The moon hovered above in it's pale effervescence, effacing its glow over every surface like a god that watched in reverie of the still silence below. The night's chill held a sting; an imitation of his mothers care against his cheek, but stagnant enough to give way to the impression of lifelessness.
He had no particular destination in mind as he wondered, and had his chest not felt so achingly empty, he would realize how truly grateful he was for how abandoned the streets of his neighborhood became when night fell. After all, trying to explain why someone so young wandered the streets at so late an hour would lead to questions he couldn't answer.
/Because I have no where to go./
No where he could bare the idea of being any longer. Every place had been touched; imprinted with memories that pulsed and ached as if infected.
That's how he felt- infected, sick. Lost.
As if he had been robbed of his equilibrium; as if someone had blotted out the sun and took with it the gravity that kept him tied to the Earth.
No where was safe anymore, because Soubi had followed him everywhere, and everywhere they had gone, memories had been made. Even without the photographic proof to pin to his wall, such vivid memories were branded so deeply inside of him that Ritsuka was sure they had become apart of his DNA.
Soubi always did things that were so unnervingly intense that Ritsuka had no choice but to remember them. Almost as if...
The realization hit him with a force that exhaled the air from his lungs in a single breath and the shock of it arrested his steps. The idea ricocheted inside of him like fireworks, driving deeper and deeper inside of him the grinding reality with which he was now faced.
...As if trying to seal himself inside of Ritsuka, sear himself in so deep that forgetting was no longer an option. Ritsuka had always thought he needed the pictures to remember, terrified as he was of forgetting, and Soubi had known that.
That was why he never failed to make each moment into something more than it should have been.
His body trembled, as his head bowed to shield his face from the world and the things he was currently experiencing- things he could feel clearly in the lines of his face. No one could see this, not even the god moon above, because these things /hurt/. This was /scathing/, burning him in a place where not even his mother had ever reached and there was nothing that she could have inflicted on to him that would amount to this.
His breathing became shallow, his body struggling to take in oxygen around the way his throat had suddenly closed in. Warm rivulets made identical tracks down the curve of his cheek, quickly chilling from the cold and he afforded a single, soul-shuddering gasp to ripple in the air. Against the stillness and the silence, the sound exploded from his lips like the backfire of an engine and in that moment, the curtain of loss and confusion he seemed unable to escape, created from the moment Soubi stepped away from him and did not look back, fell away in a flurry of rippling fabric. It left nothing in its wake but shimmering anguish and iron-clad resolve.
His legs seemed to decide on his next course action of their own accord, his mind unable to give conscious commands and he was suddenly running. The air whipped passed him, tugging at his clothes and hair; the scenery around him blurred into a array of dull color as a single thought took precedence at the forefront of everything else and gripped him in an unshakeable, single-minded determination.
He was going to get his fighter back.
One way or another.