#mekhaniotes

Hanazawa Yuusaku means nothing to him. Maybe some of the same blood runs within their veins, but that doesn't make them—brothers, or anything like that. They're nothing to each other.

He takes a slow breath, ejects the empty cartridge and cycles the next bullet into the chamber. Takes aim again, with perfectly steady hands, and looks for the next target.

Ogata's in total control, as he always is. It doesn't matter that Yuusaku looked back at him when he never falters, not when he's leading men into battle just as Ogata pulled the trigger. He was too far away to spot Ogata, much less for their eyes to make contact. For anything to pass between them, other than Ogata's bullet.

That still found its mark in Yuusaku's thick skull, and that's the only thing that matters.

Usami finds him, after.

"Haven't you heard the awful news, Hyakunosuke?" he asks, one arm hooking companionably around Ogata's neck, just on the right side of strangling.

"No," he says flatly, shrugging out of Usami's grasp. He can guess, though. The enlisted men loved their blessed flag-bearer so much that they even took his corpse back behind their own lines, though Ogata can't begin to understand why. He didn't miss, so Yuusaku was already dead. What difference does it make at that point? It's not like Yuusaku could complain about the indignity of it; he'd probably approve, somehow, of being treated the same as the thousand other bodies already strewn over the hillside. So what was one more?

Why is Hanazawa Yuusaku always the exception?

"—guess someone got to Second Lieutenant Hanazawa first," Usami's saying, when Ogata buries those thoughts along with the others and finally turns his attention back to the conversation.

"What," Ogata says, too sharply to pass off as casual annoyance.

"Yeah!" Usami smiles, wide and feral. "It was pretty sloppy. Hit the side of his head and lodged there. I guess the Russian sniper had to take any shot he could get."

It was a mistake. No, Usami's the one who's mistaken. "The bullet didn't go through?" Ogata demands.

"Nope~"

Fuck. It's not as if the army bothers examining any of the bodies that this bloody war produces before tossing them in a shallow grave or onto the pyre. But for the only-acknowledged son of Lieutenant General Hanazawa Koujirou, they might make an exception. Even if they find it's a bullet from a Type-30 in his head, that doesn't mean it can be traced back to Ogata, though—

Usami blinks, the wildness receding as his eyes narrow at whatever he sees in Ogata's face. "You seem upset, Hyakunosuke."

Ogata clenches his jaw once, trying to school his expression into blankness. "I'm not," he says.

"Oh, of course not. It's not like you and your little brother were that close, after all. I mean, if you were, you'd already be on your way to visit him."

"I've seen a dead body before." He just has to look over the top of the trench if he wants to see more; besides, Ogata's intimately familiar with what a corpse with its brains blown out looks like. Yuusaku wouldn't look any different.

Ogata could go to view the body, though, under the pretense of their shared blood. He could dig his bullet out of Yuusaku's head, and dispose of it. There might be witnesses though—people would notice that someone had gone rummaging around in Yuusaku's skull, at the very least, and they would wonder why. Better to leave the bullet where it is.

"Dea—Were you even listening to me?" Usami complains.

"What," Ogata says again, voice unforgivably shaken, as the poorly-stifled feelings and thoughts threaten to overwhelm him. Usami—He's messing with Ogata. This is another of his stupid pranks, an attempt to goad a reaction out of him. "There's no way Yuu—Second Lieutenant Hanazawa is still alive."

Usami stares back at him with the same lack of comprehension for a long moment. Then, with a terrible dawning light of realization in his face, he leans in to whisper, "Hyakunosuke, did you miss?"

"I didn't," he snarls, shoving Usami away. "I don't miss."

Usami cackles gleefully. "Did your hands shake at the wrong second?"

"Shut up—"

"Did the thought make you feel guilty?"

Ogata lashes out, catching Usami off guard and silencing his obnoxious laughter with a fist to the face. The upper hand only lasts as long as it takes for Usami to overcome his surprise, so: a second or two, at most.

Tsukishima himself hauls Usami off Ogata a few minutes later. His scowl looks heavier than usual, and he steps bodily between them when Usami makes to lunge at Ogata again.

"Clean yourself up," he says, in that particular tone that combines exhaustion and exasperation.

Ogata sits up, licking at the blood on his lips. "It's just a bloody nose." His teeth feel loose in his mouth when he prods them with his tongue, but they're all still there.

Tsukishima frowns even harder at him. "Second Lieutenant Hanazawa woke up. He's asking for you."