Chapter Text
The shovel is heavy in Ryou’s hand, but he doesn’t feel it. There’s a strange numbness to the affair, returning Amane to the grave he’d dug her from. The spirit watches, sitting at the top of the grave beside him, one hand on the stone cross, its eyes looking down.
“Hole full of worms, hm?” it asks, and Ryou feels a slight wrenching sensation, like a scratch on a chalkboard.
“Silence,” he mumbles, hands shaking as he heaps it over her, her perfect, preserved body. “She won’t rot, spirit.”
“I suppose she won’t,” the spirit coos, kicking its feet. “Buried alive, then, trapped beneath the crushing earth, unable to breathe, unable to scream?”
“I’ll take the Ring off,” Ryou says, slowly, holding a hand to it. “Maybe melt it down. I wonder what I can do with the gold, oh, have it turned into trinkets and sell them in town. Imagine having all of your pieces split apart, seperated over thousands of miles. Unable to ever be whole, unable to ever be freed.” He plants the shovel into the dirt with a soft, accentuating thud.
“I’ve been through worse,” the spirit says, beetle eyes shimmering with hidden fear.
Ryou shakes, slightly, in bubbling laughter. “I’m not talking about you , although, now that you mention it, two birds with one stone always was the upside to twins, wasn’t it? ”
“Silence,” the spirit echoes. Then stops.
They both exchange a look, then sigh. Ryou slumps into the grass, and the spirit flutters down to join him, nestling up in the crook of his thin arm, the crook of a thin waist that will never truly have the shape any other’s could be. He’s missing pieces of himself, where Amane’s flesh was dug out of him, but now the spirit fits easily into those empty places. Ryou sighs.
N either of them apologize, but neither of them don’t.