notes: chapter 51 has broken me in ways i have never been broken before. it also intensified my otp feelings.
/
Shima is alone in the dark for thirty seconds. In those thirty seconds he thinks this:
Izumo's eyes are a wonderful shade of red when she's angry and he can't help but pick up on the fact that she's always angry around him. The way her pupils dilate with utmost ferocity; the red so consuming like the fire from the deepest pit of hell coming forth and announcing her wrath. The way they connect with his when he finally decides to let someone know his true feelings of outmost disgust with everything; the vibrant red a softer shade like pink on a shocked little girl.
He thinks she looks small and helpless as she kneels on the gurney, so lost and alone and he wants to reach out to her because she's Izumo and everything about Izumo drives him crazy. But it's too late for silly things like that, he's on an entire different league and she's too good for some scum like him, leaving everything behind because he simply doesn't want it.
And in the darkness her sneer vibrates in his mind and to his very core where it resonates and shakes him up like an earthquake. Too dangerous, too strong, too mind jarring and Shima closes his eyes and smiles.
The tilt of his lips causes the sting on his cheek to burn and he slowly lifts his hand up to cup the sensitive skin and choke on a soft chuckle.
Her hand had felt like steel against his bone, angry and betrayed. It'd rattled his brain and the venom in her words as she spat in his face things he already knew froze him all over. But it's different hearing it come out of someone else's mouth, and even worse when they're laced with the sharp timbre of Izumo's voice, the way her lips moved to pronounce the words, the way they pursed and curled.
Shima closes his eyes and leans his head back against the steel door, hard enough to make it clank and hurt and hard enough for her to hear on the other side and know that he's still there. And how much more disgust can he cause her, he wonders, it's turned into a game and so far there's such a contrast in the scores it almost makes Shima laugh again.
He stares at the darkness in front of him and if he were the kind of guy, he'd take it as a foreshadowing to what waits for him now that the truth is out and set in stone. He doesn't delve into it too much because all that is on his mind are Izumo's words like a chant, a mantra, a death march ("Traitor! I saw you all as my comrades—Traitor! I saw you all as my comrades—Traitor—") and the intense look in her eyes; the hate that disguises the betrayal that disguises the shock that disguises the disbelief that disguises the fear.
And who would ever have thought that someone like Kamiki Izumo could be so afraid?
All the more reasons for her to drive him crazy—blind with something sickening and raw that lies in between love and hate—white hot with something forbidden and inexplicable. He places his palms flat on the surface of the cool door and tries to claw at them to find some sort of outlet to the swirling pathetic emotions he's feeling.
A flashlight illuminates him and he feels himself go blind for ten seconds.
The world around him grabs his attention and everything about Izumo, everything about himself, everything—absolutely everything is left behind.
He is a soldier again.