Heihachi stared sleeplessly up at the ceiling, turning over what he had seen in Kyuuzou.
He had been right. He was both more and less than a Nobuseri. He closed his eyes and remembered how Kyuuzou's had appeared, how they had seemed to bore into his being, searching, grasping for that which Kyuuzou was lacking. Even if he did not consciously know it, he desired that which he had lost. Heihachi slowly thought out the possibilities, his scientific mind sifting through countless situations to come to a conclusion.
Kyuuzou could not stay this way.
If he did...
'Slowly,anything that is left of him will vanish. He will truly die, and we will never be able to revive the man he once was. As time passes, he will more and more see things in black and white, enemies that are to be slain, and friends that are to be protected. But how quickly that idea can change! One day he could be fighting for us, the next, against us.'
He resolved to tell Kanbei what he had meant by his statement, From there, the next course of action would be decided. He turned over onto his stomach, content with what he had decided,and promptly fell asleep.
After a week had passed, Kanbei had sought out the silent warrior.
He found him overlooking the chasm that separated the main complex of the village from the surrounding areas.
Kanbei stood next to him, wary in spite of himself. There was no longer any sense of that uneasy companionship,let alone the deep, subtle emotion that had connected them on a more intimate level. The two men stood in silence for a long time, before Kyuuzou asked a question that startled Kanbei:
"Who are you?"
That question asked in such a cold, only vaguely curious voice took a moment to process.
"my name is Shimada Kanbei."
There was no recognition, not even the mild disinterest that Kanbei had seen when Kyuuzou had met Heihachi and Shichijirou.
"Kanbei," he heard Kyuuzou say, as if turning the name over in his mind, trying to commit it to memory...and failing. Kanbei looked over at Kyuuzou and their eyes unwillingly met.
Kyuuzou took a step forward, seeing something in Kanbei, a burning recognition that caused a different emotion to melt through the ice.
Kanbei, at first, had seen the distant emptiness that frightened so many, but at the swift hunger and movement, Kanbei took a step back, one hand instinctively falling to the hilt of his sword.
Kanbei found himself asking the question that Kyuuzou had posed only a moment before:
"Who are you?"
All light fell out of the man's eyes, but he kept them trained on Kanbei's, searching. Kanbei saw, briefly, beneath all the cold anger, a glimpse of a pain that had buried beneath and lost within Kyuuzou's all-consuming hatred, anger, and distance.
"I don't know."
A silence fell between them as each looked away, Kanbei thinking, Kyuuzou withdrawing. Even as they reacted differently, they both wondered the same thing: what had they seen in the eyes of the other?
Kanbei turned, brushing past Kyuuzou as he returned to the village. A flash of memory passed lightly behind his eyes, but there was no hitch in his step, nor a sense of buried hopeful yearning.
He heard Kanbei leave, but kept on looking into the chasm before him, contemplating it and the conversation. He closed his eyes, trying to recall the man he had just spoken to.
There was no face. There was no voice. There was no name. All that was left were the words spoken. He opened his eyes again, and while he knew that the man he had just spoken to existed, and that he had interacted with him time to time, it appeared that something was preventing him from remembering.