Author's Notes: Rather than working on Valley like I should be, I was struck by this Evanescence song being perfect for Hisoka (which is all Kira's fault, damn it!) and I decided to write an angsty introspective one shot thing. I am working on my other fics. I swear. No, really.
Cookies go to Kira for giving me the song and to TK for giving me some of the idea for the premise.
Disclaimer: If Hisoka were mine... ::wanders off starry eyed::
Disclaimer 2: "Missing" is a song by Evanescence. They are my god. I do not pretend to own them. Actually, Yoko Matsushita is my god too. I have lots of gods. I transcribed the lyrics just from listening, so if there are any errors, I apologize.
Missing
It was raining in the Meifu.
Hisoka leaned against the window, watching the water stream down the panes of glass. His eyes were slightly unfocused. He wasn't really watching; he was just thinking. It was something that, in Tsuzuki's opinion, the younger Shinigami spent far too much time doing. He didn't really try to spend all his time thinking. It was just that he had so much to think about, that it occupied his mind much of the time.
His apartment was far away from the nearest set of houses, which was by his choice. Less chance of other people's thoughts and feelings interfering with his own. Less chance of waking up with someone else's nightmares. His own were enough to deal with.
Kurosaki Hisoka was thinking about his family.
//Please, please forgive me
But I won't be home again
Maybe someday you'll look up
and barely conscious, you'll say to no one
Isn't something missing?//
It seemed that, after two years as a Shinigami, he would have gotten over his family's rejection and ultimate betrayal. It seemed that after two years, he would have forgotten about the cellar, about the bars, about the cold stone walls. It seemed that he should have been able to get rid of the lingering self-hatred that their hatred of him had caused.
It seemed that he should be able to let go, but he couldn't.
//You won't cry for my absence, I know
You forgot me long ago//
He wondered what it was about human nature that made parents the ultimate in importance. Why should he care what they thought of him? Because he was the product of his father's sperm and his mother's egg? Because he had been birthed from her womb? Because she had held him and rocked him as a child, nursed him at her breast? Because until his powers had manifested, he had been their little boy?
Really, why did it matter?
Their family was cursed. Everyone knew that. You couldn't meet a single member of the Kurosaki family without knowing it. Hisoka didn't know if the curse was the cause of his empathy. He didn't know if the curse was why he had met Muraki on that windy spring night. He didn't know if the family curse had been the reason why he had spent so long in the hospital, abandoned and ignored by his parents when he needed them the most.
He didn't know if the curse was why they had never cared for him, never looked twice in his direction. Even before his empathy had made its presence known, he had been an afterthought, a member of the family that was fed and clothed the way any would be, but somehow . . .
peripheral.
//Am I that unimportant?
Am I so insignificant?//
Regardless of what had caused it, he reminded himself firmly, it made no difference now. It was over. He was dead and gone. Undoubtedly, his family no longer thought of him. If he had been an afterthought when he was alive, he certainly couldn't be counted as an important member of the family now.
//Isn't someone missing me?//
He pressed both his hands against the window and watched the rain pour down outside. They didn't often get rain, and he missed it. It always seemed to rain just when he was missing it most, and he had to wonder if that had anything to do with it. Most places in the Meifu, it was always sunny. Tsuzuki had once joked it was like a perpetual rain cloud hung over Hisoka's house.
Hisoka wondered if that was true.
It seemed that, if two years of being dead and gone hadn't made him forget, then two years of Tsuzuki should have. Two years of Tsuzuki's kindness, two years of Tsuzuki's unfailing gentleness, two years of being in love. Surely that should have washed away some of the pain that still woke Hisoka up at night, stealing his breath with its intensity.
Surely love could balance hate.
And yet, he could not forget.
//Even though I'm the sacrifice
You won't try for me, not now
Though I'd die to know you love me
I'm all alone//
He was aware that, as an empath, their hatred of him, their fear of him, their revulsion, all must have had a profound effect on him. Until he had become a Shinigami, he couldn't use the most rudimentary of shields. Everything that they felt seeped through his skin. Everything they felt was something he felt as well.
They hated him, and so he hated himself. For many years, locked in a stone cold cellar with bars on the walls, he had hated himself.
For years, while he watched the rain pour down outside from the window of his new house, he tried to remember that it was over. Tried to remember that he was among friends, among those he cared about, among those who cared about him. That should have been enough to smooth away the scars, the way water washed away patterns in the sand.
And yet, he could not forget.
//Isn't someone missing me?//
Tsuzuki loved him; this was something Hisoka was sure of. He didn't know if Tsuzuki loved him 'Like That', as the schoolgirls might say, but he knew that the purple-eyed Shinigami cared for him deeply. Knew that he was at least as imprinted on Tsuzuki's heart as Tsuzuki was on his. He knew that Tsuzuki believed in him whole-heartedly, and he would never give up on him or turn him away or think of him as a monster.
What was it about family that made them so influential? Why couldn't he forget their hatred of him? Why couldn't he forget their fear? Why did he still wake up in the middle of the night, shivering but covered in sweat, hearing his mother's cries that he was nothing but a monster and no child of hers?
Why did he still dream about it? Why couldn't he just dream of Tsuzuki instead?
//Please, please forgive me
But I won't be home again//
They were probably glad that he was gone. Hisoka could remember waking up in the field the next morning, bloody and in pain and unable to remember what had happened. He could remember stumbling home and making his way inside. He remembered passing out in a dead faint when the pain overwhelmed him.
He remembered waking up in the cellar hours later, and being verbally castigated by his mother for being out late at night without telling them. He remembered crying for hours, trying to explain to her that something had happened, and he didn't know what, but he hurt all over and he didn't know why.
The ravings of a crazy little boy.
The ravings of a demon child.
They locked him in the cellar and forgot about him.
//I know what you do to yourself
I breathe deep and cry out
Isn't something missing?//
It was months before they finally took him to the hospital, because his cries of pain were so incessant and so piercing that they couldn't sleep, even when he was in the cellar. They put him there and they left him there, and after that, he had never seen them again.
As they left, their relief to be rid of him was so palpable that Hisoka could still feel it, after three years of agonizing pain and two years of death. They had finally gotten away from their own demon child. The doctors had told them they would do all they could, and as they left, Hisoka knew that they couldn't care less if he had lived or died.
He had told the nurses this, and they had patted his hand and said they were sure that his parents would be back to visit the next day. Empty words, spoken to counter the ravings of a crazy little boy.
//Even though I'm the sacrifice
You won't try for me, not now
Though I'd die to know you love me
I'm all alone//
After three years, he had died. They were finally rid of him for good. Three years of agonizing pain. Why was it that he could not call the agony to mind without great effort, yet the hatred and the fear and the revulsion were all still just underneath the surface? Why did he dream more of the cellar than the hospital?
Why did they matter?
Hisoka stood and watched the rain come to a stop. There was a knock on the door and he knew that it was Tsuzuki. He had been distracted at work, and he had known that Tsuzuki was going to come by and check on him. Tsuzuki's gentle worry and concern flooded over his inner barriers, but it could not smooth away the hurt his parents had caused. Some wounds would never heal.
//Isn't someone missing me?//
It didn't matter. It was over. He had been dead for two years and had not seen his parents for five. There was nothing they could do to hurt him anymore.
It didn't matter. He had Tsuzuki. Tsuzuki loved and cared for him.
It didn't matter.
As he turned away from the window and went to let Tsuzuki into his small apartment, he promised himself that someday those words would be true. Someday it wouldn't matter.
And until then, he would watch the rain.
