Work Text:
He's waving his arms around and telling us about how
pain is worth it, how it makes us
stronger
but he's wrong.
Or maybe I only think so because
I'm still suffering.
Or maybe only
some people come out the other end of shame
a better person
while others can't escape.
There are fields on fire and I lay burning.
—Shame, Katie Maria
Lauren Shiba was born under the shadow of a war that threatened to consume the entire world, a river of Sanzu water that would inevitably drown every fire that humanity had ever sparked.
Both her and her little brother were.
That is the Samurai way; offering up children to swallow down the fire to protect it.
No one even knew that there was a daughter. No one knew that there was an elder child. Two children, born a year apart in the middle of war, their mother tucked away because she was not of the Shiba clan, she was barely an extended Mori cousin, some farm girl who managed to catch Alan Shiba's eye when he was visiting Emily and Serena's father on the eve of war.
(And if Lauren had died, no one ever would have known.
If a tree falls in the forest, if a log burns down with no one around to see it, would anyone ever hear it? Would anyone ever listen to the crackle and realize that the girl was burning up at the stake for the sake of saving everyone else?)
That was the deal, at the end of the day: two children, offered up for sacrifice for what their father was and what their mother was not.
Lauren’s bloodline had what was needed to save the world, and that was all that mattered: the Symbol power in their blood and the fire that burned through their veins.
But did anyone ever ask what the little girl if she wanted to be a sacrifice on the altar?
Of course not. You don’t ask the lamb if they want to be slaughtered. You don’t ask the tree if it wants to be burned.
You raise it so that it’s all that it is aware of. You raise it so that, best case scenario, if you’re really lucky, the only option is to offer itself up in the first place.
So is anyone really that shocked what happens when she gets into a battle with four Samurai at her back and no brother there, she does exactly as she was raised to do?
Jayden is missing, Antonio missing with him, because Antonio has his loyalties, has his love, and it’s not to Lauren, because why would anyone’s love ever be for Lauren? Why would anyone burn themselves up for years just for the girl who was only ever a symbol?
Mike, Kevin, Emily, even Mia—the reason why they’re Samurai is because of the blood that burns through their veins, the names that they were born to carry, the need for Samurai to rise up to save the world. They never had a choice.
Antonio had a choice, and he chose Jayden, over and over.
Lauren can’t blame him; if she had a choice between Shiba siblings, she knows who she would choose. She knows which sibling would get her ache towards protection.
But since Jayden is gone, because he misunderstood what she needed, because she gave him a leadership role that he just handed right back to her, when Lauren steps into battle, she is faced with her own ghosts.
And she can’t—
She can’t lose people.
She can’t be the first female Red Ranger who fails.
There is a weight, to every swipe of the Sealing Symbol, every burning brushstroke that peels away at her skin, that burns away at the power in her blood.
And there is a weight to the lives of the team that sit on her shoulders.
Out of the corner of her eyes, in the distance of her ear, echoing against the inside of her helmet, she hears Mia's grunt of pain.
And Lauren sees it in an instant.
For all that the team was raised to be complete with five, they have become used to fighting with six. There is a missing spot, next to Lauren, next to the Red Ranger, that would normally be filled by a flicker of sunlight, a flicker of gold, that has been filled by Yellow instead, lemon-yellow instead of sunlight, and thus, there is a gap next to Mia.
Mia is in danger. There is a group of overwhelming moogers, super-charged by the power of the Sanzu river, and if Lauren can't move, then Mia will be drowned.
And Lauren specifically can’t lose Mia.
It’s not a rational thing, what Lauren does next, throwing herself between the Nighlok’s blast and her Pink Ranger.
Or maybe it is.
Maybe when a girl has been raised to be a sacrifice, when she has been raised to one day die in the pursuit of saving the world, she is more predisposed to throw herself into danger in order to protect others.
(A pre-existing condition, some might say. A comorbidity of fucking existence. Lauren Shiba and her ghosts were destined to meet one way or another, right?)
Mia is in danger, and Lauren only ever knows how to exist within the presence of danger, and so in the split-second she has for instinct to take over, she abandons her Yellow guardian in favor of making sure that the pink does not leave the sky.
The Nighlok's sword shrieks through the air, colliding straight with Lauren's sword arm and her ribs.
It’s not something that Jayden would have had to do, is her last thought. He wouldn’t have had to get to this point, because he’d know how his team fights, he’d know how to protect them without his body ending up on the line, because for all of her training, she never learned how to exist alongside humans. She never learned how to be anything other than a conduit for the Power.
Lauren’s last memory is collapsing out of the Morph, fire falling to ash, gold spraying through the sky.
---
When Lauren falls, the sun is setting in the sky, gold and orange and pink and red mingling in the sky to spill across the horizon.
When Lauren wakes, it is to the night sky an ink spill of the sort that would have gotten her disciplined as a child, food or sustenance taken away.
This is good for you, her mentors would say, If you are to be a Red Ranger, the head of the Shiba clan, then you need to know how to survive in unideal circumstances.
Some part of Lauren had thought: as long as I am head of the Shiba Clan, as long as I am doing this, Jayden doesn’t have to. Jayden doesn’t have to be strained under the sort of pressure that splits trees down into stumps.
And so she’d been happy to do it, to be less than a person, to be nothing more than a symbol, no matter how much her knuckles bled against the dummy, no matter how much her fingers calloused against the quills, no matter how much the backs of her eyes burned from lack of sleep.
Lauren Shiba could do this. Could be the heir—or, rather, the future Lady—to the Shiba legacy so that her brother could have an easier time of things.
Except—
When Lauren wakes, it is to her arm in a sling and Mia Watanabe at her side, humming along to the music, because her brother is gone.
(Her brother is gone, because she wanted to give him relief, and so she cannot regret her decision—
And yet, there is something in her that aches because he left so easily, even though she’d wanted him to go, even though she’d wanted him to be safe, because his team prefers him over her, she saw that the moment she arrived to each of them supporting him, holding him, helping him recover.)
Music is something that many samurai are trained in—at least, the classics are, because rhythm and precision is something that samurai need—but there’s something about Mia’s gentle, organic humming that feels…different. That feels more organic. That feels almost...cozy?
Lauren Shiba has never had cozy. She sleeps on bamboo mats. She has never used a blanket, unlike the ones that she sees scattered on beds throughout the Shiba house. She doesn't do hugs, no matter how much some weak part of herself craves closeness. She never lets herself soften, because going soft can lead to weakness, can lead to vulnerability, can lead to you not being prepared for when an attack might occur.
“You’re awake!” Mia cheers, but then immediately lowers her voice as she bustles over to Lauren with tea and cups on a tray in hand.
And god, there she is.
Lauren drinks in Mia’s life. Mia Watanabe, fully alive, nothing more than a small scratch on her face, still cooking, still a bright light in the darkness.
All that Lauren ever could have wanted.
Lauren lets out a deep breath.
Thank god. Mia’s alive. Mia looks fine.
The ache in Lauren’s chest is answered. The fire in her brain seems to die down, just a bit.
She knows that she’s not supposed to risk her own life before the Sealing Symbol is finished, but Red Rangers are built for sacrifice, right?
And there is some selfish part of her that thinks—
I would not mind if my sacrifice was for Mia specifically. To see that smile shine again.
Lauren smiles at Mia. “Everyone is safe,” she says.
Something in Mia’s expression crinkles. “You were injured, though.”
Lauren shrugs, this small, tired acceptance. “That’s what I’m here for,” she says, “And I’ll be back on my feet soon enough.”
Mia’s expression doesn’t clear as Lauren had wanted it to, though; it only creases further, though that doesn’t stop her from settling the tray onto Lauren’s lap, showing off not just the tea set, the warm smell of hōjicha settling over her—an extra step of work, but lowering the amount of caffeine, perfect for the middle of night.
“Here,” Mia says, “Here’s some tea to take with the ibuprofen.” Mia winces. “It’s not strong enough for what you’re dealing with, of course, sorry about that, but it helps with the ache as the Power does its work.”
Mia’s hands are calloused but her touch is tender, human even, and Lauren’s head is pounding with an underlying headache, and that might be the reason why she doesn’t quite understand all of this.
Tenderness? Ibuprofen? A painkiller? For her?
Lauren is the Red Samurai Ranger. She’s supposed to be able to withstand anything. She’s supposed to be able to be whatever everyone needs, no matter what muscles are burning, no matter what ribs are bruised.
She almost doesn’t take it. She almost tells Mia that she doesn’t need such things, that they are wasted on someone who is meant to keep fighting without assistance, someone who has to be strong when everyone else is falling—
But Mia is the one offering, and Lauren is weaker than she’d like to believe, so she takes it. She drinks the tea and lets the pill slip behind her tongue and down her throat, and there’s a moment, as she’s waiting for the medicine to kick in, that she really starts to think about things. Really starts to take in the fact that no one but Mia is here, not even Ji.
When she first arrived, when Jayden was injured, the others hovered like nurses, waiting with baited breath for him to wake, because he was their friend, because they cared.
Now, though, it’s just Mia.
And Lauren’ mouth is as weak as her heart, her usual filter slipping, because her voice is quiet, eyes downturned, as she asks, “They’re not here because they don't trust me.”
Or, rather, she doesn’t ask.
It's supposed to be a question, but Lauren knows better. She’s not going to beg for an answer to the opposite.
It’s nighttime, and the others are sleeping, because they’re supposed to be sleeping, because they don’t have a Sixth Ranger because Antonio left because his loyalty is to Jayden, not the Code, and the others are loyal to the Shiba clan, but she can see the way that they look at her, the way that she’s filling a hole that all of them can feel gaping open, the way that she is not her brother and never will be.
Lauren Shiba is exactly the Samurai Ranger that she was raised to be. She took the blows that she was supposed to take.
And yet, she is not the leader that her team needs, because it’s not her team, is it?
In the question of which Shiba child leads the clans, the answer of birthright is clear, at least on this island, ever since a rule change took place in the 1700s placing absolute primogeniture as the law regarding succession, but when it comes to which Shiba child leads the Samurai?
Lauren might be the eldest child, the heir, but she is not the one who became the leader. The one that other Samurai will look to. The one that other Samurai trust.
Despite her birthright, despite the fact that she is supposed to lead—
She was the one that was tucked away. The one that was determined to be an appendix to the Samurai team. The one that was put into a different body than the rest, her organs severed, her lungs tied down.
“That’s not true,” Mia says, but she has no need to lie. Not to Lauren, who understands exactly what’s going on. She knows which Shiba scion has the loyalty of the team.
And she’s glad, truly, that her brother has people who love him. People who see him as more than just the replacement, the shadow, the echo.
Because Lauren remembers being a child, in that small sliver of time that she got to be a child.
Or, rather—she wasn’t the child. Her mother was gone. Her father was fighting a war.
Lauren’s first memory is Jayden being about a year old, just beginning to babble and speak, and her trying to take care of him with their father fighting and their mother busy at his side taking care of victims of attacks and them being told that there had been complications thanks to a Nighlok attack and that her mother was dead.
She remembers holding her baby brother in her arms and thinking: we’re what’s left for each other.
And then Lauren was told that soon enough, they’d both be hidden away from each other. That they’d have to separate.
Lauren was a lonely, still, dutiful child. The same is likely true of Jayden, though there has to have been at least one moment of rebellion considering the fact that Antonio was here.
(And now he’s gone, because Jayden is loved, and that is the one thing that Lauren never could have given him. And no matter how she does as a Red Ranger, she will have always failed as an older sister because of it.)
Lauren's head is pounding, is spinning, and she's not sure that she's not dreaming.
How could she not be dreaming?
A red ranger is supposed to fight to the death. They are not supposed to fail. They are not supposed to come back from a fight where the rest of their team saved the day.
Lauren Shiba has spent so long alone with all her ghosts, and maybe some part of her wants to be among the living.
That it makes her a bad person, makes her selfish, because she knows she's supposed to be above it, but—
The only thing that Lauren Shiba has ever had is the Sealing Symbol. The quest to master the power that her father failed to fully harness.
It is the only thing that she has ever had faith in. The entirety of what she is.
She never had the chance to be a person. To have friends.
Even Jayden got the chance to meet Antonio before sending him away—all Lauren has ever had is her ghosts. The phantom of her parents, her brother, what could have been, what never was.
“I'm jealous of you all and your closeness,” the confession slips from between Lauren's lips, and it's a sign of weakness, and yet, she can't stop herself. "I've been—I've been so alone, for so long. And to see you all—I am happy for you, truly. And I know I'm not supposed to be jealous, that Red Rangers are supposed to be what we're needed to be, but I—"
Red Rangers are supposed to be strong. Are supposed to do whatever it takes to win. Are supposed to offer up life and limb to protect others.
They’re supposed to be sacrifices; they’re not supposed to be people.
In the flickering starlight outside of the windows, the guttering flicker of a single lantern out in the hallway, Lauren can make out just a bit of Mia’s expression. Just a bit of the way that Mia’s expression seems to gutter in the wind, despite the fact that Mia’s element is supposed to be air, that elegant dancing of the fan.
There’s some part of Lauren that wants to compliment Mia on her elegance. There's some part of Lauren that wants to say I can't stop watching you, because you are the brightest, most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
Mia's mouth opens, maybe to protest, maybe to agree, Lauren can't begin to guess, but she's interrupted when the bamboo door sweeps back and there, emerging with shadows beneath his eyes, hands covered in dirt, knuckles busted up from some fight, is Lauren’s baby brother.
Jayden's eyes are ghost-bright beneath the moonlight trickling in through the windows as he swallows and says, “I am sorry for leaving you,” in perfect Japanese, each pronoun formal, an offering to someone who was raised on the importance of strictly adhering to tradition, to following the rules set before her, to being what she was supposed to be.
Lauren cannot say it’s alright, even though she knows that she should. She cannot say you were supposed to, even though she knows that she should.
The plan was always for her to come in and take over the team, after all.
And yet, it is not her team. Not entirely. Not as much as it is Jayden’s, because he is their friend, he is someone that they love, and she is nothing more than a substitution.
Mia takes a deep breath and kisses Lauren's head, lips ghosting across the crown of her hair as she gently pulls the tray and the empty cup of tea away so that Lauren doesn't have to deal with it, and it's the most tender thing that Lauren has ever experienced, the sort of affection that she has no idea what to do with, before standing and leaving, nodding at Jayden as they pass, trading watches in the dead of night.
Then Jayden, despite his bruised face, despite the clear ache in his own body, kneels at the bed by her side, bowing deep in respect, in apology.
But it’s not what Lauren wants.
Lauren wants to say hug me.
She wants to say I wish we had been able to be soft.
She wants to ask do you remember playing hide and seek when we were kids, when you were a toddler and I was five, that last year before I left, and I promised I would find you, because that's what older siblings do, and then they took me away and I wasn't sure if you'd even remember me or not?
But she knows that he will respond best to formal orders, because so would she, because that's how they were raised, they, the two Shiba heirs, the spare and the spare, in their own ways, equally indisposable and disposable in their own turn.
And so she bids him rise.
Something in Jayden's spine seems to relax at the formal command as he stands, and it makes something inside of her ache, that her little brother responds better to formal commands from her than pleas from his friends to stay, that this is what they've come to.
"Sit down," she says, and her voice is trembling as she says it, but he does. He sits by her side and it's actually him that reaches out, that takes her hand in his, and Lauren has never had someone hold her hand before.
His hand is calloused. Scarred. What can only be a burn scar curls around the edge of his thumb, because Shibas might have higher heat tolerance than most people do, but they’re not completely immune to fire. They have fragile flesh and skin, same as everyone else. They can take damage.
(And boy, do they take damage. When has there ever been a time when Lauren wasn’t a little bit broken?)
And more than anything, his hand trembles in hers.
Here he is, her baby brother, and the first time she saw him after fifteen years apart, it was collapsed in a sacred garden after a Nighlok had put him on his knees. His breathing was ragged, his body bruised, his entire being an ache.
All his baby teeth are missing. His skin is scarred. If they played hide and seek, he’d be found in an instant, because he’s shot up in height so much, he’s got at least half a foot on her.
She is the eldest daughter. She is supposed to be the protector. She is supposed to be the one who can hold him up during a fight. She is supposed to be the one who make sure that he doesn’t fall apart.
And yet here they both sit, broken, the ashes of the fires that burned their father alive having consumed them both.
And yet—
He’d smiled to see her. He’d smiled, proud and fond as anything, to say she’s my big sister.
And Lauren doesn’t know what to do with that. She doesn’t know what to do with the boy who was excited to see her back after so long separated, the boy who she once played hide and seek with (and she’d won, after all this time, because she hid for fifteen years and he never found her), the boy who still left, because he thought that she didn’t want him there—and maybe, a little bit, to protect him, she didn’t, no matter how much she’d missed him while she was gone.
Lauren swallows. “It is good to have you back, little brother.”
The words fall out in Japanese, not English, the tongue she was raised on, otōto, younger brother, but not with the suffix chan, not with the affection that she called him when they were children, before they were split for fifteen years to opposite ends of duty.
Sometimes Lauren wonders if the disconnect between her and the team is because of the language difference. Because she bleeds in the tongue of their mother land, the language of their training, the words buried deep in their blood, and they speak a language for the land that they now call home, the world they defend.
Maybe that’s where the change comes from.
The fuel for Lauren’s fire comes from the tradition they were raised on; their fuel comes from somewhere else. From each other, perhaps.
And clearly enough, since Antonio left, since Jayden only came back once Antonio caught up to him—
Something in Lauren’s chest twists at the fact that duty was not enough for Jayden. Not like her. That it was only love, affection, that brought him back, not the Code.
“They said that you went down saving Mia’s life,” Jayden says.
“It’s what a leader’s supposed to do,” Lauren says, matter-of-fact, because that’s the truth. That’s what she was made for—to be the sacrifice. To be tucked away to learn the Sealing Symbol so that one day she could sacrifice her life on the altar to complete it.
Jayden nods. “I’d do the same, for any member of the team. But—I learned, the hard way, that they don’t want me to do that.” He swallows, fingers fidgeting between his legs. “I didn’t tell you how I pushed everyone away when they first came here, did I?” Lauren shakes her head. All she’s seen since she got here was how her little brother gets along with his team, a perfect leader, the sort of leader that has earned the trust of his Samurai, the sort of leadership that feels near impossible for her to reach. “I thought, for the longest time, that my life was forfeit, that my life was sacrifice, because that’s why I existed. To take the blows, to even die, so that you wouldn’t have to. So that you could learn the Symbol power.” Jayden smiles despite the way that Lauren’s heart is curdling between her ribs. “There was this dream I had, as a kid, that if I died, one day, at least I would have the organs to give to you so that you could finish the Sealing Symbol.”
The little boy that she left behind so that she could be alone, so that she could do the harder solitude, so that he could have a life—
Instead, his childhood was eaten up by training, by the Nighlok, as much as hers was.
Lauren’s eyes go wide with horror. “No, that’s not—"
“That is,” Jayden gently corrects.
“You’re my little brother, I would never want you to die for me—"
“You might not, but our father, Ji, the rest of the Council that decided to separate us as they did—they all did.” There’s something dreadfully matter-of-fact to Jayden’s voice as he says, “I was the spare. You’re the heir. You’re the sun. I’m the pale imitation of moonlight.”
But he's wrong. He can't be her echo. He can't be her shadow. The same fire runs through their veins, burning bright through both of their beings.
“You’re a better leader than I could ever be,” tumbles from Lauren’s mouth.
“And yet you’re the one that nearly died for Mia,” Jayden immediately argues, and there is the smallest sliver of a smile to his lips, and Lauren doesn’t understand why. Did he want Lauren to die? Does he think of her as a sacrifice, same as everyone else?
No, that doesn’t seem quite right, by his own admission.
And yet, Jayden continues: “She’s been staying up all day and night, everyone says, to take care of you. And I don’t think it’s because of duty. I think it’s for the same reason that Antonio did the same for me, when I got poisoned, when Dekker kidnapped me. Why he came after me.”
There is something sweet to Jayden’s expression that is almost hard to read, because Lauren doesn’t have the language in Japanese or English to contextualize it.
Loyalty not out of duty, but out of…affection?
It seems a concept not suited for Samurai. A concept only meant for the bizarre romance movies that Emily and Mia were watching along with a rather invested (despite his protests) Mike the other day.
Loyalty powered not by a sense of filial piety, of the blood within their veins, but the feelings within their…hearts.
It makes Lauren swallow.
It makes her heart skip a beat, the idea that Mia—for her—
“There’s no way that Mia—”
“There should have been no way that Antonio, either,” Jayden says, and there is something in his voice that wavers, just a bit, as he says: “Why would anyone ever love someone destined to be a sacrifice?”
It echoes within Lauren’s chest, battering up against the insides of her ribs. He has a point. Why should anyone ever love someone meant to be a sacrifice? Why should anyone ever care about someone that will only ever leave you, someone who was never meant to be a person at all?
There are so many logical reasons why a person wouldn’t. Why they would never let their heart expand too far to fill their chest.
Because why would you ever love something that is meant to leave you, just to burn itself out and scatter the ashes six feet under?
“It seems such an illogical thing to do,” Lauren says, but her voice wavers more than she’d meant for it to. Her ache bleeds too bright a red for either of them to ignore.
“And yet, we still have it. We deserve love, I have found,” Jayden says, “It’s hard to believe, most days, trust me, I’m terrible at believing it—"
And Lauren can’t hold in an involuntary giggle at that, because she’s seen the way that he cares about this team, the way that they care about him, the way that a child can learn to connect with others just like them.
Because at the end of the day, he’s still the earnest little kid who tried to convince her that she hadn’t found his hiding place as a kid, that he was just a ghost, that he could prove it by saying boo.
Jayden grins in return, for a moment holding onto his own laughter, before eventually breaking and giggling as well.
Here her and her little brother are, giggling like children in the middle of the night, him bruised and recovering from poison and some sort of fight while he was gone, her arm in a sling and her ribs bruised as well.
And yet, it’s the closest to actual children that they’ve gotten to be in nearly two decades.
And it’s the most human she can remember ever feeling.
And some part of Lauren asks—what if we’d had the chance to do this the entire time? What if we’d ever had a shot at being something other than sacrifices?
It’s an impossible question, of course. Children born to their parents would have ended up with the same fate, no matter how the scrolls unfolded, no matter how long it took their father to die. They would have always been raised up as heirs to their father’s legacy rather than children with a choice.
The only real possible change would have been which of them was destined to labor alone, learning the Sealing Symbol, and which of them would lead the team into battle.
And honestly, if it’s up to Lauren, she’s happy that this is the choice that was made. That it was her that was tucked away to starve for affection and fulfill her duty.
Lauren is happy that it was her that didn’t have a chance at life.
She’s happy that her brother has friends. That he got to meet Antonio. That he got to have a glimpse at a life—
“You deserve a life, big sister,” Jayden says, but he says big sister as onee-chan, as in big sis, affectionate, like you would a sister you grew up with, like you would a sister that you love, and some part of Lauren thinks:
I was a daughter long before I was a girl. I was a sister long before I was a person.
I was a symbol long before I could speak.
And yet, somehow, the way that the syllables curl on Jayden’s tongue make her think: he was my brother long before he became a soldier.
She remembers a younger Jayden, hair brighter than it is now, running around the Shiba house and gardens, curling up tight and small because the longer that he hid, the more time they could ignore the war that was raging beyond their castle walls.
“So—let these people do for you what they did for me. Let yourself have friends. Let yourself be hugged and celebrated and taken care of and fed.” There is something wobbly and yet—almost endearing, in its teasing nature, as Jayden smiles and pokes, “Even if you have terrible taste in food.”
“I still don’t know why you all hate Mia’s food,” Lauren says, “It’s delicious.”
“Taste Antonio’s fish and you’ll see what good food really tastes like,” Jayden says, and there is a fond uptick to the corner of his mouth, as there so often is when he speaks of Antonio, and Lauren thinks—
He loves you, it’s clear. You are the sun to his moon.
But it’s also clear that you love him.
It’s a strange thing to think about, a man loving a man, a man going to the ends of the earth for a love outside of duty, but if Antonio is what makes Jayden smile, then how could Lauren ever protest their friendship—or more than that, if it comes to it?
The Code is the only law that Lauren has ever lived by. The only rules that she has ever set her world by. It’s how they’re supposed to save the world, after all, them and the Symbol power and the rules that make the power work.
But Jayden came back because he loved Antonio and because Antonio loved him. Because Antonio makes him smile. Because Antonio is the one person that he could never truly hide from.
And how could that ever be a bad thing?
Lauren swallows and makes her brother an offer. I see you, she wants to say, I've found you. You're not hiding anymore. “Only if you agree to let yourself be taken care of, too.”
“Antonio does that already,” Jayden says, and his tone is so fond it makes her ache. "I know that he went to find me, but know—he likes you, too. When I told him about you—he was so excited to meet my sister."
Some small fire kindles inside of her, because maybe she is loved, just a little bit—
Jayden’s jaw cracks open with a yawn, and sure, Lauren isn’t at her strongest right now. She isn’t exactly up to fighting a Nighlok, no matter how much she knows that she needs to.
Lauren’s ribs are still bruised. The starlight outside of her window is still so, so far away.
But right here and right now, she has her brother. She has the world that the two of them are trying to save and the people within it that she knows that they’re both not supposed to get too attached to, because forming attachments is antithetical to a Samurai’s vows, and yet—
The dark circles around her brother’s eyes are from the sleepless nights, the breathless ache, the responsibility of an entire team on his back.
She wants nothing more to relieve that weight.
And even in a sling, Lauren can help her little brother deal with nightmares. She has plenty of practice herself, after all.
“Here,” Lauren says, and adjusts just enough to shuffle to the side and hand her brother the blanket from the end of her bed, “Stay the night.”
It’s an offer made by someone whose world has shifted off of its axis. It is an offer made by a girl who doesn’t know what it’s like to be a person.
It’s an offer made by a sister to her brother.
And so Jayden lays down next to her, on her good side, careful not to disturb her ribs or her arm, and they're both stiff, injured, older, aching—
But they cuddle like they're kids again, his head tucked into her good shoulder, an arm carefully tucked against her side, and it's the closest human contact she's had since before they were separated, and it burns, hot as anything, against skin not used to such weight—
But it burns high and heavy and beautiful inside of her chest, scorching like sunlight against a body so long deprived, and she welcomes it with all that she has.
---
When Lauren wakes up, her head isn’t pounding as badly anymore. The world doesn’t feel as dizzying under her feet.
And yet, when she wakes, she finds herself alone.
And something aches inside of her chest.
She’d hoped—she’d thought—maybe, just maybe—
One of them might stay. That Mia or Jayden might be there when she woke.
Last night, waking up to Mia sitting by her bedside—
It had been something that Lauren hadn’t thought possible. She’d never dreamed of it, because it hadn’t even been something that was formable in her cold, quiet, solitary world.
But today, when she’d woke, she had had that possibility in her brain. She’d had the idea that someone might be waiting for her for the first time in her life.
And yet, she woke alone, with everyone else—
She can smell something delicious cooking in the kitchen, and her stomach grumbles.
Wait—how long has she been out for, between the night and the day? How long did it take for them to bring back Jayden?
(How long did it take for everyone to realize that now that Jayden was back, there was no reason for her to be here, too, especially since she was injured, especially since is now a redundancy in everything other than the Symbol power?)
Lauren swallows, hard. Maybe, after last night’s conversations, she supposes that she might as well join everyone else and try to be a part of things, right?
Ready or not, here I come, some small child part of her wants to sing-song as she gets out of bed, as she slowly wraps a shawl around her shoulders, careful not to disturb her sling, and she pads into the hallway, towards the kitchen—
But she stops at the doorway, good hand resting against the doorjamb.
Yes, Mia and Jayden spoke to her about her being part of the group. About her deserving to be a person. She can still remember Mia’s kiss to her hair, Jayden’s hand clutched in hers.
But do the team really want her there? Antonio went to get Jayden because he had no loyalty to Lauren. Mike, Emily, Kevin—what do they really want with the lonely Shiba heir other than filial loyalty?
But then, before Lauren can duck back to her room, before she can turn around, Emily meets her eyes and Emily’s mouth splits into a bright smile. “Lauren!” she cheers, “You’re feeling better!”
Emily bounds forward, and it’s so much energy that Lauren almost feels like she’s living in slow-motion. Emily is earth, her element the ground, she should be a stabilizing presence, but there is a certain lightning crackling through the blonde hair and yellow-bright blouse.
Behind Emily, Mike is also grinning as he follows Emily to the doorway.
Mike even offers up a hand—to Lauren?
Mike isn’t like Kevin. He isn’t steadfast in his duty. He isn't obligated towards respect in the same way that Kevin, traditional blue, is.
But he doesn’t seem to be pitying, either. Rather, he seems to be offering out a hand to Lauren to help her forward, down the small step into the living area and then up to the kitchen, where Lauren can see that Antonio and Mia have plenty of food cooking, because he seems to—care?
Lauren takes Mike's offered hand with her good one, allowing herself to be helped just as she let Mia and Jayden do last night, because maybe Mia might be right, after all.
“Everyone’s made something for you,” Mia says with a beam, “See?"
Mia rattles them all off as Lauren settles onto one of the stools: Mike made horchata, Emily made bacon (those Mori farm roots showing through), Kevin made some grits, Antonio’s obviously frying some fish, and Mia made a quiche that has the sort of seasoning that makes the rest of them wince, but Lauren loves it, because her diet was so strict for so long that trying anything new is a delight, a small slice of impossible freedom.
“And what about otōto‑chan?” Lauren asks, and Jayden smiles at her.
But before Jayden can respond, Antonio beats him to the punch with a quick, “Jay’s there to sit and look pretty.” He gestures between both Lauren and Jayden with his spatula before dropping it back to his skillet. “I know better than to let any Shiba near something they can burn. Jay’s infamous for burning any fish I try to get him to help me with. And you, mi hermana—you are here to enjoy, because every meal needs its audience."
Mi hermana.
It’s not onee-chan, not onee-san, but he’s not Jayden, he’s not the brother that she had to leave behind, it’s sister, in Spanish, in Antonio’s home tongue, it’s my sister, and all of this—the affection, the food, the easy acceptance, the family—
Lauren’s chest is doing something strange. It feels, in some ways, like it’s splintering, the pieces of it throwing themselves against the inside of her ribs.
Because they’re all here.
They’re all here, with her, and they don’t want to replace her, they want to add her to their existing family, want to bring her in with a hug and the very source of life itself.
It’s not just Mia and Jayden—it’s all of them, they each had a role in making the food, in setting her aside a place, and her heart feels painfully human inside of her chest.
Lauren remembers, once, when she was a child being trained how to use Symbol power, the first time that she summoned fire. No one warned her ahead of time what it could do, the power that it could have because of the blood within her veins, and so it burned her.
Shibas aren’t immune to fire. Not entirely. And especially not an UnMorphed child.
Lauren walked around with a second degree burn for a week and yes, it was cleaned, rinsed out with cold water, but she had to grit her teeth against the pain because she was not allowed to put shiso in her soup, aojiso or otherwise.
It was supposed to be a lesson. You stand on your own or you fail for everyone.
And yet, now, that seems to not be the case.
Emily nods. "You're part of the team, Lauren. Part of the family—and not just Antonio and Jayden as your brothers. But the rest of us, y'know?"
A tear slips from Lauren’s eyes, because she doesn’t know how to stop it.
Eyes that have burned for so long are finally able to let the tears slip forth—
A hand reaches out, a thumb gently wiping across her cheek to wipe the tear away.
Lauren swallows, hard, looking up to find that Mia is right there, a soft, sympathetic smile on her lips.
Lauren is the eldest daughter. She is supposed to be the one who bears the weight.
But in this moment, as Mia wipes the tear from Lauren’s cheek, touch tender, Kevin says, “We’re all for here you, Lauren,” and it doesn’t sound like it does when he has said her name before, all duty. It doesn’t even sound like pity, though she wouldn’t blame him for it, and she doesn’t think that she’d resent him for it.
It sounds like the same care in Emily's voice, in Mike's, in Antonio's, in Jayden and Mia's.
So Lauren smiles back. "Thank you all," she says, in Japanese, the deepest gratitude, and all of them understand it save Antonio, who she slips out a tentative, "Gracias," towards, because a mother tongue is a thing that means something, and it's worth it for the way that he lights up.
They all smile back at her, and things fall into an easy rhythm, conversation spilling across the room, people helping ladle helpings of food—their food—onto Lauren's plate, where Mia actually helps cut up her food so that Lauren can eat with her good hand.
And some part of Lauren should feel made useless, redundant, by the help. She is the heir to the Shiba line. She is the Red fucking Samurai Ranger. She shouldn’t need anyone’s help.
But her entire life, she has been one half of an organ, each seemingly able to be done away with without the other one dying.
Right now, Jayden is giving Antonio that soft, sweet, proud smile, the sort of thing that was born out of affection long before anyone made it into a duty, but then he smiles at her, too, and Lauren thinks—
Lauren is still going to have to use the Sealing Symbol. She is still going to have to figure out how to bear the weight of saving everyone.
But she and Jayden are going to have to lead the team together, and that seems like a task for later, after food, after laughter.
And for a moment, Lauren doesn’t feel like the nineteen-year-old heir to the Shiba line. She doesn’t feel like Atlas carrying the weight of the sky, of all of that filial duty, of the entire fate of the world.
She feels like a teenager, hanging out with friends, binging on comfort food, laughing with her brother, letting the sunlight spill through her veins, finally found.
'Cause I keep you in my heart
Yeah, I keep you even when we are apart
And I'd keep you out of the dark
If I only could
All that you believe in can survive this one
A fairy only keeps her wings if you cheer them on
Well, it's hard to find a star
In all this godforsaken dark
So I'll believe in you
—The Oh Hellos, December ‘04