Collaboration with Glorifiedscapegoat.

Lab Coat didn't stick around for the actual transport from solitary to Section M; he did a quick check-up on Nezumi and issued a clean bill of health, then flashed a smile and went off to harass someone else.

The officers frogmarched Nezumi through the corridors, his arms pinioned behind his back, the light-smothering sack over his head. The officer to his right—Tsuyu? He couldn't remember which officer was where—kept checking him in the side with his elbow, a silent reminder not to try any "funny business."

It was ironic how wary and antagonistic the officers were toward Nezumi now, when Nezumi was feeling the least lethal he'd ever been. If they had been as attentive and a little less arrogant before, he might never have had the chance to make his short escape. If Nezumi ever wanted to escape now, it'd be a shitload harder. Not just days of planning, but months. Months of good behavior, pretending to be beaten, gaining the Lab's trust and building their conceitedness back to a point where he could shove it back into their faces as he made his grand escape.

But Nezumi didn't feel like plotting right now. He had the energy to walk on autopilot down this corridor, up that one, catch himself when the officers shouldered him off balance, and that was it. And even for this he was losing motivation. If they didn't reach his cell soon, he might just decide to keel over and have them drag him the rest of the way. At least then Nezumi would have the satisfaction of inconveniencing the Lab and, if only for a short stretch, make everyone else as frustrated and miserable as he felt.

The officers beside him stopped abruptly, each taking hold of one of his arms to ensure Nezumi stopped in line with them. Bright light burned Nezumi's eyes as the sack was ripped off his head, and he had to squint and drop his gaze to the ground. His sight had grown used to the dimness of solitary, and it seemed like he was going to have to suffer the eye-watering humiliation of getting used to brighter lights again.

"Fucking pathetic," he heard Rashi mutter, and Nezumi stumbled forward as the man shoved him through the open door of his cage.

The door thunked and whirred as it locked. Hatred bubbled up in Nezumi's chest, sticking tight to his sternum.

"You're dismissed," Rashi said, voice clipped. "I want a moment with VC-221."

Nezumi listened to the sound of boots disappearing down the corridor, and only when they faded from earshot did he attempt to raise his eyes a little. The light still stung, but it was getting better. He blinked a few times and raised his sight a little higher.

The view wasn't too pretty.

The look on Rashi's face was cold hellfire. His right arm was crooked and his bandaged hand lay across his stomach in a way that told Nezumi the man wanted him to look at it and know that this conversation was about vengeance.

Nezumi stared at the empty space where Rashi's ring and pinky fingers had been before his father bit them off.

"You should have killed me," Rashi said. For all the rage in his face, his voice was level, almost unconcerned."If you were smart, you would have. But I guess you were too busy thinking with your dick to do the smart thing."

Nezumi's gaze snapped up. "You fucking—!"

The words burst out of him with such suffocated rage that Nezumi couldn't get the rest of the emotion out before the anger choked his throat shut.

Rashi's mouth pulled into a mirthless smile. "You just had to go see for yourself whether your boyfriend was dead," he said, hunching forward a little, "instead of taking that opportunity to escape like a rational creature. You might have actually slipped out of our grasp, if it weren't for your pathetic attachment.

"You things are like wild animals; you break out of your cage, and it's like you've got blinders on. You can't see anything but that one goal you're racing towards, and when you don't get it… Well, look at you." The officer wrinkled his nose. His glasses shifted, the bright lights flashing across the lenses. "It's disgusting."

"You're right," Nezumi said.

Rashi's eyebrows lifted, that small, smarmy smile still perched like poison on his lips.

"I should have killed you," Nezumi clarified. "But Mirai pissed me off first, so she took precedent. Next time, though, I'll be sure to break more than your fingers."

They held each other's gaze, expressions so cold, they burned with everything unsaid between them.

Nezumi had thought he didn't have fight in him anymore, but he realized he still harbored plenty of hate. Maybe he had nothing left to live for, maybe he couldn't escape and he would be poked and prodded by Lab Coat until he died, but Nezumi would make sure that Rashi suffered in equal measure. If the man hated his existence that much, Nezumi would live just to spite him.

"Not if I break you first," Rashi said. The statement was not a promise, but a purpose, forged in fire.

Rashi's dark eyes held him for a long moment, and it seemed they grew darker with every breath. He leaned back from the cell and folded his arms, the mutilated hand tucked in the crook of the opposite elbow. "Glad to have you back, Nezumi," he said, softly.

The officer pivoted on his heel and stalked down the hallway. Nezumi didn't hear the door close, but after a minute of standing still and listening to the sound of nothing but his own breathing, he determined that Rashi was truly gone.

Nezumi's burning blood cooled to a crawl in his veins. He moved to the cot at the back of the cell and dropped onto it. The mattress was so thin and the metal beneath so hard that the jolt of the impact rattled his bones.

Talking to Rashi had left a bitter, bloody taste in his mouth. The head officer was definitely cracked before he met Nezumi, but his aura was worse now. It seemed the last bit of whatever twisted humanity Rashi still harbored inside him had broken with the rest of his right hand's fingers.

Something had been different about this encounter, but what? The question burrowed through Nezumi's mind like a weevil.

He was half asleep when the answer came to him at last: Rashi had called him "Nezumi." He had never called him by his name before.

It sounded like a farewell on his lips.

When Nezumi woke up the next morning, he had a feeling it was noon already. It was difficult to say from where the impression came—since there was no way to tell time in the cell, and his internal clock was probably screwed from days without sunlight or schedule—but he had the distinct feeling he had slept long past what was normally permissible. He was surprised Rashi hadn't come in to beat or berate him awake. The man had seemed so ready to commit violence yesterday, Nezumi expected to start every day with a fresh brand of hell.

But Section M was quiet, as it had always been.

Nezumi wondered if the other prisoners had been moved out of his Reach. The Lab never got a confirmation from him that he was responsible for the riots, but they didn't need it to know he had some part in it.

Nezumi laid face up on his cot and Reached around him, searching for a sapient thrum of energy. He found none closeby, not even Inukashi's. If he stretched his mind, he could skim the edge of a few signatures, but his brain and body were too drained to bother holding the strain, let alone attempting to make use of it. Nezumi stopped Reaching and the tendrils of his awareness curled back into him and disintegrated like dandelion fluff in the wind.

The silence and hopelessness built around him like chains, weighing Nezumi down to the bed. He recognized that he was acting pathetic. He had a life before Shion, and remembered those days well: lonely but bearable, fueled by nothing but the drive to survive. Life went on after death, and Nezumi should pick up the pieces like he did after his family was annihilated.

But what was the point?

Before, he calculated to escape Horizon Labs. Then Shion came into the picture, and Nezumi no longer had to worry only about himself. Then that burden turned to love, and protecting Shion and himself from the Lab's grasp became that much more necessary.

Now, he was captured by the Lab. Now, Shion was dead. Now, he had failed in one attempt to escape, garnered special monitoring, and the resources he had within his power's reach had been removed. What was there to live for—to survive for—anymore? Staying alive meant furthering Horizon Labs' research and prolonging his misery.

But it's not like Nezumi wanted to die either. It would be easier if he could give up completely; then nothing would matter, and he might finally be free, one way or another. But despite the heaviness in his heart and the fog in his mind, Nezumi's body wanted to live.

For the first time in a long time, Nezumi allowed himself to sigh. It was a long, fraught sound that came from the very depths of him, built of years of holding back and shoving his sadness and frustration down.

If he was going to live, he should probably eat. He had been too consumed by grief to eat properly in solitary. Nezumi half turned his head to peer at the food slot, but the compartment was empty. Either he was wrong about the time, or no one had brought him food yet.

No matter. He didn't have an appetite anyway.

Nezumi pulled the thin blanket up, closed his eyes, and tried to sleep again. He had gotten very good at napping while in solitary, and it seemed like his regular cell life wasn't going to look much different.

The door down the corridor clicked.

Nezumi slowly opened his eyes and turned his head fully to watch out the glass partition. Rashi and Tsuyu appeared, their buzz batons already out and faces grim. Nezumi's gaze shifted between them, wondering if a beating was going to be the torture of the day.

"Get up," Rashi barked. "It's exercise time with the mutt."

Nezumi's brow furrowed. He hadn't expected to get one-on-one privileges back after the events of the riot, and especially not with Inukashi. Did that mean the officers hadn't realized that Inukashi had helped him incite the riot? Perhaps with Benkei and Mirai being compromised, the Lab had also assumed Inukashi had been manipulated into acting as they did. Or maybe they had decided that Nezumi and Inukashi simply hated each other and their fight had nothing to do with the events that followed.

Interesting.

Nezumi pushed himself up to a sitting position and waited for the officers to unlock the door, which Tsuyu did after a nod from his superior. Nezumi rose from the bed and walked out without having to be told. He didn't react to Rashi's death glare, or Tsuyu's offended grimace, and even submitted to the head-bagging without complaint, but he got jabbed in the back with the blunt end of the buzz baton anyway.

True bullies didn't stop being cruel just because you learned to ignore them.

Inukashi didn't look too jazzed to see him when the burlap sack was ripped from Nezumi's head. A quick once over of their person, though, told Nezumi that the youth hadn't suffered any fallout from the riot. That was good; he didn't want to bear the burden of more than his own pain.

A few sparks from Rashi's baton caught Nezumi on the elbow as the man shoved him into the room. Nezumi sucked in a breath and winced.

Inukashi's eyes narrowed when the door slammed shut. "You look like shit."

"I bet," Nezumi grunted, rubbing his stinging elbow.

"Heard there was some trouble after last time we met," Inukashi said slowly. The swelling in their lip from their first fight had gone down completely and they were back to looking like a regular unwashed feral child. "And yet you're still here…."

Nezumi could read everything they were not saying in the soft cadence of their words. You said you were going to start a riot and escape. You said you were going to tear the Lab to the ground. You said you were going to come back and free us all.

Inukashi crossed their arms and bared their canines. "You fucking suck, you know that?"

Nezumi closed his eyes and blew an angry breath through his nostrils. He stopped probing his elbow and crossed the room. He felt Inukashi's keen gaze follow him as he slid down the wall until he sat hunched against it, knees up, head down. Nezumi wrapped his hand around the charm bracelet on his wrist and, one by one, he pressed the charms into the pad of his thumb. The cool bite of their edges against his skin soothed his harried nerves.

It was a long time before Inukashi approached. Nezumi peered sidewise through the cage of his arms when he heard them slide down the wall a few feet away. Far enough to look like they didn't want him to get any ideas about friendliness, but close enough for discreet conversation.

Inukashi spoke quietly to their hands as they inspected and picked under their nails. "Your plan went bad, huh?"

"No, I escaped and you're having a really shitty dream right now."

"Wouldn't be the first."

Nezumi pressed his lips together and focused on the bracelet again. The charms glittered like raindrops as they fell against each other: a book, an aster, a cupcake, a butterfly, and a heart. Nezumi remembered Shion explaining the meanings to him all those weeks back, but he only remembered what the butterfly represented: Regrowth, hope, Shion's inner strength just waiting to break free from its doubts.

Why hadn't he listened more closely to what the others meant? Nezumi squeezed the heart charm between his fingers. Why hadn't he appreciated the time they had earlier?

He had never given Shion the sun charm.

When Kinako Yoshida had taken him into town and dangled the possibility of buying Shion a gift, Nezumi had been resistant. When he had actually bought the sun charm and brought it home, he had been too burnt up with embarrassment to give it to Shion. He knew it would make the other boy's face light up, he knew it would mean the world to him and he'd kiss Nezumi and sit down right where they were and string the charm onto the bracelet with the rest.

Why had Nezumi been so afraid of that? It seemed ridiculous now. He knew his feelings for Shion and vice versa, so what more was there to hide from? Why couldn't he have let his pride go sooner?

The blue and purple braided string was a bit frayed in places, a testament to the trying nature of his and Shion's journey. Had it only been three months? It felt like they had known each other for years.

They should have had years.

"Hey. You OK?" Inukashi had given up on looking like they were absorbed in their cuticles. "You're...not gonna cry, are you?" Their face pinched, uncomfortable in an annoyed sort of way.

Nezumi sighed. But Inukashi was lucky; he didn't feel like crying. He was past that. Now he was in the too-tired-to-bother phase, and now that he no longer had a ban on sighing, Nezumi was certain he would make frequent use of the action.

"I'm not in the mood to talk to you," Nezumi said.

"And you think I am?"

"Then why don't you stop?"

"Because I hate you," Inukashi snarled.

Nezumi clicked his tongue and leaned his head back against the wall.

"God," Inukashi spat, "could you be any more pathetic? You're really pissing me off. So your big plan didn't work. Get over it; come up with a better plan next time."

"There is no next time."

"You're just gonna give up after one failure?" Inukashi's voice raised a few decibels.

Despite the fog in Nezumi's head, he couldn't help but glance up at the camera winking in the corner of the room. Inukashi caught the glance and snapped their mouth shut. When they spoke again, their tone returned to a mutter.

"So much for all that big talk about freedom and forests and shit, huh? What, did they break you already? That didn't take long. Guess you're just another smooth talker who's all bark and no bite."

Nezumi grit his teeth. "Shut up. You don't know a goddamn thing. I've tried running. I ran for ten years and it never felt like freedom. The only time it felt worth it was when I was with Shion and he's fucking dead now."

Inukashi's face went blank. They blinked at him once, furrowed their brow, glanced down at the charm bracelet on his wrist and then back up at Nezumi in the span of a second. They leaned back against the wall, their mouth pulling into a taut line.

"That bracelet belonged to this Shion guy?" Inukashi asked.

Nezumi didn't answer. He released the heart charm and studied the divot it had made in his fingers. His heartbeat throbbed in his hands, and for a moment it seemed as if it were a sign that Shion was still with him. It was stupid and cliche and he was above such things, but he wanted to believe it anyway.

"Look," Inukashi sighed. "You're right; I don't know anything about you or your life and I don't really want to. I've never had anyone but myself to look after. But I get it, for the most part. You cared about someone, more than you cared about anything else, and you lost them. Or," Inukashi's face twisted into a scowl, "actually, you didn't lose them. They were taken from you. I get that feeling. You're sad and angry, and you feel like shit and like the world has ended, blah, blah, blah. But, come on."

Nezumi glared at Inukashi and opened his mouth to tell them to shut up again.

"No, you shut up," they hissed before he could get the words out. "Just shut up and listen, 'cause you need it, believe me. Think about it. What would your boyfriend say right now? What would he want you to do? Lay down and die? Or pick your sorry ass up and do something about it? Be the badass you pretended to be when you first got here. Get revenge."

Nezumi hadn't dropped his glare, but behind the mask, the cogs of his rusty mind turned once before sticking again. Inukashi leered back with an expression that seemed unable to decide if it meant to encourage or disparage him.

The runt had a point. Shion wouldn't want him to grieve for long, and he would be furious if Nezumi gave up. Shion would urge him to climb to his feet and fight, no matter how many times he was knocked down. He would want him to finish what they started and free as many prisoners as he could along the way.

Nezumi knew this, but it was hard to care about what was true at the moment. Maybe tomorrow he would have the energy to try again.

Inukashi seemed to read his thoughts. Their face darkened at once. They pressed against the wall and rose to their feet, aiming a look of burning censure at him from on high.

But their voice was coolly detached when they said, "Take my advice or don't, I don't really care. But I'm not sitting over here with you." Inukashi's lip curled up. "You smell like a wounded animal."

Inukashi's body shivered as they crossed the room. They were in full dog form by the time they reached the opposite wall, where they circled in place twice before curling up on the floor to ostensibly take a nap.

He and Inukashi sat in silence for the rest of the hour, not even deigning to look each other's way. Rashi seemed pleased to find them mute and on opposite sides of the room when he came in to escort Nezumi back to his cell.

Possibly, the Lab hoped that the superhumans they paired were incompatible both in power and personality; that way, their prisoners were further disillusioned by the lack of solidarity.

"Come along," Rashi purred when he met Nezumi's eye. Then he canted his head to the side and issued orders to his lackeys that they should take "the other animal" back to its cage.

Inukashi lifted their head, and even in dog form, Nezumi could clearly read their distaste.

Rashi said nothing on their walk back to Section M, and nothing when he locked Nezumi inside his glass cage. He only stood a moment outside, enjoying the view with self-satisfied hatred before sniffing and turning away.

Nezumi stared at the concrete floor. The green of his jumpsuit looked sickly and garish against the blank grey expanse.

He should sleep. He should eat.

But his cot had been stripped of its sheets and there still was no food in the meal slot.