Kenta

"Whoa, you've decorated!" Kenta exclaimed as Masamune opened the door to the front room to reveal what could only be described as an explosion of tinsel. "Um… is there even a tree under there?"

"Of course there is," Masamune laughed, taking Kenta's bag and throwing it on the sofa. "HEY, ZEO! TOBY! KENTA'S HERE!"

A loud slam from above their heads was followed almost immediately by running feet coming down the stairs, and ten seconds later Zeo and Toby all but tumbled into the room.

"Hey, Kenta!" Toby said, smiling broadly. "Welcome to America!"

"And Happy Christmas," Zeo added.

"Thanks," said Kenta, confused. "But… it's the nineteenth?"

"Yeah but it's less than a week, it's basically Christmas here now," Toby shrugged. "Hey, I'll take your bag, let me show you your room. Masamune, did you remember to get food when you were collecting Kenta?"

"...nooooooo," Masamune squeaked, and Zeo rolled his eyes.

"Go on, I'm not getting Chinese again just because you forgot to get groceries. Come on, Kenta. Masamune, get going! The shops shut in an hour, it's a Saturday, remember!"

Masamune shot back out of the door with a yelp, and Toby laughed. "Sorry about that, Kenta. This way." He led Kenta to the stairs, where the banisters were almost as swamped with tinsel as the tree had been.

"Is everywhere this… tinselly?" Kenta asked, blinking to get the flickers of light out of his eyes. Zeo sighed.

"Tinsel is Masamune's favourite, and it was his turn to decorate this year. He says it doesn't feel like Christmas without piles of it all over the place. So yes, pretty much everywhere. Take it down in your room if you don't like it. I think he even put it in the bathroom."

Kenta shook his head. "It's okay, it looks really festive, it's just… a lot. We don't really decorate like this in Japan."

Toby was giving him a sideways sort of look. "Masamune said you didn't want to stay in Japan for Christmas? Why?"

Ah. This question already. Kenta opened his mouth to give the answer he had rehearsed - I wanted to see how other places did Christmas, there's a tournament here just after Christmas, it's nice to see other friends sometimesexcept what came out was "I just didn't want to talk about Gingka and Ryuga for once."
Zeo and Toby both froze. The silence stretched between them, difficult and uncomfortable. Of course, they weren't quite as familiar with the history surrounding those two and the other Legendary Bladers as Kenta was, despite the fact that King basically lived with them now and Chris regularly dropped by. They weren't in the cohort who had faced Ryuga in Battle Bladers, or seen him come to Tsubasa's aid when the Darkness threatened to take him away from them too, or seen him in King Hades' Temple – no, Kenta didn't want to think about that, not at this time of year.

Christmas was always a weird period for the Legendary Bladers. Nemesis had risen on the Winter Solstice, when the daylight was shortest and the night the longest, December 22nd, and so every year when the rest of the world lit up with tinsel and lights and hope, the Legendary Bladers and those who had travelled so far with them tended to gather together and remember the darkness they had faced, and the one they had lost. It made the Christmas season uncomfortable at best, and whenever they gathered together at this time of year, someone would always start talking about Ryuga, and Kenta just… didn't want to go back through the memories again. It was difficult enough when he still got flashbacks during storms if lightning struck too close by, let alone deliberately bringing it up.

It had actually got worse when Gingka had disappeared on the second anniversary and hadn't come back. Now everyone talked about where he might have gone, or why, or when he might come back. It was exhausting trying to forget the grief, the pain, the sense that he had been abandoned right when he needed both of them.

So this year, Kenta had decided to take a break, and go to America for Christmas, where there were no Legendary Bladers to meet up, and no-one to wince when they remembered several minutes too late into their reminiscence about Ryuga that at least one person in the room (two if Yuu was there as well) missed more about the Dragon Emperor than his mighty strength and formidable skill.

"Sorry," said Zeo suddenly, breaking the silence and snapping Kenta's attention back to the present. "That was awkward. Um. Let's not mention that again."

"This is your room," Toby interrupted, pushing open a door at the top of the second landing. "I think – yes, Masamune's definitely been in here too. You know, I have no idea where he managed to find this much tinsel."

Toby was right. The room was… dazzling, if that was the right word. Tinsel hung from almost every available surface, the edges of it scattering light from the fairy lights that were strewn across every shelf and mirror.

"… I think I need to have a word with Masamune when he gets back about suitable levels of decoration," Zeo said. "He's not normally this… enthusiastic, if I'm honest."

"Must have been because you were coming over," Toby suggested. "Anyway, you probably want to unpack and unwind a bit. Dinner will be about an hour after Masamune gets back again, I'm afraid, but if you want food before then just come and find one of us."

"And remember you can take down any decorations that you don't want," Zeo added, giving the room a look of slight distaste. "This is over the top even for him."

Kenta shook his head. "I said it's fine."

It… really wasn't, not when he got a proper look. Tinsel was everywhere. Kenta was pretty certain the bit on the bed was actually meant to be there, rather than having fallen off of something, simply because he couldn't see any gaps where it might have fallen from. Gingerly, he perched himself on the edge of the bed, his bag at his feet.

The tinsel shimmered in the fairy lights, the tiny strands waving in the updraught from the radiator. The flickers of light caught in the corner of Kenta's vision like the stray embers of a campfire on the edge of a mountain deep in Japan that held a prototype Pegasus – the last time Kenta had spent the night out of door with Gingka. That had been in summer, and the little group had laid on their backs with the fire burning beside them, and pointed out their constellations overhead. Kenta had waved at Sagittarius, and liked to imagine he saw a shooting star like a wave back. Gingka had been a little bit upset when Pegasus wasn't there, being an autumn constellation, and instead had pointed out where Draco snaked across the whole sky.

"He's still out there somewhere," he had sighed. "I'll bet anything he's repairing Lighting L-Drago and then he'll come back. As long as his stars are in the sky, he's not going to go anywhere."

Kenta had remembered those words next to another campfire a year or so later, when the sparks that were rising around him weren't embers but the stranger flashes of tiny lightning-sparks, as red as Dark Bull and nothing compared to the flashing anger in the golden eyes he dared not look away from. No, Ryuga wasn't going anywhere, not whilst Draco was in the sky, rising to its meridian in the heights of summer.

But when it faded away into the winter sky, so had the last and greatest of the people who had trained Kenta into the man he was today.

The silver tinsel over the door caught in a draught as someone opened the front door, and once again Kenta was dazzled by the reflected lights. The spots remained in his vision even when he blinked, dozens of stars that were still there when he closed his eyes.

Circumpolar, that's what they called Draco. It swung around the northern sky, sometimes bright and sometimes dim, but always, always there, stretching across vast swathes of the night.

Kenta took a breath and started unpacking his bag. He'd been right to come here. He still didn't want to talk about where Gingka might have gone (and if Masamune tried to ask, Kenta had a plan to rope Zeo and Toby into throwing something at him), and having a Solstice without thinking of Ryuga and the Darkest Day was never going to happen.

But maybe with the distance of both time and physical location, he could think of them a little more fondly.

Sure, there was too much tinsel in the house, just as there were too many memories back in Japan. Having too much of something, even something he treasured, was never good. But tinsel shone like stars, and some people liked it more than others. Some people needed it for it to feel like Christmas at all.

Next year, he promised himself. Next year, I'll actually stay and talk instead of leaving as soon as someone mentions Gingka or Ryuga. Just because it's too much for me right now, doesn't mean it's not a way of celebrating for someone else. And maybe one day the light will shine off the memories once more, and they'll be beautiful again.