i.
When a fire swallows an entire wing of Kou's imperial palace in Rakushou, it swallows the lives of its two most beloved princes along with it.
Perhaps not so beloved, Koutoku says with a half-sneer lifting the corners of his mouth, looking askance at the wreckage of last night's conflagration, as soldiers and attendants scramble to find the bodies of two young men surrounded by (surely) the many, many guards tasked to protect them from such a calamity.
When the search continues well into the afternoon and they've found corpses a plenty—scattered amongst the dust and ashes and sometimes stacked atop each other, most often wedged under some fallen structure—they surmise soon enough that all of them belong to Hakuyuu and Hakuren's household, and all of them are in the wrong places, with neither of the princes in sight.
And so the search eventually dwindles into just finding two bodies, bearing the metal ornaments of Kou's royal family, perhaps armed, hopefully just trapped beneath some collapsed wall, still alive and having miraculously managed to escape the flames—
But the search goes on until dusk, and when night falls around them all they've managed to find are the charred remains of maybe two bodies or maybe two pieces of wood belonging to the same beam yet the sharp-looking, elongated metal lumps by their sides are unmistakably swords, and the smaller, blackened lumps resting some distance away from the remains are enough to make the war general who'd led the search turn away and duck behind his sleeve as he composed himself, pointing with his other hand at those same inconspicuous lumps, it's them, those are their hair ornaments, my lord, those are the princes.
Everyone had been answering to Koutouku even then—but Kouen only realizes this later; in this moment of time he is too busy staring wide eyed at the masses of black flesh that used to be his cousins. His ears are ringing hollow, even with the cries and gasps of horror and the desperate sound of people picking apart the burnt palatial wing, trying to surmise what had happened moments before the lives of Ren Hakuyuu and Ren Hakuren were eaten by the flames.
It's clear to him: no surplus of guards or lands or titles that Kou had gained in recent years saved the lives of its precious princes—and they'd died alone, in the safety of their own private wing. He'd only returned from a dungeon expedition, and of course fate would have it that the elements he'd been battling in the dungeon Astaroth would be the same elements ravaging his home while he was gone.
I would have died, Kouen realizes, I would have died for them.
Not I would have died if I stayed like Koumei wanted me to but I would have died in their stead.
And some part of that revelation stays with him, even as he draws Koumei close for the first time in many years later that night, and he doesn't need his younger brother's terrified trembling and hysteric cries of we're next we're next we're next Gyokuen will marry father and we'll be next, En to remind him of the strange new path his destiny has taken.
He says nothing even as Koumei continues to snivel in his shoulder; never mind that by then they've already fought in wars and drawn their swords against many of their fellow man, and Kouen has become the master of two djinns—now is the time they choose to break, as everyone else in the nation does, and Kouen clutches his brother even tighter to him.
Family has just become the most important thing to Ren Kouen.
He remembers, with a tensing of his heart, that his cousins had been found just a few feet away from each other—and for all the good it had done them, for all the meaning it carried—they'd died with the other in sight, or so he hopes, which had to be a marginally less lonely death than truly dying alone. The world should have afforded them at least that much.
ii.
Perhaps Hakuei thinks it strange that he attends to Hakuyuu and Hakuren's graves so much. He could understand why she might think that way—after all, they'd only been cousins. And Kouen is Crown Prince, now—even if only by less than seemly circumstances.
But Kouen has always shouldered responsibility well, and this is another he intends to keep with faith. He knows the sins of his father—Koutoku's many midnight meetings with the ministers and imperial priests and just days after his cousins died they'd announced his wedding to the empress dowager—and he shoulders the responsibility of keeping those secrets, too.
He keeps his own misgivings. Like how Hakuei is now his step-sister, and Kouen doesn't really know how to feel about that, when he vividly remembers only months ago he'd been kneeling before her and pledging to her his lifelong service.
Weeks ago Hakuyuu and Hakuren were still alive, a voice in his head echoes, and now you wear their clothes. Just how loyal are you to their memory?
He may expertly go about the motions of being the Crown Prince, may bear the title of Crown Prince, but deep in his heart he'll never truly embrace the role that had never been intended for him anyway: he doesn't feel like a sham or a fake, but one thing Kouen knows without a doubt is that he still feels guilty.
Sometimes his sword burns through his robes as he walks or sits or reads his scrolls at night. Sometimes he spends the early hours of morning contemplating the length of steel—sometimes he recognizes it's only guilt weighing down the sword Hakuyuu had bequeathed him. Sometimes.
Other times (most of the time) he finds a way to make it here, by their graves.
"Were they your heroes?"
Hakuei stands behind him. Her voice is thick with emotion, but she tries so hard to steel it in the way Kouen and his own brothers have already perfected. It's a commendable effort—but he doesn't turn to face her all the same, instead absently wiping some dust off the stone tablet bearing Hakuren's name with his thumb.
Perhaps this is hero worship, albeit of the dutiful, peculiar kind, and the many times he'd returned to his cousins' tomb is his way of coping with the bitter realization that even his heroes die. That perhaps his heroes died because he hadn't been there to save them, in a strange reversal of roles—
—which, admittedly, he thinks of often. More often than Koumei says he should, with a wrinkle in his forehead. But he never truly stops thinking of the ominous grey skies screened with smoke he'd come home to, the morning of the fire: if only I'd arrived earlier, the same voice in his head whispers, if only I'd hastened my journey, I would've saved them—and—my metal vessels would've made the difference, I'm sure of it—
He belatedly opens his mouth to reply yes, they were, but the words have already died in his throat. He sits in front of their resting spot for hours when he returns to Rakushou from his campaigns—sits in front of her dead brother's graves, wearing a recreation of their imperial ornaments in his hair, knowing full well he could've done something.
So Kouen keeps silent.
(Hakuei understands—however sadly—when he never visits their graves again.)
iii.
Time passes.
Rarely does he bring up their memory now, when he has so much to do—but amidst wars and treatises and monitoring Al-Thamen, Kouen silently looks after his own brothers and sisters, after their example.
He'd been remiss before, but now he goes out of his way to extend his reach past Koumei and Kouha: he intercedes for his half-sisters' marriages, because Koutoku is fondest of him and will grant him most of everything; he speaks to a sword master and Judal about raising a dungeon for Kougyoku's sake, because Kouha offhandedly tells him one day how much she wants to be a warrior; he speaks to his war council on Hakuei's behalf, because she is more than capable of being one of his generals and yearns to help in the war effort, instead of marrying a man lesser than her (as she was originally expected to do).
He conspires with Koumei to send Hakuryuu to Sindria, because he knows the boy craves his own strength just as much as he hates Kouen—so when the Sindrian delegation arrives in Rakushou, he has Koumei plant the idea as the Balbadd negotiations occur. Nobody ever suspects his involvement—partly because he'd been away on a war campaign when the planting occurred, but mostly because of all the trouble Hakuryuu later brews with his djinn.
He especially thinks about this last machination of his as he whiles away his time in exile, after both he and Hakuryuu plunge Kou into a civil war that never should have happened, and drove the empire to its knees in front of Sinbad and his allies.
Again he silently looks after his siblings, living their own lives apart from another—as he has always known, as they always have been.
He thinks about his half-sisters. At least they had remained relatively safe through their short-lived war, having been married off to numerous smaller kingdoms.
He thinks about Kougyoku: how lonely she must be, sitting atop the throne of the emperor in empty Rakushou. Neither he nor she ever wanted the throne, but they had both stood to inherit it anyway—so when that boy Alibaba comes, he is glad they manage to send Koumei and his expertise to aid her—even though he knows she might have preferred Kouha.
He thinks about Judal, too—about what had possessed both him and Hakuryuu to finally go after Gyokuen, even when Kouen himself had been unconvinced that anyone was powerful enough to slay her. He thinks about their oracle with a slight smirk: all his years around their family had unknowingly made him a Ren, no matter how much Judal would've protested such a thing.
But Kouen thinks about Hakuryuu the most.
He's long since come to realize that what he'd done was wrong—and that perhaps if he'd taken the time to speak to Hakuryuu, Kou would still thrive the way it thrived three years ago. Koumei had begged to differ, before he'd left for the capitol—Kouha still scoffs at the idea.
But Kouen is convinced.
Hakuryuu is, after all, Hakuyuu and Hakuren's brother. And he is Kouen's brother too—sitting as he is in his stone chair, leagues away from his beloved homeland, Kouen knows it will be Hakuryuu to finally bring about the unified world his cousins had envisioned, and perhaps that admission alone brings him the most peace and comfort Kouen's ever had since their deaths.
Notes:
I love Kouen. He is much more than Sinbad's foil.
I actually uploaded this years ago, but for some reason I took it down. Not sure why, but after browsing through everything I'd written in the past years (finished or unfinished) I've decided to upload everything. For posterity, shall we say.