Resolve
Character/Pairings: Doppo Kunikida, Rokuzou Taguchi, Yukichi Fukuzawa | no pairings.
Summary: Kunikida once said that when he first caused casualties during a job, he "cried so much [he] couldn't get up, and [he] took time off from work without leave". What led to him being the way he is now? Done for #bsdwrite no. 8 (blue). Extrapolates on events from the first novel/anime eps. 6 and 7.
Notes: Grief and loss (but no actual death) involved, so don't read if you're not willing to have feels.
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters.
A blonde ponytailed man in Western clothing, kneeling and holding his rimless glasses in one hand, was weeping in front of a row of five graves - loud and unrestrained, a stark contrast to the emotionless grey-haired yukata-wearing man behind him.
"Are you ready to come back to work yet?" the older man, Fukuzawa, asked the blonde as he placed a hand on his shoulder in comfort.
The blonde known as Doppo Kunikida sucked away his last tears, slid his glasses back onto his face and nodded, mentally vowing never to cry again.
/
A boy showed up at the Agency's doorstep the next day - a brunette, with brown disinterested eyes that played with their surroundings like flecks of sunlight. Doppo was about to shut the door on him since he'd come at least three times before and had merely sat at the doorstep after he knocked, but this time was different. This time, the boy yelled out, "You killed my father!"
"The Agency is involved with many clients," Kunikida tried to calmly tell him through the mostly-closed door, his breath creating a warm breeze on the brunette's cheek as he leant in to hear the detective speak. "Unless we have more details about your father, you're making a mistake." For some reason, he could feel an invisible blanket of déjà vu settling around him.
"I know I'm not making a mistake," the brunette told him, his head hung, "he was part of the Azure King taskforce, and the Agency was responsible for that case."
/
Just before the dawn, Kunikida woke up, as if under hypnosis, and slid his glasses on. The brunette boy, which he now knew was called Rokuzou, lay asleep next to him in a spare futon, still lightly snoring and in the clothes he wore when he'd arrived at the Agency - a white jumper, green pants, blue shirt. "Dad, look at the tropical fish," the brunette murmured under his breath softly, and Kunikida sighed with regret at what he was about to do.
With this boy still in his care, he had to do everything to stick to his resolve. It was once said that 75% of goals were achieved if you told your friends and wrote them down somewhere you could see them every day - so the best place to leave his goals would be the source of his ability.
As he began to scrawl in details of how Rokuzou should live his life, he couldn't help remembering the day he'd been rejected for being "too young and inexperienced for the job" at his second university tuition job and he'd stepped into an antique shop that presented itself as "stocking rare types of stationery" to put his sorrows elsewhere. Certainly, it was only out of sheer interest that he'd stepped in (and he needed a new notebook anyway) but as he approached a certain book stack in that store, he felt a resonance. An almost electric feeling, as if he were now psychically connected with the green book he'd just set eyes on.
"Welcome to the shop!" A female clerk in a grey suit greeted him and spied the book he'd just picked up. "That's a notebook made by the esteemed Master Carlyle. Do you want it?" Kunikida, his face falling as a feeling of dread settled like a sudden fog, nodded stiffly. "It's 8000 yen for one," she finished, leaving him to gape in horror.
Sunlight seeped past the curtain in his Agency dorm, snapping him back to the present. As he ruled the lines of a timetable in, Rokuzou rose, the blankets making a soft rustling noise as he did so. Kunikida, having heard the noise, tore out the page he was writing on and gestured at him to come closer.
"This is how you'll live your life from now on," he reasoned, allowing the sheet to drift into Rokuzou's hands. The boy glared at it with confusion and disgust as it fell.
"Don't give me this treatment. You know I harbour resentment for you, so why-?" the brunette shot back, then recoiled. Kunikida's writing had gone through the paper, and as the new morning light began to shine on the timetable a previous schedule could be read using close inspection.
"Visit cemetery to pay respects to those who lost their lives in Azure King case," Rokuzou read aloud, suddenly breathless. Kunikida turned his eyes away to watch the sunrise, trying his hardest not to lapse into tears like the boy had just done. Trying his hardest to uphold the promise he had made to himself and, since the writing of the timetable was basically an indirect pledge to be a surrogate father, Rokuzou.
Kunikida may have been the "man who walked alone", but his personal debt now meant he couldn't be alone again.
I got that 75% statistic from a language blog I was reading.
"Doppo" roughly means "to walk alone".