(help me find the Higuruma artist in the banner, for crediting and thanks/permission!)
Marrying again after losing your husband in Shibuya was never part of your plan. Then, Higuruma Hiromi came along.
Warnings: Character death, grief, angst, fluff
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A hysterical shriek-- a frantic cry for a man long dead-- rang through the bedroom, enveloped in the dark warmth of night, and broke down into anguished sobs. A soft shout of alarm, and hurried reassurances, sobs muffled, hands stroking, soothing, kisses on foreheads.
Hiromi held you to his chest, his pyjama top damp with your tears, his eyes gritty from sudden wakefulness. You cried away your grief, still so raw, replaying over and over in your dreams-- taunting you with 'what if's and 'if only's. Hiromi's nose nuzzled into your hair, both arms tightly holding you lest you fall apart against him, mumbling his sweet love in humid little breaths to your head.
It had been a while since you had dreamed of Nanami Kento, he pondered, rocking you gently from side-to-side. Dead and buried for almost 4 years now, Hiromi had married you and your trauma, your loss, your fallen love. He had taken you as the package you were, a complex parcel, and the mother of the second love of his life.
Little footsteps approached the door; little hands, cautious against the cool wood, pushed it open with a squeak.
"Mummy? Daddy? Is it a bad dream? You woke me up," grumbled your little girl, blonde and brown-eyed, with sharp delicate features. You sat up hurriedly, wiping your eyes and plastering on a damp smile. As you began moving to get out of bed, Hiromi laid a gentle hand on your thigh, kissing you on the temple.
"I'll take it from here," he hushed, and you sniffled, threatening tears again, "go back to sleep. I love you."
Planting a watery kiss to Hiromi's lips, you laid down in bed, burrowing your nose into his pillow, his smell, always feeling your adoration for him with the sting of guilt.
Hiromi scooted to the door, his loud shuffling footsteps pretending to be sneaky as he scooped his daughter up in his arms, nosing at her with deliberate snuffles. She giggled, batting him away, capturing his face in her little hands, slanted eyes narrow and delighted.
"Back to bed, little one. Your teddies can't sleep without you." Hiromi's playful bargaining wasn't needed, his daughter half-asleep in his arms already, while her arms wound around his neck to snuggle her head under his chin. By the time he had tucked her back into bed, she breathed soft snores, her bed still warm from the nest she had made.
Hiromi crouched by your daughter's bed, watching her, committing all of her features to memory; never this small, ever again, he thought, bittersweet as she grew, blooming. He stroked her hair, nursing the stale guilt of feeling he had stolen this life from another man, and feeling so deeply undeserving, so ashamed because of it.
While Hiromi knew his daughter-- your daughter, Kento's daughter-- more than Kento ever would, there felt to be an impenetrable wall to his love, an absence of a blood bond, stolen away from a man who did not want to leave his wife, and had not even known he was to become a father. Hiromi felt responsible, as if he had spirited you both away himself. He did not deserve to hold you through your grief; he did not deserve to be daddy.
Planting a last kiss to his daughter's forehead, a long-fingered hand stroking blond flicks out of her eyes, Hiromi tiptoed to the door. He hesitated for a moment, then tiptoed back. A brown teddy with its familiar, well-fiddled-with and far-too-large-for-teddies yellow leopard-spotted tie, belonged in his daughters' arms, and not on the floor.
Padding back to your bedroom, a thief in the night, the sheets played a gentle susurrus over your bodies as Hiromi tangled his legs through yours, lying on his back so you could tuck across his chest. You slipped a hand under his t-shirt, travelling up to his chest to stroke its patch of downy black hair. Hiromi's fingers tangled through your hair, examining the whorls of your ear, rolling your earlobe in thought.
"I'm so sorry," you hiccuped into Hiromi's chest, and you heaved with sobs when his reassurance began before you had even finished apologising, his arms tightening around you. He cupped your face in his hands, tilting it, look at me, come on darling, please, look at me.
Hiromi held your face, your cheeks squashed and blotchy with tears in his palms. He felt a trickle of disgust with himself run down his throat, as he stole his role as your hero from Kento, "None of that. You know you don't have to apologise for anything--"
"But I love him," you sobbed, voice cracking with devastated guilt, feeling like a filthy liar, a cheater, a bigamist, "I love him so much and I want him back, but I want you, Hiro, I-- I--" Hiromi nodded, still gazing into you, hooded dark eyes like little embers in the night. You felt a surge of appreciative, grateful love as he drank down your proclamations of love for another man, and wanted you anyway.
"If it were the other way round," Hiromi started, slow and deliberate, "if it were me who had died, and Kento loved you after...I would trust him completely to carry the torch for me. To give you two everything that I wouldn't be able to give."
You wept again, your face and chest aching, loss heavy in your soul. Hiromi kept you close, tethering you, repeating in a tender mantra; "You can love us both. You can love us both, because we both love you. You can love us both."
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"I...I'm not very good at this sort of thing."
Hiromi's words fell weakly, unanswered by the dead. Nanami Kento's grave was pristine under the hands of his many friends, his lover, his students, those he had saved. He was popular in death as he had been in life; not inundated with true friends, but awash with bannermen and admirers, those who aspired to be like him, and those who aspired to be liked by him. An admission of guilt writhed in Hiromi's chest, bursting out in one strained cry.
"I can't feel sad that you died," Hiromi spat, disgusted not with Kento, but with himself, "because if you hadn't died, I wouldn't have them, and I'm a real piece of shit--"
"No you're not," a friendly voice drawled to Hiromi's left. Hiromi froze, eyes wide and paralyzed, dread creeping through him that someone had heard his biggest shame--
"-- and Nanami wouldn't have thought so, either. I bet she was the last thing he thought about-- worrying about her, who would look after her. He'd be happy. For her to have a good man. Like you."
Ino Takuma leaned down beside Hiromi, speaking a brief prayer above Kento, a wrapped, spotted blunt blade harnessed onto his back. Placing some fresh flowers down, he stood up again.
Hiromi and Ino were silent together amongst the rustling willows, the smooth dappling sunlight, the whispering babble of the shallow river. Ino rocked on his heels, smiling, hands pocketed. Hiromi hung his head in shame.
"You can...you can feel both, Higuruma. Regret for him dying and leaving her, and...and loving her, I guess. You're not a bad person. I bet she beats herself up for marrying again, right?"
Hiromi swallowed, nodding quickly after a breath's pause. Images flitted across his mind-- you, resplendent in your gown. Your daughter, so solemn on her big day, scattering petals down the aisle. Your earnest kiss, your joyful dancing, your gracious speech. Your wedding night breakdown, holding you in a hot bath in innocent intimacy, folding your lingerie away in favour of a soft nightdress, nothing expected, nothing lost, in life and in death, in sickness and in health.
"You've just...you've just got to be his wingman, y'know?" Ino stated, arms crossed up behind his balaclava'd head, "You and Nanami...you're both her husband. You're both my niece's dad. So big him up a bit for us, huh?"
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"Hey, dad?"
Hiromi leaned round the fridge door, crows feet crinkling around his eyes as he popped a cube of cheese into his mouth, busted.
His daughter smirked at him, fine eyebrows raised under a smooth honey-blonde fringe. As tall as Hiromi, leggy and sarcastic, Hiromi didn't so much tell this young woman off now, as get savagely roasted by her dry wit. Hiromi took it with all of the frustrated joy of a father trying to parent a young woman with unparentably excellent traits.
"Cheese?" Hiromi offered, flicking a cube deftly at his daughter. She caught it, seamlessly, eyes narrowing at him. For all the bravado she was putting on, Hiromi knew she was putting it on. He headed over, pulling her to him with one arm, blonde head against black-grey head.
"Penny for them?"
She sighed, and began: "Did you...meet him?"
Him. Ah.
"I did not," Hiromi admitted, "but I know he was exceptional. Your mother has wonderful taste." He accepted the slap to his arm, well-deserved.
"I can never...I don't think I'll ever be as good as him." Hiromi's heart swelled and ached for his daughter; he felt an odd kinship, one of them in such a powerful shadow, one of them in such enormous shoes. Hiromi nodded, his throat thick.
"You're right," he said, his daughter's lips puckering up in grim acceptance, looking at the floor, "your dad was a hero. He protected the weak when nobody else wanted to. He took on the messy jobs with nothing more than a glass of whiskey and your mum's love behind him. He was funny, kind, patient, empathetic... he was the best of the best. The best sort of man. He's a legend even now."
"So, no, sweetheart, you're never going to be as good as him," Hiromi turned to his daughter, cupping her high-cheeked face in his hands, pressing her to look at him, "you're going to be better. You have all three of us in you, and you carry it so well."
Hiromi's daughter let out a dry sob, refusing to let tears fall. She sniffled, pulling close to Hiromi, letting herself be held. Rubbing her nose and pulling her hair behind one ear, she reached behind her onto a chair, revealing a black, rectangular handled case.
"Uncle Ino gave me something, today," she started, unclipping the case, "he said it was dad's. I thought I...I want to use it. Like he did."
Hiromi gazed fondly down at the blade of legends, white wrapping yellowed at the edges with age, but still just as deadly. He smiled, and your daughter relaxed into his wordless reassurance.
"Yes. Absolutely. It's the only...you're the only one who could do this old thing justice, now," Hiromi pressed, eager to hold Kento and his child together across the impenetrable veil of death, "but I have to warn you."
His daughter glanced to Hiromi, anxious. He took a deep breath, and continued;
I had to yell at the ghosts in my room about this one
"If it were the other way round," Hiromi started, slow and deliberate, "if it were me who had died, and Kento loved you after...l would trust him completely to carry the torch for me. To give you two everything that I wouldn't be able to give."
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