He hated this.
So many years had passed since that fateful autumn day, and yet it wouldn't leave his head.
It refused.
A small part of him noted that he really shouldn't be that surprised. He had watched someone die in front of him, someone who was so tired of the life he'd had that he had willingly taken the bullet. The look of relief and freedom had scared him, spoken to him in a way that frightened him right to the core. He hadn't known it was possible to look that relaxed to die …
Now it felt like the full moon would forever taunt him with that memory, forbidding him sleep. If he tried to, he'd feel those hands grabbing his legs to drag him down. Hands rough from using a battle axe, sleeves hiding arms covered in scars, eyes paler than the moon. No accusation in those eyes, only that horrifying relief, disconcerting against the backdrop of a blood-red face. Every night that nightmare happened, he'd wake up, screaming and incapable of consolation until the sun began to rise.
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, he had recalled one of the doctors saying. Too many mentally scarring things at too young of an age, too much strain and stress; taking him out of the city should help.
He frowned at that.
The city had the grave, the one place he could spend the full moon and not be haunted by the nightmares.
A small one decorated with a watch, a small cherry tree nearby constantly letting its white blossoms drop to the ground on the grave, a chilling reminder that life didn't give a single damn if one person died. If anything, it could have cared less; it wasn't the first time, it wouldn't be the last. The broken watch that hung over the stone remained frozen at midnight, dried blood on the inside of the machine from where the force of the shot had forced metal into the chest cavity.
They'd never found the killer, either. He'd vanished one day, and everyone had written him off for dead.
And they had lied.
They had lied about why he had died, saying it had been a mugging. That it had been just another random crime.
His blood boiled at the very thought. Why? Was keeping panic out of the city worth lying about the fate of one that they had deigned to call a friend?
Rage and anger ate at his heart, remorse and guilt blinding him as he began punching the mirror in front of him. The feeling of his hand being lacerated didn't deter him, didn't make him stop to realize he was bleeding into the sink beneath its shattered face.
He hated it all.
This … this anger inside of him, this disgusting feeling of hatred … it was all aimed at him.
He had been warned about that too, he realized with a bitter, hollow laugh. He had become the one thing he had sought to destroy, and all he could do was laugh at the bitter irony of it. Even if he hadn't been the one to land the deathblow, even if he'd been the one whose life had ultimately been in danger, his rage and idiocy had instigated the situation in the first place.
The others hadn't punished him.
They didn't need to.
The guilt that consumed him from the inside out did that for them.
His knuckles were bleeding, hitting the back of the mirror hard enough to break the skin. Stopping when he saw the crimson smearing onto the wall, he backed away and tended to his hand with shocking disinterest. The dorm mother would probably find the mess tomorrow, and he'd be hauled off to another therapist, even though they couldn't help.
It didn't fool him.
If he hadn't been in her dorm, that woman wouldn't have given a damn about him.
And the only person who had genuinely cared laid under the ground now. Because he couldn't grow up enough in time to accept that an accident was an accident, even if it had destroyed his world; it had clearly destroyed him just as much, a crushing weight nobody else had noticed.
Those same hands that tried to drag him to hell in his nightmares had once calmed him down from a horrible fever, even knowing that he would soon die by the small boy's hand.
He hadn't cared.
Laughing bitterly, he slid down to the floor of the bathroom, noting streaks of crimson running down the wall to the floor. That would be hell to clean, and they'd have to be careful about broken glass.
Tch, not like he'd be getting sleep tonight; the full moon shone down from its place in the night sky, bright enough to read a book by. He'd clean up the glass eventually.
He was almost waiting for them to haul him off to an asylum, deeming him hopeless. If that happened, he wondered if he'd go along.
He had taken that set of worn down, well-tended kitchen knives with him, after all.
They were under his bed, never used, but served as a haunting reminder of how badly he had erred. Of the price it had cost him to fall blindly into wrath and revenge.
He …
Was he crying?
He hadn't cried in years, and yet …
It wasn't pain, he knew that much. It was raw grief, anger, and sorrow. Battered arms pulled his legs in close, head resting on his knees as he sobbed.
How could he have killed his brother …?
... why the fuck am I writing drabbles at five in the morning? ಠ_ಠ
No, seriously. I need to be in fucking bed. why am I wide awake?
Anyway, before everyone gets confused by the last line, it's a personal belief of mine that the two in this oneshot (KEn and Shinjiro, if it's not obvious), are brothers/half brothers. I Don't know why, but it works ...