innocent vision
summary: all he really wanted was to be able to love everyone equally and to stop being such a human. but he was a human, just a glorified human, and her death brought him crashing down from the clouds. he can't take it anymore. he thought she cared (if she did she'd have hung on for him).
All he really ever wanted to do was to love humans.
Yes, he loved them all, no matter who.
But then he met Yagiri Namie.
"i don't care who you are, i'm not going to wear that type of thing."
"how rude. i'm your boss."
she stares at him without giving in. "i know you won't fire me."
and he doesn't fire her.
He doesn't know why he didn't fire her the first time she was rude to him.
He had always been a petty person. He got tired of others very quickly, and threw them away. Like his sisters, for say.
They had come to the funeral, hadn't they?
They had come to the funeral and cried and looked at him with those large eyes, practically saying, "You never came to visit us all these years and here we are now."
He doesn't know how they heard.
For the first time since childhood, he finds himself breaking.
Right now, he's drowning in a pool of useless guilt, and Mairu and Kururi are tying bricks to his body to push him down even further.
They liked Namie, he remembered. Thought of her as the sibling that he wasn't.
(He'd like to believe that maybe Mairu and Kururi are demons like him and so he can excuse himself for not loving him.)
It doesn't work.
He breaks down and invites them over for the first time, not even exasperated enough to tell them don't muss up the blankets or ruin the chairs, and he doesn't have enough energy anyways, so it's all quite useless.
He flops down into his chair, and studies his chessboard.
He's brought it from his office, hoping he can concentrate on it here.
His eyes fly over the chessboard, expertly calculating his next move.
His phone rings. Wearily, he picks it up, hoping it isn't somebody sending their condolences along, or somebody who is pretending to care about what happened to Namie (he knows that she was loved, and he knows that he couldn't refuse her anything).
Twirling a strand of his hair, after some deliberation, he clicks the answer button.
A voice comes out of the phone, louder than even Shizu-chan, that beast, and startles him, snapping him out of his daze for a little.
"WHERE IS MY SISTER?"
It's Seiji. The worst brother in the history of the world. Potentially even worse than Izaya (that is probably actually true.)
"In an expensive carved marble coffin under the earth, covered with flowers."
"..."
There is silence on the other end as Seiji takes this in.
But then, his anger comes back twofold.
"WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME, YOU DAMN-"
That's it. For some reason, he has an urge to do what he hasn't done in a long time: break a human's spirit.
"The whole city knew about it, Yagiri-kun. Everyone was mourning your sister and buying her flowers and visiting her grave to pray that she would go to heaven. How would you not know?"
There was another pause.
"Maybe it's because...oh, you weren't in the city! You weren't there when the sister you only caused grief and trouble for died, you weren't there when they lowered her into the ground, you weren't there when she got married, or for any of her birthdays. Maybe it's because you hated her. Isn't that true, Yagiri-kun? And now that she's dead you don't even care, do you? You're a sickening person."
There. He's done it. He's sure that this has broken Seiji's spirit.
(but he knows that Seiji does deserve it, the rat).
"Stay out of this city, Yagiri-kun. If you ever return, then I will find you, and you will finally get what you deserve."
That's more sadistic than he's been in a while.
It frightens and enamors him.
He buries his head in his hands. He doesn't understand.
He doesn't understand why.
Deep down in him he had wanted to end things with Namie, to see what it would be like for a human to experience that kind of heartbreak.
But he hadn't been able to.
her eyes fluttered open. she had slept on his lap again.
"izaya, how long have i been sleeping?"
he mockingly runs his slender, white fingers through her hair, and smooths it out.
"long enough for me to dock your pay."
she sighed, and curled up closer to him.
she didn't know why she always woke up cold.
but at least there was a fluffy person in front of her.
The day he plans on finally ending things is the day that he finds a corpse in the bathtub.
She probably knew what he was going to do.
"you're quieter than usual today."
she could always read him fairly well.
he smiles at her dazzlingly.
"just contemplating a question," he says lazily, and stretches, before passing his mug to her so she can make him coffee.
Scratch that, she knew what he was going to do.
He flashes back to the smile she gave him before leaving the office.
It still haunts him, that smile. It's a wan, tired smile, a goodbye smile. A smile that tells him that this is the end for him.
Maybe he's reading too much into her actions.
Maybe he's just tired of being so tired he falls asleep, then jolts awake screaming.
She might not live on this world anymore, but she still lives in his nightmares.
she gently grasps his arm.
"you've been a bad boy, haven't you?"
the torture begins.
he watches her, paralyzed, happy.
he's paralyzed.
he wishes he could be happy too.
but he can't.
he can't because he ruined it.
he's never been one to build.
always the destroyer.
she dances away through the gloom of his tortured mind, cloaked in a gown of white.
he wishes he could be happy.
he wishes he could be happy.
She got to him before he could. She ended things before he did.
But she ended them in the most abrupt way possible, the only one that could bring him to tears.
He's alone right now.
Oh, he's still an informant, but he's lost his passion. He's docile now. He's stopped betraying people, except for here and there.
He's stopped watching humans.
there is a trail of blood in the bathroom.
she's in his bathtub.
she is cold.
she is colder than he thought possible.
the bathtub is filled with water - and blood.
there is a cut on her neck.
he doesn't know what to do.
he's far past the point when he could still cry.
he takes her out of the bathtub and drains it.
he gently wipes down her corpse, all the while hyperventilating.
he doesn't know what to do.
so he falls asleep, clutching her dead body.
shinra finds him in the morning, angelic face wracked with fear, head resting on namie's naked chest.
shinra sees the wound, and cries too.
he cries because he knows what this will mean for izaya.
he cries because he knows that it wasn't her fault, and this is yet another death that the informant has caused.
Shinra passes by the apartment to talk to Izaya.
"Izaya...?"
He tentatively knocks on the door.
Izaya answers.
Shinra is shocked. He's pale, the color of clean snow, and he's dressed in all black. But he isn't wearing his fur jacket.
"Where's your jacket?" he inquires.
Izaya smiles, a large and genuine grin, and closes his eyes.
Is he ready to let go?
"the last stage of grief is acceptance."
he smiles. "how do you know? were you grieving the loss of seiji?"
"shut up. it's not that."
Yes, he is ready.
He smiles again, and laughs.
Tears come out of his eyes, for the first time in so many years.
He's crying. He's crying for Namie.
"I left in on her grave," he says.
This doesn't surprise Shinra.
"I wanted her to know that I was there with her until death."
He knows that it was a mistake to ever try to end things with her.
But the only thing he can do at this point is accept his mistakes.
"I'm quitting my job as an informant."
He's at a little bakery with Celty and Shinra.
"Why?" Shinra questions, prodding his egg custard and watching Celty.
Celty is interested, and leans forward.
"Why?" she asks, watching Izaya.
"I've only ever truly loved Namie, haven't I?
The conversation is finally heading to where it was going to go. This does not surprise Shinra, just like their conversation years ago when Namie first died.
"And so..."
He closes his eyes, and accepts his decision.
He knows where to begin. He starts to say something, but then changes his mind.
"Did you know I've stopped watching humans?"
This finally surprises Shinra. Humans, their behavior, and their general activities were Izaya's life.
"You see, I feel like I was being hypocritical."
The wind chimes on the door dance in the breeze outside, and the clerk wipes down a counter. All before Izaya finally admits it.
"I've become human."
A/N: Yay, right? I don't own Durarara! Leave story ideas in the comments, I guess.