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Title: as it rains & falls back into us.
Word count: 3069
Summary: It goes like this: she's here, and he's there, and sometimes, they run into each other. Not exactly the kind of meet-up one would expect.
W/n: Canon-ish. Contains spoilers.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything, besides the tryhard writing.
A/N: Is this a made-up prompt? Drabble? A stupid attempt to shove my two favorites together? Am I really that desperate?
Yes. Yes.
Well there ya go, this will be the last of my To Aru fanfics. It can be a stand-alone, or quick sequel for my other fic OTDE but meh, either way works. Now that my head is finally clear and my hands no longer itch, I am good to return to my boring life duties. Not sure when I'll be coming back to writing honestly, but I'll try. No promises. But once I feel inspired again, I'll be baaaaack~
Enjoy! And don't forget to let me know what you think at the end!
i.
I lose my mind and it happens all the time.
At night, he thinks about dying the most.
It's a habit, one that's hard to quit, that sticks and never really goes away. Back then, when he used to be caught up in hiding away from firearms and lab tubes, it was a constant chant. Now, it's a fleeting idea, that dwells and twists at the darkest spots, and always returns.
The bed is a soft, warm weight under him, the sheets smooth through the rough material of his jeans. Academy City always has its lights on, and the street lamp outside blinks lazily through the thin window curtains, casting shadows on the floor. Accelerator's staring up at the dark ceiling of his room, and sees blood pouring and skin tearing. Dead brown eyes stare after him as he falls apart.
Each time is different. He either goes flat or lies and suffers until his breath dies out. But there's always one thing that stays the same, and it's that empty look of amber and tanned lines of skin. The girls are a haunting sight, and their Original –
Sleep is a luxury long gone, most of the times.
ii.
These voices won't leave me alone.
Sometimes, it's a chant inside his head.
He's Accelerator, the number one Esper of Academy City, the one to wield the power of God, and he was in a level 6 Experiment in which he slaughtered ten thousand clones of Misaka Mikoto, and nobody will probably notice but he's also utterly, completely screwed for life.
"I have a lot to say to you,"
She's said, in the middle of the battlefield, where their powers sizzle in the air and their breaths go jagged with each hit. Her hair is the blazing color of copper and her eyes are dark bronze. She's the splitting image of the girls in his dreams and it burns just looking. He stares.
"Like what?"
He challenges, because it's good to see her fumbling for words, and it's good for him to see her do it. The others were always so flat. And dead. Dead.
She's angry again. Always angry. Upset. Hateful. It's the few reactions he can pull out of her. "You know what." You know what.
He doesn't answer, but it leads to the same thing either way.
The truth is that he knows. Knows it as well as he knows how to breathe, how to kill, and he can show her exactly that. Just march over. One. Two. Three steps. Run the rough palms of his hands on either side of her smooth, perfect neck. Tighten his grip and watch her bambi eyes roll back to their sockets. She will be gone. And come back to him again in his dreams. Always back. Always, always, always –
In front of them, blood splatters and bullets explode. He hears them bursting in his ears and rattling at his bones, but nothing hits as hard as the look on her face then.
Her fists shake at her sides. "Do you even think about them?"
Oh, this. This she doesn't know then. He almost tells her so. Because he doesn't need to think to remember the blood coating at his hands, doesn't have to close his eyes to see the broken limbs or the guns and the pair of googles left on the ground. It doesn't matter. He knows what he looks like in her eyes. He knows it's also very close to what he thinks he is, too.
He does say, though, when the dust clears and they've leveled out another battlefield. "Everyday."
He's not even sure if she's heard it. Not even sure if he even wanted her to. But the Railgun's back was to him later on, and her shoulders were shaking and her rough breathing was swallow. Accelerator doesn't call her out on it, though, and walks away from the ruins surrounding them.
iii.
We live in a world full of broken hearts and judgmental hypocrites.
It goes like this: she's here, and he's there, and sometimes, they run into each other. Not exactly the kind of meet-up one would expect.
He doesn't know how it started, just that she starts appearing at the park, and he starts to run into her. He doesn't pass her a glare like the normal him would, and she skips past him to reach the busted up vending machine (which has just conveniently swallowed his 130 yens without popping out shit god dammit). It's happened enough for him to skim by her like just any other face in the crowd, and secretly hoping she wouldn't notice his too bright hair and too distinctive eyes. Evidently, it doesn't work.
"It won't work that way."
He diverts his gaze from the vending machine, and eventually, glowers at her.
She shrugs, and delivers a kick to the side of the metal box. It slushes out a soda can.
"Why are you here?"
"Why d' you care?'
She shrugs again, shoulders drooping, before snapping the metal hook open to take a sip. "Never seen you around this place before, that's all."
He scoffs. "I went here often. Your ignorant ass just never noticed because we didn't know each other then."
Maybe if he weren't busy glaring daggers at the vending and trying to figure how to use a vector to sneak a coffee can out he would have noticed the look on her face.
"That would be better, wouldn't it?"
He frowns, before glancing back to her, caffeine suddenly forgotten.
"Would it be better if we just never met at all?"
So I wouldn't feel over your misery. And you over mine.
He's quiet as he ponders it over his head. No killing. No nasty words. No guilt or regret. No doe eyes or tan skin. Yes, that – that sure as hell would be wonderful. Fucking perfect, actually. He could probably die in peace then without feeling like absolute shit when Last Order or any of the people he gave a rat's ass about found out.
"I think it would be better, honestly," the girl continues, and he snaps out of his head to turn to her again. "I can never imagine actually knowing someone like you. You're crude, and rude, and always snap at every little thing. That's not nice, you know."
"Nothing ever really is," he says slowly, "nice."
"Oh is it, now?"
There's sarcasm in her tone, and Accelerator doesn't even realize how much he hates that until it comes out from someone else' mouth. Or maybe he's just unnerved, he's not sure. His head's mushed when he's next to the source of his misery and guilt-trips.
"Nobody's nice anymore," he says instead, matter-of-factly. "They only act nice when they want to get something from you. Even an asshole can be nice if he thinks he's gonna get some."
He's not only talking about coition, and they both know it.
"So think whatever the fuck you want. We're either strangers or not at all. But I will never be, nice. Hell, none of us is."
iv.
People leave you out in the cold and get mad when you learn how to get warm by yourself.
The thing about niceness, is that it's something you learn, not born with. You see it through other people, or other people show it to you, and you adept and take after them.
So yes, that – that's exactly where his problem is. He's not nice, probably never will be anymore. Not because he actually prefers it that way (hell, when has he even had a choice to actually pick something for his wretched life), but because he's been so deprived of it for so long. And by the time he's opened enough to learn the world's already tipped itself over and people only take its shell to mask away their much less pretty intentions now.
He's never been one for social norms. Give him what they want and he'll pay it right back, sometimes more. They seem so ridiculous at times too, so he throws it over his head and takes care of his own problems. In that manic, robotic kind of way, since his passion is dead, and his thoughts for society, or people, are deader than dead. His only will to still stand on his feet and keep on fighting then was in the darker side of the underworld, and its insistent efforts to get into his overloaded head. And wasn't that a shocker? Hated and loathed him, yet still wanting him alive for the thing that ultimately scares them the most.
That was that. But now that dedication, that resolve lies in a little girl with the ahoge, and those big, expressive eyes, those frail fingers that grip at the sleeves of his shirt, and it kills him as much as it breathes life back to his lungs. This feeling, of closeness, of home, of – good, stubborn and painfully slow, but it grows, until there's one, two, three…more people start filling in the void. He looks at Misaka Mikoto now and he doesn't just see that wild, distraught girl at the trainwreck anymore. He sees why she's like that. People will only fall so hard when they have others to love, to protect.
The Railgun can say all she wants, but Accelerator knows, he may have won that fight, but he's losing it all on the inside. This is why even though he sees her everywhere he doesn't turn away. This is why he stays and listens to her blabbing nonsense. Because maybe one day, when there's no more pain left and they don't have this course of hatred and self-repulsion to wallow by themselves anymore, maybe they'll be nice again, too.
v.
There's no strength in depression and none in loneliness.
The night is flaky and humid against his skin in the city's summer heat. It's the only time of the day that Accelerator can tolerate, with no eyes lingering on his abnormal paleness or excited little kids trailing after him. The house gets suffocating with familiarity and home and actual people breathing and sleeping soundly without minding that he's actually there with them, so sometimes, he leaves.
He didn't need to walk far to catch her shadow – this time sitting at the edge of the lake of the park. Her back's to him and technically he can only see half of her with the darkness obscuring the rest, but she notices him approaching nonetheless.
She doesn't turn back to him when she speaks.
"It's past midnight."
"And past your curfew."
She pushes a piece of hair behind her ear. "I used to stay past curfew for worse. This is nothing."
He's not really sure how to reply to that so he doesn't, his hand curls uncomfortably on the cane's handle. He loosens it when he remembers he doesn't do stuff like that.
Inhale. Exhale.
Mikoto blinks. Breathes. She takes a slow turn towards him, drags a look from his crutch, his worn out jeans to the thin shirt obscuring his even thinner frame. His hair is mussed from the wind blowing through them. He holds her stare steady until she turns away again.
"Why are you still up?" she says.
"Probably the same reason why you are." He replies.
In the shadows, he thinks he sees her head duck a little lower. But then she licks her lips, and smirks.
"You can't get to your room because a Supervisor is guarding it like a hawk too?"
His stare flattens. "Don't try to be funny when you're not."
She shrugs. "It helps sometimes."
Help what, he was about to ask, but then the answer sinks down in his head. He clamps his mouth shut instead, and shoves his hands back deeper into the pockets of his jeans. The crutch is leaned against the tree behind him.
"We're all just a bunch of freaks, and liars, you know that." She finally says. "The…the people are too, but we're worse. We're not anywhere better than them yet we let them think we are."
He glares at her back through the darkness. "You think you can change that? You think you can prove them wrong?"
"I already tried. It already proved me wrong."
He knows who she's thinking of. That eyesore of a bastard with a right hook to watch out for. He may have chosen to live the rest of his life for the rest of the girls he didn't kill, but Kamijou Touma coughed blood and bled tears to fight against the rest of the world just for one misled girl. Misaka Mikoto is a lost cause, as much as her selfless dedication for that boy she couldn't reach is.
"He was right, you know. You can't prove the world wrong, just yourself."
That Accelerator really doesn't have a response to then. The day he admitted Kamijou Touma was right was the day he stopped feeling the constant urge to punch the guy's pretty teeth back into his throat. Never gonna happen.
What Misaka Mikoto is failing to notice, is that they're a mirror image of each other, a circus fun house mirror, but still.
It's not Kamijou, it's him. It's always been him, ever since the day she let those assholes draw her blood out with a needle and the day he let them put himself under their microscopes. Her failure sends him to his misery and now they're both living in despair with the fact that they've killed the most innocent lives to ever be created. They're both running tracks to an already torn ribbon, and neither him or her is trying to pick the other up to finish it.
He grabs his cane and crutches himself back up. "Then stop trying to stay up so late. You're not dying sooner than any of them."
The heels of his shoes skid across the flat ground and fade into the quiet sounds of the night that she's already turning accustomed to blurring them into white noise. Twilight has fully faded, glimmering the moonlight on the ripples of the water in the lake under them. Mikoto stares into the blackness, and feels her breath smoothen out with every step he takes.
Inhale. Exhale.
vi.
Even if relief is only temporary at least it exists.
"I think," she says one day, when there were only the two of them in front of that vending machine again, "that we ruined each other."
At first, he only looks at her, but then it settles, and comes down on him in feathering weight of realization. It's light and heady but suddenly it makes complete sense. Him in his wild, blinded rage at the world and her in her stubborn desperation to give, to please. They've been running in circles their whole life and tying back the knot at everywhere they come across each other. He frowns at the vending machine. Their life really sucks.
"Which one do you want?"
She asks instead, a quick change of topic, tapping the heel of her shoe on the ground for a light warm-up.
"Why does it matter? There's like, what, a one in a dozen percentage of you actually succeeding in getting coffee."
"Yeah, true…"
She shrugs at him, before turning away and swinging a well-aimed kick to the side of the vending that sends his pale hair fluttering back. The machine shakes at the force, before flushing out another can into the tray. Accelerator stares.
"But at least there's a chance,"
She says, and plops the caffeine can into his hand.
vii.
Upon us all, a little rain must fall.
Sadness never goes away. Sometimes it leaves and you feel like you can finally breathe again, but only until it floods back in waves and drowns you whole. He feels his in his chest, through his lungs, and now every so often, at where he sees the dark hair and dark eyes that haunt at his every step.
He finds her at the park again, and this time it's pouring. It's started out with just a light drizzle, before turning full-blown wet and mutinous, damping through his clothes and biting at his bones. It's late, and people are passing by in blurring figures – hiding away from the monsoon that soaks him whole. And he's not the only one letting them.
"What the hell are you doing out here – " he begins, already feeling irritated. The girl doesn't even blink at his sudden appearance " – in the rain?" His voice fades when he finally notices her still, quiet figure under the downpour.
The air is heady and tastes of soil when he gets a lung full of it. Mikoto half-turns towards him, before looking away again.
"Will it ever end?"
She whispers, and it's one of those stupid rhetorical tricks that send people into a dead end. He hates it. Accelerator considers Mikoto for a long time, absent-mindedly watching the water sluice down her face and drip down her hair in big, fat droplets. He feels some of them splatter against the base of his neck, and resists the urge to whisk away from the harmless hits. The last time they tried a push and pull blood was spilled and curses were spat as worlds crumbled and grinded into dust under their restless feet. And right then and there it's like they're at that bottom again – ripped apart at every edge and pulled away at the seams. He's looking at her now, and feels the world collapse all over again.
But then she moves. Slow and quiet this time – padding through the wet puddles at their feet and stepping closer to him. She tugs at his shirt sleeves, presses her forehead to his left shoulder, and just stays there. His skin flames up at where they make contact and his collarbone suddenly feels just a bit damper than before. The smell of earth and rain and body warmth is just that close to knock the air right out of his lungs. Heady and suffocating.
It takes a few, endless moments, but when her fingers curl on his and her cries quake through his chest, he finally relents. Her body trembles against his, hot and baring, and Accelerator allows himself to lean into her, too.
The sorrows don't go away. But with both of them here, they fade. Just a little.
/
A/N: （ﾟ∀ﾟ ）