For Bungou Stray Dogs Rarepair Week 2017.
Day 7: Ghosts
steel
.
She used to think his eyes were steel.
She used to look up to them, to the fiery determination of a gaze frozen in time– used to believe they held all there was to admire within them. They never hesitated, never wavered; be it an attack or a slaughter, they stared composed, imperturbable where the warmth in hers was unable to stand a brutality she clung to with the hope to find him looking back at her from the darkness.
She used to think he strived to become stronger, even though he was already incredibly respected in the underworld, the Port Mafia's rabid dog a pseudonym most sensible people feared. She admired his determination, his ruthlessness and his yearning for a greater power; she revelled in excitement every time she accompanied him on a mission, pride tinting her pale cheeks with the softest pink at every praise he threw in her direction.
To her, his eyes were the most untamed metal.
And they were beautiful.
She can't recall, not even now, when it was that she saw deeper inside his gaze for the first time. She only knows the hatred she felt then hasn't lessened one bit since that moment.
A loathing not directed towards him, but to the one that caused this. For his determination became desperation, his motivation a man that wouldn't look at his strength twice. His cruelty a desperate cry for someone whose life was still, after four years, tangled to the Port Mafia to acknowledge what he had become, what he was.
And she became unable to catch the slightest glimpse of steel in his eyes anymore. It was hidden, drowning in mist as his obsession isolated him from everything but that man– but the words he craved, the recognition a desperate soul needed to keep going.
She could only stand aside –forcefully, reluctantly obeying bites and barked out orders– as he threw every caution overboard, ready to die and even disobey the Boss' orders, those that resounded within the Port Mafia as divine commandments.
He disregarded everything and everyone for the sake of that man, and all she could do was watching, preparing herself to lose the only reason she hadn't crawled out of that hell yet.
She was wrong.
And she has never been happier to be wrong.
As she walks into the room where he rests, leaning on a bunch of pillows with bruises all over his body and exhaustion clinging to his very soul, there is steel in his eyes again. For a second she worries her sight is failing her, and the last of her concerns is stopping being useful to the Mafia. But when she dares to peek into them again she notices the mist, still there but lighter, slowly lifting as he tears his gaze off the window, off the mechanical whale still half-submerged in the bay, to acknowledge the newcomer.
And she doesn't know what happened, but she knows it's good.
"I brought flowers," she hears herself say, unsure when he doesn't speak.
Akutagawa only nods.
"Leave them on the nightstand," he mutters, concealing a quiet cough behind his hand as Higuchi complies. She frowns at the single sunflower already laying on the wooden surface, but she supposes wondering about its possible implications can wait.
"You look better, senpai," she comments, a smile curving her lips even as Akutagawa shoots her a tired glare.
"…If you say so," he replies slowly, probably too weary to argue. "Thank you for the flowers." Higuchi sits down on the chair next to the bed, intertwining her fingers together as she bites her lower lip, half expecting to be sent out. "How are things going?"
Higuchi's brown eyes widen in honest surprise at the unspoken invitation in those words.
But she answers the questions, voice soft as she looks into his eyes, through steel that today, for the first time, looks somewhat warm.