A/N: I'm not typically one for oneshots, but this one kind of came together. There were some interesting parallels between some stuff happening in my life and Kouya's situation [i'm not cutting! i promise!, so I just started writing. I know it's definitely not perfect, so critiques are welcomed and loved.
It was her way of laughing at the world.
At least, so she told herself. A haughty act to match her attitude, flaunting her power and her gift. Ensuring that everyone knew just how she was different.
And she was different. An outcast, a rebel, living on the fringes of society. She didn't need anyone else. They were beneath her.
So the tiny middle schooler told herself, hiding behind long hair and glasses, behind big books and lofty ideals. She wove herself a protective web of make-believe, convincing herself that her isolation was of her own choice. They didn't want her, she didn't want them.
But it was lonely sometimes, so lonely. Everything she felt, everything she kept bottled up inside as she watched the world from the sidelines sometimes became too much. So she continued her game, trying to release the feelings with the blood, trying to pretend like it made a difference.
Desperately she tried to believe. But at night she cried, running her fingers over the scars both fresh and old that refused to let her tumultuous emotions pass through. It was supposed to hurt. It was supposed to be a release. She felt neither. Yet she continued, hopelessly, futilely, unable to stop.
Zero. Nothing. Nothingness. Oblivion. She could only wonder bitterly, with a darkness that belied her age, if Nagisa knew the irony of her name.
What she would give to feel something, even if it meant bringing herself down to their level. Anything beside numbness. Anything beside empty scars and an empty heart.
These things she admitted to herself, silently, in the dead of night.
Yet even the longest of nights must come to an end. Hers ended in a sunrise: a beautiful, glorious sunrise, who ran her own radiant fingers over the dark one's wrists, questioning, querying, confused- accusing.
The darkness is a thing of
the past, and she faces the new day with a sunrise at her back. No
longer alone, no longer nothing. She can love; that much
in this world
is certain.