"I don't know what happened. Disease? War? Social collapse? Or was it just us? The Dead replacing the Living? I guess it's not so important. Once you've arrived at the end of the world, it hardly matters which route you took."
- Isaac Marion, Warm Bodies
-ooo-
DAY THREE
-continued-
The sky was dark and the rain was still falling.
He turned his face up into it and the cold helps wash away some of the doubt that swamps him, helps cool the frantic rush of panic in his veins.
One breath.
Two.
Three.
He was alone.
It was dark.
The rain was still falling.
It had been falling for a long time and no time at all.
His name was Hinata Hajime.
And this was not how his story began.
One day, not very long ago, he'd woken up on a beach.
He hadn't been alone.
There had been people all around him.
Some had been confused, some alarmed, some hungry, but the only one who had mattered in that first moment had been the one that had woken him.
The first face he saw, the first voice he heard.
Komaeda Nagito was not where his story began either, but he was a convenient enough place to start.
And somehow he was always the easiest part to remember.
The rain was still falling.
There'd been no rain during those first few brief sunlit days before everything had gone so terribly wrong.
He knew this place.
This was... their island.
This was Jabberwock Island.
Only... it wasn't, was it?
It wasn't real.
The island had been a lie.
And the truth as well.
Or, more simply, it had been something in between.
Everything that had happened there had meant something and nothing at all.
Funny, how he couldn't ever seem to escape it, even in his dreams.
Trapped.
As if this were the only place he knew, as if the rest of the world had ceased to exist for him or had never truly existed at all.
Perhaps he'd always been there.
Perhaps he'd been born on the island and everything he thought of as 'before' had only been a long, strange dream.
Only... he knew that wasn't true.
The island was not where his story began.
But the island was still important.
For many reasons, but also because that was where he'd met Komaeda Nagito.
And that was the truth.
But it wasn't the whole truth.
He'd also met Komaeda Nagito on a stairway.
On a boat.
In the dark.
In a collision.
In the rain
On his knees.
He was always meeting him, meeting him and forgetting him, and the only thing that had stayed consistent through all those meetings, the only thing that had ever really been true, was that he confused him.
He'd always been so confusing.
He was… confusing and awful and he…
Missed him.
He'd lain in bed that night, the night after the trial, staring up at the ceiling and he'd wanted to scream.
Because he didn't want to miss him.
How could he do that?
Why would he do that?
What had he been thinking?
Well, no, he didn't need to ask that.
There was no mystery there, not really.
He thought he'd understood his intent well enough by the end even though he hadn't wanted to.
And he still wanted to scream and scream and scream and never stop, because everything felt so, so wrong and he couldn't cry, couldn't feel anything outside of that vague directionless frustration, that urge to scream until his voice cracked and gave way to silence.
Because he felt broken.
He felt as if losing them had scorched the earth of his soul, burnt everything he was to ash and all that was left was this vast, terrible emptiness.
And he was glad.
Terribly, horribly glad.
Because he was pretty sure if he could feel anything, if he could, it would be too big, too much.
That he might just walk out into the ocean and swim, swim and swim until his arms could carry him no further.
Until he couldn't come back.
Until exhaustion dragged him down beneath the waves, because it's too much.
And so he's glad.
Because if he could feel this, feel anything, he'd never be able to get over it, around it, past it and he has to.
His friends needed him and he needed to help them. Needed to just... move on... to just... get past it.
He couldn't help them and he couldn't go with them.
He wasn't sure they'd have even cared if he had tried.
He could almost hear Komaeda's flat, scornful tones, "Oh, Hinata, you're here. Huh. Lame."
Nanami's pleasant ambivalence and inevitable disappointment, "Oh, hello, Hinata, what about the others?"
They hadn't cared enough to stay.
So why would they care if he...
They'd probably already forgotten all about him before they even left.
So, he was glad.
He could help the others. Sonia and Souda and Kazuryuu and Owari. He could try to be useful to them at least, even if he was nothing more than ordinary.
Boring.
He couldn't do anything for Nanami or Komaeda anymore.
They were gone.
They were gone and he... he just needed to sleep.
To get past this.
To just...
Move on.
So it was… it was good that he couldn't feel anything, that everything was so... numb.
So empty.
It was a good thing.
Necessary.
So it needed to stay that way.
At least for a little while.
So, he wouldn't think about it.
Wouldn't think about them.
Wouldn't let himself think about Komaeda alone in that warehouse with that terrible resolution. About whether maybe he'd even been laughing, giddy in his desolation, as he set the trap, as he up lined all those Monokuma standees up like dominos. Whether his hands had shaken as he tied those ropes around his ankles, as he'd slashed the knife across his legs.
He wouldn't let himself think about whether he'd cried at the end.
Whether he'd regretted it in the last moments after the fire ignited, when it was too late to turn aside, too late to do anything but die.
He wouldn't let himself think about Nanami smiling as if it didn't matter at all, as if nothing did, as if she'd never cared at all or she'd cared too much or he had.
Because he couldn't do anything about it.
About any of it.
And maybe it should have hurt.
Maybe everything should have hurt.
And it didn't.
It really was like he was broken, like this had shattered him into pieces and all that was left was this ache, this terrible empty space where the tangled, contradictory jumble of his feelings for Komaeda used to live, where the warmth and affection he'd once felt for Nanami had been…
All the others, losing them had hurt, but this….
This… had been too much.
Too much.
And now there was just…
Nothing.
Had any of it been real?
Had they ever cared at all?
Had he?
Nanami was gone.
Komaeda was gone.
So, either way, it didn't really matter anymore.
None of it mattered anymore.
He just needed to rest, to sleep.
He was so tired.
So tired and everything seemed surreal as if he hadn't slept properly in days.
Had he been dreaming?
Was he still dreaming?
Would he wake up and find Komaeda and Nanami eating breakfast in the dining room as if nothing had happened?
As he lay there in the dark that night, he'd kept catching images out of the corner of his eye, little sparks of color, little spurts of green and white, like he'd spent too long staring into the sun even though it was the middle of the night and the only light in the room was the pale moonlight washing in through his window.
It was all so….
Boring.
Why had he wanted this?
He rolled onto his side, staring sightlessly at the pale, featureless stretch of wall beside his bed.
But it reminded him of Komaeda's stupid hair so he rolled over to face the shower instead.
He was so tired.
Why had he wanted this?
Any of this?
In the end, all it did was….
Hurt.
Eventually exhaustion had pulled him down into sleep.
When he'd next opened his eyes, sunlight had been streaming in through his little window and the room had been far too bright and each and every one of those stupid Monokuma figurines lined up on his shelves had seemed to be smiling at him, mocking every last one of his life choices.
Why had he thought it was a good idea to collect them in the first place?
He huffed a sigh and tugged the blanket up over his head.
His eyes ached, his head too.
He'd stayed in bed until the need to pee had finally driven him to the bathroom hours later.
He spent far too long washing his hands afterwards.
Had scrubbed them until they ached.
He hadn't cried.
There was nothing worth crying about.
Not really.
They'd both lied to him.
About everything.
He was pretty sure he'd never even known them at all.
Eventually he'd stumbled back to bed again and burrowed back under the covers.
His stomach grumbled protest, but the need to eat was easily smothered beneath the desire not see anyone or do anything.
He didn't sleep.
He didn't even really think about anything.
Instead, he'd just curled in around his knees beneath the stifling warmth of the blanket and watched the white of his sheets fade to grey as the day wore too slowly towards night.
He didn't want to be here anymore.
He wished the day would pass.
And somehow, eventually, it did.
But it had seemed to take a long, long time.
And then...
Everything had ended.
Everything had ended and he'd woken up in the dark and he hadn't been alone.
They'd been together in that dark, so close he could have kissed the breath from his lips.
"I don't really understand why you're wasting your thoughts on someone as worthless as me."
And this was what he knew:
- He'd never felt that thinking of him had been a waste.
- Even when all those thoughts had been sad and angry, bitter and resentful.
- But he'd never told him that.
- Maybe he should have.
- But it probably wouldn't have changed anything anyway.
Besides that kind of thing... was always easier to think than to say.
For a moment they'd been together in the dark and then he'd been alone again.
Or maybe he'd always been alone.
Either way he'd woken up to a different darkness, to a different reality.
And this was what he remembered:
- He'd woken up alone, trapped.
- His friends had been screaming.
- He'd been screaming too.
- His hair had been long.
- Long and dark and tangled around him and it had scared the hell out of him.
- His friends had been there.
- But not all of them.
- He'd been grateful.
- Because they were there.
- And because there had at least been hope for the others.
Hope in the glow of those pods, because they weren't dead.
Not yet.
And that hope had made him greedy.
He wanted them to go home together.
All of them to go home together.
And this might not have been how his story had begun.
But it was, more or less, how it continued.
He'd slept again.
And he'd found him again.
"Komaeda."
He could taste the name, bitter on his tongue.
Right.
Komaeda.
He'd come here for Komaeda.
Only that wasn't… that wasn't quite right, was it?
He hadn't come here for him, but he'd still found him here again and again nonetheless.
He'd always turned up.
Like a bad penny.
Again.
" This isn't quite how I imagined you inside of me, Hinata, but perhaps this is just right for trash like me, hm?"
And again.
And that was the truth.
But it wasn't the whole truth.
After all, he'd been the one to seek him out, hadn't he?
Because he'd wanted to see him.
Because he'd… missed him.
Because he was…
He was…
Komaeda was…
He remembered the pod, the glow of it against the wall of the hospital room they shared. Remembered peering at it from inches away unable to see anything but shadows inside, but knowing he was there.
Sleeping.
Right.
Komaeda was still sleeping.
They all were.
And he'd just been dreaming about him.
Dreaming about him again and again.
Dreams that were filthy and terrible and wonderful and confusing all at once.
Dreaming about him again and again until he'd begun to think that maybe it wasn't a dream at all.
Until he could no longer bring himself to wake.
Until he couldn't tell the difference anymore between what was real and what was not.
Because he couldn't stop thinking that maybe Komaeda was, somehow, there with him and that was… exhilarating and terrifying all at once.
Because if he were there then it meant he was okay, maybe.
But it also meant...
He wasn't.
Because the Komaeda he'd known here had never been okay.
Not that the one he'd known before had been a picture of mental health either, but...
This Komaeda had been so far away from okay that he might as well have been on a different plane of existence and he didn't… he didn't know how to help him.
Didn't even know if he truly wanted to… even if he could.
And that was the truth.
But it wasn't the whole truth.
Because he…
He couldn't even help himself.
Because he was….
He was….
She'd called him Izuru.
But that's not who he was.
He was…
Hinata Hajime
And he was…
Broken.
"It's not," Komaeda had hissed, his voice cool and almost even once again as the pain presumably faded and he got himself under control once again. He sounded vaguely disgusted, but he couldn't be sure if that disgust was for either of them or both. He didn't pull away though, just pressed his face against his chest and let him continue to run vaguely panicked hands over his hair. His voice when he spoke again was muffled and low. "You make me sick. Your lies make me sick. Why won't you just do what I want you to do? What you want to do? You're here, aren't you? Why are you even here if you're not going to be what I want? If you're here to make me feel good than do it. If you're here to hurt me than hurt me. What are you even here for if I have to do all the work?"
"I don't-"
"Liar, stop lying, just stop lying to me, don't you think I know what I want? I know what I want," Komaeda rasped, short, blunt nails scrapping over his bare shoulders, over his back, and it hurt, but it also burned through him, real and wanted. Heat pooled in his limbs, between his legs, dragged a stuttering moan from his lips.
The world seemed to spin around him and he closed his eyes to keep it at bay.
"Yes, like that," he groaned, his voice still muffled as he pressed against his chest, raising one trembling hand to run a thumb over one nipple, already painfully tight. "That's what I want to hear from you. I'm tired of arguing with myself. It's boring. It's such a hopeless thing to argue with oneself. You can never really win."
Liar, he'd said.
"I don't understand anything you're saying," he'd panted as those blunt fingernails scored his chest so hard that he was pretty sure that if he wasn't bleeding it was only because this was a dream. "I don't understand you at all," he rasped, blinking his eyes open and trying to focus past the desire to find a way to climb inside Komaeda and never come back out again.
Liar.
"You never did," Komaeda had replied, leaning back and offering him a smile that was bitter as it his voice was caustic. "Nothing new there. Just touch me, Hinata. Just touch me. Don't you want to hear me moan for you again?"
And there was something about that bitter, mocking tone that set his nerves on edge, something that felt like swallowing nails, because he did.
He wanted to hear him moan, he wanted to hear him scream.
He wanted to break his composure to pieces.
The marks left by Komaeda's fingernails ached and he sat there, leaning back against the wall almost lazily and he'd just looked so certain, so… smug.
He was confusing and terrible and he hated him.
He hated him.
Hated him for being like this.
Even in his dreams.
For making him feel like this.
This confused.
This sad and sick and terrible.
For leaving him alone.
He hated him so much.
So.
Much.
And as he stared at him something in him just broke.
"Beg me for it," he'd replied conversationally, rage making him cold, bitter, as he shoved him back against the wall, climbed into his lap, one hand diving under his pale shirt to drag rough fingers over him. He'd never touched anyone but himself before, but it wasn't so very different and he's too angry to appreciate the nuances anyway.
His fingers are rough against his skin, catching moisture from the tip to make the slide smoother, but it's not enough, not near enough to make it fluid or easy.
Komaeda whimpered, fingers dropping to grope for handholds in the sheets as his eyes squeezed shut, his entire face scrunching up like his touch was painful and it sent a thrill through him, like lightning that made his hands shake.
"Moan for me."
He knows he's the one saying the words, but they seem to come from very far away and he's sure the sound is almost lost beneath the frantic slide of skin against skin as he moves faster, grips just a little bit tighter. It's awkward still and the movement stilted, but he hasn't the least intention of stopping to figure out a better solution, not when Komaeda's hips are jumping up to chase his touch each time he swipes his fingers over the tip.
When he moans it sounds as if it's been ripped from him by force and it just makes him harder, just makes him greedy for the sound, makes him want to hear it again.
Again and again.
And he hates that too.
Because it wasn't real, none of it was.
This was all just another lie.
Even if it was one he's telling himself.
He's just...
"Luck," he'd hissed, vaguely aware that his hand is still shaking, trembling out of rhythm before he finally relinquishes his hold completely. "Such a useless, tawdry, pathetic talent, hardly worthy of consideration. How lucky do you feel right now, hm? If you want me inside you, you'll beg me for it. Tell me how much you need me, how empty you are without me, how unworthy you are, but how much you need it anyway. Do it."
And then he's leaning back disgusted with himself, with Komaeda, with everything to find Komaeda looking at him.
Like he was… special.
And he knew it was just a lie.
He knew it was.
But it was such a pretty lie.
Such a convincing lie.
And he wanted it.
He wanted him.
Even if it was only for a moment.
And it makes him feel brittle, fragile as that want slashes to the heart of him tearing away his rage and leaving only the lingering vestiges of disgust.
He'd leaned forward, catching a hand against his chest to steady himself, curling his fingers just inside the part of his shirt, framing that bloody reminder of how sick, how depraved they both could be even as Komaeda took a breath, still staring at him with that same steady gaze.
That gaze that had spoken of challenges and dares, the same look he'd always had in trials when he wanted him to speak against him, to rise to the occasion, to push through his lies or truths and find the hope he thought would come from all those terrible things. As if he hadn't stuck his own fingers in that wound and screamed bloody murder two minutes ago. As if none of that had happened at all.
"Go ahead," Komaeda murmured, gaze still steady. "I want you to."
"Well, I don't want me to," he'd whispered, but it sounded weak even in his own ears. A mewling, whining sound in the dark without any real weight or desire behind it, a token protest at best. His thighs had been shaking, quivering with the strain of kneeling over him, of not touching him.
His stomach had roiled, queasy and uncertain, but it had been difficult to tell if it was disgust or nerves or something else entirely.
And that was the truth.
He was...
And he's in the rain again, alone again, in the parking lot again, as he hits his knees and vomits water he doesn't remember drinking across the dark, rain slick pavement.
"No," he whispered, fingers curling, bruising against the pavement. "That wasn't... I didn't..."
He didn't remember that.
He didn't... and he did.
Vividly.
Just as vividly as he remembered the taste of Komaeda in his mouth, of his cock rushing over his tongue.
"Curiosity killed the cat, you know."
"But satisfaction brought it back," he whispered to the rain, his breath rattling like old bones in his chest.
He shivered and wrapped his arms around his chest to stave it off, rocking back and forth as if that will somehow stave off the cold in the pit of his stomach the sudden certain undeniable knowledge that there was something very, very wrong with him.
That maybe Komaeda had been right to run from him, to leave him behind.
Why had he... why had he done that?
Why had he forgotten that?
And if he'd forgotten that... what else had he forgotten?
What else had he done?
He remembered Komaeda's feet swinging back and forth, Komaeda dangling from the tree.
"They sting sometimes too, but mostly they just ache. Except when you touch them, of course, than they just make other things ache, hm?"
He'd been...
He'd...
He…
He remembered trailing fingers across the soles of vulnerable dangling feet.
Remembered feeling… feeling… how had it felt?
Soft?
Nice?
How did someone feel when they did something like that?
Then the crack, the sudden pain of Komaeda's hand against his cheek.
And then he'd been standing in the rain watching him disappear again.
Watching him leave him behind again.
And it…
Hurt.
Everything hurt.
He…
He didn't know how to make him stay.
Even in his dreams.
He couldn't...
He'd never known how to make him stay.
And it hurt.
And he'd wanted him to hurt too.
He remembered the rain and the bridge… standing on the bridge, tearing him down, tearing him to pieces, because he'd… he was just… what was he…?
Why had he…?
Why had he done that?
He moaned, curling over his knees, crushing his forehead against the rough asphalt his breaths coming in panicked gasps.
He hadn't, had he?
He wouldn't... he hadn't...
His hands trembled, scrambling against the ground for purchase, trying to find his balance as if the ground were in danger of shifting, sliding away from him completely.
"You'd beg for it, I'm quite certain, beg for both the pain and the pleasure of it. Perhaps that would even be entertaining for a while. Your raw, breathy, irritating voice calling out to him, 'Hinata… oh… Hinata… please.'"
"No, no, no, no," he moaned, words swimming up from the trenches of memory to choke him.
Not... that wasn't...
It barely felt like him at all.
But he remembered it.
All of it.
Even if it was through a haze of red.
Every awful, hateful, revolting word.
He remembered how good it had felt, how satisfying… like every dark moment of frustration and rage and confusion and hurt he'd felt towards him during those long weeks given voice.
How much it had hurt during that last trial and afterwards, the way he'd... looked at him.
Like he'd suddenly become someone else, someone who hadn't been worth his time, someone who he'd regretted ever meeting.
Someone he'd just wanted to forget.
How much it had hurt.
Everything that he hadn't let himself feel at the end during those last days, knowing what Komaeda had done.
It felt like all of that were finally screaming out of the void he'd left behind.
The void he'd torn in him by dying, by leaving him, by making Nanami murder him and taking her away too.
He wanted to make him hurt.
Because he'd made him care and then he'd taken it all away like it was nothing when they'd been everything to him.
And he'd never even told them.
He'd never bothered to say it.
Any of it.
And he hadn't known how to stop, to make the pain of that stop, so he'd shut it away, he'd shut it all away.
And it had been fine.
Until he'd stood there in the rain, his cheek aching, watched him vanish into the distance and it had just been... too much.
Even his dreams, he couldn't be happy, he couldn't have the things he wanted, he couldn't do anything, be anything.
He was just...
"You know," she commented, arms slipping around his waist; chin digging in against his shoulder. "It doesn't have to be that way. It's just a dream, right? So what does it matter really? You can be whoever you want to be, you can do whoever you want to do, it's not complicated."
It wasn't complicated.
He closed his eyes as fingers trailed over his chest, slipping down to trace across the front of his pants, it seemed like the simplest thing in the world to just stand there, to let those fingers flick open the fastenings on his pants to dip inside.
He wanted this, didn't he?
Wanted to feel something?
To be needed?
Necessary?
He shivered as he curled those fingers, his fingers, around his cock with a whimper.
"There you go. Easy peasy, right?" She whispered, "Feels good, doesn't it? To take control? He's always wanted you, you know. He's been wandering around here for days and days looking for you, jerking off in your cabin because it still smelled a little like you. It's completely pathetic. And kind of gross, really."
And he can almost see it, Komaeda sprawled across his sheets, knees bent, moaning his name into the stifling warmth of his room, the slick slap of flesh and squelch of something slick easing the way as his other hand slides lower, vanishing beneath the arc of his thrusting hips.
Can almost hear him.
"Hajime, please, god, I... hn... ah!"
It didn't take long at all until he came in a rush, spilling warm over his fingers across the damp sand with Komaeda's voice still ringing in his ears, his legs trembling, his breath coming too fast and shallow and she laughed in his ear. "You'd really be doing him a favor if you finally just fucked him so you could both get it out of your systems. I'm really not enjoying the working conditions here. Teenage hormones are such a drag. Even if they are mostly artificial."
He collapses against the sand, still panting, still coming down from the momentary high of release, his pants still loose and open around his hips.
"There you go, that was easy, wasn't it?" His breath caught, startled as a fingernail traced across the curve of his lip. For a moment he'd forgotten she was there, forgotten all about her. He looked up and she smiled at him, soft and approving, "Hinata, you're lonely, aren't you?"
"Yes," he whispered, fingers of his free hand curling in the sand.
"I knew you were. No one wants you, do they? Everyone leaves you eventually. And who can blame them, right? I mean, who would want someone like you, hm? Someone so boring and ordinary? It's hard to believe you made it all the way to this ripe old age without just killing yourself. I mean, really, you'd be doing everybody a favor if you did."
He was forgettable, he was boring, he was nothing.
But he already knew that.
He'd always known that.
He was nothing and he didn't matter, nothing did, and no one cared and everything hurt.
His friends would forget him.
It was just a matter of time.
He wasn't remarkable.
He wasn't memorable.
He wasn't anything.
He couldn't even dream up a version of someone that cared about him.
How pathetic was that?
She smiled, a wide, white-toothed grin, "Don't worry though, Mr. Boring. I'll find a way to make you useful yet."
Then those fingers were shoving past the barrier of his lips, fingernails digging, scrapping over his tongue and he tried to scream, but there was no space for that as he choked on the press of her fingers as they clawed down his throat. It was like swallowing a thousand wasps, a buzzing, stinging terror that brought tears to his eyes as he scrambled for purchase, trying to escape to shove himself away and push her out of him simultaneously and managing neither task.
It hurt.
It hurt.
It hurt.
And she was laughing, shoving him over on his back as she knelt on his chest, her knees digging in as she drove her arm deep and deeper still down his throat, scraping raw and painful over ever inch as the rain drenched them both.
He couldn't swallow, couldn't breathe, couldn't scream as tears streamed for his eyes blending seamlessly with the fall of rain as his mouth cracked so far open that he was certain he'd never be able to close it again, as it stretched wide around her forearm.
And then she was gone and he was picking himself up off the ground, dusting mud and sand from his pants after he'd redone the fastenings.
His name was Hinata Hajime.
He wasn't Kamukura Izuru.
But sometimes he wanted to be.
Because he was a monster.
And monsters couldn't be hurt.
Monsters didn't feel pain.
And he was more than that. So much more than he'd ever been.
He was talented.
He was memorable.
He could have the things he wanted.
He didn't have to hurt like this.
And it had been easy.
And it had felt good.
Like a release.
Better than anything ever had.
And it was so easy to give in to it, to just let it happen.
To just let her happen.
All of it, everything he'd kept bottled up, locked away, every last lingering fragment of despair within him finally given purpose, relief.
He'd wanted to be...
Cruel.
Because he was so...
It hurt so much.
It hurt so much.
And he... he just... he just didn't care at all.
He probably never had.
It was a simple matter to catch up with him.
To step up behind him on the bridge and slip his fingers into his back, into the squelch of that waiting warmth, imminently satisfying to hear the way he cried out, to see the way pleasure bent his spine, but it had been distracting too.
Because he...
He...
So he'd drawn back and used words instead.
Words were easier, more distant, and it had felt so good to lash out, to be cruel, to be him.
To be better.
To be someone who mattered.
Someone who could touch him and not care.
Someone who could hurt without being hurt in return.
Someone he'd remember.
And he could hear her in the back of his head urging him on, whispering assurance and provocation.
And then...
"Oh, you're really slow, aren't you? I like my version better, he's a lot quicker than you. Still, you're not exactly boring, so let's have some fun together before you have to go, hm?"
He remembered falling, the strange unexpected exhilaration of it, the warmth of laughter in his ear and arms held tight around him.
And the anger had lingered, but it had already begun to fade beneath the subtle balm of my version.
As if he belonged to him.
As if he mattered.
As if Hinata Hajime mattered.
The impact hadn't hurt.
One moment they'd been falling and the next he'd been in the water his hand around his pale throat, shoving him down beneath the crashing waves, water washing cold over his fingers, but whatever madness had overtaken him was less, was almost gone and there was only the vague haze of desire and the clinging residue of hate, but even that had slipped away easily enough beneath the gentle, constant rush of the ocean.
He remembered allowing his other hand to be guided, coaxed… there'd… there'd been something else too… something… a memory of something he could have done, but... it's gone, swept away before he can grasp it and her voice had fallen silent and still as he'd startled awake as if from a bad dream and dragged Komaeda up out of the water.
He'd been himself again.
For whatever that was worth.
He woke again, choking, coughing as if he were the one emerging from the waves of his memory only to find himself still lying on rough asphalt, gasping, exhaustion clinging to every scrapped, exposed piece of his bruised, aching body.
The sharp taste of bile lingered on his tongue as the first sob shook through him.
And the second.
And the third.
The rain was still falling.
It had been falling for a long time and no time at all.
His name was Hinata Hajime.
And he is suddenly, painfully, aware that he doesn't actually know anything at all.