thefuriouslittlefiredemon:
Chizuru was shaking as the tears streamed freely down her face. She should’ve guessed it would be this way. She should’ve known that the Shinsengumi would fall. Kazama had predicted it from the very start and he didn’t seem one to tell lies, no matter how much she had wished this was the case. One thing she would never forget is how much they meant to her, how much their mission meant to them. They fought for it until their last breaths. She wanted to be so loyal to something. To be willing to die for something. She thought she had been, but why was she alive now if that was so?
She looked up, her auburn eyes meeting Kazama’s. Stifling back the last of the tears, she stood up, trying to look more angry at him than she actually was. He was right and it frustrated her, but she could hardly be mad at him. He wasn’t the one who had killed them all. “Kazama… I…” What was she going to say? Her words caught up in her throat in her feeble attempt to stop herself from crying anymore.
His crimson eyes don’t move; watching her as she cries tears for those men. Chikage, though he stands silently, is forced to think on them; the fools clinging to a dream, who couldn’t carry on into a new era; they, who fought according to their own wills and intentions right to the end. Somehow, despite that utter idiocy, he didn’t detest them. But, perhaps that is a thought better kept to himself and so--as much as Chizuru would likely very much approve of this change of heart--he refrains from speaking aloud to pay his own silent respects to their memory.
Her eyes turn to him in anger; she rises to her feet with an attempt to look so, at the very least. Chikage doesn’t mock it with a smirk like perhaps he usually would, instead he merely keeps his gaze level with hers; his arms folding across his chest as he watches her try to speak--to make sense of her thoughts.
“Come.” Already he has once held Chizuru to himself as she cried; despite it being him who had to slay her father to protect her--to preserve was pride was left for demons--she had still clung to him. He doesn’t necessarily expect the same to happen again, but he unfolds his arms nonetheless, and extends a hand towards Chizuru. His voice is softer this time, far more gentle than the commanding tone a moment ago. “Come here, Chizuru.”
