Title: Alive
Author: Jordanna Morgan
Archive Rights: Please request the author's consent.
Rating/Warnings: G.
Characters: Ikoma, Kajika, and the orphans.
Setting: Sometime after episode four.
Summary: Kajika reflects on the changes she sees in Ikoma.
Disclaimer: They belong to Kabaneri Committee and other relevant parties. I'm just playing with them.
Notes: Just a little something sweet to mark my second anniversary as a KotIF fan. Submitted for the prompts of "Renewal" at Small Fandom Flash, and "Slice of Life" at Genprompt Bingo.

"Okay, okay!" laughed Ikoma, nearly toppling from the assault of small hands that clutched his arms, trying to pull him down to their level. "Just one more ride. But after that, I really have to get back to work, alright?"

Three young orphans crowded around the Kabaneri with eager cheers, grabbing at his very convenient straps of leather and metal to climb up his body like monkeys. Although his inhuman strength made their weight little burden to him, his reed-thin figure was barely large enough to provide a perch for them all; but they managed it nonetheless, hanging precariously on his neck and shoulders. Their laughter rang through the train car as he whirled away, jogging up and down the narrow space, eliciting thrilled gasps when he pretended to stumble and nearly smack his passengers into the surrounding bunks.

Sitting off to the side with the youngest orphan in her arms, Kajika watched the ruckus with a full heart and a beaming smile.

Despite the transformation Ikoma had endured, and all the fear and uncertainty of his fate that they had recently been through, Kajika's friend was still alive—and in her eyes, much more so than before. It was a peculiar contradiction to the very name Kabaneri. A word that meant corpse-person implied he should be something half-dead, yet his entire being was more vibrant now than she had ever seen him when he was human. It was true enough in body, as he discovered physical powers that let him fight as he had long dreamed of doing… but most of all, Ikoma seemed new and radiant in spirit.

Kajika couldn't imagine him playing with children like this back at Aragane Station. The young man she once knew was solitary and brooding: all his thoughts obsessed with finding better ways to destroy Kabane, as an atonement for fleeing in terror when they seized his sister. He was never really unkind, but—with the exception of Takumi, who would talk to him in his language of weapon mechanics—he treated most any interaction as time stolen from his cause. He must never have realized that in isolating himself like that, he was still only running away from the people around him.

Yet it was different now. As a human, Ikoma had wanted to kill what he hated; but as a Kabaneri, he fought to protect what he cared for.

It had hurt to see him so afraid of himself at first, believing he'd become a monster. He feared that not only his body had changed, but that even his heart eventually would, deep within the metal cage that formed around it.

And maybe it had changed—but only in a wonderful way.

Somehow, his heart had become more open to others only after it was sheathed in iron armor.

Maybe some small part of it really was influenced by his Kabaneri nature. Maybe it was a vestige of whatever pack instinct bound Kabane together in hunting hordes, transferred in Ikoma's psyche to the humans who nourished him with their blood. Or maybe it was all a very human part of him that he'd buried with his sister five years ago, now reawakened by the trials he and his new family on the Kotetsujo had overcome together.

Whatever it was, Kajika was grateful that it made her friend the person he had become—even though she was also sorry that it came at the cost of losing his humanity.

…Except that wasn't really how it was. Because it seemed much more to her that he had found it again instead.

After one last swoop across the width of the car, Ikoma collapsed against the bunk where Kajika sat, dumping his giggling riders on the blankets. Breathless, he raised his head and smiled at her. In his eyes there was a gentle light that she could not remember seeing before he changed.

Playfully she brushed his pale forelock away from his face, looking into those eyes with heartfelt affection as she smiled back.

2020 Jordanna Morgan