At school, Utagawa gets a lot of disbelief for willingly being with Kikuchihara all the time. He has been asked, more than once, why he chooses to stick around someone so negative and off-putting. 'What are you getting out of it?' 'You'd be so much more popular without him hanging around!' 'What's so good about him?' Usually, Utagawa just glosses over the issue with a smile. It's not their business why he does what he does and they're not asking the right questions anyway.
At Border, Utagawa gets pity instead. Usually from people who think they know what's going on. People who feel so sorry for him because they think he has to play nice, because Kikuchihara is so necessary to Kazama Squad's concept. People who think he has to put up with Kikuchihara against his will for the sake of their duty as Border agents, because why else would he bother with someone like that?
Kikuchihara doesn't need Utagawa to defend him. Not against people who so obviously doesn't understand anything. That's what Utagawa tells himself when he feels the urge.
It's not about Kikuchihara when it comes down to it; it's Utagawa and his need to be useful, to do things for others, to make them happy.
He'd thought it was normal, the kind of thing everyone was taught as they were growing up. And then the first invasion happened. Knowing intellectually that everyone was fearing for their lives doesn't do much to help an 11 year old's trauma.
Maybe it's because he knows now that providing support just because you can isn't as ordinary as he was taught, but it makes him want to help people all the more. Who else will?
It always feels weird the first few days back from an expedition. Having to get used to your physical body again, being surrounded by the ordinary rhythms of everyday life, even eating fresh food. It's a lot to get used to.
It feels harder this time; they haven't messed up on an expedition this badly in ages.
It was an amateur mistake. Utagawa and Kikuchihara hiding at the very end of an out-of-the-way alley after they'd discovered that the nation they're visiting wasn't as peaceful as they were led to believe. The first rule was 'always leave yourself a way out'. But they had panicked; the wound in Kikuchihara's shoulder meant they couldn't stay where they were, but they needed to wait for Tachikawa Squad to provide a big enough distraction so they could sneak back to the ship. They had waited too long.
Utagawa knew it happened, sometimes; soldiers using the commotion of battle to get away with crimes they couldn't otherwise. Like the one standing at the entrance of the alleyway, using his trion body to overpower a small child of indeterminate gender. The soldier was twice the size of the shaking form in his arms; the child's terrified screams unconsciously making Utagawa step forward.
It was a bad moment. There were only two choices: kill the soldier so he wouldn't take knowledge of their existence back to his boss or allow the rape of a child. That the soldier deactivating his trion body allowed the child to gain the upper hand and stab him to death without their intervention was only a slight consolation.
Kazama had found them after it was all over, the child scared away from the body by Tachikawa Squad's theatrics. He did not judge them for their blunder, an unnecessary kindness that just makes Utagawa feel more ashamed. They should never have allowed themselves to be trapped there in the first place.
What he isn't ashamed of was stepping forward. Had the child not done it, Utagawa would have stopped the soldier himself. A fact Kikuchihara was very loud and condemning of on the ship the whole way back to Earth. Utagawa didn't mind. He knows Kikuchihara would have been with him every step of the way. Just as Kikuchihara is with him every step of the way now.
It's not as simple as mutual reliance. It's about everyone learning to look after themselves because that's what they have to rely on after the first invasion. It's about having to learn independence in Border because the strength of the team can only go so far without the strength of the individual. It's about how, despite all that, Kikuchihara needs him in the most obvious and obfuscating way possible. And how Utagawa needs to be needed.
Dreams are a common product of expeditions; Utagawa knows the drill by now. What's different is that while everyone else dreams of what is freshest in their minds, for Utagawa it is always the first expedition Kazama Squad participated in.
Nothing out of the ordinary had happened; there was no fighting, no politics, no one even got a paper cut – if a paper cut was even possible for trion bodies. Nevertheless, Utagawa remembered, and dreamed; the aftermath of some kind of battle they had happened upon, the corpses stinking in the sun, and how conscientious they had gone through the bodies because you never know what had been left behind. Utagawa had cut off all senses except sight and the very limits of his sense of touch by the third body. But it was too late by then.
Utagawa wakes to an empty house and a heartbeat so loud, he doesn't need to be hooked into Kikuchihara's ears to hear. He lies there, listening to his own panting for a while, until the sound of his breathing is louder than the beating of his heart.
A hand reaches automatically for his phone. There is only one person Utagawa turns to after a nightmare. One person who knows what Utagawa needs, who needs Utagawa in turn. One who allows himself to be weak in front of Utagawa, allows Utagawa to support him.
I had another one.
Kikuchihara can hear the deepest, most hidden parts of Utagawa without him having to lift a finger.