A/N: been on a writing spree. This is the result of tonight's session apparently.
bury your dead
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He aims and he shoots. There's a mere 97% probability of failure, but he believes in the last three percents like he believes in Tsunayoshi-kun.
Those three percents do not fail him – the zombie's head bursts and blood shoots out, splattering the narrow alley and Shouichi's clothes.
Ignoring his trembling hands, he sneaks in from one of the doors invisible to everyone with as limited perception as zombies have.
Day three-hundred-sixty-four and there is still no cure.
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His eyelids droop without his consent and he quickly and irritably rubs at them with his palm before focusing on the numbers and tests and chemicals all over again.
Even with the recent success... even with a sample of zombie's brain tissue... The thoughts run astray, scatter in different directions, and chaos reigns.
If he can't find a cure...
(Doctor Verde is long gone, his sanity crippled and zombified by the virus.)
The pressure of ingenuity has never been harder to bear than it has been in this year.
(So many times, his incompetencies collapse him; yet he has stood back up. For what?)
He closes his eyes at the despair and goes back to work, though there is no escaping the agony known as dying hope.
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Dino is there, with him, but Shouichi can't ask much from a person that knows next to nothing about the growth rates of amaeba and deadly viruses.
But Dino is an easy company, and somehow Shouichi finds himself smiling at something absolutely dorky Dino has blurted out. Thirty-two, and still as young as ever; if there's any secret to eternal youth, Shouichi thinks Dino is one of the people that has it.
It's a trait he's jealous of, because he himself falls deeper into the abyss of self-blame and negativity.
(It's impossible, a voice similar to Byakuran's whispers. You'll never find the antidote because there's nothing to find.)
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"Don't give in," Dino says one day.
Shouichi listens, if only because Dino is his only social contact on regular basis.
(Tsunayoshi-kun can't visit anymore. Whose fault is that, he wonders, that the leader of the Resistance is locked inside a bleak room with white, claustrophobia-inducing walls for good.)
He's not surprised that Dino has noticed. It would be difficult not to – Shouichi has never kept secrets very well, and this he never really tried to sweep under the rug anyway.
"You don't know how it's like," he says accusingly, but the accusation dies when his throat constricts with the anxiety he has tried too hard to keep in.
"I don't," Dino admits readily, and very very softly, "but I can try to understand."
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Isolated from the other members of Resistance by necessity, he only has Dino.
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He wants to think that it's enough.
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But even when Dino's arms wrap around him when the nights take the turn for worse, he can't deny that it simply isn't.
Hasn't been for a while now.
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Three hundred and seventy eight days have passed since The Calamity struck in the form of a virus that went more viral than news clips of Justin Bieber's idiocies.
The countdown has begun a long time ago – for their deaths.
Irie Shouichi, once a naive beginner of a scientist, has given up.
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Dino doesn't blame him for giving in.
That makes his failure seem all the more frustrating, but even great men fell from their greatness – and lesser men trip never to get back up again and only to live with their errors.
Shouichi throws in the towel of forfeit,
and that's that for humanity.
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Dino knows they're running out of food and other supplies fast, and he sees that the fact upsets Shouichi's fragile mental health as days go by.
Always such a worrier, Dino thinks almost fondly but mostly the thought just feels disconnected, abstract in the reality they face.
His best side has always been his warm personality, but as he watches Shouichi wither away, that warmth crumbles and falls until the degree reaches zero.
If only... "If only I knew how to help you," Dino says to the sleeping face of the person he has watched work tirelessly for the sake of a cure the past year only to see him fall.
It doesn't quite work like it does in films, Dino thinks. Another obscure, absurd thought.
He closes Shouichi's eyes when they have stared up at Dino for too long, the light of life already dead.
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Dino never buries the corpse, though that carries a risk.
He doesn't really care.
He goes out to steal some liquor, though that's not his style (it's Mukuro's, but god knows whether he's still alive out there), and he comes back to pour two shots of Apocalypse.
"It's not your fault," he tells the corpse .
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The taste of apocalypse in his mouth, he goes out again with his shotgun and eyes that burn bright fire in the dead of the night.
It's time to go hunting.