In Your Eyes
It was fortunate that he never had to worry about his eyes giving him away. It was a strange perk; one he clung to when he suffered his occasional moments of dissociation. And he often goaded Togusa on the subject – that his face was an open book to read, often in the most inappropriate of times. To think of it, Batou often teased Togusa of everything about him that was still real and human. Soft. Malleable. Expressive.
But Togasa hadn't seen what Batou had seen. He hadn't been trained to kill and set loose in the jungle. The terrible, paradoxical beauty of the sun filtering through the canopy of ancient trees, sparkling the dew that had collected on the haphazardly sprawled bodies. An entire village dead. Tortured and dead, red, red blood everywhere, on his own hands… had he been there? Had he done it?
In those moments, the brief and excruciating flashbacks that kept the horror fresh and unhealed in his subconscious, he was supremely thankful that his eyes no longer had the ability to register terror or emit tears. He simply settled his lips together and used his borrowed skin to form a sheltering mask until the moment had passed. It fooled everyone; no one the wiser to his dark memories.
Except one. And for that reason, among many others, he watched over her, always looking for a bullet to jump in front of that might have her name on it. She didn't need his eyes to tell her what he was thinking. She had seen what he saw. She knew what lay hidden, unabsolved, in the name of duty. And she felt, as he did, the panicky scrabble to cling to even a single shred of the softness of what once was and never would be again.
She didn't need his protection and they both knew it. Yet she allowed it, as though to say she understood. And she pretended not to notice when he studied her a bit too long. His eyes didn't give him away – and neither did she.