Chapter Text
It happens on the morning that the article revealing them as Ai's children comes out.
Aqua barely catches it in the bottom of the screen, this story a mere afterthought in the wake of the news that he had leaked.
‘Founder of entertainment agency Kamiki Productions — Kamiki Hikaru, 33 years old, dead after injuries as a result of a car accident.’
He could only watch the words go by, as a wave of mind-numbing shock washes over him.
He’s not sure how long he sits there in disbelief, because when he’s come to Ruby is grabbing him by his shoulders, pinning him against the wall in an uncharacteristic show of force.
He wouldn’t describe his sister as strong, but her fingers dig into his shoulders so hard that he swears there will be indents of them there for weeks. Her teeth are clenched together, and she stares at him with a mix of horror, disbelief, betrayal and fury.
“Why did you do that!?” She screams out, her voice quivering from the weight of the raw emotions she was feeling right now.
If Aqua hadn’t seen those words at the bottom of the TV screen this morning, he would’ve been able to reply.
“It was necessary.” He had planned to say, in his usual, emotionless tone.
Now though, not a single word was even close to spilling out of his lips.
What was happening right now didn’t feel real, like a hazy dream that he’d wake up from with a sweat-drenched face.
“Goddammit Aqua! Say something!” Ruby keeps him up against the wall, and as Aqua looks into her eyes, knowing that he was the one to cause this, emotions begin to well up in him.
His mouth opened, but nothing came out.
Ruby’s eyes fill with confusion for a moment, he almost misses it, before they’re flooded with rage again.
“After what you did you can’t even say a word to me!? You told the world mama’s secret! You betrayed her!”
“I know.” He finally manages to speak, but the words that come out of his mouth are hollow.
It’s not because he regrets his actions — Aqua would do it again in a heartbeat, even knowing that it wouldn’t help him get his revenge. Instead, it’s caused by the emotional whiplash he was feeling right now.
He’d finally started to accept the fact that he could live his own life, only to be thrust back into his single minded revenge after his talk with Ichigo. He’d been torn up about that for a while, but now, after he’d split up with Akane, he’d accepted his fate.
He’d already envisioned everything in his head. He knew where all this would go, and he’d come to terms with it.
For that to be flipped on it’s head yet again was too much for him.
“You know!? Of course you do! I didn’t ask you whether or not you knew what you did! I want you to explain to me why you did it!”
Aqua looks away for a moment, trying to think of a quick lie to tell her. It’s a habit he’s developed — Whenever he feels uncomfortable, or threatened, the first thing that comes to his mind is how to lie his way out of it.
It’s his first reaction, but after a moment of thinking about it he realizes how absurd the idea is.
Why would he lie to her now? He’d planned on hiding his revenge from Ruby, so she wouldn’t involve herself with it, but what was the point of that now?
There was no more revenge for them, so why keep lying?
“It was supposed to be for Ai’s sake. I’d planned on using this as part of my revenge, but. . .”
“But what?” Ruby’s voice cuts through the silence after he trails off. Her words are sharp, and it’s as if she’s trying to stare into Aqua’s soul itself as he responds to her.
“The revenge I was looking for is pointless, Ruby. Our father, the one who caused Ai’s suffering, died because of a car crash. I saw it in the news this morning, when I watched them talk about the article.”
A million things are reflected in his sister’s eyes as he speaks, but as he finishes the all coalesce into one single feeling.
Denial.
“You’re lying. You just-” Ruby starts to speak, letting go of him and taking a couple steps back as she does. Aqua cuts her off though, because for once in his life he was telling the truth, and he needed her to know that.
“Kamiki Hikaru is his name. I can show you a picture of him, that should be more than enough to prove our relation to the man.”
After his words, Ruby doesn’t move for a second, processing what he’d said.
Her eyes are still coated in disbelief, but she looks at him, and replies.
“Go ahead.”
Aqua does just that, and even in the mental state she’s in, Ruby can’t deny that he’s their father.
“He’s dead. . .” His sister mutters, more to herself than him.
Something seems to change about her in that moment, as if a weight was lifted off of her shoulders, but he doesn’t mention it.
“So, what are you gonna do now? You said you were chasing after revenge, right?” She asks, and Aqua doesn’t know how to answer.
He’d like to say that now they can live their lives as they wanted, (He knows that’s what he wants to do) but part of him still can’t believe the situation he’s in. It all seemed too convenient — It didn’t make sense to him, that he'd been granted something like this.
But, then again, when did anything ever make sense when it dealt with the revenge he’d been searching for?
“I don’t know.” He answers honestly.
“I thought our father was dead before, you know? After the end of the Tokyo Blade play, I talked to Himekawa, who’s our half brother, and he told me that his father had died long ago. I believed that, until I talked to Ichigo, and he pointed out that the timeline didn’t match up.”
“You talked to Ichigo?” Ruby interjects, but Aqua ignores it for now, knowing he’ll have a lot of explaining to do later. For now though, he just needs to talk to somebody about this, to get it all off of his chest.
“I realized then that Himekawa thought the wrong man was his father, and I was thrown back into all of this. I’d planned everything out, and now that it’s all gone, I have no idea what to do.”
Ruby didn’t say a word, and Aqua’s thoughts began to spill from his lips. He brings his hands up to his head, as he contemplates his future.
“I’d already starting severing all my connections, Ruby. What do I do now? After everything I’ve done, I can’t just. . .”
“Severing your connections? Was me hating you part of your plan too?” Ruby says as he trails off.
She takes his silence as a yes.
“You idiot!” She says, slapping him on the back of his head as she does. He lets his head hang afterwards, as she continues to talk. “Who do you think you are!?”
It’s a question that hits him a lot closer to home than she intended.
He knows that she doesn’t actually expect him to answer it, but it still makes him think.
Without his obsession over revenge, without that singular goal that drove him so much, who was Hoshino Aqua?
It was a question he felt he’d been getting close to answering, before he’d been told that his father wasn’t really dead.
“You’re not some lone hero! Did you really think you should just carry this burden all by yourself — That isolating yourself from everyone who cares about you was really the best option!?”
“Yes.” He says without hesitation.
Ruby stares at him, mouth agape in shock because of his automatic response. It takes her a few seconds to speak again, as if she’s taking the time to wrap her head around what he’d said really meant.
“I know you don’t seem to realize it, but you’re a normal teen, just like me and Kana are! You wouldn’t think we could handle all of that on our shoulders, right? What makes you different from us!?”
“I’m not a normal teen, and you aren’t either, Ruby.” Aqua says cruelly, and he notices a slight shift in Ruby’s face. “Even between you and me though, I lived a full life my last time around. You died young didn’t you?”
He pretends not to notice Ruby's sharp inhale at the mention of her death, or the way her hands jump to her chest, as if trying to protect her heart.
“How did you. . .” She says after a few seconds, and as Aqua takes her trailing off as his cue to respond.
“It was just an assumption, based off of how you act. This is the oldest you’ve ever been, isn’t it?”
“I-. . ."
The silence that follows is heavy, and he briefly regrets bringing up such a sensitive topic in the first place.
“Yeah, it is." She says solemnly, her tone then switching as what she talks about does. "That’s besides the point though! You say that you lived a full life before, but you don’t even view that version of you as yourself anymore!”
Aqua goes silent, wondering how she knew that.
As if reading his mind, Ruby answers the question he hadn’t even asked yet.
“Do you not even pay attention to the words that come out of your mouth? ‘My last time around’? Just from that I can tell you view you from before and you now as separate.”
She says that, but it still doesn’t add up to him.
“How?”
Ruby looks away, contemplating whether or not she should say what’s on her mind. After a second or two though, she lets out a breath, and tells him.
“Because, someone like me, who’s still clinging onto their last life, wouldn’t say it like that. Instead of ‘my last time around’, I would just say ‘before’. . .”
"You can tell the difference, right?”
He can.
“Look, Aqua. I’m trying to tell you that, even with your past life, you’re still the same as us. You shouldn’t have tried to put this all on yourself.”
He wants to argue back, to tell her that it was his fault Ai died, but he knows she won’t hear him out.
It’s not like it matters anyways, they were arguing over him trying to carry everything on his shoulders, but there was nothing left to carry.
Kamiki Hikaru is dead. The object of his revenge is unreachable now.
Because of that, he simply nods along to what Ruby says, letting her think she’s convinced him.
If she can tell that he doesn’t actually believe what she’s saying, she doesn’t mention it, instead moving onto the question he’d asked her before they’d gotten sidetracked.
“I can’t tell you what to do from here on. It’s your choice, but I think I know what you want to do.” She doesn’t say what she thinks he wants, but he can tell anyways.
She was right, Aqua wanted to take this news as a blessing, and use it to move on in his life, but there was one last thing he needed to do.
He had to make sure that this was all by luck, that no one else had snuffed out the life that he'd wanted to so desperately.
If all of this was simply a coincidence, then he would allow himself to live freely. If not. . .
There was a single possibility he could think of where it wasn’t one, and if it was what had really happened, then he had no idea what he’d do.
“I’ll be back, Ruby. I need to make a call.”
He walks out of the room after that, and though he can feel his sister’s eyes on him as he does, she doesn’t make an attempt to follow him.
He turns his phone on once he’s out of the room, and calls someone he has no business speaking to.
It rings once before the call is answered, and before who he called can even say a word Aqua begins to speak.
“Was it you?”
“What?”
“Did you do it?” He asks, not wanting to beat around the bush.
“Do what? Aqua, you’re confusing me. Besides, I thought you weren’t going to speak to me anymore.” Akane says, and Aqua can only sigh. If she was acting right now, then she had gotten even better since they’d last seen each other.
“Kamiki Hikaru died because of a car crash. I know there’s almost no chance, but for my own sake of mind, were you involved at all?” Aqua says, already knowing what the answer most likely is.
“No.” She replies curtly.
“Alright, good.” Aqua says. “But, Akane, I need to tell you one more thing.”
“What is it?”
“If you did somehow cause all of this, please don’t tell me.”
After that he hangs up, content to not hear her reaction to those words.
With this, he could finally live with himself, knowing that the stars had just happened to align for him.
He could finally be free.