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Chapter 44

When my brothers died, when I learned about it, I thought that that was the worst day. That had to be the worst day. Because nothing would ever be worse than finding out that the people you judged every decision for were gone. There was no more of Imori's soft smiles or Amori's sighed exasperation at my antics or Umori's hands to lift me up. I was alone. Nothing could be worse than that.

But grief has a way of pulling you back under. Grief felt more like an ocean than a simple wave. It didn't knock you down and then release you, spluttering and half-dead, to the shore. No. It dragged you down. It was a swirl of so many conflicting emotions - all that love bubbling up, suddenly without an outlet, all that rage and despair, and bewilderment. It tugged you down, slammed you agaisnt rocks, and dragged you under before releasing you just enough to allow you to breathe.

But you were always in the water.

I didn't know when I had last eaten.

I didn't know when I had last showered or gotten out of this bed.

I couldn't remember who I had last spoken to, what words had left my mouth.

I was drowning, and I didn't know how to save myself, didn't know if I could pull myself forward anymore. Or if I even wanted to.

I thought a lot about my brothers in the days after I killed Ichihiro. I wanted to torture myself, I think. Sometimes the only way to get all of it out was to twist the knife, make it hurt so much that you feel like you might pass out. So that's what I did.

I thought about the day that Imori read a full book and tried to get all of us to do the same to no avail. He wanted to be a teacher, I think, not that he ever had the guts to say it. He used to try and coerce us into learning things.

Then I thought about Ichihiro catching him in the little net that he had used on me. Then I thought about how loud he would have had to scream to get my brothers to run to him.

I thought about Umori, how big and stumbling he was. I thought about when he tried to pickpocket a coupe with too many guards and then tripped and fell in the harbor while he was trying to escape. I thought about how, when we had fished him out, lips blue, ears purple, how he had said he was too heavy and tried to crawl home.

Then I thought about Ichihiro making him cry. I thought about his last moments in that stinking fucking net and how I wanted to die with him.

I thought about Amori, fearless, headstrong Amori. Sometimes I forgot that he was the only one that knew where his dad was, that he was alive and living good in the upper side. I had caught him once under a lamppost just outside a gate that sectioned off a pretty little house with a yellow door and a garden in the front. He didn't see me, and I didn't ask. Either too afraid to remind him or too afraid that by reminding him it might make him try and go and live with him instead of us.

Then I thought about him dying last. How much that would kill him. How much seeing our brothers hurt and screaming would tear him apart. I thought about how he said I was their only hope. I thought about how he had said he trusted me.

I thought about that a lot - different orders, different memories but all the same outcome. All the same pain. Those were the facts. I could change the memories before, but it always remained the same.

The truth was that I knew exactly what I had been doing when I had gone after Ichihiro. I knew that killing him would do nothing, but somehow I had built it up inside my head. I had made it this grand thing that would renew my brothers, make their ending happy. But that was foolish. That wasn't how life or death worked.

"How is she?" Hisoka. Again. I heard him shuffle closer, Minoru just beside him. His swirls had begun to fade, the shimmering crystal-like complexity of those patterns flickering like a bulb about to go out. I think I might have been about to go out too.

I shut my eyes. The sheets were sweaty, too wrinkled, and used to be called anything other than garbage. I was living in my own filth at this point, barely able to force myself to get up and go to the bathroom. I felt him shift behind me, moving closer, a cool hand pressing to my fevered skin. I wasn't going to die. Every time the world had begun to blur, the dehydration and hunger getting to be so much that I felt physically sick, Minoru would shove crackers and peanut butter at me with a glass of water or a frothy broth. My body didn't want to die, I gathered, shoving the food into my mouth mindlessly before rolling over and going back to sleep.

All that work. Now I couldn't even stomach the sight of a sandwich.

"Your next fight is coming up soon," Hisoka murmured, and I couldn't even muster the energy to be mad at the soft quality his voice had taken. I didn't move as he pushed my hair back; the silver strand snared and tangled. I would need to cut it all off again, it had gotten so bad.

Mori? Minoru's tired, hesitant voice sounded. If I was the pulsing, battered nerves within then, he was the bruise, raw. I could feel his pain like a mirror showing me my very soul. In battle, we fed off of each other, but here, in this room, we were two twins mimicking each other's screams. Hisoka's here. He brought food.

I knew. I could smell the roasted meat and kimchi. It made my stomach turn. I didn't say anything.

Clothes shifted, fabric rubbing together, Hisoka's hand pulling away from my face. Here is where he decided I was trash. I didn't blame him. I was pathetic. I had gotten what I wanted, what I had been craving and begging for, and still, I was useless. So much fanfare for so little payoff.

"I won't tell you to get up." His voice was low, rough like tires against gravel. For once, there was no teasing only bleak reality. "I won't tell you that you need to or that people are waiting for you or even that you should. But I will tell you that I won't be here if you decide to wither away. I won't sit by and watch you kill yourself in such a pathetic, useless manner." Was that what I was waiting for? How heartless he was, I wanted to laugh. "I can't tell you to get up because I've been exactly where you are, and I know that picking you up will only give you a farther distance to fall. When you get out of this bed - and you will - you'll need to have the strength to stand on your own two feet."

The bed creaked, his body heat leaving abruptly. I could feel his rage, the angry lash of his aura against mine.

His voice was distant when he spoke again. "Your brothers wouldn't want this for you."

Oh, how heartless. I let out a strangled laugh, the sound like a noose that tightened around my throat until I eventually fell unconscious. What a heartless, brutal man.

"Mori Amori to stage J."

I hadn't gotten out of bed since Hisoka had come by. I didn't quite know if that was my body giving up on me or my soul. But his words kept playing in my head, sharp and merciless. For all of his bluster, Hisoka kept sending food. And I kept staring at walls.

I could feel Minoru just at the edge of the room, his body curled into a corner. He hadn't moved from that spot for over a day now. If I didn't know that his life span was my own, I would have thought that he was dead.

"Mori Amori," the pleasant voice repeated.

Right. Fighting. I was supposed to fight.

My body revolted at the thought. That's why it was so odd when my muscles worked without me. I stiffly sat up, fumbling with the sheets, my limbs weak little noodles that had to be braced by walls and lampshades and any passing furniture. I didn't think about it. I didn't address it - not mentally. I just moved, putting one foot in front of the other. One after the other until I was out the door and then down the hallway.

Years later, I still wouldn't be sure what got me out of that bed.

Maybe it was something as simple as disappointing my brothers one more time. Maybe it was something selfish like not wanting to disgrace myself by not showing up to a fight. Or maybe it was complex. Maybe it was that I didn't want to drown anymore. I wanted to try and swim. And this was the only way I knew how. Get up. Fight. Fight so hard that you have a reason to stay in bed tomorrow. Then do it all over again.

So for that day it was good enough to simply put one foot in front of the other.

I got the shit beat out of me. My ribs had been stomped on, my face had gotten so many hits that a blood vessel in my eye popped, and my left ear still had a slight ringing to it. She should have won if I was being honest, and it was only a slip that had gotten the better of her. One slip. Because I had made sure that every time I slid across that ring after she rung my bell one more time, I never slid all the way off. I clung to the edge of that concrete pad like a safety blanket. And in the end, I had been fortunate enough that I had been able to trip her.

The crowd wasn't nearly as enthused if the boos were any indication. Even the ref looked like he wanted to take my ticket back, his fingers pinching it so hard that the top corner had torn when I had taken it.

I stared down at it for a moment, my left leg shot to the point that I had to lean all the way to the right. The arena lights made a trickle of sweat roll down my back. God, if only my brothers could see me now. They would have loved this place.

Liquid dripped onto the ticket, smudging the ink in small little ponds. Jesus, I was crying. The tears burned up into my throat. I was lost again. I had cried so much, but somehow, this felt different. This felt like I was crying for what they could have been, the beauty of all that they wanted and didn't get. Was this what it felt like to cry for a whole being and not just the parts that had been taken for you. What was my loss to theirs? I cried for the teachers that Imori wanted to be and the silly kindness that Umori possessed. He should have been a father. If he had lived a bit longer he would have been able to find someone nice to share pastries within the morning. And Amori. I cried for his pain. I cried for the agony I had seen when he had looked in that window and seen his father tucking another set of kids in like he hadn't discarded one. I cried for all the things that they wanted and would never get, and I cried because the ache in my heart felt like a bed of flowers that had been ripped away by the roots.