Do As You Like Chapter Seven
DISCLAIMER: I do not own KHR, otherwise I wouldn't be flat broke right now.
WARNING: GORE IN THIS CHAPTER.
{KHR18KR}
"So everything's alright over there? Ahaha, yeah, it's fine with us too. Yeah, I'll tell Kyouya you said hi. Love you too."
Click.
"Otou-san? Was that Okaa-san?" I gently slid the panel close behind me, setting my backpack on the ground. Toeing off my shoes, I proceeded into the kitchen for something to drink. Water would be nice, especially in such hot and muggy weather. As much as I liked tea, iced tea was an entirely different boat; hot tea would be suicidal.
Kisuke smiled brightly and put down the cable phone even as he straightened the tie around his neck. He wore his uniform casually, adjusting the belt around his waist and the strap roping over his chest. Shiny boots; he'd just gotten a new pair. "Oh, welcome home, Skylark. Yeah, that was Okaa-san on the phone just now."
I returned with a tiny quirk of my own lips. "She's okay? No sudden relapses or anything?"
"Nah, it's all good."
Stillness descended upon us.
"So…" My father began somewhat nervously, "today's the day." He cleared his throat. "I've gotta go in a few hours. Wanna get something to eat?"
"Depends," I mumbled, scratching my head and trying to smother the dread in my stomach. "Is it Japanese?"
"Hmm," he said, cocking his head, "I dunno." Although he and my mother preferred the traditional lifestyle with traditional clothing and a huge traditional house, he didn't crave the food all that often. He liked modern, Western-inspired dishes with astonishing aplomb. While my mother also preferred Western dishes, she wasn't exceptionally picky. "We had some miso and fish just the other day, right?"
"But we had hamburg and carbonara the day after that and yesterday," I pointed out. "I'm getting sick of Western food."
"Ehhhhhh…" Kisuke poked his tongue out of his mouth in a childish unconscious habit, crossing his arms. "Alright, alright, how about… ah, Sushi!"
"Sushi?" My brow raised; I grabbed a cup of water. "Would that even feel right without Okaa-san there?"
Tsubame, after all, was the one who loved sushi the most. Without fail, she dragged the three of us to the sushiya a couple of streets over to get some at least once a month.
"Why not? We can get some to-go for her, after all. Haha, she'll probably stab me with a syringe if we don't get any for her!"
Eyeing him thoughtfully, I took a long drink. Cold water slipped from my mouth and splashed on my shirt, but I ignored it. "So it's settled? Sushi for dinner?"
"To the sushiya we go!" He crowed, and not for the first time, I wondered how exactly he had become the Chief of Police. Kami, the man could be so energetic sometimes.
He jammed a palm over my head and ruffled my hair with a lopsided smile on his face, pulling me out of the house. Hastily, still in my school uniform, I ran back in and threw on my still-warm shoes, sprinting after him. He laughed and waved from a far distance away when I finally remembered that I still held the glass of water in my hand.
{KHR18KHR}
"Be careful at home, okay, Kyouya?"
I looked away from the ants crawling on the side of the road to squint upward at him. He squeezed my hand in his and didn't look away from the sun setting in the horizon. He had to leave soon. I didn't want him to go, and for once I wasn't annoyed (scared) enough to admit this to him.
"I should say the same thing. You be careful too, Otou-san. Don't play the hero and die."
Ha had the audacity to laugh. "Die? That's a bit morbid, Skylark," he replied with a chuckle, not faltering with his steps. Skylark. Not Kyouya. I smiled at him and let my fingers slip from his grasp to run forward a couple of paces and begin walking backward. He sighed. "You know I can't exactly follow your directions if my men get in danger."
"Then don't get hurt when you get them out of danger," I intoned forcefully, meeting his eyes and watching how my shadow faded away to be replaced with the new darkness of night. "You can get hurt, so long as you don't die."
"Haha, that's harsh! I thought you didn't want me to get hurt at all!"
I rolled my eyes. "Injury is fine. Mortal wounds are not. If you must, you may protect them with your body only to the extent where your life will not be in danger." It would have amused me, years ago, to hear these words pour from my mouth. Like I was a deity. Like I was important. Now, I was deadly serious.
Kisuke gave me an odd, patronizing look. "Ah, that's right," he suddenly said out of nowhere, "You still don't understand the last line in our creed, do you?"
Narrowing my eyes, I stopped walking backward and turned around so that I couldn't see his face. "What does that have to do with anything?" I snapped at him.
He laughed again, this time more genuinely. Lighter than before. "Everything, Skylark! It will always be relevant!"
I huffed. "I don't get you."
"You will someday," murmured Kisuke. "And when you do, you're going to come whining to me about how stupid you are, and how it's all my fault because my genes tainted you or something."
A startled and hollow laugh slipped out of my grasp. "Your words, not mine. And I'm pretty sure that will only happen in your dreams." If you die because of your men, I wanted to say, you'll be an even bigger idiot than me. Don't forget about Okaa-san. She's waiting for you, damn it.
Our house came into view, and I spent a moment tracing the kanji on our nameplate. Hibari. Cloud and sparrow.
The free Skylark.
The three of us, we Hibari, had a lot of pride. It was a no-brainer; one could even say that we had iron wills, unyielding presences. At this point in time I had no trouble thinking that Tsubame would live. She would. She had said so, and so she would do so.
Kisuke, on the other hand, I wasn't so sure about. He was an idiot. A bleeding heart. Soft. Accepting. Sacrificial. Stupid to an almost unbelievable degree.
Weak, but not at the same time. I had no idea what to think about him, because this was my father and he was almost a herbivore. Almost, though, because he was my father, the head of the Hibari clan, and the Chief of Police. If that didn't mean anything, I'd swear off tea forever, call myself a herbivore, and dance in a circle with Sasagawa, Fon and Iemitsu.
(Never, never, and NEVER TO THE FUCKING POWER OF INFINITY.)
Kisuke's phone beeped softly and yet still caused the both of us to jolt out of our thoughts. My father squinted at the brightly glowing screen, frowning, before closing it and tucking it back into his pocket. "I'll be fine," he assured me before I could tell him to watch out for himself for the umpteenth time. A bit peeved at how he had cut me off, I slapped the hand that reached out to pat my head.
"Shut up," I wrestled from my throat. "You—just—don't forget! I'm never going to forgive you if you forget! Protect yourself!"
And then I, being the ultra-manly and untouchable Hibari Kyouya that was me, slammed into him with all the force my seven-year-old body could offer, and hugged him senseless. No, I just tried to squish the life out of him. Yeah, that was right. But all the while I kept telling myself that my arms weren't trembling, and that I wasn't crying (fuck, when was the last time I had cried, if ever), and that I was just being an idiot. Nothing wrong would happen on his raid. It would go smoothly.
It would.
"Will do," he confirmed with another of his broad and dumb smiles that I hadn't realize had become so important and precious to me. I wanted to take a camera and take a picture of his face, but then I noticed how I was still hanging off of him like a wimp, so I let go and hastily wiped at my eyes. A strong and determined tone seeped into his voice. "I won't ever let you get hurt."
"That's not what I meant, you idiot!"
And we both laughed with tears in our eyes.
{KHR18KHR}
I couldn't sleep that night. As I constantly rolled over and over in my futon, trying to get comfortable, my legs entangled with my blanket in a way that pissed me off even more than the way I acted—like a freaking kid. No, a freaking girly girl! I was twenty-five, so when was I going to act my fucking age?
Get up. Lie down. Get up. Throw the blanket off. Walk into the kitchen. My eyes bored into the family picture on the walls (huh, when had we gotten so many?) and I sat at the table, limply letting my upper half flop onto the smooth and cold wood. That one was from a year ago. Kisuke grinned into the camera while Tsubame and I splashed about in the water some feet away. The other one was from three years ago, during the winter. Tsuna was there, as was Nana, and the four of us (Kisuke had taken the picture) laughed because of something that Tsuna had said. I didn't remember what it was. Another in the corner, half hidden by the others, was by far my favorite. It was a candid shot of the three of us walking to the marketplace, taken by a photographer who had apparently thought that we would make nice subjects. In it all three of us smiled, and the sun sparkled in a way that seemed to radiate the happiness we felt that day, just us walking together.
With no one but me home, the house rattled with an eerie sort of quiet that kept me on edge. The shishi-odoshi in the pond outside doinked at constant intervals, amplifying the silence. I took a gander at the clock on the wall.
Oh. Two in the morning. How long could a raid last?
When I finally eased out of the chair and made my way back over to my room several hallways away, I had finally calmed to an acceptable level. I could sleep at last. But then the phone in the kitchen rang loudly. My heart shuddered at the sudden noise that pierced the night, and I sprinted back to the kitchen.
Ring-ring-ring! Ring-ring-ring! I nearly tripped in my haste to reach it before the thing could go to voicemail. Ring-ring— "Hello?" I called into the device breathlessly.
I caught shallow breathing on the other side of the line. "H-Hello? Is this the H-Hibari residence?"
"Yeah," I answered dumbly before shaking my head. "Who are you?"
"I-I'm Shimura A-Aiko! I'm the nurse for Hibari Tsubame, and—"
Moving with an all-body jerk, I dropped the phone like it had burned me. No. No. Nonononono, this couldn't be possible. Wait. Calm down. I bent down to retrieve the phone, fingers shaking, neck peppering with goosebumps despite the heat of the house. "Sorry about that," I said, not sorry at all, "the phone just slipped out of my hand. What happened to her? Is she alright?"
"H-Hibari-san just went into a violent coughing fit, and right now she's in intensive care, but we don't know if she'll live—"
Damn it! I growled in frustration and panic. "My father isn't here right now. I'll be right there. Make sure she doesn't die!" I snarled into the receiver.
A muffled squeak came out of the other end. "Y-Yes!"
Not bothering to replace the phone that now hung by its cord on the ground, I dashed to entrance and laced up my shoes. Screw the fact that I was wearing my pajamas. Screw the fact that I looked like shit. That was my mother. That was my mother there!
The shoji door slammed open and fell over due to my excessive force. The hot and muggy air stuck to my skin like glue, and I sprinted out of the house on the fastest path to Namimori Hospital. Tsubame had relapsed. She was in intensive care. Kisuke wasn't here, and I couldn't call him because he was on a raid.
Damn it! Breathe!
"Well, that was easier than I thought it would be."
I stopped. Huh? A shadow loomed over my shoulder.
What?
Something slammed into my head.
What's going on?
I fell to the ground with a thump that echoed in my ears.
{KHR18KHR}
I opened my eyes to dim lighting and a headache that bordered on the feeling of something digging into the side of my head.
Oh, wait, something really was digging into my head. "Looks like Sleeping Beauty here is awake," snorted an amused and gravely voice. It instantly put me on edge, and I tensed. "Oh, scared, is he?"
I didn't answer. The smooth glint of a gun caught the corner of my eye and I forced myself not to curse. A gun. Of course a fucking gun prodded my temple. If anything, I thought to myself, I should have expected this. I mean, look at this place! It's filthy and filled with tattooed men!
My silence made the gun jab roughly into my skin. "You," drawled the voice, "What's your name?"
"…My mother isn't really in intensive care, is she?" I asked instead, breathing slowly. A wiggle of the shoulder; a twitch of the foot. Thin rope bound me to my seat, my hands behind the chair.
"Regular smartass, are you? Naw, your mom's perfectly fine. Sleeping like a baby right now, I bet."
Exhale. Okay. That was one good thing. "And you guys wouldn't happen to be the Dojinkai-gumi, would you?"
They all stiffened. "What's it to you?"
Oh, fuck me. "Oh, nothing. I mean, my father hasn't been chasing you guys for several months now, has he?"
The man snorted and clouted me with the side of his gun, sending my neck snapping to the side and lights dancing before my eyes. I grunted, since the pain wasn't really that much compared to how much my teeth burned with my indignation. My hands clawed at the old and damp wood of my chair, and I gritted my teeth.
"Ay, Oyabun, ya don't have to hit him that hard! He's just a little hostage, remember?" Someone from the sidelines called out surprisedly, and I heard a few people step back in trepidation and disbelief. Oyabun, huh? So the man who stood behind me was the boss.
This was not reassuring to know.
"I'm a hostage, am I?" I drawled, cutting into whatever the boss had wanted to say in response to his kobun. "Just to be clear—so the police aren't raiding your main base right now?"
The barrel pushed against the skin of my shoulder, and the boss—ah, Ashiwara Kazuto, my mind reminded me—grabbed a handful of my hair to tilt my neck back. Unimpressed with his face, I raised a brow.
"You shut up," he ordered, yanking harder on my hair. I clenched my teeth even harder. "Hostages stay silent or we do it for them."
Hah, I thought to myself. He thinks those kinds of threats can scare me?
I mean, I've died before, and no fucking shit is scarier than feeling your life slip away.
(Except for maybe one thing—)
"Do what?" I smirked. "Cut out my tongue? Or shoot me—"
Bang!
Well, there goes that theory.
My eye twitched as I watched the bullet exit my shoulder, feeling the blood seep from my shoulder and pool at my hip. Some of it ran down my arms and onto my hands. The wound throbbed with heat and hot-fire pain, but I could tell that the bullet hadn't hit anything really important. Whether that had been a warning shot or just incompetence I didn't know.
But damn did it hurt. I bit down on my tongue and closed my eyes harshly.
"I was going to let you live," spat the yakuza with a curse, "but just looking at you is making my blood pressure rise."
"I'm a hostage," I smartly replied, receiving another clout for my efforts. Fuck.
Another member spoke up. "If the boss doesn't want to keep you alive, now we don't hafta, do we?" His voice reminded me of a nerd with a lisp. I focused hard on my bleeding shoulder to keep from throwing out a retort like, 'And if I don't want you to live, then I don't have to tell my father to save you when he gets here, right?'
"Hey, maybe we can even get the mom," another one joined in, and I flinched, drawing a laugh out of them. "Oh? Little boy doesn't like that, does he? He doesn't want to see us fu—"
"You leave my mother alone!" I snarled, pulling my wrists away from each other. The rope gave slightly, but didn't tear. "Fuck," I swore, "You better not touch a single fucking hair on your head or I'll—"
"Or you'll what?" I could practically feel the smirk on the boss' face. His breath ghosted over my ear, and I jerked away in revulsion. "Kill us? You don't have the guts."
I do, I wanted to yell, scream at them, and tear the words into their skin. I do, and I'll murder you all if you so much as touch her!
But I fell silent, because if I died, they'd definitely get Tsubame then. I couldn't let that happen. My muscles all tensed, straining against the rope tying me down. My fingers picked at the knots, and I froze as something slipped over my finger. Wiggle room. Soon, I had the entire thing done.
My hands were free. My heart thumped with adrenaline, and I pulled the rope back around my wrists just as Ashiwara stepped away from his post and to a place a few feet in front of me.
"See?" He dragged out, "You don't have the guts to endure any more pain. Weak little baby, you are. The son of a weakling will be a weakling, after all." My chair rocked as I tried to lunge for him. The chair legs momentarily left the floor, but that was it. My shoulder continued to bleed, and soon my shirt glistened with the shiny, dark red so characteristic of vital fluid.
I wanted so much to rage at him. But planning first. My hands were free. What else was there to do?
That almost subconscious lunge had cracked a line through the wood of the left leg, and I suspected that if I lunged again, the wood would snap entirely. Feigning resignation and fear, I pulled my head down to get a glimpse of the other men in the room.
Two to the left behind me. On to the right. In front of me stood four men—one to the left, two to the right, and of course, the boss before me, right next to a moldy wooden table. I catalogued the weapons: five guns and two knives. If I could get to a knife, my right leg could get free. But then what? If I got free, what would I do? Perhaps I could grab Ashiwara's gun in his surprise if I lunged at him, but even if I shot him they'd still kill me.
And they'd go after Tsubame.
Where was Kisuke? Was he still at the raid on what wasn't even the Dojinkai-gumi's main base? When would he figure it out? When would he run back home? Had he been injured there? Was he dead?
Oh, please, no.
But I was a hostage, right? What for? Why would they need me? Revenge. Against who? My father. Why? He was the Chief of Police. If they killed him, they'd gain complete control over Namimori.
No.
"You've got another thing coming if you want to exchange me for my father," I hissed softly, keeping my head down.
"What's that?" Ashiwara grunted, stepping toward me.
"I said," and here I snapped my head up, baring my teeth menacingly, "You've got another thing coming if you think I'm just going to play along when you kill my father!"
It happened in a rush after that. As I lunged forward, my hands came up to push against the cold floor. Something sliced into my palm, but I didn't care—my weight came crashing down on my arms and my injured shoulder, and with a soft hiss I twisted my body midair so that the legs of my chair slammed full force into the man's chest. He fell back just as I ripped my legs from the now-broken wood, and I rolled out of the way of a volley of bullets so that the table shielded me from view.
Breath. Take in the surroundings. Don't fall to tunnel vision.
The boss struggled on the floor, attempting to right himself, but I darted out and grabbed his gun before he could remember to get it. Bang! My arms accepted the recoil with ease, and I mentally thanked Nika's brother for teaching me how to shoot in my previous life. Blood splattered.
Oops! I didn't mean to get any of that filthy, disgusting, dirty blood on me. Stepping away from a gunshot, I ran over to the nearest kobun and slid between his legs, shooting upward as I did so. Blood rained down all around me, and I laughed breathlessly at the view, because when else would I get to see such a wonderful sight? The shock on that skinny, dumbfounded face tasted amazing.
More. I needed to hurt some more.
"Shit! When did he—"
"Little fucker's gone insane!"
"Get him! Kill him!"
The gun hummed in my hands, and I shot wildly. Bang! Bangbangbang!
Click.
Damn it. I threw the empty hunk of metal to the side and sprinted over to the men in the back, disregarding the ones in the front for the moment. Weapon. I needed a weapon. My eyes shifted swiftly, backandforthbackandforth—aha~!
The crowbar settled snugly into my hands, perhaps a tad too big for them, but I took an experimental swing and decided that this thing fit me much better than the gun ever did. Blunt violence really was the best, after all.
"S-Stay back!" I met his eyes—ah, such an ugly shade of muddy brown—and gleefully swung down, hitting his groin and pulling back slightly so that when I darted forward again the crowbar stabbed into his soft and fleshy stomach. "Guh—aah, stop, stop!" More and more of the ruby fluid sprayed around me, and I yanked the weapon back to my side, clawing out his intestines and maniacally flinging the pink and squiggly organs onto another man's face. The uninjured one screamed in either revulsion or horror as his friend's organs hit him with a loud squoomph! Uninjured. Not for long.
"Ahaha—ahahaha!" Swing, and the tip grazed his neck. Swing, and I caved his skull in. Swing, and he stopped breathing. Where were the others? One, two, three, four—ah, I had three left!
"Shit, run for it!"
Ara, herbivores weren't supposed to open the door! They weren't supposed to try and escape! "You can't run from a carnivore!" I chided, rushing over and pouncing on the one whose hand had barely grazed the doorknob before I dropkicked him and slammed the metal stick into his chest. Stab, stab, stab, stab—
"Hey, what are you doing?" I stopped and stared at the final two prey quivering on their asses, one beside the other. The stench of body fluids hit my nose, and my nose scrunched up in abhorrence. Oh repugnance, that is thy form. The crowbar slid with a wet squelch from the dead prey's ribs, and I took a step forward.
"No, stop! Please, I beg of you, we didn't want to kidnap you! We were against it in the first place! We—!"
Cracksplatthumpthumpthumpthump. I gave him one more whack for good measure. "But you're the one that mentioned raping my mother in the first place." I didn't understand; why would he lie so blatantly, so stupidly? If he had to die, he had to accept it. That was how herbivores were supposed to act.
Duh.
The last one whimpered, tears streaming down his face to mix with snot. He blubbered incoherently to himself—or to me, I couldn't really tell—rocking back and forth. His eyes seemed to convey how his mind had snapped, and as I stared at him, at how his hands clamped down over his ears and how his eyes squinted shut, I was struck by a pang of pity.
He looked rather young for a yakuza member. Just twenty or so. Slowly my heart stopped its rapid pace, and slowly I let my muscles relax. This was just a kid; he was so young, too young. As I dropped the crowbar, the burning heat of my gunshot wound reminded me of the blood still pooling from my body. How odd adrenaline was; it temporarily numbed pain receptors so that the body wouldn't feel it until later.
Funny thing about having a mental condition/curse that derives relief from violence—I couldn't go into shock. Nice side effect, that.
So I stood there, suddenly realizing that yes, my body was soaked entirely through with blood, as that pathetic thing over there continued rocking by himself.
(The adult human body contains five-point-five liters of blood, but even then it looked like so much more than that.)
What kind of a monster had I become to be able to do this?
To have been able to laugh while doing it?
What kind of a monster indeed.
{KHRkKHR}
Kisuke cursed, because damn, this was not what was supposed to happen at all. These yakuza members had been prepared—too prepared. As he reloaded his gun, he rolled out of the way of several bullets, eyes instantly zeroing in on each and every one of them in the split second it took them to travel through the air. One nearly reached Tanuma beside him, and he grimaced as he pulled the unaware man away.
"Pay attention!" He snapped, kicking over the table they hid underneath and proceeding to unleash several bullets into several targets. The sound of gunshots and grunts echoed throughout the room but no one seemed to notice as they all shot and shot and shot and died. "Don't make me tell your wife you died because you were spacing out, dimwit!"
It was nice to be the Chief of Police in a region; that way he could insult people all he wanted.
He took stock of the situation. Tanaka was already dead. Itsuki, Satou, Haibara—all dead. Bang! Bang! The Oyabun was nowhere to be found. Reload. Bangbangbang! For some reason, the reinforcements that he had called for and hour ago had failed to show up.
Ah, he realized as his eyes widened, This is a trap.
Shit.
Bangbang! Reload. Bangbangbangbangbangbang! "Tanuma!" He called to the officer, "Take charge! Round up these assholes! I've got to get back to headquarters to find out what happened to the reinforcements!"
"What?! Are you insane?" The older man—but not by much, Kisuke reminded himself, just three years—shouted, ducking as a bullet whirled by overhead. "They're not letting anyone leave! You'll be killed!"
"We'll all be killed if I don't do something, damn it!" And that was it. He tore through the bloody skirmish and to a hole in the wall. Kami-sama. Kisuke scowled. In such a large building, how was it that everyone had made it inside this room and gotten into a full-out battle royale? This was a raid—meant to be simple, meant to be straightforward. Yeah, this was a trap, all right. Shimmying through the just-barely-enough space, the man made his way from there out of the building and into his car.
It took a while to reach the broad edifice, but when he did he wasted no time in bursting in and startling the half-asleep receptionists.
"Wha—Hibari-san, you're covered in blood!"
"I called for reinforcements hours ago!" He said instead, banging a fist on the desk. "Where are they? My men are dying over there, and I need to know who's going to back them up!"
"What—?"
"It was a trap, okay?! Damn it, call Atobe and get him to round up his men! They need to get over there ASAP!"
"H-Hai!"
Finally! Kisuke turned on his heel and ran back to the entrance, but a surprised voice caused him to flinch and turn around.
"H-Hibari-san! A note! Kami-sama, it's a ransom note!"
No. Ransom? Who was close enough to him that could—
Tsubame, his Sparrow.. Kyouya, his Little Skylark, even though he omitted the 'Little' these days.
No.
He couldn't snatch the slip out of her hand fast enough. His eyes ran over the words ones—get here, we have your son, kill yourself—and his heart stopped for a total of three seconds.
We have your son.
Kyouya. Kyouya, Kyouya, Kyouya.
Little Skylark.
Kisuke couldn't run to his car fast enough.
{KHR18KHR}
My mind had descended into a cloudy haze. Silence deafened my ears, and all I could think was, You're a monster, you killed these men and yet you don't even regret doing so. Monster.
Carnivore. That was what I had called myself before, wasn't it? A carnivore. A monster.
Whimpering, crying, silence. The sounds seemed to ring in my ears at constant intervals. The boy would cry for a moment and then fall silent, then begin sobbing even louder until the noises died down into whimpers and keening. I stared at the bloody crowbar on the ground.
Monster.
"Kyouya!"
At first I didn't recognize the voice that called out for me. It resonated from outside, and instantly connected with my heart so that I relaxed and perked up without even realizing. Who was this? Who was he?
"Kyouya! Are you in there?" The voice seemed to be looking for me.
"I—" I cleared my throat, because it had suddenly gotten so dry. "I'm here!"
The door flew open, and there he was.
Father. Otou-san. Kisuke.
"Kyouya!" He didn't seem capable of saying anything other than my name, appearing by my side in a flash and drawing me up into a bone-crushing hug that put my earlier one to shame. For some reason, that one had felt like so long ago. Had it really only been a few hours?
The whimpering stopped, but I didn't notice.
"Otou-san," I murmured softly, clutching his shirt. There was blood on it, and it didn't come from me. "I—I didn't mean to—"
"But you're safe," he exhaled, unmindful of the blood he kneeled in. "You're safe, Skylark. That's all that matters. Oh, thank Benten, kami, whoever. You're not dead."
The boy shifted slightly, but again, I didn't notice.
"I killed them." My voice cracked as I admitted this. "I killed them and I liked it, because they said that if I died they'd go after Okaa-san."
Kisuke laughed softly. "Then all the more reason to have killed them, hmm? Oh damn, don't tell anyone I just said that, haha. That's not very befitting of a Police Chief, is it?"
"No, it isn't," I replied, letting a thread of humor seep into my tone. "I won't tell."
"Well, that's wonderfu—Kyouya!"
Bang!
What?
"Ah—aha…ahahahaha! AhahaHAHAHAHA!" I whipped around, almost giving myself whiplash as I stared wide-eyed at the boy leveling a gun at me. He continued laughing, guffawing maniacally even as tears streamed down his face. I could only stare at my father's body draped protectively over mine.
Kisuke, with a hole in his back. Kisuke, with blood that was his pouring out of him.
Kisuke, who still smiled at me even at my look of absolute horror. He whispered something to me that I didn't catch.
He was still smiling as the wistful light faded from his eyes.
My heart stopped.
No. Nononononononono.
"AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA—"
No.
"AHAHAHAHA—"
No.
AHAHAHA—guhk—"
The boy fell and clutched his crushed windpipe. I let my arm drop back to my side.
This couldn't be happening. Had he just—had he protected me?
He had a wife to go back to, damn it! Tsubame was still waiting for us—for him to get back to her side! Damn it, damn it, damn it! Fucking damn it, Kisuke!
("I won't ever let you get hurt.")
Why the fuck is your smile so damn happy?!
I screamed, and was still screaming as the police filed into the building hours later.
.
.
.
A/N: …Um. Hi.
PLEASEDON'TKILLMEOHMYGOSHWHATAREYOUDOINGWITHTHATKNIFE.
Don't give me that look! You guys kinda knew from my thinly-veiled foreshadowing that something would go wrong! Only, well, Kisuke didn't die during the raid. He died after it.
And yes, I did plan his death. From the very beginning. But I'm very heartbroken right now, because I just killed him, and damn it, I wasn't supposed to grow attached!
Aaaaaah. /bashes head into wall multiple times
Poor Kyouya. I can never seem to give him (fictional me, really) a break. This is weird, since I'm a sadist writing about causing pain to myself.
Ow, my head.
Leave me a PM or review to tell me what you think! A heads up—next chapter is going to be also a bit of a downer. Go read some fluff in the meantime!
QUESTION: Did any of you guys actually think that Kisuke would live? What are your thoughts on Tsubame?
