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Giyuu's breath came in short gasps as he ran through the dark streets of Inazuma. The vision in his hand burned like ice when it touched the skin for too long. It was a far cry from the warmth and cheer of the man it belonged to.
He had been running for hours without rest. Everywhere he turned, the Tenryou Commission was close behind. He hadn't been thinking, when he tore his way through the Tenshukaku and snatched the already fading hydro vision from his friend's body.
Only when Giyuu found a deserted laneway and collapsed behind a cart full of barrels and wooden crates, did he allow himself to open his palm and look at it. But the colour had completely faded from the once sky blue gemstone. Sabito was dead.
He clutched the vision to his chest, ignoring the pain in his skin as his fingers curled around it. Water shouldn't burn like this. But nothing that had happened that day was right, or fair.
He could still see the blood on Sabito's neck as he succumbed to the Raiden Shogun, even when he closed his eyes and tried to push the memory away.
Tears streamed down his cheeks, mingling with the rain that hadn't stopped pouring since the Musou no Hitotachi. He clasped a hand over his mouth to stifle the sound of his sobs - though he wouldn't have resisted capture if he were found at that moment.
Because what else was there for him to do? How could he keep running, when he could barely stand? Sabito's loss was a chasm in his chest that only grew deeper and wider as time marched mercilessly onwards.
How could the rain still fall, the rivers still run, and the waves still crash along the sand without Sabito?
When he heard someone coming towards him, he didn't make a move, even when the Doushin walked around the cart and immediately spotted him.
It was a man with a pyro vision and hair like a sunrise. Even in the dark of the evening, he seemed to glow, and Giyuu lowered his hand as he stared up at him.
"I won't resist..." He whispered. "I don't want to run anymore... I just... want this to be over."
But the Doushin crouched down in front of him, took off his flame tipped haori, and wrapped it around Giyuu's shoulders.
He blinked in surprise, the rain clinging to his eyelashes as he instinctively pulled away from the stranger's touch. But the Doushin only gave him a sad smile and said, "It's alright, I won't arrest you."
"Why not?" Giyuu asked, shivering under the detective's gaze. Even his eyes burned bright as he looked at him with sympathy and care. "You're from the Commission, aren't you?"
Before he could reply, there was a shout from the street below, "Doushin Rengoku! Have you found any sign of the fugitive?"
"None at all!" He replied, tilting his head towards the sound of his comrade, without taking his eyes off Giyuu. "I'm sure he's found a place to hide for the evening, so we will continue at sunrise in a few hours time!"
He exchanged conversation with the two Doushin in the street below, before they retired to their homes and Rengoku turned his full attention back to Giyuu.
"I can hide you for a few days and then arrange passage to Liyue," he explained. "The captain of the Crux wouldn't say no to another stowaway!"
"...Why," Giyuu murmured, his voice still thick with tears. "Why would you help me?"
For the first time since he arrived in the laneway, the Doushin's smile faded. "Because this isn't right."
Of course it isn't right, Giyuu thought to himself, as he clutched the hydro vision to his chest. And Sabito knew that. He only faced the Shogun because he knew he couldn't stand by and watch while she tore her people's lives apart. He was always a better person than Giyuu ever hoped to be, and yet he was the one who was gone. Of course it wasn't right.
Without another word, Rengoku helped him to his feet and half carried him through the streets of Inazuma. Even if Giyuu wanted to run, he couldn't find the strength in his limbs. And when the Doushin brought him to a house and showed him to a bed, he immediately collapsed and slept through the rest of the night.
He woke the next morning to the sight of a crimson oni, trying to pry his fingers apart with one hand while holding a roll of bandages with the other.
Giyuu snatched his injured hand back and sat up, pulling away from the stranger and the delighted grin he suddenly gave him.
"Hey, Kyojuro!" He shouted over his shoulder, gesturing to Giyuu with the bandages that he'd almost dropped. "Your little criminal is awake!"
A moment later, the golden haired Doushin came into the room and smiled at him. "It's good to see you're awake, Tomioka! May I call you that?"
But Giyuu couldn't respond, and only stared at them as he retreated to the corner of the bed. There was a window, but they were too high up for him to escape that way. His only exit was through the door the Doushin had just come through.
"Heyyyyy. Can you hear meeeee?" The crimson oni loudly asked, as he waved a hand over Giyuu's eyes before glancing back over at Rengoku. "Are you sure this is the guy?"
He crossed his arms and nodded. "I'm absolutely positive!"
The oni tilted his head at Giyuu and raised his eyebrows. "I suppose the vision is a giveaway. But he won't let me look at his hand!"
"Hmm! Perhaps he heard of your healing skills from the other Arataki members."
"Only good things, I'm sure!" He exclaimed, with a laugh. "Very few people get the chance to be treated by the one and only Arataki Itto!"
In his effort to show off, he dropped the bandages, and Rengoku picked them up when they rolled by his feet. "And Shinobu was busy today, right?"
"Busy as ever!" He replied, with a nod. Then he turned and winked at Giyuu. "That's my deputy, Kuki Shinobu! She's always putting me back together whenever I get busted up... Whichdoesn'thappenoften!"
But Giyuu had no idea who either of these people were, and could only look over at Rengoku until he came into the room and tapped his friend's shoulder with the roll of bandages. "Why don't I take care of his wounds while you see about some breakfast?"
Arataki happily got up and rattled off a number of dishes he recommended for every healthy growing criminal, before he finally left the room and Giyuu was alone again with the Doushin.
He sat down on the edge of the bed and gestured to his hand. "That must be painful. Will you let me look at it?"
Giyuu reluctantly opened his palm and looked down at the hydro vision. Since the colour had faded the night before, it was a dead weight that no longer burned his skin. Though a terrible part of him wished it still did, if only it meant that some piece of Sabito lived on.
"I won't try and take it from you," Rengoku reassured him, and he looked back up at his smiling face. "I promise you that."
Giyuu's breath caught in his throat. Every kindness from the Doushin made the chasm in his chest grow even wider. For it only reminded him of everything he'd lost.
Wordlessly, he took the vision in his other hand before offering his injured arm to Rengoku. As he cleaned and wrapped his wounds, Giyuu stared out the window at the clear blue sky - so different from the night before - and wondered what waited for him outside those walls. He hadn't visited Liyue since he was a child and, try as he might, he couldn't remember what it was like.
He wondered how long it would take before Sabito faded into the mists of his memory. The way he liked to take his tea in the evenings and how he used to sleep with his arm outstretched towards Giyuu... The shape of his brow when he was in his rage and the curve of his lips when he smiled at him... He didn't want to forget. Even if it hurt to remember.
He was almost certain that he didn't have any tears left in him. And yet they still rolled silently down his cheeks as Rengoku carefully wrapped the bandages around the angry, vision shaped wound in the palm of his hand. If the Doushin saw anything, he was polite enough to avert his eyes and say nothing of the river that flowed from Giyuu's eyes and heart.
When he was done, he got up and left the room - but not before sending one last kindness over his shoulder. "You can leave whenever you want, you aren't a prisoner here! But the ship for Liyue sets sail in five days, if you'd like to be on it."
Later, Arataki returned with enough food to feed a small army. He spread the offerings across the bed and called Rengoku back to join them. While Giyuu picked at some plain rice and salmon daikon, they talked about the gang's latest commissions. Everyone in Inazuma had heard of the Arataki Gang. They were a well meaning group of friends taking odd jobs and requests across the city. He wasn't sure why a member of the Tenryou Commission was friends with Arataki Itto of all people, but watching them laugh and exchange stories of their exploits was all the explanation Giyuu needed.
It was strange to be surrounded by their joy, after so much grief. He felt like a ghost, wandering the halls of Arataki's oni-baba's home. She wasn't related to him by blood, yet she treated him like one of her own grandchildren. And the crimson oni was only too happy to let her cook for him and pinch his cheeks with fondness.
On the third day after Giyuu ran from the Shogunate, Kuki Shinobu arrived in the dead of night and announced that she was going to change his bandages. She was an interesting, formidable woman with bright green hair and a black mask that covered the lower half of her face. What her leader lacked in expertise and guile, Shinobu seemed to offer in spades, as she told Giyuu of the job she just finished.
It was a relief to have someone talk to him and expect nothing in return. He was content to listen to her stories for hours without speaking, but it was already late and she was yawning by the time she'd finished tending to his wounds. "Goodnight, Tomioka," she said, as she left his room.
"Thank you," Giyuu replied. It was the first time he'd spoken since Rengoku found him in the laneway.
Shinobu turned and looked at him. Then she lowered her mask and smiled. "Any time."
There was a thunderstorm the night before Giyuu was due to leave. He lay awake for hours, listening to the rain on the rooftop and the lightning crackling across the sky. Even when sleep finally found him, he dreamed only of Sabito facing the Shogun and losing, over and over again, while Giyuu was helpless to stop it.
He woke, screaming and clawing at the bandages on his arm, until someone finally came and took his hand and stopped him from hurting himself any further. When he felt the weight behind his back and saw golden hair spilling over his shoulder, he knew it was Rengoku.
"It was just a dream, Tomioka!" He reassured him, his breath warm on his bare neck. "It's over - you're alive, you're safe, and I won't let anything happen to you."
Another slash of lightning cut across the sky outside his window, and Giyuu pulled away from Rengoku's embrace and sat up with his back turned towards him. "I'm... not..." He whispered.
"What did you say? I can't hear you."
He moved his head towards the Doushin and repeated himself, "I'm not... alive."
There was a silence that stretched on long enough that Giyuu glanced over at Rengoku to see if he had heard him this time. But he was staring back at him with the kind of sadness that made Giyuu avert his gaze and clutch the sheets of his bed. Without hesitation, Rengoku reached out and held his trembling hand. "You cannot lose heart, Tomioka. Would your friend have wanted that for you?" He uttered - loud enough to be heard over the storm, yet low enough to capture Giyuu's attention. "However devastated we are by our losses, we must live with our heads held high. There's no other way forward."
Giyuu distantly wondered who it was that Rengoku had lost, to be so familiar with grief. But he never received an answer and was on a ship to Liyue the next morning.
It was another year before he saw him again. The Vision Hunt Decree had been abolished and small celebrations were underway with the other refugees that had fled Inazuma.
Giyuu almost avoided the festivities, but Gorou and Beidou had insisted on dragging him out. While they sampled food and laughed over drinks, he leaned on the railing of the bridge and watched the fireworks over the harbour. He'd often found himself looking across the ocean, towards Inazuma, and thinking of sunset coloured hair.
He'd never understood why the Doushin had helped him. And though Arataki Itto spoke highly of him and his sense of justice, he still couldn't wrap his head around Rengoku's intentions when he saved him that night. Wasn't he putting himself at risk, when he made that decision? And why would he do all of that for a complete stranger?
He could feel someone's eyes on his back and he turned around. It was Rengoku Kyojuro, his haori swaying in the ocean breeze as he smiled at Giyuu. "I was hoping I would find you here!"
"What brings the Tenryou Commission to Liyue?" He asked, as Rengoku joined him at the railing.
The fireworks were dancing in his flame coloured eyes as he looked up at the night sky and replied, "I'm not here for work."
Giyuu flexed his hand, which he still kept wrapped in bandages to hide the scars. "What would the Shogun think if she learned you were here, celebrating with the victims of her decree?"
"I'm not a Doushin anymore," Rengoku said with a simple shrug, though Giyuu glanced over at him with surprise. "I wanted to see more of Teyvat, and maybe find where else I'm needed!"
"...Are you traveling alone?"
Rengoku looked at him and smiled. "I am! But I hoped that I might find a companion in Liyue. I've never left Inazuma before!"
Giyuu's gaze lingered on his, for a long moment, before he was distracted by another set of fireworks. "Beautiful," he observed.
And Rengoku, still staring at him, hummed in agreement.