☾ Kurogane Week: Day 5 (Aug 29th)
Ember and ash and blood beneath his nails had forced him to know the taste of powerlessness. He’d spent too long burying it (spent too long in denial), bound beneath an identity carved from shadow and steel.
(The child had been left behind. He’d built a man in its place.)
The shell chips away, bit by bit – too many restless nights alone; too many mornings risen before the dawn, too silent, too empty. It’s the loss of his father’s sword (a safety net, not a weapon, its meaning forgotten beneath the bloodshed) that cracks him.
(It’s no longer a thing he can rely on, that strength. A new one must be grown from the ashes.)
He learns, slowly, not to say no.
When the princess stares at the scar that mars his palm, he clenches his teeth, unfurls his fingers, lets her see.
When the kid sits with moonlight caught in Hien’s blade, asks quietly what Ginryuu meant to him, Kurogane takes in a slow breath, loosens his fists, tells him.
When the manjuu prods why, more nights than not, he doesn’t sleep, he toys with his empty glass, leaves the bottle untouched; mutters lowly, Because I can’t.
It tastes like bile, stings like a wound still bleeding – but he opens himself, gradually.
(He can’t lose them again.)
The panic strikes, one night (never should have gotten close, never should have tried again), too familiar and too forgotten.
(The child had been buried, but not lost.)
It’s okay, the mage murmurs, over, and over, and over again, and Kurogane slowly –
(breathes, head puddled to one thin shoulder, brow wrinkling and chest too tight, every layer stripped to nothing but this –)
Slowly, he starts to believe it.
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