A/N:

Written for the Amuro server's Creation Craze #2 - Theme: Tear.

A Tear in a Paper Mask

Scotch is the one who places the first mask on Rei's face.

Not that Scotch is Scotch back then - he wouldn't be, not for years yet. But if Rei thinks of Scotch as anything but Scotch, he feels like he's choking, like someone shot a hole dead in his throat and he'll die if he doesn't plug it up.

So Scotch is Scotch, at least in his mind.

They're children still. It's not been long since Elena-sensei left, and while Rei would like to say that his younger self listened to Elena and didn't get into any more fights, in reality, he didn't even try. He had to deal with his stabbing sorrow and angry frustration somehow.

Rei doesn't have Elena to clean up his wounds anymore, but Scotch is a good friend, and he does his best. They're sitting on a park bench, Rei covered in small cuts and bruises from a tussle with a boy three years older. It's a terribly bright spring day, not a cloud in the sky and a temperature that's on the wrong side of comfortable.

Scotch is pouring the water from his water bottle onto Rei's knee with a look of great concentration.

"Is it better?" Scotch asks once the last drop of water drips out of the bottle.

Rei is still a child, and sometimes he doesn't appreciate the things he has. So his only response is to scowl and let out a disgruntled, "Yes."

Scotch simply sighs and puts the lid back on his water bottle. "Zero, you don't need to always fight."

"They started it!" Rei snaps, glaring at Scotch mulishly.

"You didn't need to finish it," Scotch says immediately, crossing his arms with a pout. "Mom said when you get angry, you should take lots of breaths."

Rei scoffs. "That doesn't help."

"Doesn't fighting mean they win?" Scotch tries instead, "You gave them what they wanted!"

That logic actually strikes a chord in Rei. His eyes widen in horror, and as if he already knows his denials were pointless, he whispers, "Nuh uh, no way."

Scotch, likely sensing an opportunity, double-downs on the logic. "Yes huh!"

Rei gives in.

"What should I do!?" says Rei in a panic. He can't just stop fighting them - he can't just let it all go when they were in the wrong! He looks up at Scotch and feels tears welling up in the corner of his eyes.

Scotch looks to be in a similar panic - likely due to Rei's teary face. "I- uh, smile?"

"Huh?"

"I saw it on TV," Scotch explains, nodding sagely. He crosses his arms and grins. "If you smile even when you're not happy, you become happy! So if you're always smiling, maybe you can ignore them better!"

"Urgh…" Rei mumbles. He's feeling kinda skeptical about the whole thing but well, he's feeling desperate as well. So he forces a smile onto his face and turns to face Scotch. "Like this?"

"Um…" says Scotch, raising an eyebrow. After a moment of hesitation, he grins again, the bright smile shining on his face. "Sure! Looks good, Zero!"

And now, thinking back, Rei is certain that the smile on his face back then actually looked horrid, but all Rei as a child thought was that the smile made him feel safer. Like no one could see into him, like no one could affect him.

A thin paper mask flutters down onto Rei's face that day.

Rei improves his mask as the years pass.

A teacher sneers at him for his hair being too light and the mask tears. He studies his nights away and ends the class with a perfect grade - he fixes the mask with scotch tape.

A girl in class laughs at him because his lunch always looks ugly and disgusting, and the mask tears. He improves his cooking skills - his fingers covered in band-aids from cuts - and the girl who laughed at him so mockingly comes up to him with sparkling eyes. He fixes the mask up with scotch tape again then drapes a new mask, this one made of cloth, on top of the old one.

Charm comes easily to him after that.

At first it's easy to lift up his mask. In elementary school, especially at first, it's harder for him to keep the thin thing from fluttering off than it is to keep it on. But as the scotch tape and duct tape and whatever else he needs piles up, it grows heavier on his face.

After the cloth mask settles itself on Rei's face, most of the time, it's too bothersome for Rei to lift up the mask.

(There's only one person he lets still see under it.)

In the police academy, he finds his masks don't work. His charm is met by stony faces and his smiles with anger. The instructors are always displeased with him, always complaining. Furuya doesn't take anything seriously, they say. Furuya is too carefree, they snap.

"Furuya" can't stand taking off his masks in front of just anyone, not anymore. So he keeps on smiling vapidly and tries to make up for it by completing his training flawlessly.

It's been a few months since he entered the academy when he's approached by one of his cohort-mates in the hallway after class. A man with stubble a couple years older than him - Date Wataru, ranked second in the class. Rei knows exactly who he is.

"Hey, Furuya," Date says, waving cheerfully at Rei.

Rei smiles, though all he feels on the inside is vague irritation. "Hello, Date. Was there something you wanted?"

"Can't I just say 'hi' to the guy ranked at the top of our cohort?" asks Date, and Rei holds back the urge to roll his eyes. So it was jealousy then, most likely - this was probably some attempt to get under his skin. He experienced it often enough back in high school.

"Of course you can," Rei replies mildly, "But you haven't before."

"Aha, well, you're a hard man to catch," Date says with a laugh, "You only ever really talk to your friend, and you disappear right after training…"

"My apologies."

"You don't need to apologize, just-" Date hesitates a little before continuing, "-I'm going out with a few of my friends to drink. Matsuda, Hagiwara, few others. Just a little celebration for surviving the academy for four months. Want to come with?"

Rei stares, but to his surprise, the look on Date's face looks awfully… genuine. He doesn't spot any dark shadows behind the expression, not like he had with so many of his classmates in high school and middle school.

Well, he doesn't have any reason to refuse… getting along with his cohort might be a good idea too.

"Alright," Rei says, then after a pause - "But why me?"

"Ah, well." Date lets out another laugh, "You seemed kind of… lonely?"

And Rei freezes, because the masks on his face suddenly feel much too thin.

He fits a wooden mask of reasonable thickness over his other masks. His instructors no longer have any issues with his behaviour. He's cool and professional and his smiles are limited to when he's trying to take a criminal off guard.

It's easy for Rei to let his other masks come up to the surface instead of his wooden one, but the paper mask feels glued to his face now.

(It's too painful to take it off anymore for even-)

He doesn't put on any more masks, just reinforces them. He adds strips of metal to the wood when he joins the Organization, and by the time he gains his codename the mask is layered with enough strips that it's more metal than wood.

His masks don't, can't tear anymore, and losing them is a laughable notion.

Rei can kill someone and not blink an eye.

So he gets arrogant.

He thinks he's perfected his masks. He doesn't layer on any more metal, ignores hairline cracks in the base material because he thinks it doesn't matter. Thinks he's too strong for anything to affect him anymore.

Then Scotch dies and the feeling of his masks tearing themselves apart makes him want to scream almost as much as the sight of Rye standing there splattered in Scotch's blood.

Rei fits his masks back onto his face in a single night, though they're weak and slapdash and covered in scotch tape even where duct tape might serve better. He feels like they're going to break apart at the slightest pressure, and he's right. He spots Rye a few days later, he sees red, and his masks fall to pieces again.

He learns how to piece his masks back together quickly, because he's given up on his masks surviving long around Rye.

(Rei can't hold back his true, unadulterated hatred behind a mask. Besides, it would be an insult to Scotch to hide away his feelings towards Scotch's murderer.

But sometimes when he's patching up his paper mask, he remembers a bright grin and feels like he's forgetting something.

Then he makes himself forget that he's forgetting something.)

Rye is revealed to be a traitor and Rei doesn't have to see him for years on end. It's enough time for Rei to start building up his masks again.

By the time he gets the news that Akai Shuichi is dead, the metal is plastered over his face thicker than it had been before Scotch died.

His hatred hasn't abated in the slightest over the years, but he feels he's gotten a bit wiser. He's certain that he won't let Akai tear apart his masks so easily anymore - the best way to use his hatred is to use it calmly, to get his revenge as carefully as possible.

Akai tears his masks apart with a few careful words over a phone, and Rei wants to stab him into little pieces.

Then months later, he learns the truth behind Scotch's death and the only person he wants to stab into little pieces is himself.

He gradually stops fixing his masks.

Bourbon dies, and he doesn't really need to keep his emotions under such tight lock and key anymore. The metal disappears.

Amuro Tooru dies, and he's getting sick of charming people all the time so he lets the cloth fade away.

The wooden mask stays for a while longer, then he's forced to work with Akai and finds that he works fine, better even without his stifling professionality. And so he doesn't bother putting the pieces back together.

But whenever he moves to tear apart that one last paper mask, he can't quite bring himself to do it.

Rei decides to bring flowers to Scotch's grave. A giant bouquet of white daffodils, because while they might not be flowers traditionally placed on a grave, Rei always thought that daffodils suited Scotch well. Suited them both well, really, at least before.

Nowadays he's not so sure he can bounce back from anything anymore.

(If he loses another friend, then this time, perhaps, it would be finally time to just stop.)

But when he approaches the grave, there's already someone there staring down at it with a solemn look.

"Akai," he says shortly. He stops a pace or two away from him, still gripping the bouquet tightly in his hands.

Akai looks up towards him and says, hesitant in a way Rei's never seen him before, "Furuya-kun."

Rei scowls and pushes past Akai to gently place the bouquet on Scotch's grave. He doesn't demand what Akai is doing here - he can't, not anymore, not when perhaps it's Rei himself who has no right to be here. But that doesn't mean he wants to talk, not about this.

He straightens up and takes a step back, and if that brings him standing side-by-side with Akai, it's a coincidence and no more.

It's a terribly bright spring day with not a cloud in the sky. In the mildly uncomfortable heat, Rei quietly stares at Scotch's grave and remembers.

Rei glances at Akai, remembers his fury, his frustration, and yet after everything, finds he's willing to let it go. Willing to push back his annoyance, willing to not force a fight.

A paper mask flutters to the ground.

And Rei smiles.