AU where the reason the Hamada parents died is that their siblings stole money from a witch with absurdly bad aim. As in, she tried to kill them with a spell, and the spell missed and got the Hamada parents.
Wow, sucks to be them. Actually, no. Let’s take this seriously.
Maybe Hiro and Tadashi grow up training with swords and shields and spears and axes, and learning their own magic and spells, and forming all these alliances with neighboring Lords and towns and churches and merchants and whoever, so that they have all these resources at their disposal when they finally decide to take down the witch who killed their parents.
When they’re finally old enough (Well, Tadashi’s old enough. Hiro’s still 14, but the thought of waiting another 7 years until Hiro’s of age makes them both want to tear their own hair out in frustration so they decide to just go for it) they gather their weapons and shields and magic books, and they recruit a speedy archer named GoGo, a brilliant alchemist called Honey, a burly but gentle mercenary Wasabi, and the Lord’s bored son Fred, and they set off to kill the witch. They know it will be a difficult journey, because they’ve been trying to track her for years, so that when it was time to confront her they’d know where to go, but she’s been sneaky and crafty and she’s almost impossible to track down.
They finally trap her in a cave on the shore of the island kingdom, on a stereotypical dark and stormy night. They’re all soaked to the bone and half-deaf from the thunder booming outside the cave, slipping on slick rocks wet from the rain and the ocean, but none of that matters because they’ve finally found her. They ready their weapons, Tadashi with his sword, Hiro with his spells, to face their parent’s murderer.
Only when they turn the corner and come to the end of the cave, it’s not to find an evil old crone, standing there and cackling as she prepares to fling curses and hexes at them for daring to face her. Instead there’s a young woman crying and cowering against the far wall, her hair limp and tangled around her face, her eyes wide and afraid.
When they don’t immediately attack her, the witch throws herself to their feet, weeping piteously. They can barely understand her through her tears, but slowly her garbled words start to make sense. Slowly they start to understand.
Tadashi and Hiro had known little of their parents, and known even less of their parent’s siblings aside from the Aunt Cass that had taken them in. So they hadn’t realized that their other aunt and uncle had been bandits of the worst kind, attacking people on the roads and breaking into their houses. Their parents had long since cut ties with their crueler siblings, so how were Tadashi and Hiro to know?
The witch shakily reveals that the siblings had attacked her and her father on the road one day, robbing them of all they had. The witch and her father would have been glad to simply give up their belongings, if it meant they could go free, but when the uncle started to eye the witch with a sinister look in his eyes, the witch’s father had intervened, stepping between them to defend his daughter. In retaliation for his actions, the siblings had cut him down where he stood in cold blood.
Terrified, watching her father bleed out, and sobbing, the witch had tried to throw a curse at the bandit’s retreating backs. Only she was half-mad with grief, and very new to magic at the time, so she’d missed. And the nature of the curse was such that it sought out the next closest thing.
Hiro and Tadashi’s parents.
The witch, horrified that she had done just the same thing as the bandits, had fled, and had been running from the brothers ever since. Because she knew how powerful revenge could be, and she knew they would try to find her. And now here they were, and she could say nothing to defend herself because as much as she had been a victim first, she was still a murderer, and there was nothing she could do to change that.
Her story finished, the witch bared her neck to Tadashi’s blade, and told them to do what they wished with her.
Thunder boomed and lightning flashed.
An hour later the cave stood empty, any sign that anyone had been there before washed away by the sea and the storms. The little troupe of warriors was long gone, headed back to the village they called home with their heads held high, their quest complete, their parents’ spirits put to rest.
And in the center of their company was a young inexperienced witch wrapped in a warm blanket, with tears in her eyes but a small hopeful smile on her face.
