Preamble: This can be read standalone, but a few references will be clearer if you've read the Hokushin and Kirin prequel fic Mirror Most Dark, the Hokushin and Raizen prequel fancomic North Bound, and the parallel other-universe (canon-following) result in The enemy of my enemy is my coworker.

When there are no miracles, and you are at his side and holding his hand - a hand that grows colder and more bereft of presence each day, already barely even a ghost of the larger-than-life warmth that was familiar to you for a thousand years - and the king whispers to you, in a nearly imperceptible breath, to form an alliance with Mukuro -

You do not drop his hand.

You do not drop his hand. And you do not say, "Why? Why are you saying this now? If we had done so long ago, if we had reached out the first, second, tenth, twentieth time I had broached the suggestion in the last five centuries when you were still hale and a force to be reckoned with instead of a bag of skin and bones, we would not be here. We would not be little more than a pile of shining pebbles and a cluster of bodies easily brushed aside, in a war between two powers with neither fear of us nor need of anything we have to offer. What have you left me to bargain with? But yes, I will try to form an alliance with Mukuro as you have condemned me to do."

You do not say this. Instead, you continue holding his hand. And you say, calmly and quietly with all the warmth you can muster, "You may rest assured I will commit myself to this."

Which are true words. Even if they do not express the full breadth and depth of any of your feelings.

What good are such feelings for a skeleton already passing death's door?

When there are no miracles, and you have a king-less kingdom to care for, there is no time to mourn. Hard choices must be made. Quickly.

There were no instructions given to you for how to proceed with an alliance; as always, the king had left the practical details up to you. Undoubtedly Mukuro's forces will soon begin an assault on Gandara. To wait, or to move? Who should stay, and who must go? What is most cautious? What is least treacherous?

After much internal debate, internal turmoil, trying to balance prudent decision-making with minimizing the loss of precious time - and precious lives - you finally decide to set out alone. To leave everyone else out of it. If you are successful, they will be brought in. If you are not -

Hopefully they will all be long gone by the time Mukuro or Yomi's forces arrive.

Before you leave, you leave things for others. A system for running intermittent messages back and forth. A chain of command to prevent confusion and chaos. Detailed instructions in case they never hear from you again. For this. For that. Backup plans for backup plans. But most importantly, leaving everyone available to support themselves and each other, and all of the rest of the warriors to mobilize the population out of harm's way. If needed.

If possible. Your decisions gnaw at you. When night falls, you are too tired to grieve.

When there are no miracles, and the news somehow manages to reach you, news from a long distance behind you now, that strangers had made their way to the territory you called home - old friends of the king, far more powerful than could be imagined and unknown to anyone in your kingdom -

You hardly know what to think. How to feel.

These old friends, you hear, came, and mourned, and collected the king's body, and dispersed. They could not be stayed.

Where had they been all this time? Where have they gone? Where are they now? It is too far, too late.

And you were not there.

But perhaps it would not have mattered. The news brought to you is that they were outsiders, isolationists, with little interest in wars or kingdoms. Little interest in anything, save for the corpse.

You alternate between numb ice and silent rage. These old friends of the king who left him centuries ago: what were they, in the end, to the king? What do they know of the span of his life, of its end, of his dreams?

Let them have his cold body. That was all they could be bothered to be there for.

When there are no miracles, and you have finally reached Mukuro's forces, there have been no messages for a long time. You have no way to send news back, and as far as you have been able to tell, whether you succeed or fail, there may very well be no one else left to bring news back to.

It is a good time, a terrible time, for being lost in thoughts. In your thoughts, sometimes there are questions, and no one to answer.

Sometimes there is nothing

Why did things turn out like this? Why? Was it pride? Stubbornness? Idiocy? Apathy? Why? And what good is lamenting your inability to foretell the future? What good is raging at your inability to know things kept from you to the very end?

What good is anything?

When there are no miracles, and you meet at last your counterpart under Mukuro, the one named Kirin, he is as formidable a figure as you have ever imagined. He seems to be smiling behind his mask, though you cannot be sure.

As for you, you are exhausted. Physically. Mentally. But there is no fear. There is nothing left to be fearful for.

But there is surprise.

You are surprised when he calls you by a name you have not heard in a thousand years.

Again. What good is raging at your inability to know things kept from you to the very end?

When there are no miracles, and you have at last been led before Mukuro, a figure buried in bandages, wreathed in wards and seals, a single exposed eye staring lidlessly ahead, unnervingly, at you, as though piercing to your very soul -

You do not break the contact.

One hand offers you a flower. A word indicates it is for your king.

You ignore it.

Mukuro seems to find this, if not impressive, at least amusing.

From within the bandages and seals, a voice, oddly pitched and hollow, rings in the air. It is the voice of one who has seen too much to be easily moved by anything. At the same time, it comes across almost child-like in its whimsical demand. The thought strikes you as strangely familiar.

Strangely comforting.

"So this is Raizen's general," Mukuro says. "I should hope you have at least one good story to entertain me with."

When there are no miracles, you will - you pray - know exactly what to say.

Author's notes: If Yusuke and co. never made it to the Makai, I believe Raizen and Mukuro would have eventually joined forces to counter Yomi. That is, assuming Raizen didn't kick the bucket before they both overcame whatever issues they apparently had about the matter.

Alliance with Mukuro is a strategy Raizen outright recommends to Yusuke before his death, and Mukuro has also explicitly stated she hates Yomi more. So assuming it wasn't just differences in opinion on the matter of food, and their pride, why didn't they do it? It would have been an easy way to end the standoff. Of course, nothing is that easy.

Mukuro's actions after Raizen's death also betray a strange kind of fondness for him, leading to various fanworks theorizing a past relationship of some sort between the two of them. I haven't worked out what that relationship might be for myself yet... but it doesn't really matter here.

In the back of my head there's the thought that in canon, Hokushin could probably keep up with or overtake Mukade pretty easily, so it shouldn't take him that long to get to Mukuro's... but for the purpose of impact in this fic we'll just ignore that.

I would like to conclude by saying I have this whole AU where after Raizen's death, Hokushin ends up joining Mukuro's army solely to fulfill Raizen's final command and I have all these ideas for character redesign and everything! And it's all really vague but also very cool in my head! And this is as far as I've gotten after two+ years of sitting on it. Ah well.