#if just

I DID NOT REALISE THAT. 

AND NOW I AM IN LOVE WITH THAT. 

I went back and browsed my original posts about that moment in Piffle and my favourite thing is that it all had so much incredible meaning already but when we add the new lens of Kurogane’s past it gets even deeper still. 

Because we have this:

Which, again, was perfectly deep and meaningful at the time because it took us all the way back to the start of the series and wrapped a neat and measurable bow around Kurogane’s character growth so far. 

But HEY, STRENGTH DID YOU SAY? WHERE HAVE WE HEARD THAT BEFORE?

YES THAT WAS RHETORICAL, YOU ALREADY KNOW THE ANSWER. 

Kurogane’s existence has always been tied to the idea of True Strength - of protecting the ones you love. And the fall of Suwa was his ultimate failure in that the regard and part of the catalyst that drove him further and further from that true goal. 

At the start of the series we have a Kurogane that embodies the “false” idea of strength that his father gives him during his training, a strength that is focused on getting stronger and stronger and stronger, for no particular reason other than constantly outdoing yourself and your enemies. But Kurogane is also self-aware enough to know this, at least on some level. We saw how, on losing his parents, he went berserk and attacked anyone who came near him. Kurogane at the start of Tsubasa has parts of that still inside him, where he loses himself to the violence and let’s it take over and revels in the strength of it because it’s a distraction of everything he failed to do. But that’s not healing. 

So his first hand wound is shot into him by Tomoyo, against his will at the time, to save him. She is, in a way, demonstrating the kind of True Strength that Kuropapa was talking about. 

And Kurogane’s wound in Piffle is the reverse of that. He wounds the same hand in defense of Sakura’s life - and by doing so both parallels and fulfills the promise of the first wound. He is demonstrating True Strength, like he was always meant to. 

He is healing. 

And it’s impossible to guess how much of this Piffle!Tomoyo is aware of. Maybe the other Tomoyo told her everything, and she knows what this means. Maybe the other Tomoyo told her nothing, and she is just intuitive. But either way, her words cut right into the core of Kurogane’s entire life highlight exactly what this moment means to him. He has a new family now. Even though he “failed” the first time and lost everything, now he’s becoming the kind of person his parents always wanted him to be. 

AND WHILE I’M TALKING ABOUT IT CHECK OUT THE TAGS IN THAT POST. 

“not just from the wound that Tomoyo inflicted on him”