Disclaimer: Characters aren't mine.

Note: Spoilers for episodes 34 onwards, as this has to do with that little secret Takumi hides until then.

Stubborn Too
by Estirose
c 2007

Inui Takumi had to be the most stubborn person on earth, and now Kiba Yuji could see why.

He looked at the case that Takumi had just left with him. He'd promised to protect where Takumi couldn't, protect until Takumi felt comfortable with himself again, got a chance to reintegrate Takumi-the-Rider with Takumi-the-Orphenoch.

Blinking, he willed moisture away from his eyes. He wasn't crying. Not for himself, not for Osada, or Kaido, or Takumi. He couldn't show weakness, not right now. He couldn't mourn for the loss of innocence becoming an Orphenoch meant. And Takumi had been an Orphenoch for so long, longer than Kiba, and yet he still was plainly uncomfortable with what he was.

Yuji looked at the case again, and at the retreating form, now a vague blur in the distance. He wanted to be gentle, to reassure the other that he was still human, still had his human heart. Had functioned as a human for so long that he was okay. Except he wasn't, and there was nothing that Yuji could do about that. The man wasn't like Osada, not someone who wanted a hand stroked through his hair, a quiet whisper that things were all right.

Takumi, who had reacted in anger that Yuji was Orphenoch just as Yuji had been angry that Takumi was Faiz. But how could Takumi know that there were good Orphenoch, people like him, people who weren't out to destroy humans just because they could? That he wasn't alone in being subject to this poor galactic joke of an evolution?

Like Osada and Kaido, Yuji wanted to protect Takumi. Except Takumi wouldn't accept protection, wouldn't accept being protected. He fought for his own reasons, against his own kind, inscrutably so, fighting just because he was fighting. Fighting to protect, though Takumi would just about admit it as Murakami would admit that killing humans was wrong.

So, in the meantime, Yuji had the belt, and the obligation to protect. Save Humanity from his own kind. Because he was stubborn too.

-end