Chapter 52: From the Inside
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With the silence of the night now shattered by a ringtone and a pitiful whimper―a vestige of yet another nightmare, one with broken bones, agonizing thrusts and bleeding orifices―a quivering hand reached for the phone on the nightstand, but the device ended up slipping through clammy fingers a couple of times before Izaya finally managed to pick it up. Just a nightmare, he kept telling himself as he fought to calm down enough to be able to read the message, but the task was proving to be difficult when his sight was blurred by tears and his eyes burned more than they had before he'd fallen asleep; not to mention that the screen was too bright to look at within the smothering darkness of the bedroom. The whole thing was making his already terrible headache worse, but at least he was no longer dreaming of a cruel beast with yellow eyes and inhuman strength.
The problem now was that he had a bad feeling because the few people who had this number didn't usually call in the middle of the night unless it was an emergency. Letting out a sound of irritation, he cracked one eye open and attempted to read it again, but when that didn't seem to work either, he placed the phone on the bed and proceeded to rub his eyes, at the same time wiping away those pesky tears he refused to acknowledge ever having been shed. The phone's screen still seemed too bright once he picked it up again, but at least this time it looked like he could read the text. The message was from Celty, and since she'd never bothered him before at such odd hours, it could only mean that something was wrong. As it turns out, he'd been right.
[Shinra is in the hospital. Someone broke into our apartment and nearly beat him to death. I thought you might want to know.]
"Someone nearly... beat him to death," Izaya uttered, the shock of the news hitting him so hard that he lost the grip on the phone and the device slipped between bony fingers and fell on the bed. He almost felt dizzy as the information sunk into his brain, and he couldn't understand for the life of him why anyone would ever want to hurt that big idiot, especially when Shinra's ever cheerful mood and bubbling personality made him a likable character, even though he could be quite annoying at times because of his silly antics.
The right hand, the one which had previous been holding the phone, briefly hovered above his heart before fingers buried into his chest, digging deeper into the skin as the pain intensified. The petty, wouldn't-ever-let-it-go part of Orihara Izaya tried to remind him that he shouldn't care about what happened to the doctor, but every fiber of his being felt sick knowing that his friend―yes, his only friend―had nearly been beaten to death.
After having been viciously assaulted himself, he knew all too well what it meant to be a victim, especially the pain that came with it as well as the terror of being unable to defend himself. Months had passed since his attack, and yet he could still remember that utter coldness he felt when realization dawned upon him and he understood the implications of what Shizuo was planning to do, as well as the feeling of ice sloshing through his veins and the terror of the unavoidable before finally being thrown into a world of torment and despair. No matter how evil he might've acted on some occasions, there was no part of him that wanted the doctor to get hurt in any way, regardless of what had occurred between them. The fingers on his chest kept on pressing, until he finally felt an intense pain on top of the one throbbing deep within and he looked at his hand in surprise for a few moments before finally pulling it away.
I have to see him, he decided, and it was the only thought occupying his mind as he got up on wobbly legs and went to change. The light nearly blinded him when he turned it on, and he was still feeling slightly dizzy after going so many days without food and sleep, but the need to see Shinra pushed him forward with all its might because the two of them shared a strong bond, born out of the kindness Shinra showed him when everyone else had pushed him away. Shinra had been there for him when the Informant no one cared about was bleeding to death―well, there was Kasuka too, but Izaya didn't really want to think about the freak right at that moment―but unlike everyone else, Shinra had chosen him over Shizuo.
He was in such a hurry to go see the foolish doctor that he nearly stumbled and fell down the stairs, but his parkour skills and the many years of practice he had at avoiding flying objects thrown by a certain beast with inhuman strength helped him recover his balance and avoid getting his neck broken. It wouldn't have been a pretty sight, but he had a feeling that Namie would've enjoy it nonetheless. The ornery woman still came to work―except for those times when he'd left her a message telling her not to show up at the office―but she was ignoring him ever since the 'incident' involving a kiss. That however was an issue for another time. Izaya had more important things to worry about than to waste his time thinking about a certain secretary with a brother complex who couldn't take a joke.
It was during times such as these when he regretted having moved to Shinjuku, especially since it was always hard to find a train or a subway to take him to Ikebukuro at such odd hours, but at least he always had the option of calling a cab, which was what he did before he even stepped out of his apartment. Luckily, he didn't have to wait long for one to arrive, but it still felt like an eternity had passed before the car finally stopped in front of his apartment building and he hopped in it. He made sure to pay the man a little extra so that he would drive faster, but the journey still seemed too long and Izaya's heart didn't stop ratcheting inside his chest no matter how hard he tried to calm down.
He was terrified of what he'd find when he got there, because if Shinra had been nearly beaten to death, then that frail-looking body had to have received considerable damage. As the bubbling idiot had once jokingly told him, he was a lover, not a fighter, so Izaya doubted that the doctor even stood a chance against his attacker―or attackers, in case there had been more than one. The way he saw it, Shinra had been either beaten for information or for the sheer pleasure of inflicting damage, which in both cases most likely meant torture. At that point, Izaya could only hope that Shinra got away with only a few broken bones.
By the time the car stopped in front of the hospital, Izaya was feeling faint after having imagined the too many ways in which Shinra could've been tortured, and he absentmindedly handed the driver a few more bills before he stepped out of the cab and headed towards the entrance. He stopped by the reception to get information on where he could find Shinra, after which he headed straight for the elevator. He found Celty waiting outside the operating room, trenching the hallway and looking like she was about to either murder someone or crumple to the floor and burst into tears even though she didn't even have a head.
"Hey, Celty," he greeted her when it didn't look like she had noticed him even though he was standing right beside her. She jerked in surprised when she heard his voice, and she immediately pulled out her PDA and started typing.
[You came.]
"Mhm. How is he?"
[I don't know. They haven't told me anything yet.]
Izaya's eyes drifted over to the door and he stared at it for a few moments before his attention went back to Celty who looked more miserable than he had ever seen her before. It was almost hard to believe that this creature was a Dullahan, but Izaya knew the world to be a strange place, so a headless rider worrying over a human suddenly didn't seem as surprising anymore. "Is it bad?" he dared to ask even though he dreaded the answer.
Upon hearing the question, Celty's shoulders drooped further, and it took everything in her power for her to not break down into sobbing. She suddenly felt more drained than she'd felt ever since she woke up without a head and hardly any memories of her past, but she couldn't afford to be weak when she had to stay strong for Shinra's sake. The idea of putting those horrible injuries into written words hurt more than she had ever imagined, but Izaya was there, worrying about Shinra, and she had to tell the man what he wanted to know. Her fingers hovered above the keyboard for a long time before she finally started pressing the keys, but each character felt like a knife to the heart and it took her a while to even get as much down.
[The paramedics were saying that a couple of his ribs and both his legs have been broken. And also...]
Izaya held his breathe as he waited for her to continue, and he found himself placing a comforting hand on her shoulder when he noticed that she was trembling so badly that she couldn't even finish what she was trying to write.
[His forearm...] she typed and showed the PDA to Izaya before pulling back her hand and continuing. Her fingers were badly quivering and she could hardly press the keys, but she kept on trying until the horror of what had been done to Shinra appeared on the screen in the form of a few words.
[The broken bones pierced the skin.]
The words tore through Izaya's heart similarly to how the sharp bones had sliced through the muscles and the skin of Shinra's arm, and no matter how hard he tried to take his eyes off that screen, he was transfixed by the seemingly innocent looking characters combined in such a way that made them convey a most painful message. He could hardly breathe with how much it hurt, so he was thankful to Celty when she pulled back the PDA and those accursed words were out of his face even if they could never leave his mind.
Finally, he pulled back his hand and shoved it into the pocket of his jacket where he wrapped thin fingers around the switchblade and then tightened his hold, knuckles turning white with how hard he was squeezing it. With a compound fracture, Shinra must've screamed a lot, and Izaya had to fight the impulse to cover his ears at the mere thought of it. "Was he conscious when you found him?" he asked, and then continued when Celty nodded. "Did he tell you who did it?"
[Right before he passed out he told me that it was someone looking for Ruri Hijiribe.]
Izaya'd been worried that the attack might've had something to do with him ever since he read the message back at the apartment, so he couldn't have been more grateful to Celty for lifting that heavy weight off his shoulders. He saw her recline against the wall then, helmet tipped downwards as she slowly typed a new message.
[It's all my fault. I should've been there for him.]
"It's not your fault," Izaya tried, but her shoulders began to shake as though she was crying and he was at a loss about what to do.
[If only I had escaped the police sooner...]
The message hit him with the strength of a vending machine sending him flying through the air and then crushing him under its weight. It wasn't Celty's fault that she hadn't been home, but his, and as the guilt flooded every cell in his body, he turned around on shaky legs and rushed to the bathroom. A feeling of self-loathing like he hadn't felt in a long time overcame his sense, and he gripped the sink tighter while he fought the nausea threatening to make him lose the little amount of food he had eaten at the restaurant while 'dining' with Shizuo.
Celty hadn't been home to protect Shinra because she was being chased by Kinnosuke Kuzuhara and his men across town, so Shinra lying in a hospital bed was partly Izaya's fault because of his stupid game of revenge against Celty. His eyes caught sight of his reflection in the mirror, and the disgust he felt for the person looking back at him made him raise his fist and crash it into it with all of his strength. The pain flared from his fist like wildfire, but he welcomed it because he truly believed that he deserved it. As expected, the mirror cracked upon impact, and a few droplets of blood spattered on its surface from the split and sliced skin of his knuckles. "I screwed up," he repeatedly murmured while grinding his teeth so hard that his jaw ached, until his strength finally left him and he found himself gripping the edge of the sink.
His previously unfocused eyes settled on the image in front of him again, and that's when he finally saw it in all its shameful glory, the broken thingstaring back at him from the bloody surface of the cracked mirror. His red-rimmed, bloodshot eyes widened further, but it felt as though they'd been closed this whole time and that only now he was once again seeing the world around him. Past the unshed tears―which caused it to appear slightly blurred―lay the image reflected outside the cracks, shattered into as many pieces as his once God-like mind. He realized then, as he stared at the image, that what the beast had truly broken that night were the walls keeping his emotions under near-perfect control.
Over the years, people have often accused him of being a psychopath or a sociopath―he himself had strengthened those beliefs on several occasions when it suited him―but the truth was that he wasn't either of those. Underneath the god was a painfully human Orihara Izaya who Heiwajima Shizuo had succeeded in dragging to the surface. The monster had hauled that part of him from deep within where Izaya had locked it and it was that Izaya who was going after Shizuo like a bloodthirsty animal instead of putting himself back together and using his head instead of being driven by the pain and hatred he constantly drowned into. He had not only lost his place as the chess master, but he was acting like one of those foolish pieces he'd so often looked down upon from his high place amongst gods.
And he felt shame. Not shame born out of what had been done to him, but shame at having allowed himself to crash so violently. With the fall came not only broken bones, torn muscles and bleeding wounds, but also a shattered to pieces mind that could not cope with the events of that fateful night. The shock had been so fierce that even though he was finally seeing things with crystal clarity, those human emotions that Shizuo had unleashed were still rampaging his mind. They were like tornadoes tearing apart everything in their path and leaving things in shambles, and for someone like him―a genius―a ruined mind was the worst thing that could've ever happened.
So it made sense that if the shattered him was the reflection in the mirror, then the God him was the unbroken mirror. By picking up the pieces and putting them back together he could never restore it to its previous state. The only way to achieve a similar result would be to completely destroy the thing and then replace it with a new one. The painful truth was that the old Orihara Izaya could no longer be put together, not after what he'd suffered at the beast's hands, but perhaps he could built himself into something if not better, then at least closer to the original Izaya than this pathetic thing looking back at him with those too human eyes.
"You're done," he told his reflection before he tore his eyes away from it and washed the blood off his hands. He then walked out of the bathroom and hurried back to Celty, but she was no longer there and it looked like the doctors working on Shinra were done because they were leaving the room outside which Celty had been previously waiting.
"Excuse me, but do you happen to know where the patient you were operating on earlier has been moved?" he asked one of the two doctors passing him by.
"Room 303," the man said and then went on his way after Izaya thanked him.
Instead of taking the elevator, he rushed to the stairs and went up two floors, easily finding the room and bursting inside before the thought of knocking even passed through his mind. Celty turned to him, looking startled, but she seemed to calm down a bit when she saw who it was. Izaya's eyes then reluctantly traveled over to Shinra's form, and he nearly felt sick all over again when he saw how badly he looked. One eye was swollen and closed shut while the rest of Shinra's face was covered in bruises. All of the doctor's limbs were in casts and there were also bandages around his head. If anything, it looked like Shinra'd been hit by a truck.
[I'm sorry for disappearing like that,] she typed and raised the device in front of Izaya's face, at the same time blocking his view of Shinra. The man looked pale and like he was about to either pass out or throw up, and Celty was starting to seriously worry about him. He looked much worse than the last time she'd seen him back at the police station, and it was obvious that being away from Shinra, the only person who seemed somewhat care about him, was not doing him any good. When it still didn't look like she was getting his attention, she placed a hand on his shoulder and squeezed until startled red eyes turned her way and he blinked a few times before finally settling on her, but it was only after she moved the PDA in his line of view that he seemed to have come back from wherever his mind had been wandering.
"It's okay," he told her in a low voice before he turned his attention back to Shinra and he made his way towards the hospital bed. Now that he was closer he could better see the damage done to the doctor, and the ache in his chest flared up as his eyes reluctantly roamed over the unconscious form. "What did the doctor say?" he asked without even turning to Celty.
Izaya seemed transfixed by Shinra's injuries, so she used the automatic voice function to answer his question.
["Spiral femur fracture on both his legs, compound fracture of the radius and ulna of his right arm, two broken ribs and one fractured, as well as a linear skull fracture."]
Red eyes shifted over to Shinra's left arm and stayed there. It was the arm Shizuo had broken, and even though Izaya didn't know the exact details, he was almost glad that it happened because it would've been much worse if the guy who attacked Shinra would've decided to break that one as well. Perhaps that sicko was someone who didn't like to play with something that was already damaged. Rage and disgust at his own train of thought nearly blinded him, and he vowed right then to find the man who had dare touch Shinra and make him pay.
["You look like you could use a cup of coffee,"] he heard the automatic voice say before the door opened and then closed behind Celty.
He nearly collapsed in the chair next to the bed the second she was gone, and he sat like that for a few moments before he carefully took Shinra's left hand into his and gently squeezed it. It was cold and pale, just like the rest of the battered body wherever the skin was not covered in bruises, bandages or the casts. The man could've died just like that, and Izaya realized that he'd never before seen Shinra look so mortal. It was an unnerving thought which he tried to push to the back of his mind, but the ephemeral nature of the human existence refused to give him peace and he ended up shuddering despite himself.
Ironically enough, that same grim thought helped Izaya understand why Shinra had changed so much after that accursed day. They didn't like to call each other friends, not out loud anyway, but they both knew they cared about each other in some way. Izaya had always found the doctor to be quite fascinating―so much that he didn't even see him as one of his humans―while Shinra, even though he was an idiot who had only taken a knife for him in order to impress Celty, ended up making his first real connection with another human being through that. Their 'friendship' was born out of selfishness or curiosity more than anything else, but the fact still remained that the two of them were accustomed to each other's company and the thought of one of them dying was not something he even wished to entertain.
Some of the hatred Shinra felt towards Shizuo was not because of what the monster had done to Izaya, but because through his actions, the beast had destroyed his somewhat peaceful life. Anyone else would've been hurt by such a realization, but Izaya smiled and squeezed the limp hand tighter. The two of them had the most messed up friendship in the world, and Izaya couldn't help but let out a laugh as he got up and leaned over the sleeping form. "I'll make sure he pays for hurting my doctor," he whispered into Shinra's ear before he straightened his back and turned on his heels, only now noticing that Celty was watching him from the entrance. A malicious smirk spread across his face, and he walked over to the frozen Dullahan who was just standing there looking confused. "I have to go, but I'll take the cup if you don't mind."
Celty handed it to him and Izaya thanked her before he went on his way. She watched him as he disappeared down the hallway, a sort of uneasiness settling in her stomach and refusing to leave after seeing the earlier scene and the disturbing smirk on the Informant's face. Whether he appeared to be calm, angry or cheerful, Orihara Izaya was a dangerous man, but the way he looked earlier reminded her more of the old Izaya who was less angry and more calculated. After closing the door behind her and sitting down on the chair next to the bed, he pulled out the PDA to send a message.
Outside the hospital, Izaya heard his phone go off. He fished it from inside the pocket of his jacket and read the message.
[Let me know when you find him.]
A dark chuckle slipped past his lips and he shoved the device back into his pocket, but he heard someone call his name before he could cross the street and he turned around, cursing under his breathe before he put on the same smile he used whenever he had to deal with clients or business partners. "Shiki-san, it's been a while."
"Indeed, it has," the man said before he took a drag from the cigarette, "and it just so happens that I need your services again."
Izaya's eyes briefly wandered to the cigarette and he was glad that his little sessions seemed to be paying off because he no longer felt the urge to throw up whenever someone smoked in his presence, although he was still feeling slightly dizzy. "Ah, I'm sorry, but I'm a bit busy at the moment and―"
"Yamashita Rikuto, twenty-seven years old, now a former member of the Awakusu-kai. Call me when you find him."
Shiki was obviously in a bad mood, and now that Izaya was seeing things more clearly, he understood that crossing the man was not a good idea, especially when it looked like the Awakusu-kai Executive was one step away from murdering someone. That alone seemed interesting enough, and Izaya decided to look into it if only out of curiosity. Still, he had more important things to do right at that moment, so he filed the name he'd been given under -New Cases- before he took a right turn and headed towards a specific destination, sipping on his coffee from time to time and hoping that he could handle what he was about to do.
He ended up stopping a few times on his way there and even changed the direction once and headed towards the train station, but he changed his mind and continued on his previous path because he knew that he had to go there and face his demons. He now understood that he couldn't move forward as long as he didn't come to terms with what happened back then, and that was the reason why he was back to the place where the god had been beaten by a monster and nearly killed in the process.
The closed-off alley was just as dark as he remembered. He tried to go inside, but he didn't even manage to take one step before a wave of nausea hit him and he could've sworn he felt the ground shift beneath his feet. He leaned against the building's wall, holding a hand to his mouth while he trembled like a miserable puppy forgotten outside in the rain on a cold autumn night. Very bad idea, he thought as he fought to swallow the bile threatening to climb up his throat. He stayed like that for a few minutes, fighting the impulse to wretch until he finally felt well enough to move away from the wall. He let out a broken laugh and gave the alley a haunted look before he turned around and walked away. Perhaps he was not yet ready after all.
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A/N: Now that the second season of the anime is out, I'd like to say a few things about Blind Fury. I started writing this a little over two years ago, back when a new season was nothing more than a dream and many of the novels weren't translated. I wrote the first six chapters and then closed the document and didn't open it again until a year later when I decided to post the fic. I still haven't read the novels yet, but over time I read some things on the drrr wiki and that's why you may find some events or characters from the light novels into this fic. Obviously the timeline may be screwed up at times, but I wouldn't have followed every canon event anyway because no one wants to read a replica of the original story. I've made up my mind about how this story will progress and eventually end, so I'm not going to start changing things now just because a second season is out. That being said, forgive me for any inconsistencies you may encounter. ^^'
