Curried Favors
A Hayate the Combat Butler oneshot
By
EvilFuzzy9
Hinagiku collapsed onto the grass, panting heavily. Her skin glistened with a cold sweat. Despite their recent exertions, her face was deathly pale. She was shivering, shoulders heaving as she swallowed every breath with a deep gulp.
In the distance of the shadowy woods, she could still hear the inhuman echoes of ghostly whispers. She was still, intermittently, catching the briefest blurred flashes of spectral, wandering will-o'-the-wisps out of the corner of her eyes. She had no idea whether these spirits were those of the villagers or the murderer, but quite frankly she didn't care.
Briefly, her thoughts went to Alice, who had chosen to stay and guard the boat. Hinagiku couldn't help but envy the little girl's unflappability even in the face of the supernatural... Although Alice herself was also somewhat unnatural...
Still, however, she couldn't help wondering whether the girl would be alright. But Hinagiku knew that she couldn't afford to distract herself worrying about someone else at the moment, and so she reluctantly shook off those thoughts.
This place was dangerous. That was the only detail that mattered, right now. Everything else was just fluff. Even the borderline superhuman student council president was not immune to fear.
"Hayate... do we really need those spices?" Hinagiku wondered aloud, feeling the rarest of urges to give up and go home.
Under almost any under circumstances, Hinagiku would have never said such a thing, but even her stubborn pride had its limits. She didn't want to stay here.
There was a moment of silence from the boy beside her, the young man whom Hinagiku not-so-secretly liked a very great deal. Probably he was considering her words, or maybe he was also catching his breath from their latest session of flee-the-murderous-spirits.
For a moment, Hinagiku hoped that Hayate would acquiesce to her not so subtle suggestion. It was almost unheard of for her to get cold feet over something not involving heights, after all. And certainly, under any other circumstances, Hayate probably would have acquiesced to the student council president's most uncommon of requests.
But tonight was a night of rare flags tripping all over, and the usually passive butler shot Hinagiku Katsura a surprisingly baleful glare.
"Hinagiku-san..." said the teenaged manservant sharply, his voice low. "...since when were you the sort of person to back down from a challenge?"
His eyes were frightening in the dappled starlight of this dark forest on that haunted isle, and Hinagiku could not restrain the chill which shivered her spine when he pierced her with that frighteningly intense gaze. There was something distinctly hellish about his pupils, which looked almost like sharp, vertical slits at that moment.
"A...ah..." Hinagiku half-whimpered, gulping nervously. "I-it's not running away, though...!" she said, raising her arms up and waving them defensively in front of her face. "We would be advancing, you know? Towards future victory!"
A beat.
Hayate's glare darkened.
"Hinagiku-san... you know I can't afford to lose this," he said, his voice low and ominous. "If it means beating that no-good piece of trash, I'll do whatever it takes."
Hinagiku winced, recoiling the slightest bit at the most uncharacteristic ice in Hayate's tone. It was unlike him, to say the least. Hina could not remember ever seeing him in this kind of mood, before. Hayate Ayasaki was very mild mannered by nature, or at least exceptionally skilled at hiding his true feelings, but right now she could see in those eyes nothing but a fathomless depth of black and virulent bile to make even a demon balk.
The Hayate she knew didn't act like this.
Hinagiku frowned, wondering.
Not for the first time, she was struck by how little she really knew about Hayate, as he turned away to start walking. Despite all the time she had spent with him over the past year and change, they had rarely ever gone into any depths about Hayate's personal feelings. Although he would gladly dispense the most disturbing anecdotes about his own morbidly depressing past, and he certainly had no filter when came to saying embarrassing things, Hayate was actually usually very reticent to talk about himself.
Idly, Hinagiku wondered what was going through his mind right now, to make the usually sweet boy act so harsh and cold. Although she was not displeased to see Hayate take a more active role in his own life – after all had she not personally told the lad, when they first met, that he should act more selfishly once in a while, if he didn't want to miss his chance at happiness? – it still left her at something of a loss to see the perpetually impoverished manservant acting so... ruthlessly.
Twigs cracked underfoot, pulling Hinagiku briefly from her musings. Hayate was standing at the edge of the clearing, now, his back to her.
"If you don't want to come with me," Hayate said, walking away from Hinagiku, "then go wait with Alice back at the boat."
Hinagiku's brow furrowed.
"Don't count me out, yet..." she muttered softly, getting back to her feet with no small effort of will.
The dread and malice which hang heavy in the air of this island were on a whole other level from anything she had felt back at the old school building, last year. If anything, it was closer in sheer weight to the pressure which had emanated from the Tennousu estate in Mykonos, back when...
...a knot formed in Hinagiku's stomach as she remembered what it had been like then, and what meager yet disturbing details she had learned, and inferred, regarding Hayate's past during that Golden Week...
...but, still, Hinagiku knew that she couldn't let this keep her from helping. So she banished those thoughts and soldiered on.
Even as she forced herself to put one leg in front of the other, following only with great effort in Hayate's footsteps as the teen viciously muscled his way through the tangled, grasping branches and undergrowth, Hinagiku could not help but feel both sadness and frustration. As she followed the trail which Hayate blazed stubbornly through the dense forest, the student council president tried – seemingly in vain – to make sense of everything that had happened lately.
She remembered how warmly, admiringly Hayate had spoken of his brother, before. Just hearing him talk, back then, it had been obvious how deeply Hayate had cared for Ikusa, and how much he'd looked up to him. He had clearly placed his brother on a pedestal in his heart, seen the man as some larger-than-life icon.
Hinagiku found it hard to grasp what this kind of admiration might be like. Even from a very young age, she had known her sister to be a deeply flawed human being. Although it didn't keep Hinagiku from being grateful to the woman for what she'd done for her, she did not have any real deep respect for Yukiji.
She pitied her sister, more than anything.
A part of Hinagiku found it very strange, indeed, how deeply Hayate had idolized his brother. The affection, the unconditional trust Hayate had placed in Ikusa was something wholly foreign to her. She was used to being let down by an older sibling, but that was only from very low heights.
She could not even begin to imagine what kind of disappointment Hayate must be feeling, to realize what a stubborn, impulsive idiot his older brother really was.
The moans of the ghosts drew nearer, then faded, then drew nearer again. The moon slowly made its journey through the night sky as Hayate and Hinagiku searched for the herbs Alice had described. It felt like hours had passed before Hinagiku was finally able to muster up the courage to speak to Hayate again.
"I'm sure he'll remember you. Just give it time," she said, and to Hayate the words probably seemed to come straight out of nowhere. Yet if he was befuddled, however momentarily, by the sudden statement, the butler did not let it show.
"Not like it would make a difference," said Hayate bitterly.
Hinagiku frowned, pursing her lips into a thin line.
"Don't say that kind of thing!" she said. "It's not your brother's fault he got amnesia. I'm sure he cares about you. You are his precious little brother, after all."
"No," Hayate said. "He's right. He has no brother. I have no brother."
"Hayate!" Hinagiku very nearly snapped, riled up by this statement. "He's just confused right now. Once he has his memory back, I'm sure things will improve!"
Hayate scoffed.
"No. Nothing will change," he muttered, and he shot Hinagiku a dismal look over his shoulder. "I get it now. He's no better than my parents." Hayate sighed. "Because he was my big brother, I blindly assumed that he had to be a good person... better, at least, than them."
"I think he IS better," said Hinagiku firmly. "Would your parents have gone to the lengths he did, just to protect a bunch of octopus? Of course not. And that's the difference between him and them. He is a good person. I'm sure of it."
"Because he saved a fucking octopus?" Hayate snapped, and he spun around to glare at Hinagiku. His face was ruddy, and his nostrils flared. "Because he went off to play hero to a bunch of worthless goddamn cephalopods while leaving his only brother in the world at the mercy of those human scum who dared to call themselves parents?!"
Hinagiku staggered back, unconsciously inching away from Hayate. Her eyes were wide, and she felt suddenly very small beneath the young man's looming shadow. Hayate's fist struck the trunk of a nearby tree, shaking several leaves from the branches. Blood dripped from his knuckles, but he did not flinch.
"That's so admirable, huh!?" Hayate snarled through grit teeth, his shoulders trembling. "That he left his little brother all alone with those monsters!? He must not have known, right? He must have had a reason! He couldn't have realized what sort of HORRIBLE people our parents were, when he only spent eighteen fucking years of his life with them!
"No, I'm sure there must have been a reason! Something to explain why such a good person would live his own brother in the care of people who would happily sell their son's organs to Yakuza to cover their own worthless hides! Right?!" Hayate roared.
The teen let out a wordless scream, then. A furious cry tore from his ragged lips, ringing unchallenged through the haunted wood. He gnashed his teeth, beating his fists raw and bloody against rough bark.
His head swiveled wildly on his shoulders, a glint of beaded tears flashing in the moonlight.
Hayate was crying.
"That fucking bastard!" he sobbed. "Why?! Why did he have to go and lose his memory?! Why did he have to leave me behind?! Why?"
Hayate fell to his knees, shoulders heaving. His hands were shaking uncontrollably as he wept, his breath coming to him only in wretched, rattling gasps. He bent nearly double, his eyes squeezed tightly shut against the inexorable surge of bitter tears.
Hinagiku's heart very nearly broke, watching as her crush fell to pieces before her very eyes.
"Ha...Hayate..." she said softly, almost inaudibly. She reached a hand out, kneeling slowly to the ground.
The young man continued to weep. He did not flinch away when Hinagiku brought a hand forth to brush gently across his cheek. He did not push her away when she raised a small handkerchief to the tear tracks below his eyes.
"Ikusa..." Hayate moaned bitterly. "Why...?"
"I'm sure..." Hinagiku said slowly, tenderly wiping away his tears. "...I'm sure he had his reasons..."
Hayate sighed morosely, and met Hinagiku's softly glistening emeralds with his own dull and bloodshot sapphires.
"I wish I could say the same."
Hinagiku sniffed, feeling truly sorry for him in that moment. Acting on impulse, she leaned forward and wrapped her arms around Hayate. She drew him into a warm and tender hug.
"Then I guess I'll just have to keep on believing," she said, "hard enough for the both of us."
Despite himself, Hayate felt the smallest and weakest of smiles upturn the corners of his mouth.
"And I..." he said, "...will just have to believe in the Hina who believes in my brother."
Hinagiku punched him lightly on the shoulder.
"We're having a moment," she said, her cheeks a bright red. "Don't ruin it."
Hayate's smile widened, became warmer.
He hugged Hinagiku back.
A/N: You know something? As much as I enjoy writing HnG smut, I also very much like to do angst and/or character exploration pieces. And it's been a while since I'd done something real nice and angsty for HnG.
Thus, this. I've felt suspicious of Ikusa's unspoken of but undeniable abandonment of Hayate for a some time, now, and with this latest arc I just could not resist latching onto Hayate's sudden and harsh disillusionment to do a short bit of angst.
And I'm not even particularly much a HayaHina shipper, personally (though I can accept it in an AyuHayaHina OT3) but the little bit of fluff at the end just came up real organically.
Also, I am perfectly aware of how jarring that kind of swearing is from Hayate, which is EXACTLY why I did it.
Chapter added: 4-14-14
TTFN and R&R!
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