Re:
Chapter One: Re: Searching
Characters/Pairing: Kojuurou and Masamune, eventual Kojuurou/Masamune
Rating: PG
Words: 1685
Summary: Kojuurou and Masamune find each other again. Four hundred years late.
Hikaru doesn't know how many days it has been since he had started taking this train every day- this exactly train, exactly at 4:17pm in the afternoon, every single day without fail. No- Hikaru does know - it has been exactly thirty one days. An entire month has passed and he is repeating this day over and over again as if he is caught into a loop that he cannot get out of.. Even when he tried to break away from the routine, to try to return to a semblance of normalcy in his life, Hikaru finds his feet finding its way back to the train station.
Back to that one train. Back to that one day, one month ago, when he had felt that heavy tug against his very being, like there is a chain tied around his chest and it's being heavily yanked, dragging him towards someone, somewhere.
When he has seen that boy.
He knows who it is- Masamune-sama- and he knows that it's him he sees, sitting on a corner seat, his legs crossed, and Hikaru has missed that train that one day, thirty days and a month ago. At the time, he had been early, because he usually takes the next train to go home, and yet- he had seen him, silhouetted against the window of the train, and Hikaru had ran as fast as he could, ignoring the looks from the other people in the station.
And he had watched the door close in his own face, shutting away the boy behind glass and metal, and Hikaru's hand had pressed against it for what seemed like eternity. At then, it seems as if that even if his fingers are broken by the door, Hikaru won't care, because the door will be open and he would be able to rush forward to the man- no, the boy that his mind has already supplied the name of.
Date Masamune.
Date Masamune.
-x-
(he's no longer a lord and no longer Date Masamune)
The cart rocks below him as Tohru makes the insanely long commute all the way to the other end of the city at this exhausting hour. It's a blistering hot afternoon, the sun an angry red in the middle of the skyline that seems to have been bled over entirely. It's almost a month since he had bothered to take the train this far. His parents had chosen to send him to cram school miles away from the actual city area, and he rarely even bothers to go because it's not that he cares much about school either.
But he remembers. He remembers every single bit of that life, of the scent of the battlefield, the sensation of lightning slipping over his limbs, crackling fiercely around his flesh. The weight of six swords on his hands and the presence of Kojuurou by his side, always like a shadow to him. He knows that they're not just hallucinations or some product of his imagination. He is that person – the same personality, same ambitions, same emotions.
The memories had started trickling in a few years ago, and if Tohru was the type to regret, he would have regretted that. Even his attitude and mannerisms remain the same, he's still chained down to such normalcy, as if he's someone who will slowly and quietly fade into the background. There are no lands to conquer, no battles to fight. He might be a dragon but he is one muzzled and collared by society, with a weight at his neck to force him to bend. He refuses to, but for what ends?
There's nothing to do here.
There's nothing for him in this time.
Not even his Right Eye.
-x-
Hikaru had stood there for a moment, completely gobsmacked and surprised even as the train pulled away from the station. That chain was tugging at him stronger and stronger until he wants to jump down the tracks and physically chase that train, even though it is entirely mad. Even if he might die from it.
Masamune-sama, Masamune-sama— and the memories had came rushing back in a tidal wave of memories, and voices, and endless repetitions of his own voice calling his name, repeating over and over. Hikaru had just stood there, staring into space until the next train had come- and then, he had simply walked over to the seats, dropped down, and tried to make sense of a world that suddenly had been rendered entirely too confusing for him to deal with. Far too much for him to be able to swallow, and Hikaru barely had to presence of mind to cancel his appointment that day—
He couldn't get his own voice out of his mind. That same register, that same name, with an air of reverence as if Masamune was his god—or someone even more important. Someone whom he could not live without; someone whose life he had built upon in order to make his own.
It haunted him in his sleep, that name, that eyepatch with a daredevil grin. He always wakes up with tear tracks on his face and an ache on his left cheek like an old, phantom wound that shouldn't exist, but did, somehow. His entire body ached as if he had lost something so incredibly important to him. Like a limb—no, it was not merely a limb. It's it's something even more than it, It's as if he is the limb that is torn away, and he feels entirely lost without the body.
And he had went to the history books, flipping through them, trying to find that one name (every single stroke of the kanji has been carved into his brain, so stark and clear that Hikaru wondered if it had been carved onto his own skin instead). And he had found it, in one of the more obscure books.
Date Masamune, a warlord who had conquered most of the North of Japan; who had been one of those instrumental in defeating the Demon King Oda Nobunaga.
Date Masamune, who died at the age of twenty-two at the hands of Sanada Yukimura.
Date Masamune, who had a retainer named Katakura Kojuurou, whom he had called his Right Eye.
(as if he is the limb that is torn away)
-x-
Tohru tugs on the eyepatch covering his missing eye, tilting his head upwards to stare at the ceiling of the train. He has never have much affinity with this right eye of his, because in his last life he had lost it when he was five; now in this life he's born with it damaged, and has to be taken out right after.
But this time, he doesn't even have Kojuurou by his side, and he feels the emptiness of his right side more than ever, the spot aching like it used, nearly five hundred years ago.
He's truly alone this time; a One-Eyed Dragon with his wings clipped and without his Right Eye.
It's strange, to be able to miss a person whom he has never met, whom might not even exist, but whom he remembers every single detail of. The calluses on Kojuurou's hand, the line of his back as he stands in front of Masamune, the reverence and respect in his voice when he says that name that Tohru is starting to use to describe himself.
Masamune-sama.
-x-
He needs to know if the visions he sees are true— he needs to. Nothing else matters to Hikaru; his life might be falling apart and the woman he had been dating might have decided to leave him because he kept going back to the train station, again and again.
At exactly 4:17pm in the afternoon, right in the middle of a work day.
He's here again, standing right in front of the tracks. Waiting like he had for the past month, even those he thinks that there's no chance that the boy will appear after an entire month had passed. Yet he can't help but hope, because if it's true, there's truly nothing left for him in this life any longer. It's pathetic of him, to stake his entire life on one meeting. To tear down his life and rebuild it around a shadow that he's chasing.
(he's the Right Eye)
The roar of the train pulling into the station resounds in his ears, and Hikaru raises his eyes just as it stops. The door stays closed, but he can see through the glass and- there.
There.
Theretheretherethere-
His breathing catches in his throat and his heart is thumping so fast and Hikaru can't believe his eyes and he doesn't know if he's dreaming again or if this is another one of those visions those fantasies- and it takes an eternity for him to wait for the door to open, and when it did all he can do is to stand there for a long moment, simply staring at the boy seating obliviously in the carriage. The same carriage, the same seat, the same scene as it was a month ago but this time- this time, Hikaru is on time. He will catch him and he will ask him and he will call him by that name and his feet stumbles as he steps into the carriage, woken from his reverie by the beeping warnings as the door closes behind him.
He stands in front of the boy, and for a moment he's entirely silent not because he has nothing to say but because all the words are weighing down his tongue and he doesn't know how to begin.
(hi, hello, can I have your name
hi, hello, I've been dreaming of you for the past month—
hi, hello, I have been waiting all of my life for you—?)
But then his knees are giving out on him, sending him crashing to the ground and his voice works without his mind needing to order it—
"Masamune-sama."
Please, he thinks, with the desperation of a man who has staked his everything in just this, please tell me who I am.
Please.
-x-
"Kojuurou."
-x-
TBC