iv.
Once, at the dinner table, Taka's hand brushed against Algren's – accidentally and and fleetingly, but the touch was enough to remind him of what they had shared before the day of his certain death. Algren took his hand back to his teacup and said nothing of it.
Taka gave her children a brief smile, and quietly, looking at the table, offered Algren another bowl of rice.
v.
Algren had never thought of mothers as figures of honor and respect. Having never remembered his own, he hardly had much to say when other soldiers on the field reminisced of their parents, speaking of their warmth and laughter, making jokes of the features they had inherited and the trust they misused. Every mother, it seemed, was a victim of warmhearted jests for their love and blind belief.
With Taka, it was different.
At first Algren had wondered at how she never held her children close or told them stories of mighty emperors. Then he understood that her role was different – it should have been a man's duty to raise the child, and a woman's to keep him safe, but Taka had to fill the man's responsibility as well, alighting a sense of honor in her small boys. There was no hesitation in her when she taught them to read and write, or when she watched them play with the wooden bokken they had received from their father.
And when she tucked them into bed at night – if she lingered a little bit longer next to their futon than was necessary, and if she reached, gingerly, to sweep back a lock of hair from Higen's forehead, but withdrew her hand in silence – who was he to judge, when her eyes held all the love, and more, a mother could ever possess?
Algren walked past the children's room quietly and felt, for the first time in months, like an outsider. A disturber, always; but an outsider, not after what he had done – what they had given him.
But when Magojiro called him "father" and faltered at the words that had so thoughtlessly – easily – left his lips, Algren knelt in front of him, taking his face between his hands and said, "I am not, but thank you."
vi.
Come summer, Algren's wounds were nearly gone.
Running his thumb over the ugly scar on his shoulder he felt the carefully sewed stitches and under, the hardened skin.
Despite how he was more scarred than ever before in his life, on the inside, there was a wholeness so enthralling he felt it seep into his entire being, filling him with its healing power.
Summer had never smelled more beautiful.