A Mourning Reunion

He could hear the rain outside. He didn’t know how long he had been listening to it.

Had it started during the night? Had he been awake all night?

Rain. Rain was inside weather. Always had been. He had never really been able to work in the rain. And when it rained, Ha his attention had always turned inward. Indoors.

How long had he been indoors? He didn’t remember. Sometimes all he did was remember, in fragments or loops. Sometimes it was all he could do to remember if it was day or night.

Right now, it was.... day? Early? It was grey behind the sheer curtains but not dark enough for night. Not orange enough for the streetlight. Morning? Morning. But he hadn’t woken up recently.

He sank farther down into the couch, but the blanket spilled from his shoulders. His bare arms, the exposed skin, shivered in the cool air. Cool like an open window. Fresh air from the rain. Clean. Not like the air in here. It was always the same air. In the living room, it smelled only faintly of him. More of him] now. He didn’t remember when he’d last showered. Probably had had to be told. It was just so hard to.... do anything. Being was exhausting enough. How was he supposed to do something when he was so tired and empty?

His phone vibrated on the coffee table. It shivered and danced sideways across the white melamine. It got closer to the edge. Closer. Fell off. Vibrated one more time and then fell silent.

Seren tipped forward to pick it up with nerveless fingers. One missed call. Mr. Chuuhi. Probably going to come over again. He didn’t have the energy to see him. The man who would be - would have been - his -

No, he didn’t have the energy for that. Not today. And he wasn’t weary enough to withstand it. To sleep through it. It would last hours. Hours of not looking at the face that H- that he would never look like. Not today. No. He couldn’t do it. His chest was already tightening, ratcheting smaller beneath his skin and his scars. No. He wouldn’t be able to even listen to his voice today. The soft Japanese, the accented English. That same way of shaping each sound. No. He couldn’t. He couldn’t be here. He had to... get out. Go out for a while. Far enough away that they wouldn’t accidentally cross his path. People he didn’t know, who didn’t know him. Somewhere new. He needed to go somewhere new.

When had he stood? It had been too fast, but he hadn’t hit the coffee table, just wobbled. His head caught up with the movement, and he rolled his shoulders to loosen them. So stiff. Everything felt stiff. His shoulders, his body. His head. His mind. Everything. Even his aura, and he couldn’t actually feel it. But it seemed to move in slow jerks, ill-formed twitches and ripples around him. Whatever. Let it hang around him like a cherry haze, a shroud. All the better if people thought he was dead.

His phone buzzed again in his hand, shivering against his leg. Just twice this time. A message. Had it already been ten minutes? It was Mr. Chuuhi again. He should... tell him not to come. He didn’t want to see him, hear him, but he didn’t want to be rude. Mr. Chuuhi didn’t deserve that. He should let him know. Tell him he would be out. Not to worry. Going out for a walk. Fresh air. There. That should do it.

He slid off his house slippers and stared at his outside shoes. Hero boots closest to hand, untouched since before. Dress shoes and runners and sandals. Too many options. Why did he want to go out again?

His phone buzzed. Mr. Chuuhi. No, he didn’t need anything dropped off. He wasn’t hungry. Didn’t want to waste anything. He didn’t say that he couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt hungry, even though he’d worked his way through a tub of ice cream recently enough that the lid was still on the coffee table. Either of his parents in law would have thrown it out. No. Too many reminders. He needed out. Needed to be somewhere different and new and not full of memories. Shoes. Whatever was easiest. He shoved on a pair of of slip-on sandals, even though they weren’t much more than soles and some straps. There was a name for them, but he didn’t remember and didn’t care. He needed to get out of here. Keys. Those were his keys beside the door. He grabbed the leaf-shaped leather tag and shoved the jangly collection into his pant pocket. Out the door. Down the steps. Past the rain-flattened gardens, don’t look too close, don’t think too much. The rain had stopped for now. The sun wasn’t out. The ground was covered in scattered puddles. His feet would get wet. Were wet. Not much point trying to keep them dry even if he had the energy to try.

The gate clanged as it bounced against the latch. He didn’t need to keep anything in or out. Just keep walking. Pick a direction. Don’t even need to look. Not past the Chuuhi residence. The other way. Away, away, away.

...where was he? Seren shivered, hands deep in his pant pockets, one hand awkwardly beneath his keys and half-numb despite the thin heat from his thigh. Everything was cold. Or he couldn’t feel it. Not that that was all that new, but he couldn’t tell why he couldn’t feel the things that weren’t cold, if they were too cold or if he was just numb. Like so much else was numb. Rain trickled down his neck, not cold enough to burn as it slid over his burn scars. His shoulders were soaked, the plain navy t-shirt looking closer to black other than the few sheltered areas still showing their dry colour. His arms. The hairs stood out with rain and a selfish attempt to retain heat. His pyjama pants were soaked from the waist down and from the hems up. His feet... ached, where they weren’t cold or numb or numb with cold. He couldn’t quite tell where the difference lay, but some of them ached. How far had he walked?

How long had he walked? His phone. It had the time. Rain slowly beaded on the screen, challenging his attempts to unlock it but no longer heavy enough to stop him altogether. Less than an hour. No, less than two hours. One missed text from Mr. Chuuhi, just checking in. Yes, he was alive, yes he was still out. No, he didn’t need anything. The responses felt wooden and automatic. They were enough to stop further questions for a while. That was what he wanted. He sighed, and then sneezed as the movement shifted rainwater from the outside of his nose to the inside. Now that was cold and wet too. He sighed again, and rubbed his face on his wet shoulder. It didn’t really help. Maybe he should go inside?

There was a cafe just over there. He didn’t recognize it, but the Open sign glowed, warm and bright against the rain-streaked glass. Maybe he should go inside.

The bell over the door tinkled, soft and not quite invasively cheerful, and the cafe itself didn’t try to brighten everything either. That was... not distressing. Seren stood in the doorway for a long moment, rain slowly dripping from his t-shirt and pyjamas, half-looking at the room.

Maybe later he would be up to noticing the casual French, but for the moment Seren neither heard nor processed it. It took him a moment to process the Japanese as it was, never mind a language he hadn’t heard in several years. Take a seat? He could do that. Some of his muscles and joints had started to stiffen in the time he had been standing there, despite the warmer air gently leaning against his skin, so his first step was rather wooden.

At least his wet shoes didn’t slip. He was sore enough with the cold and the... everything else. He didn’t need to fall. Maybe he’d hit his head. He’d probably just hurt himself, though. Nothing that would help, just make things even worse. At least he was healing and all that. He heard that, soft attempts at reassurances when all other words failed. Words failed a lot.

Like right now. Some how, he’d made it into a soft chair, and the person who had told him to sit was returning with a tray. He should say something, but he didn’t know what to say. Would it be rude to say nothing? Was it rude that his hands were still in his pockets? They were too cold to take out, though. He didn’t want to feel even colder. Maybe he should stay in here until he had started to dry. It might take too long for his clothes to dry completely, and that might be rude too, but it was at least a start.

”Thank you,” The words slipped out so automatically that he didn’t realize he was speaking until he had finished, and it was only then that he consciously realized that there was tea and a croissant in front of him. Seren stared at the tray for a long moment, started to reach for the mug mechanically, stopped when his hand caught on the pocket it was in. Right. With a moment of effort, he straightened his fingers enough to withdraw both hands, stiff and reddened, and then carefully wrapped them around the mug. The heat bit in, sharp and vibrant and all the things neither he nor his hands were currently, and he winced but didn’t bother letting go. It was just heat. It probably wasn’t hot enough to do any damage. It was already feeling more comfortable, with some of the heat seeping up his arms. ”Thank you,” he said again, having already forgotten he’d said it once.

Seren looked in the direction of the steaming mug as the café person talked, unblinking but insufficiently attentive to consider it staring. The sounds rippled past his ears. Something about.. opening? Batch? He closed his eyes, shutting out the inoffensive light and surroundings to better concentrate. He caught more, this time, but he couldn’t quite figure out what a wet floor sign had to do with opening or batches. And then, in no time at all, the other person had moved away, and Seren was alone again.

His fingertips bent against the cup with more force than he intended, if indeed he did intend anything. He thought about drinking the tea. The mug didn’t move. He thought about it a bit more, and his aura flowed around the steaming cup as if it could help. It couldn’t, of course, since its capabilities were so very specific. He let the faint bit of colour fall away, collapsing like withheld rain, and left it puddled around his feet as though it cared about gravity. The floor was too clean for the aura to pick up anything. Opening? New? Seren slowly looked around, mostly just with his eyes since moving his head felt like so much work. No dents in the walls. No burned-out lightbulbs, and bright enough to leave spots when he looked at them too long. Even blinking was in slow motion. And the table. No peeling edges or worn-through pictures or gouges with unknown stories. New. Everything was new.

Seren’s head turned toward rattling wheels, and he saw the café person wheeling a mop and bucket away. When had it come out? He hadn’t noticed. He was still thinking about the café being new.

As the apron-clad blond (when had he noticed the apron or the hair?) headed back in his direction, some of the background gears in Seren’s head apparently reconnected, if only for a moment. ”Sorry,” he said softly, gaze now stuck on the wet floor sign. He’d made work for this person, in this new café, and had been offered tea in exchange. Another, smaller, shiver trickled down his spine, but the radiating warmth from the tea kept it from reaching any farther. ”I didn’t mean to make a mess..” With more than two words in a row, Seren’s faint accent crept through, though it had never been especially pronounced, and he blinked up at the lean figure alongside. May they... what?

Seren’s gaze slowly followed the gesture. Sit? It wasn’t his café. It wasn’t his decision. But formalities. Yes. Social protocols. He dipped his head in agreement, though he stalled before the second half of the motion and stared at the cloths now sitting on the table. Those... Why were they there?

Water dripped down his face, creeping from his hair down whatever path it could find. Were the towels for him?

OH. Was that what person across from him had been talking about? He must really be making a mess, Seren looked down at the steaming mug. The first thing offered, after a seat. And food, although his stomach shied away whenever the croissant came into focus. He should do... something. Not just sit here, even if everything felt so heavy and stiff and numb. At least make some observable effort. Something that wouldn’t cause this person any trouble. He didn’t want to cause trouble...

He could be tired later. With an almost-normal-speed deep breath, Seren sat up a little straighter, tucked his aura behind him (much less clearly like wings than usual, but still more organized than the floor puddle it had been), and stiffly separated one hand from the hot cup. His palm immediately chilled, though the flesh underneath remained warmer than it had felt before, and he pivoted it on his elbow to pick up the top cloth. It was soft but not in the way of worn fabric, soft In that stiff way like it had never been used. There were still creases in it too. The new towels at home still had creases in them. They hadn’t been used. He had been cutting off the sales tags and then he and Haiiro couldn’t agree on whether or not new towels needed to be washed before they were used

The hand on the towel shook, the movement from deep inside rather than the superficial tremor of a shiver from the cold.

He couldn’t -

His head knew but even that refused to believe, to accept -

His heart was even further, turning to hide at the slightest thought, good or ill -

He clung to the sliver of knowledge that his hand was on a towel he’d never seen before, a clean scrap for cleaning a cafe that didn’t yet need cleaning, a cafe he’d never seen before, provided by a person he couldn’t quite see right now but knew was there, just beyond the towel he couldn’t quite feel. Clung to it and tried desperately to shut down all the other thoughts swirling around. None of the good or the bad. None of the one person he missed more desperately than anyone else in the world -

The hand on his was warm. Comfortable weight. Comfortable heat. Real. Not memory, not meagre texture taunting him with tangential memories. Not haunting him with thoughts trying to trick him.

But for just a moment, as his vision brightened, he thought the hand on his was much darker-skinned, Asian rather than European, and he stared at where a black-and-green ring ought to lie. The sight warred with the sickening knowledge that that ring was in a box on a dresser beside a bed in a room he couldn’t bear to approach, couldn’t imagine ever again entering. The illusion didn’t hold up to movement, and the pale hand withdrew. His own hand shifted after it, imperceptible to most if not all, desperate to cling to the hope that he wasn’t alone even if it was false.

Dry his hair? The rest of the words echoed and tangled, reverberating in an indecipherable mess, and Seren dipped his head as much to clear it as to agree. Agree to... he couldn’t drag his attention around that much. He could feel the gentle weight of the towel, though, and the little points of light pressure against his head. He could almost hear the movement, and let his eyes close under the attention. Gradually, some of the tightness eased, though it had yet to ever fade entirely. The visible scars were supposed to grow more flexible with time, if he continued to refuse to let them be healed. Right now, though, he could breathe, and he didn’t need to think or move or see or do anything. Just breathe, and be, and feel the hot tea in the cup against his hand, and the edge of the table against his other forearm from where it still lay limply atop the place the towel had been. He slowly curled and uncurled those fingers, and then gently drew it back to the cup.

Warm...

When the café person spoke, it was easier to hear the words and know what they meant. It still took Seren a few slow breaths, maybe more, but he was able to speak without consciously trying, or even thinking about the words. They just drifted out, absent and soft but clear. ”I worked in France one summer. When I was still in school...” France had been nice. Bright and lively. Flowers. The distant memories flared, a fragment of their usual vitality but present nonetheless. It felt so long ago... Could he?

”Je pense je parle une peu encore le francais?” The accent was probably better than the broken grammar, but it had been a number of years since he’d had to learn a language on the job.

Suddenly. French. Far too fast for his unpracticed ear, never mind his muddled brain. There were definitely... some sounds in that. Some vowels. At least one J. Maybe an M or two. It was all more than enough to make his head spin. Somewhere in the chaos, the French stopped and more fluent words began to seep into his brain again, but it was still hard to process them. Too fast. He needed more time to listen and to think, never mind to understand or respond. How could he respond if he didn’t even understand because he hadn’t really heard?

The barrage finally subsided, and the cafe person moved, no longer drying Seren’s hair but maybe intending to return to that? The towel itself was still kind of comforting. Maybe he should hood himself with blankets more often. He was starting to feel a little warmer too, and his hands no longer felt like they were melting. His body, at least, was almost starting to feel... normal. When his fingers curled around the mug’s handle rather than the mug itself, they didn’t creak or take a lifetime to move.

Somewhere through this subtle action, he realized that the cafe person was looking at his face from the side, and just radiating some sort of joy that he didn’t have the energy to describe. Maybe it was familiar? Maybe he just couldn’t tell the difference between the different kinds of happy right now. He certainly hadn’t felt any of them in a while, and couldn’t find the energy to think about it any further.

Was the cafe person staring at him? At his scars? Or at least the bit they could see. Seren turned the mug in his hands, just enough to lift it with his left rather than his right, and tried to pretend that he was unintentionally covering the mark on his cheek while solely focused on tasting the tea... and then actually realizing that the warm ceramic felt rather nice against his still-cool cheek. He leaned the mug against his head, briefly closing his eyes and not actually trying to cover the scar, although it was undoubtedly more successful this time.

After a long moment, almost seeming long even to Seren, he shifted slightly. ”You might have seen me on TV,” he admitted. He didn’t want to be recognized for his work, not yet, but he also didn’t want to be a bother to someone who had already recognized him. But he wouldn’t go so far as to give his hero/idol name. ”I’m Seren.”

Seren felt a flicker of relief when the cafe person didn’t immediately react to Seren’s media involvement. Positive or negative, he didn’t have the energy to deal with that now... although a distant piece of him looked on with surprise that he had actually felt that flicker. Lately the closest he had come was maybe slightly less numb, and even then it was more likely to be marginally less actively distressed.

He tried to ponder this while the cafe person pulled out a phone and fiddled around, but they were probably looking him up online. He tried to prepare himself for the imminent gushing and general fan.....ness. He’d only have to withstand it long enough to finish his tea and pay and leave, and then he could go back to not dealing with it. And then the cafe person spoke, and the delighted recognition in their voice iced over the tiny fragment of not-as-numb.

Wait.

Canada? Neighbour? These were not common words associated with the media stuff. Sure, plenty of his fans knew he was Canadian - he certainly didn’t look particularly Japanese, though his non-Caucasian heritage threw some folks, but. Ms. Vallier. Ellen. This was a familiar name. This was much less recent. This was home. Something shifted, and with that shift the name Jules found a connection. A younger face, still older than himself. So many years ago. And a woman who had, inadvertently or intentionally, helped guide him toward international hero work, had given him the original idea to apply to a work-study in France one summer. Bewildered, Seren didn’t even notice when Jules returned to drying his hair. Jules. He hadn’t seen them in years, and now here they were, walking distance apart, and probably a reasonable distance to walk if he actually travelled in a straight line. He’d have to actually look, probably when he went to leave...

Jules. Huh.

”I do remember,” he finally answered, more life in his voice though there was still a bit of a hollow echo. ”Blonde woman, hair like....” Seren did his best to gesture, shaping the hairstyle in the air above his own head and only partially tangling himself in the towel and disrupting Jules’ attempts. ”Oh, sorry.”. He dropped his hands back to his lap, and then after a moment reached for the tea cup again.

His hand stalled halfway, hanging in the air as time seemed to stop for him again, colour leeching from the room he saw and the hesitant internal crack wavering. Slowly, glacially slowly, his hand crept around the cup and clung to it. ”I- H-“ Haiiro’s face seemed to swim before him, and that little crack gave way, tears bubbling and then pouring from around his eyes and streaming down his cheeks. ”H-“ He couldn’t even say his name, much less think about him.

He... he didn’t want this. Any of this. He didn’t want to feel like this, or for any of it to have happened, for any of it to be real. He certainly didn’t want it to all be real, not like this. He could handle the scars, even the way they cut into his chest and haunted every reflection. Scars were part of the job, and he had chosen to keep them to remind himself of what he could neither accept nor forget. He hung in between, unable to do or be or feel any of it, unable to move in any direction, unable even to run away from it all. The farthest he’d gone was the couch, or here, And he hadn’t come here to flee the past, not exactly.

He didn’t want to feel like this, like the space between his heart and his lungs had shrunk, had pulled everything else deeper, spun it up like noodles on a fork and then thrown into the jaws of a vise spun shut by a god. A heartless, uncaring god who spread chaos and death and despair so that others could feel what they could not. He couldn’t breathe. The pressure in his chest had claws in his ribs, keeping them from moving and keeping the tightness from rising past his throat, even as the struggle to bring in air stung the back of his nose and raked coals across his eyes.

He didn’t want to feel this, but he could feel both it and a hand on his arm, light and soft and warm and not intruding but just... alongside. He could feel the heat in his face, both in the tracks of his tears and beneath the skin around them, and the little places where fallen tears had caught on his bare arms, on his hands. Maybe... maybe if he could feel more of those things, it wouldn’t hurt as much? To feel the hurt too. And Jules was familiar, but separate; they weren’t part of the hurt, and didn’t know H- ... Haiiro. Just him, Seren. A trickle of air made it a little bit deeper, cold against the inside of his throat. Cold like his scars felt now, tired ashes embedded in tense and fiery tissue. Cold at the same time as the heat and the damp and the ache and the burn and the terrible, terrible pressure buried beneath his breastbone.

Jules was there, and they were offering, and they were there for only Seren, not judging, not remembering anyone else, not also hurt by Seren’s failures. Their life hadn’t been torn apart. They were safe, and the people who survived needed to lean on the people who were safe. He had always been the safe one, the rescuer, the hero, calm and alert and accepting. He wasn’t that now. He couldn’t be.

He tipped sideways, somewhere between hesitantly and tentatively and so, so slow and yet almost as fast as he could bear to move. The chair’s low arm proved little barrier, and then there was resistance against his shoulder, sturdy support and heat that wrapped gently around him and the hand pressed against his chest like pressure from outside would lessen the pressure inside. Perhaps it was hard enough to bruise. Perhaps he had space to care?

No. There was a different kind of not caring. He didn’t care that he was tucked into someone’s chest, that a chair arm was tucked into his side, or that his feet were tangled up between the chair and the table. He didn’t care that he was sobbing, quietly, tears sheeting across his face and spreading faster across the front of Jules’ apron, chest seizing against his knuckles as his lungs fought to keep air moving in and out. He... didn’t care that everything hurt, because maybe it should hurt, and deserved to hurt. He deserved to feel like this, not numb. He deserved this pain, after all: ”He died,” he coughed out, barely more sound than his tears and his uneven breaths. ”Because of me.”. All because of him. Because he was the hero, a hero who could barely fight, a hero who had been caught unarmed and unprepared and unawares. Because they knew how he was vulnerable.

Because Haiiro died because of him.