Title: All That You Can't Leave Behind
Author: jordannamorgan
Fandom: Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress
Characters: Ikoma, Takumi, Kurusu, Sukari.
Setting: General.
Rating: PG.
Length: 1,304 words.
Summary: What we die to protect speaks volumes about our lives.
Notes: Also written for the prompt of “Possessions” at genprompt_bingo.



The ruins of fallen stations were truly eerie places—and all the more so the older they were.

Accompanying a crew of steamsmiths and their well-armed bushi escorts, Ikoma walked slowly down the main street of a ghost town. Crumbling walls loomed around them; some were charred black by fire, others green with moss. Here and there, healthy young trees rose up from the middle of roofless buildings, as nature tried to reclaim what man had lost. The few recognizable objects scattered on the street were decayed and half-buried: a broken clay bowl, a carved walking stick, a sandal without its mate. Long devoid of life, Nodoka Station was indeed steeped in the peace for which it had been named… in haunting contrast to the scene that must have unfolded there on the day it fell, more than twelve years earlier.

“So far we’ve seen no human remains,” Kurusu noted, his eyes darting vigilantly from one gaping doorway to the next. “We can hope that means most, if not all of the citizens were able to escape the Kabane.”

Takumi squirmed and grimaced, nervously pressing close to Ikoma’s side. “…Unless it just means all the bodies got up again.”

It was a sobering thought—and unsettlingly plausible. The Kabane always left few dead in their wake who did not join their ranks. Even after more than a decade, the undead husks of those who died there may still have been roaming the wilderness in search of blood.

“Don’t worry, Takumi,” Ikoma assured his best friend quietly. “Mumei and I haven’t sensed Kabane anywhere near here. They’ve got no reason to stay where they can’t find any more fresh blood. And if Mumei does pick up any of them wandering past the walls, the Kotetsujo will warn us.”

At that the bigger steamsmith let out a grunt that was almost a chuckle, and Ikoma could guess what he was thinking. Mumei had pitched a regular fit when asked to stand lookout from the deck of the train, instead of tagging along to sightsee with the salvage team. Only a great deal of reasoning and reassurance of her vital role in the mission quieted her down. Ikoma could sympathize with her boredom, but they did need one of the Kabaneri to stay alert from a vantage point closer to the station’s gate, and he was much more qualified to help identify and recover equipment with the other steamsmiths.

Not that there had yet been much of value to find. At least within a relatively close distance from the train tracks, it seemed some other very brave and enterprising train crew must have dared to scavenge sometime in the past. The steamsmiths had noted several places around the depot where machinery was missing; things too heavy or too unimportant to be carried away in the rush of an evacuation. Now they were finding this also extended to the houses and shops on the main street. Towns would be left frozen in time when their inhabitants fled before the Kabane, yet Nodoka Station seemed largely bereft of the usual fragments of lives left behind.

At least, those that could be used or sold by scavengers. Ikoma briefly shut his eyes as he stepped over the remains of a now eyeless rotting ragdoll, and tried very hard not to think of Hatsune.

He wondered what had become of her belongings and his own, back in the ravaged ruins of their home station. Poor as they were, nothing of the little they possessed would ever have caught a scavenger’s eye. Just like that doll, he supposed it was all slowly and silently turning to dust, with no one left to even remember it but him.

The worlds people created for themselves and fiercely clung to were so much more fragile than they wanted to think about.

Ahead of him, Kurusu provided a welcome distraction, cautiously stepping up to the doorway of what must have once been a fairly wealthy household. It was now a burned-out shell, its walls charred halfway to the ground and nearly all of its roof caved in.

Slowly the warrior’s gaze scanned over the ash-blackened interior of the house… and he stiffened. A tight breath drew into his lungs as he stepped back.

“What is it?” Takumi asked with a note of dread, crowding closer to look beyond Kurusu, just as Ikoma came near enough to see as well.

They had found their first evidence of human remains in Nodoka Station.

Near the opposite wall of what had been the house’s front room, a crumbling skeletal figure lay facedown with its feet pointing toward the door. It was still dressed in tattered rags of silk. Judging by the length of the bones, in life this had been a man of formidable height. A heavy beam from the collapsed roof lay across his back, and his right hand was outstretched, as if he had died while struggling to crawl out from beneath it.

“Poor bastard,” Sukari muttered, peering between Ikoma and Takumi. “I guess the Kabane didn’t get to him—but getting caught in a burning house must be almost as ugly a way to die.”

Ikoma tilted his head slowly, pondering exactly what it was about this scene that didn’t quite make sense to him.

“…If he was trying to escape, why would he be facing away from the door?”

Kurusu cast a sharp glance at Ikoma. Takumi blinked and scratched the back of his neck. Sukari raised an eyebrow interestedly.

Unable to contain his curiosity, Ikoma picked his way forward to examine the skeleton more closely. His gaze was drawn to that outstretched hand. Its fingers, he noticed, were digging into a crevice between the floorboards—one that looked just a little too large and too smoothly shaped to be natural. That particular board was much shorter than those around it, and when Ikoma tapped on it with his knuckles, it produced a distinctly different hollow sound.

Glancing up at Kurusu, he watched the bushi realize the same thought that had struck him.

Kurusu knelt down. Slowly, with obvious care and respect, he took hold of the skeletal hand and attempted to move it to one side. He flinched as brittle bones separated and fell loose between his fingers—which was somehow sadly amusing to see from the ordinarily stoic warrior. Nevertheless, he set himself and completed the motion of pulling the bones away from the hollow floorboard. He grasped the crevice the dead man had been clawing at, and with only a small effort, he pulled it upward to expose an open space beneath.

A leather pouch lay within the hidden compartment. When Kurusu lifted it, the contents shifted with a heavy metallic jingle; and when he pried open the dry and stiffened drawstring, a shining gold piece slipped out, clattering onto the floor.

Takumi gulped as if he might swallow his tongue. “That’s…!”

“It’s real.” Kurusu picked up the gold piece, turning it in the light; and as his gaze slid back to the bag in his hand, Ikoma saw the way he almost cracked a smile.

“That’s gotta be enough to buy food and supplies for the passengers for a month,” Hatori mused, standing at the head of the bushi escorts who were now unabashedly gawking.

“For two months.” For once Kurusu let his smile show through, and it came to rest on Ikoma. “We have you to thank for this. Without your keen eye, we would have overlooked this hidden treasure, just as the previous scavengers did.”

A blush struggled into Ikoma’s pale cheeks. “I was just curious.”

“Huh. I guess your curiosity doesn’t always lead to trouble after all,” Takumi remarked gleefully, throwing an arm over Ikoma’s shoulders. “Oh boy, we’re gonna eat great at the next station we visit…!”

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2022 Jordanna Morgan