"I'm going home," Izaya finally says, pulling his arm from Shizuo's grasp. "I'm tired."
"No, we have to try again," Shizuo protests, following Izaya out of the alleyway like an angry, blonde puppy. "We still don't know what's causing all these zombies to appear!"
"I think you mean who," he replied, sighing. This was deliberate, he thought, it had to be. If there was something in the water or a food source, he'd know all about it. No, people were going missing and they, he and Shizuo, were finding them zombified. Worst of all, there was no real connection between victims. They just turned up, usually where Shizuo and Izaya were, drawn to them inexplicably. Never found or reported anywhere on the news, and Izaya would know, being so deep in everything going on in Ikebukuro.
"Whatever. We just need to capture one of them already, before some kids find our trap or somethin'."
"Why couldn't you just resist eating your fellow monsters, Shizu-chan?" They were in Ikebukuro, currently, having just finished another unsuccessful hunt. "You'd have to transport the trapped creature once we had one anyway, do you really think you could keep from having yourself a little snack? Hmm?"
"That's different," The fight drained from Shizuo's shoulders as he trailed behind Izaya, telling him he had resigned to quit for the night. It's late, almost 3am. Even monsters got tired, Izaya supposed.
"Why? Why couldn't you just have dragged the monster to the trap instead of eating it?" Shizuo didn't need to eat brains to survive, but the physical benefits were a big part of what kept his strength with him, even in "human" form. And yet Shinra had always claimed he was human. Hah! There was a reason Shizuo never let his blood be drawn.
"Cause…" Shizuo mumbled, drawing another sigh from Izaya. It was clear he wasn't getting any straight answer from the idiot, so once he spotted a late night/early morning taxi, he moved to hail it down, hoping he would be seen instead of run over in the darkness.
"Wait!" Tch, the taxi passed them by, the driver swiftly pretending he didn't see them when Shizuo's bloodied form came into view. Damn it.
"What?" He huffed, irritated he'd lost his ride home.
"It's so late to be going home...why don't you just stay the night? We're not far..." Shizuo offered, absently rubbing the back of his neck. Izaya shrugged, a little displeased, but accepting.
"Sure, why not." It wasn't the first time he'd stayed over, but that didn't make him entirely comfortable with the situation.
"Great," Shizuo smiled like he was relieved, and they headed to his apartment.
"I can't not kill the others," Shizuo blurted later, when they were in the quiet darkness of Shizuo's apartment. The blonde had agreed to take the couch, not unusual for when Izaya stayed over. "When I see them...attacking someone. Someone like you, for example," Shizuo said awkwardly.
"What? Don't try to tell me you're protective, now?" Izaya laughed, shaking his head. "That's a huge load of shit, Shizu...are you limping?"
"Ah, Yeah. The last one bit a good chunk out of my calf."
"Hmm." Izaya cast a wary eye over him, seeing the conflicting emotions flit across Shizuo's face. What the brute could possibly be considering so carefully, some feeling deep in Izaya's chest told him he didn't want to know.
"The bed would be more comfortable for that," Izaya finally said, stepping forward to take the spare blanket and pillow from him. "I can just take the couch inste-"
"Or... we could share."
"Oh my, Shizu-chan, how scandalous!" Izaya laughed, pushing past Shizuo towards the couch. The brute huffed behind him, frustrated, and Izaya felt a tug at his elbow.
"It'd be more comfortable. Didn't you hurt your back earlier, flea?"
"Nope, not at all. Would you like me to prove it?"
"How would you even prov-hey!" Izaya backed up quickly several feet to the opposite end of Shizu's living room, then took a running start. He used the momentum to do a backflip through the air, landing only a few inches from Shizuo's face with a wide grin.
"Proof enough?"
"Show off," Shizuo snapped, turning and stomping to his bedroom. He slammed the door, much to Izaya's delight.
"Nighty night, don't let the fleas bite!" Izaya called, just to be an ass.
He got no response.
December 30th, 1999
Leukemia… the first thing that comes to mind are bald children, with brave smiles and tubes in their nose, right? Or maybe you knew someone who had it, or you yourself had it, unfortunately, so you think of pain and hospitals and fear. You think of dour faces and frowns and serious conversations, most likely.
Yeah. Yuuto wasn't having any of that.
"It's progressed too far-" He knew that. He could feel it. The way he was feverish so often and the way pain radiated through his skeleton.
"What it is, exactly, is the excess-" He knew that too. He knew what it was, he was a hematologist for fucks sake. Don't lecture a hematologist about cancer of the blood.
"It's progressed so far, we don't know how someone like you didn't notice-" He noticed! He knew, he saw the symptoms, and he'd been scared. So scared…
"You have about-"
"Stop." Smiling, Yuuto held up a shaky hand. "I'd rather not know." The doctor looked taken about, brushing a loose lock of hair behind her ear.
"...If we start treatment right away, there's a chance-"
"No." He stood up, gave a polite bow, and headed out of the hospital, ignoring the calls of the doctor.
No, no, he wasn't going through that. He wouldn't survive it. A man like him, he didn't have any family or friends to rely on. It would be him, the doctors, and the machines. Sure, Miku-chan might pay a visit, but that wouldn't be enough.
He didn't go home. Cold, bare, no one to greet him or comfort him, no… he wasn't spending his last hours there. Instead, he went to his office, where he kept different tools and paperwork on his various patients. It was late afternoon, but he was fairly sure he didn't have any appointment scheduled.
He was wrong.
It was while the sun was setting, the last golden rays shining through the blinds of his windows and spilling over the puddles of blood seeping through slit wrists that a patient, Miku Aikawa, suffering from Sickle Cell Anemia, found him bleeding out. She'd panicked, as anyone would, and this is what saved Dr. Yuuto Kurouchi's life.
The following events are quite a blur. He remembers that Miku ran, remembers feeling sad that the young girl had to see him like that, and remembers the way the blood pooled around him burned his feverish skin. There's a woman, then, in all black and matching black helmet. Black bandages are wrapped tightly around his wrists, though he could have sworn they'd materialized out of thin air, as if made of shadow. Miku is begging the woman to help him, either too young to understand he did this on purpose or uncaring.
The woman nods, says nothing and they move him. There's a motorcycle, speeding through the city at top speed, though he swears it neighs at him. Fever dreams are a trip, really.
"He needs a transfusion," there's a young boy, there, 15 at most and too young to be the one quickly cleaning the wounds and stitching his wrists.
"We're out? Oh, dear." He's finished the stitches now, and is leaning over Yuuto with a smile. "Looks like you'll die."
"Please," Miku sobs in the background. Odd, he hadn't even noticed her coming along. "You can use mine, he-he once said we're the same type, O negative..."
Yuuto coughs out a weak laughs, raising his hand a little to wave away the idea. "She has...sickle cell...anemia. Too dangerous…"
"Mm, this is a problem," he boy sighs, though his attention is caught by the biker lady. "Oh? Shizuo's blood, that's right, I took some yesterday when he fell asleep here! Aww don't look at me like that," he whines at her, though through the helmet Yuuto doesn't know how the body can possibly see her expression. "But I don't have enough…"
"Use mine too! Then you'll have enough, right?"
"Miku," he protests, through his dizziness, but he's ignored. He fades in and out while they transfer the blood, and the burning of the fever intensifies.
"Hurts," he cries, at one point, but it is also ignored. Something is wrong, his blood is screaming, and his eyes are hot like twin suns burning in his skull.
He wakes up and feels better than he has in months.
Sitting up is easy, pain free, aside the throbbing in his wrists. He suspects he's on pain meds, though.
"I had to give up my entire sample!" The boy from before is wailing to the biker woman across the room. She holds up some device and- oh, that makes sense, she's mute. And angry, by the way her hand goes to her hip and she waves the device in his face.
"Well, yeah, maybe 2 full liters was excessive, but you saw him! He didn't even notice!" She shoves the device closer, angrily, and Yuuto suspects she says something like "That's not the point!"
They'd make a cute couple, he thinks.
"Ah, you're awake," The boy exclaims suddenly, turning his attention to Yuuto. "That's good, I was hoping to run some tests-"
"No. No, I'd rather you not…" He hedges, glancing to the sheets. "I'd like to go home, actually…"
"Well, see, the thing is that you tried to kill yourself and it took a lot of work to save you."
"I'll pay you a sufficient amount." He's jumping off a bridge as soon as he gets out of here.
"That's reassuring, but not my main concern. You had some strange symptoms, some fascinatingly strange ones, actually, and I'd really like to monitor you a little longer."
"What are you, in middle school?" Yuuto usually isn't so rude, but really, the boy doesn't even look old enough to shave. "How would you even know what to monitor?"
"Just started high school, actually," the boy says easily, adjusting his glasses. Highschool, eh? Just like Miku…
"Where is Aikawa-san?" He asks suddenly worried about her condition.
"My darling Celty drove her home!"
"...what's a Celty?" He asked, frowning. The woman in black comes forward, holding out a PDA.
[That would be me. Miss Aikawa said her parents were there to watch her condition...just what is your relationship her her? She was very desperate to help you.]
"I'm her doctor," He smiles. "A hematologist, ironically enough… I really should go now." He's dizzy when he stands, swaying a bit. "I need to make sure she's okay, you took blood from her right?"
"Yes, we had to. But it wasn't much, and we gave her juice and everything!" Shinra exclaims proudly, looking to the woman, Celty, for praise. She gives none.
[She'll be alright. She seemed lively, and she said her parents were home.]
"Thank you." He gets their information, where he'd send the money. He decides he might as well, he can spare a few minutes writing out a check, can stop by the bank on his way to the bridge, after he checks on Miku.
Of course the girls parents aren't never are, wouldn't be for months last time he checked and never called. All her appointments are attended alone.
He finds her feverish, still in her school uniform, sprawled near the phone, unconscious from the strain of having crawled there. He decides it doesn't look all that serious, takes her back to his office where he has all the proper equipment needed to take care of her. What's a few days more of pain and depression of the inevitable?
Except...there is no pain. None. Except for his wrists, of course, but even that isn't nearly as bad as it should be. The boy who treated him revealed he'd not used any painkillers after all, claiming it dangerous when so many suicides took them along with slit wrists to make sure the job gets done, and to make things a little easier. He's just glad they didn't have the equipment to pump his stomach.
It's when he's coming back from a bathroom trip, washing his hands,that he glances into the mirror and freezes. It's his eyes. Dull and brown, nothing special there, except the greenish blue tint they've taken. It's not overly obvious, but it's different, and different is alarming.
He tries not to dwell on it too much, thinking that it doesn't matter, of course, not like anything matters anymore, but he finds himself going back to the mirror again and again to look.
By nightfall, his eyes are a full blown mossy green.
"I...like the contacts," Miku compliments him, falling back asleep shortly after. Her condition isn't good.
Fuck.
He runs some tests, drawing his own blood with practised ease and studying it for hours. It's different, there are new blood cells that shouldn't there! Red blood cells, he thinks, though the color is tinted green, and green doesn't mix well with red, so the cells wind up almost an off orange color.
He had zero explanation.
It seems, too, that the bone pain is gone. Three days go by as his wrists heal too quickly and his eyes remain a disturbing shade of green and his bones feel normal again. He stays pale, but grows strong, and watches the cancers cells destroyed by the greenish orange ones.
It's a miracle. He's so absorbed in it that he forgets most everything else, including Miku. He thinks she calls for him, sometimes, but he's too busy studying the mutation in his blood for the most part. He writes down everything he can, isolates various samples to study and experiment with later.
He only remembers Miku when he finds her file, looking for a fresh notebook to fill.
"Oh, God, I'm so sorry, Aikawa-san," he whispers, approaching the couch he'd set her up on days ago, fearing the worst when he gets no response. He finds her alive, though just barely.
"I can save you," He says, to her pale, unconscious form. He injects her with his blood, twice, just to be safe, and sets up a temporary feeding tube and IV. Amazingly, she gets better. The new cells destroy the infection within the hour, and her fever breaks easily. She's up and walking the next morning, babbling about missing school and unaware of what he's done.
"Thank you for helping me, Kurouchi-sensei!" She hugs him, tightly, whispering that she'll be back to visit soon. He hugs back, a little too tightly, before waving her out. He has to go document his success, anyway.
"I'm humanity's saviour," he crows to himself excitedly, storing away a petri dish that contained Miku's blood mixed with his own without taking a look at the results. That can come later. He'd glad he didn't wait to see the results of that before injecting her. She wouldn't have made it.
"This mutation," he's speaking of his own blood, completely believing it's naturally from him and him alone, "this will save the world of all blood diseases!"
He fantasises of the medals awarded to him, of world wide fame. He thinks of Miku, oddly enough, and can't quite shake the picture of a healthier, older version of her, wishing him a good day from their fancy house on his way to make speeches and shake hands with world leaders.
...How silly.
Still, he can't shake it, until he notices it's around the time for school to be out, and decides to pick her up and take her for ice cream. In a friendly way, of course, she's only 15, but the flustered excitement in his stomach makes him feel a little sick with himself.
He gets worried when she doesn't leave with all the other students, and more worried when the clubs leave as well.
He heads into the school, empty and dark, and is drawn towards the cafeteria by a shout.
"Izaya, stay back!" Yuuto peeks through the crack in the door, curious, and finds two boys, one with red eyes that stands out to him. "It's a-...it's not human."
Oh, God.
It's Miku. It's his Miku, Her eyes are green at the irises, similar to the color of his own, and yellow at the whites, and he's alarmed to see her skin has taken on a rotting greenish color. She lunges at a dark haired boy, attempting to bite him with inhuman ferocity. The blonde boy stops her, though he can't see how by the way they're turned, and feels his heart sink when they pin down the girl who's no longer human.
They fucking decapite her, the blonde having some sort of inhumane strength, and he runs away.
His dreams shatter around him.
It's weeks before he hears anything about her disappearance on the news, and by that time he's closed down his business and moves to a new location on the other side of Ikebukuro. He looks at the sample of Miku's blood and his own, and finds the orange cells have turned a sour green, all of them, and are starting to die.
If he cries, no one knows.
"This is my fault," he whispers, looking over his notes again and again. He doesn't understand, doesn't see how this could have happened, when she'd been so lively and healthy. How she'd smiled at him, and hugged him, and now he'd never see her again, never see that lovely girl he wanted to build a life with, when she was old enough and would surely have said yes.
Great. He's sick and grieving.
It's not till he's looking over a patient, an old woman living alone with no family, complaining of unusual symptoms and here because she's sure it's to do with her blood, that he thinks of trying again. A few quick tests prove she's fine, just old and over thinking things.
"I think I have just the thing to help, Inoue-san" He says calmly, injecting her with a fresh syringe of his blood. He makes her stay, even when she begins to get nervous, retrains her when she starts to cry for help and beg him to let her leave.
In 6 hours time, around 11PM, her eyes turn that ugly green and she begins to rapidly lose all coherency. She struggles, biting at the air, flesh rotting, and growling.
He doesn't know what to do.
He runs the tests, so many tests, and can't decide what to think when she breaks free of her bonds. He panics, thinking of the dark haired boy and expects she'll bite him, but she skirts around him like he's on fire and escapes through a window.
In the following days, where he ignores his conscience in his lingering grief for Miku and his dreams, there are no reports of her, or creatures like her. He never rots, never loses his mind like them, and keeps pursuing his experiments, determined to get it right.
He hears talk one day of a boy who's dyed his hair bright blonde to warn people, some kind of delinquent, and does the same. Except he goes with dark green.
It makes him feel less guilty, as he starts luring in the homeless and the old and the forgotten with promises of free checkups and food, etc. A professional man would never dye his hair green, so by that logic, those that trust him are the ones at fault.
That makes sense, right?
He moves to a bigger location, one with a huge, convenient basement no one really knows about, and starts storing his "experiments." Men, Women, a few children when he can get them, although he's usually very kind to them first, of all different ages and blood types. The ones who are kept unchanged for testing purposes start to call him the Zombie Doctor. He takes to gagging them when their desperate pleas and angry accusations get on his nerves. He lets the fully turned experiments go, and never sees or hears about them again. This probably isn't smart, but someone is taking care of them, and he quite frankly doesn't give a shit.
One day, a shady man comes in. He's got a stern frown, sour attitude, and sharp eyes.
"We've noticed," he says, referring to his shady operation of people and the many disappearances. "No one else has, but we have."
He's handed a list of names with pictures, and a lot of money, with promises of more if he starts using these people instead of the homeless and the forgotten. He agrees easily, and makes plenty of money to fund his experiments, takes to liking his job more and more knowing he's using only the scum of Japan to save the world. He's a hero, really.
Years go by. He gets so much information, has a whole process, but he's still no closer to figuring out how he got this mutation and why he isn't a monster. The Leukemia stays gone, his eyes stay green, and Miku's painful demise haunts him constantly.
He begins to feel hopeless, restless, wishes he could find some way to make himself feel better even if he thinks it's selfish. It's not till he's handed that months list, and spots the picture of one man in particular with dark hair and familiar red eyes.
Izaya Orihara, one of the two boys from all those years ago.
Oh, this was going to be fun.
I um, I didn't really clean it up much. I just wrote it. I'm so lazy, I know I know, but I just needed to update this lest I lose interest
I really hope you don't hate me for going SO into detail with Yuuto. I also hope you didn't completely lose interest. It's getting to the Shizaya, I swear!
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