A/N: Cue the "I've obtained loss" quote.
BONUS: If you want to see character designs I did of Tome-san and Reigen's mom, they are on my tumblr ( thejapanesemapletree) under the 'fic: a risk of going through a doorway is that it may be locked shut behind you' tag!
.
She was gone. Just like she promised she would be.
Like the ghost at the funeral guided away by the wind, suddenly where there was Tome-san was entirely nothing. It seemed to Mob that as she fell through his body and disappeared she took parts of him with her, and he was left with a hollow misunderstanding of what had just happened. The black horror of reality was too much. His tiny heart would burst.
The spirit retracted his weapon, hissing swears at his mistake.
"It wasn't meant for you, Grandma."
Him.
He was the reason Tome-san was gone. If he hadn't come, if he hadn't threatened them, if he hadn't sliced her open, she would still be there, she wouldn't have been forced to pass on. It was all his fault.
And Mob felt the full force of the resulting emotion.
Rage.
Fire—everything was fire and wind. A ring stamped into the ground where Mob stood, his powers now onrushing like a tidal wave. Blades of disturbed grass and clods of dirt sprung through the energized air, and the spirit looked almost impressed.
"To think you were such a powerful ESPer!" he belittled nevertheless. "You must have been the one who released all that energy!"
Mob did not reply. Instead, he lifted his arm.
"Do you think this is fake?"
The spirit paused, then scoffed, "Don't get cocky. I can make you disappear just as easily."
The fence bent into a myriad of angles. Mob asked again:
"Do you think this is 'pretend'?"
"Enough with the chatter," the spirit lost his patience. "If you want me to come at you with all I've got, that's what I'll do!"
He threw his hulking form at Mob with speed not expected of his size; but, in the end, it didn't really matter. Mob launched him backwards with a beam of bright light.
"What you did to Tome-san wasn't 'pretend'."
The spirit pulled himself up from the ground. He stumbled with his balance, clutching the shoulder where his arm had been cleaved clean off.
"It wasn't 'fun."
Mob parted from the light-blindness. His hair shivered about him like a gorgon's snakes, his red copper eyes looking as if he could turn flesh to stone. He pointed his first two fingers at the spirit's forehead.
"I will never see Tome-san again, and it's your fault."
Mob realized then what he felt wasn't rage at all…
It was revenge.
Like touching a hot iron, Mob felt the pain too late to stop the blistering. The communication from his brain to his fingers did not occur, and the psychic energy released. The spirit had the briefest look of fright on his face before he was incinerated, the lock on the graveyard gate rattling and the road asphalt cracking as Mob send him to oblivion. He tried to retract his fingers and shut off his powers just as he did, but alas…
Scorched earth stretched all the way to the end of the street. In the most dreadful way, it reminded him of the trail of barren earth that led to his home and the missing tree. Mob shuddered away from the sight and tripped to the ground, disgust bloating his insides like parasites.
He actually struck out in meanness.
Rage and revenge were not the same. Rage was a quick, hysteric thing: a reaction to a momentary upset. Revenge, however… Revenge took planning: a wanted hostility that involved plucking out another's eye to replace the one lost. Too deliberate to be excusable.
Vanquishing the evil spirit wouldn't bring back Tome-san. He knew he hadn't used his powers in the noble way to protect the graveyard.
Mob curled in on himself, swallowed by the depth of his emotions.
Regret.
.
"If I were you, I would face the couch towards the window."
Reigen stuck out his fingers to picture it.
"That way, if anything exciting happened in the graveyard, I could see it!"
"That's the issue," Serizawa insisted meekly behind him. "I don't want to see if anything exciting happens."
"Serizawa-kun…" Reigen sighed, making loopy hand gestures. "This house is going to be yours someday, and you don't even want to make it your own!"
.
Reigen awoke when the window panes vibrated. He sat up in his futon frazzled, startled, and clutching his blanket. The vibration quelled, then started up again at a pace very similar to a heartbeat. He hesitantly released the blanket from his grasp and abandoned the safe warmth of his bed, creeping cautiously out of his room to see if Mob was okay.
Once, something similar had happened. During one of his first weeks with Reigen, Mob had a nightmare about not being able to save someone from being kidnapped, and the resulting fright caused his powers to act out and shake the house. Reigen, thinking it was an earthquake, had went to Mob immediately and found him curled up in a fearful little ball and shivering. He was not crying, which surprised Reigen with him being so young, but he comforted Mob nonetheless. He made Mob a cup of warmed milk and assured him the best he could that under his watch Mob would never have to experience the insecurity of himself or anyone he loved being taken ever again.
Maybe he could not guarantee that, but Mob was soothed.
"Mob?"
Reigen switched on the light to find the futon empty. A light draft blew from the open window, and flashes of strange colors played on the other side of the curtains. Reigen crossed the room to investigate the curious display, peeling back the curtains and peeking out.
What looked like green and blue snakes snapped up from the graveyard fence. The poles that were bent to angles and curls like how Mob bent spoons were stiffening up, the metal creaking as it shifted back into fierce points. Reigen almost recoiled from the bright and oddly organic display, but not before he saw Mob, balled up near the graveyard gate like something was harming him.
Worry overcast sense. Reigen thought to jump out the window, but reason found him at the last second, and he turned around and made his way via the front door. The cracked asphalt outside also had embellishments of ectoplasmic snakes that drew the pieces together like clothing seams being sewn shut. They took only the smallest of Reigen's attention. What mattered was Mob.
Reigen had never seen Mob cry. Never.
Even at his youngest, Mob had not once been moved enough to shed tears. No heartfelt movie, nor scraped knee, nor denial of ice cream was ever enough. It was like he was born desensitized to the negatively he felt in his own heart. Maybe what had to hurt had to practically kill him.
Mob cried now.
Wet, broken sobs poured from his mouth as everything fixed back into place around him. The limbs pulled up to his face did nothing to muffle the sound. Mob wept in raw, open sorrow, all alone on the damp grass. The streetlights began to flicker on again, almost to illuminate Mob in a spotlight of utter loneliness. Reigen felt cold and sick.
If he feared the slithering whips of power that worked around Mob, it wasn't important. They were creative, not destructive, in nature, and Reigen could walk through them with only the slightest sensation of stray electricity. He did not want to panic Mob, so he knelt by him gently, calling out in the sweetest voice he could.
"Hey, Mob… Mob…"
The boy unfurled his upper half. His face was flushed and stained, the tears running freely from his eyes. He hiccupped, and whined at himself, false starts at speaking bobbing in his sore throat. Some memory of his sadness returned at the difficulty, and he gave up all together, burrowing his face in his knees and continuing to weep.
Reigen offered a little sigh of sympathy. Like his mother had done when he fell down on the playground and began to cry, Reigen scooped Mob out of his lonely terror and held him close. Mob clasped his fists to Reigen's shirt and sobbed into it instead—snottily, but Reigen didn't care. He stroked Mob's trembling head and stood carefully, walking to the house and leaving the dark uncertainty and terrible happenings of the night behind.
.
Like how everything in the world eventually comes to an end, Mob stopped crying.
That left them with the silence. Mob sat wrapped up on the couch with a mug of warm milk and honey, Reigen forsaken to the other end where he watched Mob stare into the cup distantly. The hot ceramic had to be scalding his hands, but Mob showed no reaction of pain, his two hands stagnant around his drink. The subtle action of self-harm only increased Reigen's worry.
"Shishou."
A breakthrough! Reigen wanted to shout with relief. Instead, he stopped picking at the snagged threads on the couch pillow, puffing up and preparing to give the best support and wisdom Mob could ask for.
"Yes, Mob?"
He did not look up from his reflection in the milk. He would continue when he wanted to, and Reigen did not pressure him.
"I… I did something really bad."
His fingers squeezed tighter around his cup. Reigen watched the aftermath of the admittance in patient confusion, not knowing the story or context at all.
"What did you do that was bad?"
The retelling was going to hurt—Reigen could see that. Mob swallowed the hardness in his throat. He organized his thoughts as he spoke.
"There was a spirit," Mob began. "A mean one—he wanted to harm Tome-san. He was toying with her, and it made me really angry, and— "
If Mob were any stronger, the mug may have cracked.
"—Shishou, I used my powers for the wrong reason."
Mob waited for any angry backlash from his mentor. Reigen was not a cruel man, nor impulsive when it came to Mob's wellbeing, so nothing harsh came from him. He just offered a quiet question.
"How did you use them for the wrong reason?"
Reigen's kindness did not assure Mob; what he did he saw as utterly terrible, perhaps even unforgiveable, and he could not fathom deserving care and understanding. He saw it all as a child would: there wasn't grey; only black and white.
Mob shook his head woefully. "I didn't use my powers to protect the graveyard from the spirit… I used them to get revenge. It was just like the time with the high schoolers, where everything just lashed out. I wanted to change from using my powers like that, but I couldn't."
His downcast eyes quivered like he wanted to cry again. "It doesn't matter that he made Tome-san disappear."
Reigen felt no… mourning, so to speak. He had lost his grandmother long ago, so no new feelings of loss surfaced. Rather, empathy to Mob's predicament came, and Reigen wished desperately to extend that. Misery loves company, as they say, and Reigen would do everything for Mob not to feel abandoned in his grief.
"Ah, I understand." Reigen motioned towards Mob. "When you stick a knife inside someone, it's not like you can pull it out and there not be a wound."
Mob looked up from his milk for the first time. Puzzlement overshadowed his red-from-crying eyes, and Reigen moved quickly to explain himself, over-exaggerating the crossing of his legs and arms.
"Regret is like that," he expounded. "The consequences of what you do is all you think about. I can be hard to move past that, because more often than not you see yourself in a different way. We can be trapped in the perceptions of what we did."
He relaxed a little as he mellowed his momentum.
"It's like walking through a doorway… A risk of going through a doorway is that it may be locked shut behind you. You mustn't allow yourself to be trapped by your inability to forgive yourself for using your powers out of malice."
He held up one finger and smile at Mob encouragingly.
"That is the first step to changing. If you want to move on, you will."
A little of the lost life returned to Mob's eyes. He nodded feverishly, believing at once everything Reigen said and how there was a way for him to create a better person.
"Yes, of course, Shishou!"
Something he said got through to him. Reigen wanted to melt from joy, but held strong, a thumbs up his final resolve.
"And in the end, you still protected the graveyard. You and Grandmother still kept the other residence of the graveyard from harm."
Mob tilted his head, musing the thought of an adverse positive action.
"I suppose we did."
.
A/N: TFW the title is incorporated.
ALSO, if anyone has suggestions as to how the Scar Arc is to go in this story, I am open to suggestions! It is hard for me to write so many characters at once, so any ideas are appreciated! You can either comment your ideas here or contact me on my tumblr! Thanks!