Warning: Male/male relationship. Spoilers for every world mentioned in the chapter titles.

Author's Notes: For cloverfield, who requested "five first kisses that never happened (and if you feel like it, the one that did)" when I opened up the TRC meme on my dreamwidth account.


Outo was a veritable paradise that offered everything to everyone. Despite their varied backgrounds, the country's administrative system had fitted the four (point oh-five) travelers easily into jobs appropriate for their talents and personalities. They were given a spacious and neatly appointed place in which to work and live, and found enough variety of clothing in the shops to suit each of them well.

The country was generous with information and assistance, not just resources, and all of its citizenry seemed very much aware of the ease and pleasantness of their life. There were no crimes being committed, nor even very many idlers looking for trouble to get into. Most everyone was cheerfully busy, with even the demon hunters throwing themselves into their work with enthusiasm like children on the hunt for play instead of being stained with the grim determination of contracted killers seeking to exterminate a threat.

Kurogane loathed Outo. Everything came too easily and what didn't come easily was only challenging because of annoying, irritating, petty little difficulties in the shape of blank-eyed little girls being coy about giving out information. A man became a man defined by the struggles he overcame. A world like this could only raise fat little piglets with success. Even the demons were strangely polite enough to never attack anyone but the hunters assigned to slay them, which was just one more unnatural thing about this soft-strange-silly world.

He hated the demons the most. They were everywhere, either rising up around him or on the lips of people around him. They were not like the demons of his home, with malevolent intent rippling off of them in tangible waves. They were more like animated shadows, with form but hardly any feel, and he found that he could not rely upon his unseeing sight to give him warning of attacks from behind and above. He had to rely on sight and hearing, and it irritated him because it was like battling puppets instead of the puppet master who was the true enemy.

Having to fight demons at every turn reminded him of his childhood and its abrupt end. Wasting his time on lesser enemies without having a clue as to who was controlling them reminded him of his frustrated, frustrating quest for vengeance. The unease that this unnatural world as a whole gave him reminded him of the way his life kept being turned upside down by mysterious othersas if he was but a pawn on someone else's gameboard. He loathed Outo so much that he didn't think it was possible to loathe the place even one scrap more.

And then the wizard got himself overwhelmed, killed, and eaten. Not necessarily in that order. And Kurogane found that he'd been wrong; it hadbeen possible to hate Outo more than he had before.

He refused to put the wizard's death on an equal plane with the loss of his father and the murder of his mother, but what he couldn't deny was the bitter, burning, seething rage that overtook him every time his unruly thoughts turned toward the blonde. Kurogane measured the hours until sunset and set himself to keeping his remaining companions safe, but his focus was shredded as badly as the little bit of red fabric tucked into his sleeve.

Kurogane had picked the remains of the cafe proprietor's neck ribbon up off of the floor on a random impulse. He would burn it later, and that would just have to serve as a funeral for the wayward wizard who had left behind no corpse to properly honor. The wizard who would now never need to fear his mysterious past catching up to him. The wizard who no longer needed to run and hide and lie and evade. He would never have to flee Souhi's bright edge again, never get to mangle Kurogane's name again, never smile again.

The aborted possibilities enraged the ninja, who knew - knew- that the man could have been so much more. There had been so much potential there. Instead of merely a traveling companion through chance, they could have been true comrades, battle-tested and -bound. Their quests could have been threefold, and not just the short-sighted wishes they'd made at the shop to go back to or run away from home; Kurogane could have used a man of the wizard's wit and talents in his quest for vengeance, and the ninja himself would have made a respectable - and willing - ally could the wizard have committed himself to making a stand and facing down his past. Instead of acquaintances they had become allies. Instead of mere allies they were becoming friends. Instead of friends, they could have been...more. They could have been something.

The wizard could have been stronger, braver, better. It had been in him already and only suppressed by lack of perspective or some other such thing. He could have been at peace; found it and made it and claimed it for himself. He could have been happy; truly and honestly happy. The wizard wasn't - hadn't been- stupid though he'd been an idiot. Kurogane felt that persistence and (im)patience could have done a great deal toward forcing those blue eyes to look forward instead of always peering fearfully backward, but it was useless to think of it now. He was dead, and so were the possibilities.

People grieved in different ways. Some broke down quietly, others screamed and raged, most wept and wailed. When deeply wounded, Kurogane looked around for something to kill, and so he was glad, so deeply satisfied to finally meet the elusive Seishirou and see in those cool, cold eyes that he need not waste pity or sympathy on this person. Two blooded swordsmen locked eyes across twisted space, recognized something in each other, and smiled. Kurogane cared nothing for the curse upon him at that moment; killing this killer - the opportunity to finally avenge someone he'd lost, someone important to him who'd been torn away from him when he hadn't been looking - meant more to him than his own strength.

And moments later when he caught sight of the wizard - alive- and saw that smile again and heard that voice again, he was too stunned and relieved and grateful to remember to even pretend to be offended at the nickname.

They separated from the teenagers in the next world temporarily, to go scouting around in the jungle for signs of civilization or a feather. The blonde was his usual self, filling the air with meaningless noise like he was one of the songbirds flitting about them. Kurogane just glared darkly at him while mentally sorting out all he'd learned about Outo and Edonis, and it seemed like everything was back to normal, or at least the way they had been before, until suddenly the wizard paused before slipping between two close-growing trees and tipped his head at him in a playful, curious manner.

"Aren't you going to say anything?"

The wizard could have simply been querying about Kurogane's stony silence since landing in this lush, tropical world. Those blue eyes were open and seeking, however, and the ninja thought he could see questions swirling in the back of them; Were you sad when I died? Are you glad I'm alive? Don't care either way? Aren't you even going to say anything at all?

Kurogane was better with actions than words and he almost, almost just grabbed a fistful of that fluttery blonde hair and hauled the idiot in for a hot, hungry kiss that would have told everything the wizard wanted and didn't want to know. But he didn't move, only growled a dismissive negative before moving on through the underbrush, and cursed the little white bun's restrictive presence.