Chapter Text
It has… been a long, long time since they first met. Or, well, perhaps it has been a long, long time since they think they first met, rather than the first time they truly did come across one another.
That happened far longer ago.
She was merely a little girl, back then. Barely even seven. She had run from her mother for the very first time — had tried to get away from the treatment she’d thought wasn’t something she deserved.
(She had been right, of course. The problem was, she forgot it for decades to come.)
That was just the first time.
They’d been in London for a fencing tournament — Kagami’s first international tournament, already placed with children older than her —, and what would become Tomoe’s last. Kagami had done her best — her very best! — to get make her Mother proud, except instead of making her Mother proud, she could only find Mother frowning at her, those silver eyes fixated on her with disappointment.
She hated it.
What had she done so wrong as to get her Mother’s disappointment cast upon her? She’d come in second, should that not have been enough?
Clearly, it wasn’t. It wasn’t, because Mother was disappointed, and if Mother was disappointed? Well. There must have been something that was off. Something she should not have done and did anyway.
Instead of staying and taking the reprimands like a big girl, she fled. She ran away from her Mother, left her rapiers behind, left everything except the clothes she’d been wearing when she left. The ones that were far too light for the cold and at times rainy London weather. She hadn’t been supposed to go out anyway, it was understandable her clothes weren’t suitable for the city and the country.
And then, as she’d run through the streets and eventually found herself in an alley, she came face to face with a boy, barely 4 years her senior, except he’d realised she was just a child. She was just a small, broken child, a hurt child, just like himself.
He had been able to see himself in her.
(Neither of them would come to realise this until well into adulthood.)
He’d given her a shelter, both of them far too skinny even if she did have some muscles already on her, both of them huddled under his far too big coat, using a plastic bag and a couple of sticks he’d found sometime earlier as an umbrella.
Besides, even as Kagami commented on how badly the ‘umbrella’ had been made, she was grateful. When she’d finally begun to miss her Mother, he had helped her find a more public place so that she could call her Mother from a stranger’s phone. He helped her find her Mother again.
Later she would regret this, but that wasn’t here nor there right now.
And, once Tomoe had come to fetch Kagami, she spun up a tale full of lies about how she’d been taken by some crude adults, and was then saved by the boy who was with her, for now. Tomoe believed her tale and thanked him curtly, handing him a good sum of money as a reward for rescuing her ‘no-good’ daughter.
Hopefully, the money would help him in turn. It would make the discipline she had to face later worth it all.
(She missed the way he looked at her and her mother at those words, the way he was disgusted and fearful and how he seemed to know the situation from his own life. How it looked like he’d had to go through a similar thing himself.)
(Neither of them deserved the parents they got.)
(Both of them still had to deal with them.)
Tomoe Tsurugi got into a car accident later that day, when her daughter was hidden in her hotel, sitting on a chaise, her back straight and gaze empty, unseeing as she stared at the wall, waiting.
Because waiting was all she was allowed to do.
Tomoe Tsurugi would never fence competitively again — her leg would never function properly again. All of the responsibility of bringing honour and fame home fell upon Kagami’s shoulders.
So, perhaps it was unfortunate, what had happened to them, but that was alright. Or, maybe it wasn’t, but it wasn’t like that was going to change a thing — knowing something was wrong wouldn’t correct what had been wronged, wouldn’t save the one who had been hurt.
So really, it was rather useless.
The thing is, neither of them remembers this encounter. Not as an encounter with one another. Certainly, it was a significant event — memorable, even —, but they still didn’t remember it was each other they had met.
That was simply how life was.
And Kagami never again lied for another person, never again lied to save them from another’s anger because while the punishment she’d faced had not been that bad, she could deal with one it had been like, she refused to lie for anyone ever again for it felt… In a way, like a betrayal. Or no, it wasn’t quite that either, but she didn’t want that one somewhat nice memory she had tainted by someone else’s mistakes, so she stood by her decision.
She stood by it until she was sixteen and met a young man, perhaps in his early twenties or late teens, and she had not even the slightest idea of what had happened when the police began questioning her because she’d been near the young man, and instead of telling them what she knew (because she knew where he’d gone and where he was), she played the part of an innocent tourist who only barely understood what they were saying.
It wasn’t like it was difficult. She could easily fake her accent, talk English as if she’d just begun practising. It wasn’t like English was her first, or even second, language in the first place.
It wasn’t difficult.
And she lied to the police as if it was the most simple thing in the world, knowing that if she was caught, it would mean big trouble for her, and did it anyway.
Kagami had no idea why she did it.
And the young man? Well, he was long gone by the time she could check how he was. She wasn’t sure whether she should be impressed or offended.
It didn’t matter either way.
This was why she didn’t lie for people.
Two years later, she met the young man again. It was… in a way, strange because this time she met him properly. She even got his name.
“John Constantine,” he said, expression far too smug for someone who looked like they had crawled out of garbage disposal before setting themselves on fire for about thirty-six seconds; Hardly enough to do proper damage, but definitely long enough to ruin his looks. No question about that.
“Kagami Tsurugi,” she replied, her own face blank and void of emotion because that was how she worked. Emotions, all of them, were a weakness. They couldn't be shown to someone like this. Not now, and not ever.
(That turned out to be yet another lie, even if it took her a long time to realise it.)
(At least she’d only told it to herself.)
Because she was a fighter — the daughter of Tsurugi, one who had sacrificed her eyes a year after her accident to receive power, to be able to see what wasn’t from this world, and along with it, the ability to see lies —, and she’d been gifted her Mother’s ability after Tomoe’s tragic demise
(Tomoe may not have known what the truth was, but she could wrangle it out of anyone she wanted.)
(The important part was that she knew about the lie in the first place.=
(That was the second reason Kagami stopped lying — she grew afraid of what would happen because Mother always found out the truth.)
And she was… Well, because Kagami was a fighter, she couldn’t say no when she was asked to assist John Constantine with a case — the request came from the Justice League itself. Even as much as she disliked John Constantine, it was important that the mission went without a hitch, and if that meant she had to work together with him? Then she would.
Then she would, until again, things happened and she had to stop, had to stop to lie to save the stupid wizard and his terrible trenchcoat, the amount of arrogance he hid behind to cover how broken he was.
Of course she saw through John Constantine.
It wasn’t even that difficult when the man was like an open book.
(He wasn’t one. He couldn’t simply hide all he was from her. Not from her, who had been bound to him by life once, long, long time ago.)
(Not from her, who’d been bound to him by life many, many lifetimes ago.)
(They were destined to meet whether they liked it or not.)