There are no windows, not in the gray walls or the gray door, and the bare bulb overhead blinds like the sun as he stares up at it. Alone in this narrow room, Ginji smiles. He's lying half on the grating set in the cement floor, the metal bars imprinting grooves into his back, but he's not quite able to roll over just yet. It hurts to breathe. Hurts more to cough, and the coppery saltiness on his tongue makes him nauseous, but still he smiles.
He doesn't know how they found him, but when Shido and Kazuki burst through that basement door, he had no time to be surprised. It was an unexpected chance, and he knew better than to hope for another. The gasoline had already been poured, rainbow pools spreading across the floor, and all his pleas to the monster's victims had gone unheard, their souls clenched in his iron fist. But so close to the monster, he could see the strain, the will imprisoning him slipping as the leader concentrated his mastery. He watched the monster tighten his hold, meeting each individual pair of eyes, calling their names.
It was a juggling act, requiring constant attention, and all it might take was a single lapse for the balls to tumble down and roll away. And Ginji had seen it before, that brief flinch when he had tried to strike, an instant before the monster's spell inflicted the pain on him instead. A single chance, and he marshaled all the energy he could wring from the building's power lines to throw at the monster.
He had been prepared for the hurt, but when the electric shock jarred him he lost the brightness of the fire, the sharp poison of the smoke. He only knew he had screamed from the rawness of his throat. But when he recovered enough to breathe, he heard those terrified, human wails, and saw the fury contorting the monster's face into something not at all human, and knew he had succeeded. Then the leader's hands closed around his arms like talons, dragged him stumbling through the concealed door. He remembers a brief glimpse of evening, dark sky and cool breeze, before something heavy slammed into the back of his head and dropped him into pitch black night.
He awoke here, behind solid cement walls and a reinforced metal door. Half-conscious, he heard the lock rattle over the pounding in his skull, but before he could drag himself to his feet, his captor entered, furious, raging about his lost opportunities, his stolen sacrifices. And there was only one target left on which to expend his rage.
But each of the monster's blows that fell on him, every curse the monster screamed, all of it was victory. The blood in Ginji's mouth tastes of life, the hundred lives that escaped the monster's hunger. All free, like the girl, a hundred successful retrievals...no one hired us, he can almost hear Ban complain, but he's never cared about the payment, any more than Ban actually does. And right now there's little else that matters.
He doesn't know for sure that Kazuki or Shido made it out in time, and that doubt aches worse than his head or his stomach, but he knows better than to think about it. Despair can hit harder than fists or boots, and wreak more damage. A fire couldn't take down two of the Volts' kings. Shido is too strong, Kazuki too swift.
He doesn't dwell on it, focuses instead on their victory. The monster isn't infallible, for all his plotting and manipulation. He holds that hope inside his heart, like cupping his hands around a candle--don't give it breath or else he might blow it out. There's no one now but him, and that's always...difficult. He's never been good at worrying about himself. Ban isn't the first person to tell him so. Though Ban is the loudest about it.
It's strange, how Ban will yell at him if ever he asks whether Ban is all right after a fight, but if he neglects to mention any injury took himself, Ban gets just as angry, even fully knowing how quickly Ginji can heal. And Ban always knows when he's hurt, even if he tries to pretend he isn't.
He wonders if Ban is worried now. He hopes not; he hopes Ban is still just mad at him for giving himself up. Really, there's no reason for Ban to be concerned. Those hundred escaped alive, and he's been hurt worse than this before. When Raitei fought Midou Ban, there had been that moment that he thought he might die--he had almost forgotten what that fear felt like. But he's not so afraid now. There's no reason for him to be. He isn't so badly hurt, and Ban is coming for him. And Kazuki and Shido must have survived.
Yet he still shivers, when he hears the lock clink again. Rolling over--it doesn't really hurt so much, and impatiently he blinks away the spots clouding his vision--he pushes himself against the wall, uses that leverage to shove himself to his knees. Not enough, though; he should brace himself to bowl the monster over and run, but his legs won't support him that far. And then the door swings open.
The monster has shed the red robes, and in these black pants and shirt he would pass for any regular man on the street. His face is calm, mask of humanity restored, but for the fathomless pits of his eyes. He stops just far enough in to shut the door, studies his captive. Ginji glares back, refusing to lower his eyes.
"I apologize for my previous fit of pique," the monster says at last, calmly. "It was only a passing frustration; in the long run it changes nothing. You're all I need. But then, there's really no harm done." His gaze flicks down to the grate. "Touch it," he says.
"What?"
"Put your hand there," the monster orders, patiently, but when Ginji tries to draw back instead, he sighs, raises his hand. Ginji's arm extends of its own accord, as if it were someone else's limb, reaches down as he watches it and presses his palm to the metal.
The monster is holding something, small and rectangular. His fingers move over it, and Ginji feels a current surge to life in the metal under his hand. Sparks pop around him, but none of it hurts. This electricity feels like it's supposed to, warm like spring rain and soothing as a healing salve. It floods him, washes away the pain as it enfolds him in a flickering embrace.
When it cuts off, abruptly, he almost cries out from the loss. Colors fade back into gray and black and cold eyes watching him. He feels empty, drained; there wasn't enough time for him to absorb most of it. But he no longer hurts. Closing his open mouth, he climbs to his feet, faces the monster.
"Impressive," his captor breathes. "Even better than I had...you see, of course, what you felt before is the pain of this body, not your own. Your own is as strong as ever."
"Why did you..."
"You must be healthy," the monster says. "Even if it's you--you must be whole, if you're to survive long enough for what I need. Before, I drew on those souls to heal this body, but it took time. With you it will be far more efficient." He smiles, his lips pressed pale against his teeth. "I thought I'd have to wait, but you're even more than what I expected. Rest now, Amano-kun. I'll begin in the morning, and you should be ready for it."
Ginji lunges for him, but the monster is quick, and he's still dizzy. The door slams shut and he rams up against it, pounds his fist once uselessly against the steel.
The light bulb above flicks off, leaving him in complete darkness.
Shido thinks it might be well enough that he can't see Juubei's eyes.
Emishi brought Kakei Juubei to the hospital, only a few minutes after Shido arrived himself at the ICU's waiting room. Emishi stayed just long enough to hear that the doctors had nothing yet to say about Kazuki's condition one way or another, and then disappeared, ostensibly to find something for supper. Half an hour later he has yet to return.
There are times a jester is needed as much as a doctor, that laughter can heal as well as any medicine. But Juubei's guilt is like another entity in the room, a palpable mass, for all he sits straight upright in the plastic chair, his shoulders unbowed. He waits quietly, asking no questions, neither of the nurses nor Shido, and the visor hiding half his face makes his expression unreadable. And yet his silent mourning is deafening as a funeral wail.
Shido wonders if he heard the emergency bulletin that alerted Makubex to the situation, according to Emishi, or if Juubei knew the moment it happened, that again he had failed in his sworn duty of protection.
The ICU doors swing open to admit yet another nurse. This time Shido pushes off the wall he's leaning against, touches her arm to get her attention. "Has there been anything?"
She shakes her head. "Not yet. I'm sorry, Fuyuki-san." Her dark eyes travel up and down his figure, darting from his soot-stained vest to the red scratches and burns on his arms. "Are you sure you shouldn't be looked at yourself--"
"I'm fine," Shido tells her, as he already insisted when first he arrived at the hospital. "If there's anything you can tell us--"
Her expression softens. "Fuchoin-san's still in surgery. If anything happens, you and your friend will know. I promise."
As her heels click away on the tile, Juubei asks, "Beastmaster, were you injured?"
His visored head is angled up toward Shido. "Barely," Shido says. There aren't any animals immune to fire, but the intimation of a turtle's shell had given him some protection, so that he had managed to reach Kazuki before the entire burning roof caved in, and dragged him out of the flames. But not soon enough.
Juubei is silent for a moment, then says, "I apologize. I had not thought to ask before. If you're wounded, you should be attended."
"It can wait." He should get the worst of it bandaged. Madoka wouldn't see it, but her staff might chance to comment, and she would worry.
He wants to call her. Something about that fire, the memory of that heat and smoke, makes him want to hear her voice. But she has a concert in Kyoto in a couple days, and it wouldn't do to add to that stress. At least not until he has something definite to tell her. She knows Kazuki, too.
And Ginji, of course. She knows Ginji better, but he doesn't want to tell her any of what he saw. Not until he's had a chance to do something about it. If he could get Kazuki out of that fire, to say nothing of those hundred others--are they still standing there, watching the building burn? The last he saw, rescue workers were distributing blankets, leading them all off the street. Not outward injuries, in shock, he heard the helpers pronounce, but Shido recalls their bizarre behavior inside and doubts it's anything so simple.
His hair prickles at the memory. Something wrong, in that place, like all the animals had told him. Something terribly wrong, and Ginji had been in its midst. That man--was it truly a man at all?--in red, holding him... But if Shido made it out, Ginji must have. He's too strong not to have.
The walls are too close here. Though he and Juubei are presently the only ones in this area, Shido can't hear even a mouse's scurrying over the hum of equipment and conversations, the constant hurried footsteps just outside the doors. He paces to the other end of the room, turns, and has almost completed a circuit when the outer door slams aside more forcefully than its pneumatic hinge should allow, and Midou Ban stalks in.
Shido's eyes narrow, his blood rising like it always does with this man, but there's something different tonight. The snake bastard's normal arrogant swagger is contained, shortened to quick clipped strides, and his eyes are hidden behind his dark lenses. "What are you doing here, monkey trainer?" he demands, tight and angry, but not his usual scathing temper.
'He was really upset,' Natsumi had said at the HonkyTonk, and Shido better understands her nervousness now. The girl hasn't seen much of Midou's serpent side, that cold-blooded nature he hides with hot-headed displays of irritation.
But snakes are only animals, after all, and Shido knows their language as well as any other. "What are you doing here, Midou?" he asks in turn.
Midou's head turns to take in Juubei, standing now, then back to Shido, and quick comprehension flashes across his face. "That damn thread spool," he says. "He was the casualty they reported. What's the prognosis?"
"We haven't yet heard." Juubei's deep voice is misleadingly calm.
Shido watches Midou's hand clench into a fist, open slowly as if he's forcing the fingers to uncurl. "You goddamn morons. You should've stayed out of this. It's our job."
"Stayed out of what?" Shido demands. "What did you get Ginji into, you snake bastard? He was--"
"You saw him?" Midou doesn't move save for his blue eyes flicking to Shido's, but the Beastmaster can't shake the impression that he's suddenly been caught, invisibly, in a python's stranglehold. "Ginji was there?"
"Him and a hundred others, and the bastard in red who started the fire," Shido tells him. "And if we hadn't been there none of them might've made it out."
"Dammit. Dammit. I should've thought of that. He got what he wanted, he got Ginji, he wouldn't need..." Midou's muttering trails off.
"The Raitei was there?" Juubei asks.
"Ginji was there," Shido says, "but after the fire was started...we didn't see what happened to him, Midou." And for some reason that's as hard to say as it was to confirm Kazuki's condition to Juubei. "Ginji helped us save them, but then--"
"He's still alive." Midou sounds too flat for that to be anything more than absolute fact. "That bastard wanted him too badly. But who knows where he's been taken now."
"Who?" Juubei's calm is fracturing under the pressure of his guilt and grief. "Who's responsible for this? What has happened to the Raitei?"
Midou moves like a striking cobra, too fast to be seen. He's standing before Shido, and then he has Juubei shoved against the wall, arm pressed to the larger man's throat. His eyes are flat as a snake's, blue divided by black slits. "Amano Ginji. How stupid are you? His name's Amano Ginji, samurai boy."
"Midou!" Shido goes to pull him off Juubei, but Midou twists away, a fluid turning that ends with him crouched in a battle stance. For a moment Shido thinks he might attack, braces himself. In these confines there's little room to dodge.
Three long needles glitter in Juubei's hand, spread between his fingers. The noise of the hospital around them is muted, forgotten as their focus narrows to the scope of a fight. The look in Midou's eyes is strange. Shido's used to the menace of his fighting genius, but this is different, not as easily read as his serpent moods, more than anger or battle lust. Alarming, because it makes him that much harder to predict, and Midou is dangerous enough as it is.
Seconds tick by with all of them motionless, posed like stalking tigers, and then the ICU door clatters opens and another nurse rushes in. She's about to speak, but her jaw clicks shut as she sees their still tableau, then parts again. "Fuyuki-san, I'm..."
Not even sure what she's preventing, she steps forward between him and Midou, and for an instant Shido almost believes she'll be struck. But then Midou straightens, lowers his arm, and that vicious aura slides off him like shed skin. "You've got news about him?" he asks, shortly.
The nurse glances to him, then looks to Shido. "Fuchoin-san is still in surgery, but one of the doctors will be out shortly to speak with you." She gives him a small, encouraging smile. "I think it might be good news." She turns to Juubei, whose needles have returned to their concealed sheath. "You're Kakei Juubei-san?"
He nods, and her smile grows a little. "I don't want to get your hopes up too soon, but Fuchoin-san woke a little when he was being sedated, and I heard him ask for you. I'm sure of it."
Juubei nods again. "Thank you," he says gravely, and it probably sounds like unfeeling courtesy to the nurse, who wouldn't know his baritone well enough to hear its faint tremor.
"The doctor will be with you in a little while," she says, and disappears back through the door.
The silence in her wake is just as profound as before her arrival, but not so threatening. Midou's hands are in his pockets, and his slouch should be casual, but when Shido looks him in the eyes he still sees that aspect he can't identify. "Midou..."
"Yeah." He knows better than to expect an apology, but there's something like remorse in Midou's soft, "This isn't the place for that." He runs his hand through his hair, disturbing the drooping dark spikes. "The thread spool was hurt bad, then."
Shido looks at Juubei, but answers honestly. "Very badly."
"He'll make it, samurai boy," Midou says, abruptly. "That guy's strong." He looks at Shido, and the suddenly piercing study of his scrapes and burns makes Shido uncomfortable, but Midou just shakes his head. "You too, huh, monkey trainer? You stupid assholes. It was none of your damn business."
"We were there looking for you and Ginji," Shido growls. "What the hell happened, Midou? Who was that man?"
"I've got better things to do than this." The snake bastard starts to turn away, but Shido grabs his shoulder, wrenches him around.
He thinks he might have made a bad mistake when Midou's hand closes over his wrist and twists back his arm. That steel grip tightens agonizingly over the burns, and even this close Shido still can't quite recognize that emotion flattening those serpent eyes. He realizes his bones could be crushed, and then Midou's clenched jaw works and he lets go, shoves Shido away.
"Midou." Juubei is at Shido's side, steadying him with an impersonal hand on his arm, his face turned toward the blue-eyed bastard. "Was Kazuki injured for nothing? What has happened to Amano Ginji?"
"I'm getting him back." It's no more than a hiss. "That bastard demon won't--"
"Demon?" Shido repeats. "You mean..."
"I mean demon." Midou's laugh is grating. "No human being, monkey trainer, and not one of your beasts either. Demon, from hell, from those pits that are deeper than this world goes. That's what was using those people. We didn't know what we were up against, and he got Ginji. Ginji surrendered to him, didn't think he had a choice."
Shido saw all kinds of madness in Mugenjou, from the imbalances of disease to psychotic retreats from horrific reality. But whatever he sees in Midou's eyes now isn't insanity. And Shido's world is not the safe, rational universe that so many humans place their trust in. The terror of all the animals makes more sense now. "Midou, what do you know about demons?" he asks, urgently. If anyone would know it would be this man. "Have you fought them before? Do you know how?"
Midou stares at him for a moment, as if incredulous that he could be so easily believed. "I'm looking into it. There's a man--I've got sources."
All Shido can think of is the blank faces of the people, and Ginji's scream. "How do you fight something like that?"
"What kind of coward are you, monkey trainer?" Midou hisses. "It's a monster, but it's not invincible. I'll destroy this thing."
"Tell us how," Juubei says. "We have our own score to settle."
Midou looks to him. "Where's your twin, samurai boy? I thought the thread spool had two of you now."
"Uryuu stands in my place at Makubex's side, so that I may be here. But he'll also want this battle."
"It isn't your fight," Midou begins, but is interrupted by the reappearance of the nurse.
"Kakei-san, the doctor is ready to see you, if you'll come with me. Fuyuki-san, you can as well. And you, sir?..."
"I can't," Midou says. "I've gotta go back--"
"I'll come with you," Shido says. Kazuki has Juubei, and there's nothing he can do for either of them. And Ginji needs him.
"You'll be no help, Beastmaster," Midou hisses. "This isn't a job for your pets. Just stay here."
"You expect me to stand here and do nothing, snake bastard? If you think I'd just let you have this fight--" Shido stops when Midou turns back, momentarily silenced by what he sees.
"It's not a fight. Not yet," Midou says. "First I have to know what I'm up against. What we're up against. So unless you're a demon expert, monkey trainer, there's not a damn thing you can do for him yet." He pulls out his celphone, punches a few buttons to turn it on. "Call me when you've heard how long it's going to take the thread spool to get out of here. You've got my number?"
"Midou."
At the door Midou pauses. "Don't look so pathetic, monkey trainer. Ginji...he's not going to be taken down by some damn demon."
Midou's insulting arrogance should be as vexing as always, but it rings oddly hollow. Odd, too, that its uncertainty makes him uncertain. "No," Shido says cautiously. He feels as if he's walking through a pit of vipers, placing every step with care. "Of course not..."
Their eyes meet, only for a second before Midou turns away, but that's long enough for Shido to finally recognize what is there. He's not surprised he didn't understand it right away. In any animal's eyes he would have immediately known it for what it was, had witnessed it too many times already today.
But he's never really seen Midou afraid before. And as he follows the doctor and Juubei, Shido thinks that he would as soon never see it again, if this is the price it takes to shake the serpent's conceit.
to be continued...
No, I haven't forgotten this - have been distracted of late, but I didn't mean to leave everyone in suspense for this long. Glad folks are enjoying this, thanks much for the reviews! Sanada - that's a great compliment, that I got you into GB ^^ goldfish - I usually prefer things to be in the standard past tense, but present tense has an immediacy that lends itself to the pacing of certain stories. It's not exactly a deliberate choice, but rather how a story tells itself in my mind - in the case of Darkness Visible, it started in present tense, and keeping it that way helps me stay in the mood. I'm glad to know it works for you; I worry sometimes that it might be awkward, but it would be even more awkward for me to force it otherwise...