Mikoto's Legacy
Summary: Genderswap. As his Sword of Damocles continues to deteriorate Mikoto thinks on what he wants to leave behind besides a giant crater. To this end he asks his loyal vanguard to perform one last service for him.
It had been over a week since he'd had that talk with a certain pair of idiots about Misaki and just why nobody in Scepter 4—or anywhere else for that matter— was allowed to bait her but him. It had been over a week and he was still filling out paperwork.
Fushimi wondered if complaining to Munakata would get him out of the rest of it, but he doubted that would help. His king seemed more amused by his relationship with Misaki than anything else, but he tended not to intervene when Awashima lost her temper and decided to confine him to the office.
Fushimi desperately need to get out of the office. He hadn't seen Misaki since the Askinaka incident a month ago. That was far too long. Even Awashima had seen her just last week. How was that fair?
He scribbled his signature on one last form before pushing away from his desk. Ignoring the stack that seemed to grow every time he turned around, he grabbed his uniform jacket.
"I'm going to lunch," he told Akiyama as he passed his underling's desk.
"Mr. Fushimi? Lieutenant Awashima said you weren't supposed to leave the office," Akiyama protested.
Fushimi ignored him. It's not like they could chain him to his desk—Awashima had tried, oh how she'd tried— and the likelihood of him running into Misaki was non-existent so what was the point of making him stay in?
There was a quiet little restaurant a few blocks away that Akiyama had recommended to him awhile back. It was nice to be able hear himself think on occasion. Getting a table to himself at lunchtime wasn't as much of a chore as it would be somewhere else. Fifteen minutes after exiting Scepter 4, Fushimi was seated at his favorite table waiting on his usual meal.
His thoughts, as usual, turned to Misaki. As he'd told quite a few people over the years, Misaki was his. Most people had respected that claim.
Until Homra.
No one there had acknowledged his rights to Misaki's undivided attention. Fushimi had been almost okay with the attention Misaki gave to Anna. The little girl had lost her parents not long before she came to be in Suoh's care. It was expected Misaki would empathize with Anna's circumstances.
He'd met Misaki in the final days of her mother's illness. Misaki had been sick herself at the time, and was recovering from surgery when they met in the hospital. They'd been in adjacent rooms, though Fushimi would have been able to hear her if she was on the other end of the hall. Misaki was loud when she was healthy, but laid up in bed she was deafening. He'd hobbled over to her room on a broken leg—trees were evil—to tell her to shut up. Somehow this had led to them becoming friends, though he had no idea how.
They'd spent the next few years together, just the two of them surrounded by a sea of faces that didn't warrant recognition.
Then came Suoh and suddenly Misaki's world opened up, and Fushimi's had shrunk. Those years they spent together apparently meant nothing to her.
But now Suoh was dead. And Misaki was still out of his reach.
He couldn't go to her. Misaki might need him, maybe even enough to welcome him back with open arms, but Suoh had had the fucking nerve to die. He couldn't compete with Suoh when he was there in all his languid glory, how could he compete with the bastard now? Suoh would fill Misaki's heart and mind until there was no room for him anymore.
Fushimi caught that line of thought before it could go any further. That wasn't right. There hadn't been room in Misaki's heart for him in a long time.
Whoosh!
Yata ducked the punch thrown at her head before sidestepping the idiot who was charging her from behind. She spun around, bringing her elbow up and smashing it into the third man's nose with a beautiful crunch. The first man grabbed her upper arm to try and hold her in place. She responded by head-butting him, then pulling him with her when she went into a back roll, planting her feet firmly against his stomach and sent him hurtling into a brick wall. The final man pulled out a gun and leveled it at her face.
Once upon a time this would have been threatening. When she was five maybe.
Another sidestep out of the way in case he was stupid enough to pull the trigger, a quick leap forward and the bastard's arm is clutched in her hands. She brought it down over her knee, pulling the man down with it. She hears him begin to scream even before she feels his bone crack.
Yata let him drop and stepped back to survey the scene. All three men were down, and unlikely to target her when she was doing her deliveries in the future.
She guessed it might be partially her fault. When she began work for Kamiya Deliveries she'd flat out refused to take any jobs that would put her within five blocks of Scepter 4 headquarters. After all, the general consensus among Homra was to steer clear of the Blue clan as much as possible. Unfortunately Kamiya Deliveries had a substantial client base in that area, which meant that she essentially had to agree to take the jobs nobody else wanted, including the ones that brought her down to the Jihan district of the city, which wasn't under Red Clan protection and barely rated the notice of the Blue Clan. Her co-workers told her that within the last year, three people from Kamiya Deliveries alone had been robbed, and supposedly someone from another delivery company had been killed in the area. In all honesty, she shouldn't have been surprised to be grabbed right off her bike and dragged back into an alley while the assholes tried to make off with her bag and bike.
She pulled her work phone out of her pocket. Her boss would need to know she'd been attacked. He liked to know those kinds of things. With any luck he wouldn't get the police involved. Whether Scepter 4 was called or not, if her name showed up in any police reports, even if all she'd done was defend herself, she would be getting another visit the heartless woman. Yata couldn't afford that with the custody hearings coming up. Homra couldn't lose Anna just because Yata couldn't stay out of trouble for a few weeks.
Her manager was absolutely thrilled that she hadn't lost any of her cargo, less thrilled that she didn't want to talk to the police— but all her references came from Homra members so he knew when he hired her that she would have an aversion to law enforcement— and agreed to leave her name out of any reports he made to the police.
The man who answered the door when she reached the delivery destination seemed surprised to see her and she was beginning to suspect that the problems with this area had been downplayed. She ended up walking away with a nice tip that had a phone number scribbled on one of the bills in very fresh ink—what the hell? Did they not have women in this part of Shizume? God, that was such a Chitose move— so she'd call today a win.
Yata made a few more deliveries before heading back to the main office to drop off her work clothes and clock out for the day. Her boss was honestly surprised when she said she'd see him on her next scheduled work day. She had a feeling she was going to be running all the deliveries in the Jihan area from now on.
That was the first day of her new job.
Her first paycheck was still four weeks away, but the customers tipped well and she would be able to buy groceries for the bar. She and Kusanagi had sat down and looked at finances, determined there was no way she was going to be able to support Anna by herself, and decided to split the costs. Yata would buy groceries and do some free labor around the bar and Kusanagi wouldn't bitch about having to buy Anna new clothes to satisfy her strange obsession with imitating Yata.
The bar was quiet when she got there. The only people in the barroom were Eric and Anna. The two were sitting silently in Eric's usual corner. A book was spread open on the table in front of them. It appeared to be about tanto fighting.
Yata made a mental note to talk to Kusanagi about Anna's sudden interest in the martial arts.
She knocked on the door to his upstairs office before just walking in. "I'm back."
"Do you still have a job?" Kusanagi asked, not bothering to look up from the order forms he was filling out.
"Yup. The boss was impressed that I didn't die, so I think he wants to keep me around."
The pen in Kusanagi's hand snapped in two and ink spilled on his forms. "What?!"
Yata shrugged. "Some guys tried to rob me. I think that happens a lot on that route… You have ink on your face." She'd never seen someone literally headdesk before, but it figured that it would be Kusanagi to finally do it.
Peeling an ink stained sheet of paper from his face, Kusanagi sighed. "I'll try and find some work for you around here."
Yata blinked. "…Why?"
"Yata, two months ago, I was sitting behind my bar watching Tatara play his guitar for Mikoto. Since then, I've had to arrange both their funerals. I'm not planning yours too."
"I thought the point of me getting a job was to bring in extra money. You said you couldn't afford to pay me because business was slow."
"I can afford to support you and Anna both if you're living here."
Yata's eyes narrowed. "No."
"What?"
"No. I've moved in here because you insisted. I got a job because you told me I had to. I am not quitting it after just one day just because you say so."
The chair screeched as Kusanagi stood. "Didn't you hear me? You were attacked! Tatara was killed on a goddamn roof a few blocks from here. What if one of those guys had a gun?!" Kusanagi's eyes narrowed, intently reading her expression. "Oh god, they did, didn't they?"
Yata shifted uncomfortably. "He didn't get a shot off."
"That doesn't make it better!"
"Why not? I've actually been shot at before. Remember those punks last month? Or that drug distributer back in October? Hell, last year I actually got hit! You told me to walk it off!"
"We had a king then! Don't tell me you haven't noticed? Without the Red King's sanctum our powers aren't anywhere near what they use to be."
Actually, she hadn't noticed. Her red was burning just as hot as it always had.
"Yata, we need you. We need you here, and we need you alive because we can't survive another loss. Not now."
"Can we afford for me not to have a job right now?" Yata asked.
"Better than we can afford for you to die."
"And if I stopped doing deliveries to Jihan? Would you have a problem with me keeping this job?" Yata had an idea. Not one she was happy about, but one that would probably be more tolerable to Kusanagi.
Kusanagi blinked. "Jihan? Yata, what? Never mind. What are you thinking?"
"If I run deliveries in the Blues territory, I could avoid Jihan."
"And if you run into Fushimi? I have explained about why you need to avoid getting arrested right?"
"In detail."
"Is it really one or the other? Jihan or Scepter 4?"
Yata nodded. "Not much point in hiring someone who won't run deliveries to ninety percent of the clientele."
Kusanagi sighed. "Then I'd prefer you risk a run in with Fushimi. He won't try to kill you at least."
She still had a scar on her shoulder from when she ran into Fushimi at Askinaka while looking for the Colorless King. It hadn't been a killing blow, and Saru never misses, not with his knives. Whatever their differences, Saru didn't want her dead.
"I'll talk to my boss," Yata thought for a minute, "the day after tomorrow. That's when I work next."
Kusanagi nods. "Good."
Yata turned to go.
"Oh, Anna wants to go out tomorrow. Could you take her?" Kusanagi asked before she gets to the door. "She mentioned a bookstore."
Yata considered it for a minute, and then nodded. "Sure."
AN: *Sigh* I wasn't sure where I was going with this chapter, and I think it shows. Also, at least according to Fushimi in Missing Kings, clansmen without an active king are considerably weakened. To the point that Fushimi turned down a fight with Yata because he felt it wouldn't be an even match.