Chapter Text
“What are you doing?” The voice breaking into his dead tired sleep was so deadpan and unamused that Giriko coughed and rubbed his painfully sore eyes to force himself awake, not wanting to be slapped around by these stupid ass scythes who thought they could do whatever. Still, he was actually surprised to see someone other than Azusa staring him down for once, he wasn’t a hundred percent sure if he even knew the name of the woman glaring at him. He had probably seen her before, but just never cared enough to learn her name. The only reason he knew Azusa’s was because she was so loud and, as much as he hated to admit it, fearsome , that he had to know it. Had to know when he needed to be concerned.
“What do you think I’m doing?” Rubbing his face some more he groaned tiredly at how much his head hurt. His entire body was screaming at him to go the hell back to sleep, that it was not time to wake up yet. He cursed under his breath and tried to open his eyes up all the way despite the bright lights stinging. This sucked. What was happening anyway? Looking over at her with a truly pissed off glare he looked for clarification.
“Causing a disruption in medical treatment.” For a second he was purely confused. At a complete loss as to what the hell she could be talking about. But when it clicked he looked down in a panic, all his sudden stress coming out in a heavy relieved sigh when he saw Justin still asleep, drooling on him. The kid looked fine, way better than he had in a very, very long time honestly. Giriko wasn’t sure if he had seen Justin look this way since they met, he wasn’t even sure if the kid had looked this alive even back then.
Justin had surely been on a crashing decline of health since the moment they met. Hell, long before they met. The second the kishin woke up the kid had started dying. Still Giriko only had the starting point of when they had met. So as the kid went further and further into insanity Giriko’s only idea of what he was like before was that. That was all he had hoped to get Justin back to. He wanted to see the other healthy enough to be as annoying and smug as he always was, without drifting off into the nonsensical bad decisions and horrible self destructiveness that ate away at his body and psyche. It was a small goal, but until this very moment he hadn’t even considered a healthier version of Justin to exist at all.
Looking at how much better the kid looked right now a selfish kind of fear settled in Giriko’s stomach. Was it possible for Justin to get better enough that he would realize that he could do far better than the enchanter? That once he was healthy there’d be no point for him to drag the rotten man behind him? Shaking his head tiredly Giriko berated himself for worrying about something as stupid as that. Justin still honestly looked more dead than alive, even if better than he had, so he was still nowhere near being healthy. Also all of this was assuming the academy wasn’t just going to execute him the second they had their guillotine back and working. After all the only reason he was alive right now, the only reason he wasn’t rotting in their stupid cells while they tried to decide just what to do with him, was because he was the only person Justin trusted right now.
Once the brat could stay up for longer than a few minutes they were undoubtedly going to try and force Giriko to convince him of going back to the academy or some shit. There was no way they were helping Justin because they actually cared, they just wanted his service again. Something Giriko didn’t want to let happen but at the same time he knew there wasn’t really anywhere else for the brat to go. There was no way they were just going to let them go after this, and even if they escaped somehow… he’d just be trapping Justin with him instead of with the academy. It wasn’t like the other could get very far being as young as he was, and even if he could it’d raise enough eyebrows that the DWMA would undoubtedly catch wind of it and figure out it was their ex-scythe.
There might not be anything better to do here than lie and tell Justin that’d staying here would be fine. The academy was gross, giving Giriko no other option than that. It was pretty on brand though. They loved trapping people in corners like this. But one big thing they were ignoring here was that Justin wasn’t an idiot. He wouldn’t just believe whatever the fuck Giriko told him, and after the whole fiasco with the Kishin he knew not to trust them blindly anymore either. They had undoubtedly given the brat a handful of new complexes abandoning and then messing with him like they had, all of which Giriko didn’t know how the fuck to deal with. So if they didn’t know either, it might be a lost cause trying to get Justin to trust them at all.
“I’m always causing a disruption as far as you guys are concerned.” Her eyebrow twitched horribly at his response and she grabbed onto his shoulder and threw him back so she could actually see Justin past him. The way that the bars of the bed slammed into his back made him cough horribly and his glare got worse. She was a lot stronger than he was expecting. Were even their nurses jacked? What the hell kind of training did it take just to be a janitor here?
Still, he was glad he had managed to get her to do whatever she needed to without making him stand up. Not only was he still exhausted from being up for days on end, but he also wasn’t too keen on letting go of Justin yet. The beeping of a heart monitor only went so far to remind him that the brat was still alive. Being able to feel his heartbeat and how his chest moved with his tiny, still ineffective breaths was far more of a comfort then he was proud to admit.
“I heard he woke up yesterday.” Giriko blinked and looked up at her in confusion, shocked she was trying to start a conversation with him. Usually they all pretended he didn’t exist unless they were telling him to get out of the way or something they needed him to do. Scratching the back of his head he looked away with a strained frown. He wasn’t really interested in talking amicably with anyone here…
“Yeah he did.” She took a deep lungful of air, readying herself to ask her next question, getting prepared to hear an answer she knew she wouldn’t want to hear.
“How was he?” Giriko looked down at Justin when she said it, feeling a heavy pain settle over his heart as he saw Justin’s slight red flush of living skin, his dark circles that weren’t going away even though he literally couldn’t wake up anymore, his wet little lips drooling into the oxygen mask and dripping out the side onto Giriko with how relaxed he was right now. He was so hurt… even waking up he was so hurt… but Giriko didn’t want to admit that.
“He was having a hard time understanding what was real, and even after I could convince him he’d forget again after a bit. But he was talking and making sense, seemed ok enough.” Her mouth hardened into a pained line. She looked devastated, angry, disgusted, and probably a bit of every other negative emotion. Giriko couldn’t blame her though. He felt that way too. Justin thinking they were dead had been heartbreaking, and even after he convinced Justin they weren’t dead he had still taken far longer to accept that Giriko was real, he hadn’t realized it until he was falling asleep again. Which meant the conversation they had been having… Justin had thought he was talking to himself. That made Giriko feel like he was gutted.
How much had Justin been ‘talking’ to him since he left? How had he been able to seem so normal if he thought all of that was fake? Was he that used to it? That desperate? Giriko knew he was being overly optimistic by thinking Justin ‘forgot’ that he was alive. After the immediate fear that came with waking up so drugged Justin knew damn well that he was alive. He just didn’t know Giriko was. He didn’t know Giriko was and didn’t bother to question it. And that had to be because he wasn’t all that surprised to see him. Because he undoubtedly had seen Giriko before. Had those conversations before.
‘I thought you were dead. I thought you died. I missed you. Why did you leave me?’ Giriko felt sick. How many times had Justin told ‘him’ all of that? How many times had he lived through that to be so unquestioning of it, to be so certain that Giriko was nothing more than a part of his subconscious? He had never once asked Giriko if he was real, if he was really alive, never asked for any kind of confirmation on that. All his questions up until ‘why did you leave’ were just about what was happening, things his subconscious could easily make up an answer for. None of them were directed specifically at Giriko. Because Justin already knew the questions would fall flat against nothingness. Because Giriko wasn’t actually there.
Looking down at the blonde Giriko had to steel himself to not have any kind of visible reaction. He grit his teeth horribly, clenching and unclenching one of his fists. Would Justin even know he was real the next time he woke up? Would he just think it was another delusion? Would he write off that encounter as fake? There was no way to know. No way to tell how long it’d take to convince Justin that he wasn’t imagining things anymore, or at the very least wasn’t imagining Giriko.
“How was he… while everything was happening?” It took a second for Giriko to realize she meant while they were off doing their own thing, Giriko burning time and watching over Justin and Justin wandering after the kishin in search of some type of answer to the madness. Some reason as to why he was suffering like this, where the supposed beauty in it was.
“Scared.” The woman’s eyebrows shot up, shocked to hear that response. It made Giriko scoff. He knew they were this stupid, he had been there when it was happening after all… but being reminded of it really did wonders whipping his anger back up again.
“You look surprised by that. Aren’t you guys the leaders in this whole fight against madness? Shouldn’t you know how it affects people? Don’t you all underline the ‘fear’ it gives everyone?” The silence that came over them after that was deafening, she clearly knew he was right, that she had been reading this wrong the entire time. Giriko wasn’t interesting in being patient and turning this into a fucking teaching moment though, this bullshit wasn’t his job and he also didn’t give a fuck as long as they left Justin alone.
“I guess it's better to assume they're all inhuman if you want to make it easy to finish off your ineffective killings.” With that Giriko moved Justin gently back onto his lap, getting back into the center of the bed after being so rudely pushed to the side. Each move was very careful though, terrified of smacking Justin’s central port on something and letting a fucking fountain of blood come out of the brat’s chest.
“If he was scared, why didn’t he come back with Tezca? Or just come back before everything snowballed into that?” Looking back at her with a glare Giriko tried to inspire some kind of fear so she’d leave them the hell alone. It didn’t work even a little bit, she raised a judgemental eyebrow at him, not entertained with his shitty attempts to scare her. Huffing Giriko relented to the fact he was going to have to answer and be a part of this conversation.
“He was scared of you . What you’d do to him.” Her eyebrow didn’t lower, still looking skeptical, not believing him even a little bit… how fucking exhausting. Giriko wasn’t even going to get into the topic of how Tezca didn’t exactly seem like the safest person to go with in the first place, he wanted this over as soon as possible.
“Scared of what you’d do and angry that you all abandoned him so quick. Having all of that mixing around in the head of a kid wracked with delusions that was also being pushed around by a psychotic clown obviously made for a pretty fucked up experience for everyone.” Her mouth opened slightly before closing, racing thoughts behind her eyes, a million things she was trying to piece together with this new information, a million things she was trying to justify so she wouldn’t feel guilty for being a part of this. Giriko wasn’t going to let that happen.
“Before you start with all those questions I can see you gettin’ ready to ask me, I’m gonna stop you.” Her lips pursed, but she waited, agreeing to hearing more. That was something, barely anything but more than Giriko expected from these fucks.
“I’m not going to be able to tell you exactly what Justin was thinking. Hell, I don’t think Justin will be able to.” That was undoubtedly true, Giriko knew it was. Justin had barely been sure of what he was doing the entire time, going forward with confidence, refusing to doubt himself, but he was still on entirely his own for the first time… and it was painfully apparent. Giriko wasn’t sure how he had made it so far before he had gone to find Giriko in the gutters. He was strong and intelligent, but… really stupid too.
There was a reason he grabbed onto Noah the second he left, needing someone there so he wasn’t walking straight into walls thinking it was normal and possibly even acceptable to be mad outside of the academy… coming back with blank eyes that weren’t sure why they believed they’d be accepted anywhere. Shaking those thoughts out of his mind Giriko continued.
“But the exact isn’t what matters here- what matters is that you realize you all weren’t as blameless as you like to believe.” She looked mad at him for saying that, still lost in denial. Giriko gave a humorless laugh, rubbing the bridge of his nose in disbelief.
“Justin wasn’t as crazy and insane as you all think he was. He was desperate.” Giriko’s voice went painfully quiet there, filled with pain as he was forced to remember everything he saw from the kid this last year… it had been hard just to watch everything blow up in Justin’s face. To see the kid stand perfectly still for a moment, dealing with his tragedy before regaining his smug expression, acting as if everything was fine, as if no one could see the suffering behind his eyes.
“Why’d he kill BJ?” The dramatic sigh Giriko made was so loud it felt inappropriate for the conversation they were having. He didn’t care. He was tired playing this game, tired of being forced to explain everything because they couldn’t think for one single moment. Shooting her another glare he clicked his tongue at how she didn’t react, unphased with his anger.
“I don’t think you’re ever gonna get an answer to that.” Giriko was being serious with that, he didn’t know what led Justin to that, what had happened in Justin’s final moments with the academy, but it didn’t matter all that much either. The nurse didn’t seem to agree.
“He has to answer for his crimes eventually.” They kept saying that but Giriko didn’t even know what they meant by that.
“What kind of answer are you looking for? The man’s still dead. What could he tell you that’d make that better?” Her lips puckered, annoyed by the question as if it was an unfair thing to ask even with how insistent they were on saying that over and over and over again as if they were supposed to just figure it out from that.
“You said yourself that he was scared of us, why would he do something that’d make us more inclined to find him?” She bypassed answering, confirming Giriko’s idea that they didn’t even know themselves what they wanted from Justin. They were angry, surely, fairly even… but they couldn’t just keep holding this against him, telling him he had to pay it back while also feeling as if there was nothing he could do to actually make it ok.
“We could sit here and play a guessin’ game if you really want, but there's no fucking point.” Leaning back against the angled bed Giriko held Justin closer against his chest, protectively.
“Something happened that led Justin to that decision and he did it. He killed that man, it's your choice how to stomach that information.” The nurse nodded slowly, understanding that that was the truth, that there was nothing else to hear here. Took her fucking long enough. Giriko went a bit further to really try to end this right here.
“He won’t give you any excuses and you probably wouldn’t take any excuses he could give either.” Suddenly she looked pissed off, upset with this again out of fucking nowhere… Jesus, talk about denial, realizing things and then immediately falling back because it's too hard to stomach.
“How are we supposed to know whether or not he’ll do it again if we don’t know what led him to it?” The anger that lit up in Giriko’s soul was so explosive he was shocked he didn’t get up and throw her out. He was sick of this, sick of them acting as if Justin was an uncontrollable animal who was just interested in blood 24/7.
“You guys are dumber than I thought.” Giriko spat the words at her like a greasy black gob of hatred. He hated this bullshit, he wanted to bundle Justin up and take him back to Loew, somewhere he wouldn’t have to deal with all this while he was still trying to fucking heal.
“How so?” If Giriko didn’t have Justin in a cute sleepy puddle on his lap he’d get up and actually fight her right now, this was fucking absurd. He did not understand even a little bit how they could be this dumb.
“Because it was obviously a war effort! Did you fucking forget that was a war!?” That seemed to get to her, making enough sense she grimaced at her own stupidity. It was something, but not nearly enough.
“And none of you ever picked up on that fucking clown! Just ignored it like morons! I can’t tell you how it happened or how it convinced him to kill BJ but I can tell you that it was using him as a puppet that entire fucking time!” Giriko didn’t even like thinking about the clown, this monstrous thing that followed them around constantly, like Justin’s fucking creepy chaperone. A lot of the time, even though they started dating during all of this, they didn’t sleep together because the clown would just stare at the scythe until he followed him hesitantly into the night. Justin had never told him what they were doing, why the clown was even there… Giriko wasn’t even sure if he wanted to know. It seemed that bad.
“It was gross and horrific and the fact that none of you picked up on it is…!” The bruises on Justin’s face and wrists, some even on his legs and upper thighs… they were never explained but Giriko knew where they came from. He should’ve done something while it was happening but he never did, the clown commanded a presence that all of them were actually a bit scared of. There was something more than a bit wrong with it.
“Pathetic honestly.” It didn’t have any venom in it. He was far too disgusted and upset about all of it to get properly angry anymore. Justin was still asleep. Through this whole awful conversation he had stayed perfectly asleep. Heavy and unmoving in Giriko’s arms. All drugged up and blind to everything around him. Good. He deserved to be away from all of this for a second. Giriko remembered back when they were with Noah the brat’s hair had started to fall out in clumps from all his fear and stress and starvation. He remembered that the kid couldn’t stop shaking, that when he wasn’t being held together by his heavy vestments he was as steady as a baby deer, his bony knees knocking together as he scratched the back of his neck bloody and talked about everything with a calm confident voice that just felt wrong to hear on someone so blatantly in pain.
Justin had never lost his confidence. In all of that he had never once lost his will. But not because he knew he was going to win. It was because he knew he was going to die. ‘Out in a blaze of glory Giriko, surely you’ve heard of it. After all that’s what you're doing here too, isn’t it?’ It wasn’t. He had every intent to win. Justin didn’t. Because Justin knew it was a lost cause from the beginning. The brat had never been looking for victory. He had just been making sure he made the best of his time left.
‘They must’ve had a suffocatingly tight hold on you for a real long time for you to be actin’ like this now.’ Giriko still remembered Justin’s horrific smile, the one that looked far too happy, far too pleased to be on the face of a dying boy. Justin found it all funny. He laughed slightly at Giriko’s misconception of the situation and pulled on the enchanter’s necklace until they were almost kissing.
‘You’re giving them far too much credit here. It wasn’t ever them holding me back, it was my own patience. And I don’t have time for patience anymore.’ It was only a whisper, but it was filled with so much confidence, so much desire. Justin took whatever he wanted. Did whatever he wanted. He was insane. But not in the way everyone thought he was. Even in his delusions, he knew he was delusional. Even being manipulated, he knew he was being manipulated. Justin knew he didn’t have control of his life anymore. He knew that everything was winding up to a horrible explosive end. He knew there was no escape from his fate. From the role he was being forced into.
So every moment that he wasn’t being swallowed alive by the clown; every second he was able to lose himself in his delusions… he did. They were all better than his reality. He had found a way to channel all his crippling pain into a suffocating confidence. Lined with his overwhelming and selfish desire to live. ‘I want to have the experience of being so painfully human burnt into my soul before it ends Giriko. Nothing’s going to stop me from taking that.’
Justin had been falling apart. Thin to the point that his face started to show the lines of his skull. Pale to the point that he seemed a bit blue. Covered in wounds that his body didn’t have the resources or energy to heal. Made entirely out of survival instincts and twitchy habits that went under the radar of everyone except the people who knew him. He was dying. He knew he was dying. But…
‘I’m alive aren’t I?’ Giriko bit his lip. Holding back any kind of tears that dare to slip out. Justin had been so cold that night. His heart barely beating. He was shivering and sweating. Neither of them knew exactly what was wrong with him, but they both knew it was dangerous. Giriko still wasn’t exactly sure what possessed Justin to say that. Or at least he wished didn’t. He wished Justin never explained.
‘This is what it means to be alive.’ Giriko’s mouth had felt cold. There wasn’t really any way for him to deny that. Pain was something that came with being alive. Justin wasn’t wrong, and there was nothing Giriko could say that’d convince him that was wrong. Justin couldn’t be convinced of anything once his voice sounded like that. Once he had truly committed something to heart.
‘I love it. I love it so much Giriko.’ Justin’s voice cracked, turning into a pained sob at the end. Giriko hadn’t known how to react. That was the first time he had seen Justin cry. The other was always so infuriatingly composed, even in the height of his insanity he had this egomaniacal vibe about him, even when the clown messed with him he’d just cling to Giriko’s side in silence for hours. He never cried. He never cried but… then he had been sobbing.
‘I’m not ready for it to end. I want to hurt more.’ Justin had no hope for a victory, for a peaceful future. He hadn’t had one since the beginning. He just wanted to survive. And they were both realizing that he wasn’t going to be able to much longer.
Giriko hadn’t had any words of comfort that night. He had no idea what to say. And within the next few hours they had gotten torn apart with Giriko finding himself on the business end of a bunch of the reaper’s death weapons. So yeah. He had been shocked to hear Justin was still alive. Shocked to hear that he had turned himself in. Shocked to hear that he had begged to die.
So much had happened in those few weeks he had been gone. So much that he’d never know. Even if he convinced Justin to tell him what had happened there was probably a lot the kid didn’t even process. Probably a lot he had blocked out. So in a way there was a lot that no one would ever know. But whatever had happened, Giriko knew enough to be devastated. He knew that Justin thought he died, that something had made the kid give up entirely and embrace death, that he had gotten bad enough that they put him into a fucking medical coma. Worst of all he knew that Justin had been having delusions that he was there. That he had been so desperate for Giriko to be there with him that his mind had been trying to compensate.
Sighing he pulled the kid’s heavy body up the bed slightly, making their heads level again after the brat had slumped down to curl up against his chest. Justin’s head had fallen to the side limply, he was still completely out. Giriko laughed with a sad kind of humor. He had heard the nurse say something in all of that, get huffy and leave, but he still checked behind him to make sure before he nuzzled the side of the brat’s face warmly.
“You’re alive. You’re alive still. But you’re not going to get to hurt more. I’m going to keep you safe this time.” Justin shifted at that, probably more in response to having words said right up against his ear then to any of the meaning they carried, but it still took Giriko’s breath away. He still felt his heart cramp up as Justin curled back into him, searching for the comfort Giriko gave him even in his sleep.