Day 7: By the Fire, Under the Ice; SakazukiKuzan
All subtext beneath the violence.
Night had long settled across the land, eliminating color and all the things that made the world unique and decipherable. This made the swells of bright lava and fiery heat stand out all the more. Bright pops of red and orange and yellow, gold and white, sparkling, dazzling, thick and viscous. Like liquid glass flooding across the earth. Kuzan wondered if this was what their world had looked like in the very beginning.
He sat in front of the small fire, legs tucked beneath him. The residual heat of it was almost a comfort, whereas before the sun set, it had been antagonistic, terrifying. Smoke blotted out the stars above, and there was no moon. Sakazuki sat across from him, staring not at the flames but at him.
"This is foolish Kuzan," he growled. There was no heat behind it. An old argument, warn thin by warfare.
"So you keep saying," Kuzan yawned. The fire crackled, sparks whooshing into the air like dying stars. Sakazuki's scowl was distorted through the smoke. Their night time truce was both a blessing and a curse.
"Do you recall Asunder Isle?" Sakazuki asked. Though magma flowed in the background, his breath misted in the air. Kuzan supposed he could catch that breath, that exhalation of life, turn it to ice. A sculpture to keep, a reminder.
"What about it?" It had been a long time ago. Before Ohara, before the death of the pirate king, before the Paramount War. Before everything that had made them who they are, who they will be. If Kuzan closed his eyes, he could still see the green hills, the white sands. Flowers blooming larger than his head, or smaller than the eye could see.
"Why did you give it to me?" The smoke shifted, Sakazuki's eyes pinpricks of light under his stern brows. So similar to the cadet he had been, but so much harder. Colder.
"Why are you asking?" So much subtext, Sakazuki could never stomach such direct confrontation of emotions. Action was so much easier for him. Words were a foreign language that he only had a rudimentary grasp of. Poetry would never leave his lips, nor long late night debates. But that did not mean he did not feel.
Perhaps, Kuzan mused, he knew that better than anyone.
"Because I am… torn." Kuzan raised an eyebrow at him. Indecisiveness was not a common state of mind for Sakazuki, whereas Kuzan felt it acutely. He waited, letting the moment take its time, giving him the space needed to formulate his thoughts.
"I don't know if I should keep it," he said at last, the deep rumble to his voice that of a sleeping volcano. All vibration and rising steam.
"That's up to you, it was a gift. Who am I to tell you what to do with it?" Kuzan almost chuckled, but tossed a charred stick into the flames instead. The two of them faded back into quiet, their truce only stretching so far. Perhaps, if Kuzan had had his way, they could have sat next to one another instead of on opposite sides.
In the morning, Kuzan awoke alone, the fire long put out. A carnation, carefully maintained, lay on the earth where Sakazuki had been the night before. He had made his decision, though if he was looking for Kuzan's opinion, this wasn't what he would have chosen.
But that's how it always was.
Kuzan reached out and sank the flower beneath the ice.
Notes:
I love writing Kuzan, I really really do.