This took way longer than expected I am so sorry. But as I said, I do not plan to abandon this fic. It just might take me a while to complete it. But the next chapter is back to the present timeline which I know many of you were waiting for. I will try to have the update up faster than this but I can't promise anything. My life has been pretty hectic lately and it doesn't help having to battle depression and anxiety on top of it all...

But anyway, I hope you enjoy the chapter and don't forget to review if you haven't already! That shit cheers me up immensely.

Thank you all so much for reading and being patient!

…~-~...

Izaya woke up shivering. The sudden cold confused him. Hadn't he been warm in the bath a moment ago? Gradually he became more aware of his position, his exhausted mind catching up with reality.

"Ah," the small sound left his lips when everything finally made sense.

He had fallen asleep in the tub and the cooling water had taken the little body heat he had from him.

With a great deal of effort, Izaya tried to stand up, the now cold water brushing up against his skin as he moved. His joints were stiff as he finally stood and pulled himself out of the tub. Quickly reaching for his towel, Izaya wrapped himself tightly in it as he shivered again.

Izaya wanted nothing more than to dry off and get into some warm clothes, however his reflection in the mirror stopped him once more. He needed to bandage his injuries first. At least the new ones. He wasn't bleeding anymore which made things a little easier to examine and clean with his well-stocked first aid kit; however, the wounds on his back that had reopened slightly during his escape were impossible to reach on his own. Examining them in the mirror as if they were not part of his own body, Izaya decided to leave them as they were. Eventually, when they healed more, he could try to remove the makeshift sutures that Jiro had done.

With the bandages in place Izaya slipped out of the bathroom and into his bedroom. It felt strange to have that kind of freedom, but Izaya did the best he could to shake that feeling off for now.

A pair of black sweatpants, a grey hoodie, and the warmest socks he could find was what Izaya had chosen to wear. With clean, warm clothes, Izaya located his laptop and spare cell phone and brought them back into his bedroom. Locking the door behind him, Izaya wiped the dust off of the electronics before moving to his bed and shaking the thin layer of dust off of his comforter.

It felt surreal knowing that he had been away long enough for dust to begin to build up, but once again, Izaya ignored the feeling in an effort to keep himself composed.

Shivering once more, Izaya slipped under the blankets and propped himself up with pillows. He wanted to be warm, but he didn't want to fall asleep just yet. He had to take care of some business first.

Izaya paid his bills with a small amount of his emergency fund and began to catch up with some of the recent news. When he found there was nothing out of the ordinary, Izaya moved on.

Using his various contacts and his Web of information, Izaya was able to dig up a few important pieces of information about his captor. Kimura Jiro was, indeed, the man's real name; however it might as well have been fake. There was nothing on the man he hadn't found before the meeting, so Izaya expanded his search.

After 4 hours, Izaya realized why Jiro had chosen to provide his real name. Under that name, he had a clean slate, and the information was all easily verified to be true. His aliases however, were a different story. He had 3 of them. After exhausting his information sources of everything he could dig up, Izaya found that Jiro's 3 aliases held all of his crimes. After all, dealers in the sex trade, drug trade, and child pornography industry didn't care to verify your information. Each alias was involved in a different business while in the surface, Jiro worked and seemed a regular guy. Izaya dug deeper into each name. He was good at covering his tracks. Very good. The only true connection the aliases had in common with Jiro was his looks, meaning that although Izaya knew they were all the same person, there wasn't enough evidence to bring to the police. Except one. A photograph he had been able to dig up. It was slightly blurry, probably taken without his knowledge, but it showed his face interacting with a nude child "model".

All it took was to leak the info to the police via another connection along with some information including his name. It wasn't a permanent solution, but it would put his mind at ease knowing that man was being closely guarded in a prison cell.

Now all Izaya had to do was wait.

But from a safer location might be a better idea.

Reluctant to leave the warm spot he had made in his bed over the past few hours, Izaya decided his safety was more important than taking a nap. He quickly booked a hotel for a week, changed into something more presentable, and packed a bag of essentials.

Traveling during the daytime felt much different than his escape the previous night.

It was the light that hit him first. He was seeing sunlight for the first time in thirty-seven days. The curtains were closed in his apartment and Izaya hadn't even thought to open them while he scoured the Internet for information.

It was bright. Too bright. Izaya flipped his hood up to protect his sensitive eyes. As much as he wanted to enjoy being able to see the light, it was giving him a headache.

He walked for five minutes until he was forced to step into an alley and call a taxi.

It had gotten to be too much. The people he normally loved to be around were suddenly intimidating. There were so many of them. They packed the streets causing them to occasionally brush up against Izaya, startling him for a moment every time he felt the touch of another person.

In the back of his mind he knew Jiro could very easily be hiding in this crowd, watching him. He had been hypervigilant, trying to watch his own back to be sure no one was following him. Finally the paranoia had become too much, forcing him to have to slip to the side of the street and call a taxi. His hands were shaking in his coat pockets where his right hand was wrapped tightly around his spare knife, ready to fight at a moment's notice.

But the fight never came.

A few hours later Izaya was tucked between the sheets of a large bed in a luxury hotel with the best security he could find.

Behind a locked door Izaya had collapsed into the soft bed, exhausted beyond anything he had felt before. Finally, Izaya got the sleep he desperately needed.

When he woke again, it was 5PM. He wasn't awake because he had gotten enough rest, he had woken because if the pain in his stomach, reminding him he hadn't eaten in quite a while and demanding food was more important than sleep.

It was astonishing how everyday routines became so foreign to Izaya in such a short amount of time. The fact that he could eat what and when he chose was something he realized he had taken for granted all his life. As he scanned the room service menu, Izaya's mouth began to water at the thought of eating real food, not some drugged slop that was given the name "rice porridge".

As tempting as it was to simply order everything on the menu, Izaya's logical side knew he would have to take it slow to allow his body the time to adjust to eating real food again. So he opted to order a bowl of chicken udon and water.

The food arrived promptly and the scent began to fill the room as Izaya attempted to control himself and eat slow. The first bite nearly ruined his control.

It was perfect. Absolutely delicious. The moment the food hit his stomach, tears formed in his eyes and began falling steadily. He had held it together until this point, Refusing to show his own pain to himself. But the taste of good, real food pushed him over the edge. The tears continued to fall down to the last bite of udon. When he was finished, he filled a glass of cold, clean tasting water and downed the entire glass in one go.

Izaya set his plates on the nightstand and collapsed back into the bed. The tears wouldn't stop. He couldn't make them stop.

Curled up under the soft blankets, Izaya continued to cry even as sleep finally took him once again, tears falling intermittently throughout his sleep.

…~-~...

Everyday life was difficult for the next few months. His physical injuries were healed, however he was having lasting psychological symptoms. Nightmares were the main problem. Nightmares which seemed to continue even after he woke. Izaya despised those brief moments where nothing and everything felt real at the same time.

Sometimes he wondered if his freedom was real, or if he was going to wake up in that dark room again, arms and legs tied up and neck chained to the wall.

Yet out of everything that felt strange and foreign to Izaya, the biggest adjustment was his move away from Ikebukuro. He hadn't gone far, but the change of scenery in his new loft in Shinjuku had taken a bit of time to become a place he could call home. He imagined Shizuo was thrilled to have him doing most of his business outside Ikebukuro, but every once in a while, he ventured back into the district in which he was born and raised both for work, and because the people in Ikebukuro were by far the most interesting in Tokyo.

These first few months of freedom had other trials, though. Izaya began to feel something he had never felt before when interacting with clients; anxiety. He knew Jiro was now behind bars. The evidence he had leaked was enough to keep him out of the way for a few years while Izaya decided what to do with him. However meeting new clients was becoming a taxing experience.

Izaya tended to do more work for familiar clients, often unwilling to take the risk to see anyone new and unknown. He didn't want to make the same mistakes he made with Jiro, however this quickly led to avoidance of new clients all together until finally, Izaya grew fed up with himself and decided to give himself a push back into the underworld. He began taking more clients again, though not without multiple thorough background checks and a meeting place of his own choosing, which was usually a public space where it would be unwise to pull any weapons.

A few more months passed and the nightmares had yet to go away. There had even been a few times when the nightmares were accompanied by a horrible feeling of dread and fear that left him shaking and unable to think or breathe properly. Izaya finally accepted that those moments were likely some kind of anxiety attack.

He had expected these symptoms, along with a few other undesirable feelings to disappear with time. However, while they had become fewer and farther between, they would not completely leave him alone.

It was frustrating. All rational thought couldn't keep him from experiencing these moments of weakness even if he knew he was safe. He had been avoiding seeing a doctor or psychologist because he knew what they would say. He had studied psychology. He knew what was probably wrong yet he couldn't accept it as fact. It wasn't until the first true flashback that had left him confused, drained, and an emotional wreck that he finally decided to confirm his suspicions. But not with a doctor. No, he wouldn't explain this to anyone. He had books on how the mind works. Tons of them. He didn't need anyone to diagnose what he already felt deep down past all of the denial and irrational anger.

Yet at the same time he didn't want to believe it until he was given the hard facts. With a book in his hands, Izaya began to read. When he realized his symptoms matched with each line he read, he could feel himself slip. When his grip was so tight that it tore the paper halfway down the page Izaya put the book down.

He thought he was strong.

At least stronger than this…

Perhaps strong enough not to end up like this.

But there was no denying the evidence thrown in front of his face. It had been over 6 months since he had escaped and the symptoms remained. At some point Izaya would have to admit to himself that he might have to spend the rest of his life dealing with the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.