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barnacles eating steel

Summary:

A collection of drabbles in a universe where ships girls are saniwas, and sword boys are admirals. Each odd-numbered chapter focuses a ship girl saniwa while even-numbered chapters focus on sword boy admirals. Everyone is in their OU forms (as in: all swords are still tsukumogami, all ships can still fire cannons).

Next: Yamashiro is absolutely convinced Nihongou doesn't exist.

Chapter 1: Akashi (the ship)

Summary:

Akashi learns that some fears are justified, and even doctors kill.

Notes:

CHARACTER DEATH WARNING HAHA (CRIES)

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Akashi doesn’t know how to hold a knife.

She is not like the swords she is surrounded by. She was forged in iron and steel, but also fuel and bauxite, ammunition loaded into anti-air mounts she would hopefully never have to use. Akashi was not made for combat, and never will be-- she is the only specialized repair ship in the Combined Fleet, and her job is something that never taught her how to kill.

She does, however, know how to hold a scalpel.

When they called her up and said she was to get an entirely new job, Akashi didn’t know how to feel. There are only so many others who know how to repair, because putting things together is an art much less savage than tearing it all apart. She holds a scalpel like a buttercup, like the fragile handle of Kongou’s teacups, because her knife is supposed to slice but never kill.

“Well… I’m not sure if this is really my thing,” Akashi says when they fit her into a saniwa’s outfit, onmyoji hat and all. There is a tentative quality to her voice, the obvious um um um no in her pauses which she does not dare articulate out loud. They told her that every single Fleet Girl has this ability, this innate spiritual power that comes with their reincarnation. Their souls are linked to the tides of the sea, the breath of the earth itself, and they have the means to give tsukumogami corporeal forms.

The Abyssal Fleet is not the only threat in the world. They are not the only spirits trapped in time, so fixated on events long gone that they try to reenact it. But unlike the Abyssal Fleet, which doesn’t have the ability to travel through time, the Retrograding Army is a much more silent enemy. They don’t seek glory long past. They seek a resolution they never met with.

Akashi understands the importance of protecting the past, and thus, she doesn’t complain that much when she’s brought away to a distant place called the ‘Citadel’. She promises to write letters back to Kure Naval Base. She’s not sure if she’ll have the time for that, but-- well, it doesn’t sound like she’ll be going back soon.

When she is presented with Kashuu Kiyomitsu’s sword, she holds him like a scalpel. He is an artifact to her, not a weapon, and Akashi doesn’t think she can ever see him that way, especially when he springs to life with her command.

(They’re all so human, just like them. Just like the Fleet Girls. She can’t call them weapons, or machinery, or just cold steel.)

Once Kashuu finds his footing, he recovers rather quickly from the surprise of actually having feet. “Uhh,” he breathes first, before clearing his throat. “I'm the child beneath the river. Kashuu Kiyomitsu. I may be difficult to handle, but my performance is good.”

Akashi shakes his hand, taking care not to accidentally crush his fingers. While she’s not a combat ship, she’s still remarkably strong compared to a human. “I'm repair ship Akashi. If you take a little damage, I can fix you up in the base. Just leave it to me!”

Kashuu smiles, then raises an eyebrow. “Huh?”

“Oh, uh--” Akashi waves her arms wildly. “Nothing, nothing! I’m your saniwa. I’m not experienced in warfare, but I’ll try my best!”

---

The first time Kashuu comes back screaming is after they’ve returned from the battles of Hakata Bay.

The fortuitous wind that was said to aid the Japanese against the invading Mongols had, in fact, caused the Swords Army to make a great mistake. They called that wind the kamikaze, a divine wind, and Akashi did not live long enough in her past life to recognize that name as the same one they gave to cascading aeroplanes almost seven hundred years later. But she is certainly alive now, when Squad 1 bursts through the Citadel gates and Kashuu begs his squadmates to hide Yasusada from her.

She has never truly been in battle, but she certainly feels the rush of adrenaline that quickly surges through her veins, leading her to throw her room door open and rush onto the scene. Her assistant sword, Taroutachi, tells her the gist of what’s happened in a tone more urgent than she’s ever heard him having. “The divine wind was against us,” he proclaims, and Akashi suddenly feels the sheer gravity of the situation. “When we were searching for the Retrograding Army, they used the wind to catch us off-guard with falling trees and rocks. We managed to fight them off, but Yasusada has been heavily damaged.”

Akashi’s stomach drops. “Eh?! How heavily damaged?!”

Taroutachi gives her a bow, and he’s still taller by a head. “I am sorry. Had I pr--”

“No, it’s my fault-- if it was the wind, I shouldn’t have told you to go to the North,” Akashi quickly says, before shaking her head. “Nevermind! Right, move away, let me look at him!”

This feels familiar, she realizes, as the rest of her swords clear the way for her. A crowd has gathered, but only Kashuu makes himself into a barricade, as if her presence will kill him. This is something she’s never seen before, from the boy who always tried to get everyone’s attention, and she listens to his words very, very closely.

“You can’t fix him,” Kashuu chokes. Akashi looks down, and realizes the tip of Yasusada’s sword had been snapped off, like a beheading. His human body is-- unresponsive, at best. “Don’t throw him away.”

“Don’t worry, Kashuu,” Akashi says softly, bending her knees to pick up the two pieces of Yasusada’s real body. “Like I said. I’m a repair ship.”

Kashuu doesn’t understand her words, doesn’t realize their saniwa isn’t a human herself-- but he does step aside for a moment. “Master,” he says in a voice far too serious for such a flamboyant person, “I know what can’t be fixed. Like-- I’ve seen this before--”

“You can come watch me, Kashuu.”

Repairing swords is a completely different matter from repairing ships. It is not their human body that needs tending to, but their sword one, and the human body will eventually snap back into place. Akashi lays Yasusada on the floor and begins to work while Kashuu watches, gripping the hem of Yasusada’s sleeve as if he’ll slip away. She notices that his eyes are trained on her the entire time, but she does not say it. “He’s still alive,” she decides to say to Kashuu as she gathers materials. “I felt a pulse, see? Living bodies have a pulse.”

Kashuu doesn’t reply.

Akashi melts steel and folds it into the cracks. Kashuu watches, almost without blinking, always expecting her to stand up and say I’m sorry, you were right, he can’t be fixed. But Akashi doesn’t speak, doesn’t move from her seat at all, doesn’t even drink the tea Taroutachi brings for her until it grows as cold as the beads of sweat rolling down her face. She works for two hours, five hours, nine hours and twenty-two minutes before she’s satisfied with the measurements she’s recorded down. She’s checked the curvature of Yasusada’s blade, right down to the fifth significant number and the dimensions of its thickness. Cannons and guns were always easier to fix, in hindsight-- but swords are at least preferable to human bone.

(Except that human bone is organic and can heal on its own, over time. Swords can’t. She thinks swords are better, because they are less complicated than a living body, but that’s a fatal misconception.)

This is the defining moment, then.

Akashi draws molten steel across the broken tip of Yasusada’s sword and hopes to god she’s got everything down pat when she presses it back on. Her finger is punctured on the pointed edge, but she doesn’t react. The blood mingles with liquid steel as it digs into her bones. But she doesn’t let go.

She has something which other swordsmiths don’t have-- the spiritual power to make everything go in her favor.

Yasusada’s wound disappears from his neck, and his eyes fly open with a gasp. Kashuu and Akashi have both not slept in more than a day, but they burst into a chorus of sound anyway, a non-too-unpleasant cacophony of thank god, thank god, I can’t believe it, it worked--

“You’re tougher than you look,” Kashuu says when Akashi tries putting her own finger back together. “...As I thought. Humans don’t heal that quickly.”

“What do you mean I’m tougher than I look? Do I not look tough?” Akashi laughs at her own words, because she knows she’s not what other Fleet Girls would call ‘tough’, not in the conventional sense. “I’m alright! I just need to bandage it together, and I’ll be fine after a while.”

Kashuu quickly grabs her wrist.

It turns out that swords are a little more observant than they appear, and Kashuu comes from an age where people still die from toothaches or little scrapes turn into gangrene. It would be a bit too complicated to tell Kashuu that she’s not actually human, so instead, she just lets him do what he wants. He undoes Akashi’s horrible bandaging-- it was just a placebo to convince him she was alright, obviously he didn’t fall for it-- and gets to work. He doesn’t know exactly how to go about this, and Akashi, who has put so many people back together, can point out a few dozen errors in what Kashuu’s doing before he even picks up the needle-- but she doesn’t.

“I’ve sat in one place for, like, years,” Kashuu mutters, fingers steadier than she expected them to be. Swordsmen don’t seem like the kind that can handle delicate work, but Kashuu does fix his own clothes. “Of course I’ve watched people do this before. Master, it’s a little too deep, are you sure you shouldn’t get a human doctor--”

“Oh, I’m glad you’re so worried about me,” Akashi says while reaching out to pat Kashuu on the head with her free hand. “Ah… really, really, I’ll be fine!”

Kashuu stares at her. “You’re too reckless, Master! Jeez… you’re just like him, you know…”

Akashi blinks, then decides not to ask who is this ‘him’. (She remembers calling her own admiral reckless at times, and wonders if all leaders just go down the same path.) “You could actually say I’m a doctor,” she hums, and Kashuu doesn’t look convinced. “Hey, what’s with that look? I always handle the maintenance of everyone around me!”

“Done,” Kashuu suddenly says. “You didn’t even flinch when I was sewing.”

“Like you said, I’m tougher than I look,” she retorts while smiling. “Thank you very much! Remember, Kashuu, don’t be afraid. Whatever injury you get, I will put you back together.”

“Master--?”

“The first time I repaired you, you said something,” Akashi hums. Their first sortie was an absolute disaster, with Kashuu almost destroyed at the end, and she was concentrating too much to respond. “I’ll answer it now. Of course I love you! You’ve done so much for me.”

Kashuu decides to smile back, and Akashi’s words are both what he needed to hear and what dooms him in the end.

---

Kashuu does return screaming a few times, but mostly it’s at the people who have done idiotic things, or curses at the enemy that carried over to when they flash back to the Citadel. Akashi has met a sword named Akashi Kuniyuki, and honestly, she’s ashamed he could share her namesake with someone so profoundly shameless-- but Kashuu retrieved him with a proud smirk all over his face, so she can’t be too harsh with the tachi.

The alarming event is when Kashuu returns one day, and he doesn’t speak at all.

“I’m sorry,” Yasusada says, when Akashi sees Kashuu snapped right in half in front of her. Yasusada doesn’t open his mouth again, just sits in a seiza and bows, staring ceaselessly at the floor. Kashuu’s human body is still present, not yet dismissed by the saniwa’s hand, and there’s no way in hell Akashi plans on doing that.

She picks up the two broken pieces of Kashuu Kiyomitsu. She holds them like scalpels.

“I’ll fix him,” she says. She doesn’t listen when Yasusada says this isn’t a break she can ever put back together.

Taroutachi tries to give her the report-- it was some break in formation, this time, while they were at Atsukashiyama-- but she doesn’t hear it. She closes the repair room door, puts Kashuu’s body on the floor, and begins to work. She remembers how Yasusada’s body still had a pulse, weak as it was. She can’t find a pulse on Kashuu. She decides not to waste any more time searching.

Yasusada watches her, like Kashuu did, but he doesn’t hold anyone’s sleeve. He simply continues bowing down, not daring to look her in the eye, just staring at Kashuu’s chest which does not rise and fall. Taroutachi doesn’t interrupt her this time. Yasusada learns that their saniwa doesn’t need to eat.

She works, works for two hours, three days, two weeks and one more sunrise. She works till her fingers begin to fumble and she cuts her skin so many times on Kashuu’s broken edges that he is washed in her blood. She continues for two more seconds before she realizes it’s hopeless. The curvature of a Japanese sword simply makes it impossible to fix if it’s snapped in the middle. That kind of injury is like-- a torpedo to the hull, a fire in the engine room, the destruction of every steering mechanism whilst heading straight for a rock--

Akashi collapses upon running out of fuel.

Either a tsukumogami’s body doesn’t rot, or Akashi was using her powers to make sure Kashuu’s didn’t. As if she already knew he would rot anyway.

“I said I would put him back together,” Akashi whispers, and can’t quite find it in herself to ask Yasusada to help her.

“Did you know?” Yasusada’s voice begins strongly for someone who has been sitting in silence for over two weeks. Akashi realizes he doesn’t aim to comfort her. “He jumped in front of me and said he would be fine. He said you would never throw him away. You would love him forever.”

They remain like this for a moment, Akashi completely collapsed on the floor, secretly mechanical limbs stiffened together, and Yasusada standing over her, suddenly more human than their own saniwa. “He was always careless with his own life. I told him not to blame me if he died. He didn’t blame anyone, but he should have blamed you.

Yasusada is similar to Kashuu, but not at all a carbon copy. He does not offer to stitch up Akashi’s wounds, even if these ones cannot be put back together physically. He doesn’t seek Akashi’s attention, never did, not like Kashuu, and she can guess that perhaps it’s because of this Okita-kun he repeated in his sleep when she was watching over him all that time back to make sure his injuries were really healed--

She doesn’t remember if she says I’m sorry or Please forgive me. Her consciousness returns to her when she’s suddenly back in her own office, smell of fuel all over.

“You were heavier than I expected,” Yasusada says, and he sounds significantly calmer.

Akashi blinks. “Uh… did I black out? S-sorry, I…”

“You’re not human,” he suddenly declares, and Akashi sees the fuel can in his hands. She tastes the oil in her mouth. So he figured it out, then. “Kashuu always said that you liked to call yourself a ‘repair ship’ in front of him. He never understood why.”

“I’ll forge him again,” Akashi almost shouts will as much conviction as she can. “I’ll summon his spirit! He won’t remember me or what’s happened here, but he isn’t gone forever. And I won’t mislead him this time. I overestimated my own abilities. You can tell everyone else what I am-- if you know, I mean, I can explain--”

“I’m sorry too,” Yasusada cuts her off. “For yelling at you. I was angry.”

(Like Okita was, but at least this time, Kashuu can just be forged anew.)

---

She does not throw him away. She doesn’t even melt him down. Akashi wraps him in cloth, stitches up every wound in his human body, and buries him in the garden. She leaves his sword in his hands. Before he is covered by the earth, she bows and says a flurry of things that no longer matter, such as I love you, I love you or I am sorry, I am sorry.

She realizes that she does not need to be a combat ship to end a life.

---

She pulls him out of the fire like a scalpel.

“Uhh,” Kashuu breathes first, before clearing his throat. “I'm the child beneath the river. Kashuu Kiyomitsu. I may be difficult to handle, but my performance is good.”

Akashi reaches out to shake his hand. “I'm repair ship Akashi. If you take a little damage, I can fix you up in the base. Just leave it to me! But remember: only a little damage! Don’t be reckless!”

(Some fears are justified.)

Notes:

kashuu must always suffer