FicWad

Author's Note: Sorry it took so long- between applications, classes, searching for a job, family illness and a car wreck- it's been a bit hectic. Next chapter should, I hope, be up far quicker. Enjoy!


The sound of her footsteps rings through the room, reverberating off the broken walls. Stepping back, I move away from the edge of the balcony, hiding myself just well enough that she won’t notice me if she looks up quickly. Her breath echoes her footsteps, long drawn out gasps that sound like sobbing punctuated with crashing shards of metal as she digs through the rubble. The sound of her panting rises as she searches, translating a dense, deadening frustration to the room. An oppressive and weighty noise to back our temperament.
It breaks suddenly- withering away into a low rattle as her breath is choked off, the wire gleaming in the strangely revealing light. She shudders with each fluctuation in grip, the steel biting in and releasing in a strange confusion of tension. Tsujii jerks her head about, trying to look behind her. From overhead- her grimace is stark, her face cadaverous in the light.
I’m tired of parallels.
Her hands jerk from the pile of shrapnel, clutching at the puckering skin of her throat where it has begun to split. In the light the blood is orange, too bright to appear real, as if she had been caught in some strange ritual play.
Transfixed, I watch as she struggles up to her feet, weaving on her legs for lack of breath, clutching wildly at the air around her.
My eyes find hers, staring up vacantly, in the process of glazing over. A sort of finality I can’t wholly fathom, standing here watching her suffocate with all the gracelessness and inevitability of an animal.
Her breath comes in long, frantic gulps as the wire retracts, cutting the air with an audible click. So desperate to regain her equilibrium, she does not notice as he steps out behind her, moving silently from behind an overturned machine. Glass glitters on the floor around his feet, adding to the translucent quality of the place.
He smiles as she turns around, her shoulders tense, her cough conveying all the venom I imagine to be written in her face.
His smile widening, Yohji takes something from his jacket, thrusting it close into her face. It gleams, sickeningly familiar in the stark, overly exposing light.
I feel bleached away at my edges, and glance down furtively to assure myself of my being, my fingers lingering over the crusts of blood bright on the front of my coat.
Almost in tandem, Tsujii lifts her hands, reaching for the disk in its gleaming clear cover.
“Is this what you were looking for?”
Not at all.
“That’s-”
Her voice is incredulous, breaking off thickly as Yohji pulls the disk away, crushing it in his hand.
The pieces fall to the floor, mingling with the dust, and metal, and refuse of its results.
“Do you understand how it feels to lose that precious something?”
His voice is low, crackling through the room with a strange, almost electric, charge, imbuing the space with a sort of stillness.
Tsujii breaks it, whipping her arm out toward him.
“Yohji!”
Her voice is a howl, ripping from her with an almost physical force as the blow connects with Yohji’s cheek, as if the intensity of the hit drew the sound from her throat.
As if prompted by the strike of her fist as well, the building shudders, flakes of plaster crashing down from the ceiling. Neither of them, standing below me in such perfect form, seem to notice.
Yohji, thrown by the hit as well as the unsteady ground, collapses on the floor, staring up at her through his bangs, his mouth curving into a grim line.
“I won’t let you die easy.”
She punctuates the threat with a kick to Yohji’s side. He flinches, struggling up without responding to the pointless words.
I feel numb, suspended in some strange awe, as he whips the wire out towards her.
When she dodges it, he plunges his fist into her stomach, connecting with a satisfying slap of flesh. Tsujii staggers back, her shoulders shaking. Her hair, thrown into the light as she snapped back from the punch, is blinding. I squint away from it.
After she shifts, I watch silent, stiff, my hands reaching out to clutch around the metal bar of the railing. It digs cold into my skin through the gloves, a sensation I am as acutely aware of as the flail of Yohji’s arms around her face, and the blur of her legs as she dances around him. His breath comes hard, I can hear it reverberating off the walls in a way so tangible I can almost feel it against my skin.
Compulsively, I try to pull myself away, fingers twitching against the metal, shoulders tensing as I watch them. My eyes are dry from not blinking, a feeling that strangely feels too similar to clarity, and is equally upsetting as paralysis seems to set in.
He drags himself around her, energy clearly flagging as his arm glides sluggishly through the air, his wire pulls slower than it should.
My eyes gape at the sight, screaming in a way I’m no longer accustomed to.
Ultimately, I cannot move, the weight suddenly collected in my hands, in my legs and chest, prevents me from moving at all, from doing anything but watching the bruises raise on his cheeks as her hands move past his face, watch the blood collecting down his stomach, mixed with sweat and traces of body paint.
In that moment, I am certain that the stains left on my skin earlier have long since faded from sweat and exertion, but I’m too rapt, too immobilized to check for sure.
Vaguely, in the midst of their violence, it seems important.
She seems to be laughing, the twist of her face bright and gleeful every time they change positions and I can see her lunging at him face first. Her lips move softly, through the breaking of air and slapping of flesh, I can’t make out any words.
She leans up, arcing her fist over his head, eyes narrowing as he feints down, hand gripping his watch. The wire gleams in the bright light, searing against my eyes. I don’t flinch from it, watching as it coils out, reflecting spirals of glare along the room, shifting and merging as he moves, sliding down onto his knees. The wire shoots up behind him, seemingly of its own accord, wrapping in loops in the air.
Finally, it comes to rest on Tsujii’s arm, clenching through the soot stained sleeve of her coat. He yanks, pulling her down so she’s half bent over him, her face twisting into a scowl.
I let a smile settle over my lips, grip relaxing on the railing as I watch her struggle against the wire.
And then she pulls back, dragging him back around to face her. She smiles as the sleeve begins to soak red, dripping a slow drip onto the floor.
In a single movement, her hand shoots out and clenches around Yohji’s neck, the wire retracts, and she pulls herself fully erect, yanking Yohji off the ground with her.
Her arm high over her head, the blood drips down, catching parts of the white fabric and gluing them to her skin, a macabre smile to match the one splitting her face. Yohji’s legs dangle over the ground, his arms hold limply onto Tsujii’s, whether for support or to try and pry her off I can’t tell.
The paralysis is overwhelming.
He begins to sputter, kicking through the air as his face pales, taking on a pallor he’s long familiar with. My stomach churns, trying to marshal my will against the rigidity of my limbs.
The kicking slows.
It is as if my body is on fire, ignited through my eyes. My arm moves through the sudden heat, wrenching my sword from my hip. Blindly I throw it towards him, wincing at the light it throws back at me.
Somehow, unbelievably, improbably, he catches it. His hand slides down the hilt as he finds a grip on his through his breathlessness.
As he lifts it, a tremor of something indefinable rips through me, assaulting my senses with something akin to a physical blow.
It is as if that throw, that strange and wildly desperate catch signifies a sort of resolution.
He glances up at me, thanking me, as if somehow we’re both saved, relieved of all this death. He doesn’t break the gaze as he plunges it forward, driving it through Tsujii’s stomach.
Her grip breaks as she lets out a low moan, stumbling backwards with one hand pressed along the splitting of her skin, the progressive opening of the wound by spurting blood and heavy organs.
Yohji falls to the floor, his knees slamming against the ground hard, the sword clattering behind him. Breathing heavily, he gropes for it, dragging it towards him with an exhausted smile and lifting it up, resting his weight on it. A surrogate spine, shimmering with a film of blood.
Tsujii convulses on the floor, an unremarkable corpse. There is something terrible about the way she lays, with her legs driven up under her chest.
I look away.
I can’t help but smile.
Yohji’s face seems to glow in the light, blazing with a peace, with something that is so inexplicably pure that is clear in the set of his jaw, in the ease of his smile.
It is as if he has been given what he wanted- that it is possible despite all my words- the right to be separate from everything he has done or seen. His eyes burn almost cold in the light, cauterizing clear and clean.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
The words settle in a familiar rhythm over me, inducing a second and easier paralysis than before. I’m tired of recourse in promises.
He hasn’t. It seems impossible.
I feel like laughing, out of spite or relief or simple human wonder I don’t know.
If he’s free of it, so clean and stripped of all of this, relieved of everything- than what redemption is that?
“Redemption is being able to recall your actions without suffering them again.”
It sounds so harmless with his ghost to say the words for me.
If you lose that basic sense- shouldn’t you have dissipated? Shouldn’t the self be negated by that loss?
I’m not sure anymore, watching the smile on his face now, spreading out to defeat everything I’ve held on to so ruthlessly.
And now it seems- so pointless.
Strangely, now, in the face of this strange joy spreading through me- it doesn’t matter.
I can face the realization once its fully over.
I tense as the sound of footsteps breaks the silence, whipping around in time to see Omi half carrying a limping Ken towards me.
“Yohji-kun!”
As Omi nears the edge, he almost drops Ken with the shock.
Were we all expecting betrayal? Loyalty doesn’t matter. It’s retaining the self, something which is neither loyalty nor sacrifice, but better than both.
Yohji looks up, breathing hard, smiling to discourage the worry in Omi’s voice.
The movement is broken by another explosion in the distance. The force of it vibrates under our feet.
Yohji’s voice is both surprising and strained, a testament to the pain obvious in the way he’s holding himself.
“You guys- go ahead.”
“We can’t! There’s no way we could leave you like this!”
Omi’s voice however is no surprise.
Fool. For once the word feels soft, not a condemnation then.
“Are you crying again Omi?”
His voice is soft, laughing through the pain clear in his spasming hands and the blood staining his cheek.
“I’ll catch up to you.”
I bite my lip. Promises again.
“Let’s go home together.”
Ken’s voice sounds thick, almost delirious and he winces as he speaks.
I almost snort at his sentimentality, stopping as I catch Yohji’s eyes again.
“We will.”
It seems that even if you can unlearn sin, you can’t lose that compulsion to promise, to bind yourself.
Without it, could you move at all?
“Aya.”
His voice constricts around my throat, shockingly breaking the numbness that had taken hold of my body. It settles deep into my stomach.
“I have to return this to you too. I’ll be back.”
He grips the sword emphatically.
I almost want to tell him I won’t need it. Not this, not for that.
“The place for me is with all of you.”
I want to tell him, thank him, for this. There are no words for this liberation I can’t explain and this sudden narrowness of vision.
I can no longer see myself returning to any of this, no longer see those same walls and same purposes.
Yohji, with my sword in hand, has laid this to rest.
“Yohji.”
A whisper, choked against the raw pain of my throat.
Whether or not he hears it, his gaze snaps to me, eyes boring deep into mine. For once, it is not a painful sensation.
“I am…….weiss.”
The meaning of his words comes foggily into my brain, strangely seeming like an affirmation.
My smile, despite me, widens, my breath becoming tremulous with elation and an aimless excitement.
Perhaps it is that excitement that prompts me to beg another promise off of him.
“Wait for me.”
He nods, staring at me with something I almost swear is amazement, or disbelief.
There’s little to differ between the two.
_______________________________________________

“Aya, come on, I don’t think Ken’s going to be able to carry himself much longer.”
Omi stares at me from the doorway, gesturing with one hand to the staggering mess that is Ken gripping his neck for support as he weaves on his legs. Even through his concern, his poorly hidden smile is too clear, too hopeful. Too obvious, and what is worst, too good a match for my own.
Unconsciously, I feel along my belt, looking to grab the hilt of my katana so it doesn’t hit my leg as I run. Finding only cloth, I glance over my shoulder again. From this vantage point, I can’t see him, but I pretend I can, drawing his image up again, hunched over and smiling.
I can’t remember the last time I saw him smile.
“Aya, come on! We should hurry. Yohji-kun said he’d catch up to us!”
Nodding I turn around, following Omi out into the hall where he’s already begin to run, a half hobbled staggered movement with Ken limping heavily beside him. Smoke gushes around us, wrapping between their legs, creating a strange and suffocating barrier between us.
A voice breaks it. It is paralyzing.
“Commencing self-destruct sequence in 5.…4.…3..”
I stop, numb and half blinded with smoke, listening to the mechanical voice and the heady racing of Omi’s footsteps as he retreats. I wonder if he imagines mine behind him or has cut his losses.
Blinking against the heady air, I turn around, feeling along the way for the door I want, the door I need to find. I open my mouth to yell, the word broken by a rush of smoke and the crumbling of the ground beneath my feet and the echoing sound of breaking stone and shuddering walls, falling black before me.
___________________________________________________

Black. The sky shakes over my head, bright and unbearable and unremittingly black, glaring with curls of smoke arching over my head. Still black, the ceiling rains down around me, spilling charred and suffocating over my flattened limbs, my bruised lungs choking for air. My eyes itch with the dust. I wonder if that’s what causing all this insufferable blackness- some misconception of my eyes filmed with filth.
Either way, the black stretches down out of the sky, snapping back on itself, contrasting and supplanting itself in some strange cyclical run of unfathomable texture. It grates against my skin, absorbing me into the ruin around me, the halting breath of smoke that gives me what little oxygen it can afford, the miring light of the burning walls and hissing machines, the squall of the collapsing floors. I imagine a few screams in the distance, to satisfy my need for impetus, or maybe just a pathos for the tragic.
My nerves strain and scream as I pull myself to my knees, head swimming with released blood. My vision pulses and swirls with splotches of color, little neon forms eating each other. I used to know the name for them. I think Yohji told me.
My hand snaps to my hip, hoping, but not expecting, to find my blade lashed to it.
I wince as my fingers brush along some cut. Hard to tell its location with my whole body throbbing, moved entirely by pain.
“Wait for me!”
My words lash at me out of the darkness, forcing my body to its feet, scrambling along the floor. My hands scrape against the walls, feeling for a gap, a doorway that will lead me back to where I promised.
Finally, I stumble through the doorway, tripping over scattered rubble. The air in here is thicker, spuming almost electric. It is lit murkily from a set of fizzling wires, dangling from a cracked ceiling beam. The railing of the balcony has snapped, it sets an oddly grim figure on the floor below. I pick my way out silently over its edge, dropping to my feet on the ground. Biting my lip I wince at the shock of pain up my legs.
Glancing out over the wrecked lab, I can’t see anything but hulks of metal, the corpses of these huge machines staring vacantly around me.
Silently, I begin to move towards where we last saw him, not daring to speak. Stupid perhaps, not to call out for him. I pick my way through the mess with all the fearful solemnity of one in a cemetery or battleground.
There is nothing to be found here, the sudden emptiness of the room yawns back at me. The windows are cracked with smoke. I stop suddenly, watching the blaze as it touches the rest of the school, streaming past the windows in an orange blaze.
And may they all rest.
Turning away, I keep walking, my eyes trained on the floor.
Strangely, almost fittingly, I stumble across Tsujii’s body first, her corpse sheathed in an odd beam of light. It’s strangely appropriate. Her mouth is slack, misplaced in a face tense with a grim horror. Her blood is sticky along the floor, clinging to the heels of my boots as I walk past her, not pausing to pay respects.
And may she lie- I could care less for her peace.
Something catches my eye as I move away from her- the light hitting metal. It flashes across my vision, glaring and bright, a long thin sheet of ruddy steel.
Without hesitation, I rush over, picking it up and fingering the blade. My lips contort into a thin line, pressing against each other as I close my eyes. My hands shake, pulsing with my breath, which too quick, shuddering through my shoulders. My eyes are hot and heavy with a miserable tension. I hardly notice as my hands clench around the blade, slicing my palms open in two thin cuts, staining the cuffs of my coat red.
I swallow hard, against the pressure growing in my throat.
That I thought I could be free of this- I throw the sword, flinching as it strikes the floor with a resounding and metallic clang.
That either of us could- fool. I drop to my knees, numbed with my increasing nausea.
My skin is chilled, seemingly hardening around me in a sore shell. My entire world narrows to the pain in my body that, thankfully, drowns out the sounds of the building breaking around me and the resignation that is making itself known to me only now.
It is as fitting that I will lie here with the rest of them. Nameless.
It’s perfect. Nameless- I won’t have to mourn anything anymore.
I would damn guilt, if I had anything else left to damn it with.
___________________________________________

The blood of my palms smears along the walls as I stagger towards them, breathing hard and strangely in tandem with the creaking of the floor, the eruption of plaster dropping over my shoulders, the loud ringing and lightheadedness of its aftermath. My legs weave, betraying my hope for stoicism here, and I topple into a corner with my legs sprawled out beneath me, stiff and useless with pain.
Unconsciously, I grope for my sword again, anything to hold me up as long as I need to be held. Again, I find only cloth soaked through with sweat and blood- hardly anything to throw my weight against.
My eyes blur as smoke begins to leak into the room from a rupture in the wall, streaming in a thick white mire to catch in my throat. It rushes in my ears, stings my eyes. Strangely- it reminds me of the ocean, with its terrible currents and biting salt.
I lean back against the wall, hoping it will stand long enough to give me the support I need. My whole body shudders.
I wrap my arms around myself, rubbing the damp skin, staring warily at the greenish expanse of fitful water that stretches on until it dissolves in the sky, and by contrast, the almost frenetically moving figures in it, almost overwhelmed by sheer size of the sea they’re playing in.
“Come on Ran! Let’s go in now- it’s not so crowded anymore.”
Aya taps at my arm, looking irritatingly cheerful in her bright colored swimsuit and braids. The color isn’t clear- only, it hurts my eyes. Our parents nod assent in the background, their faces guarded and obscured by the blinding sunlight.
“We’ll get burned.”
She pouts, crossing her arms.
“You’re already burned. What- are you afraid we’ll drown.”
Petrified. I glared at the ocean again, as if the force of my stare could make it evaporate. It breaks- somehow of my face’s own accord- when Aya’s laughs.
“”Oh come on baby- nothing’s going to happen.”
She takes off, running and waving her arms. When she notices I’m not following she stops, sending me a gently impatient look.
“Ran- everything will be okay. I promise, nothing bad will happen.”
She smiles softly, waiting for me to acquiesce. Inevitable really. After a moment, I followed her carefully, with slow hesitant steps. Overly gleeful- she clapped her hands together.
“Good! I waited for you all morning.”
Following her I let the water cover my body by stages, each new submersion a sensation in and of itself, almost like suffocating through the skin.
Unnerved- I turned to leave to water, and was stopped by her hand grabbing my wrist.
“Ran- I waited for this.”
“I waited.”
Startled- I begin to cough, hacking the smoke out of my lungs. My whole body convulses with the effort, leaving me sore and dazed. My ears roar with the sound of the building collapsing- the same roar as the sea.
“I waited.”
I shake my wrist, trying to remove the effects of the hallucination.
She would visit me here. Funny though- that I ended up waiting so long for her instead.
The grip stayed, a limp grasp of flesh on my arm. The sound of crashing walls was suddenly overwhelmed by hoarse sputtering coughs, and the slap of limb or skull on the concrete floor.
I open my eyes, trying to squint through the smoke and my burning corneas, flooded with irritated tears that burned worse than even the smoke had.
Staring down, shocked, at my arm I hesitantly brush a finger across the hand clenched tight around my wrist, following its trail of skin up a torn sleeve, to a bony shoulder and finally to a panting a lacerated face.
Relieved, Yohji smiles up at me, his eyes drifting in and out of focus, his mouth almost entirely obscured by blood trickling down from his temple.
“I-”
I press my finger over his mouth.
“Don’t say anything.”
He flinches at my voice made harsher by smoke. Instead of whispering, I had barked the words out at him.
“Please.”
The smile quavers again on his lips before his jaw goes slack, his hand slipping from my wrist and to the floor.
My vision blurring through the smoke, I grope around for the sword where he must have dropped it and pull it to us, leaning my weight against it. Using it as support, I pull myself to my knees and begin to drag Yohji off the ground.
The building rumbles around us, a hail of plaster slows my movements, but finally, panting, eyes streaming and inflamed, body aching, I’ve got him gripped well enough to carry, the sword balanced again on my hip.
_____________________________________

The lights of the ER are blinding, flickering through the night long before I reach them. A twin set of beacons stretching at us through the abyss.
Glancing back over my shoulder it is shocking that there is no corresponding flare, not rush of smoke or flame to mark the point of our departure- I feel numb. Even if I stood on that same spit of land that still holds the shattering remains of the school, or worse in the middle of the road where Aya was run down- I have been rendered incapable of returning to whatever anything was before, or whatever sense of things I had.
Even the hospital holds no apprehension for me.
There is no wind, no chill to the air, only the dense agonizing heat of our bodies- of the simmering blood that touches the air above a wound and the lingering rasp of his breath into my chest as I carry him, limbs shivering feverishly in their unconsciousness, slowing us down as he shifts, threatening to topple us both over. It could be any number of nights.
I pause momentarily, breathlessly checking the distance between us and the road, how dense the tree cover still is around us as the blue-red lights of a passing ambulance scream past, tracing the distance I still have to trek in neon.
The only difference now- the thoughts begin again, regrouping as I resume walking, now feeling the grimace as it carves itself through my features- is the formlessness before me that matches the night. The odd, shiftless uncertainty heavy on my shoulders, heavier than Yohji’s weight or the blade slapping against my hip.
Reluctantly, I glance down at his face again, still unable to tell- or believe- if the distortions of his features are shadows, and not the blood still spilling wet from his temples, forming in stiff beads along the short hair around his face. Regardless of obscurances, I can watch his features tensing, his eyes spasming around some unseen object, the trembling protest of his lips into a weary grimace.
I almost envy him his dreams, they spare him at least the burden of choosing.
Walking, swearing I can still feel the choking rasp of smoke in my throat, measuring my steps to the force and convulsing pressure of his breathing, I stare out into the night, demanding every sight, every possibility from the distant horizon.
Echoing back- the dim outlines of the town, appearing decrepit without the benefit of any illumination so late; and the glaring sterility of the hospital, the pillars of the entryway now too close, too unavoidable- too unconditional to ignore.
Shaking suddenly, I tighten my grip on him, digging my fingers into the damp leather of his coat. Even though he doesn’t slide at all in my hold on him, my seizing, desperate, fervent hands- it is impossible to hold on.
______________________________________

It is not long enough before we reach the hospital and the small, bright-lit, covered entry of the ER. The road stretches out black on either side of us, into the woods, which in the scant illumination of the lamplights, are tranquil and undisturbed- seemingly stretching on into an idyllic and impossible forever.
Despite our grievances- it ends. Endurance is the last and most meaningless of qualities to be attained- what one must first master is suffering, and numbness.
It’s easy to endure anything, easy to close your eyes, give in to perpetuation- change is the least likely of all occurrences- regardless of its necessity. So rare, and so unceasingly traumatic- it is no wonder we cite it to explain our losses.
Loss isn’t change, isn’t absolute enough, estranging enough.
Change is only exile without the hope of return. Even if one could return, or does, it is only disappointment and a second, more ruinous departure.
Maybe, just maybe, I could believe in Sena’s idea of redemption.
Right now, it is enough that the lot in front of the hospital is empty.
Kneeling, I ease Yohji onto the ground in front of me, setting his head on the pavement as carefully as I am able, using my hand as a makeshift cushion.
Furtively, I glance up at the door to the ER- inside I can see a listless line of people in various states of injury and disarray, all impatient, all waiting for the lethargic nurse settled by the door to wake up, or at least work faster. I doubt I have much time; if anyone comes out and finds me with him, I’ll be made to stay as well.
I’ve lost any momentum I had, I lean over him, skimming his bare chest with my hand. His face is almost placid, the skin blanched and made strange with blood curling down from his temple.
He looks- I bite my lip, my throat grows together, congealing over a swollen lump of emotional trash. What I would rather not recall now, kneeling here, my legs aching and pressed into the pavement, his faintly translucent skin made so much brighter by blood- and everything suddenly stark, irrevocable and at once obscene and monstrously absurd. As if it was impossible, sacrosanct, that I should have made it here, that I should move on from this with anything intact.
I will not- I will not even be able to watch him sleep.
It took so long to convince myself of that one fact, that it’s sleep at all, this losing of time, this rupturing of everything; and I can’t even tell when I made this choice that now seems so ingrained in me that it seems to be the very stuff and structure of my bones.
If only this could be eternity- this lingering, this redress, this suffocating proximity of the moment before departure.
Nothing- I can’t even apologize. And laments- nothing more useless, feeble attempts at recapturing a bliss, or a deprivation, that one is incapable of truly longing for, or acting upon.
My whole body, regardless, is heavy with it.
In this sleep he looks so peaceful, relieved.
What can I do but leave him to it?
A chill rushes over my body, a sudden influx of wind that is the rush of a leaving ambulance. They do not pause, somehow not having seen us.
I can’t say anything.
“Are you incapable of changing yourself?”
My mouth tightens around his remembered words, as if to hold on to them longer.
Yes- the most change that has been made to me is castration, everything ripping itself away from me. Reaction too, I have found, is something less than and beyond change.
“I’m not going to go anywhere.”
I clutch at my temples, futilely trying to ward off the promise- now, horribly enough, an accusation.
So much for promises- The words come back to me all over again.
And those last words, those last, terrifyingly binding words of his.
“I waited.”
Muttered out between breaths- my hand itches, grasping at the hilt of my sword as if to defy the words, or silence them. All articles of unconscious defense, all rendered meaningless, emptied out by the very act of leaving.
To end anything is to devastate it, to render it whole and bankrupt at once. Untouchable, razed clean and catalyzed and unmistakably separated.
How much better to sleep through it then- awake with its dreams long since devoured by oblivion.
Let him ward them off anyways; quickly, with fumbling, feverish movements, I unbuckle the belt that holds my sword to me. The sheath is rough in my hands, thick and heavy and unbalanced from where I grasp the blade.
“I can’t”
I lay the blade over his chest, placing the hilt in an awkward cross over his heart.
For what protection it could grant you, and what little promise I can keep.
For a moment, I consider taking his watch- why not expound betrayal with rage?
Briefly, suddenly, I consider dragging the both of us inside, to be bled out, saved, returned to Weiss. As always and so many times before would have it- we could continue.
It’s laughable.
Carefully, I search his pockets, taking his wallet and hiding it in one of my own. The only other thing he had in them was a lighter.
He can keep that, if he has any appetite for smoke when he wakes up.
Again- it is a when. Always a when. My good fortune has left me expectant.
I flip through it- some cash, a driver’s license with a false name, although one that would flag Omi’s attention immediately, and a thick slip of folded paper.
Curious, I pull it out, baring it to the examination of the glaring light.
It proves to be a copy of the photo Omi has on his desk. Strange, I suppose.
I keep it, placing it in a separate pocket from the rest of the wallet.
He seems to have nothing else on him.
I bite my lip- if this will make it easier, why not obscure it?
I breathe heavily, pausing before the final step of this, stalling before I must go. I glance furiously at the door, almost inviting someone to find me here. I could do anything, what does it matter now?
I feel like screaming, no matter how silent the earth would remain.
Feeling through the folds of my coat, I finally manage to open and internal pocket, carefully pulling out a thin suede book. It is blue in the light as I set in over the sword.
It is the only burial she will get, a funeral for all of us.
I stare up at the bleak whiteness of the hospital wall, of its bleaching terrible appearance of absorbing the night itself, of cutting me away even as I stand here, precipitating my leaving.
Tears are hot behind my eyes- I do not notice their burning until one leaks out, spattering over his raw cheek.
What we can leave behind-
How much I advocated everything, how much I precipitated this myself. I tense, narrowing my eyes at nothing.
Leaning forward, I press my lips to the lids of his closed eyes. The Greeks set coins upon the eyes of their dead, so that they could pay their way into the underworld, meet that dim sacrifice of the old, outside world into the new, the permanent and unshakeable one they now have no choice but to follow.
Like my weaknesses- I hope to seal his eyes. I couldn’t offer payment like that even for myself.
Hesitating, I glance down at the odd crucifix of Asami’s book upon the sword and Yohji’s supine body.
It can’t wait any longer. The scream dies in my throat.
Carefully, I press my lips to his, bruisingly- I can feel the lines of his teeth and jaw through the force of my kiss. My lips are clenched tightly closed against his slack mouth, the skin of which shifts under my breath and with his with a strangely horrible whisper.
Nothing.
The sort of farewell I should have expected.
As I stand to leave, I look back once more at his tired, wounded, pale figure, so weak in the exposing light.
The last moment I will ever do anything it seems, the last moment of my reluctant and too quickly severed vitality.
Grimacing, ripping my eyes away, I begin to walk, slowly, with measured steps, towards nothing, watching the horizon devour the end I might have imagined.