A/N: This is the first chapter of the final arc. The remaining chapters are in the last stage of reviewing and I'll post them soon, one at a time. Special thanks to my beta and dear friend Kay, and to my beloved Su for her constant support and encouragement. Thanks to all of you for the love you've shown me in all these years.
The night was quiet in a remote corner in the northern part of the wild lands. Among the skeleton of a burned forest, the smell of ashes and damp earth felt thick like the mist that hid the moon and concealed the sight beyond the rope secured on a row of old willows. Fire had mutilated their slender branches, scarred their bark, yet they still stood in all their survivor loneliness, swaying their scant foliage like ghosts cloaked in shredded mantles.
The Dullahan's eyes gleamed in the shadows of the night like two neon green brush strokes over a charcoal sketch.
"This is the place," the head spoke with its ancient voice.
Celty stopped her coach and climbed down. Her headless horse snorted, skittish, hooves beating on the ground as he stepped back until his rear hit the ebony hardwood of the wagon. Wheels made of human thighbones creaked as they carved gashes into dark and marshy soil. Celty passed her hand over his charcoal pelt. It's alright, Shooter, she thought. I hate to make you feel like this, but I have to find a place that will make me pass into the human world. There's something I need to do there, so please bear with me.
Dismissing the horse's distress, the head said, "A blaze destroyed this place a few months ago. Hopefully, it weakened the rope's power as well, but we won't know for sure unless we test it."
The layer of ash covering the soil shifted under the soles of her slippers as she made her way toward the rope that split the world of humans and the wild lands apart. Paper talismans shook gently in the faint breeze, and the sight sent a fresh wave of panic up her spine. The memory of the pain that came from activating the rope still resonated into her body. An entire day had passed by since she had started looking for a place where the ancient spell would break, without success. The hand that wasn't holding the head closed in a fist above her heart, as if to secure it inside her chest since it was pounding so fast, so hard; it slammed against the ribcage. She wanted to run away. She wanted to go home.
The head was adamant. "Come on, touch it."
Mustering all her courage, Celty brushed the thick bundles of rice straws with one shaking hand, and all the talismans in sight sparked with silver light for the briefest of moments, then a noise like a rattle exploded and raced through her in jolts of electricity that made her feel as though her bones were smoldering. Celty jerked herself away and fell on the ground with a thud, the severed head rolling onto her lap.
Pain raced through her body and she arched her back, placing her hands on her thighs, closing them in fists across her shirt, holding on. The head stared back at her, the pale, symmetrical face framed by copper hair set into an expressionless mask. A sudden thought cut into Celty, more deeply than the spell from the rope: it felt like looking at something that didn't belong to her. The time when Celty and her head were part of one soul had taken on the foggy consistency of an old dream within her memories. Maybe what Celty identified as her own conscience had once been like a seed in the cellar of their mind, tucked into a grout line on the floor, hidden under discarded trains of thoughts and reasonings like raveled bundles. Taking one decision against the head's will had brought it to sprout until she could clearly see herself in that bud. Killing the men she had saved would mean destroying that first step she took on her own, bringing her conscience back into sleep.
As if sensing her thoughts, the muscles of the head's face stiffened enough to carve wrinkles into the skin, distort mouth and eyes, make nostrils flare, draw back lips over pointed teeth into an expression devoid of any trace of humanity. Into that grimace there was all the rage that gods felt toward human beings who tricked them into meddling with a balance set in stone, written in the rising of the hills and the depth of gorges: these lands are sacred and a Dullahan must kill every human that crossed her path. No hesitation allowed.
The ache slowly faded away. Her legs felt shaky as though they couldn't support her yet, but still Celty stood up and, while she staggered to the wagon, her shadow enveloped her like a black shield.
The head's voice thundered, louder than the rattle, "Let's try somewhere else. There must be a place that would let us pass."
Shooter bolted and tried to run, the rattle and the head's anger terrifying him. Before jumping on her wagon, Celty passed her hand all over his severed neck until he was quiet again.
You're so brave, Shooter. Now, let's go.
The headless horse picked up the rhythm and galloped eagerly out of the burned forest up to the crest of a hill. The drum of his hooves merged with the rattle from the rope and the beating of Celty's heart, speeding up as memories of the night she met Shinra overcame her. If they trespassed past the wild lands' boundaries, would her head limit itself to killing those two men, or would it exterminate every person in sight? What if she ended up calling Shinra's name?
Smoke spiraled out of her neck into a contorted, turbulent flow like a river at the bottom of a waterfall. Celty's heart was still free falling, like it was making its way all across a distant place, and until it reached her, she would feel a terrible hollowness inside her chest. It was the echo of a pain she knew like her own name but, somehow, she had forgotten.
She had already seen Shinra dying once. She had already lost him, not in a past life, and she wasn't sharing what another version of her was feeling either. Celty kept her head secured under her arm and stared at her hands laying on her thighs, palm up. Those very hands had held Shinra when his chest rose for the last time — she could still feel the weight of him in her arms, the cotton of the lab coat and his frizzy hair, see the play of the light on his glasses, smell the scent of his cologne and disinfectant and licorice herbal tea and arterial blood.
She didn't understand… What had happened to her? Where did she come from? Why were all those memories slowly resurfacing?
A blast of icy wind blew the fog away, unveiling the massive expanse of the wild lands in front of her and the constellations that towered in the universe's darkness.
She looked up, searching for an answer. But the sky wouldn't reply, just stared back at her like the eyes of the dead, making her wish she had her own eyes to cry.
But there was just smoke above her neck, and the tears didn't come.
The night was at its coldest when the wild lands spread in front of Izaya's eyes. The moon towered over that mysterious realm, lightening banks of white mist that glided like a shroud over the outline of the hills stretching up to the horizon as though they were fossilized giants.
In his hand sat the hunting knife he had just retrieved from the ground. He wiped Shizuo's blood from the blade onto his black v-neck shirt, the metal cold across the cotton, then closed it with his index finger and tucked it in his pocket. For the journey that awaited him, he would definitely need a proper weapon.
Izaya didn't look back and climbed down the hill, the LED flashlight from the Swiss Army knife showing the path through the fog that rolled between his feet, until he reached a wildflower meadow that stretched for miles ahead of him. In this place, the scent of soil and wild vegetation mingled with the humidity of the night that climbed under his clothes, slithered cold on his bruised skin and the bite on the back of his neck that kept stinging and burning, angry like the man who gave it to him when he would wake up from the drug-induced sleep.
"Serves him right to trust me too much," he murmured to himself, giggling softly.
The rattle from the rope exploded suddenly, making him jolt and lose his balance.
"Come on, Dullahan, show yourself and let's get over with it," he murmured as pain exploded into his knee.
The headless woman seemed to have no intention of making things easier for him, though, and he kept going on until, by morning, the meadow gave way to the first row of hooded hills that blocked his path like a wall. He climbed the slope, making his way through dull-colored trunks and moving the branches that grew out every way up to the dense leaves overhead. Undergrowth and ferns littered the ground and cushioned the sound of his uneven gait.
There was no trace of the Dullahan in sight, not even around midday when the rope activated again. At that point he had descended the first row of hills and the next ridge drew nearer. Those slopes rose steeply, so he trudged carefully, holding his knee and biting on his lower lip until, at length, he reached the top. In this place, the forest receded and left the place to a clearing, so he finally breathed fresh air and saw the late summer sun glowing up in the sky.
In front of him lay another valley covered in forests and open fields that spread to the closest row of hills, and in the distance beyond them, there were others, grey and blue, blending into the color of the sky like in an oil painting. He sat there to catch his breath and eat lunch. He unzipped his backpack and pulled out a bottle of mineral water, uncapped it and took a shorter sip than he would have liked to. He chewed on half a sandwich, then popped a painkiller into his mouth and threw his head back to swallow it. His stomach craved a proper meal, but the food and drinks he had brought would last for a few days only, since a heavier backpack would just burden and slow him down. Besides, he didn't plan to survive for a return journey.
I'm going to die, after all, he thought. And I didn't even leave a note.
"Like father like son," he said out loud, and laughed until his stomach ached.
The laughter left a disappointing tiredness on its tail, like an expensive wine with a cork aftertaste. He would kill for a cup of coffee. Sleep had escaped him lately, and what happened the night before didn't help him either. He shook his head; he wouldn't think about it, God forbid. But the bite on the back of his neck kept stinging, turning his blood into liquid fire because it was a constant reminder of the hardness of Shizuo's teeth pressing there, the contrast to the warm, wet softness of his tongue, the depth of his moan across Izaya's skin when he came inside Izaya for the first time.
The last words Shizuo told him were, "You love me back, don't you?"
Izaya got on his feet, grimacing from the pain and his bothersome thoughts, brushed the dirt off his black trousers and went on again.
By midafternoon, the first great obstacle lay ahead. At the foot of the hill he was going to descend, the slope got steeper until, at its bottom, a tangle of trees blocked the path. Unlike the woods he had just crossed, in this one the vegetation looked ominously dense. Timber trees rose high, creating a sea of shadows under their canopy. Looking at the horizon, Izaya saw the point where the forest ended. Through the partially overcast sky, sunrays played a game of light and shadow over the green grass covering round hills. Between them a narrow river flowed, glistening like a mirage, making him wish he had wings to fly all the way above the treetops and land beside it.
Delusions aside, he had a decision to make. Camping so soon in the afternoon was not an option; he would lose precious time, so he either travelled all around the forest looking for a passage, with the risk of not being able to find it, or faced this unsettling realm now, hopefully reaching the river before the nightfall. The pain in his knee reminded he had no time to lose, so he slowly descended the slope, switched on the LED flashlight tool, and delved into the forest.
His first impression was that he had ended up in a faraway place, dark and primordial. The air was humid, heavy with the stagnant smell of decomposing plant matter. The cone of light bounced over weirdly shaped leaves before the gloom swallowed it. After a few steps, he couldn't see the hill he had just climbed down anymore. Around him there was only darkness.
Though he soon realized that there was something even more terrifying than feeling the wood's shadow encompassing him; it was the immaculate silence that left him dressed him in goosebumps. Entering this place felt like diving into an abyss. There was not a bird to be heard. The further he trudged his way into this tangle of branches and leaves, the deeper the quiet became, as though the forest had morphed into an unexplored underwater cave, which nurtured a sense of claustrophobia inside him. The only sound breaking the silence was a faint breath of wind, like someone breathing arcane words across the nape of his neck. In its lament, spreading through the foliage like the echoes of the people who lost their life here, he could almost hear the beat of the wild lands' heart; it was a hushed sound, like the ticking of an old clock.
Izaya's pulse sped up, pumping dread like acid into his veins, because the forest soon proved out to be thicker than he had thought; foliage grew like spilled ink over the sky and blotted out the purple twilight light. Nighttime was approaching, and he still didn't know how much further he needed to walk before reaching the end of the wood. The trees gave him no answer, their thick, black trunks looming on every side, making every direction look the same.
Eventually, as he feared, the night came before he had found a way out. His senses sharpened, nerves tensed, and every time the cone of light stretched through the darkness, his eyes frantically scanned the horizon. Shivers slithered up his backbone in icy licks, wrapped across his neck and squeezed all the oxygen out of his lungs, leaving him gasping for air. Sweat trickled down his forehead, made his clothes glue to his skin.
That mysterious wind was louder in the darkness; it passed past him like a ghost, shook the branches and vanished into the starred sky.
The leaves at his back rustled again, but this time the wind had gone to die somewhere along with Izaya's breath and all was still as though crystalized.
It exploded into him, the sensation that he was being watched. Chased. He turned.
The sight at his back was the same as the one in front of him, like in a house of mirrors. It made him feel alone and surrounded at the same time. He tightened the hold on the switchblade and didn't stop moving forward—if he was moving forward.
He stopped only when he perceived a smell coming from the unbroken darkness. It was sugary and sharp. It filled his nostrils and lungs with every breath, liquid and thick enough that he felt like he was drinking it instead of smelling it. It clashed violently with his gastric juices, making him heave.
Covering his mouth and nose with his shirt, he kept walking until he bumped into a piece of cloth. It looked like a tattered and bloody trench coat. Through it, he spotted patches of livid skin. He staggered back, heartbeat hammering in his chest at the display of death in front of him. He was aware that, if everything went as he planned, in a few days he would look like this corpse. His body, at least. His mind would be in a far better place. As he struggled to reassure himself, he saw a trail of a dark liquid, slimy like petrol, soiling the undergrowth and disappearing in the darkness between the trees.
Something had dragged the body to this place, he thought.
Like a switch being flipped, suddenly, it felt as though the surrounding silence had gained the ability to hear and see, like the trees had invisible eyes, and ears, all aimed at him. Breath escaped him.
He pointed the flashlight onwards, trying to stretch the beam further into the dark.
Two reflecting eyes flashed in front of him. It lasted for a moment, then they were gone.
He switched off the flashlight, tucked it in his pocket, and hid with his back against the closest tree. Here, he strained his ears for any sound. The cotton of his shirt fluttered with the ragged breaths he was desperately trying to hold to not make any sound escape him.
A branch snapped somewhere at his right.
He flicked open the switchblade. From a few trunks away, a rhythmic wind crawled all around him along with a sound like snuffling. Was it paws on fallen leaves? What he was hearing?
No, it's just my mind, he thought.
He wracked his brain trying to prove himself that it was all just a silly panic, but he couldn't find anything that justified the sound of steps drawing closer and stopping behind his hiding place. Whatever that thing was, it was real, and it was too close.
Adrenaline exploded through his veins. He flashed the switchblade and aimed at the dark heap of fast-moving muscles in the exact moment that it jumped on him from his left. The blade hit home and a roar like a clap of thunder resounded in Izaya's ears, paralyzing his thinking for a moment only — a moment too much. A paw with claws as long as human fingers came down from the sky and hit him like a wrecking ball.
His back landed against a trunk, the blow knocking the oxygen out of his lungs. The pain was electrifying and all-consuming; every other sensation vanished in its wake. Blood as thick as molasses clogged his mouth, and only rasping breaths left his lips. His hands convulsed, holding onto nothing. He had lost the switchblade. Panting against that cold, coarse trunk, he couldn't see the beast approaching; it was too dark and his sight flickered with pain. He felt it, though, the stink of death, the scorching breath that fanned on his sweat-drenched forehead, the thud thud thud of a solid darkness charging on him to deliver the deathblow.
No, he thought. I will not die like a prey.
He shoved his hand in his pockets. Fingers caught on the cheap plastic covering the handle of the Swiss Army knife.
The dim light seeping through the foliage caught on wide-open jaws at the moment in which they descended on him like lightning pummeling the earth, and he shouted, too, a ragged and desperate war cry.
When Shizuo gave him the Swiss Army knife, Izaya had told him he could barely cut butter with it.
The last thing he remembered before he passed out was when the crappiest blade he had ever owned broke through the beast's temple and dove like a sinking stone into its brain.
Izaya woke to the rattle from the rope. It was too loud; he could feel it pinging off the inside of his skull like the world's noisiest pinball machine. He coughed. It hurt his ribcage. He inhaled, taking a deep breath, and pushed himself up on his hands and knees. His head swam. His mouth tasted like blood. He coughed again, flinched, and then remained like that, head hanging low, until his eyes could focus, and he recognized the beast's enormous shape laying a few feet away. Izaya slowly got himself upright. His bones ached and, for a moment, his sight frayed along the edges before it focused again. He inhaled, exhaled, and felt better.
The fight left him several superficial cuts and two twin gashes that ran from his left shoulder to his elbow, not deep enough to make him bleed to death, but obnoxious to deal with in case of infection. Anyway, it got way worse for the monstrous thing. It was too dark to recognize what kind of being had attacked him, and he didn't care. He just wanted to retrieve his knives. The switchblade was nowhere in sight — it was probably stuck under the beast's belly and he had no chance to roll such a heavy carcass on its back, not in this physical shape, at least. The Swiss Army knife was lodged into the beast's skull. Cringing and cursing under his breath, Izaya used all his strength to pull it out.
The knife lay like a heap of metal in the palm of his hand. The blade was bent and the cheap plastic had peeled off. The impact had deformed the handle so much that Izaya couldn't extract the tools anymore. Not the flashlight, not the corkscrew, not the nail file. It also meant that if he were to cross another forest by night, he would have to do it in the utter dark because the Swiss army knife was now a broken, useless thing.
"Too bad," he breathed, fingers curling across the broken handle. "You had been a good knife after all."
As he trudged forward, the pain in his knee increased until it felt as though the bone was smoldering. He tried to exhale away the ache, every shuddering gasp after another until, eventually, the forest receded and left the place to soft slopes covered in grass that bent lazily in the breeze.
He heard an owl hooting a low, sepulchral sound as it soared above his head toward the forest he had just crossed. Izaya turned, and saw in the distance over the treetops the rows of hills he was leaving at his back, their profiles black against the starred sky. It would be impossible for Shizuo to find him here, like searching for a grain of sand fluttering into the depth of an abyss.
Izaya passed his hand over the nape of his neck, and recalled Shizuo's voice uttering the words Izaya wouldn't recall now, or never. Old hatred was wearing thin, as though it became just a chrysalis softening to let the moth push through and spread its wings, nothing but a shell that was becoming transparent, a mask crumbling to dust. Memories felt like splinters of light in his chest. The weight of warm bodies moving in the creased sheets, the friction of chests pressed together, arms holding and legs brushing against each other, the softness of lips parting, ruffled hair tickling like a caress of feathers, and the connection between them. He could almost hear Shizuo's voice saying his name.
Sweat made his eyes sting, and he rubbed them with his shirt. He would prefer to avoid camping to keep walking until he would find what he was looking for, but he knew that it was a stupid thing to do, because he could barely take a step without crying out in pain. His body was falling apart. His mind was wandering, as though it had slipped into the labyrinthine meadows of a dream.
An oak tree dominated the top of the hill, its branches spreading outwards like extended arms. The only thing bigger than its canopy was the night sky. Izaya sat against its coarse trunk, making himself all the tinier, and here he finished the sandwich, drank water and took another pill. He wrapped himself into a plaid blanket he had carried from home and focused all his attention in calming his breathing down and trying to not shiver and jolt at every breath of wind that raced through the field. Breeze aside, the surroundings were quiet, like all those times he sat with Shizuo on the windowsill, their legs intertwined, enjoying their drinks in a comfortable silence. He closed his eyes and imagined being there, sitting on cold marble with the slight coarseness of plaster across his back, foot sliding aimlessly on wooden floorboards. The smell of coffee and milk, and a faint scent of tobacco. The salty wind ruffled Shizuo's bleached bangs, making them fall over hazel eyes that stared at Izaya only.
They sat face to face, staring into each other's eyes like two kings before the match started, as two men on the opposite side of everything, poles apart one from the other. Shizuo had kept walking, kept going on looking for life all while Izaya searched for death. One desired to be human, the other craved to transcend human nature. Izaya's fingers caught on the scar that crossed Shizuo's chest. It reminded him of the line between two chessboard's squares, darkness and light held together, like the marble floor he walked in his dreams.
When the hallway stretched in front of him, he told himself that he was dreaming. "Wake up," he told himself.
Though his eyelids felt too heavy, and he remained trapped there, with dark smoke rolling out of the doors on fire and blotting the sight of the golden numbers that marked the thresholds. The circus print on his mother's wrap dress seemed alive as she approached him. Horses' eyes widened until they looked possessed, like his father's gaze the moment he understood he had lost her, then expanded again until they painted the whole dress black and her mother morphed into a Dullahan.
"Shizuo," the Dullahan's head said.
He woke up with Shizuo's name ringing in his ears and the ruthless need to see him one last time. Eyelids fluttering shut, he allowed himself to smile. A nice thought had crossed his mind: he wouldn't feel this pitiful anymore. Maybe, if he walked a little further, the next day he would be in Valhalla. He leaned against the tree and got up.
Dawn had already broken, bringing the surrounding lands into focus. At the bottom of the next valley, a clear stream flowed, disappearing into another wood that covered the next rows of hills. He laughed. He had found it. He hadn't particularly cared about the details in Tom's story, he just wanted to know how they had navigated those lands to find the Dullahan's dwelling. Shizuo's boss told Izaya that they had followed a river. After all, what an easier way to travel through those lands than following a waterway? Izaya staggered forward, focusing on the sight of the stream ahead of him, as though it was an anchor that kept his thoughts from sailing towards dangerous directions. He could hear water flowing, and he followed it blindly, like a man wandering in a desert.
The sun was high in the sky when he finally knelt on the rocky bed, the foliage overhead casting shifting shadows on the slick pebbles that dug painfully into his knees. Something in the sound of water foaming over its bed elicited the memory of the warmth of Shizuo's chest pressing across his back and Izaya drinking cool water from cupped hands that weren't his own. If it had happened for real, he couldn't tell. The wild lands messed with his mind until he could no longer discern the truth from the dreams.
He satiated his thirst, drinking mouthfuls of fresh water, and soon his mind felt steadier, like leaning into Shizuo when his injured knee wouldn't hold him up anymore. Then he washed his face, cleaned the wounds and refilled the water bottle.
During the millennia, the stream had dug a narrow gorge, like a hallway throughout the hills. Sparse briars and shrubs had sprung up on the slopes between the white-streaked grey rocks on each side, outstretching their branches as much as they could to catch the feeble light that reached this cleft. In this confined, dank space, the sound of the water echoed like an echo in a cave. Above the stream, a chilly wind flowed like an invisible waterway, producing a sound like ancient voices whispering a lament older than humanity. It beat frozen against Izaya's back, and he held on, shivering as he staggered to keep balance over the riverbed pebbles until, at the end of the gorge, a valley opened in front of him.
Immediately, his senses caught the scents of soil and luxuriant vegetation, along with the sound of that icy wind shaking the treetops. Even from the distance, he saw that the stream skimmed a building so small it looked barely bigger than a tool shed. The sight in front of him made his skin prickle with anticipation, because the place Tanaka Tom told him about was right in front of his eyes.
"My friends and I—we reached the place where she lives," Shizuo's boss had said.
Izaya couldn't deny that he had felt disappointed when he had discovered that a Dullahan, a spirit of death, didn't dwell in a castle that would appear only when the stars aligned or in some other magnificent abode, but in a modest cottage. As Izaya went farther into this valley, though, his instinct told him that there was a sinister quality, something indescribably wrong with this place.
Lifting his eyes, he took in the skyline made of towering hills that stood stark and livid across the indigo sky and enclosed the small valley like the crater of a dormant volcano. A forest of gnarled oak trees spiraled down the slopes into a clearing, their trunks and foliage grotesquely tilted on one side as though they had surrendered to the frigid blast that in this place blew like a whirlwind. Even the clouds seemed to follow that circular motion, as though an invisible plug had been removed and the surroundings behaved like water being sucked down the drain. He felt like he ended up into a deformation in the space-time fabric where, at the center of that gigantic whirlpool, the cottage lay placidly like a black hole leading to another universe.
Izaya noticed with bewilderment that the house emitted no shadow, and not even the warm afternoon light undermined the utter obscurity of the material composing its walls, making it look unconnected from the surroundings, like a sticker attached to an old painting.
The door was open. Frigid air wafted out of it, frozen enough to make his teeth chatter. The cottage was empty like he had landed onto an extrasolar object floating alone beyond Pluto's orbit. Inside there was nothing but a table and a chair, as though the being that occupied this dwelling didn't eat nor drink, only waited, as if it presided a frontier to the afterlife. He sat there and stared at the shadows of the trees outside stretching on the grass, looking forward to the headless woman's arrival.
Soon, he shivered from the cold; minute by minute he felt reason slipping through his fingers as if it was in some kind of mental free-fall that swallowed him up into the hallways of memory. He remembered sitting on the soft carpet in his father's study, lingering on the cold marble of the pieces as he moved them on the chessboard. Nobody knocked on the hardwood door. No sound came from outside it beside the click-click-click of the maids' heels as they walked across the corridor, in a straight line as though they were rooks flying over the black and white squares composing the floor.
One day, his father came in, alone. He removed his black double-breasted coat as he strode, laying it on top the executive desk carved with the figures of mythological beings, then knelt down in front of Izaya, looped one wavy strand of his black, shoulder-length hair over his ear and leaned both his hands on Izaya's shoulder, squeezing them tightly. Shirou told him that he and his mother had returned home and they wouldn't visit hospitals all over the world anymore. An ember of unexpected happiness kindled into Izaya's chest, though it died out as soon as his father explained she hadn't returned home because she had healed. Izaya felt his heart shriveling up, and then suddenly jumping into his throat. He didn't remember how to breathe anymore, all while his father stared at him with his red eyes.
There was a whiff of earthy cologne on the flawless burgundy tux Shirou had donned, despite all odds, as though it was some kind of armor.
Izaya's lower lip had trembled, and still his father didn't break the gaze, as though looking at him to check his reactions. Izaya wanted to cry, though Shirou's eyes were dry.
He's so strong, he recalled thinking. And he needed to be as strong as him.
Izaya had visualized his father's study in his head, and he castled in there, like a safe king. When the mental walls rose all around him, he felt safe enough that he realized he had to let all his emotions slide away, fly across the hallway outside, skimming his door and then going far away. All he had to do was to hide in a hard kernel inside his mind. That way, the tears didn't come.
Even when his father had crumbled, Izaya had sheltered into that mental room, letting everything slide off him, thinking that he wouldn't let what happened to his father happen to him as well.
Shizuo's last words to him whispered through the wind and crashed against his walls. Once again, he shook them off.
Shizuo told him he loved him and that he wouldn't shy away just because he was afraid. How his life would change once he had come to terms with the fact that Izaya was dead? Like watching a movie, Izaya saw Shizuo's grief morphing to a dull ache. After all, Shizuo had found the strength to go on even after losing his brother so, this time, too, he would keep going on, like trees growing around obstacles, encompassing them so they could continue to live. Izaya pictured Shizuo looking at Kyouko the way he had looked into Izaya's eyes when he said that he loved him, and he had to stop there because the thought alone made his blood boil.
He snorted, lips cracking in a smirk. Such a long wait for death felt anticlimactic; why wasn't the Dullahan here already?
The moon was sliding up from behind the black wooded hills when the wind suddenly rose, making the air inside the room feel as though it had been charged with electricity. He stood up and walked outside the cottage into the clearing. The perpetual wind had dragged a mist as dark as smoke into the hollow and, with feverish excitement, he saw shadows of many shapes and forms stretching strangely across the grass.
By the edge of the woods stood the Dullahan, obscurity half consuming her frame. She carried the head under her arm. Izaya laughed under his breath.
Every nerve in Izaya's body screamed at him to run, but he remained there, barely blinking, following her with his gaze as she approached on a wagon towed by a headless horse.
"Legends don't do you any justice," he said once she was close enough. If only my father could see her, he thought.
"We meet, at last," the Dullahan's head said with a tone of voice that felt as remote as the surface of a meteorite plunging slowly into the darkness of the universe.
The head's smile was crocodile-cold; it sent a wave of raw horror up his spine.
And in that moment, he knew that his end had come.
The ring of the phone brought Shizuo crashing back to consciousness.
He blinked, in a haze, and flinched. Thinking felt like searching bare-handed through sharp pieces of broken glass. His hand slid across the tangled sheet, just to find them cold and empty. Izaya wasn't by his side. When Shizuo perceived the sting from the wound on his chest, memories resurfaced: the taste of sugary milk, the smell of coffee on Izaya's breath when he told Shizuo about his father, the tiredness setting in, the softness of Izaya's lips pressing against his own one last time and the words Shizuo had told him before losing consciousness.
You love me back, don't you?
He threw himself out of bed. Bare feet staggered on the wooden floorboards, stumbled when he wore the first pair of trousers and shirt he found in the wardrobe, bumped into things until, eventually, Shizuo found his way downstairs. The echo of the phone resounded eerily in the semi-darkness around him; only the faintest light cut through the windowpanes across the old-fashioned phone that sat on the sideboard beside the entry door.
Suddenly, the sound stopped, and all was left was an intermittent light, warning him he had missed the call. He stood there, in the middle of the living room, wearing a half-buttoned shirt over his bartender slacks, breathing hard. Through the messy hair falling over his eyes, he stared at that red light telling him he was too late. It was too late, indeed. Izaya was gone.
When he heard Alfred mewling majestically while scratching at the entry door, he snapped out of his daze. The cat's bowl had been filled to overflowing, and he still had plenty of water to drink, so at least the flea took care of him before leaving, but now he was pleading for Shizuo to let him out like he was used to doing at night. The hands of the clock pointed to a little after midnight, telling Shizuo that had slept for an entire day. The red light blinked one last time before he closed the door at their backs.
Outside in the street, he wondered what to do now. His head hurt. He was hungry and thirsty and the aftertaste of strange and too sweet milk was an overwhelming feeling; it had wiped away every trace of Izaya's taste from his mouth. And that was when he realized Izaya allowed what had happened between them because he was going to leave for good, and had poisoned Shizuo to make sure he wouldn't meddle. His breath caught. Anger reared up and disappeared like a wave shattering against rocks, leaving just foam behind. There was a time where he would have felt blessed that the flea had let him be, but Shizuo couldn't let him go now. Izaya loved him back, and Shizuo felt so stupid to not have understood it before. Since that fateful first encounter, Izaya had always tormented him so much that Shizuo couldn't think of someone else beside him. He remembered Izaya's kiss on his chest after he had saved him from the fire and recalled the warm glow in those red eyes before he realized they didn't belong to Kasuka. It had been Izaya's fingers who left those bloody marks Shizuo had found on his own cheek the night Izaya woke up after their journey. He was such an idiot, wasn't he? How could he have not understood it, in the way Izaya looked at him, in the jealousy and the way he trembled when Shizuo held him in his arms? That facade of hatred had totally tricked him. And now, where did Izaya go now? And why did he leave? What did he plan to do?
The blacktop scraping the soles of his bare feet reminded him of when they heard the rope rattling for the first time. Izaya had dashed outside, without even bothering to don shoes, and ran uphill toward the wild lands - the same place Shizuo had found him the night before.
This time, there was no guiding light to show him the way through the forest and across the rope. The shirt he wore was not heavy enough for the stiff wind howling from the heart of the wild lands. His feet hurt and his breathing was short when, for the first time since their escape, he reached the hilltop and took in the vast extent of the valley in front of him and the closest hills emerging like islands over a sea of mist.
He called out for Izaya, shouting his name like he was used to doing during their fights, wishing it would travel fast and reach Izaya wherever he would be, as though it was a cloud travelling through all that space.
The sound of his voice died out, but he still scanned the view for a familiar frame in all that green. Though no matter how many times he shifted his gaze from right to left, and left to right, Izaya was nowhere in sight; the flea had gone too far. How was Shizuo supposed to find him in these immense places if he didn't know what the other man was looking for?
How could you even dare to think that a normal human life would be enough for me? There's something greater waiting for me, Izaya had told him before leaving.
Shizuo lay cross-legged on the ground and hid his face in his hands. What greater things could Izaya find in these uninhabited places, he had no idea. He felt so utterly confused and disoriented, like being trapped in a hall of mirrors from which he couldn't see a way out; every direction looked the same, a dead end.
Yet tears wouldn't come. Because, deep down, he knew that there was still something he could do. He could still move forward, just not alone. Despite his superhuman strength, he wouldn't have managed to go on without Izaya at his side. Sometimes the thought of losing Kasuka was just too much to bear, the guilt too strong, but knowing that he wasn't alone made it better. The bonds he had created with people made it better.
When he dashed downhill, he found out that the normally crowded alleys were quiet, deserted in the dead of night. The only sounds were the long breaking waves and faraway luggage wheels catching on the cobblestones as he walked past the square with the tree in the flowerbed and out of the maze of narrow alleys toward Tom's pub.
No music came from inside, and there was a red "CLOSED" tag attached on the hardwood door. A few steps ahead, haloed in the golden haze of an old-fashioned street lamp, Kadota and Erika nursed their beers while sitting on the sidewalk. Tom was the only one standing, a trail of smoke coming from the cigarette he clamped between his lips.
Shizuo was so out of breath from running all the way here that for a moment he had to lean against a lamppost, hinting a forced smile while holding his spleen. They all clamored to ask him if something bad had happened, even if those didn't sound like questions at all.
He said, "I'm fine." A lie; they could see that his feet bled, and the white shirt was open on his chest, leaving the wound on his chest in plain sight. Breath escaped him and shivers ran throughout him.
"Something bad had definitely happened," Erika commented. "I'm trying my best to not freak out."
Shizuo's mind was reeling, tripping on itself until he could barely make sense of what he was doing. He blurted out, "Do you remember Izaya?"
Kadota said, "He saved your life; of course we do."
Erika added, "Someone like him is hard to forget."
Tom just nodded.
Shizuo passed his hand over the nape of his neck and said, "He went into the wild lands on his own. He drugged me so I couldn't stop him." He hesitated when he saw that Tom's brows had knitted over an unblinking stare, deep wrinkles forming into his forehead, like the valleys left after a glacier had melted. Shizuo swallowed. "I don't know what he's looking for in those places or what his plan might be. I wanna stop him, but I don't know how to do it alone."
Suddenly, Kadota and Erika stood up. Two beer bottles clanked into the trash bin. Tom jumped at the sound that resounded eerily in the empty alley.
"We'll help you in the best way we can," Erika said, calm as Shizuo had never seen her before.
"We'll find him. Let's meet at five a.m., uphill where the forest starts," Kadota said, hand clenching Shizuo's shoulder. He gave him a lopsided grin, a warm light playing in his eyes. "And this time remember to wear shoes."
After Kadota and Erika left, Shizuo remained alone with Tom who, in the meantime, hadn't spoken or moved or shifted his gaze from an indefinite point on the wall in front of him. There was something in that dazed yet jumpy behavior that gave Shizuo a distressing feeling, as though there was something haunting his boss, something that was lurking deep into the folds of Tom's mind and cast deep shadows into the wrinkles at his eyes' outer edges. Like spotting the shadow of a spider into its nest, Shizuo could catch glimpses of it every time Tom exhaled a shaky, nicotine filled breath.
Shizuo tried to guess what was the matter. "You warned me from going into the wild lands. I know I shouldn't drag other people into this mess either. But I gotta find him."
When Tom removed the smoked cigarette to throw it into a package he used as a pocket ashtray, the cuff of his striped shirt slid up, showing a forearm that reminded Shizuo of a wintry twig. Only when another cancer stick sat snugly between his thin lips, Tom hinted a nod with his head. Shizuo didn't know what it meant, if he agreed with what he had said, or if it was a sign to let Shizuo know he had heard him.
Shizuo said, "That monster you saw was a headless woman, right?"
Deep hollows formed on Tom's cheeks when he took the next drag. His voice was gravelly when he said, "Why are you asking?"
"That weirdo with the gas mask said that he had seen a headless woman in the wild lands—can't remember what he called her—and suddenly I saw Izaya go so fucking pale I thought he would faint on me. He said his father was fond of that legend and all that shit, but who was he trying to kid? You were there too, you asked us to stop, remember? He's looking for something there and, maybe, he's looking for that monster."
Tom mumbled, "She's called a Dullahan."
"Dullahan," Shizuo repeated, committing that name to his memory. "Do you know why he would look for her?"
"I don't. Unless he wants to die."
Shizuo said nothing.
Tom continued, "A Dullahan will kill every human being on her path. If he's looking for that monster of his own free will, there's nothing you can do to save him. Going into those places will only get yourself killed."
"I gotta stop him before it's too late. Those places are huge, so I bet it's not that easy for a Dullahan and Izaya to bump into each other, isn't it? What about you, Tom-san? Where did you meet her?"
Tom put out the half-smoked cigarette, removed his glasses and passed his hands all over his face, as though he was trying to clean it from some kind of invisible dirt. When bony fingers dug into the skin, Shizuo felt the urge to ask him which memories were haunting him, but he stopped himself when he heard Tom's voice coming out muffled by the palm of his hands as he hinted a bitter laugh.
"Who knows," he said, "I really can't remember."
It was four in the morning when Shizuo got home.
After Tom had told him he didn't remember meeting the Dullahan, the rattle from the rope had resounded in the air. When all those talismans shook together, the older man had crouched, covering his ears with the palms of his hands and had started shivering like a kid let alone during a thunderstorm. Shizuo remained with him until the sound had subsided, without touching him, just making him feel his presence. Tom didn't remember where he had seen the Dullahan, but his escapade in the wild lands had left deep wounds in him. After making sure Tom was alright, Shizuo had stopped by Kyouko's bakery to entrust Alfred's care to her. Her shop was still closed after Shizuo had thrown a bulky sailor across its window, but since no damage had been done to the other rooms, she still woke up early in the morning to bake the goods that she would home deliver to the few people that hadn't left the village yet. She asked for an explanation, but Shizuo promised he would explain everything to her once he got back home. It wasn't the right moment to tell her that there was a huge probability he wouldn't be making it home safe and sound.
In a few minutes, he had gathered some food, water, and a change of clothes and had thrown them into a plastic bag. He found the paper envelope from an old electricity bill and, with a half-bitten pencil he found between the pages of a crosswords magazine, he wrote a lopsided, barely readable "Thank you for everything, Shizuo". He tucked inside all the money he had saved from his bartending and closed the envelope. When he went outside, the icy wind blowing from the wild lands made him shudder and reminded him he had forgotten to pack a sweatshirt. He shoved the envelope into Shinra's mailbox and when he read the tag "Kishitani" on the black aluminum frame, it occurred to him he hadn't spoken with Shingen about the Dullahan. That weirdo said that he had seen her, hadn't he? Shizuo didn't like him, but he thought that it would be still worth a try, so he rang the bell. Nobody replied. He kept on doing it until a vein had popped on his forehead and blood had dripped from his finger. Only then, he realized he had broken the bell and, since nobody would reply anyway, it was better if he just went back home and waited for five a.m. to come. He didn't trust him, anyway.
At half past four, he was sitting with his back against the entry door, holding Alfred in his arms and petting him from ears to tail, all while he stared at the clock slowly trudging forward. The reason Izaya would go looking for a monster still escaped him. He chewed on his inner cheek so hard that he tasted blood. Nothing made sense, like when playing Connect the dots he linked a dot wrong and the final drawing was just a mess of entangled lines. The worst was that it wasn't a game. Izaya was going to die, disappearing like smoke into the air, and Shizuo wouldn't even see him one last time.
In the darkness, the flickering red light from the answering machine called for his attention. Shizuo gritted his teeth, jammed his finger over the play button and stood there, trembling from head to toe. Fuck, he thought, he had forgotten to pack that damned sweatshirt.
A beep introduced the sound of Tom's recorded voice. The black cat perked up his ears, but calmed down once again when Shizuo hugged him closer to his chest.
"You left in a hurry yesterday evening so… I'm just asking if you're alright. Let me know how you guys are doing, okay?"
The device beeped.
"It's me, again, I hope you're fine. I doubt I'll open the pub tonight. Call me back."
Shizuo swore under his breath, wracking his brain to find a remaining dot that would pour some sense into the big picture.
The device beeped again, and this time a stranger's voice filled the dark room.
"I can't believe you hung up on him. I don't care if it's late—you gotta call me back."
Shizuo pressed the repeat button but, even after listening to the message a second time, he still hadn't recognized the voice. Either someone had dialed the wrong number, or someone had tried to speak with Izaya. What an idiot! He thought, slapping his hand on his forehead, as he had recalled Izaya's expression going blank after he had called his former mentor and lover, that man in white called Shiki. They had planned to call the older man to let him know that Shizuo wouldn't join the army for the mission Izaya had devised to offer a perfect chance for revenge - or had it just been an excuse to make him leave the village and grant Izaya the chance to pursue his plans?
Shizuo didn't know Shiki well enough to recognize his voice—he had only met him a few times. He had talked to him only once, when he was twenty, and he had fucked up so badly while he attempted at murdering Izaya that his superiors sent him to Shiki for an exemplary punishment. Shizuo remembered standing there, covered in dust and mud and blood, breath ragged and mind filled with fantasies of Izaya's bones breaking under his fists, in an office in which the only furniture was a two seaters white leather sofa, a bookshelf with a few books and a glass and aluminum executive desk. Upon the countertop was a cardboard box filled with books and a picture frame face down on the surface. The room had smelled faintly of stale air, spicy cologne and tobacco. Shizuo had wrinkled his nose. It had been a week since he had started smoking as an attempt to calm his nerves, and he still hadn't gotten used to the stench of cigarettes. Shiki had come into the room a few moments later. He was a lithe man, at least four inches shorter than Shizuo himself, with ink black hair and a thin, triangular face set into a frown that carved deep wrinkles at corners of his eyes and between the thin eyebrows. Shiki had gestured at him to take a seat on the sofa and Shizuo had obeyed, sitting by his side. The older man passed his hands all over his face and for a full minute they had remained that way, neither of them speaking.
"Is there a way to stop these fights of yours?" Shiki asked eventually. There was a kind of nervous exhaustion that made his baritone voice brittle around the edges.
Shizuo had been too angry to tone down his words. "Sure. If only I were to find that louse's corpse into a dumpster with that fucking smile on his face."
"Izaya doesn't hate you. Or, well, hatred is quite a reductive word to describe what Izaya feels for you."
"He makes my life hell. It looks like he hates me a lot."
Shiki had exhaled and hadn't spoken another word. After that, he had dismissed Shizuo without reprimand or punishment.
Shizuo jammed his finger on the repeat button again, and this time he wrote the number he saw on the screen down on the cover of the crosswords magazine in which he had found the pencil. Izaya's neat handwriting filling the grid with arcane words and complicated technical terms flipped him the bird, telling Shizuo that he was too dumb to get some meaning out of this mess.
Shizuo snarled and dialed the call. Shiki picked the phone at the third ring, stating just his name with a croaked groan.
"Izaya won't call you back, so I'm calling you myself. I can't join the army because Izaya left and I think he's gonna get himself killed. I gotta stop him."
For a while Shiki didn't speak. Eventually, he asked, "When did he leave?"
"One day ago. He drugged me so I wouldn't stop him from going into the wild lands. Maybe he's chasing after a Dullahan. I'm not sure because I can't understand why he's pursuing a monster."
"You said a Dullahan?"
"Yeah, a mythological headless woman who's supposed to wander in the wild lands and kill everyone off and all that shit."
"Wait. Don't hang up. Wait for a moment, okay?"
"Sure, I'm not going anywhere." Until five o'clock, at least.
Endless minutes passed by before Shizuo heard some other sound aside from the tapping of Shiki's shoes. It was a labored breathing along with Shiki whispering something that Shizuo hadn't been able to catch. Then, a faint voice said, "Heiwajima Shizuo-kun, isn't it?"
It was like listening to Izaya speaking, just not quite. The timbre and cadence were the same, but this voice had grown smaller. It had shriveled until it sounded like a tiny thing fighting for survival in too much space. "I'm Izaya's father, Orihara Shirou," the man said, proving that the similarity Shizuo had perceived was not an illusion.
"Izaya told me you were dead."
"I've been more dead than alive for a long time. Besides, I'm not surprised that Izaya considers me dead. I abandoned him in the worst way possible."
After that first and last night they spent together as lovers, Izaya had told him, "He didn't want to live if she was dead. And that was it. No dramatic turn of events. He never got back on his feet, no matter how smart or powerful he was; he lost her and his life was over." His father had tried to kill himself. Izaya had remained alone, like a lonely crow balancing on a wire of sanity while watching the skyline blow up in flames until nothing remained but ashes that fell all around him like a dirty snow. He felt the sudden urge to hold him so tightly that Izaya would surely complain that Shizuo was going to crush him, but he needed to find him beforehand.
Shirou said, "Shiki-kun told me that Izaya is looking for a Dullahan, is that true?"
Shizuo replied it was what he believed.
"Dullahans are female spirits of death who kill people by calling their names with the severed head they carry under their arm. Some theories claim that Dullahans are the Valkyries of Norse mythology. Being called by them, being killed by them, it means to gain access to Valhalla."
A shudder went through Shizuo. "To what?"
Shirou's weak chuckle trailed off into a sigh. "Valhalla is a place where, after dying, you gain what no other human being can reach. Immortality, that's it. The survival of the soul."
"There's something greater waiting for me," Izaya had said. A picture had surfaced from the tangled heap of lines connecting each dot.
Shizuo asked, "Do you know where I can find a Dullahan?"
"I'm sorry, but I don't. Besides, even you cannot beat a monster like that with your bare fists, despite what Shiki-kun told me about your superhuman strength. Your only chance is to stop my son before he meets the Dullahan. There could be another way, but there's no time to look for the tool in questions. It has been centuries since it had disappeared. Nobody knows where it is. It's a supernatural object that can sever the link between the Dullahan's body and her head, therefore undermining her ability to kill. It's a demonic katana called Saika. But I'm rambling now, aren't I?"
Shizuo pressed his fingers on his temples, teeth gritting, and recalled Izaya pulling from Kishitani Shingen's doctor bag a katana, and the way shivers had racked his body once he had taken hold of it. Shizuo had been too pissed and creeped out to pay attention to what Shingen rambled afterwards, and he regretted it now. Though, the masked weirdo had seen a Dullahan too, so before he started his journey he needed to pay a visit to Shinra, even if he had to break down the door.
Shizuo said, "Thanks, Orihara-san."
"I wish I could tell you where to find him. I don't know where he might be or how you could save him." Shirou's breath caught softly beneath his teeth and his voice shrunk until it was barely louder than a whisper blowing in a desert made of ashes. "Just, please, bring my son back."
