A/N: Refs to ch: 54, 65, 80, 87.
I do not own or profit from any of what Kazue Kato has created.
Sit. Pace. Stand. Wait.
they'd told him to wait how the fuck could they expect him to just sit like a good boy and wait
Pace. Sit. Pace. Vomit.
he'd never get rid of the taste no matter how much he would spit and wash and
Wait.
Wait.
Wait for the taste of blood to bend him over the hospital toilet again.
Dog bite, they'd said when they rushed into the emergency department. Dog bite. The nurses had seen the smears of blood he'd tried to wipe from his face, he was sure, but none had said anything.
Of course they hadn't. Anybody could tell those bites didn't come from a human.
Stand. Pace. Wait.
He couldn't tell in which order things happened. Sharp snapshots had replayed in his head so many times they seemed to blur together in a dream. All he knew was he would never forget the taste.
Was he injured? No. His relation to the injured? Friend, he thought he'd replied, but he couldn't quite remember.
some fucking friend couldn't remember it all went black the taste exploded and the burning
Was she a student at the Academy? No. Was there somebody to contact? Yes - mother and brother, though he only knew how to get in touch with the latter.
Pace. Sit. Wait. Quiver.
Shizuku would tear him to pieces.
pieces between his teeth soft sweet pieces peeled them away get them away and
Stand. Rush.
When he vomited again – fourth time? fifth? – his cramping gut mustered no more than strings of saliva and acid. There was nothing left to throw up, nothing left inside, nothing… nothing…
Shiro fumbled with the tap, fingers numb and trembling with exhaustion. He washed his mouth, washed his hands, face; poured water down his clammy back. Shuddered. How long had it been…? Emergency surgery should be quick, right? It sounded like something that should go quick. When things needed to be fixed quickly. Stitched back together. Repairing the damage done.
why don't you stop lying to yourself
Shiro hated masks. Hated how people pretended to be something they weren't. Because they changed. They became the lie, decaying behind a mask that merged with their skin and grew into the bone underneath. Like a tumour. Growing into you. Eating you. Disintegrating you and replacing you.
And you wouldn't even notice. Rapid change, slow change – those, you'll notice. But not change within. You don't notice the subtle lies you echo inside your head to smother the voice of truth. Not until the mask is ripped off your face, skin and all.
He hated masks, and still he'd worn them. Without noticing, without thinking – masks painted with the lie that he could have the same life as everyone else. That he was still the same as everyone else.
He was a vessel for Satan. How the fuck could he ever hope to be like everyone else?
and look what that hope had done what he had done no matter how many warnings he refused to
It went black again. Thick, swathing black brought it all back to him: Kasumi's wide eyes, cataracts of blood washing over her fingers, the taste, the taste-
"Screwed up pretty bad, did ya? Some boyfriend ya make fufufu~ But, it's not like it's gonna matter in the long run, is it? You'll find someone new. You always do. 'Cause they never really matter, do they~?"
Shut up. Shut up shut up just go away and shut up…!
"Lose one girl, find a new one. Lose some friends, find new ones. As soon as things stop being fun and games ya turn tail and run, no strings attached - 'cause that's what they're for, your precious little friends. They're your entertainment."
Shut up!
"They're your distractions."
"You're lying", he hissed, scrambling within himself to find support for his claim.
"They're there to make ya forget how lonely ya feel."
"I love her!"
"Do ya~?" it snickered gleefully. "Or do ya love how she makes ya feel? Warm, happy, wanted – quite different from the orphanage where ya were raised, heeh~? That's what ya love, little hypocrite. And ya could get that from anybody."
"I love her!"
Shiro broke through the surface of the darkness, gasping for breath in a corridor he couldn't place. Still in the hospital: good. Nobody around: even better. Be the master of your emotion, be the master of your darkness – god, it was like swimming upstream in a mountain torrent, swept up and carried away; guilt, panic, shame, despair…
He fumbled his way along the concrete wall, into the blinding, sterile light of a larger corridor hoping to weaken the demon's hold somewhat. It worked, but it was a quick fix. He managed to shut it out, while at the same time shutting himself in with an inferno of emotion he couldn't bring under control. Idiot. As dumb as Shizuku joked he was and then some. A stupid fucking idiot that-
"What am I whining about?" Cold. So cold it froze the angst to crisp, sharp-edged icicles in his chest. "I'm not the one lying in there with my face torn to shreds."
Selfish. Just like his dear old father; a selfish coward that put his own goddamn comfort before the welfare of people he claimed he loved. Keep a crack in the shielding, 'cause that was so bloody much more comfortable – never mind it risked demons slipping in, he just wanted to feel that sweet drug of emotion fill him. Him. Him, him, him – always him, Fujimoto Shiro; the orphan that didn't want to be close and didn't want to be alone, the daredevil that took stupid fuck-ass risks for his precious kicks…!
"It should've been me." He took the risks, he should pay the price when they backfired! "It should've been me, dammit!"
Wait. Walk.
Walk anywhere, walk nowhere. Just walk and hope that he couldn't keep up. That he'd fall behind and let his better self move on.
Shiro didn't meet the eyes of the nurses he passed in the white corridors, but he felt them. As if the fallen mask had left his face a raw, skinless horror that everyone saw but pretended not to see. Selfish, unspeakable, tainted: a vessel befitting Satan.
He sought the shadows of the echoing hallways, hurried his feet through oceans of lamplight as if it could reveal his thoughts aloud if he stayed too long. It all looked the same, everywhere. White corridors spawning endless clones that ran the same crooked spirals as his thoughts. He couldn't find the doors to the surgery room, couldn't find the doors he'd arrived through, couldn't find-
"I don't even know what I'm trying to find. I don't know what I'm doing."
Walking. Manically walking, as if he were a wind-up toy whose heart would stop if he did. The empty waiting room welcomed him with nondescript paintings and worn couches with covers that gained an unpleasant hue of flesh pink in the stuffy light.
Shiro couldn't sit down anyway. Move, move, had to move. Restlessness churned in his gut, chased his gaze this-way-and-that across the room – bookshelf with old magazines, cup of dried-up ballpoint pens for those with time and peace of mind to solve crosswords, children's corner, long-leafed pot plants in the windows, brochures on vaccination info
thoughts racing god they didn't stop rushed around madly like caged birds looking for a way out when there wasn't
He tried to stop something, just something – his feet, his thoughts, his neurotic eyes – but it all kept moving, kept
so many things he wouldn't have done if he'd only stopped to think if he'd only listened tonight would never have happened if
*dun*
Silence.
Bliss… silence… drowning his thoughts in the wrenching pain of a dislocated knuckle.
Shiro leaned against the wall he'd punched, shrouded in the private darkness behind his closed eyelids. His breath hissed in and out between clenched teeth. Right hand. Index finger. Of course. His idiot brain had never thought before it acted, why would it start now?
Doctor training kicked in, and Shiro gratefully latched onto the practical protocol that rolled like cinema through his mind. Clear, methodical thoughts. Drilled-in procedure that he could find respite in. First, check where the phalanx bone was- nngh, okay, okay; it had dislocated entirely and stuck on the side of the metacarpal bone. So, first to disconnect it…
Shiro drew a breath, placed his left hand fingers around the knuckle, and squeezed hard.
"Bloody fucking shit…!" Electric current shot through his bones, cracking flesh and muscle…! He gasped at the sickening feeling of things moving where things should not move. "Okay… okay…" Feel the joint again, try to find the – nghah! – find the end of the phalanx. It wasn't in position yet, fuck it all. One more go, one more… "Ngh-haaaanrrrh!" Capillaries caught fire and painted forks of thunder over his closed eyelids. Was it-? Yes, it was in position. Good.
Shiro opened his eyes a sliver and inspected his right hand. The finger was where it should be, but longer than it should be. It hadn't popped back into its socket yet. Gingerly, he felt the row of knuckles, then grimaced as he forced his fingers down into a ninety-degree angle.
"One…" He placed the backs of his fingers flat against the wall. "Two…" He extended his arm in a right angle against the surface. "Three." Drew a breath: and pushed.
He might have whimpered, he wasn't sure. When the pain subsided, he tried bending and straightening his fingers. The index finger felt sore and unsteady, but it was in place. Nothing seemed fractured, as far as he could tell. The tendons would be sore: that was about it. Splint it and it would be back to normal in a couple of weeks.
Back to normal…
With the task completed, his calm, practical reasoning fell apart once more. Slowly. Inevitably. Bridges burning with flame he couldn't extinguish.
Back to normal. Another lie he should stop telling himself.
Shiro waded through a slow-motion haze of disconnected impressions; vacuum-wrapped emotions; thoughts half decayed; he could've walked off the edge of the world, and he wouldn't even have noticed. Vacant eyes stared blindly through reality, through the mirage lies he'd anchored his hopes to and into the hollow truth in his heart; into his own eyes…
The low hum of the vending machine lulled him back to consciousness, back through the eyes of the reflection that stared at him inside the glass.
eyes like a demon
He hadn't understood it before, what Midori had meant when she said that. But there they were. Pupils narrowed down to arrow tips; lethal, glaring black holes in brown irises that had always shifted towards red, but not this much. Not this bright. These were predator eyes. Demon eyes.
There is no grey zone, the reflection whispered through the buzzing of the cooling system. There is black and there is white, and no room for you to doubt which side you're on anymore.
No grey zones of doubt. No haven for lies to feed his precious delusions.
And slowly… Fujimoto Shiro, the infamous daredevil of True Cross Academy… sagged against the smooth, cold glass… and slid down on the floor.