Author's Note: This is set during Kamen Rider Black RX, between episodes 17 and 18, after the arc with Hitomi's kidnapping, where RX's alternate forms are introduced. This contains spoilers for Kamen Rider Black (though if you've watched RX it's already been spoiled for you). Hope someone enjoys!
This Is Who I Am
This is who I am.
Hitomi studies herself in the mirror, reaching out to touch the nose of the girl who stares back with wide black eyes.
She knows the girl in the mirror. Until three weeks ago she loved seeing the girl in the mirror—bigger, stronger, smarter every day. Waiting for the day she would be big enough to keep up with Shigeru, strong enough to wrestle with Kotaro without him being so conscientiously delicate every time he touches her, smart enough to follow Reiko and understand what she's doing.
Now the girl in the mirror looks wrong.
Now she expects to see something else... someone else?
Why does she sometimes think she sees long, curly hair framing a beautiful woman's face when she sees her reflection out of the corner of her eye? Why does she sometimes start and turn to respond when people say words that sound nothing like her name?
You're safe now, Kotaro had said, his palm fire-warm on her head, his hands just a little too tight as they held her. She hadn't complained—he had been scared, she could see, and if he grips too tight it means he isn't seeing her as a helpless child. Crisis took you away for a while, but you're safe now, and we're going home.
Crisis is to blame for the missing month of her life. They are to blame for the glimpses she gets of a woman who doesn't exist yet. Shigeru told her, after she begged and pleaded and promised not to tell Mom that he hadn't done his homework, a bit of what Crisis had done to her.
You were all grown up. Shigeru's voice held a mixture of awe and fear, and Hitomi had clenched his hand tight to her. And you could do things—hurt people just by looking at them. But I knew it was you. And I knew you wouldn't hurt me and Kotaro.
She thinks there is more to it than that. She thinks from the way Kotaro follows her, holds her, picks her up and plays helicopter and horse with her more than usual, that maybe she did hurt them.
The woman in the mirror, the beautiful woman with the curly-wild hair and the princess' crown, hurt them.
But Shigeru and Kotaro called her, and eventually she stopped hurting them, and together they all came back home.
Home to parents who don't want to let them do anything, to classmates who don't believe that aliens really kidnapped her, but home, to Mama and Papa and Reiko and Kotaro.
"I am you." Tapping her reflection on the nose, Hitomi nods once, firmly. "I'm not a princess. But I will grow up big and strong and smart, and we'll make Crisis pay for what they did."
The girl in the mirror nods, firmly, and then they both break into a smile.
And if the tube of toothpaste slides off the counter on its own, well... things like that happen all the time.
XXX
This is who I am.
Joe studies the man in the mirror, the expressive mouth and shaggy black hair. It has been a long time since he saw his own reflection so clearly. It has been a long time since he has been so clean, no sand caught in his hair, worming its way into his clothing, scratching against his body.
How long? He doesn't know. He has no way of telling. He doesn't know if he escaped from Crisis recently or if he has been a puppet in the desert for decades, luring people in with a true-but-false promise of aid in finding the rebels only to kill his new friends when Necksticker took him over.
He doesn't know his age. He doesn't know if he does age anymore, after what Crisis has done. He doesn't know if the fact that he looks like a man somewhere around thirty means that he is or that he was or that this was the way Crisis wanted him to look—if they changed Hitomi into an adult, why could they not age a gangly teenager into a warrior?
He doesn't know his true name, though he likes the name that he has, the history that goes with it.
He doesn't know his history. He doesn't remember who, if anyone, he left behind—does he have parents, siblings, children out there who cried when he disappeared? If he does, would seeing him now be better or worse for them?
He doesn't know how many sins he has to answer for. Kotaro has told him none, and he believes Kotaro, so he supposes he will have to accept that answer. Surely the man who tells his enemies that they are unforgivable would be honest in his doling out of guilt.
He doesn't know so many things.
But he knows where he belongs.
There can be no doubt of that, and he smiles at his reflection as he thinks of the man that brought him here. He had been drawn to Kotaro immediately, to the man's fierce determination and willingness to trust. Working with the man over the last week has only reinforced that first impression, and he is grateful for everything Kotaro has offered him.
Grateful to Kotaro for trusting him with Shigeru's safety, even if he hadn't done a terribly good job protecting the boy.
Grateful to Shigeru, for his strength in the face of horror.
Grateful to Hitomi, who seems completely unimpressed with his status as a Crisis cyborg, demanding horse rides and helicopter lifts (Kotaro explains what she means by each, as Kotaro readily explains so much about Joe's new-old world).
Grateful to the Sahara adults, who have welcomed him into their house solely on Kotaro's word and the joy of having their children returned. He will have to decide if he wants to stay here or move, but for now...
For now, he has a name and home, and that is far more than he would have expected mere days ago.
XXX
This is who I am.
Kotaro studies his face in the mirror, the familiar face that hasn't changed—hasn't aged, hasn't scarred—since the day Golgom took him and Black's power awakened.
There is more to him than this young-forever face, though. More to what the Kingstone has done to him—more than there has ever been before.
This is the face of your sorrow.
Closing his eyes, not wanting to watch his body change, Kotaro calls forth the power of RX and then immediately shoves himself toward Robo-Rider.
The transformation hurts—not physically, sadly. He could get used to physical pain. Instead it rips open the wounds that Hitomi's survival—unharmed, miraculously, unchanged by her experience—should have closed.
How can he grieve a child that he holds in his hands each day?
He doesn't. Or at least not just her, though it was the thought that she died—that he failed, again, to protect one dear to him—that had first opened this path inside him.
He does not have the option not to see once the transformation has washed over him. He only has the option not to interpret what his hyperaware body tells him.
He wants to see what he looks like, though. He wants to see what it is that the others have reacted to.
Cold.
That is his first impression. His grief is cold, robotic, every motion stiff and choreographed as though he were a machine. Robo-Rider's body—his body—gleams like metal, clicks like metal at each joint, and he did not think sorrow could look so empty.
Except...
Reaching out to the mirror, he traces the red lines flowing down from the shimmering ruby eyes. Tears, molten and hot, etched forever into his flesh.
Ah.
This, yes, this he can accept as the face of his sorrow. Cold, methodical, implacable, a force of vengeance and protection for those still alive, but only because that is what is needed. Only because the molten sorrow, the screams and tears and pleas and denial, will do no good.
Tears couldn't save Nobuhiko.
Tears couldn't save Hitomi.
But this new body, this slick thing given to him by the Kingstone if only he is willing to rip all the scabs off all the old wounds, this can protect.
(Would it look different, if his grief burned hot instead of cold? What would Nobuhiko's embodiment of sorrow look like? What would his have looked like, before he took up weapons against the shell of his brother, the last birthday present anyone had ever given him?)
Anger surges through him, hot and hard, and he clasps onto it with all his mental strength, pulling himself free of the well of grief and regret and stubborn determination that fuels Robo-Rider. He rides the anger, because it is familiar, something he has been using to fight all his life but more than ever since he became Kamen Rider.
He slides into Bio-Rider's form like a body sliding into a pool, the rage-fueled transformation covering him between one breath and the next.
So smooth, compared to the firm determination of Robo-Rider. So slick and slippery and impossible to contain—he catches his breath as he remembers the thrill of turning into water. Impossible to hold, impossible to capture, impossible to fight against, sliding through every defense...
Yes, water is a good element for his anger. Even if it burns hot—and oh, can it burn hot, the memory of heat exploding through the chinks in Black's armor as he studied the horrors that Golgom had visited upon the world making the light in Bio-Rider's eyes flare up—his anger is not lava. His anger is something more solid, more controlled, something that he leads rather than being led by it. His anger is something that he can use, and this form will be very, very useful in the future, he thinks.
The eyes are the same between both forms, and he traces their outline—delicately, acutely aware of how fragile everything in the bathroom will be.
That is fitting, too, that anger and sorrow be tied together in the eyes.
The belt—the Kingstone's place—is different between all three forms. Running his hands over the oval setting that Bio-Rider uses, Kotaro wonders why the stone should choose to change this.
Why choose to change anything, though?
Why use Kotaro's emotions as fuel?
He almost calls for the Stone to come forth and answer him. He doesn't think he could explain passing out in the bathroom in a way that the others would find satisfactory, though, and Hitomi and Shigeru could use a few days without anything frightening happening after what they've been through.
Besides, he suspects he knows the answer.
The Stone shapes itself to him because he earned the right. His is the mind and heart that defines their abilities, even if the Stone provides the raw power.
His is the robotic grief. His is the liquid-mercury anger. His is the hope and love and strength that keeps Black and now RX as a force for good when it would be frighteningly easy to give in to temptation.
Allowing the transformation to fall away, Kotaro leans against the sink, careful not to grip the sides too tightly. He will not damage the house that has welcomed him.
His eyes stare back at him from the mirror, dark and unreadable. He doesn't like his expression like this, cold and distant, so he forces a tentative smile.
The smile becomes a true one as he sees the difference it makes in his expression. He can see RX's forms in his face—in his eyes—when he stares so steadily at the mirror, but when he smiles... ah, when he smiles, then he sees Minami Kotaro.
Then he sees the boy that he was, the man he wants to become, and is glad to know they are both still present.
A small fist pounds on the door, and Shigeru's strained voice rings out clearly. "Kotaro, aren't you done yet?"
"Yes. Yes, I am." Opening the door, Kotaro smiles at the child who skitters eagerly around him.
Shigeru shoots him a look of pained exasperation and slams the door.
Laughing, Kotaro heads out to the living room.
This is who he is, and for now, he is quite happy with it.