A very introspective chapter, and I suppose this is what you'd call a slow build.
I used the chatrooms that appear so often in canon here, but Doc Manager being what it is, of course the spacing disappeared - never to return. This crap all works on AO3, I swear, but put it on FF and - just no.
Anyway, you'll see as you're reading, but I interrupted the chat twice with more third person narration. That, I had to just stick in brackets because anything else would've just been too awkward. I know, the whole chat thing looks super awkward on here, but there doesn't seem to be much for me to do to fix it.
People who yearned to forget the past were fools. Trying to forget was the same as trying to destroy a part of oneself. If you already felt that you'd lost a lot, what good could losing more possibly do you? Would there be anything left if all the important and painful things disappeared? To Izaya, it seemed like the perfect way to let the cracks turn into fragmented bits and pieces. Like the perfect way to become permanently lost by burning what was left of the map, by throwing the compass into the seething waves below.
Izaya, who had always been ready to play the philosopher when it suited him, had passed an entire year thinking along these and other lines, wrestling with himself and with a grief that defied all reason. He'd spent a lot of time telling himself things like this, because it seemed that the more he clung to the past – and then, the more he ran from it – the more lost he became. He clearly remembered what he had once been like, but he couldn't seem to fit back into that mold.
And so he was an actor now more than ever. Now, literally everything he did was an act – the excitement, the apathy, the job he so doggedly threw himself back into. Now, he was no longer just acting in front of everyone else; he was acting to fool himself, as well. And he was failing daily.
He fully understood the purpose behind Shizuo's final requests, of course. The idiot had wanted him to live at least as happily as he had before. He'd thought that forgetting would be the best way for Izaya to do that, but, Izaya decided, he should have known better. Shizuo had forgotten once, too, and had it helped him any in the end? He'd fallen in love because of it, maybe, but he'd still died and he'd still worried about all the same things as before. He'd had more to worry about, hadn't he?
So, the informant instead tried in his own way to get back on his feet. He didn't cry, not once, and he did leave Ikebukuro – for a few months, at least, until he felt that familiar attraction urging him to return. It was like he was being called by Shizuo's ghost. He might have hoped, somewhere in the back of his mind, that he'd come across the blonde again someday. They'd fight, Shizuo chasing Izaya, shouting at him and dodging his throwing knives and maybe being maneuvered unwittingly into the path of a truck. Like always.
Or maybe they'd break that pattern and do something other than fight. Eat together, sleep together, live together. Shizuo would be endlessly full of surprises, and Izaya would be freed from the oppressive boredom that had taken hold of him since the blonde's death.
He knew he was messed up for wanting to see that old routine broken again. He wanted his old old life back, yet still he missed the new one that he hadn't had a chance to experiment with. He really was lost.
It wasn't fair. Everyone else had managed to move on – Tom, Celty and Shinra, even Kasuka. They were still grieving, too, and Izaya could see that because he was adept at human observation. He could read the same emotions that he was feeling in each and every one of them. Hell, he saw it in Dotachin and in Simon and in just about every other random human who had ever known Shizuo for even the shortest stretch of time. Those who hadn't been close to him didn't keep the look for long, of course, but they, too, still felt the occasional sting of Shizuo's absence.
Yet Izaya could also see that none of those people were wandering astray. They were struggling a little, sure, but they knew what they had to do, every one of them, and they were doing it. There was purpose in their actions, while in Izaya's there was nothing but a desperate misery and silent cries for relief.
Tom got himself a new bodyguard – not nearly as effective, of course, and Izaya was sure that he'd probably wind up looking for a replacement at some point soon. Kasuka took a brief break from acting, but when he came back it was to a wave of support from fans who continued to follow his latest roles. Celty and Shinra never stopped their own work; they must have been like pillars for each other in the early months. Izaya still supplied Celty with the vast majority of her carrier jobs, and the violence he sometimes helped cause gave Shinra more to do.
And, for his own part, he truly did try to drown himself in his work. He punished himself with it as if the pain alone could erase his emotions. Work, life, wasn't to him what it was to everyone else. He didn't cling to his sanity; it clung to him, and he was unable to convince himself in even the furthest reaches of his sometimes-inebriated mind that Shizuo would return.
He didn't jump to any conclusions, then, when he received an odd email from Shinra one morning – the sun sparkling on the heavy snow that had fallen early the last night – asking for Shizuo's old medical records. It was easy for Izaya to access something like that, of course, and he sent the information Shinra's way without so much as a request for compensation. The thing didn't even serve as a reminder, didn't dredge up anything Izaya hadn't already been dwelling on.
He didn't receive any immediate response or thanks for his timely help, and he didn't bother with trying to find out why Shinra had wanted him to look something like that up in the first place. Apathy was something he had to fight all the time.
He fought it somewhat effectively, clearing his inbox of an enormous pile of questions and demands and then logging in to one of the many chatrooms that he liked to use for information gathering.
Kanra has entered the chatroom.
Kanra
Anyone around~? Kanra-chan is so bored!
Tanaka Tarou has entered the chatroom.
Tanaka Tarou
Ah, Kanra-san, long time no see
Kanra
^.^ I've been suuuuper busy with a lot of things
Kanra
Has anything exciting been going on that I don't know about~?
Tanaka Tarou
Kanra-san usually knows about everything…
Tanaka Tarou
Oh, have you heard about the weird foreigner who was wandering around the city last night?
Kanra
Do tell! X)
Tanaka Tarou
Eh? It's rare for you not to know about things like this. Though, I guess it's pretty recent news
Tanaka Tarou
Actually, I only know about it because I happened to see him. He looked kind of familiar, but I only saw him from a distance
Kanra
An American? O_O
Tanaka Tarou
Maybe. He was blonde, but his clothes were like a samurai's
Tanaka Tarou
I mean, people don't usually wear yukatas like that in the winter, right? I think that's why he was getting a lot of attention from people
Kanra
An American samurai, huh? Sounds neat! X)
Tanaka Tarou
Now that I think about it, maybe he looked a little like Heiwajima Shizuo-san?
[Izaya abruptly leaned back in his swiveling chair, away from the computer, and narrowed his eyes. Shizuo? Of course that was impossible, but the fact that the man's name had come up twice now in one morning seemed an odd coincidence, and one deserving of further investigation.]
Kanra
Heeeeeh? Maybe it's a spirit or something! Scary!
Tanaka Tarou
I think that's impossible… (-_-;)
Kanra
I hope I can meet him~ Do you know anything else~?
[An altogether clumsy job of seeking information, but Izaya had no more patience for this conversation. What was it? A small degree of motivation that he hadn't felt in a long time? That was enough, and he meant to latch on to it immediately. He would quickly take whatever else Ryuugamine Mikado could give him, and then he would build on that – maybe through direct observation, if he could manage it.]
Tanaka Tarou
sorry, I can't really say more than that, and there aren't many rumors going around about it just yet
Kanra
Ah, I envy you~!
Kanra
Oh dear, looks like I'm needed – ttyl (^_-)-
Kanra has left the chatroom.
And that was it. Not one of his shining moments as an informant, but that awkward forwardness truly was enough for now. Ignoring the pangs of hunger that radiated up from his stomach, Izaya climbed to his feet and readied himself for a trip outside.
He was exhausted, actually, having only slept a handful of hours out of the past week. It didn't matter. He was used to it at this point, and he finally had something else to fuel him. It might have been hope, or it might have been something as simple as yearning for the impossible. Chasing a fantasy. It wasn't all that different from he'd been doing, but it excited him more than anything had – he needed to grasp this chance. He didn't believe in miracles, but he did believe in moving forward when the opportunity presented itself.
He didn't want to feel like he was losing himself any longer.