desire for variety than anything else, but had no intention to waste time. City streets were blistering even in early summer, and small towns were no different. Devil hissed in his ear again as he turned to leave.

You need my power.

You don’t have any, not without my body.

Refusing to acknowledge it visually still, he made his way down to the small line of street stalls halfway across town – meaning, not a five minute's walk away. There were a few local markets in the village, but he liked this one best, smaller and quieter than the rest, and while he hated the idea of being a regular in such a place, the vendors knew him by now and didn't attempt small talk. That alone was enough reason to prefer it over any other.

Devil was sick of him, and he knew that far before it screeched and growled at him like an animal out of nowhere, digging for a reaction that he never gave. Separate from him now, the splitting headaches it would give him were much weaker, and he'd learned to not show outward discomfort a long time ago anyway.

It blocked his vision then, black and formless between him and the vendor he’d been paying. Kazuya’s gaze did not waver, looking through it as if it weren’t there at all, for it wasn’t to anybody but him. Ignoring it only made it angrier, and while it was a dangerous game to play no matter how he participated, he had to admit he found a certain pleasure in pissing it off. Always had, when the consequence wasn’t enough to make his vision spin in his younger years especially.

You need me!!

I don’t. You need me.

It snarled like a beast as he waltzed right through it.

"What... the hell did you... just do?" were the first words Kazuya truly recalled saying after his resuscitation, strained and thin.

"No time," Lee said back, shaken from his oddly fixated stare on Kazuya and blinking to turn his head away. As his brother stepped forward, looking just as perfectly fitting of the infirmary as him with all the gauze and tape, Kazuya struggled to sit up.

"Lee. What did you do?"

The man stopped. Kazuya and Jun beside him stared in the pregnant pause that followed, his own focused breathing the only sound in the small room. At last, Lee replied.

"I just bargained your whole company away."

In the middle of the street, Kazuya closed his eyes. The rest of that day, the last six months even, could play in his mind like a dreadful movie if he let it, and with his current track record of dwelling on it, he probably would. The disbelief, the rage, the humiliation, all of it.

But that tower-crumbling betrayal, that blinding fury, that embarrassment – the hellish smile on Heihachi's lips as he broke every facet of his own half of the bargain – would not be the end of it. That was damn certain.

Slinging the now full bag over his shoulder, he set off in the direction he came, paving his way down the street in a manner that made everyone move for him instead of weaving through himself. He'd always had that ability, from a tender age with house staff clearing the halls, to crowded alleyways as a teenager, and the masses within the Mishima Zaibatsu itself. Everyone knew who he was in those places, that he wasn't to be trifled with or obstructed, but even here where no one knew his face or name, people avoided his path. Less like a plague and more like a mild shock – he'd caught many a surprised glance in his direction as he passed, his physique and stature catching more eyes than anything else, and the few times he returned the gaze had the other turning away quickly.

Stopping for a beat at the crest of the small hill that led down to the time-worn path into the woods, Kazuya turned back to the town. A sparsely populated street, children running amok while housewives gabbed over produce, men and boys carrying supplies – and in the middle of it all, the black mass of Devil hovered menacingly, invisible to all around. It had no eyes, no features besides the insinuation of a humanoid shape, but he could feel its burning glower regardless, searing into the back of his head until he turned to finally look.

He regarded it coldly, and continued on his way.

"So this is where you've hidden yourself away."

Kazuya wouldn't say he jumped at the sudden voice interrupting his training, but he was certainly caught off guard as he turned to face the source. Visitors were something he no longer entertained nor wanted, and no one besides himself had spoken a single word in this place since he'd taken up residence in the abandoned cabin. He wasn't sure whether to feel relieved or even more agitated once he registered who it was.

"It's been a long time, Kazuya," Wang said from his place across the yard, hands behind his back as they always were.

Caught between a glare and a scoff, he turned away as he dropped his stance.

"Yes, I haven't seen you since you set yourself to killing me at the tournament."

"Killing you was never what I wanted."

"Don't lie to me," and Kazuya looked back snidely. "I know the look you had in your eye. I've seen it more times than I can count."

In other eyes, on other faces, family members most notably. Yes, he knew the look of determination to end something with an act of murder. He'd worn it most of his life.

"... It was still something I never wanted," the man replied softly, wrinkled features pulled in a mournful expression. Kazuya looked away again, wiping sweat from his brow in the July heat. Training would have to be put on hold for the time being, clearly.

"What do you want, old man? To end me here, since you didn't get the chance at the tournament?"

"Far from it," he replied almost immediately, carefully. "I wish to help you."

Kazuya raised a brow at that, not believing it for a second.

"Excuse me?"

"You have more people in your corner than you think, my boy. I don't wish to see you tear yourself to pieces in an effort for peace of mind any further than you already have. Or to watch you do it to anyone else," and Wang leveled a hard look at him.

Oh, oh. Another one of these, then. Another person reaching out to save him from himself, to change his outlook and heal his broken little heart, make him a better man and weaken him to the point he let himself be murdered again. One of those. He did scoff this time, his gaze darkening.

"I don't need your help, Jinrei. If you're so intent on not seeing me kill that bastard, then don't look."

"I've turned my gaze away long enough, I think," he said somewhere between regret and anger. "I could have helped you sooner, if I hadn't. Helped Jinpachi..."

Kazuya finally did coil at that, the mention of his beloved grandfather causing him to ball his fists in suppressed rage. Ignoring it, he asked a question he'd been wondering the whole conversation.

"How did you find me, old man?"

Wang stayed silent for moments, something calculating in his eyes.

"... Someone in your corner has been wondering how you've been," he answered carefully, confirming Kazuya's suspicion without even needing to say it outright.

"Lee," he hissed back with clenched teeth. Bastard. Bastard, bastard, bastard-

Ripping a tattered glove from his hand, Kazuya threw the thing at the foot of the makiwara and turned his back, seething at the prospect of it. How did he know anything about it, either? Their last words to each other were anything but pleasant, the unspoken declaration of screw off feeling more permanent than ever before, and he himself didn't know where he would end up afterward, let alone allow it to spill to Lee. The urge to violently ruffle the back of his head in frustration surfaced, but he bit down on it.

"And how the hell does he know?" he practically growled after the beats Wang allowed him to silently rage.

"He doesn't, just simply pointed me in the right direction. He knows you better than you think, Kazuya." In the pause that followed, Kazuya got the feeling Wang was looking to the forest around them, eye examining the tall trees and lush greenery, listening to the birds. "These woods resemble the ones on the estate grounds quite a lot, don't you think?"

Inwardly he recoiled. Lee already knew him better than any other living person on the planet, and the implication that he could parse even his reasoning for choosing here, in the middle of nowhere, made Kazuya even more irate. Made him sick, even.

"I don't need that piece of shit's help either," he grumbled after a long pause of glaring at the treeline between his thoughts.

"Do not speak ill of your brother," Wang nearly bit. "You have caused him far too much grief already."

Turning to look over his shoulder, Kazuya all but glowered at him in response, hesitating only slightly before replying.

"He's not my brother."

At that, Wang deflated somewhat with a tired sigh, slowly shaking his head at the ground as he did.

"I don't consider it that way, my boy, and I don't believe he does, either."

"I didn't ask you," Kazuya spat back, refusing to consider the rest of that sentence in favor of starting to prowl back to the cabin. "Take your pity and leave, and if any word of this gets back to Heihachi, I will hunt you down and end you myself."

"I did not come to pity," Wang said sharply, speaking in that seasoned teacher tone he remembered oh so well from his childhood. "I've come to train you."

Kazuya's pace stalled at that, pittering to a halt halfway across the distance. He did not grace the man with a verbal response, but the question translated clearly from his carefully blank face. As blank as he could get it with rage coloring it still, anyway.

"You won't improve out here by yourself, going over teachings you already know and nothing else. Heihachi's teachings."

Kazuya listened mutely, hating the truth in that statement.

"I agree that the man needs to be stopped, violently if need be, but if you only use his lessons and your own hatred, you will destroy nothing but yourself. You will never win against him a second time. And so I offer my teachings, if you will listen to them."

Wind rustled in the trees as Kazuya considered silently, holding the older man's gaze as he went through it in his head. He didn't need a teacher. He didn't want a teacher. And yet his statements about his own stagnation rang true, even as he argued and Devil hissed in his head. It wasn't his lack of technique or strength of body that cost him the fight against Heihachi, but his strength of will and focus. If his mind hadn't been cluttered by... her, his own doubts, he wouldn't be this in damned forest.

"... I don't need them," he said at length, at last dropping eye contact. He only heard Wang breathe out a not-quite sigh in reply as Kazuya turned his gaze back to the cabin.

"I thought you would say as such, although I hoped not. I know you well enough to recognize I cannot change your mind, but I will be in the village above for a few days if you reconsider."

With a middling bow and little else, Wang turned to leave, his shoulders seeming heavy under some invisible weight.

"Goodbye, Kazuya Mishima. I wish you well."

Kazuya only watched his back while the man made his way down the path for a handful of moments before finally stepping inside the little cabin. Ignored the itching in the back of his mind as best he could while he went through his evening routine, as he treated and bandaged any scrapes of note from the day. The one across his face from a stray branch he hadn't spotted on time last week was still healing, but he paid it little real mind beyond protecting it from the air enough to not sting when he tried to sleep. It was likely to scar.

Wang's words lingered in his mind through the rest of the day, and the next. He wouldn't subject himself to it, to whatever moral enlightenment the old man planned to heft onto him. And he didn't need the help. He didn't.

It was the third day after his grandfather's oldest friend visited that he made his way up through the valley with the canvas bag packed fully on his back, grumbling to himself and arguing with both halves of Devil the whole way.

It had been three months since Kazuya had begrudgingly followed Wang Jinrei back to his dojo, three months of being subjected to an annoyingly soft style of kung-fu and the predicted moral lectures and philosophies, when he finally checked his phone. It was a small thing, less advanced than the one he used to carry but clearly tinkered with, and another one of the things that Wang forced onto him while under his tutelage.

"A gift from your brother," he'd said while deliberately folding Kazuya's fingers over the device, the look in his eye completing the statement with a silent don't throw it out. Kazuya had promptly tossed it into a bedstand drawer in his room and hardly acknowledged it since. They'd said their piece, and he wasn't interested in hearing from the single number saved in its contacts. Not anymore.

"I can't believe this," he nearly coughed, all but limping away from the other man down the corridor. "I can't BELIEVE you-!"

"I just saved your life!" Lee barked back, voice wavering even as he prowled after him. "Saved all our lives, and I think that's worth a little more than some egomaniacal empire and a few broken bones!"

Kazuya turned on a dime to look him in the eyes, and felt some sick satisfaction at the way Lee all but jumped. The bastard was lucky looks couldn't truly kill, because he'd be torn to shreds already if they did.

"You've just ruined everything I've ever fought for. You've taken everything from me!!"

Lee's disgustingly betrayed yet incredulous look back practically made him sick.

Rifling through the drawer between training sessions, he stumbled across it that day, bumping into it and pulling his hand away like it burned. Despite his quiet disdain for the object, for some reason Kazuya took the time to actually flip the little device open, watching the screen light up immediately.

Scoffing internally, he wasn't sure if he expected more or fewer attempts at contacting him. He wasn't sure which would irritate him more, either. Idly, he opened the first of the texts, almost two months old. He had no intention of gracing it with a reply, even if he didn't loathe the act of texting in of itself – he was just curious.

He checked the next one.

And the next.

If he wasn't already set in not doing so, that would have sealed the deal for him then and there. Rolling his eyes, Kazuya threw it back to the drawer where it belonged perhaps a little harder than need be, and left to return to another one of Wang's infuriatingly slow lessons. Why was he putting himself through this again?

He didn't spare any more brain power for the image of Lee hunched over his own little phone, texting and calling furiously, checking back repeatedly to nothing in return every time. Definitely not.

Five hours later, fresh from the shower, he dug up the phone again. Not knowing why, he clicked back up the tiny list and selected the first voicemail. It was almost a full month before the initial text, not long after Wang forced the phone into his hand.

"Hey," came Lee's voice tinnily, and to anyone else it would sound completely level, but not to him. "I'm glad Wang found you. The phone you're holding has been modded by yours truly, so you can be assured its completely secure when contacting this number at the very least. I don't expect you to use it much, but if you ever need to, know the option is there, alright?" The following pause was long, the quiet practically static over the little speaker, and Kazuya got the distinct impression that the man was considering saying something else.

"... Bye," he said instead, and the recording ended.

Kazuya listened in silence as the message played, narrowing his eyes at nothing. The man was clearly nervous, the clumsy farewell proof of that even if Kazuya hadn't already known. He considered Lee's gall, assuming he'd ever want to use something so kindly gifted from his conniving hands again, to ever hear his voice again for that matter. But then again, he was using it all the same. And he wasn't going to acknowledge the small mystery feeling in his chest as he listened.

Almost looking to get angrier now, Kazuya flicked down to the next one, dated just a week before the first text.

"I know you don't want to hear from me, but Jun asked me to pass something on to you. It's really important, something you need to know. Get back to me, okay?"

The idea of calming himself down and throwing the phone away for good this time was instantly gone again at the mention of her. That strange, uncomfortable feeling he always got when she crossed his mind resurged, and some part of him jumped at the idea of hearing from her, however indirectly. The two of them had stayed in contact after everything? Unnerved by his own urgency, he clicked down to the next one, time stamped as nearly two weeks later.

"I get that you hate me and everything, but I'm serious, Kazuya... It's big. Call me back."

And the next, three weeks this time. The frustration and anger was palpable in this one.

"I know Wang gave you the damn phone, asshole, and I know it's still connected. Jun wants you to know. Get back to me unless you want me to show up on your doorstep."

In the final one, dated not ten minutes after the last, he sounded impossibly tired instead.

"... Damn it, Kazuya. I just want to know if you're still alive. Wang won't tell me much of anything, you're not still in that cabin, are you...?" A long pause, some distant thump. "Just get back to me, already. It's not for me, it's for Jun. You can at least do that."

Slowly pulling the phone away from his ear, Kazuya considered carefully. At least Jinrei was being as tight-lipped about everything as Kazuya threatened him to be, but he knew bait – a Lee bait – when he saw one. A message from Jun he may have, but there was no reason not to tell him in text besides the silver-haired clown desiring Kazuya bending to his arbitrary requirements. He'd done it a million times before, and he'd do it a million more if Kazuya gave him the chance. Which he wouldn't.

Still, with Jun's name hanging over his head, he hit the call button anyway.

It was picked up at the end of the fourth ring, and Kazuya tried not to be entertained at the idea of Lee scrambling not to drop his phone to do so. He had to prepare himself for this conversation instead.

"... Kazuya?" came Lee's voice again, live this time and caught between suppressed hope and disbelief.

"What is it?" Kazuya bit. The following pause was longer than necessary, but he knew the man well enough to tell he was gathering himself in the silence.

“... Not even a hello back? Your manners are atrocious, you know-“

"Lee," he all but growled, the sound of his stupid voice angering Kazuya more with each word. "I'm not calling for small talk. Get to the point."

Another pause. A long, drawn out and beyond heavy sigh some ways away from the speaker, some shuffling noise he couldn't identify, and more silence. All this effort to get in contact with him, to get Kazuya to play his moronic game, and now he wanted to take his damn time? Just like Lee, the-

"You have a son, Kazuya..."

...

For the briefest of moments, his mind went blank. A what? What? And then the words truly settled in his brain, cold and hot and definitely not panic inducing. It had been close to a year now, but of course he still remembered, remembered her, them–

You're lying, he wanted to spit, but even after everything they'd said and hadn't said to each other last, Kazuya knew his adoptive brother wasn't so cruel as to do that. Not now, not about this. He was too tender and softhearted, like he always had been behind the cool smirks and biting insults.

His heart hammered, twisted uncomfortably in his chest. A son. Him. And somewhere in the back of his mind, something whispered why did it have to be a son.

Almost before he registered moving, the call ended with a push of a button. Just before he cut the line, however, he faintly caught Lee’s voice once more.

“His name is Jin.“

Years passed in inconsistent bouts of training with Wang, sticking his neck out just far enough to see what was occurring in the outside world, and departing his grandfather’s friend’s sanctuary for relentless training on his own. He would leave for months at a time to run himself ragged in the wilderness once again, putting the useful parts of his miserable childhood to work in surviving detached from society, but without fail Kazuya always ended up crawling back out. Stronger than before, more scars coming out with him every time, but tired.

On one occasion he was gone for close to a year even, but Wang’s doors were always open to him when he eventually trudged back. He wasn’t entirely certain why he always returned there, despite his rationalization that it was the only place he could land comfortably at all. Wang would never sell him out to Heihachi no matter what he did, and so he was the only one he could marginally trust.

He ignored the fact that he always kept the cellphone from Lee with him, regardless of how far he went. Ignored it the same way he ignored the texts that would come in at random, sprinkled throughout the years as if just to remind him it was there.

Bait, most of them. After the bombshell dropped on him the last time he neglected Lee’s annoying attempts at staying in contact, however, he read every one. Never replied, never did anything more than checking it the moment he heard the little tone going off, but he always read them. Some part of him wondered why Lee was always the one to relay information about... the kid instead of Jun, but he could chalk that up to a number of reasons. It was likely she tucked herself away as well, knowing all too well what she carried and who it may concern if it ever got out.

Another part of him quietly seethed at Lee being the lifeline she had to him, but he’d put up with worse aggravations. Although few worse than Lee.

Less aggravating and more of an emotion he couldn't place (though it lingered uncomfortably close to gut twisting uneasiness), was the entire situation between them at all. The boy. The entire idea of being a father sent discomfort all the way up and down Kazuya's spine, and the reality would attack him at random points no matter how hard he pushed himself to exhaustion or how long he managed to avoid it. Lee's words would ring in his head whenever he was unlucky enough to be reminded of a snippet of his own childhood, and immediately he would stamp them out.

He was no father. He didn't want to be father. Why would he? So that the child could grow up to attempt murder on him as well, just as he did to his own father? Just so Kazuya would have to dispose of it when it inevitably got in his way? Jun could have it. He didn't want any part of it, and even if he did, the horrible parent he would make would only have them all regret it. But that discomfort still flared every time Lee shot him a message that related to Jun or the boy at all.

The text he got this time was different from the rest. No dangling news snippet attempting to get him to respond, not one of his short but well crafted lines about Jun and the child, but something he had to look at twice to identify.

Kazuya blinked. A bank account? The name confused him as well, his offhand knowledge of its location escaping him, but certainly nowhere in Japan or even Asia, even if it sounded oddly familiar. Where had Lee holed himself up all this time? The question had crossed his mind before, but he hadn’t spared it much thought and repeated to himself that he didn’t care.

Looking back up to the buildings of the town he was entering, one not terribly far off from Wang’s sanctuary in the mountains, Kazuya creased his brow in thought. He’d been gone for months again, and only just got the text that was sent weeks ago as he reentered civilization. As he walked the streets, he considered the mysterious bank account number and PIN, furious at what he was likely to find if he was able to ever punch it in. While he’d used his education in budgeting well, his own stash was running low – and Lee probably knew that, too.

He didn’t need his pity money, wherever the hell he might have gotten it. They'd both been left in ruin with Heihachi snatching up everything they owned, and Kazuya himself was only able to make off with what was readily available to him before he was nearly gunned down. Even when he thought to make the stupid move of accessing more private accounts of his, he'd found nothing. Who did Lee think he was, throwing pocket change at him like he was in any position to offer it?

His thoughts stopped abruptly, eyes catching on a sign as he marched the sidewalks of downtown. Son of a-

Grumbling the whole way over, but rationalizing it as curiosity, Kazuya punched the numbers into the ATM of the bank's Chinese branch, just to see what the hell Lee thought he had to offer. Bastard must have chosen this specific bank solely because of this location, the coincidence of it being so close in proximity to Wang’s ancestral home. Knowing Kazuya wouldn’t be able to overlook it once it caught his notice.

The thought of the man possibly being notified of him even looking inside hit him too late, just as the information popped up on screen.

Kazuya’s jaw didn’t drop, but he did blink harshly. How much? But the numbers didn’t change. Maybe Lee had been able to rescue a bit more of his own funds than he initially thought, but if this was what he was willing to part with for the sake of pity...

Where the hell did he get this kind of pocket change?

Kazuya didn’t touch the machine any further, just stared blankly. Knowing Lee, even the amount itself was calculated – enough to be beyond helpful, but nowhere near enough to survive on at Kazuya’s preferred level for any amount of time. A sure way to keep him with their fleeting childhood mentor, whether he used it or not. Thinking ten steps ahead was what they were raised to do – other than tear each other to pieces – but he hated sometimes how good Lee had come to be at it. Manipulatively generous, absurd as it sounded.

After about a full minute's consideration, Kazuya logged out of the machine and turned his back without another glance at it. Not today. He wasn’t a damn charity case for Lee to make him feel a little better for the hole he’d dug them into, and wouldn’t buy into it any further than he’d already been forced to.

Gripping at the phone in his pocket, Kazuya stalked the whole way up the mountain.

Let me back in, Kazuya.

No, he shot back for what had to be the billionth time in the past five years. Surprisingly, it had almost gotten easier as time went on, instead of the periodic clawing at his patience wearing away his walls. Whenever he returned to Wang's little corner of China with new scars and rougher fingers, as he had currently, the elderly man continued to impress upon him the importance of meditation – and as much as he hated to admit it, the man's teachings on the subject had helped a good amount in regards to it.

In general as well, actually. His thoughts had been easier to control after Devil was torn in two, but still chaotic and it was a constant task to sort his own desires from the half still buried in his mind, and the physical act of sitting and breathing through each part of his consciousness or current irritation helped to clear his head. Not quite the same as Jun's presence had, but it would have to do.

Devil was insistent on interrupting his efforts, however.

How long are you going to play this game, boy? You can't fight me forever, and you know that old fool's teachings will never be enough to accomplish your goal. Without me, Heihachi will never fall.

As long as I need to, Kazuya thought back dangerously. I don't need you.

You always say that. How much do you truly believe it?

Fully.

That was a half-truth. While he didn't believe all of Wang's lessons to hold water or be of use to him, he knew one thing even if he hated it – as it was, Devil wasn't something he could control. Not at at it's proper strength. The nightmares and the constant gnawing at his mind, his everything, were nearly enough to drive him mad last time. As horrible as it was and how far down it had cast him, Heihachi's second murder of him was a blessing in disguise, as a chance to fortify his mental barriers against it before reintegrating. It had taken him a while to come to terms with that one.

Devil scoffed, rough and closer to a growl than anything else.

I tire of your stubbornness, brat.

And yet you never leave me alone.

Blissful silence returned for a large gap, though the mere presence of Devil in proximity once again kept the air thick and oily. Truly, he was jealous of Wang in the fact that he wasn't able to perceive it fully, though the old man had some sense of when it was about.

This back and forth was completely standard between them, grating and mentally tiring as it was, but something felt slightly off this time. He wasn't able to put his finger on it until the thing uttered something entirely new.

I may just have to try somebody else, then.

Kazuya opened his eyes at that, giving Devil a small portion of what it wanted by taking it in visually at at last. Always formless, vaguely human, vaguely something else, but fully unearthly in every sense of the word. It no longer frightened him, but the aura wafting from it now was distinctly off-putting.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" he said aloud, catching himself too late. He couldn't remember the last time he made that slip up, and wasn't even certain why he made it now.

Despite having no mouth, Kazuya could feel the sickly grin growing in the demon hovering in the gardens with him. It slithered closer, coiled itself around behind him like a circling snake, and hissed in such a way that Kazuya felt he could physically hear it this time.

You'll have to find that out yourself.

While it slipped out of his sight when he turned his head to look, Kazuya got the distinctive feeling that it was laughing.

Two days longer than it should have taken him to, he realized that he hadn't heard a peep or pin-drop from it since. It took him until that second afternoon to put a possible two and two together. And another hour after that to dig up the cellphone and call Lee for the first time since the revelation that he was now a father.

"Do you know where they are?"