This chapter has a lot of violence so if you're not ready for that please be advised.
Chapter 42
My shoulder slammed into someone, my feet falter as I took the obstacle of another body at a full sprint.
MINORU! I screamed through the bond, my nen beating out of me in a gush of desperation.
I caught a dash of black hair whipping around a corner in front of me, the people crowding the hallway making it harder and harder for me to see his slim form the lower we got.
"What the fu-" I barrelled into a shoulder, my hands curling around a bench as I ducked so that I could get around the corner.
Just behind me, I could feel Hisoka, his nen oddly subdued as we darted in between people. Somewhere up above our heads I felt more than heard the Minoru's cry, his voice reverberating through the very marrow of my bones - an echo to the rage and desperation that I could feel beating through me.
I had never felt this single-minded. Every beat of me was for him - I had never craved the sight of another human being like I did. Maybe all these months had just been wrapping around a gift - something that needed to be torn away to get to the thing that was really worth it all. Maybe I had been fooling myself - fooling myself into thinking that I had been sticking around for anything other than this moment - this moment -
The powers. The feeling of Hisoka's breath along mine. Minoru. My mother. Myself.
None of that mattered. I would give everything away right then if I could just feel the last breath slip from Ichihiro. Everything. All of it. I would give it all away in an instant.
My fist slammed into the razor-sharp edge of a jaw, my body taking me tumbling down with him, the edges of stairs catching us both at odd intervals as we rolled. I clung onto him, my hands grappling with the front of his shirt, the noxious smell of sweat and uncleaned clothes dragging along my nose and across my tongue. I was so close to him now that there was barely any room separating us.
My back slammed into the hard concrete of the wall, Ichihiro's body colliding with mine seconds later as we rolled to a disjointed stop on the landing.
My breath sawed unevenly from me for a moment, my eyes adjusting to the sudden lack of movement. My body felt oddly lax against that wall, between concrete and him, his eyes slitted and dark as he stared at me, his small chest heaving as he took in gulp after gulp of air. Had he always been so small? Had he always looked so worn down?
A boyish smile crept across the sharp angles of his face, his flush pulling away like wax slowly being pushed aside by searching fingers. "Hey, mousie."
Feral, animalistic sounds tore from me as I rolled us, driving my fist into his face one more time before driving one into his throat. Air choked out of him in a harsh spurt, his face reddening at the brutal hit. His hands fumbled with me, blocking my next hit quickly before grappling with my biceps and slamming me back into the wall.
Kill him. Kill him.
Rage like this makes you stronger. His eyes widened as I sent a kick to his stomach that sent him rolling away from me and slamming into the metal railings.
Rage like this makes you blind. A knife flashed, the only clean thing on him - and snipping through the tendons in my shoulder, embedding in my skin like thorns sprouting from my very flesh.
I should have dodged that. In any other fight, I would have been able to.
But at this moment, I barely felt it. I barely cared that there was no strategy to what I was doing - how my hands closed around his pants as I hauled him closer. How I ripped out that same dagger he had thrown at me and shoved it into his pelvis, his scream ringing along the stairwell.
I didn't care.
"You know-" Spit flew from his lips, the veins around his eyes popping as he tried to compartmentalize the pain he was feeling. "I never really thought that you would come for me. I mean - killing your brothers? That was a dick move-"
The sheer audacity stilled me for a moment, my fingers still curled around where the dagger was sitting in his hip muscles. Foul emotions twisted inside my gut, tying up everything inside of me.
His lips curled away from yellowed teeth, those dull eyes flashing in the sterile hallway light. "But who really gave a fuck about them?"
I yanked the dagger out, slipping it between his ribs and twisting until his screams became short, high shouts. How had he beaten them? How had he overcome them when he was so weak? My face twisted in a scream of my own, the questions inside of me boiling over. My fingers closed on his throat, my thumb digging into his adams apple until he couldn't make more than garbled cries.
"How?" I hated the way my voice shook. Hated that even now he was able to crawl his way into my head and slither around. I didn't want to know. I didn't need to know. Their death was on his hands.
"Mori." Hisoka. I had forgotten he was even here, his body wreathed in shadows, hands in his pockets as he kept a watchful eye on where I crouched over Ichihiro. There was warning in the way that he said my name, his golden eyes sharp and cautious in the stairwell light.
My teeth ground at the high, hysterical laugh that trickled from Ichihiro's lips, his adams apple bobbing beneath my thumb. He let out a few garbled noises, his eyes darting to mine in obvious pain. I held him there for a moment longer, enjoying the nervous ticks of his eyes as they darted from my hands to the ceiling and back to me. Like he was praying or wishing.
My finger let up a little bit.
Pain roughened his words, his voice going in and out. "That's cute-" I twisted the knife once more, a fresh splash of blood coating my fingers as his voice echoed once more. "I - I caught the youngest one in one of my tr - traps - traps-" Imori. Emotions clawed up my chest, ripping away my voice. I couldn't look away from his eyes - those eyes like dark puddles on an unkempt street. I was torturing myself. I knew that. I knew that he could see the agony dancing just beneath my eyes.
I needed to hear this. This was my punishment - my punishment for leaving them.
"The other two heard him screaming and came along and got caught right away." His voice had become smaller, the edges of his syllables curling up like their own little smile. He was enjoying this. He had enjoyed killing them. His eyes crinkled, black and infinite as he stared up at me. "They screamed a lot."
The words rang through me, dropping into me like a coin into an empty metal cup. It jangled there along with everything else - the rubbish that I had filled myself with over so many years.
I broke his wrists first.
Then I punctured his lung.
Maybe I had thought that it would make me feel something. I should have felt something other than this yawning hollowness, this endless sea of nothing, nothing, nothing. I would have just killed him. I should have just killed him. I didn't enjoy torture. I didn't enjoy the begging. Or the crying. Or the false sincerity near the end. Did it make me more human that I didn't feel any enjoyment from this? Or did it make me less for doing it for no other motivation than that I could?
In some ways, it felt like a toll that I was repaying. Maybe if I gave this back to the universe, I would finally be able to feel my brothers again. Maybe if I just gave this to them, I would be able to find them once more in myself.
"Please-" Reddish foam dribbled from his mouth, tears tracking down his temple in slim columns. I searched around inside myself for something - any leap of joy or burst of shame… Nothing. "You don't know - know what I've gone through. You - you had it all. You had so much and I thought that you - I wanted you to suffer."
His words dribbled along my ear like water meeting the shell of my ear and finding it's way into the cavern within. He wanted me to suffer. Some strange mixture of emotions bubbled in my gut, shivering up my stomach and into my throat. Hot, fresh laughter rang out, hitting the walls around me and bouncing back to bombard me. He wanted me to suffer? My spine went weak, forcing me forward until my hair dipped into the blood pooling on the tile beneath me. My body heaved with my laughter, shivering until my whole world felt like it was vibrating with it.
"Well," My voice quivered with mirth, the sudden irony of it all suddenly too much for me. His eyes were going dull from the pain and I suddenly felt sick. "I guess you succeeded in that."
I slit his throat, blood gushing from the wound. My pants felt heavy with it, stiff. I watched as his dark eyes flickered, swaying like candles about to be extinguished. I was still laughing. Nails scratched down my throat, the sound of my laughter hiccuping, tripping over itself. Something splattered onto my pants. Fuck. I wasn't laughing.
My wails echoed back to me, bouncing off of the walls like weak calls for help sounding into the darkness of a cavern.
This wasn't supposed to be how it felt when I finally killed him.
My hands grappled along the blood-soaked material of his shirt, pushing back his hair, staring into the unseeing ebony of his eyes.
It wasn't supposed to be like this.
"Am I dreaming?" The words came out in a jumbled haze, the sudden realization of the last few minutes punching me in the gut. Bile burned along my throat. I was going to be sick. I retched, turning to throw up all over the floor beside my hands.
I had just killed him. I had just killed someone. I heaved again, shutting my eyes and seeing nothing but blood and broken bones. I had done worse. I had - I had - I retched again, throwing up water.
"Mori." Soft hands brushed my hair away from my face, rubbing along my back as I heaved out air. Tears dripped into the foul mix of vomit and blood at my side. I followed weakly as Hisoka dragged me a little bit to the side, avoiding the sight of Ichihiro's crumpled body. "Mori, you need to get back to your room."
I blinked, taking in the suddenly serious tilt to his lips, the sharp, crystal intensity of his eyes. My thoughts rolled around each other, colliding until I couldn't think over the rushing of my own emotions. "Is this - is this real?"
His eyes flickered, his face tightening slightly as he stared down at me with plain concern. It had to be a dream. Hisoka never looked at me like that. Killing Ichihiro wasn't supposed to feel this wretched. It was supposed to make me feel happy. It was supposed to solve everything. All of my problems would be gone if I just did this one thing. If I just avenged my brothers.
His next words were soft, a cool hand pushing back the matted mess of my hair. "Mori, I need you to go back to your room and stay there until morning. I'll take care of the body."
"Body," I repeated dully. Dream - it had to be a dream. Tears burned at the back of my eyes, turning my gut into a churning mess. God, this wasn't a dream. "It wasn't supposed to be like this."
"I know," he whispered, his breath cool against my feverish skin. He helped me to my feet, his arm braced along my waist as he kept me upright. "I know. You need to go back to your room right now though. Go." He pushed me forward, his voice becoming more and more distant as I stumbled up the stairs. My shoulder was throbbing, sharp pain zinging down into my fingertips. My side felt the same way, the flesh open and raw. When had he stabbed me there? "Take care of her, Minoru."
When had he got here? His head bowed, the cord of our nen pulling tight as I slipped onto his back. How much had he seen? I had wanted to wait for him - Another sob slipped free and I curled in on myself. Shame burned hotly inside of my lunges, making each tear feel like it's one volcano finally erupting.
"I'm sorry," I sobbed, turning my face into the fur at his nape. I didn't know what I was apologizing for. Maybe my earlier words. Maybe because I had taken this revenge away from him. He should have been there with me. Maybe it wasn't even really for him. Maybe I was apologizing to my brothers. Apologizing for how I had left them. For how I had avenged them. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
Go to sleep, Mori. Minoru's voice was low, each syllable vibrating with quiet sorrow. Sleep will make it better.