The One That Wasn't
Somewhere between twenty-one and thirty she had cut her hair. As the sweat dampened strands stick to her face and neck, her stance low and guarded, he thinks she's never looked more beautiful.
It's been a long time for both of them. He has a family now, a wife and children, after all he's the heir to the Date family and could have done no less. She's made a living off of them, the legends surrounding them anyways, and they would never begrudge her that. She's lost a lot for them, but she's gained a lot too, and there are not very many people that Sage Date would stop whatever he was doing for at a last minute's notice, but she's one of them. Mia Koji has changed her name, changed her clothes, and changed her smile, and she's a little more guarded now but just as breathtaking as ever. She's almost died several times in the last decade and a half, at the hands of a monster and at the hands of something ever more frightening, but Talpa and cancer had never had anything on this woman. And even when she faltered, there was someone to drag her back to her feet, someone to keep her going, because she's done the same for them and they'll never forget that.
Rowen's taught her to fight, Kento's taught her to push past her wounds, and Ryo's taught her to close her eyes and just listen…just listen and wait and let instinct guide her. She'll always know what to do. It's good advice, but not everyone is their leader, and as Sage darts forward on agile feet, she barely blocks his attack in time. She grunts with the effort of his body weight against hers, he's got the advantage and she knows it, but Cye has taught her to choose her battles carefully, and she lets his weight push her back and pull him off balance. He could regain it quicker, but she's smirking at him as she rolls backwards, and he stumbles just to make her smile.
A family and children and a life now, but anything, anything to make this woman smile.
There was a time she was a burden, but even as she regains her feet smoothly, mahogany bangs falling across her eyes and skin dampened from the heat of summer, Sage still sees ice crystals clinging to long dark lashes. He still hears her brave cry on the wind, he still feels her own and lesser strength strengthening him, even as it slipped away from her. She could have fallen a thousand times with them, but she always held her own, held her ground, held her courage. The child he was then didn't understand, but the man he was understood now, and if there wasn't a wife and a family and a life just on the other side of that rice paper wall, then this would be going very differently. So many regrets, but she wasn't one of them. He loves her way too hard to ever regret a thing about her.
Sage pauses to catch his breath and finds himself smiling back at her. Mia raises an eyebrow, then winks challengingly, and he wonders if he's had it wrong all along, letting her go, letting them be what they were always destined to never be. But then she's moving now, and he's allowing her to land her blows with minimal deflection, because the smoothness of her skin feels good on his own, and he'd never admit it but he knows she feels the same way.
It's been a long time for both of them, but some things never change, and this one was always the one, even when she wasn't.
He could draw this out for hours, but he's got a roomful of people waiting, and Sage Date has always been aware of his duties to his family. Duty and honor, to them and to himself, but she laughs as he helps her to her feet, and he remembers that his duty to her is as deep as any of the others. Duty born in the face of battle, when he was bleeding and exhausted, and the rest of them were too, but she was finding ways to save their lives, so nothing, nothing was getting through him to her. It was his hand that held hers in the darkest of night, healing what the doctors couldn't, even if it meant he would have to start all over with letting go, letting go of a new armor they had never learned to properly control and that pulled at him even now.
Sometimes Sage looked at the pictures of her and her husband, a nice American man that had stolen her overseas, and he wondered if for her it was enough. If anything less than what they had all experienced together would ever be enough.
She knew this look in his eyes, he could see it reflected in her own, and so she gives him a different smile, one that says she understands, one that says she knew better than to come but she did so anyways. And for a moment the sunshine is warm on their faces, and a child is laughing, and the world has been saved. For a moment, the stoic man takes off his helmet and laughs out loud and draws her close, his lips curling as he buries his face in her neck and holds her for the first time.
Mia smelled like sweat and fear and hope that day. She smells of sweat and serenity and vanilla right now, and no sunlight can steal through the roof, but it's close enough to how he remembers. He smiles against her neck again, and she laughs because it's always tickled, and then she sighs softly. What never started on a mountain top, what never grew through two wars, what wasn't lost in the space between one continent and another…what never was, was still growing strong, and Sage was never right for her, but he was pretty damn close.
She doesn't say goodbye, none of them ever do, but Mia squeezes his fingers just once in her own before ambling towards the door, and he watches her go because it would be a shame to do anything other than that, the one that wasn't, the one he let get away. Somewhere between twenty-one and thirty, she became amazing, and since he broke her heart, she's allowed to rub that in a little when she wants to. She'll always have his heart anyways, and she know it.
Sage rocks his son to sleep that night, a gleaming sphere tucked away in a plain wooden box in the corner of the room, and he smiles. It's better this way.