Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"What are those?" Emu curled in on himself more as more dark, inky shapes rose from the water in the distance.

"Umibozu," Kiriya said simply. He gave Emu a curious side-eye. "How do you not know about them?"

He scoffed. "It's not like I was formally trained or anything. You think I had time to memorize demon guides while I was trying to make it through medical school?"

"City boy."

"I used to live out in the country! And don't say that like it's a bad thing!" Emu spluttered.

Kiriya kept looking at him through his periphery, a sly grin working its way across his face. "Whatever you say~"

Emu rolled his eyes, looking back to the giant humanoid shapes slowly lumbering their way across the horizon. He wasn't sure exactly what it was, but something about their slow, meditative movements and the drippy quality of their bodies, slowly sloughing off them into the water made him feel more at ease. Their giant multicolored eyes, glowing pale blue, purple and green so brightly they illuminated the ocean with powerful beams of light were unsettling at first, but eventually, Emu grew used to them. They were big, moving, humanoid lighthouses, slowly dragging their way through the water.

Their tranquil movements made Emu feel a little sleepy and he gradually leaned onto Kiriya's shoulder. He felt the ghost tense a little under his weight, but he was too tired to care, after the events of this whole week.

The last thing he felt before he passed out was Kiriya's head pressing against his own, the body next to his slightly leaning in to steal more warmth.

Chapter Text

A thin stream of smoke billowed past Emu's face. He turned to find the source and saw a flash of green fabric flutter behind a building. His gaze flickered to the roof, noting it was one of those fancy shopping complexes with an accessible rooftop garden and he dashed towards the door. Kiriya belatedly noticed him running and gave chase.

"Hey wait!" He shouted. "What are you doing?"

Emu ignored him in favor of sprinting to the automatic doors. He tried to enter casually, nodding at the attendants greeting him and heading for the elevator. Kiriya managed to catch up and they entered together.

"Roof, please." Emu smiled politely at the attendant.

"What are we doing?" Kiriya growled in his ear. "You just ran off."

Emu ignored him, closing his spiritual eyes and focusing on the attendant's reflection.

When they reached the roof, he nodded his thanks at the elevator attendant, opening his eyes again. Kiriya suddenly came into view and he was eerily silent, turned away completely, but still following from a distance. Emu felt a pang of guilt, but this was too important for him to take the time to explain, so he surveyed the rooftop.

It was a nice place, small, but comfy, and the breeze was refreshing. The sun was hitting at just the right angle, bathing everything in warmth and making the whole place bright. Brick planters lined the walls, holding bushes of all kinds of flowers. In the center was a huge square planter with a young, thin tree in the center, protected by a little cylindrical fence. Tall bushes with big, bright flowers grew wild around the tree, low hanging branches on the bushes spilled over the planter, bending delicately towards the ground with wooden benches placed against each side of the planter for patrons to enjoy the view.

A line of smoke curled over the artfully unkempt bushes and Emu briskly walked around to the other side, meeting a familiar sight.

A man, seemingly a few years older than Kiriya, wild brown hair and striking red markings lining his face lounged on the planter. A long metal pipe in the shape of a dragon rested gently on his fingers, smoke billowing gently from its mouth. He relaxed on the sun-warmed brick, eyes closed with one arm propped up to support his head, looking very comfortable despite all his layers of black and gold hiyoku. The whole affair was covered by a green kimono, embroidered in gold thread draped attractively over his body. The layers of robes were open at the top, hanging off shoulders in a way that showed off his neck and chest, exposing the bandages wrapped over his chest and strings of black beads looped around his neck.

He exhaled a thin stream of smoke away from Emu. "It's about Parad, isn't it?"

"How'd you know?" Emu asked.

The man's eyes opened slightly, and Emu felt his heavy gaze slide to him from the corner of his eye briefly, lips quirked up in a smirk. "I hate being indebted to people, especially humans, but you never had anything you wanted to use it on besides him. And now that he's not around to refuse anymore—"

"Emu, why are we here?" Kiriya rounded the corner opposite Emu.

He stopped dead in his tracks when his eyes landed on the man on the bench, his scowl quickly shifting to a mix of fear and awed respect. The man turned to look at him, brow furrowing slightly. They stared each other down, Kiriya looking more and more like a trapped animal the longer it went, jaw clenched, eyes wide, slight movement of his chest giving away his nervous breathing.

"Graphite." Emu said firmly.

The two spirits continued staring, but whatever tension that was between them dispersed for the moment. Graphite's cold glare turned into an intrigued smirk and he chuckled. He turned his attention back to Emu, finally making eye contact, gold, reptilian eyes flashing with amusement.

"You always seem to have the most interesting friends." He commented snidely.

Kiriya backed off quickly, disappearing behind the bushes.

Emu was tempted to ask what that was, but there were more pressing issues he wanted to deal with. He decided to ask Kiriya later, since Graphite wouldn't have the patience to sit through two explanations.

"Just a thing that happens when you're someone like me, I guess." He shrugged.

"Seems so." Graphite took a drag from his pipe, motioning for Emu to continue with a lazy tilt of his head.

"I'll get right to it, Parad's not here and just... left me this." He held out the slightly crumpled paper crane. "Do you have any idea what it could mean?"

Graphite sighed through his nose frustratedly, smoke rushing out in a terrifyingly similar fashion to his true form. "Of course, he's not here. I thought you'd understand that better than anyone. I was expecting you to ask me to bring him back to life or something."

Emu glared him down. "He promised me he'd be here. Ghost or alive, doesn't matter, he was supposed to be here." 

Graphite bit down on the pipe, razor sharp teeth clanking against the metal, and Emu could've sworn he heard Kiriya flinch from somewhere behind the bushes. "What, you think the afterlife made a mistake? You want me to go up there and ask if someone misplaced his paperwork? It doesn't work like a hospital, Emu. Have you considered that it might be better that he's not around?"

Emu sucked in a breath through gritted teeth. "We had a deal, I don't care what you think, you follow up on it. Either bring him back or give me something that tells me why he couldn't stay."

Graphite raised an eyebrow, expression cold. "What, that thing came straight from the afterlife and it's not doing anything for you?"

"Is it supposed to do something?" Emu deadpanned.

"Probably," Graphite shrugged with his pipe hand. "If he didn't come down here himself it must have a message for you or something. Did you try unfolding it? Or anything else remotely logical with it?"

Emu was about to protest of course he didn't, he couldn't, but just rolled his eyes instead. He got to work, unfolding the crane with hands trembling out of frustration and fear of wrecking the memento.

As he got to the final folds in the paper, he opened it slowly to reveal a message in Parad's messy handwriting.

'Go back to all the people we helped, and you'll see.'

"Go back...?" Emu murmured.

Graphite raised up slightly to peek at the note, though his face still looked uninterested.

"Speaking of..." He sighed, "Can I go, now? As nice as this place is, I do have things to be doing," Graphite's lip drew up, flashing his fangs impatiently.

"No, wait, what does this mean? What am I supposed to—"

"For someone with four... five eyes now?" Graphite raised an eyebrow at him, but continued on, "You're quite incurious. Although, if his handwriting was smaller then maybe he could fit more information."

As he said that, the paper refolded itself into a crane, fluttering a bit, then resting on Emu's palm.

Graphite stood languidly, a soft breeze suddenly picking up out of nowhere.

"Now, if you'll excuse me," he said without an ounce of politeness, his robes billowing out then whipping around him, curling and spinning into his dragon form until he suddenly took off into the air, flying up and away so quickly, he practically disappeared.

Emu stared up at the sky after him, scowling at Graphite. How could he barely care at all?

"Well..." Kiriya's voice suddenly snapped Emu out of his thoughts, "Aren't you a hot shot, knowing a dragon?"

"Please don't call me that."

Chapter Text

Nico let out a sharp laugh as she fought the tears pricking at her eyes. She scrubbed her wrist over an eye and took in a breath to try and calm herself.

"My mom has early onset dementia. It runs in the family. I mean, supposedly it's not too early since she's pretty old in comparison to other moms, but still. I got to spend 14 years with her before she started forgetting my name."

She choked up for a moment before continuing. "My sister came back from college to visit on the holidays. It was gonna be a surprise. We gave her the keys to the house so they could catch up while dad and I were out, but when she came through the door, my mom started screaming and called the cops on her for breaking in. When we came back, Amane was just sitting outside the door and crying."

Emu wanted to extend a hand in comfort, but wasn't sure how it would be received and pulled back.

"When you showed me those ghosts that forgot who they were I thought I could help. I thought that if I could figure out how to help them, it'd give me some kind of answer to help my mom. But everything I've tried isn't working. And if I can't figure it out, how the hell am I gonna help Mom?"

The silence that followed was oppressive, weighing down on them like pressure at the bottom of a deep pool.

"You—" Taiga winced at the way his voice cracked, "You're an idiot. You've done more than enough."

Nico's eyes flashed with frustration, her mouth opening to unload everything on her chest on him.

Emu cleared his throat, trying to fight down the emotion threatening to choke him up, "You're doing your best Nico. But sometimes... that's not enough. Sometimes, things happen and we can't do anything about them."

Chapter Text

Emu opened his eyes slowly and gasped softly at the sight of Kiriya. He figured Kiriya would pass on in the night, to make the goodbye easier on both of them or something. At the most leave a note with his goodbye.

Kiriya stirred next to him and blinked awake, amber fox eyes gleaming at him from under dark lashes.

"Hey there, hotshot." He said sleepily.

"Hey yourself." Emu mumbled. "What are you still doing here?"

Kiriya sat all the way up and stretched out. "I considered leaving before you woke up, but... I think that would just be running away again. I wanna say goodbye properly before I leave, at least once, y'know?"

"Kiriya..." Emu whispered, sitting up to join him. "Thank you..."

Kiriya got up from bed, brushing out the wrinkles from his aloha shirt as best he could. "Well, I think it's about time I headed out." He looked at Emu over his shoulder and grinned. "Thanks for taking me along for your wild ride, Emu."

Emu sprung out of the bed to wrap him up in a tight hug. Kiriya tensed at the action a bit but relaxed into his hold, patting his arms to try and get him to loosen up. Emu shook his head frantically where it was buried in Kiriya's hair.

"C'mon, man." Kiriya chuckled. "How'm I supposed to hug you proper if you won't let go?"

Emu sniveled a little but loosened his grip enough for Kiriya to turn around in his arms. He gripped tight once Kiriya was in position.

"I'm gonna miss you so much."

"I'm not gonna be gone forever. The people you love are always in your heart and all that jazz, right?"

Emu tried to mask his sob with a laugh, and held Kiriya tighter. "Yeah, all that stuff."

Kiriya patted Emu's shoulder blade from the awkward angle his arm was trapped in. Emu squeezed tighter as he felt Kiriya's body heat up. He cracked an eye open to see Kiriya's body glowing with a soft golden light and he let out another sob.

"Thank you for letting me say goodbye, this time." Emu's voice cracked.

"It's really the least I could've done." Kiriya's voice was distant, despite his closeness, and echoey.

"I could think of less."

"No, really. It's the least I could do. You deserve more than just a proper goodbye." Kiriya's form started to shift and fade, the light within him growing brighter. "Well, see you around, hotshot."

Little firefly-like glows started to circle Kiriya's form, leaving bright yellow trails in their wake.

And with a final burst of light, he was gone.