Ten Years Before...

1989. CLAMP Campus, Elementary School Division, Classroom 3-Z.

Imonoyama Nokoru sat at his desk, bored. His thoughts were most definitely not on the advanced botany lecture his class was receiving. If anyone had bothered to look at the notes he was taking, in fact, they would have eventually puzzled out that they were the plans for a giant robot. Not that this would be so unusual for a bored third grade student... except that Nokoru's plans were ones that actually had a high chance of actually working.

(The plans for Potatotron 2000 would, alas, end up in his wastebasket at home that evening and the robot would never be built. On such things as a child's short attention span does the fate of the world sometimes hinge.)

A short distance away, in a classroom for students a year younger, Takamura Suoh sat. His attention was fast on his teacher, and he was taking rapid notes in a graceful handwriting that belied his age. The Takamura clan believed quite firmly in the fine arts as well as the martial, owing to the fact that one never knew when a declaration of war might need to be sent tied to an arrow. And if one was going to start a war between families, it should at least be in the best handwriting.

(Suoh loved having the Heike Monogatari read to him as a bedtime story.)

Somewhere else entirely in Tokyo, a wide-eyed first grader cut out flower-shaped butter cookies and laid them deftly on a baking sheet, his mind on an entry exam his teacher had recommended to his mothers. He'd heard of CLAMP Campus...

And, In The End...
by K. Stonham
first released 21st October, 2008

Present Day...

1999. CLAMP Campus Chairman's Office.

The building shook again, this trembler longer and sharper than the previous ones. Akira yelped, grabbing his cup of tea before it could rattle its way off the desk and shatter on the floor. Hot liquid sloshed on his hand in reward. Suoh merely looked up from his terminal, eyes flickering first to Nokoru, then to Akira, then back to the screen as he continued to type. Nokoru, though, stood up from his desk, turning to look out the large picture window behind it.

This wasn't like the other earthquakes, he thought, feeling the vibrations increasing through the soles of his shoes. At the very edge of his vision, the waters of the bay surrounding the Campus rushed by, backward into the open sea. They seemed to take his stomach and heart and mind with them, and for a moment it was all he could do to realize what it meant.

"Suoh," he said, his voice cracking as it had never broken before, not even in adolescence, "Akira."

The both of them stood and came to him. His closest friends, the ones he loved more than anything, or anyone. More than his own blood kin, more than himself. Out in the distance, the sea mounded up.

He turned to face them. This was his fault, no one else's. He didn't know what he could have, should have done differently, but obviously he'd done something wrong because it wasn't supposed to happen this way-

"Kaichou?" Akira asked, seeing his expression.

He didn't know what to say. "I'm sorry" would in no way suffice. Suoh looked beyond him and drew in a sharp breath. Caught by this, Akira looked into the distance too and went pale.

In the end, it was Suoh who spoke first. "So," he said lowly, head bowed, "we lose."

"Takamura-sempai," Akira said. "Kaichou..." He was twisting his wedding ring almost absently, his thoughts clearly going to Utako-hime and his mothers. The tears shimmering in his gray eyes must have matched Nokoru's own.

"Gentlemen," Nokoru said, "it has been an honor, and my pleasure, to have known you."

And then the world ended.

Ten Years Later...

2009. Karuizawa, Nagano, Japan.

The sun was warm on Suoh's face. The breeze was light and pleasant. Birds sang and from somewhere behind him came a rhythmic banging that indicated the house was getting its roof patched. Grunting in pleasure, he pushed his measure forward and continued hewing up a new row parallel to the last. The soil had long since stopped being pleasing to his fingers, but it was with a Zen-like lack of irritation that he pulled up every tangle of root and grass and tossed it with a swish-shush into a pile destined for the compost. Every rock went with a swish-clatter into the pile for fencing. It was probably petty of him, but every single time his ears told him his aim was true he still felt a mild stab of vicious satisfaction. He wasn't useless.

"Takamura-sempai!"

Suoh felt his mouth quirk in a smile as he sat up, arching his spine, onto his heels. "Over here, Akira," he called back.

The quiet, athletic tread he'd know blindfolded stalked past plants short and tall, growing less muted with each passing row, until his friend/brother came into view. "It's getting hot, so I thought you'd like something to drink."

"I would. Thank you." Suoh smiled fully; Akira's courtesy was one thing that nothing in the world could change. He accepted the mug Akira handed him and waited until the other sat down before sipping at it. The cool drink was refreshing, flavored with something sweet... some kind of berry, he guessed. In the distance Nokoru's hammer had fallen silent, which meant that he was probably taking a break as well thanks to their mother hen doctor. Suoh moved his fingers up and down the rough ridges of the fired clay cup, remembering when once upon a time Akira had served them tea in the most exquisite bone china.

Akira finally broke their companionable silence, remarking, "It looks like we'll have a good harvest this year."

Suoh nodded. "I hope so." The three of them had come close enough to starving to death the first few winters. Now their hands were callused not just from the martial arts he and Akira had studied a lifetime ago, but from near-constant fieldwork. "Did you go check Michiko-chan's arm yet?"

"I did. It's healing up nicely." Akira slurped his beverage thoughtfully. "Her mother cut her hair yesterday. For just a second... I thought she looked like Utako-san."

"I'm sorry," Suoh said.

"No, it's all right." Akira's fingers were probably on his wedding band again. No matter how bad things had gotten, neither of them had ever considered selling or trading their rings for food or shelter. "Sometimes I almost forget, otherwise..."

"Aah." In his mind's eye his Wisteria Fairy appeared before Suoh, eternally young and beautiful, long pale hair blowing in the breeze. He couldn't know what had happened to her, to Utako... to anyone. He could only hope they'd died quickly and painlessly, as so many hadn't. Even if he'd initially thought they might still be alive, he'd long since given up hope and simply burned a joss stick for them, on birthdays and the day of the world's end.

He was drawn out of his thoughts by Akira setting down his mug and fingering Suoh's worn sleeve. "Natsumi-san said she'd have a length of cloth finished soon, Sempai..."

Tempting, but... "No," Suoh said, shaking his head. "This is fine for a while yet, Akira."

"But Sempai-"

"It's not falling apart, so I'd rather wait until the need's a bit more dire."

"Says you," Akira muttered under his breath, but Suoh's ears caught it.

"Akira, I know what holes in my clothing feel like. This haori isn't worn out yet. Leave it be." Unspoken was that they might need their credit with their neighbor for a more dire situation later.

An acquiescing sigh. "Yes, Sempai..."

"How is Kaichou looking?"

Another sigh, this one more pensive. "Too thin, as always."

No change, then, for their once fearless leader. Not that Suoh had expected one. Still, hope was treacherous and hard to root out fully. As long as there was life, as the saying went, there was hope. Maybe someday Nokoru would stop blaming himself...

The last thing he'd ever seen was the wall of glass-green sea bearing down on the Campus as the world ended. For the first time in his life Suoh had known the meaning of the word helpless. There hadn't been time to do anything, not even time enough for a final phone call to Nagisa. All he'd been able to do was lunge at Nokoru, to try to take the brunt of the wave and the wall on himself, to spare Nokoru and Akira whatever little he could... after that it was all a blur of blinding pain and pressure and the need to breathe.

He'd come to, half-buried in mud and beneath a splintered tree trunk, listening to distant screaming voices, wondering why the mist was so thick. When he'd realized that there was no mist... well, he wasn't proud of however long he'd spent panicking. But he was a Takamura, and Takamuras were survivors. After that first bout of blind panic, he'd dug himself out of the mud, levering the tree off of himself. A broken branch had made a rudimentary cane, and he'd headed off toward the sound of voices, using the branch to check the ground.

Suoh might have been blind, but he was still strong and his clan had conducted enough exercises in darkness or with blindfolds that he'd known how to adapt, doing his part in rescue efforts. Not everyone had survived, of course, and scavenging for food and water in the tsunami-ravaged remains of Tokyo had nearly broken their ragtag band of survivors apart more times than he'd wanted to count as they fought like dogs over scraps. No help had come, as he'd told them it wouldn't, as they made their way inland. The more days that passed and proved him right, the more the others had wondered what he knew that they didn't.

When he'd told them, it had finally fractured their group. A few, those who believed him or simply trusted him, had stayed. Most of their group had left. He didn't know what had happened to them.

After a few months of what was less than even subsistence living, a fellow survivor had passed along word of a doctor in a camp to the north. Worried about Akemi's cough and the coming cold weather, Suoh and his group had gratefully taken the man's directions and followed them.

He hadn't thought, hadn't even dared dream that doctor would be Akira. The reunion with his friend was the only time in his life that Suoh could remember breaking down and crying. What were dignity and composure compared to the fact that Ijyuin was alive?

He'd been at the settlement for months, using his skills as a doctor and whatever rudimentary supplies could be scavenged to help people, and his administrative skills on the side to make sure that everyone got something to eat, something to drink, a blanket to share. People really were amazing, and were rebuilding already out of the ruins. Any bodies found, animal or human, were burned, both to honor the dead and to stave off disease. They had enough of that already, without adding extra incentive to the equation! Fortunately a Buddhist priest had made his way to their encampment and performed what rites he could. The last thing they needed, Akira thought with a shiver, the supernatural events of the world's end still being too clear in his mind, was for any spirits to take umbrage at the lack of respect paid them...

Most mornings he woke to shooting pain in his right hand which didn't stop for an hour or more after he surrendered his blanket back to the common pile. It wouldn't have bothered him so much except that they were phantom pains. The hand had been half-severed when he'd surfaced amid the flotsam and jetsam of the wave debris, and it had been all he'd been able to do with his good hand to rip fabric from the hem of his shirt and use his teeth to tie a tourniquet, stemming the blood flow. He didn't even know what had caused the damage. Infection had set in fast and it had barely been a day later when he'd helped give instruction to two other survivors on how to sterilize a relatively sharp metal edge, complete the amputation, and then cauterize the wound. He'd been delirious for a week afterward, but fortunately recovered. Luckily his companions hadn't abandoned him, realizing that if he lived a doctor would have vital skills.

Takamura-sempai was pale. "It's really all right," Akira tried to tell him. "I'm ambidextrous, remember?" Though his left side had always been weaker than his natural right. Still, he was improving now. More than that, though, he was worried about Suoh. He'd noticed the leader of the newest pack of strangers moving oddly, rhythmically sweeping the ground before him with a stick. The shock of realizing it was his friend had driven it momentarily from his mind, but now he could see how Suoh's golden eyes didn't focus, didn't look at him. At anything. "Sempai, your eyes..."

Suoh shook his head. "It's been months, Ijyuin." He sounded resigned to his blindness, stronger than Akira ever would be. "Even if it wasn't, there's no ability to fix them in this new world."

Akira bit his lip, wanting to help... but as his sempai rightly pointed out, completely unable to. He couldn't even determine the cause with the equipment he had at hand, let alone be able to fix them. He sighed. "You're right," he acquiesced.

Takamura-sempai hesitated, then stretched out a hand between them. "May I, Ijyuin?"

Akira nodded, then felt silly; his sempai wouldn't be able to see the gesture. "Of course." He reached out, placed his arm in Suoh's dirty, callused hand. Suoh gave what for him was a smile and propped his walking stick against one shoulder, using both hands to undo the buttons of the tattered, filthy sleeve cuff. His fingers delicately examined the truncated limb. What he felt caused him to frown.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly, head bowed.

"We're alive," Akira replied. "That's what matters."

Suoh nodded but didn't release his arm, turning just slightly to the rest of the encampment that he couldn't see. "So what do we do now?"

Akira shrugged. "Do what we do best. Try to hold things together-" And just like that Nokoru's absence came up between them as his voice choked off.

"Try to hold things together in Kaichou's wake," Suoh said for him in a low voice, taking a shuddering breath.

It hurt again, all of a sudden, the loss he'd been able to endure by working through the intervening months. It had been okay when it had just been him. He'd been able to fool himself somewhere in the back of his mind into thinking that even if Utako-san never turned up, even if his mothers never turned up, or his father or uncle or neighbor... he'd been able to fool himself into thinking that he'd be okay because he had work to do, important work. He was a doctor, after all. He was needed.

Takamura-sempai showing up threatened to suddenly knock that all down like a house of cards in an earthquake because there was a dynamic that was supposed to exist. If Takamura-sempai was here, then Kaichou was supposed to be here as well, and if it wasn't the three of them against the world, then-

"He might show up still," Suoh said, even though the words sounded hollow. He cracked a smile that even he didn't seem to believe in. "You know Kaichou, after all."

"Y-yeah," Akira said, snuffling back tears. "'Because Kaichou is Kaichou'," he quoted their old mantra.

"Yeah."

There was a moment's silence. "So, you have patients for me, Sempai?"

A more genuine smile, one grateful for the distraction, and a nod. Suoh's fingers gracefully buttoned Akira's empty sleeve cuff back up. "Yeah. I think we're generally okay, but Akemi-san has a cough that's not going away..."

Just like that, they were back together, working as a team, even if the team was missing its third member. Suoh had a pair of working hands and Akira had a pair of working eyes, and even if there were a few doubters who grumbled that the blinded man wasn't doing anything Ijyuin-sensei hadn't been able to manage himself... well, they were silenced the first time Suoh took down the alpha of a pack of feral dogs, sending all the rest scurrying away from the encampment before they could hurt anyone or steal from the carefully hoarded food stores.

After that, Takamura Suoh was one of the most valued leads on sentry duty. The Takamura clan's training, Akira thought one day, watching his sempai at target practice with his shuriken, really must have been incredible. The wiry alpha dog, which Suoh had named "Pochi" for a head-scratching lack of imagination, watched from Akira's side. It now followed Suoh around constantly, as adoring as any lapdog Akira had seen. It must have been someone's pet before the collapse of civilization, and hunger had driven it wild. Now, with a master again, someone to feed it, it was as tame as any, sleeping at their feet while Suoh and Akira slept back-to-back, guarding one another, holding onto the last remnant of the world they'd known.

The tsunami had only been able to go so far inland. If nothing else, the increasing elevation had eventually defeated it, and the earthquakes had only been able to do so much damage to the more sparsely populated agricultural areas. It was toward these inland areas that the handfuls of coastal survivors fled, there finding (and building, if there was none) shelter and laying in food stores. The Dragons of Earth, Suoh mused one cold, rainy night while desecrating a shuriken, using its edge to carve a walking stick better suited to his hand, height, and skills, might have indeed killed most of the planet's population by that deft attack on coastal areas, but some humans still survived. Maybe, if they were lucky, this time the memory of the flood would remain and make them rebuild civilization more in harmony with nature.

...Likely not, he mentally sighed, considering how well the tale of Noah had worked as a warning in modern times.

He wondered how many had died in the global cataclysm and how many had survived. He doubted one in ten was still alive. Maybe not even one in a hundred. And how many people could one person know? At least he knew Ijyuin in this ramshackle village. Most people here couldn't even claim knowing one survivor from their life before. Mothers torn from daughters, fathers from sons, husbands from wives-

He stopped carving and touched his wedding band, needing to be sure it was still there. That even if he'd lost Nagisa (breathe, breathe, still just keep breathing and hold on to that picture of long lavender hair in the breeze...) he hadn't lost the symbol of their bond. She was still there for him, somewhere, and someday they'd meet again. Even if it took until another lifetime.

He sighed, knowing from the chill air and the way warmth momentarily blossomed back against his face that his breath had frosted in the air. He might not have needed light the way other night sentries did, but the rain muddled his hearing as surely as the darkness muddled their eyes. The steady downpour of winter rain eroded all other sound and made him wish to be inside, in the comparative warmth of the building he and Pochi shared with Akira and six other men.

Pochi, at his feet, whined. Stowing the shuriken in his wrist sheath in what he trusted was still a sleight-of-hand manner, Suoh got to his feet, listening. The steady shush of the rain, the roaring gurgle of the river, the pattering of water on rooftops, the constant drip-drip-drip from the eaves... and somewhere beyond, a slow, steady splashing.

He listened hard. Multiple feet. Multiple breaths, at least three.

Suoh was crippled by the rain hiding the sounds he needed to hear. But he wasn't fool enough to stand on his pride, not when they'd dealt with raiding bands twice already since fall. A single rap of his staff against the wall brought a flurry of thuds from inside and the door to his right opening. "At least three," he said sotto voce, knowing from the even, controlled breath and the way the floorboards didn't squeak that Ijyuin had been the first to come out. The lantern creaked as someone hooked it to a nail in the eaves. The splashing drew closer, and now he could make out that one of the sets of footsteps was much faster than the others. A child, perhaps, keeping up?

"A woman," Ijyuin murmured to him; they must be within the light cast by the lantern now, drawing closer. "A man. A child-six years, perhaps."

"Survivors," Suoh speculated in the same tone, "or a raiding party feint, do you think?"

Ijyuin was silent for a moment, no doubt studying faces. "The woman is distressed, that's clear. The child is tired. The man-" He sucked his breath in rapidly. Then he was gone, footsteps splashing in the rain.

"Ijyuin!" There was a murmur of sound, but few words, from their bunkmates as they watched from under the eaves. "What's he doing?" Suoh demanded impatiently.

"He's... hugging the man," Tomo said almost reluctantly.

Hugging...?

Suoh's eyes flew open in realization. "Does he have blond hair?" he asked urgently.

"Ijyuin-sensei?"

The sound of a smack. "Not sensei, the stranger, you moron!" Shion chided. "Could be blond, Takamura-san," he judged. "Hard to tell in this light."

That was enough for Suoh, and he was off the deck following Ijyuin's trail to the woman and the child and... and maybe, impossibly, Kaichou.

The woman stopped him before he got there. "Please," she said, and her voice was rough with care and worry, "please can you help us?" A rustle and shift in the pattering of rain and something was held out to him from beneath whatever cloak or coat she was wearing. Suoh touched it on instinct and sucked in his breath as he felt the burning flesh of an infant.

"Ijyuin!"

They ended up ensconced in the men's hut for just the night. Natsumi-san and Erika-chan were wrapped in blankets and what dry clothing could be scrounged up, tucked under the kotatsu sipping hot tea while Akira examined the infant and sent Shuuichi-san running to the central storehouse for what he'd need to try to break little Michiko's fever. Tomo-san had taken over Takamura-sempai's turn on guard duty and Suoh now sat next to Nokoru, their knees nearly touching. Kaichou gave no sign of recognizing him, as he hadn't Akira, but-

Later, he told himself. Their kaichou was alive and here, and Akira had to concentrate on helping Natsumi's baby.

"-don't know how he found us," Natsumi-san was saying. "He just came out of nowhere one day and started looking after us. I was afraid at first-"

"Of course," Shion said grimly. There was a reason, after all, that most of their quarters were divided by gender. Some of the women... hadn't had good experiences before making it to the village.

"He's really sweet, though. I don't think he can talk; I don't even know his name..."

"Nokoru," Suoh said quietly, but it resonated. "His name is Imonoyama Nokoru. He's been our," he said with a nod at Akira, "friend since elementary school."

"Is that so," Natsumi said wonderingly. Akira took a glance at her, at Nokoru, who still seemed... blank. His eyes didn't focus, though not in the same way that Takamura-sempai's didn't. Natsumi smiled at Nokoru, though. "Thank you," she said sincerely, "Imonoyama-san."

It was much, much later that night, when the fire was banked low and only Akira and Suoh were left awake, watching over little Michiko, that Suoh murmured quietly, "Just like Kaichou."

Akira blinked at his sempai for a moment before making an inquiring noise.

Suoh cracked a lopsided smile and explained, "Even... he still shows up guarding no less than three ladies."

Akira blinked again, then slowly fell over in a fit of giggles that he muffled in his fist. His head ending up on Suoh's knee, and Suoh grinned down at him. Somehow, Akira felt sure in that one moment, everything was going to be all right now. His sempai's good humor faded, though, and Akira's amusement with it. Suoh looked sightlessly at the bit of floor where Nokoru had curled up to sleep, still without saying a single word. "Do you think he'll be all right?"

Akira considered it as he slowly sat up. "I don't know," he replied honestly. "It depends on the cause of the trauma. Psychological... maybe eventually?" He shook his head in the negative, allowing himself to vent a bit of frustration. "Unfortunately I'm not a psychiatrist. Physical?" He touched his fingers gently to the thick, straggly blue hair on the back of Suoh's head. At his best guess, some sort of blow to the head had resulted in his sempai's retinas detaching. If their kaichou had similarly experienced a blow to his head... there was no way of knowing what kind of damage might have occurred. Internal bleeding was just the first thing that sprang to mind, most if not all possible injuries incorrectable at their present level of technology. It might have to be simply miracle enough that all three of them were still alive, however damaged. He sighed. "I don't think it would be anything I could fix."

Suoh's fingers covered his and squeezed briefly. "Whatever happens... or has happened," he amended, "he's still our kaichou."

Akira nodded. "Whatever happens."

Rations ran thin the longer winter drizzled on, and grumbling voices grew louder and louder. It often fell to Suoh and Akira to physically break up fights as one person accused another of taking more than their share, of hoarding, of scheming or theft. It began to feel like things were breaking again, and even the rare expeditions to the forest never seemed to bring back enough meat or gleaned vegetables to fill anyone's belly. Few of them had any experience in growing things, and it was frustrating to know that if more of them had known anything about gardening or rice farming they could have increased their food harvest the past fall and summer. As it was, there was a constant guard on the seed saved for next year's planting.

At least, Suoh though, sipping his soup, there was Akira. Though it was no comparison to the heyday of his exquisite tea and fine pastries, their resident doctor was hands-down the best cook in the camp and made mealtime into theater. A nightly enactment of the old "Stone Soup" story kept all the children entertained and kept the bonds of the community from fraying even faster than they already were.

Nokoru, though, remained silent and, on the rare occasions Suoh had to touch him, to grab his arm, too thin by far. The youngest of the Imonoyama had always been slender but now seemed almost emaciated. They were all starving, but, Akira murmured, Nokoru didn't even take half a ladleful of soup for himself, pouring his extra into the bowl of whatever lady or child looked hungriest. It was food for thought, and think Suoh certainly did as he did his part, telling after-meal stories, dragging old myths and legends out of his memory, reciting the Heike Monogatari flawlessly every evening after dinner. The serial and his near-eidetic recall of it certainly seemed to amaze the camp. Suoh only smiled a little; he had been at the top of his class at CLAMP Campus for a reason. Besides, the Heike Monogatari had always been his favorite of the classics. The Takamura clan recited it to their children as bedtime stories.

"Kaichou," he said one day while the two of them were on sentry duty, walking the perimeter with Pochi, "I don't blame you for this. No one does. No one can. The three of us weren't Dragons of Heaven. It wasn't our charge to save humanity. We helped them all we possibly could, but that they failed was not our fault." Whether or not that blue gaze sharpened any or not he couldn't know, nor even if he was being paid attention to. But he continued regardless. The finest mind in the world was locked away between those two ears, and while neither of them had ever really been able to hold Nokoru back, the chairman had at least usually listened to him and Ijyuin. "It's not your fault that they're dead. Not the former Chairwoman, not your brothers and sisters, not Nagisa-san or Utako-san or my family or Akira's... none of them."

Still no response. Irritated, Suoh planted himself in Nokoru's path, placing a hand on either side of the blond's head, forcing Nokoru to look at him. He hoped. "Kaichou-"

And just like that the words were slammed out of him as he was knocked to the ground, breath leaving his lungs in a surprised puff as it took a second to sort out the crack of his head against the ground from the flat crack of...

Cordite, and blood, and Nokoru's weight atop him. He clutched instinctively at the other man's left arm, feeling sticky wet heat on his fingers as Nokoru sat up and looked beyond them. Part of Suoh was frozen in time at age eight, staring unbelievingly at his upperclassman who'd just been shot to protect him. The rest of him was realizing that he'd been stupid, not concentrating on hearing what was around him for the sake of trying to talk to someone who clearly wasn't ready to talk yet.

Someone had shot Nokoru.

"Kaichou," he said lowly, hearing the crashes in the brush of people who were neither woodsmen nor as trained as he and Ijyuin were, "let me up."

It was a long second, but eventually Nokoru acquiesced, moving off of Suoh.

"Pochi," Suoh instructed, sitting up and reaching for the staff that had fallen to his left, "stay with Kaichou. Guard." And then shuriken were between his fingers and he let himself move, using ears and spatial awareness, touch and the taste of wind and the scent of bodies too long unwashed to guide his movement.

No one hurt his kaichou.

Nokoru hissed as the cotton swab soaked in hydrogen peroxide was applied to his injury. "Don't such a baby, Kaichou," Akira chided. "You don't even need stitches for this. Unlike all those raiders 'Zatoichi'-sempai left beaten senseless and pinned to the ground..." His pointed chiding resulted in no more than a pleased smirk from that upperclassman. Akira sighed. "Still," he said, eyes on the old scar slightly higher up Nokoru's arm, "I suppose I should be glad they didn't get the drop on both of you."

"Ijyuin!" Suoh immediately protested. Akira put on the innocent smile that had always defeated his sempai.

"I suppose that since you left them alive we've got to figure out how to stretch our supplies to feed them too," he mused.

Suoh snorted. "That's not going to be a popular train of thought," he warned.

"We can't just kill them, and if we send them on their way they'll only be back," Akira pointed out.

"There's a cache," a third voice said quietly.

Both of them froze and looked at the scraggly blond, who was looking at neither of them, but at the floor.

"It's a storehouse about two days from here," Nokoru continued slowly, almost inaudible. "I found it in the fall before Natsumi-san..."

"Kaichou?" Suoh moved as noiselessly as Akira had ever seen his ninja friend do, standing on Nokoru's other side. One hand was held out but hesitated, almost seeming afraid to touch their leader.

"I saw him in the trees while you were talking to me," Nokoru said. "He had that rifle aimed at you and I couldn't... I couldn't let him hurt you. I couldn't let you be hurt any more, not for me..."

"Kaichou." Suoh's hand found Nokoru's shoulder, then the ninja went to his knees. "Kaichou, I have never gotten hurt because of you."

"Tell me that when you can see again, Suoh, and when Akira has his hand back," Nokoru whispered harshly.

Akira swallowed, eyes wide. Nokoru felt guilty... about that?

"Kaichou," he said quietly, "you didn't chop my hand off. You didn't cause that tsunami. This isn't your fault."

"What do you think you could have done differently?" Suoh demanded angrily. "Not given that sword up? Not helped the Dragons of Heaven? Do you honestly think that anything else you could have done would have made a damn difference, Kaichou?" He snorted harshly, derisively. "It was foreordained, remember? They lost. We survived."

Nokoru looked up and his blue eyes were haunted, lost. "Not all of us..." he replied.

"No," Akira agreed sadly, twisting his wedding band. "Not all of us survived. But... it's not a good way to honor all those who died by refusing to live for them." He paused, then jabbed the cotton ball against Nokoru's arm again.

"Ow! Akira!"

"You've always been the worst patient," Akira informed him. "Takamura-sempai doesn't even whimper when I have to give him stitches."

"You can't blame him for not having martial arts training, Ijyuin," Suoh remarked, seeming to pick up on what Akira was trying to do.

"Yes I can," Akira replied calmly. "With the two of us around, he's really got no excuse."

"You do remember the time you tried to teach him a basic block, don't you, Ijyuin?"

"No one gets it on the first try," Akira said, pulling out a tube of antiseptic cream.

Nokoru whimpered. "Akira's being mean to me, Suoh..."

"You deserve it," Suoh retorted. "It serves you right for blaming yourself."

Nokoru tensed.

"It is not your fault," Suoh reiterated. "I'm alive. Ijyuin's alive. You're alive. And we need your brain to plan us a way to get to that storehouse and bring the supplies back on limited manpower and resources. Get working."

There was a moment's silence as Akira wrapped gauze around the injury and taped it off, then Nokoru murmured, "Even after the end of the world you're still making me do paperwork. It figures."

Akira sighed benignly and patted Nokoru on top of his golden head. "If you get enough done, I'll make tea later."

Nokoru closed his eyes.

He knew what they were doing. Suoh and Akira-his! a part of him insisted, greedily latching on to the two like the lifelines to sanity that they were-were trying to fall back into the pattern the three of them had held so long. They were trying to make him fall back into that pattern too, to make him stay with them.

He didn't know if he could. The sharp stab of fear at seeing that rifle pointed at Suoh's back had pierced the veil that weighed him down from the rest of the world. It had been like a bucket of ice water, seeing that danger to one of the two whose life he valued more than anything. He'd woken up just barely in time to move, to push Suoh down. Not that Suoh was helpless, even blind... the number of raiders he'd taken down single-handedly proved that he was as capable as ever.

But even if Suoh and Akira didn't blame him for what had become of the world, what had become of them, he still blamed himself. The youngest of the Imonoyama, the best and brightest and most competent... and the one truly important task he'd been given, he'd failed at.

He'd failed the former Chairwoman, who had selected him as her successor. He'd failed his brothers and sisters. He'd failed the students and staff of the Campus he'd run. He'd failed Utako-hime and Nagisa-jyou, the ladies closest to his heart, married as they were to the brothers of his heart. There was no possible way in which he had not failed. The blood of millions, probably billions, was on his hands.

How could he ever be the same person he had been? The same 'Kaichou' that Suoh and Akira expected him still to be? Even trying felt hollow. There was the part of him that wanted to latch onto the two of them and never, ever let go... and then there was the part that felt like a ghost in his own body. It demanded to know if he hadn't done enough yet, and when was he going to try to stop destroying things further.

He was drowning.

"Kaichou."

Again.

"Kaichou."

He opened his eyes. Suoh and Akira, one on either side. Suoh reached a hand out, brushed the back of his knuckles softly against Nokoru's cheek. When had his ninja become so tactile, and what would it do to him if Nokoru let himself fall away from the world again? The fingers of Akira's remaining hand grasped Nokoru's lower arm firmly, with the strength one wouldn't expect from a treasurer or a baker. His gentle thief had always been the most resilient of the three of them, but the hope and hurt in his eyes was plain to see.

They needed him, even more now than he'd always needed them before.

In his mind's eye he saw the former Chairwoman smiling, her eyes veiled from view as always. He knew exactly what she would advise in this situation. When he was younger, with a child's fancies, he'd thought she spoke with the voice of the Campus, which he'd known would be his life. Now, older, he knew that she in fact spoke to him for the world. A mother's voice, and a mother's care, regardless that it was in fact her long-dead sister who had birthed him.

She would want him to live, for those who had lived for him.

Closing his eyes, Nokoru acquiesced to the lady's will.

After a few more lean winters, the decision had been made to split the village up. There was fertile land in Nagano, Nokoru had suggested from the memory of having spent summer vacations in Karuizawa. In the end he and Suoh and Akira, along with Natsumi and her two daughters and Tomo-san, as well as most of Suoh's original band of followers, and a few dozen more, had made the long journey by foot.

It had proved to be a wise decision on their part and their village (set up on what had once been Imonoyama lands, though not too many knew that) prospered. Either it was better soil, or they were finally all getting the knack of farming. He couldn't help feeling guilty that all these people had been reduced to a subsistence level of living. He also knew his nursemaids/brothers didn't approve of the fact that he'd never gotten back to a "healthy" weight. But he'd found that hard enough to maintain when he'd been eating Akira's rich food everyday and doing nothing more strenuous than lifting paperwork. (Contrary to what Suoh thought, helping damsels in distress was not, and never had been, difficult.)

He watched Suoh teaching the children of their village how to swing a staff, or to move noiselessly through the wood. He watched Akira train others, passing on his knowledge of the medical arts. As for himself, he knew he was a lousy teacher so he did what he could, lightening a heavy carried load of firewood, picking pests off their crop plants, writing down the story of what had happened in the end of days in a journal for future generations to read and remember. His eyes were always on the horizon, watching, waiting. He knew Suoh and Akira watched him, still unconvinced in the bottom of their hearts that he wasn't just going to up and leave them someday.

Turning around, Nokoru smiled sweetly at Akira, took Suoh's arm firmly.

He wasn't going anywhere. His brothers needed him.

Author's Note: This was originally written for the "Ten Years Later" challenge on the Livejournal X2009 community. Writing about the Dragons of Heaven winning seemed too status-quo, so I turned to the flood images of what would happen if they lost... and how likely it would be that even with earthquakes and tsunami all humans would be extinguished. I couldn't picture it; life always finds a way. So my favorite trio of detectives were cast in the light of (damaged) survivors. I suspect a few of the Dragons (on either side) survived as well, but, really, they ended up completely irrelevant to the story of this group of survivors. In any case, I hope you enjoyed the story.