Chapter Text
:
A year before everyone he has ever loved is murdered, Bakugou Katsuki stumbles upon the other half of his soul. He is eight years old.
He finds him deep in the underbrush, tucked away in the cool hollow of a downed tree as though for safe keeping. He looks like a boy, and he looks like a dragon, and he looks like a painting, limned in scarlet. His hair and his horns and the velvet fold of his wing. The faint ridge of scales along the arch of his cheek. The tail. The places he’s been scraped bloody.
Katsuki’s first thought, of course, is to rub it in Mitsuki’s face. Eight years old and already he’s found a dragon, all on his own. How can she scold him for sneaking off now? The other dragon seekers will see what a wise and brave chief they’re destined for, and she’ll be forced to eat her words. If Katsuki hadn’t snuck away he would never have found him. The tree is a massive thing, and old, but it was well hidden. At least twice as tall as any tree standing and three times as broad. The disentombed roots, white as bleached bone, could shelter him from rain. As soon as he saw it it called to him. Or maybe, he now suspects, the dragon did.
When he leans close, he can just make out the crimson curve of his eyelashes. There’s a faint whistling wheeze that accompanies his every breath. Katsuki reaches out to touch his cheek.
His eyes open.
Two things happen at once. Something wakes up inside Katsuki, and there are no words for what it feels like. His only thought is of a bell. It’s not quite accurate but it’s all he has: a bell where his heart once was, that has been waiting to ring all this time.
The other thing that happens is the dragon attacks him.
He’s vicious. All claws and fangs and flat, unseeing red eyes. He goes for Katsuki’s throat. There’s a moment of animal panic, and then memory takes hold: Mitsuki, his mother, training him from the moment he could walk. His mother, who has never lost a battle. His mother’s grin, his mother’s voice: no son of mine will lose in a scrap. And he is his mother’s son.
Katsuki headbutts him, and he yowls like a wildcat. He rears back and Katsuki does not let up, tackling him low and sweeping him off his feet. The dragon bites his arms; he yanks at the dragon’s wings. Together they tumble off the trunk and through the brush, and then sharply down down down into a swampy, overgrown ravine. By the time they roll to a stop in the muddy remains of a river they’re both filthy and bleeding. The dragon boy looks as winded as Katsuki feels—maybe even worse, by the twist in his foot and the cornered, blind terror in his eyes. He starts to stand.
“Stop that,” Katsuki commands, in his best future chief voice, and he bops him on the nose. And the dragon boy, stunned, just sort of. Does.
He totters for a moment, and then falls heavily on his behind. He blinks several times. The wildness fades from his eyes, just like that. Then the dragon looks at him, really and truly and for the first time, and Katsuki feels it again: a bell ringing fiercely. This time he knows the dragon feels it too.
He takes a step forward and flinches. His leg, right. Katsuki sighs. “Dumb dragon. You’re lucky you’ve got me around.”
In the detritus of the river he locates a sturdy stick, and then he tears a strip of cloth from the end of his shirt. After a moment’s thought he peels the whole thing from his back and ties it around the dragon’s waist. The dragon lets him fuss without protest, and barely winces when he uses the stick and cloth to secure his ankle, as his mother taught him. When it’s finished the dragon shakes himself like a dog, wicking muck from his wings and leaving his hair all fluffy. Katsuki pats it down and turns to eye the steep slope of the ravine. There’s no climbing out of that. And who knows how far it goes, or in which direction, before climbing becomes a viable option.
While he’s trying to think of what his mother would do, the dragon boy comes up beside him. Now that the wildness has gone, his eyes are bright and curious. He mimics Katsuki’s pose, feet spread, hands on hips. His wings ruffle and resettle. Katsuki stares at them.
“Can you fly us out?”
He doesn’t question whether or not the dragon boy can understand him, because he knows that he can. The dragon tips his head to the side. And then he smiles, each tooth pointed and deadly and perfect.
Katsuki scrambles onto his back, taking care to mind the splint. His skin beneath Katsuki’s hands is rough and inhuman, like seaglass.
The dragon boy crouches low. He breathes in deep. They leave the ground behind.
:
The sun is heavy and low in the sky by the time they finally make it back to camp. At the treeline they linger, watching. It’s not that Katsuki is afraid of his mother’s wrath. If he’s shaking, it’s only because dusk is falling fast and it’s getting cold without his shirt.
Still. The place is in an uproar. And Mitsuki will be very mad.
“They can’t even last a few hours without me,” Katsuki tells the dragon boy, who trills softly over his shoulder, ogling the chaos with as much curiosity as caution. Katsuki turns to face him, wearing his mother’s stern face.
“Stay here until I call for you,” he says. The dragon butts his head against Katsuki’s cheek. That’s as good as any promise.
He marches into camp. All around him his name is being thrown, from person to person, first with alarm, and then, as adults catch sight of him, with varying degrees of relief or annoyance. He’s careful not to venture out of sight of the treeline, and in a stroke of luck he finds his father, bent over some maps with two of the clan elders. They’re poking around it and muttering about hunters, precautions, beware. Katsuki approaches them. For a moment he thinks he might be in the clear.
And then, across the camp, a thunderous roar: “Bakugou Katsuki!”
There she is, in all her proud, imperious, overbearing glory. Bakugou Mitsuki, chief of the dragon seekers. Katsuki’s mother.
She descends upon him like a stormhead and grabs him by the shoulders, making claws of her hands and squeezing tight. “How many times have I told you not to run off? These woods are dangerous, you know that. You know that!” She gives him a little shake. “Look at the state of you, did you wrestle a badger and lose?”
“I’m strong,” Katsuki says, affronted. It’s all the worse because she’s doing this in front of everyone. His father turns, the elders turn. All eyes are on them. How will they respect their future chief if all they remember is how his mother bawled him out every chance she got?
Mitsuki reels. “Oh, you’re strong. Of course. The next time your adventures take you to a bear’s den, I’ll just remember that you’re strong and leave you to it, shall I, little monster?”
Katsuki scowls. This is an unfair jab—he was six then, small and weak. Now he’s eight, and an entirely different person. Surely he could take on a whole den of bears by himself, just as his mother could, but that’s not what he’s here to discuss. He waits impatiently for her to stop shouting, but in the end he doesn’t have to. His father comes to his rescue, ever a balm to Mitsuki’s rage.
“You’re being uncommonly quiet, Katsuki. Tell us why.”
He rolls his eyes. Before his mother can wind herself up again he turns back to the tree line and raises a hand. It doesn’t matter whether the dragon boy can see it or not. The bell is struck in Katsuki’s chest, and soon the dragon boy emerges, answering the call.
He trots up, quickly at first, and then slow, shy. Just behind Katsuki he shuffles to a halt. His tail is curled around his ankle and his claws are clutching at Katsuki’s arm, and Katsuki puffs up a little, the better to protect him.
His father is speechless. So is his mother, which is a bigger deal. Katsuki says, “I found a dragon.”
“I can see that,” says Mitsuki, faintly. She shakes her head and whatever wire was stitching her body so taut goes slack. She crouches before them. She smiles.
“Hello there, darling,” she says, as gentle as she’s ever been. Katsuki thinks of warm hands and soft songs after nightmares. “Are you lost?”
The dragon boy blinks at her with big, big eyes.
“He doesn’t know where his mom is,” Katsuki says.
Mitsuki reaches for him. The dragon boy flinches, but after a searching look at Katsuki he tips his head toward her hand. She rubs her thumb along the apple of his cheek, and Katsuki can feel a rumbly little purr start up against his back that vibrates through his whole body.
Mitsuki pauses over a scrape on his chin. The curves of her face snap into hard angles. “Did my brat of a son do this to you?”
“What? You old hag! I didn’t!” Katsuki wilts just a little beneath his mother’s glare. “We wrestled a little. And kind of fell in an old river. But he was all beat up when I found him.”
Mitsuki frowns. She glances back at his father, who looks even more troubled than he usually does. “The one we’ve been tracking,” is all he says. Mitsuki nods tightly.
Katsuki can only cross his arms and scowl. He hates being left out of the loop. It means they still see him as a child.
The dragon butts one horn against his shoulder. His bell gives a little ring and Katsuki’s bell rings in return, and all the bad feelings dissipate.
Mitsuki, who has turned back to them, watches this exchange in silence. Her brow knits slowly, first with confusion, then suspicion. She addresses the dragon boy. “Do you remember where you last saw your mother, dear? Or when?”
The dragon’s eyes drop.
“It was bad,” Katsuki says. “It was really bad.”
Mitsuki stares at her son. She stares at the dragon. Her eyelids flicker. She says, “Do you have a name?”
And Katsuki says, “His name is Eijirou.”
:
Sitting by the fire, hours later, Katsuki knows that Eijirou is exhausted, and wants nothing more than to sleep. He knows this, apparently, because they are soulbound.
“The first in over a hundred years,” Mitsuki says. They spent the whole night doing stupid tests, lining Katsuki and Eijirou up spine to spine, asking them questions, having them answer for each other. How did they meet? What did it feel like? How did Katsuki know Eijirou’s name?
Eijirou told him.
He said this, out loud?
No, he just told him. He didn’t say it. He told him. Katsuki doesn’t know why that’s so hard to understand.
When they tried to pull them apart to test them from a greater distance, Katsuki growled, or Eijirou did. He’s not really sure which. It didn’t matter.
What really convinced the elders was the story of how they met. Katsuki was glad to tell it, even though none of the adults seemed very interested in his heroics; rather, they were hung up on Eijirou’s initial savagery.
“He was feral?” pressed Katsuki’s father, a pillar of calm, even while everyone else pitched a fit behind him. “You’re certain?”
Katsuki was offended. Of course he was certain.
“And you were able to calm him?”
Obviously.
They all kept poking and prodding until Mitsuki snapped that it was time to back off. Katsuki was grudgingly impressed by how quickly they deferred to her judgment. He and Eijirou were bundled up and cleaned and fed, and then they were stuck in front of the fire to dry. Katsuki still feels like a cat dunked in water, but Eijirou just looks shiny and pampered. He’s a warm and heavy weight against Katsuki’s side, tearing lazily into some forest fowl. His wings and his tail and his horns have all vanished--in his new clothes he could nearly pass for human. It was stress, Mitsuki told him, that kept him from committing to either form. Stress, and injury, and heartache.
Katsuki doesn’t care what form he takes. All he cares about is the bell in Eijirou’s chest, tolling slow and sleepy and steady. Content. Safe.
He says, “I thought that soulbound stuff was just a story.”
“We thought so too. Now we know better.” There are shadows in Mitsuki’s face. Katsuki thinks it’s a trick of the light, the jumping flames, but he isn’t sure. “The dragon seekers are sworn to the dragons, but Eijirou is your responsibility, Katsuki, and yours alone. You will do great things together, every soulbound pair does, but if anything happens to him, that weight is on your shoulders. It’s your duty to protect him. You know that, don’t you?”
Katsuki scowls. “I could have told you that.”
Mitsuki blinks.
“He’s a part of me. He always has been, only I didn’t know it, but I know now and now he’s come home. Understand? He’s mine and I’m his.”
He doesn’t know why Mitsuki is making that expression. It’s only the truth.
“Good,” she says, when the look passes from her face like a cloud. She ruffles his hair despite his protests. “Always look after each other.”
For a moment they fall quiet. Mitsuki is watching the fire, so Katsuki watches the fire too. At his side Eijirou has finished eating, now drowsily gnawing on the bones.
The light starts to hurt Katsuki’s eyes. He turns back to his mother. “Eijirou’s mom is feral, isn’t she? That’s why she hurt him.”
Mitsuki’s eyes stay fixed on the fire. “Yes.”
“And she's the dragon we’ve been tracking.”
“Yes.”
He considers this. “Why did she go feral?”
“We’re not sure yet. It could be anger or heartbreak or fear. It’s almost always because of humans.” Her mouth tightens. “If we’d found her sooner, this wouldn’t have happened.”
This last does not resolve neatly in Katsuki’s mind. “You’re the best tracker in the whole world. We’re moving as fast as we can, aren’t we? It’s not our fault what other people do.”
“It’s always our fault, Katsuki.” Mitsuki says it so sharply that the protests cut to ribbons in Katsuki’s throat. The shadows fall into the lines of her face just so, and she looks as ancient and war-worn and dangerous as any dragon. “Men are wicked and selfish creatures. They care nothing for nature and magic and the way of things. They do not respect. They do not ask. They would carve Eijirou’s heart from his chest, and the blood would be on your hands as much as theirs, because you were meant to protect him. When we fail a dragon, it is always our fault. Do you understand?”
Katsuki stares at his hands. He nods.
From the corner of his eye, he sees his mother’s silhouette soften. “Oh, my little monster,” she sighs. “You must understand, things will be different this time. You were too young the last time we had to confront a dragon like Eijirou’s mother, but every few years it does happen.”
Eijirou leans up to nuzzle at his cheek, and Katsuki sniffles hard. “So we’ll calm her down, like I did with Eijirou.”
“You’re soulbound to Eijirou. It’s not the same.” She looks like she means to say more, but just then Eijirou yawns. He tosses aside the fowl bones, turns a tight circle, and plops onto the ground with his head in Katsuki’s lap. He’s asleep in moments.
Mitsuki laughs. It’s loud and sudden and the sad softness in her face is chased away.
“We’ll talk more tomorrow,” she says. “For now Eijirou has the right idea. It’s time to sleep.”
She douses the fire herself, and gives Katsuki her cloak as a pillow to make up for the lack of bedroll. He’d have to wake Eijirou to get his own. Katsuki wants to stay awake and think on the things she’s told him, but it’s no use. The slow and steady tolling of Eijirou’s bell lulls him to sleep.
:
The whole clan falls in love with Eijirou, though no one more than the grannies and the children. They cart him off and play with his hair. He flits into his dragon form and lets them chase him. Every other night he noses over to help the grown ups cook. When he sneaks bites of meat or fish or sweets it’s cute, but when Katsuki does it it’s the end of the world. Typical.
Though Katsuki gets testy (Mitsuki’s word, because she lives to embarrass him) if they spend too long apart, he isn’t jealous. He has no reason to be. He’s the one whose bell rings in time with Eijirou’s. He’s the one Eijirou teaches how to hunt like a dragon, to focus on protecting your belly and attacking from above, and how to collect things that shine and where to hoard them, and how to curl up anyplace and anytime and fall asleep. Eijirou is still better than him at that last one. Dumb dragon sleeps like a rock.
And if the other children prefer Eijirou, that doesn’t matter. Katsuki has always known why they followed his every order, even the older kids. He will be chief and he acts like it. But Eijirou does not follow him because he will be chief. Eijirou does not follow him at all. Eijirou trots along beside him—Eijirou forges the path forward as often as Katsuki does. Katsuki had no idea that there was a space inside him, perfectly Eijirou-shaped, yearning for someone who wouldn’t look up to him like some dumb kid who didn’t know better, and wouldn’t look down like some dumb adult who thought they knew too much.
He starts to wonder what will happen when they catch up to Eijirou’s mom. Will Eijirou go with her? How long will the clan follow them? They’ve only ever stayed with a dragon long enough to make sure it was doing alright, that it was getting on with any humans it was nesting near or that it had found other dragons if it didn’t want to be alone. He tries to ask his mother, more than once, but the words won’t come out.
He’s not a coward. He will ask. Before he can, they find the village.
:
His father and the elders think he’s too young to see it, but Mitsuki does not believe in shielding him from the world’s horrors. “The world is made of horrors,” she says. “Our job is to protect the dragons from them, when we can.”
It's quieter than Katsuki thought it would be. He has seen the destruction of dragons, of course he has. Trampled forest, some mangled bandits. Always the dragons were attacked first.
This is different. There is no crying. There are no calls for help or relief or the gods. The blood has been stamped into the earth until the earth was swampy and black. There is no fire.
“That’s how you know it was a dragon,” Katsuki whispers to Eijirou. He has to whisper, because the other dragon seekers are silent as they investigate, respectful of the dead. “When humans raid a town, they use fire. Dragons never do.”
He has to whisper because if he doesn’t, then he will be quiet too, and the quiet is starting to frighten him. He’s comforted by the thought that no one will ever know that but Eijirou.
Eijirou sticks close to him. Every now and then he lifts his nose to the air, and then he snuffles unhappily and buries his face between Katsuki’s shoulder blades. His bell is shrill and tinny.
“Mitsuki will find your mom,” Katsuki assures him. “She’s the best tracker the dragon seekers have ever had.”
“Katsuki.”
Mitsuki is watching them. She waves them over, leads them to the edge of town. Eijirou clings so close that his claws clip the back of Katsuki’s heels. He doesn’t mention it.
“How are you holding up?” she asks, and Katsuki frowns. No one else gets asked that question.
“I’m fine.”
“Really.” Her voice is flat.
“Yeah, really. I’m not a baby. We’re strong.”
“I’m sure you are. But so am I, and I’m not fine.”
That throws him. “You’re not?”
“No. I’m very sad.”
That doesn’t sound very chief-like. “I don’t understand.”
“I’m sad,” and Mitsuki crouches before them, “because Eijirou’s mom was very scared when she did this. Just like she was scared when she hurt him. I’m sad that she was so afraid, and I’m sad that these people suffered because of that.”
She reaches out both her hands, one on Katsuki’s head, one on Eijirou’s.
“It's okay for a chief to be sad or scared, Katsuki. I didn’t show you this because I wanted you to tough it out. I showed you because you need to know that this wasn’t the dragon’s fault. And because you need to know that we can’t let her keep hurting people.”
Katsuki nods slowly. He’s not sure he understands.
“Mitsuki.” His father. There’s an urgency to him that Katsuki isn’t used to seeing. “Look at this.”
Mitsuki sees the urgency too, because she tells Katsuki, “Stay here,” and she uses the voice Katsuki knows not to disobey. To Katsuki’s credit, he does wait, for about half a minute. Then it starts to get too quiet again, and Eijirou, restlessly, reading the anxious tolling of his heart, tugs his hand in the direction his mother went.
They creep close enough to spy from the remains of a little hut, collapsed neatly down the middle. There are no bodies here, which is lucky. It makes huddling in the remains more bearable.
Katsuki’s parents and the elders are clustered around some innocuous bit of mud and straw. They follow it back and forth in a line, gesturing, speaking low and angry. Katsuki hears them say, “They’re not like other raiders,” and “This isn’t the first time,” and “What are we going to do, Mitsuki?”
“What we’ve always done,” says Mitsuki. “Protect the dragons.” Then she says, “Katsuki, Eijirou. I know you’re there. Come out now.”
They shuffle over. Katsuki refuses to lower his chin, glaring back at the elders who glare down their crooked old noses at him. Mitsuki sighs and shakes her head.
“Little monsters,” she says, rubbing at her brow with a knuckle. Then she stands tall and straight, and points at the ground. “Do you see these tracks?”
Katsuki nods.
“We believe there were people hunting Eijirou’s mother. A group of them, organized. You see these scars here?” Her hand follows the path of deep, jagged gouges in the earth. “This is strong magic. They were the ones who hurt and scared her.”
Katsuki feels a questioning ring of Eijirou’s bell.
“They did it for the same reason everyone hunts dragons,” he explains to him. “Your hearts grant wishes. And people are selfish.”
Eijirou kneads the ground with his bare feet. Katsuki frowns.
“No, you shouldn’t have stayed with her. That would just get you dead.” The thought burns inside his skull, inside his ribs, inside his belly and the soles of his feet. “You belong here, with me. You’re safe here.”
“It’s a very good thing you hid and found Katsuki, Eijirou,” Mitsuki says. Her voice has gentled again. “It was not your fault what happened to your mother, just as it was not her fault that she attacked you. It was no one’s fault but the people hunting her.”
And ours, Katsuki thinks but does not say. His mother by the fire, the shadows in her face. Always ours.
“We haven’t found their bodies, which means they’re still out there,” Mitsuki says. “We may have to face them ourselves. They’re likely still hunting her since they failed here.”
Katsuki looks forward to it. He and Eijirou will beat those raiders on their own. He says, “But we’re going to find her first.” It is not a question, and there is no doubt.
Mitsuki says, “Yes. We’ll find her first.” It is not a question. There is no doubt.
:
They track the dragon out of the village and to the west, winding their slow way to the ocean. Katsuki saw it once before when they escorted an ache of dragons to the shoreline—it was winter, their time to migrate. The ocean was a massive thing of shifting colors, gray and blue and green, and the dragons played in the waves before crashing beneath them and vanishing from sight. Eijirou would love the ocean. He’s sure of it.
He talks about it until Eijirou brightens, finally, with the quiet village far behind them. Then he says, “Mitsuki will find your mom. She will. And if your mom is angry and scared like you were angry and scared, we’ll calm her down. Everything will be okay.”
Eijirou stares at him. Then he knocks their foreheads together and says, halting and glottal and two-toned, “Katsuki.”
:
Ten months before everyone Katsuki has ever loved is murdered, they catch up with Eijirou’s mother.
It is not how Katsuki thought it would be. The forest gives way to mountains, and past those mountains is the ocean. Sometimes Katsuki thinks he can smell it on the wind. When Mitsuki says they’ve found the dragon, no one cheers. Katsuki and Eijirou are not permitted to come. No one is--Mitsuki marches off into the dark alone. Her sword is strapped to her hip.
“It’s not fair,” Katsuki insists to anyone who will listen. Eijirou paces anxiously around him, his bell one high, drawn out note. “She should have let us come along. I’m not just a kid, I can help her!”
“Katsuki,” says his father, sharp in a way he never is, and Katsuki’s jaw snaps shut.
The night turns dark and the fire stays bright. Everyone is so so quiet. There are stars and stars and stars, and Katsuki takes Eijirou away from the fire to see them better, to teach him new words and distract him with stories.
“The first dragon and dragon seeker were soulbound,” he says. In one hand he clutches a stick to draw pictures in the dirt. In the other he clutches Eijirou’s shivering hand. “Just like you and me. Every human that saw the dragon tried to hunt it, because they were scared and stupid and selfish. And then it met one human that was different. The human saved the dragon, and the dragon was so grateful it offered its own heart, because dragon hearts grant wishes.”
He draws a dragon, and a human, and between them a beating heart.
“But the human said no, dragon, keep your heart. My only wish is to stay by your side and protect you. The dragon still wanted to give a gift, though, so to better help the human protect it, it gave the human its breath of fire. That’s why dragons don’t have fire anymore.”
He carves some flames into the ground with the sharp end of his stick.
“All of the human’s descendants swore to protect all of the dragon’s descendents, and that’s how you got the dragon seekers. The story goes that the gift gets passed down, and some other soulbound humans could breathe fire too. But that first dragon and that first human stayed together, for all the rest of their days.”
Eijirou squeezes Katsuki’s hand hard. In the distance, something roars.
:
Mitsuki returns with the bloody dawn. Katsuki sees her, dragging her sword, speaking too low to hear, shrugging off the hands that touch her. They come away red.
She washes before they can greet her, scrubs so thoroughly that even Eijirou’s nose cannot catch the scent of blood. Once she’s clean she hunches by the fire and makes a bone cage of her body, her sharp shoulderblades and elbows and teeth, and snaps at anyone who gets too close. Katsuki has never seen his mother this way. Weary, down to the bone and deeper. For the first time he feels uncertain, even as he creeps close, and he feels it in Eijirou too. He is afraid.
Mitsuki catches sight of them. She opens her arms.
“My little monsters,” she murmurs, as they both fall in against her. Katsuki can feel her heart beneath her ribs. No chiming, no bell—just a heart, strong and steady.
He tries to ask what happened. He tries to ask why they couldn’t come, and if Eijirou will have to leave, and when they will get to meet his mother.
What comes out is, “Eijirou won’t get to see his mom, will he?”
Mitsuki breathes slow and deep. She holds them very close. “No, my darlings.”
Inside Katsuki’s chest, a heart that is not his own starts to break.
“What now?” he whispers. He reaches across his mother’s belly to hold Eijirou’s hand.
“Now,” says Mitsuki, and her voice does not waver long enough to question it, “Now, we look for other dragons, and we look after Eijirou until then. Like his mother would have wanted. You’ll take care of him, won’t you?”
Katsuki’s grip on Eijirou’s hand tightens. “Always,” he says.
His mother kisses Eijirou’s hair, and then she kisses Katsuki’s. “Always,” she says.
:
They never see the ocean. They leave it behind, and start heading south. Eijirou learns to put more words behind his teeth. His own name, Eijirou, with a gutteral grind that buzzes pleasantly in Katsuki’s bones. Katsuki makes sure to teach him every swear he knows, much to his father’s chagrin. His mother is just as annoyed, but sometimes, if they’re lucky, they can goad her into wrestling with them, or chasing them around camp. She always wins, but Katsuki is confident his day is coming.
There is still a sadness in Eijirou. He never talks about it, but he doesn’t need to. His bell leaves a mournful echo, and Katsuki hates that he can do nothing to change that. Nothing to help. Half of his heart is breaking, and all he can do is distract him with adventures and hold his hands when distracting isn’t enough.
“That’s all you can do,” Mitsuki confirms, when he asks her. “And that has to be enough.”
The mountains gentle into hills and unroll into plains, where the grass grows long and golden and every blade is sharp. Before Katsuki can take a breath, it feels like, before he can wrap his mind around the concept of giving Eijirou up to a dragon who doesn’t even share his blood, they find one.
She looks nothing like Eijirou. Smooth lines and sharp angles, pale like sand, with eyes as gold as cutting grass. There’s grace to her, and pride. She bows low and her scales shimmer and blow away like a sandstorm, leaving a tall, shining woman in their place. Her name is Ryukyu.
Mitsuki bows to her. The elders pay their respects. Mitsuki and Ryukyu break bread, and Katsuki watches from the shadows, crouching low and clutching Eijirou’s hand. Holding him back. He’s tugging and tugging, stamping his feet in excitement. His eyes are bright. His bell is lighter than it has been in weeks.
“Katsuki,” he whispers. “Katsuki, dragon. Dragon, Katsuki. Come see. Katsuki!”
Katsuki cannot stand the buoyancy in Eijirou’s voice, the hope there. He snatches his hand away and hides his face with it. His bell feels battered in his chest, and Eijirou’s curiosity turns to concern.
“Katsuki. Something wrong. What? What? Katsuki, talk. Talk, Katsuki.”
“Shut up,” Katsuki says into his hands. “If you’re gonna go then go, I don’t care.”
Eijirou coos. He reaches out, and Katsuki slaps his hand away.
There’s a tenderness to Eijirou’s bell then, a hurt like a dent, and Katsuki wants to cry. He doesn’t budge. Eijirou huffs, and then he stands, and then he runs off. Katsuki can feel every step he takes, carrying him farther and farther.
Mitsuki introduces Eijirou to Ryukyu. Eijirou and Ryukyu start chirping and growling at each other. Eijirou bursts into his dragon form in a shower of sparks and races around their legs. Mitsuki laughs, Ryukyu laughs, the other dragon seekers laugh. Katsuki wants to be sick.
Soon Ryukyu and Mitsuki are talking in low tones, rumors and warnings about trackers, hunters, a group attacking dragons. Take care, keep moving, keep low. Katsuki tries to listen but he keeps getting distracted by Eijirou’s bell, the dent buffing out and the notes singing clear, for someone who isn’t him. It’s not like when he plays with the kids or cooks with the grannies. Then his return to Katsuki’s side was assured. This time it’s not.
Tears weigh his eyes down so he shuts them, tight tight tight, until they pulse in his skull in time with Eijirou’s bell. His parents start to call for him. He doesn’t move. After a few minutes he sniffles hard, and opens his eyes. He’s going to be the future chief--he can’t just sit here and wallow like a baby. If Eijirou wants to leave so bad, Katsuki will just have to remind him that they’re soulbound, that they have to stay together. And if he still wants to leave, Katsuki will go with him. In a few years they’ll come back to the dragon seekers, and then in a few years more back to the dragons, and to and fro, back and forth, for however long they have to. His mom and dad won’t like it, he’s sure of that, but too bad. Eijirou is his, and he is Eijirou’s. That’s just how it is.
He climbs to his feet, and then the tall grass is rustling, and Eijirou is tackling him, flickering from dragon to human midleap. Katsuki manages to catch him but fails to conquer gravity, and they oomph into the grass, a sailor’s knot of limbs. Eijirou is giggling. He isn’t upset about Katsuki’s earlier meanness at all. “Mitsuki is mad. Looking for you.” In singsong: “Trouble.”
“I’m always in trouble, whatever.” He meets Eijirou’s eyes and brings forth his courage. “Look, if you wanna go with the dragon lady—”
“Not going, Katsuki,” Eijirou interrupts.
“You’re not--what?”
“Not with Ryukyu. Not with anyone. Said no.”
Katsuki gapes. There is grass scratching at his neck below and the sky a big blue infinity above, and there is Eijirou’s hair tickling his cheek, and there are Eijirou’s eyes watching him. The look on his face. A year before they met Katsuki found a shard of amber, and within, the iridescent wing of a dragonfly. His mother said it could have been there for hundreds of years, for thousands—to him that was spectacular. That anything could be preserved so perfectly, could last so long. That was the closest proof he had of forever.
That’s what that look is. Amber. The promise of forever.
Of course Eijirou isn’t leaving. Of course. Katsuki feels like a fool.
“Dumb Katsuki,” Eijirou snickers. He presses his whole face into Katsuki’s cheek, hard. It might be a kiss. “Silly, dumb Katsuki. Katsuki and Eijirou together, always.”
Katsuki gathers himself and grouses, “You’re dumb,” but his fingers find Eijirou’s fingers, and his bell slips back in tune with Eijirou’s bell. They hurry off to face Mitsuki’s wrath, together.
:
Katsuki isn’t afraid after that. Not of losing Eijirou, or of anything else, really. He has no reason to be. He was always very brave and very wise, but with Eijirou, he feels limitless.
Two months later they track a flight of dragons. A month after that they track an ache, and then another flight. They even find an enclave half a year later. Eijirou is always thrilled to meet them, but when Mitsuki asks if Eijirou would like to stay with them, he always says no.
Between dragons they have adventures. Their bells sing songs of gold. They fight badgers in the forests and rams in the mountains, and together they dispel an imp. That gets them both scratched up something awful, and scolded by Mitsuki something worse. Once they pocket a scale fallen from one of the dragons that Eijirou rejects, but Mitsuki makes them give it back.
“We do not take from dragons,” she says. “We accept.”
Which is well enough, because Eijirou makes a habit of gifting Katsuki with junk. He brings him the small animal bones he finds, or the shiny things that catch his eye, or even his teeth as they fall out and grow back sharper.
“Gross,” he says about the animals, and “Ew,” he says about the teeth, but he tucks them all away for safe keeping regardless. Most of the shiny stuff is useless, but Eijirou’s eyes are big and bright when Katsuki closes his fingers over them, so he keeps that stuff too.
Once he even gives him one of his scales. It’s different from the teeth, more precious. Small and red and sharp, and tougher than crystal. Looks like crystal too, see-through, faceted, shining in the light. During a scrap it was knocked loose, and it bothered him for a whole week before Katsuki got him to sit still long enough to pluck it out. Eijirou pressed it into his palm, and from then on if it wasn’t jangling in his pocket with the teeth, it was pinched between his thumb and forefinger.
Six hours before everyone he has ever loved is murdered, Katsuki is holding that scale up to the sun. Through it he can see the outline of his fingertips. He is nine years old.
“Katsuki,” says Eijirou. He’s jittery. He wants to play.
They’re following the path of a wide and tumbling river as they track a dragon. His parents are arguing about how to proceed.
“We’ll have to cross soon,” his father is saying. “And the river will help to hide our tracks.”
“How long are we going to run and cower like this, Masaru?” his mother fires back. “We should stand and fight. Removing the threat is the more effective way of protecting the dragons than simply warning them.”
Katsuki turns to look at them, and has to blink the light from his eyes. He starts to lower his hand.
Eijirou pounces on him, laughing, and just like that the scale slips from his fingers. It arcs through the sky, winking as it spins and spins. Into the river it falls. Into the river Katsuki follows.
He hears his parents cry out, but only for a moment, and then all sound is deafened by the rush and roar of the river. It’s cold and consuming and Katsuki loses his breath, but he keeps his eyes open, and far off in the whipping water he sees a flicker of red. He’s tossed and he’s tumbled and he loses it. Thrashes to the surface, claws at a lungful of air. He’s dragged back under. There it is again. Closer.
He reaches out, and then an outcropping of rock slams into his side, and everything goes white with pain. There’s water in his lungs and he can’t see or feel or hear or anything, anything.
Two arms lock around him and the terror washes away. Of course Eijirou followed him. He knew he would.
They drag themselves onto the muddy bank and lay there, achy and exhausted. Katsuki has no idea how far the river has dragged them. He cranes his neck but it is no use: he can’t see the camp, not even as a speck in the distance, and he can no longer hear his parents. He wipes his sopping hair from his eyes with a hand and leaves it there, feeling foolish and failed. His mother will have his hide for this and he did not even retrieve Eijirou’s scale.
Stupid. Eijirou has hundreds more. Any that fall out he’ll give to Katsuki. It makes no sense to get precious about one little scale. The first scale.
“Katsuki.” Eijirou’s voice is muffled by Katsuki’s shoulder. Through his shirt Katsuki can feel the pinprick points of his teeth. “Katsuki.”
Eijirou paws at his face until Katsuki is forced to bat his hand away, and blink the water from his eyes. For a moment, the sun is deeply red in the sky, despite only being late afternoon—and then his vision clears, and that deep red sun resolves into a crimson shard of crystal. The scale.
Katsuki sits bolt upright. He snatches it up and yes, yes, it is the scale, it is his scale, he would know it anywhere.
“You got it,” he breathes. He feels Eijirou’s pride before he looks down and sees it for himself: his shining eyes, all his sharp and grinning teeth. Katsuki punches his shoulder. It is not enough to expel his triumph and his joy, and so he laughs, and Eijirou laughs too, and Katsuki falls back, and they laugh together.
After a minute or three, when his mirth has become more manageable, Katsuki wobbles to his feet. Eijirou remains splayed on the ground, eyes shut.
“C’mon, get up,” Katsuki orders.
Eijirou doesn’t move.
“Get up. Mitsuki’s going to skin us alive if we don’t get back soon.”
Katsuki kicks him. Eijirou snorts and rolls away.
Then he yelps, because Katsuki has caught him under the arms and started dragging him away from the river. He doesn’t get far; Eijirou is denser than he looks, and it doesn’t help when he goes boneless in Katsuki’s hold.
“Lazy dragon,” Katsuki grunts, and heaves another few inches, “Lazy, dumb dragon. Come on.”
He trips over his feet and lands hard on his back. Eijirou snickers, and then he darts over and curls up on Katsuki’s chest. In seconds his weight sinks in against him. He’s snoring softly.
Katsuki huffs. Beneath his breath he calls Eijirou dumb and silly, but he curls around him, and closes his eyes.
:
Evening is well on its way to night when they finally set off down the riverbank. It’s a slow, uncomfortable trudge, wet and cold, and the few places that are dry have dried stiff, and muddy. Katsuki keeps one hand in his pocket, assured of the waterlogged presence of teeth and scale.
It is full dark by the time they see the light of camp. All of Katsuki’s bones get heavier with the weight of relief. He longs for the warmth of the fire, and to peel out of his wet clothes. He even longs for his mother’s inevitable tirade, because afterward his father will soothe her and she will sigh, and call Katsuki and Eijirou her little monsters, and hold them and kiss their foreheads. The future chief of the dragon seekers should not need his mother’s comfort, but no one other than Eijirou will ever know.
The fire grows brighter, and brighter. Ever brighter.
:
Everything Katsuki has ever known is burning. Everyone he has ever loved is gone.
The fire is deafening. He doesn’t know why that surprises him. It roars, louder than any dragon, and burns so hot that the water in his clothes and hair and mouth has cooked away. His eyes are too dry for tears, but he doesn’t think he would cry even if he could.
He does not know how to feel. Here is his life and here is his future, up in so much smoke. Here is his mother, a smear of ash on his cheek. He cannot hear his own bell over the howling fire.
He looks to Eijirou, whose scales are rippling across his skin, whose horns and wings are there and gone again, whose teeth and eyes flicker with firelight, who has no words for how it feels to watch a life die but who has endured it all before. Eijirou who clutches Katsuki’s hand and looks him in the eyes, and lets his bell speak for them both: it’s time to run.
“And who is this?”
There is a man in the fire. An old man, standing unburned beneath the leathery black limb of a monster. He has a bristling mustache and a round pair of spectacles. Katsuki can see his large square teeth and not his eyes.
“What sweet looking children,” says the man. “You boys are dragon seekers, aren’t you? My friends and I have been looking for you for a long time.”
He comes closer, and his steps are shadowed. One, two, three more monsters. Their skin eats up the light.
“We came to help, but we were too late. I’m so happy there were survivors. Don’t be afraid. You’re safe now. I’m a doctor.”
Run, says Eijirou’s bell, and the man says, “Have either of you seen a young dragon?”
Katsuki’s bell screams. Katsuki screams too.
:
He is attacking the doctor. He is clawing at his eyes. There is fire. There is pain.
Katsuki processes it all in fractured still-life images. Disjointed and feverish. There is fire. There is a monster. The taste of smoke. The taste of blood. Pain. There is Eijirou, and Eijirou’s fangs, and the monster letting go of him. There is the monster seizing Eijirou. There is fire. There is Eijirou shifting into a dragon and slipping from its grasp, and Katsuki catching him, and the wildness in Eijirou’s eyes, and Katsuki calling him away from it. They are running. There is fire. There is a starless sky, and the husk of someone he knew, and there is fire, and they are running, and they are running, and there—
There is the doctor grabbing Eijirou. His broken spectacles, his bleeding eye, his furious bared teeth. There is Katsuki’s hand without Eijirou’s hand. There is Eijirou, kicking and shrieking, and his foot connecting with Katsuki’s sternum.
And then there is the river.
:
It’s cold in the river. It’s dark. There is an outcropping of rock, and there are no arms to catch him.
:
In ten years, Katsuki will remember the first thing he noticed when he woke up.
Not the cry of the seabirds. Not the white sunlight burning through the thin skin of his eyelids. Not the boy, kneeling at his side and asking if he’s alright, and not the grit under his nails or the salt on his tongue. He’ll think that it’s blood, and then he’ll learn that it’s only sea water. The river deposited him on the coast.
But before any of that he will notice the bell inside his heart, yearning, yearning, yearning for an echo. And yearning. And yearning.
Eijirou is gone. Everyone is gone. Katsuki wants to be angry, he wants to kill someone, but the old man is gone too. The only one here is this boy with his freckled face and his big worried eyes, and Katsuki hates him. He pushes him as hard as he can, and when he tumbles backward Katsuki follows. He hits and hits. He punches and punches. Everyone is gone but this snively boy with his pitying eyes is here. Katsuki doesn’t want him. He wants the dragon seekers. He wants his mother. He wants Eijirou, but Eijirou is gone, and Katsuki didn’t protect him, and—and.
And whose fault is that, Katsuki? Whose fault is it really? Whose fault is it always?
The boy blinks up at him. He has a nosebleed and a swelling eye. Katsuki’s fists drop, and his gaze lifts, and there, far off in the distance, he sees a thin line of smoke. Here is Katsuki’s home, miles and miles away, a black thread rending the sky in two. Here is Katsuki, alone. Here is the end.
Katsuki closes his eyes. Here is the end.
:
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