--
The light is not on, but someone is home.
There's not much point in lighting, anyway. Illuminated or not, emptiness is still emptiness.
He is sitting on the floor, back against the wall. Watching the moon through his window. He isn't sitting on a chair, or a pillow, or a rug. He owns none of these things, and the floor isn't that cold, not really. There are worse things.
He owns one table; a cheap thing, that sits next to his futon on the floor. There are two objects on it, a clock and a phone, both of which are needed for work.
The clock says 3:43 AM in glaring red. The phone is dusty.
There are no notes by the phone. It is only used to summon him at late hours of the night to work for important cases. Personal calls just do not happen, and it's better that way. He tries to discourage attachment.
He receives no mail, and no letters. All holidays, including his birthday, go by unnoticed. On that thread, no one even knows when his birthday is. He makes no mention of it to anyone, and his files are restricted so no one can look it up without much effort.
He doesn't care. The time passes faster without those reminders. He would like the time to go even quicker, but he doesn't care enough to search for a way. Guilt alone is not a very strong thing to live for.
There is no music in this house. He does not own a CD player, or a radio. That is fine with him. He never got music growing up, and sees no reason to start listening, especially now. He sits and stares in the silence.
The walls are utterly bare, like the floor, a dull shade of off-white. If he looks long enough, everything blurs and he is nowhere at all.
There was a time when he would read whenever the opportunity arose. There are no books, now, though. He is tired of the stories.
The stories are nothing like life.
Bare walls, bare walls. Nothing to focus on. Remembering.
He had owned a plant, once. He had found it, near dead, next to the trashcan at the office, and spent months nursing it back to health.
That all came to nothing, though. It had abruptly died, after he had suffered one of his more vivid nightmares, and lost control of his powers. The poor unprotected plant had withered.
Nothing living entered that house again.
Days are routine. Get up, in the dawn light. Mechanically dress. Walk to work. They don't send him on missions anymore, so he files paperwork all day. Come home. Undress. He sits, alone on the floor, and thinks. Sometimes he gets to the mattress for sleep. Most of the time he just loses consciousness against the wall.
He thinks a lot. He thinks about the past. He thinks about his future. He thinks he is going crazy.
It doesn't scare him.
Each day blurs into the next, and the next, and the next…
Shinigami don't need to eat, so he doesn't bother. Shinigami don't even technically need to breathe. He tries to stop his breaths, sometimes, but he always starts again.
Years have passed. Everyone else has moved on. Now he is the eldest in the division, wishing he could bring himself to die again but never going on to the next plane.
His coworkers think that he is stone. Unfeeling. For every attempt they make at friendship, the old soul goes ice on them. They don't understand why he's still here. They wish he would move on, too.
But he won't.
Because he knows Tsuzuki is still out there, somewhere. And his partner, he cannot abandon. No matter how many centuries pass.
~~~*~~~
"And presenting… the amazing… the stupendous… Karin-chan!" Confetti falls to the ground around the scientist, and 003 dutifully claps.
The other occupants of the office eye the invention distrustfully.
"Ano… what is it?" Tsuzuki questions, and receives a glare. "Er… what is she, I meant…" he amends.
"Well," Watari begins, "she is my latest, and greatest, invention!" The scientist grins, and pats the little purple contraption proudly, "The MEGASHARPENER! There will be no more dull pencils, ever! Not with my Karin-chan here on the job."
"So, its-" –glare- "she's, sorry, a giant… purple… er, pencil sharpener?" Tsuzuki questions. It seems too… well, boring of an invention compared to Watari's normally quite colorful ones.
"For once, something useful to the office." Tatsumi praises, and Watari nearly glows, until- "Let's see if it actually works."
"Of course she'll work!" Watari says indignantly, "Yes you will, won't you Karin-chan?" he adds, patting the contraption again.
Tatsumi raises an eyebrow.
Watari grabs a dull pencil with a flourish, and sticks it in a little hole near the side. Smiling, he presses the purple button.
Whirr, goes the little machine. And the pencil is indeed sharpened quite nicely.
Unfortunately, no one quite notices the favorable result. They're distracted because, at the same instant, the contraption also lets out a blinding flash. There is a large cracking noise, like a whip, and when it is over, no one is looking at the pencil.
Tsuzuki is rubbing his eyes, "Watariiii… I should have expected that. Nothing's fun unless it explodes for you…"
Watari is divided between poking the contraption, and soothing his poor little owl. 003 does not like bright flashes.
Tsuzuki glances over at his partner, hoping to catch his eyes. He wants to look and see the boy's carefully hidden amusement. Hisoka really did enjoy the scientist's inventions, not that he would let it show.
The empath is not turned toward him, and only the back of his head is visible. Not even looking at the invention. That's odd. He's probably trying to fight a smile, Tsuzuki thinks with his own grin. He steps closer.
Hisoka turns, revealing eyes that are flat and blank. A jagged scar travels down his cheek in an angry line.
"Hisoka!" Tsuzuki knew how long it took a Shinigami to scar… what had happened? That scar had most definitely not been there earlier. Maybe Watari's invention was to blame for that … but no, it's definitely a scar, not fresh…
Tatsumi is giving Watari another reminder about what should and should not be brought into the main office, and Watari's protests about how pencil sharpeners, accidentally explosive or not, are technically allowed… that conversation had the amused attention of the rest of the room. No one but Tsuzuki was looking at the empath.
The curiously vacant green eyes focus on him. Widen. "Tsuzuki…" the hoarse voice comes, as though much unused.Since when did Hisoka start to sound so old?
Something is not right.
The boy seems to be frozen. Staring right into Tsuzuki's eyes, as if reading his soul, he's an empath, of course he is, there's something frantic about him.
The ice breaks. In a few steps, the empath has crossed the room. In another, thrown his arms around a bewildered Tsuzuki's waist. The embrace is frantic, grasping. Pale hands tangle in the older man's shirt.
"I found you…" whispering in that old, old voice again, "I knew I'd find you, I knew it…. If I waited, I k-knew it…" The voice breaks, and it seems like there should be tears, but his eyes are dry.
Tsuzuki is utterly confused, and immensely worried. He wraps his arms around the boy reflexively, gripping back almost as tightly, and meets his bewildered coworker's eyes.
--
AN: ^^; Ehe. He. He. Well, I should be working on Tribute… but I'm completely, utterly stuck on that one, sooo… This was spawned. As in all my fics, the angst will get better! I promise! I mean it! I'll fix it, never fear!
Sooo…. anyone have any ideas as to where I'm going with this? I'm wondering if I'm getting my point across clearly.
I know the first part has severe 'subject-verb-object' structure, but I left it like that to show the monotonous was the poor guy's living. It's intentional! ^^;