Soushi couldn't say exactly when it is that he wakes up. Only that he becomes aware, at some point, in the darkness of his counterpart's bedroom, with a figure - Maris, his heap of borrowed memories tells him, and isn't that a name that comes with a whole host of baggage - kneeling on the bed across from them.
Kneeling on the bed and touching that child's face, and smiling in a way that makes Soushi's stomach turn.
(Because it's possessive and condescending all at once, like he's looking at some favored possession rather than a person. Because that child's thoughts are so foggy that he doesn't understand that.)
(Because Soushi's not sure it would change anything if he did understand it.)
Even though he doesn't know what difference it will make, Soushi pushes at his counterpart's awareness. If he thinks he's dreaming, then Soushi will wake him up. Even if it hurts. Even if it's cruel. Peace born of ignorance is no peace at all, whether that's on the grand scale of the Festum or the smaller scale of that child's tangled-up feelings for the boy in front of him.
Maris shifts in closer to them, and Soushi can feel the way that his counterpart's thoughts narrow to Maris' presence and nothing else. It's halfway familiar, for all that Soushi's stomach turns all the more at even remotely comparing this boy to Kazuki, after his were the hands that took Soushi's counterpart away from Kazuki and hurt him so badly in the process.
But Soushi won't lie to himself, particularly when he's intending to prevent that child from lying to himself. His counterpart's focus on Maris is nowhere near as deep as the way Kazuki draws his own attention, even with whatever Maris is doing that's fogging up that child's thoughts and letting him believe it's a dream, but— but there are echoes of it.
(Soushi knows that his feelings for Kazuki run to levels that would be unthinkable and even abhorrent to others. He knows that he is lucky that Kazuki feels just as deeply in return; that Kazuki is someone who would willingly face a lifetime without him in exchange for a moment beyond the horizon, just as Soushi would face the same for him. He knows that a better man would be willing to let Kazuki go, if it came down to it, just as he knows that there is absolutely no question of him ever letting Kazuki go.)
(It doesn't surprise him, that that level of intensity might be something inherited. That his counterpart's feelings don't run quite so deep is a small comfort, when Soushi is almost certain that they could. An even smaller comfort, when the echoes of that focus are turned on someone more likely to break him with them than to return them.)
Maris is leaning in closer now, and that child is driven entirely to distraction by his closeness.
"Please," he breathes, and Soushi prickles uncomfortably even as he tries to push for his counterpart's awareness again. Maris laughs, soft and condescending, and his breath gusts over their face in a way that's half pleasant to his counterpart and skin-crawling for Soushi.
The barest brush of Maris' lips against their own is what finally makes it intolerable enough for Soushi's discomfort to spike through the fog in that child's thoughts. He jerks his head down, one hand clutching at his eye and his forehead throbbing where he's caught Maris' chin with it.
Are you awake now? Soushi asks, his tone more acid than he entirely intends.
(Soushi could tolerate it, this shared body being touched by someone other than Kazuki. He would not like it, but proximity and understanding is beginning to sprout into a grudging level of affection for his counterpart, and he could look the other way where he needed to, in order to let that child make his own choices.)
(As much as he's certain Kazuki would disapprove, Soushi knows that he could look the other way where even the boy in front of them is concerned, so long as his counterpart went in with eyes wide open. The point that tips it from barely-tolerable to sickening is that child inviting Maris into his heart with eyes screwed shut against the truth of him.)
He feels understanding bloom in his counterpart's thoughts. Feels the horror and panic and self-loathing that follow hot on the heels of that understanding.
Soushi expects those.
What he doesn't expect is for that child to grab at him, wild and desperate, and to force him into control of their body before practically disappearing in his haste to get away from the situation. It shouldn't be so surprising, if he thinks clearly about it, but it takes him by surprise enough for it to work, at least.
When Soushi feels fully in control of his faculties, he focuses again on Maris.
Maris, who's staring at him, head tilted ever so slightly to one side, and who meets his gaze easily and says, "You're not Soushi."
He sounds less certain of it than he wants to be, though, and Soushi just lifts an eyebrow, slow and unimpressed, until Maris starts to frown. He doesn't like not having the answers, clearly. Equally clearly, Soushi is less of an open book to him than that child is.
"Am I not?" he asks eventually, cutting in just as Maris has opened his mouth to say something else.
Maris' mouth snaps shut, and his frown deepens. Soushi can't even be sure that it's at the correction or simply at being interrupted, but either way he's scowling at Soushi.
(He looks every bit his age, right now, and Soushi would frown at that if he weren't controlling his expression so tightly. Bad enough that the island has to send children to war for the sake of peace; now they have to fight them, too?)
"How?" Maris demands, apparently having understood the implication. "How are you here? You weren't, before."
When we rifled through that child's head to insert what we needed and remove what we didn't, goes unsaid, but Soushi tilts his head, just slightly, and lets the knowledge of it sit wordlessly between them until Maris squirms.
"The Element," Maris decides. "Makabe Kazuki did something, now that Soushi is back in your grasp."
Kazuki did no such thing. If there was any outside hand in his return at all, it was Mark Nicht's, while Kazuki was still avoiding this child as best he could. Soushi could enlighten the boy to that, if he so chose. Instead, he just watches Maris' increasing discomfort at his silence, and doesn't stop him when he catapults himself off of the bed to pace wildly back and forth.
"But if he could, then why didn't he do this before?" Maris mutters. It's half to himself - apparently, he can pick up on the fact that Soushi is choosing not to answer him - but he still turns his eyes back on Soushi. Hoping for an answer, or that he can read some reaction to his words out of Soushi's expression or, more likely, out of his mind.
Soushi just stares back at him, expression hard. If Maris' understanding of other humans - of Kazuki - falls so short that he can't understand that, even if Kazuki had had a hand in his return, he would have spent years alone rather than let the too-early weight of Soushi's presence eclipse that child's forming personality and life, then Soushi isn't particularly inclined to be the one to enlighten him on that, either.
Besides. Maris' frustrated attempts to understand are significantly less important, right now, than deciding what to do with him. Soushi is aware that that's why he's here. That that child cannot decide between justice and mercy, where Maris is concerned. That the decision falls to Soushi.
He knows that he should alert someone. Perhaps they'd let him go again anyway, and perhaps he'd escape from Alvis' grasp even if they didn't. But, thinking as a leader, as a soldier, Soushi should at least attempt to capture Maris. He's the enemy. Perhaps more importantly to Soushi, he's someone who willingly and intentionally hurt Kazuki.
(The boy in front of him might just be irredeemable. Certainly, in Kazuki's eyes, Soushi is certain he's beyond forgiveness. And yet. And yet…)
(Maybe if he'd been present for Kazuki's pain in the last three years, Soushi would already have steeled himself to counting a child among their enemies. But he hasn't been, and he hasn't.)
"Get out," he bites out abruptly.
Maris freezes, staring wide-eyed at Soushi. And then he pastes a smile onto his face, all dripping with condescension and not nearly as confident as he clearly wants it to be.
"Oh? I wonder what Makabe Kazuki would think—"
"Get out," Soushi interrupts him before he can say anything more. The attempt to rile him up is almost as laughable as it is incredibly ill-advised, under the circumstances, but Soushi doesn't have the patience for it right now.
When Maris makes no move to leave, Soushi huffs out an irritable sigh.
"I'm giving you one chance," he says. "Leave now, and I'll let tonight slide. Come here again, try anything like that with him again, and I'll alert Alvis."
Maris gets halfway to attempting the condescension again, before Soushi adds, "Or just alert Kazuki."
That makes Maris pause.
(Makabe Fumihiko is calm and forgiving almost to a fault, where humans are concerned, and Maris is - at least for the most part - still human. Alvis moves to his commands, and is a more merciful beast than it ever was in the hands of Soushi's father.)
(Makabe Kazuki is calm and absolutely forgiving to a fault, where anyone at all is concerned, until he is not.)
Soushi stares at Maris, long and hard. And then, slowly and deliberately, he closes his eyes.
When he opens them, Maris is gone, and there's only the moon outside their window and the tiny, half-choked gratitude that is not his own curling in the back of Soushi's head.