A/N: Sorry for the short-ish chapter guys, real life was pretty crazy these last 2 weeks :/
The Grigori have ordered to have both of you executed.
I'm so jarred by that I don't even realize Suguro has started moving. One second we're in the hospital room and the next I'm flinching as he goes down the stairs. Only half the lights are on in the stairwell for the night, casting most of the area in shadows. Suguro's heavy footsteps sound like thunderclaps in the eerie silence. I know he's trying to go down the six flights as gently as he can but I still feel my side cry out with each step he takes.
Suguro makes it to the first landing between the third and second floor when we hear the clack of a door latch opening. He freezes for only a second before sliding silently into the nearest shadowy corner. High pitched laughter echoes up the stairs followed by footsteps.
Shit, they're coming up from beneath us.
I can tell when Suguro realizes this by his arms tightening around me. He slides a bit towards the edge of the stairs we just came down. I look up and see his glance flickering between the flight we just came down and the stairs to level two, debating what to do. We can go back up, the person below probably won't pay much mind to hearing another set of feat in the stairwell, but what then? We can't go back to the floor. Should we wait to see what the other person does?
The laughter turns into words and the steps get louder, closer now.
Shit, shit, shit. I tighten my grip around Suguro's shoulders preparing for the race up the stairs. He's tensing up too, ready to run out of their line of sight.
There's another clack, the squeak of hinges, then nothing.
We wait silently for a few moments but the footsteps and voice has stopped. I let out a breath I didn't realize I was holding. That was close, way too close. We need to get out of this hospital, there's no way we can get lucky for that much longer and they'll notice we're missing before too long.
"Probably a visitor on their cell phone, we haven't seen any of the staff in this stairwell the whole time we cased it." Suguro whispers as he starts going back down the stairs, a little faster this time and more jarring. Each bounce of a step down hurts and I know I'm holding my breath.
"You watched this stairwell? How long have you guys been planning this?" I manage to heave a breath on the landing for floor two before Suguro turns to go down the next flight.
"Since we brought your half dead ass to this place." He snaps. "Look, we figured shit was going to hit the fan one way or another so we made a few plans. We had ideas what might happen and none of them good so we prepared for what we could. When we got word of the order we moved, hopefully before anyone else did."
We make it to the first floor and I do not feel so good. Sweat is running down my face and I'm panting like I'm the one who just carried someone down all those flights of stairs. My stomach is churning, my head aches, all from a little rough transportation. Or maybe it's the thought that people are planning my execution.
Probably both.
"Open the door a bit and make sure the coast is clear, we need to go to the left."
I take a few deep breathes to steady myself and reach out to grab the handle with the hand holding my tail. I let it slip down to wrap around Suguro's thigh to keep it out of the way. There's a sharp pain in my arm when I tug on the door causing me to look down.
Woops…I forgot all about the needle in my arm. Blood is blooming underneath the skin and threatening to ooze out around the needle. Suguro notices, of course.
"Seriously Rin?!" He hisses.
Is that the second time he's called me by my first name? Where's that coming from, he's never done that.
"Ugh, we'll take it out later. We need to get out of here." He moves to where I'm practically smashed against the door but he manages to grab the handle and pull it open a crack with the hand under my shoulders. "Just look out and tell me if we can get out without anyone seeing."
I turn to peer out. The door opens up at the end of a hallway with a lobby to the right. There's a few people mulling about but mostly sleep deprived staff members. One is typing away at a reception desk while two others sort through paperwork, coffee mugs close to all of them.
"We're clear, just be quick."
Suguro whips the door open and we're out a side door at the other end in a second. The door leads to a parking lot sparsely filled with cars at the late hour. Suguro kneels down and I slide from his grip onto my own two feet. I lean a bit towards my injured side to keep from stretching the punctured muscles.
"Ok, probably should get that out." He grabs my arm with the needle still protruding from my skin. He pulls a few napkins from his pocket, probably from the cafeteria, and pushes them against my skin. He doesn't give me any warning, he just yanks the tape holding the tube to my bicep off and then the tape and needle. It stings like mad and I glare at him as he presses the napkins against the hole. The needle and tube get tossed under a bush.
"Your brother should probably look at this when we meet up, I don't know anything regarding medicine." He mutters when the napkin comes away clean. I snort at that, yeah clearly.
Suguro slings an arm around my shoulders and under my right arm to support me so I wrap my left around his shoulders. It takes a minute but we are able to hobble along.
It's quiet, peaceful even despite all that's going on. Crickets are chirping, there's a few screeches from bats, the rustling of a breeze through trees and bushes, I can even hear the faint buzzing from the lights in the lot as we pass them.
But one thing I do notice in the quiet is exactly that, the quiet.
This once bustling city is nearly silent. No matter what the hour one would hear vehicles of all kinds, sirens, people milling about, but now nothing. I strain my ears trying to hear something, anything in the quiet but there's nothing to be heard. I feel the cold, choking depression slide down my throat and settle like a heavy weight in my gut. I know Suguro tried to reassure me a few days ago but it's a dam that's been threatening to break this whole time. I know that if it weren't for me and Yukio destroying the gate things would be worse, but I can't help but think what if? What if I had fought Ernst? What if I had been strong enough on that cross that Yukio didn't have to intervene? What if I hadn't been such a coward to confront Satan and faced him sooner? Each of those thoughts chip away at my wall.
We're passing through one of the campus gates and entering the city, or at least what's left of the two. The road is mostly intact save for cracks but the buildings and once ornate gate are nothing but rubble around us. I can hear our shoes crunch over glass with each step and the skittering of small pieces we kick up. None of the lights are on which leaves us navigating the larger obstacles in almost total darkness since the moon is nearly obscured by the remaining buildings.
I have no idea where we're going but Suguro seems to know. We're both as silent as the city. No people yelling out for taxis, no car horns, no roars of the trains over their tracks, and no words between us. In the silence I'm not sure how much time goes by. It could have been only a few minutes or several hours as I strain my senses to hear anything.
We come to the beginning of a bridge when I see it. We're finally in a patch of unobscured moonlight and there's a pile of rubble shinning in the light. I don't know if it's the glimmering light bouncing off the glass, the pieces of rebar twisting out of the pile, or just the fact that I can finally really look at the destruction but it's unmistakable at the base of the debris. The pool of black liquid doesn't expand far past the clump of stone but it halos the pale appendage. The fingers are extended, like they had been reaching for help just beyond reach. Rodents have clearly had a few meals off it since chunks of flesh are missing, exposing muscle and bone in several areas.
I gasp when I realize what I'm looking at, pulling myself closer into Suguro. He stops walking and finds the limb almost immediately. He turns so I can't see it but it's too late, the damage is already done.
How many people? I know Shima said a death count, but those are the bodies found right? What about all the people missing? Are there more bodies buried underneath the rubble, decaying in their premature graves? Becoming meals for the scavengers?
What have I done?
Suguro doesn't say anything but I feel the hand holding onto my arm around my shoulders shift so he can rub his thumb along my wrist in a soothing gesture.
It's quite a bit later when we stop. We're deep into the city now, I'm sure the sky is starting to lighten but I haven't lifted my head to look. I've kept my gaze glued to his shirt, studying every bit of the fabric to avoid seeing any more destruction.
"Rin?" I can feel his baritone voice reverberate in his chest. "Rin I'm sorry but I've got to put you down for a minute, my arms are killing me."
Oh shit! I jolt at the realization that he has been practically carrying me for several hours now. I know I'm light for guy, but there's no way this has been easy. I nod against his chest, still not trusting my voice.
He stops at the top of a few steps to sit. He's careful going down but the moment my butt touches the ground he flops back with a groan. He spreads his arms out and closes his eyes.
It's silent, no noise in this part just like the rest. My gaze turns upwards and I can make out the pink hues of sunrise behind a cluster of buildings. I don't know how long we sit there, neither one of us says anything either.
Especially not about the fact I'm still practically plastered to Suguro's lap.
The pinks are just starting to turn orange when I hear rubble shifting. It's not much, just a few small stones tumbling down a pile and skittering across the broken pavement. I don't even look over towards the noise thinking it's just a rodent or some other pest. But then I hear more shifting and realize something; we haven't seen or heard any other living things the whole time we've been walking. I turn and look back the way we came and manage to catch sight of movement in my periphery.
"Suguro?" I keep looking, trying to find the source of the noise. I hear him give a grunt in acknowledgment to hearing me. "Suguro I think we need to move."
"Just five more minutes man, I'm exhausted."
I catch more movement and see a pile of rubble shifting at the end of the block. A large chunk from close to the top slips and tumbles down causing a small avalanche. That gets his attention and finally Suguro sits up to look. More debris shifts and eventually a small hand reaches out from the pile. I jolt, trying to get up and go after person trapped but Suguro is faster, sitting up and holding me in place. I open my mouth to protest only to get one of his filthy hands clamped over it.
"Quiet!"
What the hell?! The question is just muffled gibberish against his hand and I reach up to yank the hands off my mouth and shoulder, hell bent on saving whoever it is trapped in destruction I wrought.
The small hand pushes aside more chunks revealing shoulders and part of their body. The sun isn't quite up but there's enough light for me to see what's climbing out. Their skin gray but not from dust, part of a steel bar is protruding from the shoulder, a chunk of skin on their side is gone revealing two pale rib bones. More and more of it slowly rises from the rubble and I'm able to make out what was once a dress hanging off the body. The material is practically shredded, holding on by only one shoulder strap and exposing more skin than covering it. Two legs are pulled out, bones clearly shattered by how they're twisted and uncooperative as they climb out. It's a little girl. She can't be more than five years old, so small and still rounded with baby fat, dirty hair still held together with a ribbon.
"Shit, it's a ghoul!" Suguro pushes himself up and pulls me with him.
A ghoul. A little girl died in this and a demon has taken her body. A little girl who's hardly experienced life is dead, gone, her body a host for an opportunistic demon. Suguro tugs on me and practically drags me down the stairs, my legs as uncooperative as the little girl's.
"God damn it come on! She's a ghoul now, there's nothing left!"
My eyes stay glued on her as she crawls towards us. Her body tumbles down onto the street but she doesn't stop moving, she just reaches out towards us, pulling her mangled legs behind her.
"Fine, be useless!" He dumps me against a wall at the bottom of the stairs causing me to scramble to grab hold of something to stay up. He raises his hands in prayer, reciting the fatal verse for low level ghouls. I watch in horror as the body of the little girl contorts unnaturally with an ear splitting shriek. The scream gets louder and louder before the body explodes outward in a burst of black ash. The moats float and catch in the breeze as the last of her cries echo down the streets.
I don't even realize tears are running down my face until Suguro's looking at me, eyes wide.
"Rin?" He whispers.
The dam breaks. Everything I've been holding back rushes out of me in a torrent. All the feelings of guilt, self-loathing, horror, more I can't even put a name to crush me. Everything that's happened, every thought drowns me leaving me raw. I try to push it all back behind the broken walls but it's no use. A sob escapes me and I lean forward, burrowing my face into Suguro's shirt. I can feel him pull me closer and tuck me under his chin to try and keep me together but I still fall apart. To my credit it's not gross sobbing but I can feel the tears stream down my cheeks and onto his shirt, soaking the material in seconds. My shoulders heave as I take in a gulp of air which I only choke on. I reach out with shaking hands and grab onto him, trying to steady myself but it's no use.
What have I done?