Disclaimer: Don't own anything.
Author's Note: This used to be a songfic, but I read over it again and I realized that the song didn't quite work and broke it up badly, so I took it out and smoothed out some bits.
It annoys me that there aren't a lot of Kuchinawa fics out there. I like his character, even if I do think he's a total ass.
Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.
~Paul Boese
He hadn't been expecting to see her. He'd known that she was back in Tethe'alla, naturally. She had gone back to Mizuho to report in, but he hadn't had a chance to see her before, according to Orochi, she'd bowed once respectfully and started running out of the village saying that she needed to go to Sybak.
"Kuchinawa!" The incident with Volt might never have happened, the way her eyes lit up and a smile was automatically upturning her lips. "Why are you here?" "I'm on a top secret mission." There had been a lot of those lately, for all of the ninjas in Mizuho, what with the political situation the way it was. "What about you?" "Ah," Sheena clicked her tongue, smiling sheepishly. "I'm in a bit of trouble actually. My friends and I need to get across the bridge."
"…They're not from Mizuho." But then, Sheena had always preferred company outside of the village.
"They're from Sylvarant." She kind of half-turned so that she can see both Kuchinawa and the group. "Lloyd, everyone, this is a friend from Mizuho. His name's Kuchinawa."
Kuchinawa forced himself to remember pleasantries. Just because they'd parted on…less than amicable terms…(It's all your fault…None of your…matter to you?...) didn't mean that things couldn't change. "Sheena and I grew up together. Pleased to meet you."
The young man dressed entirely in red—Kuchinawa was willing to bet that his was the name she'd mentioned. Lloyd, was it? (She had always liked the color red)—replies in kind and his accent is unfamiliar, filled with rolling consonants and lazy vowels.
They followed him and Sheena down to the basement, where he hung back and observed the group. It's something he'd been trained to do since before he could remember, watch people. Learn their mannerisms, their speech patterns, their lifestyle. But right now, he focused on Sheena.
She's changed, Kuchinawa thought. She'd been changing ever since she left for Meltokio three months before her twelfth birthday.
(They haven't spoken more than half a dozen times in the almost two years since the Volt incident. Sheena tries, at first. Four weeks after it happens, she comes up to him, pale with dark smudges beneath her eyes.
"…Hey," she begins, rubbing her left arm. It's an old nervous habit of hers.
"Hey," he replies, not able to look at her for much longer.
Sheena sighs, brushing her bangs out of her face. "…You're mad at me…aren't you?"
"What else could I be, Sheena?" Kuchinawa demands, standing from where he'd been helping harvest the tomatoes. The village is a group effort, regardless of what you're training for. "You killed my parents!"
Her temper snaps a little, an ember of defiance left after a month of hateful eyes and venomous words. "It wasn't my fault!"
"Yeah, it was! You…you should've been able to do it. To be able to bond with Volt. You're a summoner."
Sheena swallows hard, hand trembling a little. "Look, I'm sorry, alright? I-I know that your parents won't come back, but I don't know what else I can do but apologize."
Kuchinawa walks away then, unable to hear anymore.)
When she'd come back for Celsius Day the first time, the Chosen trailing behind her, Kuchinawa hadn't recognized her for long moments. Her hair was longer, kept back in a messy ponytail. There were slender curves where before had been a boyish figure and she walked with a strange confidence.
Orochi had welcomed her back easily. He hadn't been able to look at her for a few weeks after the incident with Volt, but that didn't last long. He was a forgiving person and Sheena was close to family for him. As for Kuchinawa, Sheena had looked at him a little uncertainly, saying his name questioningly.
He'd tried for a smile (and he's sure he's failed, but at least he tries) and said, "Welcome home," because damned if he hadn't sharply noticed her absence these past four years. Even when they hadn't been speaking, he'd still noticed her presence. It was one he'd always known. He knew, logically, that Sheena wasn't actually from Mizuho, but he couldn't remember a time before her. She was in his oldest memories, slotted right beside his parents and Orochi. (His dad ruffles his hair and says, "You look out for her, alright? It's your job since you're the older one. Just like Orochi and you." And he's nodding and smiling and promising, "I'll protect her, dad.")
It had been painful to watch her with the Chosen. They were comfortable with each other. Sometimes, there was (not-so-subtle) flirting, but most of the time it was banter and little things, like the way that the Chosen would use her shoulder as an armrest and Sheena would attempt to do the same, but apparently the Chosen had recently gone through a growth spurt (It was the topic of many of the banters). The Chosen called her 'darling' and Sheena didn't seem to notice. Sometimes, Sheena would make a comment that referenced a film and the Chosen would be the only one to get it.
It's only when Sheena made a casual comment on how much of a pervert the Chosen was that Kuchinawa asked her for the whole story. When she explained, he couldn't control himself from grabbing her wrist and taking her back behind the chief's hut and made sure she remembers how to punch properly (Because Mizuho looks out for itself. No one else will, after all. They're a village of outcasts and shadows)
Sheena laughed at his actions, but complied anyway. When they're done, she looked at him, hands on her hips. "Not that I don't appreciate it, but what was all that about?"
"Do that if that idiotic Chosen ever sees you in the shower again." Kuchinawa snarled, still agitated.
After that, his and Sheena's friendship made a slow rebound. She still only made extended visits to Mizuho for Celsius Week, but he visited her in the Imperial Research Academy whenever he was sent to Meltokio. They would have lunch together and he tried not to notice how much more comfortable she seemed in this big city, with its red-tiled roofs and tall towers, its cobblestone streets.
There were still things he didn't understand about her. Like her sometimes strange film references or her sudden liking of coffee—they didn't have it in Mizuho. Kuchinawa had tried it once and found it far too bitter for his taste.
They argued more than they used to and it wasn't the friendly arguing like it is between her and the Chosen.
("You have a responsibility to this village, or did you forget that?"
She squares her shoulders, unafraid to look directly into his eyes and where has this confidence come from? Where is the girl who had been so afraid of everyone? "Look, Kuchinawa, it's none of your business what I do or don't do."
"Sheena, I'm speaking as your friend-"
"Oh really? Doesn't sound like it, with the lecturing and all."
"As someone who's known you your whole life then." Even if it isn't quite true because she was gone for nearly four years in Meltokio without any contact. "Doesn't the village matter at all to you?"
"Of course it does!" Sheena hesitates. "…I just don't think the village cares about me anymore. It was all my fault, as you've been so kind to remind me.")
But now, looking at her now, standing with the group from Sylvarant and conversing with them—she even had traces of their accent, her words slurring slightly—she's suddenly a new person. One he didn't recognize.
"That's enough goofing around," Kuchinawa told Lloyd, who'd been playing with the wing pack. Did they not have such technology in Sylvarant? "How about getting on your way?"
"Let's get going to Sybak then," Sheena said.
As she was about to step onto the Elemental Cargo, Kuchinawa called her back. "Take this with you."
Sheena took the object from him, turning it over in her hands. "A protective charm?"
(He hadn't seen her the day she'd left. He'd only heard about it when Orochi told him that night. She was off to Meltokio, he says. He isn't sure why. This is the least he can do now.)
"...Yes. Be careful."
("I'll protect her, dad...")
"Then this time, let me send you to hell instead!" The anger wouldn't leav,e the rage too deep-seated and it thrummed beneath his chest, hot and heavy like molten lead.
"Who's there?"
He should've known Sheena would recognize his voice immediately. Or perhaps her night vision was better than it used to be. "Kuchinawa! What are you talking about?"
"…My chance to avenge my parents' deaths has finally arrived."
"…Avenge your parents?"
He could hear her confusion and knew that she thought that they'd worked past this. He'd tried to, but he wasn't strong like Orochi always had been. "You will die for killing my parents along with countless others of our village when you failed to control Volt."
"That was an accident," Lloyd said firmly. "Why are you doing this now?"
"Accident?" Kuchinawa repeats. "I could've accepted things if she'd just failed to make a pact with a Summon Spirit." After all, summoning was a rare ability and perhaps the ability had gotten weaker over the generations. "But then, she failed to assassinate the Chosen of Sylvarant, placing Mizuho in danger!" (And villagers look out for each other, but she isn't a true villager, is she?) And he'd known when he'd heard about the mission that Sheena wouldn't be able to complete it. As skilled a fighter as Sheena was, she wasn't a killer. Perhaps he hated her for that weakness. "And yet look at her now. She's made pacts with Summon Spirits just like that."
"You have it all wrong!" Sylvarant's Chosen said. She was the one whose death could have saved Tethe'alla. Sheena had never truly grasped the concept of Mizuho, of everyone working for the better of all. Otherwise, she would've done what needed to be done.
"Do I? I don't think she was really trying during the first pact-making."
(She'd been so frightened the day before, Kuchinawa remembers. She'd sat with him on the hill beneath a tree, where the Katz would set up their stall during the day, and she'd wrapped her arms around her knees and said, "What if I mess up? I've never even seen a Summon Spirit before."
"You won't mess up," he'd assures her. "You've been training so hard for this."
Sheena smiles a little uncertainly. "You really think I could?"
"Of course I do!")
"I-I did the best I could." Sheena looked around at the approaching Papal Knights. "…Kuchinawa, please, don't drag them into this. I'm the only one you despise, right? Then I'm the only one you need to kill."
He didn't recognize this strength, this hesitant confidence.
"Sheena, stop talking like that," Lloyd said disapprovingly, a sting of temper and warning. He was protective, was the Sylvaranti.
She glanced back at him before looking back at Kuchinawa. "It's okay. Kuchinawa…please."
Before any of them could do anything, there was a low humming and a soft, white glow. The runes on the obelisk glowed with the very same light as the moon.
"You've gotta be kidding me. Enough of this, Sheena!" Zelos grabbed her wrist, half-dragging her to the purple vortex that had formed between the obelisks.
It shouldn't surprise Kuchinawa that Zelos had stopped her. Even though Kuchinawa wasn't entirely sure what, exactly, their relationship was, he knew that Zelos and Sheena cared about each other.
He sensed them enter the room, of course. The dual swordsman and the half-elven child especially had very heavy footsteps. But then, most of the world did when they weren't taught from the beginning to walk light, to never make a sound.
"Why are you still getting in our way? The Pope and Vharley are dead." Kuchinawa looked over the top of the paper at Sheena. He'd looped and relooped all the events leading up to this in his mind, trying to find the point where everything began to spiral out of control and he found that he couldn't. "…This is about me, isn't it?" It was more than simply about her. It was about justice, about retribution for the lives lost. Kuchinawa wondered if that ever entered Sheena's mind, and quickly dismissed the thought. Sheena was a gentle person. He wasn't sure that she would ever even consider revenge as an option.
"Of course it is! Because of you, my parents and countless other villagers died!" It's the old speech, one he was sure Sheena had memorized by now, what with her memory that had been trained since she was a child. Kuchinawa made sure that his next words dug deep. "The Chief has yet to come out of the coma he went into ten years ago!"
He was rewarded by a flinch. It's a small one, the spasm of her hands and a twisting of her lip, but it was there.
"And don't start apologizing, because I'll never forgive you!"
The Chosen's voice floated from where he was lounging against one of the bookshelves, his left hand resting almost casually on the hilt of his sword. "Sheena, are we going to have to do this again?" His eyes betrayed his casualness. They were sharp and harsh as ice, focused entirely on Kuchinawa.
Sheena's gaze flicked to him before returning to Kuchinawa. "No. If you really hate me that much, we'll settle it with a one-on-one duel, as dictated by village custom."
So she had realized what it was about. "Do you honestly believe you can defeat me on your own?" He'd seen her skills, seen her fight. Strong as she was, she'd fought with these people for too long. Her solitary skills had deteriorated. "Do you want to fight here and now?"
"No, it'll be customary and we'll fight on the Isle of Decision." As Kuchinawa turned to leave, Sheena called him back. "We need those documents, Kuchinawa."
He shook his head. "These are a proof of your promise to fight." Sheena knew of honor, but she'd been defying customs and traditions since she began walking. He couldn't trust her only on her honor. Not anymore.
"No. If Colette doesn't get that, she may die." Kuchinawa glanced at the blonde Chosen. That Sheena could still care about the one person who had to die for their world was…something else. What was one person when the lives of so many were at stake? Kuchinawa heard a slight tinkling and refocuses on Sheena. "Take this instead."
He looked at what was in her hand, knew immediately what it was. He remembered her showing the little fox to him all those years ago. How proud she'd been that she'd made a pact with it! "…And that is?"
"Corrine's…memento."
Kuchinawa took the bell, but left with a final warning. "If you don't show up, I'll grind that bell to dust."
She arrived with Lloyd in the boat. Kuchinawa found himself only half-surprised that it wasn't her Chosen in the boat. But, he supposed that Lloyd would be the next logical choice.
As they fought, Kuchinawa could see that Lloyd was fighting with himself to stop the fight. But the boy showed restraint and kept silent.
Sheena had improved as a fighter. Her style was no longer purely of Mizuho, as it had once been. There were quick jabs and powerful flying kicks; when she blocked, her arms stay stiff and strong. They were the influences of her Chosen and Duke Bryant, and possibly of the pink-haired woman-child as well. But her acrobatics were still there, her flexibility allowing her to twist out of the way of his knives.
He found that he didn't quite believe it when he was knocked to the ground and there was her boot on his throat. She wasn't using enough pressure to choke him. Just enough to warn him that she could.
He was ready for an honorable suicide. He could at least do that much, as he'd most the rest of his honor with all he'd done, working with the Pope, betraying the memory of his family. Sheena's hand grabbed his before the knife could reach his heart. "I don't want your pity! I refuse it!"
He didn't stop her from taking the bell back. There's a subtle change in her posture, her shoulders weren't quite so stiff and she unclenched her jaw.
"It's alright if you hate me, y'know," Sheena said. Kuchinawa looked at her, read the look in the hazel eyes. She wanted him alive, even though he wanted to hate her? "It's alright for you to resent me. Please…"
Kuchinawa moved away, breaking her grip, but allowing her to keep the knife. "I'm being pitied by my parents' killer…I've fallen lower than I ever thought possible."
"…It's better than dying," Lloyd said.
Kuchinawa didn't look at them. "It's possible to live a life more painful than death."
Lloyd replied immediately, tone sharp. "No. Life and death are fundamentally different. Living has meaning. There is no meaning in dying. That alone is enough to make them incomparable."
"No meaning in dying?" Kuchinawa repeated, making sure he heard him correctly.
That was the difference between Mizuho and the rest of the worlds, Kuchinawa thought. In Mizuho, if you failed your mission, you weren't sentenced to death, but to live without honor was worse, so many of those who failed the mission would kill themselves. It was the honorable thing to do.
"I don't know exactly how to say it," Sheena began slowly. She understood Kuchinawa's mindset on this topic. She'd been raised in Mizuho as well. "But it's because people have respect for the way someone lived that they're sad when that person dies."
Lloyd nodded. "Yeah, exactly." He'd been having difficulty putting his thoughts into words as well. "The meaning lies in the life you lived. Therefore…you have to live."
Kuchinawa ran their words through his mind. His parents had been the greatest people in the world to him, other than his brother. That was why he'd found it so difficult to believe that they could have died by something as simple as an accident. He thought that, perhaps, some of Mizhuho's traditions were outdated. But only some of them. He's willing to try to think the way Lloyd did, the way Sheena had learned to think.
"…Is there meaning in me living?"
"I think that as long as you're alive, you can always give your life meaning," Lloyd said, shrugging slightly. Kuchinawa had a feeling he knew why Sheena liked the swordsman; he was good at forgiving, good at second chances.
"…I see." Kuchinawa could try. He would probably fail, but he was willing to try. "Someday…when I'm able to think the way you do, I may forgive you…I shall always be watching to see if what you have said is true. Don't betray me."
He couldn't go home, if indeed Mizuho could still be counted as any kind of home for him. Orochi, with all his forgiveness, wouldn't be able to look at him. Tiga would likely banish him anyway. So he wandered through Tethe'alla, not staying in any one place for more than a week or so. (He can't make another place home. Not yet. It feels wrong for people to know his face, to recognize him when he walks down the street. He tries it once, staying in Sybak for almost three weeks straight, blending in with the students of the university. But their knowledge is not llike his. They don't know what it is to kill a person, to feel the life leave their body, all only on orders. They work in theories and experiments and he does not know how to communicate with them well. But there is one girl, she has an unrelenting side that refuses to put up with his avoidances and greets him good morning and bids him goodnight every time he walks through the inn and the feeling of somsone else, someone who has not known him since birth, knowing him like that makes him itch. He leaves the next day)
Kuchinawa found it strange to be among ordinary people for so long, going without contact with any of the villagers. He made himself fade into the background and it's easier than it should be. He no longer wore the bright red clothes that had been hand-stitched in Mizuho. They're folded carefully away at the bottom of his travelling pack. It was strange to find that he needed a haircut. His hair was so often kept in the hood of his uniform that he paid little attention to it. But his bangs fell into his eyes, irritating him and he cut his hair short with the knives that he couldn't stop himself from carrying at all times on his person.
He felt it when the worlds were reunited. The ground shifted and groaned; lightning split the sky and thunder shook the earth before there was silence. Kuchinawa blinked and the world suddenly seemed different. The colors were just as bright, but there were subtler shades mixed in. The shadows seemed a little darker, the trees a little bigger and the grass was higher, up to nearly his knees. He wandered for a long time, finding only occasional landmarks of Tethe'alla.
He did as he said he would and watched people, like he'd always done. He saw people rebuilding cities that have been reduced to nearly rubble, saw some wandering much like he was, displaced in the chaos. Many didn't know what had happened, only that strangers were showing up and asking for cities whose names they didn't recognize, their voices with strange accents and they wore stranger clothes.
It was the children that stick out to Kuchinawa's mind the most. They were tentative with each other at first, not quite trusting (Because they are warchildren and know that not everything is what it seems) but neither did they reject each other outright as some of the adults did. After a few hours—how long a time that seems to children!—they were playing with each other as though they'd known each other their entire lives.
He was in a small town—it was one that he didn't recognize, full of people whose accents weren't sounding so strange anymore—when he saw her again. He sat in their one-room inn, hearing the waves crash on the shore, when he saw Sheena walk in.
She seemed surprised to see him—it's only later that he realized that she hadn't recognized him for a moment without his uniform and he could remember a time when that wouldn't have been so—and came to sit across from him, her movements still a little uncertain. "…How've you been?"
Kuchinawa pushed the rice around his plate. "…Well enough. And yourself?"
Sheena shrugged a little, tucking a stray lock of hair behind her ear. "A little tired, but nothing I can't handle." She smiled. "And getting lost since I don't know where anything is anymore."
"Don't be complaining. You can fly on those metal contraptions of the Renegades, at least," he pointed out.
Sheena chuckled. "I guess...We're working on making maps so that everyone can find each other." She hesitated. "…Grandpa was asking to see you."
Kuchinawa started a little, spilling rice across the table. "He's awake?" Sheena nodded. "He woke up not long after I fought you."
"Why does he want to see me? I'm a traitor. An exile." The words burned in his mouth, but he didn't like shying away from the truth.
"A self-appointed exile," Sheena pointed out. "No one actually told you to leave. You can come back."
"I doubt the Chief and Vice-Chief will see it that way."
Sheena hummed thoughtfully. "I think you're wrong on the Chief not seeing it."
He leaned his forearms on the table. "Oh really?"
She mimicked him, solid and strong and the breaking of a world could do nothing to her. "Really."
"And what makes you say that? Did you have a discussion with the Chief about it?"
Her smile was strange, her eyes glinting. "I'm not prone to discussing things with myself, Kuchinawa."
He blinked at her. How could he have forgotten that she was next in line? "You were appointed?"
"Mmhmm. Whaddaya say, Kuchinawa? Will you come back?"
"I haven't forgiven you," he warned her. Not yet. It was still a difficult process. The fact that they could be having this conversation civilly was already nothing short of miraculous.
Her shoulders lifted and fell in a graceful shrug. Since when did anything Sheena did become graceful? "That's your right. But we could use your skills and your family misses you."
The first thing that came to Kuchinawa's mind is to argue that Orochi was the only family he has left, that Orochi must be disappointed and ashamed because of what his little brother had done, but then he read the look on Sheena's face. Mizuho was a large family. A hard family, a family of survivors and outcasts, but a family nonetheless.
In the time that Kuchinawa had been thinking, someone else had come into the inn. "There you are, darling." Whatever the (ex)Chosen had been about to say was stopped when he saw who Sheena was speaking to. "Kuchinawa."
"Wilder." Because even Kuchinawa knew that there was no Chosen anymore.
Sheena stood, palms on the table for an instant before she turned to leave with Zelos. Words floated over her shoulder. "It's an open offer, Kuchinawa."