Closed
By MPM
Disclaimer: The characters are the property of Bandai and Sunrise. I make no profit in their use.
Warning: Barely-there slash themes; slight RyoxMia
The world was still. Even the bonfire's dying light seemed steady and unblinking as he sat beside its warmth, staring out to the trees that stretched so high as to blot out the stars. It was late—or early, depending on the perspective—the watch on his wrist ticking though the second hand did not seem to move.
He stretched back, falling back into the damp grass, and closed his eyes. The others were gone by now, sleeping in their old rooms in the Koji mansion, curled around memories and a night of laughter. Even Rowen was gone, crashed on the dining room floor after an exhaustive week at university and too much wine.
Their smell lingered over burning wood, the strange rubber and soap smell human beings tended to have. He could smell it on himself, but there was too much here to be from him. He could smell the sea salt where Cye had been, a reminder of the ocean that seemed so far away as he opened his eyes and looked to the trees again.
Even Ryo had his own smell this close to the wilderness, something slightly colder and more like mountains than trees.
"I miss this place when I'm away," Ryo said, stretched out beside Mia. "I'm sorry I missed the dinner last week, Mia."
"It was awesome," Kento said, finishing off a beer. "Cye made duck and pork, and Mia made this French dish—real fluffy."
"Oh, Kento." The woman waved it off, almost leaning on Ryo. "It's an old family recipe. Nothing to go on about."
"He should. I need that recipe," Cye interrupted.
"What was the dinner for?" Rowen asked from his position between Cye and Sage, and there was enough room to fit a person between him and either man. "Birthday or something?"
The group lapsed into silence.
He couldn't smell himself besides the rubber and the soap, but he supposed he smelled like the indoors and sweat, like a worker that had no time to think about the past and remember the feel of skin breaking beneath his fingers. He didn't smell like blood anymore or like rotting corpses, like Dynasty soldiers.
Rowen told them once that the soldiers smelled like a corpse after the intestines had been compromised, when they burst and released their bacteria into the body to help along natural decomposition. It turned the skin green, close to their armors' color.
Rowen smiled apologetically when three sets of eyes swiveled away from the Warrior of Strata and onto him. They can all smell it, he though then, and there was a sense of peace with it. It's on me.
Even at the bonfire, a celebration of the fourth anniversary of Talpa's defeat, the others sat away from him, watched him with careful eyes as if he'd done something, sold them to someone. Cye's eyes never met his, always dropped to his chest when the auburn haired man spoke to him. The words were small, paltry, always questions that he could have had answered over the phone by Mia.
Rowen sat beside him at first, smiled. Rowen called him, pulled him back out into the light when he retreated backward, hiding like Cale in the recesses of his home, his job. In the first years, the calls came frequently, once a week. In time, there were letters instead of calls, except for the important days, anniversaries that only they understood, plans when they returned to Mia's for uncomfortable parties like this one.
The invitation had come through Rowen before Mia's card arrived in his mail box, three weeks after Rowen mentioned getting his.
Please forgive me. I forgot your address, she wrote in tidy script, her tone cordial.
He sat up and stoked the red embers, sparks flying up to the dark sky. Ryo said once that the sky was the color of Rowen's eyes, and he still thought Ryo was mistaken. He was the one who liked to connect them to their elements. Kento was stubborn, hardheaded, strong. Cye's eyes were blue as the water in magazines. Ryo himself had a temper.
No one dared say Rowen's head was in the sky, detached from the firm realities, so the night sky was Rowen's eyes. They never saw Rowen alone, the boy thought no one watched, and suddenly the intellect died. His grandfather told him once that the smartest know no real rest.
"So," Ryo stated. He sat up and away from Mia. "You never told us how things were, Sage."
He shrugged. Kento and Rowen were gone now, sleeping. "Still working at the dojo teaching kendo."
"That's cool." Ryo shifted. "Um, anything else?"
"No, not really. Kendo keeps me pretty busy." He sighed. "My grandfather wants me to be ready to take over, and my sisters are constantly riding me for a girlfriend."
Cye stood. "I think I'm going in. It's getting a bit cold out here."
"Yeah. Only Rowen likes to study the stars, trying to plot out the universe."
They never saw Rowen pick up a hot pan without a pot-holder because he was thinking. He was the one to ask what happened while healing, reaching to the purity of air with his dead-smell. When Rowen broke his arm falling out of the balcony because he was reading and thought the balcony was larger than it was, he was the one to discover the blue-haired boy on the patio below.
Rowen enjoyed his healing. I feel your peace, he said. Everything stops.
He'd always thought it was funny he healed though he was the color of deep decay, and Rowen felt his peace in knowing the others would never reach out to him the way they did to each other. They were all real elements, true things to be touched, used. Something vital to life.
During the war, he always wondered why Cye fell first. Cye was water, a true force that could save and damn in the same swell. His power barely touched people's lives. They could live without light, without lighting. Without water, the kidneys shut down, and death comes in a painful scratch along the body.
The bonfire was dying, slowly. He couldn't save it. Fire was Ryo's. Its light did not belong to him, and he paid for it.
His eyes felt like glue had been smeared over their surface. It was so hard to stay awake, but his room felt so cold. Rowen's side looked like he'd never left, and his own looked as bare as he'd left it, except there was dust that sparkled in the light, swirling in the slight wind kicked up when he threw his suitcase onto the futon.
"What are you doing out here?" the air breathed.
He turned. Rowen stood away from him, far enough that the wind had to speak for him.
"Thinking," he replied, but he had to shout. He moved back onto one of the cushions Mia had put out, arms crossed over his chest. "How long have you been awake?"
"Hour or so." Rowen came closer with another log in his arms. "You would be waking up in an hour. You know that?"
Sage nodded. "I know."
"Why the sudden change?" The log was thrown onto the fire, and the other man took the poker from him. The fire kicked back up.
"No reason," he murmured.
Rowen sat down across from him. "The room's filthy. It bugs you."
He snorted softly. "Cye said his room was clean when he came back."
"It was. Mia didn't want to move any of your things." Rowen poked the fire again, and the crackle of burning wood woke the forest up. He could hear the birds now. "She knows how picky you are."
Sage shook his head. "There's too many memories in that house to let the dust settle like that." He looked at Rowen, leaning forward with interest. "It doesn't bother you?"
"Past is past is past," the man replied. "I try not to think about it."
"That gets easier in time." He looked at the house, and a light clicked on, Mia's room. "She's going to come out."
"No, she won't." Rowen stood up and came around the fire, sitting beside him. "There's nothing left for us in there."
He nodded. "I know."
They lapsed into silence, and it was comfortable. Rowen looked up the sky, staring at the stars with the expression he wore when he burned his hand, looking but not seeing.
He stared at the lights in the house as Mia's light clicked off and Ryo's clicked on.
"I don't think I'm coming back next year," Rowen said suddenly. "I don't think you should, either."
"Why?"
The other man shrugged. "There's too much here. And I got an offer from a school in America to study there."
"Do you think your English is up to it?" Sage asked, staring into the fire.
"There's no reason to stay in Japan."
He lowered his eyes, curled around himself. Daylight pressed against the night air. He could feel it through his power, always could. Even tied up and blindfolded, he could feel the night bleeding away to day. He could smell it over the death, the rubber and soap.
"What do you think?" Rowen touched his elbow.
Sage stood up. "If it's what you want, I think you should go."
The man sighed. "I'm not going to tell them, and they'll forget to invite you next year. They always do."
"Forget my address, you mean," he whispered with a sad smile. "Saving the world doesn't make you fast friends."
"Not always." Rowen poked the fire, beginning to move the embers away from each other. "Not anymore."
"They mean well."
"They don't understand you."
Sage snorted. "I don't care anymore."
Rowen set the poker down on the grass. "If I asked you, would you come to America with me? Just for a year."
He blinked and sighed, "Rowen."
The doors on Ryo's balcony slid open. "Hey, Sage, Rowen, you guys still up?" Ryo called, and he waved his arms at them.
"Yeah," Rowen shouted back, stepping around him with a sad look. "We're coming it to bed now."
Sage shook his head, checking his watch. "I have to start practice. It's almost five."
"I know." Rowen turned and gripped Sage's shoulders. "Think about it." He moved back to the house, back to the others.
He watched him disappear into Mia's living room before throwing the sand onto the fire. The light died, and the forest was still again, birds waiting for him to move.
Notes: This fic came to me during a family bonfire, watching my cousin that no one understands. Everyone in my family gets along, and we'd throw ourselves out in front of a train for each other. However, none of the cousins in his age group talk to him, and, when you try, he's very hard to get through to everyone except another of my cousins. I see Sage and Rowen like that.