War taught Sugimoto how to deal with pain.
You Scream. You Fight. When your legs don’t work, you drag your useless body across the ground until you find somebody who can make them. A swig of alcohol, a needle and thread, a tourniquet. Morphine, for the wounds that should have killed you, but didn’t, as if that small show of mercy could make the battlefield more bearable. Adrenaline for the pain that has no relief.
The list went on.
He could still feel it during those cold mornings in the mountains, when the ache of his old wounds would wake him before dawn. An old friend, it seemed, unwelcome as it was amidst the maelstrom that his life had become. Pain never really went away, he’d learned. You simply just… managed.
But this was different.
There was a hollowness in Sugimoto’s chest that he couldn’t shake. He felt it when Ogata’s bullet pierced his skull at Abashiri. He felt it when he tasted Ogata’s blood on his tongue, the tang of iron overwhelming his senses for many hours after they wandered off the ice floes. He felt it now, cradling Ogata’s head in his lap, staring at the red stain that bloomed across his bandages like a lilly in summer. It made him sick.
It was an unfamiliar hurt - anger, pity, and yearning consuming him with uncertainty. He despised this man, wanted to wring his neck and watch the life drain from his already pale face. But he also…
Was it right to say he missed him? Certainly not, but… He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the man’s resting features. Ogata’s lips were parted and chapped, his breath shallow but steady, chest rising and falling at an almost hypnotic tempo that Sugimoto found he could hardly stand to watch.
Do us all a favor and stop breathing, he wanted to say. But he couldn’t. Instead his fingers found their way to the base of Ogata’s jaw, holding his head firmly in place as his free hand made hesitant work of the cloth covering his eyes.
“You should have run,” he murmured. To himself, to Ogata, or to no-one. He didn’t know, anymore. “I would have chased you to the ends of the earth, but you should have…”
A sigh, then.
“Ahh… but it doesn’t matter, does it? Look at us. It would have ended like this either way. We didn’t have a choice, did we?”
