He stood in the Jukai Forest again. Once more, there were two of him.
The human was dropped to its hands and knees, tears streaming down its face. “Why do we keep fighting? We can’t do this anymore!”
“We can,” the oni said, kneeling beside the human. “And we will.”
“Why? What’s the point?” the human howled, echoing the pain of their whole.
“Because we are not fighting for us. We are fighting for so many more.”
The Dokuchi Reckoners and the family. The Order of Jukai. The Warren of Dragons. Satoru and Greasefang, Arturo and Lazaro, Vasro, Shregresha, Turrak, Gesserith, Leta, the Roxies, Kilik, Biilziebub, Eishi, Lady Hana and Steel-Ear, Headhunter and Hush...the list went on and on now.
“We can’t help them all,” the human whimpered.
“No,” the oni agreed, “but we can try.”
Koda slowly cracked his eyes open. He was laying on his back in some very comfortable moss, and he could hear Satoru’s voice. These were two things that did not go together. As he stirred more fully, more details came to him. The smell of tea. What seemed to be breakfast sitting nearby. Leta and Vasro and Turrak’s voices joining Satoru’s. A soft blanket covering him. A manapool filled with Black and Green, though it was not his. A feeling of feral rage from somewhere in his bond with Haruko.
He licked his dry lips. “Satoru...?”
He barely had time to blink before Satoru knelt down beside him. “Koda...” That was also new. Satoru didn’t let concern into his voice this much.
Koda braced himself. Though every movement hurt, he managed to prop himself up on his elbows just before Satoru pulled him into a surprisingly gentle hug. His limbs ached, but Koda returned the hug. All he could think to say was, “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologizes unless you’re going to do better,” Satoru whispered. Koda felt tears staining the shoulder of his armor. “Let me comfort you after your heart attack, you little jerk.”
Koda didn’t deserve the comfort. Especially not when he felt his stomach drop – metaphorically speaking, of course. Arturo and Lazaro would think that they did something to cause this. “Arturo and Lazaro-”
“-Were told about what happened,” Satoru finished. “Kid, what did you do that finally pushed you into a full near-death heart attack?”
Koda’s exhale shook. It hurt, like everything else. “I needed to fix things,” he whispered. The wards to protect Kilik in the communicators drained him quickly. But he still needed to help – help Torrezon against Aclazotz any way he could, help protect Kilik from the archangel hunting them, help get Biilziebub to listen. “I’m a weapon, I need to-”
Koda blinked a few times.
Satoru pulled back a little, keeping Koda upright by the shoulders. “You’re not a weapon, Koda. You’re a person. You’re worth protecting too. I see it, Arturo and Lazaro see it, Lethaltooth and Silentsign see it, Ghostmark and Goldenscar see it, I can go on and on. We love you, Koda. You pushing yourself like this – into a grave, regardless of how late you think it is – is going to hurt more than just you.”
Koda’s mouth felt dry again. “I...” He trailed off.
Satoru eased him back down so he was laying properly. “No arguing, little bro. You’re going to accept help, non-negotiable. And we’re probably going to talk to Vasro about getting you blood pressure medication.”
Blind panic, more rage from the other side of the bond. Koda’s nails dug into Satoru’s prosthetic hands. “No! No medication, please, not that, I can’t do that, not after Sakai-”
Satoru gently took and squeezed Koda’s hands, grounding him again with both touch and voice. “Okay, okay. No medication. But we need to do something about this.” He paused for a moment to pull the blanket back over Koda. “I need you to swear to me that you don’t use magic for a while. Please. Not until we reunite you properly with Haruko and calm you both down. And then bare minimum – and I do mean minimum – when we do.”
“No magic,” Koda promised. “On my life.”
“You’re suicidal, that doesn’t mean what you think it does.”
“Fine. On Mom’s memory, then.”
“Deal. Now, you focus on recovering, because as it stands, everyone else is trapped in Torrezon until you can stand up and reunite with Haruko.”
Fuck. Haruko in her current frenzy wouldn’t recognize any of them as friends. Not until she was reunited with Koda. Koda gently reached towards his bond with her and found her still rabid and furious. He recoiled mentally, not from Haruko, but from her fury. “Understood,” he whispered.
“Please ask for our help more. Don’t think that just because you’re a Reckoner boss that you had to do everything yourself.”
Koda fixed Satoru with a glare. “That’s what you do.”
Satoru paused. His gaze flit back and forth a few times. “It really isn’t. It just looks like it from the outside. I have Nari, Thistlefur, and several lieutenants. I genuinely permit them to handle things on my behalf, which you’re still learning.”
Koda clenched his fists under the blanket now. “But if I don’t-”
“-Then you’re disrespecting the competence of those around you.” Satoru crossed his arms. “I don’t know what it is about having a spark that makes you think you need to become a superhero or the sole protector of a plane or whatever, but I promise that we don’t all need rescuing. Let us carry you too, little brother. We want to help you. We want to know what happened to you so we can help you like you help all of us. In order to do that, we need you to talk to us, not just bottle it all up until you die.” Satoru’s voice cracked, another thing Koda had never heard before. “Don’t make me outlive you, kid. Please.”
“...I won’t. I’m sorry, Satoru.” Koda took a deep breath. “I...I don’t want to...to relive what he did to me...”
Satoru’s voice grew a little firm again. “Avoiding it isn’t helping. Please, Hayashi. I need to know what he did to you. I need to know how to help.”
Koda took another deep breath and began to speak.
He had lost track of what they injected him with after the first week. He could feel his body changing, even when Sakai would cut him open. The gills were the first thing to appear outwardly, but he had swiftly discovered how to hide them. The second notable thing was the minute temporal blinking, which he could only rarely do and never long enough to be safe. The third thing was his teeth growing into fangs, though he didn’t know what the true cause of it was. So many poisons and venoms and drugs had been injected into him during those three months of hell that he had singlehandedly catalogued most of them for the Dokuchi Reckoners upon his escape. Any unauthorized sound was punished by his throat being slit, over and over and over. Frankly, Koda didn’t even remember everything they did to him, every chip they tried to put in his brain before each one failed, every memory they tore into and tried to take from him. It was only through their own technological failures that the last one failed. Though Koda physically survived, a lot of him died in the grasp of Sakai and his Saiba Futurists.
Satoru took Koda’s left hand in both of his. “I’m sorry, little brother,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry. I should have done something.”
“You would have just gotten caught too,” was Koda’s pragmatic answer. “At least while he was torturing me, he wasn’t paying attention to anyone else.” A tear ran down the side of his face.
“You shouldn’t have had to be a martyr. Not you, not Benkei, not any other Reckoner suffering by his hand.”
He shouldn’t have had to be a martyr. But he had been.
The Koda that was captured was nothing like the Koda that had escaped.
