Soundtrack for this chapter: "Angel's Punishment" by Lacuna Coil (loop it)
Months went by and Izaya found his son growing restless. At night Tsuki would stay awake later than usual in his arms, and though he pretended to be asleep Izaya could sense his son wasn't really sleeping. In the morning his eyes would have dark smudges underneath them when Izaya left for testing, and no matter how many times he asked his son what was wrong he refused to admit that anything was amiss. He didn't smell Hakuro on him, or anything like that, and from what he could gather Tsuki was always in his room playing or sitting or whatever he did when Izaya was being injected and raped.
Kikuro eventually grew bored of destroying him, and Izaya never saw the blonde monster again. He was thankful he could have a break from sex, even if the time was now filled with more Hakuro than ever. Before Kikuro discarded him he injected him with something and then put his right leg in a metal cast that went up to his thigh, and with a single press of a button the cast crushed his leg as if it was a toothpick.
It hurt, hurt like white metal through his skull, but Izaya was used to pain and didn't make a sound. When the cast was peeled away it took with it skin and muscle, and what was left looked like a cattle's leg put through a grinder. Kikuro haphazardly wrapped the raw flesh and broken bone in gauze, and then disappeared from Izaya's life like a puff of smoke. Word was that Hakuro had forbidden that particular treatment on Izaya and for his disobedience Kikuro was put to death in a Brazen Bull.
When Izaya saw Hakuro the next day he smelled of burning flesh and something decidedly Kikuro, which confirmed the rumor. Kikuro was dead, but Izaya was not cheering. Hakuro said his leg would not heal even if given back his regeneration, and when he asked how that was possible Hakuro just smirked and said that 'if we explained everything to you I wouldn't get to hear your pretty little voice ask questions any more, now would I?' So Izaya got used to having a bum leg, got used to watching his torn flesh heal like a normal human would, and relished the itch of healing tissue.
He went through therapy to improve his movement, and heard from one of the scientists, when they didn't think he could hear them, that the mangling of the right leg was used on all reactants of S-0983 when they first arrived so they couldn't escape-but for some reason Hakuro didn't want it to be done to him. It made Izaya think of what Hakuro had told him in the eerie green-lit room where the man's 'superhuman army' floated in glass washing machines.
He says I am to lead an army, the question is where am I leading them, and for what purpose.
But perhaps I should be wondering, why me?
He received his answer the way he did all the rest, by not receiving one at all. More days passed and Izaya realized it was nearing the end of his first year at the hell hole whose name he still did not know. He was in Russia, in a facility own and run by Hakuro Chimamireina that was disguised as a pharmaceutical company, but he didn't know exactly where on a map he was, or how to possibly escape. The problem with escaping was always Tsuki, because if his son got injured or God forbid killed in his escape he could never forgive himself.
Tsuki...the boy grew stranger still as the date of his arrival passed, and still the boy refused to speak of it. His hair started to grow in grey strands amidst the dulling brown, and his eyes were starting to loose their shine. It broke his heart to watch his boy break without even knowing what was wrong. Tsuki finally said something one night when they were lying in their single bed, well late into the night when his son should have been asleep by then.
"Incineration."
It was a single word, said in a way and by the one person that it sent chills down Izaya's spine when he heard him say it. He looked down at his son, the room that always lit up in white whether day or night, and sleepless carmine eyes looked back up at him. "What was that Tsuki?" he asked, a heavy feeling forming in the pit of his gut. A child his age shouldn't even know that word, to know what it meant and the destruction it could cause.
"I think you guys who regenerate and can't die...could probably die if you were incinerated." He said it so blankly, so monotonously seriously, that it left the taste of bile in Izaya's throat. His son shouldn't known these things, shouldn't think about them or talk about them or known their existence. His son, the light of his life, the best thing that ever happened to him, had been an enigma to him from the very beginning. He always acted so cheerfully and with such life to him, despite where he was and what was going on. How bright he was, the words he knew despite not having any schooling, it made Izaya think he had some of S-0983 in him, despite being free of the smell. He had never asked, never wanted to ask, never wanted to think of his son as anything less than a miracle.
He simply let the tears fall quietly and buried his face in his son's dulling brown locks, the gray hairs standing out to him more than ever. "You don't need to worry about that Tsuki...Momma's not going to die...I'll get out of here with you, just you wait and see...I'll project you..." Tsukishima just wrapped his arms around Izaya tightly and buried his face in his mother's neck. His breath tickled Izaya's throat, a shiver going down his spine as he spoke in a muffled voice, "But who's going to protect you?"
Izaya woke to a cold bed and fear became thick in his throat. He scrambled out of bed with wild eyes and when he saw that the room was empty he let out a scream of outrage. The air stank of Hakuro and fear, though how much of it was Tsuki's and how much was his own he couldn't be sure. The opened and he was there to greet the person with a lunge full of teeth, and they met their mark.
He sunk his teeth into the orderlies' neck, and pulled away flesh like it was tissue paper. Arterial spray squirted out, the man trying vainly to cover his shredded neck, but Izaya was furious and sunk his teeth into the man again, this time into his forehead, his fangs instantly piercing bone and his jaws crunching a chunk of the man's skull, brains and blood squirting everywhere as the man shuddered and lay still.
Izaya peeled himself away from his kill to hear someone clapping slowly, the roar in his ears dulling to a throb in his temples. "Well done Roppi...now on to the main course." Hakuro said from besides Izaya, too close for comfort. The man pressed something on his collar, and before Izaya could even turn his head he was out like a light.
His vision slowly lightened and Izaya moaned as the world rushed into focus. He was in the huge white circle room, the room where he killed Madeline.
The room where his son now stood facing him in the same one-piece latex suit as she had.
The breath left him when he looked at his son's face, the soft young face of an innocent child gone forever, now bearing the look of someone who'd been tainted.
Someone who'd been raped.
He could see the outlines of bruises appearing on his pale wrists and and around his neck-rings of purple and black. He could smell it too, the scent of sex and fear and sweat and blood. The skin around his eyes was red from crying, the tears still pouring down his face that was badly swollen and bruised. His right eye was almost swollen shut from where he'd been apparently struck in the eye, blood dripping down the corner of it slowly.
"M-Mamma..." Tsuki was missing teeth, the gaps of black pouring blood that stained his tongue and his lips bright crimson. His carmine eyes, the one that was visible, was swirling with emotions that were too painful to look at, but Izaya took it all in. He took in the messy brown hair streaked with gray, the dry strands that looked unhealthily like straw. His lips were cracked and blood clotted around a split in the corner. His voice was weak and tremulous, his body lightly shaking and looking thinner than ever. His white clothes bore stains of red and of the unmentionable, some of which clung to his hair and skin like war paint.
His young son of nine.
Izaya chest heaved as he hyperventilated, body shaking and eyes wide in shock. He looked up shakily at the windowed panels towards the ceiling of the room, where the scientists and Hakuro were surely watching his reaction. He took a step forward, wanting to reach his son to comfort him, to do anything to make it all better, to make the monsters go away, but Hakuro's voice rang throughout the room on booming speakers.
"Kill your son, Roppi, or we we detonate your collar and end your life."
Izaya narrowed his eyes and looked up to the windows and let out a wolf's snarl, "I don't give a damn about my life!" The speakers let out static that sounded like a chuckle too close to the microphone, "But your son does." The sound system turned off and Izaya looked back at his son, who was limping towards him on shaking legs. Izaya rushed to met him, and when they collided Izaya held him tightly but as gently as he could. He buried his face in his son's dirty hair and let loose his tears, sobbing loudly as managed to choke out, "Oh God Tsuki forgive me.", " I should have stopped this." and "You're safe now, I won't let anything hurt you anymore."
Tsukishima pulled back from the hug, and Izaya looked at him in confusion. Was it all the blood and brains he was covered in from killing the orderly? More tears fell from his son's eyes as he wrapped his arms around Roppi's neck and he said with unwavering eyes and confidence in his voice, "I'm going to protect you Izaya."
Izaya heard a button beep on his collar as it was pressed and his world once again faded to black.
...
Why is it so dark?
...
Where are you?
...
Why am I crying?
...
What have I done?
...
What have I done?
...
Why are my hands so warm?
...
Light pushed towards him as his dark vision tunneled and the world was sudden crystal clear.
...
He was kneeling with his hands buried in a mound of intestines, blood all the way to his elbows as he slowly drew his arms from within the warm pink mess. Steam was still rising from them, the kill fresh, and he could see the faint white sliver of where the spine stuck out from the bisected torso at the abdomen. The white outfit was drenched in blood, and the victim's hands were at it's head- fists lightly clenched. His head was tilted back, hair splayed about, a thick road of blood making its way down its chin from its part mouth revealing blood stained teeth.
"T-Ts-su-suki?" Izaya whimpered lifting his hands fully out of his son's viscera. His son's chest wasn't lifting, and his eyes were covered by his hair. Izaya's own breath had left him, his head swimming and his fingers trembling-not all there, not all believing it was true. It couldn't be true, it couldn't be happening. His son couldn't be dead. He just couldn't be.
There was a wet gurgling sound and he watched as foaming red bubbles started to leak from the corner of Tsuki's lips, as he struggled to speak.
"I-It's oka-ay...M-Mamma's s-safe... no-ow." Tsuki said weakly, his upper body shivered and he suddenly went still, his head lolling to the side to reveal closed eyes and a faint smile.
Izaya screamed.
His only knew sorrow, only despair, as he raking his nails that had become claws up his thighs, marring his skin with red trenches. He didn't feel the pain of his skin tearing, only the pain of his heart shattering-the fragments that his son had managed to put together breaking once more so that his heart was dissolved once more. It hurt more than when Kikuro had broken it, more than the rape and torture and the vivisections. It hurt more than knowing that his love for Shizuo would never be returned.
It hurt more than Kanra's death.
He was still screaming when he found himself standing, now seeing clearly that he had really torn his son in half-his waist and legs behind him. Izaya was still screaming when he wrapped his fingers tightly around his collar. He could faintly hear the static of the intercom beyond the roar in his ears and the piercing tear of his screams that tore his throat bloody. He yanked hard, with all his might, and the metal warped beneath his hands and pulled away.
Nothing happened.
Izaya's screams cut off abruptly, and he stared in the eerie silence with wide eyes at the half moons of metal in his hands. His nerve endings weren't on fire, he wasn't rotting from the inside out, he wasn't turning to salt.
The collar was a fake.
Hakuro had played a trick on him.
And his son had paid the price.
His hands fell limply to his sides, and his tipped his head back to look at the single white light in the center of the tall ceiling. Izaya felt laughter bubble in the back of his throat and he was suddenly laughing hysterically, eyes wide and tears spilling down his face.
He had killed his child.
It was his fault.
Tsukishima was dead.
He had killed his son.
His son with Shizuo.
Tsukishima was dead.
He felt the Black Dog wake inside him, wake from whatever nap it had gone to after it had killed Tsukishima. No, it was his fault for allowing the beast to be let loose on his child. He laughed and laughed until his vocal cords were bloody and broken and his mind was foggy with despair.
But hadn't Tsuki pressed the button himself?
No.
His fault.
His fault.
His fault.
Izaya turned around to look at the windows where the fuckers sat and watched him, where Hakuro looked on with a smile. He wanted to get up there, to scale that two hundred foot wall and rip them apart. He didn't even realize he had been walking until he at the base of the wall, and he didn't even realize he had been climbing until he was there in front of the glass, hundreds of feet up and balancing on the rim. Apparently no one had expected him to get there, or maybe he had done it all too fast for them to react, for him to even notice he had been going fast at all. He stared at Hakuro shocked expression and sent back a hollow stare with glowing red eyes. Glass was all that separated him from destroying this man who destroyed his world.
Suddenly the glass wasn't there anymore, but shattered in a thousand pieces in the air like jagged clear knives. He saw only red, tasted only blood, heard only screams and the crunching sound of bone. He caught a glimpse of Hakuro's face, the left side shredded to the bone but the man was still alive. The scene shifted again and he was in a hallway, he heard gunshots and felt necks snap in his hands but all he saw was red, red, red.
The only thought he had was to destroy, to destroy everything that lived to equate the life his son had lost. No, nothing could replace his son's life, but their death screams soothed his despairing soul if only for a moment. He was laughing the whole time, he knew, and smiling like a mad man, but he couldn't care less. He found no humor in the situation, none at all, but he kept laughing and crying and smiling and killing and not really seeing anything.
This wasn't the Black Dog, this was him.
And it felt good to kill.
Then he was outside, because wind and cold suddenly tore at his face and his clothes and it wasn't his rage that blinded him but the snow he was now in up to his knees. He blinked against the harsh wind, suddenly feeling awake and aware and alive, and he was alone in the wilderness of Russia. All around his was torrents of snow and wind and ice, an endless dark plane of snow with no lights or warmth in sight. He was a long ways away from the facility, because he turned around and was able to see where he had come from, his long trail of blood as he trenched his way through the snow.
He turned back around to continue forward, numb inside and out, and found himself face to face with a woman dressed in black. He saw heterochromatic green and yellow eyes and suddenly he was in a cabin with a warm fire and a fur coat wrapped around his shoulders. The reality of his situation, of what he had done and what had happened, suddenly all came rushing to meet him, and Izaya collapsed to the floor as he fainted from its gravity.