With(out) You
"It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
Wild eyed, Tamaki spun to Arata. He desperately wished to run out of the room, but he couldn't believe what the man leading the group had just caused. A door slammed loudly from down the hallway. Arata looked pained at the sound and the muscles in his face flinched as he looked back to the destroyed painting. A cracked paintbrush stuck through the middle, a drop of red paint plopping to the floor from the brush, blood red, nearly all on the canvas and floor from how tightly Kyoya had squeezed in his assault.
Kind, worried, brown eyes searched Tamaki. "Go," Arata spoke. "Go after him."
Tamaki was out the door before the man finished speaking, sprinting down the hall. "Kyoya," he shouted frantically and skidded around the corner. "Kyoya!"
He burst outside, screaming, turning his head to and fro for Kyoya. A rage filled Kyoya could apparently move very quickly. Tamaki jerked his head to the left, the right, and left again. Then he tore off to the right, eyes going wide as he rounded the corner and spotted Kyoya nearing the end of that block.
"Kyoya!"
Nice dress shoes pinched at Tamaki's feet as he ran down the sidewalk. For blocks.
Gray eyes whipped about and seethed when Tamaki finally grabbed a hold of Kyoya. The young man looked ready to storm for weeks longer. Whether it be by feet, words, or violence. And by feet appeared the least likely with how Kyoya's chest heaved.
The agonized gut wrenching bellows roared through Tamaki's head. The sight of Kyoya hunched over that canvas lingered, his breath hitched painfully as a fist gushed in thick paint and the cracking noise right before he thundered out of the room.
His hand stayed on Kyoya's forearm. Tamaki could feel the paint that wound up on the sleeve staining his own hand red. The metal clinked from Kyoya's wrist.
"Let. Go." Kyoya snarled ferociously. The two words sounded as though the other young man had fought for them, seeming strange and foreign to hear any words. Beyond words. Kyoya was beyond words.
Tamaki swallowed, but stayed firm in his resolve. "No. No Kyoya, I won't."
Something faintly resembling a human voice screamed. Bitter eyes turned vicious and aimed at him. All breath left Tamaki.
A sure to be swear spat out of Kyoya's mouth in English. It surprised Tamaki. The realization of doing so seemed to snap the words right into Kyoya, his face twisting terribly. "I'm not explaining, you moronic prat! Enough with this helpful impulsive twit act! If you feel so focused to ignore your tramp mother dying, seeing her watching like angels fucking exist, and your father and grandmother not caring over a bastard, just like they did for the past twenty-five years, shoving you halfway around the world to that tramp—"
"Don't you insult my mother!"
Kyoya yanked his arm away, metal rattling at his wrist. His gray eyes narrowed, flickering full of venom. "I want to make my mother smile," he sneered. "She's dead, dead. There's nothing to protect, nothing to give, no love could save her and there's nothing left to love of her."
The shot hit home. Tamaki's eyes watered at the declaration, internally scrambling and screaming against it.
Kyoya grabbed Tamaki now, yanking him forward by the front of his collar. Metal clanked from the red hand. "I am not your mother. And you moronic prat, aren't even a nomination for even holding a single flower petal to all whom I've lost."
A stunning painting of a bouquet of tiger lilies tied with teal and golden ribbon flashed into Tamaki's head. It threw the focus off of the angry attacks that hit especially hard. Kyoya was being unpleasant for a reason. Tamaki just knew it. Then anguished cries pounded across his head. An abrupt violent motion that destroyed the canvas. A paintbrush cracking under the pressure and Kyoya's hand drenched in the red.
Kyoya's hand was shaking.
Tamaki stilled. And carefully reached to grasp it.
Kyoya whipped his hand away, gripping it hard with the other. Tamaki hovered, wanting. There was such agony in those slate gray eyes. It left even Tamaki with a harsh ache in his chest.
What happened?
A blink of eyes and the dark haired young man was gone. Tamaki stood there. The wind blew over him, but it felt like the rushes of water. He was out of his depth. It wasn't the fact someone died in Kyoya's life. It was as though Kyoya was the only one left dealing with it. Partly due to how the other young man snapped at anyone who tried to touch the subject. But…
Fuyumi and Isao. Family and friend. Neither kinds of people went to group to deal with this death. Whomever it was, it wasn't a secret person to them, and they obviously knew this person. But Tamaki was sure he'd never seen anyone else around Kyoya bring up the subject with the young man in the room. They certainly never pushed the subject, as if fearing something terrible may happen if they pushed. And it wasn't as if Arata pushed anyone to share either if they weren't ready or able to do so yet.
After months, it seemed as though the rest had given up hope in trying to change how Kyoya faced the death of this person. How Kyoya faced his life now. There seemed to be something much uglier rearing up its head underneath, a different sense of purpose brewing up and ready to blow up no matter what was done half a year later.
It scared Tamaki. It scared him to see those three circlets of metal chains looped together. Dark pink linked to teal and the teal linked beside gold with no clasp. Welded around each of Kyoya's wrists.
Like a manacle.
Kyoya did that to himself. Not just cut himself off, but actually shackled his wrists. And if Tamaki called it correctly, he was thinking he'd heard metal bouncing in time to feet pounding the ground.
No one blamed Kyoya, Tamaki thought slowly, but Kyoya sure as hell blamed himself and was damn sure keeping himself accountable for it.
With no one directly talking of it to Kyoya...
Tamaki's chest heaved. No one directly talked to Kyoya about the death of this person, afraid of pushing too hard. Even Kazue's painting of tiger lilies to her uncle were directed out as soon as it had been found in the young man's room. The flowers clearly meant something. Kyoya had painted the flowers today in group.
Kyoya staring at his finished painting with an indescribable look in his eyes.
The group had painted today, Tamaki was sure the blame was on him, he'd pestered Kyoya about that among other things before and after. It was Tamaki's fault that came to air. He'd annoyed Kyoya even. At the beginning, cheerfully saying how Kyoya couldn't possibly say no to this method. It was Tamaki's fault.
The blunt backend of a paintbrush piercing through canvas, paint splattering onto it, red paint oozing between long fingers of Kyoya's fist.
None of them talked to Kyoya about the death. They interrogated the presence of a new person in Kyoya's life, one part of a group Kyoya was supposed to talk about what they all avoided, a person determined to integrate into the young man's life and had a tendency for impulsive and reckless when his mind was made up on something.
Kyoya hunching with a bowed head, his grip tightening, and cracking the wooden paintbrush.
And Kyoya reacted to him.
The screams Kyoya released were difficult to forget and Tamaki doubted he'd ever forget the rawness of it. No one talked to Kyoya. The young man with bitter eyes and such hatred. The one determined to be cruel to everyone. Who had recently had metal chained shackles made with no release. There was a lot going on behind those slate gray eyes. More than anyone wanted to know by the bits that came out.
It wasn't that this person died, but...
Tamaki's heart pounded in his ears. He ran back to the street and building group was held in, feet starting to rub raw in these dress shoes. His driver, Akira, stood in wait. Arata was going back inside from where his driver waited. But Tamaki went straight to the worried in wait Fuyumi, who held her brother's briefcase and kept looking to the tattered remains of the painting with wide eyes. It wasn't as though Kyoya was there to get the items himself. When Fuyumi spotted him, her face cleared and she smiled warmly, then glanced in the distance behind him to try to catch sight of her brother.
Her face barely fell into worry again before Tamaki discovered his mouth moving without the say of his brain.
"You don't blame or hate him, but none of you talk to Kyoya about it!"
His hand flung upwards in the direction of the building, motioning to the group dealing with death. Arata stopped from heading back in.
"You're scared in how he punishes himself and...and...and..." Tamaki gulped. "None of you talk to Kyoya about it because you believe he had a hand in it! Whoever it was with those tiger lilies, I mean look at that! Whoever it was...they weren't no one...maybe it was Isao's sister from all those years ago...but everyone is so quick to say Kyoya just doesn't handle things well. But someone clearly died and no one talks to Kyoya about it! You're all scared of something from Kyoya. You believe he actually killed—"
Kyoya's briefcase and stabbed painting clattered to the sidewalk. Fuyumi stared open mouthed at him.
Tamaki was far more frightened of the fact he still wished to see a smile on Kyoya's face. He wanted to cry at the weight the other young man carried and take it for himself. To lighten up Kyoya's world just enough to possibly want to start living again rather than just being alive. Even if Kyoya had ended someone else's.
"No," his older sister breathed fearfully. "No, no, no."
She grasped weakly at his sleeve and pleaded softly.
"That's not why, you may not be wrong, but please no. That's not why Tamaki."
May not be wrong? Wrong about what? Her wide eyes watered. Tamaki gently covered her hand with his, trying to reassure her a little. Her voice cracked and he barely heard the admittance.
"I was there. Was there after the funeral. When my little brother tried to take his own life."
Tamaki faltered, stumbling into Fuyumi. The planet didn't stumble in spinning or into silence. It was wrong. An entire world just did. Mouth dry, his mouth hung open. There were no words.
"I...I can't talk to Kyoya about it, not when... I can't. He's just...stopped living. But as much as I feel it's an altered version of Kyoya being dead, I can't. I can't bring it up and chance losing the little I still have of my little brother. He cuts me, all of us out. But you... Tamaki, you somehow manage to crack out little slivers of living out of Kyoya. I've said before that I hope far too much on you, but I still do. And I know you don't want to talk behind his back, you're such a good friend, but I," Fuyumi stuttered. Her manicured hand flew to her mouth. Tears leaked down her cheeks and into her trembling hand. "I was so scared. That was such a, oh god. I shouldn't have told you that. I shouldn't have told you that about Kyoya. I shouldn't have—"
Wordlessly, Tamaki pulled her close and let her collapse into his embrace.
"It is not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late." ― Emil Cioran
