(no subject)
Some old thingy of mine...
Warnings: Shun & Hyoga of sorts, nothing explicit, just mild implications. No fluff.
Disclaimer: Saint Seiya is, most unfortunately, not my property.
crossposted to saintseiyayaoi
Wrong Kind Of Love
Shun looks funny in the winter coat is Hyoga's first thought, as he opens the door of his cabin on the knock. Surprise comes second, but it is not intense. Nothing that Hyoga feels is.
"Hello," Shun wears his trademark timid smile. "May I come in?"
"Sure," Hyoga shrugs and steps aside, letting his uninvited guest in. Why not?
Shun heads towards the fireplace and holds his hands over the fire to warm up. He doesn't take his coat off, Hyoga notes. As if he isn’t sure whether Hyoga will allow him to stay. Hyoga isn't intended to kick him out into the cold, of course, but uncertainty is Shun's middle name.
"I decided to...to see how you are doing...is everything okay," Shun says, when the expected question about what he is after doesn't come from Hyoga.
"I'm alright," Hyoga says, reaching for a kettle sitting on a shelf. Uninvited or not, a guest must be treated properly, according to Russian customs. "Nobody tried to kill me within a month."
Shun's smile blooms and wilts as there is not a hint of humor in Hyoga's words.
"It's all peaceful in Japan as well," he ventures, most likely out of sheer wish to make this conversation look normal. "Shiryu wrote a letter, he's doing fine too. Ikki...well, you know him, he comes and goes on his whim, and never tells where and when he's back again..."
"And you felt lonely and abandoned without the big brother, hence you ran here."
Hyoga knows he is wrong being sarcastic, and it's not Shun's kicked puppy look that makes him feel guilty -- only slightly, but guilty all the same. Not that, but a simple truth -- frail and insecure Shun may look, yet once he had enough willpower to expel a God. Saori accepted her divinity matter-of-factly and laid her arms without any resistance, so did the others, who -- like Julian -- had their gods to be literately shaken out of them. Shun managed on his own.
One way or another, he came uninvited and shall not play innocence hurt, when Hyoga shows no particular happiness about being trespassed. It is better to show him now what he can expect here, than to disappoint later. Once forewarned, Shun can always flee if Hyoga's rules do not come to his expectations.
Hyoga isn't going to tell him to get lost, however. Not that he wants Shun here; Hyoga simply doesn't care.
"It's not like that," Shun shakes his head. Hyoga's sting doesn't provoke any reaction besides a hurt puppy look; Shun never holds grudges -- another thing why it is so hard to believe Ikki and he are brothers. "Well, a little bit. Sa...Athena is weird now, when Seiya is...is..."
"Dead," Hyoga finishes for him. He does not fear either a word or a concept itself. It's strange that Shun hasn't got used to it yet, Hyoga vaguely wonders. After so many encounters with death one shouldn't have difficulties with merely saying the word.
Must be because Shun never lost anyone really close, Hyoga decides, while Shun keeps muttering.
"...yes. She looks like she's not really here, you know. Doesn't hear when you say something to her half of the time. Not really mourning, more like shut...it makes me so anxious, almost paranoid -- she's a goddess, after all, I guess that's why her feelings overwhelm me...so I'm here."
"I'm very touched you are worried about me," Hyoga says, his dispassionate voice a glaring contradiction to his words, "but I'm fine, really. Not lonely or depressed, or anything."
Shun looks around the cabin.
Spies for signs of someone else living here, Hyoga understands and deems to explain:
"Here I live alone, but there's a village nearby."
He doesn't bother to mention that he doesn't visit the village often. They all are fine folk, the villagers, but Hyoga does not need their company to feel complete.
Least of all he is going to explain Shun that it's suits him just fine living with his memories. There are plenty of memories in and around this place -- of Crystal, of Camus, of Isaac...of mother. Shun might understand, most likely he will understand, but those memories belong to Hyoga alone and are too precious to share.
Silence settles in the cabin. Shun obviously depleted his assets of social conversation; now, he will either go straight to the point of him being here, or will make an awkward good-bye and leave, Hyoga muses. He bets against himself that Shun will never muster enough courage to ask him point-blank, and loses when Shun does go for it.
"Mind if I stay with you for some time? I won't be a nuisance...I hope."
"Be my guest," Hyoga says and puts the kettle over the fire.
* * *
Shun keeps his promise. In fact, he's a tad overdoing with trying to be invisible, Hyoga thinks. Hyoga is not a hermit, the presence of other human being does not get on his nerves too much. On the contrary, it is actually pleasing to have a company, when winter nights are long and harsh. They use to sit side by side next to the fireplace, drinking black tea with honey, passing stories from their past -- with lives they once lead, those can last a lifetime. Sometimes they don't talk at all, jus sip their tea, watch the flames dance in the fireplace and listen to the blizzard wailing outside.
Sometimes they visit the village. The villagers adore Shun, all from small to old. Shun cannot be denied having this sort of charisma, he loves those people back; he cares. The people must sense that, hence this mutual affection, Hyoga muses as he watches Shun chasing the laughing kids amidst the snowball fight or listening, with genuine interest in his big blue eyes, as old geezers drone on their never-ending sagas about how much whiter was snow fifty years ago, and how you cannot get it so white nowadays, nossir. He is only a few days around here, Shun, yet he's blended in better than Hyoga has ever managed with half of his life spent here. He feels a bit envious about it, but it's a white kind of envy, fused with admiration of Shun's superiority in affairs of communication with the peers.
So flow their days, tranquil and mellow, as if no dreadful things that altered them forever, ever happened. The nights are different, though not much.
It takes two days for Shun to collect his determination into one piece and approach Hyoga's bed right when all good-nights are done.
"Hyoga? May I...may I...I mean, it would be warmer this way, of course, if it bothers you..."
"No, it doesn't," Hyoga grasps the meaning behind the other boy's apologetic stutter and lifts the corner of his blanket. "Hop in."
He is aware that cold is but a poor excuse, and evidence doesn't wait to come in Shun's fingertips rising to touch his face -- cautiously at first, then, when there is no objection from Hyoga, becoming bolder. Inviting.
Hyoga accepts the invitation.
The lovemaking is clumsy at best -- it cannot be any other way when both sides have no experience and must follow the basic instincts only, but they compensate it with sincerity and, though it's mostly from Shun's side, enthusiasm. It's not like Hyoga doesn't enjoy those under-blanket games -- he does; sometimes he even catches himself on wishing the day to be over, because the night brings delight. There is something else that troubles Hyoga, despite of satisfaction he receives. He cannot follow it yet, so he does not rack his brain over ineffability. What has to come, will come. Meanwhile, he succumbs to the new habit of drifting asleep with a warm body snuggled in his arms and green messy head on the pillow next to his.
Sometimes Hyoga imagines it is Isaac laying there. Shun is too slender for Isaac as Hyoga saw him the last time, but before he was gone from Hyoga's world, Isaac was but a skinny teenager, so it fits. There are two major differences between then and now -- first being that Isaac and Hyoga never bothered about the sex, they were in age, when only warmth and possibility to chat all night long mattered; second -- with Isaac, Hyoga always felt secure and protected, because Isaac was bigger, tougher, meaner and thought of himself as of Hyoga's ever-vigilant elder brother, if not a father, however funny it seemed now, from the distance. Hyoga misses that, but the feeling of equality that he experiences with Shun is not bad either. Looks are deceptive, and Hyoga is pretty certain Shun will not accept patronizing from anyone but Ikki. Lost child he may look, Shun is far from helpless. Neither does Hyoga feel like a sentinel.
Shun stirs and mutters something in his sleep. If it was Isaac, it would be something like 'Buzz off, I want sleep. Tomorrow's tough', Hyoga smiles and closes his eyes.
One night they don't bother to put the candle off, and the first time Hyoga takes a thorough look at Shun making love to him. There is something in Shun's eyes behind the glaze of moment's passion, something that Shun never hides, but Hyoga avoided acknowledging and even now, when truth is evident, does he keep struggling against it. It's the thing that makes him anxious, Hyoga realizes, and the name for it is love.
He cannot sleep that night, and when the morning creeps in, he informs Shun he's going to his mother's grave -- alone.
Shun must be alerted by that -- Hyoga took him to the place once, to show there is nothing gloomy about it, and Shun wholeheartedly agreed -- but this time Hyoga does his best to avert Shun's eyes and leaves in haste. He needs to think.
Shun doesn't insist; he is not a nuisance, is he?
Hyoga does not understand why some people think it's a morbid drive that draws him coming over and over to the glacier, with layers of ice and miles of black water between him and the ship. Do the others not come to cemeteries to spend some time with the people who once were close to them? Mother had always been Hyoga's closest friend, and that she has the vast underwater cemetery for her alone, doesn't change the essence of things, Hyoga believes. It is the best place for him, when he wants to do some deep thinking without being disturbed. The dead do not talk, but this silent kind of support they emanate is the best for Hyoga. He isn't talkative himself.
It doesn't fail to bring needed clarity to Hyoga's mind now, as it never does.
Shun loves him, that is clear as a day. It would be nothing wrong in that -- Hyoga is sure that Shiryu, Ikki or Athena loves him too; after what they went through together, such a bond is very natural -- but there's one small detail that twists it into the kind of love Hyoga doesn't want to accept.
This kind of love differs from the bond of friends, who challenged gods and death itself, held together against all odds and went out of it victorious if battered. This kind of love bid him farewell from his mother's eyes as the sea stretched into infinity between them. This kind of love was there with Camus, and Hyoga was luckless enough to encounter it twice. This kind of love trailed away with the last breath of Crystal, this kind of love died together with Isaac, when Hyoga couldn't do anything but watch, helpless to stop the inevitable.
This was a kind of love that fate doesn't want Hyoga to possess, for whatever reason it has. It proved it every time whenever Hyoga dared to respond -- four times out of four; five, if count Camus twice. It was more than enough to persuade Hyoga there exist prohibitions he must not cross.
Tempting fate lost its appeal to Hyoga ages ago.
He is pointedly polite and cold with Shun when he comes back, replying to every worried question with mono-syllable words. Then, with night coming closer:
"I rather sleep alone tonight, if you don't mind. I'm tired."
Clipped, distant words. Shun sags, but doesn't argue. He is not a nuisance, is he?
Another day of tensed silences and poorly concealed ignoring. Another night of 'Not tonight, Shun'. Shun breaks in the morning of the third day.
"Hyoga, what's wrong?"
"Nothing."
"Is it me, right? I...I...you are tired of me? You want me to leave?"
"I am no master of yours. I cannot tell you what to do."
Hyoga is looking straight to Shun's eyes, confident that Shun will not read anything that Hyoga does not want to show -- after all, Hyoga is an Ice Saint, and a very good one. True master.
Shun is true master of empathy on his own account -- he understands.
"I see," follows the barely audible reply. Shun’s eyes gleam traitorously, but he holds his tears. Crying now, he would spoil Hyoga's artful game of pretending, and he doesn't want to. It would draw the final line, would close the door between them, and that is not what Shun wants. He wants to hope. So why cry? Hyoga did not tell him he's unwanted, did he?
Maybe out of this feeble hope, or maybe out of dignity -- packing and leaving in a huff right now would look cheaply melodramatic -- Shun stays for one more night. He does not go for Hyoga's bed, however. And maybe he allows himself to weep, Hyoga presumes, but there's no certainty.
Next morning:
"So. It was nice here, but home is home."
Shun's voice is cheerful and as false as Hyoga's reply.
"Then I won't dare to keep you any longer."
There is an old Russian custom -- a guest isn't allowed to leave without some begging to stay some more. Shun is familiar with it, being an often guest in the village. The fact of Hyoga dismissing the custom cannot slip his acute sensitivity and must shatter his hopes, lest there remained any. Shun almost succeeds in hiding it. He is not a nuisance, is he?
And Hyoga doesn't want to tempt fate. People tend to cling to their last hopes; Shun could have taken the obligatory politeness literally.
"Well. That's it for now. Hope to see you again...soon?"
Hopes are so hard to kill, Hyoga inwardly sighs.
"Yes, why not. Of course. Bye. My regards to Athena, Jabu and Ikki, when you see him."
"Certainly. Bye."
"Bye."
There is always a chance the weak hope will die naturally, out of starvation, Hyoga thinks as he closes the door and rests against it.
You're such a pathetic coward, comes the thought. Such a weakling. Oh my, four times I loved, four times life kicked me into my head, poor little me, now I will never allow this to happen again. What a worthless coward. What a silly, silly, silly thinking. What a brilliant way to waste your chance, perhaps last one, to feel alive again. You stupid bastard.
It proves to Hyoga how dangerously close he was to the point of no return. Regrets are sordid and the sense of loss is too shrill -- his cabin looks dim and deserted without Shun, it's painful even to look around and see the little signs of his ended presence.
But longing will pass. It will take bitter days, weeks -- but it will pass. So will the scratching about the place where his heart is -- first turning into nagging but dulled ache, then vanishing for good. Hyoga knows; he's been there, done that.
In summary, what do some puny weeks of discomfort mean compared to the fact he saved Shun from fate's wilting touch? Loving Hyoga is a dangerous thing. Be loved back -- what almost happened -- is lethal. But now Shun is safe.
And Hyoga feels happy.
Warnings: Shun & Hyoga of sorts, nothing explicit, just mild implications. No fluff.
Disclaimer: Saint Seiya is, most unfortunately, not my property.
crossposted to saintseiyayaoi
Wrong Kind Of Love
Shun looks funny in the winter coat is Hyoga's first thought, as he opens the door of his cabin on the knock. Surprise comes second, but it is not intense. Nothing that Hyoga feels is.
"Hello," Shun wears his trademark timid smile. "May I come in?"
"Sure," Hyoga shrugs and steps aside, letting his uninvited guest in. Why not?
Shun heads towards the fireplace and holds his hands over the fire to warm up. He doesn't take his coat off, Hyoga notes. As if he isn’t sure whether Hyoga will allow him to stay. Hyoga isn't intended to kick him out into the cold, of course, but uncertainty is Shun's middle name.
"I decided to...to see how you are doing...is everything okay," Shun says, when the expected question about what he is after doesn't come from Hyoga.
"I'm alright," Hyoga says, reaching for a kettle sitting on a shelf. Uninvited or not, a guest must be treated properly, according to Russian customs. "Nobody tried to kill me within a month."
Shun's smile blooms and wilts as there is not a hint of humor in Hyoga's words.
"It's all peaceful in Japan as well," he ventures, most likely out of sheer wish to make this conversation look normal. "Shiryu wrote a letter, he's doing fine too. Ikki...well, you know him, he comes and goes on his whim, and never tells where and when he's back again..."
"And you felt lonely and abandoned without the big brother, hence you ran here."
Hyoga knows he is wrong being sarcastic, and it's not Shun's kicked puppy look that makes him feel guilty -- only slightly, but guilty all the same. Not that, but a simple truth -- frail and insecure Shun may look, yet once he had enough willpower to expel a God. Saori accepted her divinity matter-of-factly and laid her arms without any resistance, so did the others, who -- like Julian -- had their gods to be literately shaken out of them. Shun managed on his own.
One way or another, he came uninvited and shall not play innocence hurt, when Hyoga shows no particular happiness about being trespassed. It is better to show him now what he can expect here, than to disappoint later. Once forewarned, Shun can always flee if Hyoga's rules do not come to his expectations.
Hyoga isn't going to tell him to get lost, however. Not that he wants Shun here; Hyoga simply doesn't care.
"It's not like that," Shun shakes his head. Hyoga's sting doesn't provoke any reaction besides a hurt puppy look; Shun never holds grudges -- another thing why it is so hard to believe Ikki and he are brothers. "Well, a little bit. Sa...Athena is weird now, when Seiya is...is..."
"Dead," Hyoga finishes for him. He does not fear either a word or a concept itself. It's strange that Shun hasn't got used to it yet, Hyoga vaguely wonders. After so many encounters with death one shouldn't have difficulties with merely saying the word.
Must be because Shun never lost anyone really close, Hyoga decides, while Shun keeps muttering.
"...yes. She looks like she's not really here, you know. Doesn't hear when you say something to her half of the time. Not really mourning, more like shut...it makes me so anxious, almost paranoid -- she's a goddess, after all, I guess that's why her feelings overwhelm me...so I'm here."
"I'm very touched you are worried about me," Hyoga says, his dispassionate voice a glaring contradiction to his words, "but I'm fine, really. Not lonely or depressed, or anything."
Shun looks around the cabin.
Spies for signs of someone else living here, Hyoga understands and deems to explain:
"Here I live alone, but there's a village nearby."
He doesn't bother to mention that he doesn't visit the village often. They all are fine folk, the villagers, but Hyoga does not need their company to feel complete.
Least of all he is going to explain Shun that it's suits him just fine living with his memories. There are plenty of memories in and around this place -- of Crystal, of Camus, of Isaac...of mother. Shun might understand, most likely he will understand, but those memories belong to Hyoga alone and are too precious to share.
Silence settles in the cabin. Shun obviously depleted his assets of social conversation; now, he will either go straight to the point of him being here, or will make an awkward good-bye and leave, Hyoga muses. He bets against himself that Shun will never muster enough courage to ask him point-blank, and loses when Shun does go for it.
"Mind if I stay with you for some time? I won't be a nuisance...I hope."
"Be my guest," Hyoga says and puts the kettle over the fire.
* * *
Shun keeps his promise. In fact, he's a tad overdoing with trying to be invisible, Hyoga thinks. Hyoga is not a hermit, the presence of other human being does not get on his nerves too much. On the contrary, it is actually pleasing to have a company, when winter nights are long and harsh. They use to sit side by side next to the fireplace, drinking black tea with honey, passing stories from their past -- with lives they once lead, those can last a lifetime. Sometimes they don't talk at all, jus sip their tea, watch the flames dance in the fireplace and listen to the blizzard wailing outside.
Sometimes they visit the village. The villagers adore Shun, all from small to old. Shun cannot be denied having this sort of charisma, he loves those people back; he cares. The people must sense that, hence this mutual affection, Hyoga muses as he watches Shun chasing the laughing kids amidst the snowball fight or listening, with genuine interest in his big blue eyes, as old geezers drone on their never-ending sagas about how much whiter was snow fifty years ago, and how you cannot get it so white nowadays, nossir. He is only a few days around here, Shun, yet he's blended in better than Hyoga has ever managed with half of his life spent here. He feels a bit envious about it, but it's a white kind of envy, fused with admiration of Shun's superiority in affairs of communication with the peers.
So flow their days, tranquil and mellow, as if no dreadful things that altered them forever, ever happened. The nights are different, though not much.
It takes two days for Shun to collect his determination into one piece and approach Hyoga's bed right when all good-nights are done.
"Hyoga? May I...may I...I mean, it would be warmer this way, of course, if it bothers you..."
"No, it doesn't," Hyoga grasps the meaning behind the other boy's apologetic stutter and lifts the corner of his blanket. "Hop in."
He is aware that cold is but a poor excuse, and evidence doesn't wait to come in Shun's fingertips rising to touch his face -- cautiously at first, then, when there is no objection from Hyoga, becoming bolder. Inviting.
Hyoga accepts the invitation.
The lovemaking is clumsy at best -- it cannot be any other way when both sides have no experience and must follow the basic instincts only, but they compensate it with sincerity and, though it's mostly from Shun's side, enthusiasm. It's not like Hyoga doesn't enjoy those under-blanket games -- he does; sometimes he even catches himself on wishing the day to be over, because the night brings delight. There is something else that troubles Hyoga, despite of satisfaction he receives. He cannot follow it yet, so he does not rack his brain over ineffability. What has to come, will come. Meanwhile, he succumbs to the new habit of drifting asleep with a warm body snuggled in his arms and green messy head on the pillow next to his.
Sometimes Hyoga imagines it is Isaac laying there. Shun is too slender for Isaac as Hyoga saw him the last time, but before he was gone from Hyoga's world, Isaac was but a skinny teenager, so it fits. There are two major differences between then and now -- first being that Isaac and Hyoga never bothered about the sex, they were in age, when only warmth and possibility to chat all night long mattered; second -- with Isaac, Hyoga always felt secure and protected, because Isaac was bigger, tougher, meaner and thought of himself as of Hyoga's ever-vigilant elder brother, if not a father, however funny it seemed now, from the distance. Hyoga misses that, but the feeling of equality that he experiences with Shun is not bad either. Looks are deceptive, and Hyoga is pretty certain Shun will not accept patronizing from anyone but Ikki. Lost child he may look, Shun is far from helpless. Neither does Hyoga feel like a sentinel.
Shun stirs and mutters something in his sleep. If it was Isaac, it would be something like 'Buzz off, I want sleep. Tomorrow's tough', Hyoga smiles and closes his eyes.
One night they don't bother to put the candle off, and the first time Hyoga takes a thorough look at Shun making love to him. There is something in Shun's eyes behind the glaze of moment's passion, something that Shun never hides, but Hyoga avoided acknowledging and even now, when truth is evident, does he keep struggling against it. It's the thing that makes him anxious, Hyoga realizes, and the name for it is love.
He cannot sleep that night, and when the morning creeps in, he informs Shun he's going to his mother's grave -- alone.
Shun must be alerted by that -- Hyoga took him to the place once, to show there is nothing gloomy about it, and Shun wholeheartedly agreed -- but this time Hyoga does his best to avert Shun's eyes and leaves in haste. He needs to think.
Shun doesn't insist; he is not a nuisance, is he?
Hyoga does not understand why some people think it's a morbid drive that draws him coming over and over to the glacier, with layers of ice and miles of black water between him and the ship. Do the others not come to cemeteries to spend some time with the people who once were close to them? Mother had always been Hyoga's closest friend, and that she has the vast underwater cemetery for her alone, doesn't change the essence of things, Hyoga believes. It is the best place for him, when he wants to do some deep thinking without being disturbed. The dead do not talk, but this silent kind of support they emanate is the best for Hyoga. He isn't talkative himself.
It doesn't fail to bring needed clarity to Hyoga's mind now, as it never does.
Shun loves him, that is clear as a day. It would be nothing wrong in that -- Hyoga is sure that Shiryu, Ikki or Athena loves him too; after what they went through together, such a bond is very natural -- but there's one small detail that twists it into the kind of love Hyoga doesn't want to accept.
This kind of love differs from the bond of friends, who challenged gods and death itself, held together against all odds and went out of it victorious if battered. This kind of love bid him farewell from his mother's eyes as the sea stretched into infinity between them. This kind of love was there with Camus, and Hyoga was luckless enough to encounter it twice. This kind of love trailed away with the last breath of Crystal, this kind of love died together with Isaac, when Hyoga couldn't do anything but watch, helpless to stop the inevitable.
This was a kind of love that fate doesn't want Hyoga to possess, for whatever reason it has. It proved it every time whenever Hyoga dared to respond -- four times out of four; five, if count Camus twice. It was more than enough to persuade Hyoga there exist prohibitions he must not cross.
Tempting fate lost its appeal to Hyoga ages ago.
He is pointedly polite and cold with Shun when he comes back, replying to every worried question with mono-syllable words. Then, with night coming closer:
"I rather sleep alone tonight, if you don't mind. I'm tired."
Clipped, distant words. Shun sags, but doesn't argue. He is not a nuisance, is he?
Another day of tensed silences and poorly concealed ignoring. Another night of 'Not tonight, Shun'. Shun breaks in the morning of the third day.
"Hyoga, what's wrong?"
"Nothing."
"Is it me, right? I...I...you are tired of me? You want me to leave?"
"I am no master of yours. I cannot tell you what to do."
Hyoga is looking straight to Shun's eyes, confident that Shun will not read anything that Hyoga does not want to show -- after all, Hyoga is an Ice Saint, and a very good one. True master.
Shun is true master of empathy on his own account -- he understands.
"I see," follows the barely audible reply. Shun’s eyes gleam traitorously, but he holds his tears. Crying now, he would spoil Hyoga's artful game of pretending, and he doesn't want to. It would draw the final line, would close the door between them, and that is not what Shun wants. He wants to hope. So why cry? Hyoga did not tell him he's unwanted, did he?
Maybe out of this feeble hope, or maybe out of dignity -- packing and leaving in a huff right now would look cheaply melodramatic -- Shun stays for one more night. He does not go for Hyoga's bed, however. And maybe he allows himself to weep, Hyoga presumes, but there's no certainty.
Next morning:
"So. It was nice here, but home is home."
Shun's voice is cheerful and as false as Hyoga's reply.
"Then I won't dare to keep you any longer."
There is an old Russian custom -- a guest isn't allowed to leave without some begging to stay some more. Shun is familiar with it, being an often guest in the village. The fact of Hyoga dismissing the custom cannot slip his acute sensitivity and must shatter his hopes, lest there remained any. Shun almost succeeds in hiding it. He is not a nuisance, is he?
And Hyoga doesn't want to tempt fate. People tend to cling to their last hopes; Shun could have taken the obligatory politeness literally.
"Well. That's it for now. Hope to see you again...soon?"
Hopes are so hard to kill, Hyoga inwardly sighs.
"Yes, why not. Of course. Bye. My regards to Athena, Jabu and Ikki, when you see him."
"Certainly. Bye."
"Bye."
There is always a chance the weak hope will die naturally, out of starvation, Hyoga thinks as he closes the door and rests against it.
You're such a pathetic coward, comes the thought. Such a weakling. Oh my, four times I loved, four times life kicked me into my head, poor little me, now I will never allow this to happen again. What a worthless coward. What a silly, silly, silly thinking. What a brilliant way to waste your chance, perhaps last one, to feel alive again. You stupid bastard.
It proves to Hyoga how dangerously close he was to the point of no return. Regrets are sordid and the sense of loss is too shrill -- his cabin looks dim and deserted without Shun, it's painful even to look around and see the little signs of his ended presence.
But longing will pass. It will take bitter days, weeks -- but it will pass. So will the scratching about the place where his heart is -- first turning into nagging but dulled ache, then vanishing for good. Hyoga knows; he's been there, done that.
In summary, what do some puny weeks of discomfort mean compared to the fact he saved Shun from fate's wilting touch? Loving Hyoga is a dangerous thing. Be loved back -- what almost happened -- is lethal. But now Shun is safe.
And Hyoga feels happy.