Notes – For the gx_100. Set during season two, after Asuka has joined the Hikari no Kessha.

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You could save the world - you certainly saved me.

Fubuki thought to himself, during those hours of the night where you tended not to remember the next morning exactly what you'd kept yourself awake for so long thinking about.

That technically wasn't true. Juudai had been the one to defeat Darkness on the volcano, but they had all been there trying to help him out of it, looking for him the whole time. Ryo had saved him as much as Juudai or Asuka had as far as he was concerned.

But that isn't your style is it? You don't even look the part. If there's any world saving to be done then you'd do it with a begrudging expression and you definitely wouldn't stick around for any praise afterwards.

He wondered why he was saying these things in his head and not to Ryo himself. But he knew that if he'd spouted such rubbish to Ryo, Hell Kaiser or otherwise, that he'd be shot dead by that glare before he'd even finished the sentence.

"Why couldn't you do the right thing?" he said, looking at a photo on the sideboard of himself and Ryo standing next to each other in their school uniforms, "Why did you have to go seek victory above all else? Why could you be… more like Juudai?"

Even as he said it that sounded wrong. Juudai might have been cut from the hero cloth but he wasn't perfect either, he had his faults. Wanting Ryo to be like him was the same as wanting Ryo to not be the same person anymore.

Fubuki just wanted to know what cloth Ryo was cut from. If it was the stuff of heroes than the tailor had certainly followed an unusual pattern.

And what about you? He could almost hear the photo say back to him; what have you done to save anyone's life recently? I don't see you bounding to Juudai's side to fight against Saiou. You haven't got your sister back or come to talk to me about the change. You're no better.

And he knew that his own accusations were right. He was not a hero. Ryo was not a hero. They would both go to sleep tonight filled with their own worries and self importance and the world would be the same place tomorrow as it was right now. And at the moment that wasn't a great place.

So Fubuki turned over, closing his eyes and shutting out any thoughts of Ryo or heroes or any combination of the two.

His own role was out there somewhere; he just hadn't found it yet.