[AN] heyo. turns out that my rewrite of my other drrr! fanfiction has morphed into something else entirely. thus, I present to you "The Fox and the Wolf." my OOC Mizuki actually just so happens to be a lot like Okami-san from Okami-san and Her Seven Companions. that was unintentional, I watched that awesome anime (which is now one of my favs) after coming up with the concept for this story. but that's okay cause Okami-san is sexy as fuck. if you're familiar with the anime, you'll notice the similarities almost immediately. because I fucking nicknamed Mizuki Okami-san. whoops.
please don't hate me for this fanfiction. and the first person who gets the theme of the chapter titles can have my soul.
[warning] drug use, violence, swearing, eventual smut.
Deep within the concrete forest of Shinjuku, Japan lurked a legendary and sly fox.
Far into the recesses of Ikebukuro lived a solitary wolf who never howled at the moon.
One day, the wolf ventured into the fox's territory, and the hunt began...
Chapter 1: White Widow
- Ikebukuro
The night was rapidly waning along with her hope; a cliche notion but an accurate one nonetheless. She had known it would be difficult to find one particular person in the cluster-fuck that is Ikebukuro. Despite the district's small size, it is densely populated with all walks of life. Mizuki hasn't been to many places, so she wonders if the natives of other lands are as eccentric as the ones here.
She doesn't consider herself to be one of those 'eccentric natives.' She's just a bystander. But today she will delve into the eccentricity of this place she calls home. She's been here her whole life, knows every street and sign, but sticks to the sidewalks where it's safe. She thought that she'd avoid trouble this way, but it seems that danger often hunts down those trying to escape from it. That 's why she's going to face it head on.
"There are a few people in Ikebukuro that you don't want to mess with," her friend had warned her. She didn't really pay attention to what he had to say at the time. Kida-kun was always trying to frighten her. "Simon Brezhnev and Shizuo Heiwajima for instance. But there's one guy that you never want to come into contact with. His name is-"
"Izaya Orihara."
It was the wolf who hunted down the fox. That's how it has always been. That's nature.
After countless unreliable leads and dead ends, Mizuki has finally concluded that it is as possible to find Orihara Izaya as it is to stumble upon the fountain of youth, and that her search has been fruitless. 'Guess I'll just have to have him come to me instead,' she thinks unequivocally.
Across the street from her, lit up in the darkness of the otherwise empty stretch of sidewalk, is an oasis; a soda machine. The loose change in her pocket seems to grow heavier, and she stops her languid pacing as she mulls over whether to give in to desire and quell her patched throat. Before crossing the road, she checks both ways like her mother taught her when she was little, her own small hand in the warm an familiar one of her Oka-chan as they went on their daily commute to preschool. But instead of looking for cars, she's checking for someone much more dangerous, who -if she were to go on a collision with- would cause more damage than even a hunk of metal going forty; Shizuo Heiwajima, notorious for his mistreatment of vending and soda machines such as this one.
"Shizuo..."
"Mamma, that lady's talking to herself!"
"Don't look at her, she's probably on something," a young mother murmurs to her small boy, wrapping an arm possessively around him and guiding him away, she, too, avoiding eye contact with the strange girl. By this time, traffic has conquered the streets once again, making them impassable. Mizuki watches until the two forms are swallowed by the sea of people, thinking to herself that the pair must be tourists. The natives here are used to seeing characters stranger than those who absently whisper to the wind. Mizuki is as normal as they come. If normal encompasses consorting with the devil and a rogue demon, of course.
Her decision made, and her radar void of Shizuo-kun, she steps from the haven offered by the sidewalk and onto the unpredictable asphalt; the forest floor of Shinjuku, where the creatures of metal lurk.
She forgot to check both ways this time. She hears her mother's voice ringing above the clamoring in her head as she is suddenly struck by an oncoming vehicle, but the words are strung together too loose and incoherently for her to decipher their meaning.
- Yagiri Hospital, Ikebukuro
Azure blue irises are exposed to blinding light as heavy lids flutter open.
"Mizuki!"
"Fa...ther?"
"Thank god!" The first coherent thought that passes through Mizuki's mind is how ironic it is that her own father- a devout atheist- was thanking a god he didn't believe in for her survival. She hoped he didn't grow weak from the thought of her impending death and turn to god out of desperation. It would be insulting to religion itself. If that were the case, he would only recognize a higher power when in need of a miracle. However, she knows that her father wouldn't stoop so low.
"I'm fine," she reassures with a weak smile, the muscles all over her body including her face sore. She loves her father, even if he's a bit overbearing sometimes. That's just how he shows his love.
She looks around at her surroundings to find herself in the stiff bed of a white hospital room. The space smells of disinfectant and bleach from when the staff last cleaned it to accommodate the new patient. It stings her nose, and she vaguely wonders why they couldn't find something more pleasant to clean the walls and floors with, or if they could have at least left it with a complimentary can of air freshener. Other than the smell which first pervaded her senses, she notices a plastic potted plant in the corner, it's drooping leaves adorned in dust, and a few chairs and tables, with a hospitalized version of a TV hanging from the ceiling. She looks beside her to see the clunky remote, which is connected to the TV by a thick wire that's currently pulled taut on its position on the bedside table. She chooses to ignore the IVs and needles strewn across the pale skin of her forearm. Needles make her queasy.
"I was so worried about you. You should know better than to walk right into the middle of the road!"
"I'm alright, really," Mizuki tries to reassure. The monitor's BPM picks up a bit at the white lie; she feels like she's been hit by a car. Oh- that's right; she was.
"Mizuki, I was so afraid," murmurs another sullen, boyish voice. She looks around her father'a shoulder who is sitting at her bedside, his large hands clasped over hers, and finds a familiar blonde boy, the only splash of color -a lavish bouquet of carnations ranging from light blue to bright yellow to pale pink- held carelessly in his arms.
"Afraid of what, Kida-kun?" Mizuki was the one who got hit by a car, not him.
"Afraid that I'd have to spend an eternity without you!" he exclaims, all but throwing himself on her bed to drag her into an uncomfortable, abrasive embrace.
"Get off of me," Mizuki wheezes into his chest as he suffocates her with his weight. He smells of flowers and perfume. She wonders whose it is.
"Kida-kun! That's too far, especially with Mizuki-san's father in the room," Mikado protests, getting up from his seat in the corner of the room to drag Kida off of her. "And she's still recovering!" Mizuki thinks it was sweet of Mikado to isolate himself to the corner of the room to give her space, albeit unnecessary.
"Oh, so are you suggesting we have some privacy?" Kida lewdly implores, pulling Mizuki even closer. Her lungs feel like collapsing.
"Shi-Shimizu-san!" Mikado stammers, seeking the only adult in the room's help.
"Please, call me Hiroshi-kun," he muses, smiling warmly. His demeanor takes a sudden, drastic turn and he flashes the boys a thumbs-up, grinning widely, his clean shaven face crinkling around the eyes. He looks young for a father, and his hair is styled in a messy, carefree manner, his dark and kind eyes framed by a pair of prescription glasses. "Any friend of Okami-kun's is a friend of mine! And I'd rather be in the same room as these kids. That way I can keep an eye on them."
"Father!" Mizuki protests, scowling as she feels a bit of warmth blossom in her cheeks in response to the familiar nickname and his harmless teasing.
'He's just like Kida-kun!' thinks a bewildered Mikado, eyes and mouth wide open.
"Don't worry, Hiroshi-kun! I don't believe in premarital sex."
"That's not my point. I know you're going to do it eventually, and I'd just like to stress the use of co-"
"Now is not the time!" Mizuki yells, feeling lightheaded from the stress on her mind and body. This isn't any way to treat someone in convalescence, a fact that only Mikado seems to understand. Her father often means well, but he's just never been good at these sorts of things. It was always Mizuki's mother who handled the paternal matters.
"I think we should call a nurse in and leave them alone to check on her," Mikado suggests before anyone can reply to Mizuki's outburst. He then speaks to her directly. "You've woken up two times already, but you don't remember that part, do you? I think you'll be okay now, though. You seem a lot more aware and energetic," Mikado warily says, laughing uneasily as he scratches the back of his head habitually. His nails are chewed past the skin of his fingertips, so they're too dull to scratch his skin effectively. He has been biting them from stress after receiving news that Mizuki was admitted into a hospital.
"Did I break anything?" Mizuki asks anxiously, her heart hammering in her chest at the prospect of losing the use of any of her limbs. She can't even afford to waste time recovering or in physical therapy, or her undisciplined body will grow weak and she'll begin to lose what little muscle mass her small body has accumulated after months of training in the gym and boxing. It's practically her life now, but she doesn't even consider it a past time. It's not fun or enjoyable, not a good way to spend time, and she's not in it for her health. She has other, more imperative ambitions.
The hospital room disappears, leaving just Mizuki and her body, veiled by a thin white sheet in a blanket of darkness. Her fingers itch at the ends of the sheets, and if the cardiac monitor hadn't dissipated with everything else, she wouldn't be surprised if her BPM turned zero and her heart flat lined.
Her arms first; she checks those. She wiggles her fingers, flexes her arms, glancing quickly at the unimpressive muscles with a slight scowl. It seems that no matter how hard she trains, or how much she pushes herself, she'll never be able to gain significant muscle mass. It's not the strength she wants, however. It's the durability.
As she glances up to survey her legs, the hospital room comes back into focus, hazy at first, then gradually altogether.
"Mizuki?" Mikado asks anxiously, leaning closer. Their eyes are all on her now, and the room begins to spin.
She can't move her legs.
"It's such a nice day out, don't you think?"
'Nice' is such a vague term to describe the day's weather. Mizuki, although she acknowledges the beauty in the cherry blossoms, cares little about them.
Mikado pushes Mizuki along the winding courtyard walkway as she sits in a hospital issued wheelchair. They are alone here, among the blooming trees and sparrows that chirp in their branches.
"I guess," mutters a sullen Mizuki, eyes casted up at the blossoms. They are beautiful, but their beauty is fleeting. She inhales a gentle gust of wind as it passes her, capturing some of its perpetuity in her lungs. But such temporal vessels cannot hold the wayfaring winds, so she is reluctantly forced to release them in an exasperated sigh.
Her lungs are not suited to hold the winds just as her hands are not big enough to hold that which she loves most.
"You'll heal one day," Mikado says from behind her. She doesn't turn her head to look at him. Instead, she turns her head towards the sky.
"One day," she murmurs thoughtfully as he guides them to find haven in the shade of a cherry blossom tree. The effervescent light of the sun is scattered in the gaps of cherry blossoms, though not all of the light is repelled. That which does shine through the blossoms has been tainted a faint pink hue like water colored lighting.
Mikado runs out of comforting words, so he blurts out the first thought on his mind as he gazes into those oceanic eyes of hers.
"Y-you have really pretty eyes."
Though it may seem pompous, this is the kind of compliment that Mizuki is accustomed to. Nonetheless, she finally gazes up at him with a smile as faint as the scattered light.
"Would it be alright if I had some privacy?" she asks rather politely. Taken aback by her tone, Mikado nods, glancing around to see if anyone else has joined them. Unsurprisingly, they are still the only ones in this courtyard, which is precisely why Mizuki requested to be taken here. That is because this courtyard is in the psychiatric ward, and the only time anyone ever comes out is when the nurses take out the patients for a leisurely stroll.
It's disgusting how the mentally ill are treated like animals.
"Of course. Just call my cell if you need me. I'll be with your dad if you need either of us," he says, slightly reluctant to leave her alone. It's been only a few days since her accident.
Mizuki nods in understanding, and Mikado's hands slowly slip from the grasp of her wheelchair. Finally, he turns away to the glass doors that lead back inside, and with one final glance at Mizuki, her onyx hair blowing in the gentle breeze, he returns to the air conditioned hospital.
She watches a few blossoms fall from their branches and flutter towards the earth. She stares down at her own feet with a scowl. They haven't kissed the earth in days, and now she's trapped between the earth and the sky, unable to reach either of them.
"Orihara Izaya."
The wind carries away his name, and for that she is grateful. She'd rather no part of him linger for too long. Though she has never met him, there's always an unpleasant feeling in the pit of her stomach whenever he is mentioned or crosses her mind. Though she has never met him, Orihara Izaya is her enemy.
She has her reasons.
However, he is her last hope, especially now that her legs have been broken. She's going to have to consort with the enemy to protect her ally. If people represented countries, she'd be lighting the powder keg of World War III. In fact, a war very well may erupt in the streets of battle hardened Ikebukuro.
Mizuki can smell a fox.
"Shimizu Mizuki."
The girl doesn't lift her gaze from the blossoms above. She doesn't react when her wheelchair is pushed slowly and steadily along the walkway. She can see the sky now. In this moment, it is all that she sees. An endless, unattainable sky adorned with shapeless clouds.
Maybe she had known him in a previous life, because although she has never heard this voice before, she knows to whom it belongs.
"You've been sneaking around places you don't belong," says Izaya as he guides her in her metal throne along the winding cement. She can hear his cruel smile and wonders what it looks like. "What are you looking for?"
Mizuki's grip on the armrests tightens and she grinds her teeth as the 'unpleasant feeling' boils in her stomach again. If she still had the use of her legs, she'd use them to crush his skull beneath her foot for what he's done. She wonders how much damage two fiberglass casts can inflict. Definitely a lot, but she doubts she can wield them in her condition.
"You know what I'm looking for, and you know what I want," she spits out vehemently. She says this not because he is a skilled informant and knows almost everything that goes on in Ikebukuro, but because of the invisible strings connecting them and everyone else. She may have not ever met him before, and their paths might have never crossed until now, but those individual paths have another separate one cutting through both of them. Thus, like blades of grass, they have grown in the same field and share the same roots.
"Looks like Okami-san had her feet caught in a trap," Izaya notes, using the nickname her mother had coined for her many years ago. She doesn't find his familiarity as insulting as his tone, however. She feels his stare in the very broken bones of her legs. It's the first thing they have felt other than the irritating cats in several days.
Mizuki says nothing in response to this. If she utters a single word, he'll feed off of it and delay the conversation. It seems that his proverbial stomach is not yet empty for he continues without her.
"You're lucky all you got were two broken legs. Next time you might not be so fortunate," he ominously -and rather pleasantly- warns. His tone and words make her jump to conclusions. Humans like her are always so predictable. She's no different than the rest of them.
"You're not the one who made that car run me over, are you?" Mizuki inquires, her voice low and dangerous. Izaya mulls over all of her possible reactions if he were to say he was, but decides to answer honestly instead.
"That's a ridiculous assumption. It's your fault for not checking both ways before crossing the street."
Mizuki makes another predictable move by taking the bait. 'My, how vapid this one is.'
"So you were watching me?"
"Why of course! Once I heard that a certain Shimizu Mizuki was roaming around Ikebukuro trying to find me, I just had to look into it. I thought 'surely she's not trying to hunt me down and kill me as a token of love for that protozoa!'" Mizuki stills like calm water, her eyes now casted down. "But I knew that wasn't it. No, you want my help with something, don't you?"
"What will it cost me?" she asks grimly. Izaya stops them as they reach the fountain. Water gently cascades down into the stone pool from the lips of a cherub statue, arms and wings outstretched as though it had been trying to escape into the sky before its eyes met with those of Medusa. The angel can never kiss the sky again. At least Mizuki will be able to walk the earth once again. Her legs will heal.
"Only your soul," the strange, devious man behind her replies with a chuckle. "Actually, I'll help you free of charge. Consider it charity work."
Mizuki understands Izaya well enough by now to know that that isn't the case. She also picks up on the thick sarcasm in his smooth, deceptively soothing voice. "What do you want from me?" she asks almost impassively.
"Isn't it obvious?"
A familiar, small stick riddled with carcinogens and nicotine is suddenly brushing up against Mizuki's hard pressed lips. To accept this gift of death would be to seal a deal with the devil. Her reward, she finally decides, is worth any price. In Izaya's other hand is a simple black lighter, which he sparks to light the cigarette for her as she takes it into her lips and inhales.
Finally, she turns her head to look at him, to see the face of the devil. His eyes are what she first notices. Cold, calculating, condescending, and set in stone. A steely brown with small flecks of crimson around his fathomless pupils. If she were allowed to, she'd stare into them until she withered away and turned to dust. Until she became the earth itself. Even though he was trying to pierce her with his stare, all he did was fill the girl to the brim with intrigue.
He has miscalculated her.
"Now you're going to say you want me," she responds coolly, eyes narrowing. She releases the smoke from her blackened lungs and blows it right into Izaya's smirking face. The smoke burns his eyes and naturally they begin to water. He rubs at them quickly with a vaguely disgusted expression.
"Go ahead and give yourself cancer all you want, but don't try killing me from secondhand smoke."
"Oh, so now you're dropping the whole ominous act?" Mizuki admonishes, taking another drag and flicking the ash onto the walkway with spindly, calloused fingers. Right next to the doors on both sides of the courtyard hang signs reading "Smoking Prohibited."
"Not yet," he admits with a forced but believable chuckle. She's really beginning to piss him off. "Anyways, let's skip the foreplay shall we?"
"I need you to find me someone who can make my body stronger."
Izaya's eyebrows raise until they are obscured beneath the dark curtains of his hair. "Why don't you just go hire a physical trainer? You can start working out once your legs are h-"
"No. That's not what I meant."
"Then what did you mean exactly?" he asks, his interest piqued as he watches the determination flicker in her eyes like blue flames.
"I need someone who's willing to put me under the knife and genetically alter me so that I'm... more durable. I don't care if they have to do some crazy X-Men shit. Whatever it takes."
Izaya's crooked grin widens even more and sharpens as he erupts into a fit of laughter, hugging his sides and doubling over. Mizuki scowls, believing that he's not taking her seriously.
"The hell is your problem?" she yells, throwing the half smoked stog at him. It bounces off his chest and seems to go unnoticed by him, his attention fixated on her completely.
"Oh, nothing," he breathes, recovering as he waves his hand dismissively. "I'm just surprised by how well things are working out."
"Wha-"
Izaya cuts the bewildered, frustrated girl off with a voice like a surgical knife. It seems that he's the one who's cutting her open, not some unlicensed, immoral doctor.
"Consider it done," he murmurs with that crooked, malevolent grin of his.
"That's it?" Mizuki's eyes widen and her already pale face loses even more color. It really is like being trapped in the stare of the devil.
"That's it," Izaya echoes. "Lucky for you, I know just the man for the job. He-"
This time it's Mizuki's voice which makes an incision in the air.
They say the eyes are the windows to the soul. Hers are more like doors.
"Now! Take me to him now!"
"Maybe you should w-"
"Now!"
The grin is wiped from Izaya's face. He stares down at her beneath the picturesque sky, the clouds reflected in her eyes as though they're mirrors of Heaven. Izaya's cold expression doesn't get any warmer, but a smile creeps back onto his face.
"You're just like him. You don't respond very well to words or reasoning, do you?"
The clouds above darken and veil the sun. The calm is followed by the storm. Izaya wonders what he'll see in her eyes next...
"No I'm not," she mutters. The storm is brewing within her.
"You belong with each other."
"Just tell me who this man is. I'll go to him myself."
A gentle breeze blows, bringing her sweet scent to him. She smells like sunlight and wildflowers.
"You want to become strong so that you can be with Shizu-chan, don't you?"
... It is the flood.