Inkblood by littlelinguistme
Written for Day 2 of CoAi Week 2018 on Tumblr! Prompt: Protect
Disclaimer: Please don't sue me. All recognizable elements belong to Gosho.
bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Breathe in.
bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Breathe out.
bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Shinichi doesn't make a sound as the needles pierce him; the angry buzzing would've drowned him out anyway.
Breathe in.
He holds his breath against the pain until its handler withdraws. He can't even enjoy the brief respite because he knows there is a long session ahead of him. He braces for the next painful prick. This is his penance.
bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Breathe ou-
Shiho feels him wince beneath her hands and runs a towel across his back in response, trying to covertly soothe him. She passes it off as indifference, pretending she is simply wiping away the blood and excess ink from his seeping work-in-progress. If his part in this messed up scene is the fallen lamb which freely begs its own flagellation, she must be his implacable scourge.
Breathe in.
She can't forgive him.
bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Breathe out.
She loves him.
bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Brea- eathe in.
She's already forgiven him.
bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Breathe out.
She hates him.
bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Big. Breath. In.
They couldn't save the Professor.
bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Breathe out.
She will save the detective.
The young scientist just had to keep him together long enough for time to weather out the numbness that had become so deep-rooted in him since her adoptive father figure was taken from them by the crows. The black organization had traced one of the bugs Shinichi had planted back to Agasa. They… they found his body the next day.
She'd already forgiven the naive detective but he can't forgive himself. He starves for atonement and the only way he can be sated is under her unforgiving needle.
bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
He needed her to be the one holding the trigger.
"I won't do it."
"This is what I need. Please." It was for both of them. He willed her to understand.
"No, absolutely not. Have you finally lost it, Kudo?" Her arms were crossed, her tone repulsed.
He wanted her to see: he coveted her disappointment, her rage, her everything. He never wanted to forget his sin against her, letting both the last of her old family and her singular new family disappear on his watch. Under his protection.
"I've never even given a tattoo! You need a license; I'm not qualified."
"It doesn't matter." She was a genius. He trusted her to learn.
This was to be an act of contrition, the sincerest apology he could give. He would let her drag the needle-gun across his flesh as many times as she determined was warranted. He let her pick the size, the location, the colors, the design, everything. His only asks were that her piece would be finished in one session and that she stick to her design until the end.
He refused to specify a time limit. That, coupled with her inexperience made their first tattoo incredibly frustrating and painful for both of them. Her design was situated over bone, and he bled excessively.
ABYSSUS ABYSSUM INVOCAT
His first tattoo: hell calls hell; one misstep leads to another. She wrote it in her own script, not daring to try any unnatural fonts fearing she'd mar and ruin it. It was small and, she thought, fitting. She placed it above his rib cage, on his left side.
Before she had started designing, he relayed back to her every single decision he'd made that culminated in planting the damned bug. Like he was confessing his sins and she was his priest.
For the entire duration of the designing process she had been torn. She couldn't wholeheartedly reassure him he wasn't to blame in her guardian's death. For sure, she had brought the danger into their lives too, but he had been completely reckless.
"This is insane; what are we doing?" She wiped away the blood that was dripping down his side and pooling on the table they worked on. Shiho's hands were shaky and she bit her lip to still herself as much as she could. "What if this gets infected?"
"You've disinfected those needles with lab grade ethanol. I'll be fine."
"No, we really should stop, Kudo, you've lost too much blood. There's ink everywhere. I can't even see what I'm doing anymore." She was trying to find any excuse that would free her of this duty.
Shinichi sat up suddenly, upending her tray of tools. He grabbed her wrist. His eyes were intense.
"Please."
They locked eyes for an immeasurable moment. She gave in to him. His reparation continued.
Even as he sat beneath the needle, thirsting for every stitch of atonement, Shinichi still felt his punishment to be inadequate. Each bead of blood she drew from him added to his altar offering. It would never be enough. A liter of his blood was not worth even a drop of Agasa's.
bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
She was haggard and completely spent by the end of their first inking. He, on the other hand, had a gratified if unholy glint in his eyes, a light that was different than the twinkle he'd held once before. What kind of insanity likens that bloody black mess to a therapy session?
The strawberry-haired scientist had never been so tired in her entire life. Physically and emotionally. Their pre-design discussion had been an hour long session of self-disparaging on his part and conflicted half-denials on hers. The actual tattooing process took her over six hours, tracing and retracing her shaky handiwork.
Something had come out of her in between the pressure of permanently altering his bodyscape, and the violent state of mind she had to maintain to continue her work. Something, that felt like anger.
Wiping away the sweat from her forehead, she refused to look at him.
"Clean up."
His wounds were dressed; he shouldn't need her any longer. She slammed the door to the bathroom. Sliding down with her back to the door, she whispered to herself, frustrated with her warring emotions.
"I'm never doing this again."
But she knew those words were false even as she uttered them. This inane scheme was the first time she could see him coming back to life. She hadn't heard him string so many words together since the day of the Professor's passing. The change was stark and sudden. And despite her desire to see the person in him again-anything, anything besides that immutable numbness- it was so overwhelming.
Did I do the right thing? Indulging him in this?
The rational part of her brain kept telling her that such a destructive penance could only be harmful to the detective. But she remembered how he had been before.
She had stood witness to how the numbness crept into him, slowly at first, silently replacing every emotion that obsession and grief didn't take over when the Professor died. At first, nobody around him save for her seemed to notice that numbness had taken up residence within Shinichi until the raven-haired boy was incapable of expressing any extreme emotion. But as time went on, the haze of emotionlessness grew thicker.
For months, he had lived with a constant damper. He became disinterested in everything to the point where she thought him to be a passerby in his own life, a stark contrast to the shameless famewhore he used to be. She, his friends, and his family did everything they could think of to snap him out of it. Well, most did.
Mouri Kogoro called it "a funk. The brat'll be back to normal before you know it."
But it wasn't a funk and his parents fell deeper and deeper into despair, desperately worried for their son. They tried enticing him with cases and with limited edition books. They tried to shock him into reacting with a fake arranged marriage. They tried appealing to his guilt by breaking down and begging him to "please, snap out of it."
She watched it all fail. Eventually, even the adrenaline high he got from case solving seemed to disappear.
Shiho couldn't bear letting him slip back into that.
"I need him," she admitted to herself. If it took reliving every choice he'd ever made, she would bear that cross.
It was a light weight when considering that it was her fault either of them had been on the crows' radar in the first place. If he wanted her to listen to his distorted guilt… if he needed her hands to be stained with his inkblood… who was she to complain?
She looked at her hands clutching the bathroom sink, covered in dried streams of charcoal and crimson color. It pooled in her cuticles, in the wrinkles of her knuckles, in the lines of her palms.
Her breathing shortened.
Red
Red
Red
bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
He could hear her retching.
He hadn't meant to cause that. He knocked.
"Haibara."
No answer. Just more dry-heaving and soft cries. His heart clenched.
"Let me explain." He knocked more insistently. "Let me help you."
The only response he got was the flutter-thump of a magazine as she threw it at the door that separated them.
"Haibara, I just wanted…" He did it to feel. Six hours of having five needles dragged across the same small area of skin felt like hell. It brought pain and guilt and anger and guilt and worry and guilt and appreciation and guilt and all the other emotions he'd lost back.
Mostly guilt.
"I needed you to… to kickstart me..." A breath, "I… It's my fault… Professor Agasa died because of me. I was hasty. I didn't think about- I wasn't careful, enough."
He leaned into the door. Shinichi heard her slump, her back to the tub; the hollow clink of the porcelain gave it away.
"I needed- I couldn't do anything in that zombie-like state! A- and I needed to feel things again. I have to find them- they need to- they can't get away with what they've done to the professor. I won't let them. I promise."
""Hah." A scoff. "You have a track record of not keeping your promises, detective."
He faltered, "I won't fail this time."
Shinichi heard a scrambling from the other side and backed away from the door in alarm. Suddenly, Shiho appeared, face red and breathing hard. The slender scientist looked crazed.
"Oh? Is that so? What's different this time, huh? What's changed? How am I supposed to believe you can save us, or that you'll protect us, when you can't save anyone? You who only have a job to do after someone has died."
Each point was emphasized with a hard poke to his chest; he knew it would bruise. He could hear her implication, loud and clear. I've let her two most important people die.
He could never pen the right words to make the girl recognize his debt to her; he'd already tried.
"I know… and I'm sorry." He pleaded then, "I need your help. I can't get better without you."
He waited for her outrage.
bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
She looked at him, deliberating. A part of her was furious that he was going to try to take down the organization again. Another part was relieved that he was back on the case. But the caveat: they'll never stop searching for us until one of us is dead.
She wanted to take his olive branch, but she was so afraid for his life.
"I can't lose anymore people," she said. Shiho was quiet, resigned.
For once in his life he knew what she wanted him to say.
"I'm not going anywhere."
bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
After cleaning her utensils, a procedure she has perfected in these past three months, she finds him in the bathroom, looking over his shoulder to inspect her handiwork in the mirror:
A pair of antlers rest over his shoulder blades, one gnarled and crumbling while its twin is solid and unbent. A symbol of regeneration, she'd said. "For second chances."
He looks around the slightly red skin and notes the black that still mars the periphery of his newest tattoo. She's just as tainted, the deep ink black obstinately lingering in the crevices of her hands. He doubts they'll ever wash clean.
He doesn't dislike it. The blood had washed away after the first thorough rinse and the copper stench left them a few washes after that.
All that's left is the ink of their contract, a reminder of their mutual sin and their dedication to a future with all of their loved ones, together. They wouldn't lose anyone ever again.
Word Count: 2080