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BANDS OF black AND blue
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o8 : prisoner of war
When their six-man brigade rescues him from the rat-infested dungeons of the local (now dead, no doubt) daimyo, the first face Kuroko Tetsuya sees once his eyes adjust to the bright sunlight (that blinds his eyes to the point where he wishes he had some more blood to bleed) is that of Aomine Daiki, who forces up a smile.
"Man, Tetsu, you look like shit," his fellow ronin tells him, giving him what would be a friendly pat on the back, except his hand is trembling and his fingers only manage to brush against Tetsu's bare skin - before the other instinctively recoils.
Momoi is the one to throw up - puke splattered miserably over the bloody stone tiles. Akashi carelessly dumps the still-warm head of the daimyo at Kuroko's feet. It's in the manner of a gift, a treatise, an offering - but everyone knows what it's supposed to be: an apology. Midorima and Murasakibara - the taller ones - are given the duty of guarding the rear, katanas swinging without any hint of light (they've been dully soaked in slaughter).
"Kurokocchi," Kise tries, extending a hand. Kuroko looks up at the shadowy face of his comrade. He attempts to reach out, grasp the other's hand - but slips at the last second. Kise bites his lip, quickly retracting his offer.
"We should get out of here," Akashi notes, and it's a command, not an offer.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Aomine carelessly says, getting on his knees to better examine Kuroko. "Shit - " he mutters, two thick fingers groping for Kuroko's almost-indistinguishable heartbeat. "No wonder he can't coordinate his limbs, much less stand."
"Aomine-kun," Kuroko numbly notes as he feels sturdy arms wrap gingerly around his undeniably malnourished figure. He sees, more than feels, himself being hoisted in the air, resting awkwardly on his partner's broad back. Akashi gives a nod, before the five of them exit the place he had forcibly been kept. Sometime between meeting up with the rear guard and watching Momoi coldly shooting down a trio of guards from the back - without any sign of hesitation and the slightest hint of a smile, Kuroko remembers the images flashing through his mind growing steadily dimmer.
When he comes to again, he stares unblinkingly at the patternless ceiling. It takes him a couple minutes to realize that no, this isn't some particularly vivid dream and that he actually has been successfully rescued. When his brain manages to halfway digest that tidbit of information, he rolls over, eyes roving through the small chamber. He recognizes this place: it's a room in the complex their group had successfully 'acquired' in the outskirts of Edo - close enough to get supplies but far away enough for there to be no unnecessary questioning.
Home - this is as close at it'll ever get for him, he knows.
The anxiety, sorrow, and despair that seemed to claw at his flesh in that hellhole of neverending darkness overwhelm him in the light; Kuroko doubles over, face contorted and mouth frozen to force a silent scream through chattering teeth.
"How do you feel?" Momoi asks him when he wakes up a second time - this time, the sun has set and she has set down a plate filled to the brim with steaming rice and fish and the crabcakes that Kuroko vaguely remembers liking. "Stupid question - sorry for asking," she answers for him, gently placing the plate and chopsticks into his lap. "You should eat up; you look starved."
With all honesty - he expected this in some disgusting fashion, he picks up the chopsticks after three tries and then manages to scoop some pitiful amount of rice into his own mouth. This isn't the humiliating part; that's when he's seized with a set of inexplicable coughs and he manages to choke out the rice, his bile, and his own blood.
Momoi cleans him up as best she can (they may have light, but clean water is much harder to come by - so far from the river) but here is the grand problem: the stench of blood and vomit is actually comforting, manages to lull him to sleep even though the candles are still flickering and Momoi is still clutching him tight.
"What happened?" Aomine asks when Kuroko opens his eyes and stirs for a third time. He is leaning against the wall, legs uncharacteristically folded into a formal seiza position that Kuroko cannot imagine Aomine-kun to take on. "In that dungeon - before we managed to get you out," he says in the way of elaboration, "What happened?" Kuroko blinks at the person he would have called any other day of the week a 'comrade', the person that carried him out of the dungeons and rallied for his rescue and sat by the side of his tatami mat, waiting for him to wake up. He blinks because he cannot recognize the other and finds that, when he places his shaking hands in front of his own face, he cannot recognize the skinny, trembling stalks that are supposed to be able to half a grown man with a loose swing of the sword.
He is, he realizes, a stranger in his own body - and he hates himself for being affected so deeply by a single capture. The others had faced capture at times too - well, everyone save for their captain and medic - and they had been rescued more alive than not.
"What happened?" Aomine asks - again - and Kuroko finds his mouth opening, finds himself talking, even when he cannot feel his lips move.
He talks about the bubbling terror and retch-worthy stench of rotting corpses; the psychological terror that the daimyo's hounds would play to get at and the table scraps that he scrambled - at times - to get, tossed carelessly through the bars of the door. At some point, he remembers, he stops caring whose meat it is he's eating.
"How long was I gone?" he tonelessly asks, after he's done. It feels like forever - at some point the hours needlessly bled into years.
"Too long," Aomine responds, crawling over on all fours.
Kuroko regards the other in the ethereal light of the dawning sun. His unnervingly tanned skin - a direct contrast to everyone else's pale skin - gleams with power, energy. Aomine slowly makes his way to his rescued friend's side, gently taking a bloody-and-pale arm. With painstaking feeling, he presses his own hand against Kuroko's, loosely curling their fingers onto one-another.
Strange - that it is this action, as opposed to everything else, that brings the salt and shame of tears of Kuroko's dimmed eyes.
"I'm sorry," Aomine whispers, pressing his lips to the back of his own hand - pushing against Kuroko's hand as well. "I want to tell you that it'll never happen again, but I don't think I would be able to keep that promise." It's strange, Kuroko thinks, but with his blurred vision, it almost looks like Aomine-kun is the one crying. "The only thing my hands can do is kill."
"It's good to be back," Kuroko simply replies, closing his fingers around Aomine's hand.