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the first time inumaki wakes up, it's to intense pain.
it's everywhere. a burning fire spread throughout his entire body, tingles and pulses of blaring red. it's a dull ache and then it's piercing sharp, jabbing into his ribs, his back, his neck. toge can barely breathe through it all, and his chest heaves as he tries to take in the mass of a single breath. it flies away from him as he struggles; the oxygen feels so far away—like it doesn't exist, just a figment of his imagination. or maybe the oxygen is here, all around him like it's always been, but it's his lungs that have given up on him. all he knows is that he's falling into himself too hard and too fast, that he feels empty and tingly and sharp. a filled balloon with a hole in it, all the air seeping away slowly but surely.
he can't open his eyes.
they're stuck together, lids glued shut with tears or mucus or whatever, and toge can't gather the energy to even try to blink through it. there's just excruciating pain everywhere, from the tips of his toes up to the crown of his head. it's consuming, it's consuming him, swallowing toge in its grip as his body burns and burns and burns. there's nothing but the dark blackness of his closed eyelids and a fire heating his body red, knife sharp stabs as he tries to breathe through damaged lungs. maybe this is what it feels like to die, to be dying.
inumaki's breath catches on the thought. is he dying?
it feels like it, though toge thought it would feel differently. thought that maybe his life would flash before his eyes like the movies said, that he'd see past images of things he's done that he doesn't quite remember, lingering memories of everything he's ever loved. feelings and experiences in half-second flashes of light, bright colors floating around in his mind that he'd find eerily familiar. the entire synopsis of his life, reliving all of it in his final breaths.
it isn't like that. it couldn't be more different.
the feeling of death, of dying now, is nothing but darkness. it's inumaki feeling himself fading away as his breaths go slower, lights slowly dimming and a resonating quietness. it's like a curtain call, a closing ceremony, except instead of a bustling crowd, its an empty theatre, with nothing but the universe looking up at him. it's cold and lonely and there's no job well done, no lights or flashing or flowers. there's just light fading fast, so fast, too fast. inumaki wants to grab at it, clench it in his arms and makes sure it stays with him, but he can't move. the pain paralyzes him where he lays (it's sharp, everything is sharp), and he watches the light leave him, spotlights turning off, signalling the end of the show.
(with the lights off, the pain goes away. inumaki can't feel anything, anymore.)
-
the second time inumaki wakes, he's in someone's arms.
he doesn't feel awake. again, he can't move, but this time there's no pain. the sharp pins in his body have all vanished, turned into a muscle aching numbness as control leaves his limbs. inumaki can't move anything, can't feel anything, can't open his eyes. he feels trapped inside his own body, feeling so much of everything all at once that it turns into nothing and outcasts him, banishing him from physical movement. it doesn't hurt.
all inumaki knows is that he's in someone's arms.
the arms are thick and strong and so steady. inumaki can't even feel them tremble under his weight, only feels them tighten as the person shifts. whoever it is is warm, baking pan hot, food out of the oven toasty. it's comforting because inumaki is so cold, has been ever since the pain left him for bone chilling numbness, and if he could move he'd snuggle into them, would press his face into their neck and bask in the heat. would roll around in it like a puppy in a pile of leaves, would feel and smell and taste the warmth on his tongue as it rolled of the person in waves. they were so warm, summery almost, and inumaki felt like the ice cold of winter, begging to be melted.
melted, melt, ice dripping. there was something dripping.
inumaki could hear it, steady and slow, the sound of something hitting the pavement. the person carrying him paid it no mind, continuing their movements, and through his own haze inumaki decided to think less of it. the arms around him clenched tighter.
toge could smell whoever it was, could feel how broad they were. the arms felt unfamiliar, bigger than what inumaki was used to, but the hands that wrapped around his arms and legs felt comforting in a way toge didn't have the energy to think about. whoever it was was big, however, with broad shoulders and thick arms and a steady chest that inumaki laid his head on.
they smelled like blood.
it was overpowering and coated everything, the sharp tang of iron stuck in inumaki's nose. the scent was dark and fresh, smelled as warm as the person felt. inumaki could feel nausea rising within the pit of his stomach from it, a deep, overwhelming feel of discomfort settling over him like a heavy blanket. he wanted to shift and get away from the smell, to wipe it off and breathe in fresh air, but he still couldn't move. his nose was still buried deep into a wide chest, body coated in warm, the scent of blood enveloping him in its coppery mist.
there's a second of pause where the person stoped walking and toge's body is jostled before the being continues. inumaki is just adjusted, his nose pressed into a smooth, warm neck, blood a little farther from his nose now. he can smell properly now, the scent of iron and sweat and dirt.
under it is the smell of cedarwood and musk.
it's familiar, inumaki knows it is. there's nothing more comforting about it and inumaki wants to sink into it like he's never sunk into anything before. the scent isn't strong, buried under smoke and disaster, and yet inumaki wants to take it and bathe in it. it reminds him of the woods after rain, of the garden in front of the school, of the one he used to have back at home. reminds him of training and of panda and maki, of warm, body crushing hugs and laughing too hard, of a specific type of happiness and crying too hard.
inumaki knows this smell. has smelt it so many times before that he's used to it. knows that as long as he can smell this, cedarwood and musk and something else a little sweet, that he's good. that everything will be fine.
with that, inumaki succumbs to the darkness. it's been calling him again.
-
when inumaki wakes up a third time, he wakes up for good.
he can finally move, and as he blinks open his eyes he registers the near darkness around him, the lit candles and the protective talismans. inumaki is in that room, the same room of confinement and execution, of confusion and hurt and longing and pain. he doesn't know why he's here but he is, alone in a chair in the middle of the room, feeling confused and dizzy but alive.
he also feels strangely light. unbalanced. there are talismans on his body, wrapped around him like gauze, and as inumaki turns his head he sees it. the lack of it, rather, and then the nausea is back again, rising up his throat like the serpent of his cursed energy, too fast to turn it away. toge turns to the side and vomits, his throat heaving, upending a mess of blood and bile onto the dark, talisman covered floor.
his arm is gone.
his arm is gone and toge doesn't remember when he lost it. the memory is hazy darkness because all inumaki can remember is pain, of getting the civilians to safety and then a crash and darkness. he doesn't know anything other than that, and yet his arm is missing, cut off at the bicep and leaving a stained red stump in its place.
god, inumaki feels sick to his stomach.
if he hadn't already vomited the remaining contents of his stomach, he would've threw up again.
the silence in the room is loud and as much as inumaki wants to break it, wants to scream and call out and ask whoevers in the vicinity " what the fuck happened," he can't. his throat is rubbed raw, passed the point of gushing blood. toge can feel the cuts in his mouth, the ones deep into the inside of his cheeks and in the back of his throat, the ones crossing his tongue. they throb in a dull ache that inumaki usually ignores and pulls through, but everything is so much right now. his arm is gone and his mouth hurts and he can't utter a word if he wanted to and he's alone. so achingly alone in this godforsaken dark room and inumaki doesn't know when everything went wrong.
inumaki sits in silence until the door finally opens. it's with a quick franticness not usual for the elders that use this room, so inumaki keeps his head down and tries to feign unconsciousness. they would leave him alone then, right? would come back later to review inumaki of whatever he had done between the pained gap his mind had created.
instead of the slow footsteps of the higher ups he hears quicker, heavier ones, accompanied by heaving exhales. toge keeps his head down, chin to chest, until the being reaches the center of the room, standing in front of him. instead of sandal covered feet and a traditional outfit, what stands before him are beat up converse, laces dirty but tied too tight, and shiny leather pants from a characteristic uniform. inumaki's breath catches.
"toge," a voice says, a voice inumaki hasn't heard properly in a year. that's when he looks up, breath hopeful, and catches eyes with him, with yuuta, amethyst purple meeting teal green.
he looks different but achingly the same. he's bigger, that much is obvious, taller and with broader shoulders, more muscle added to his mass. the way yuuta carries himself is different too, a little more confident than the scittish aura he gave off in the beginning of his first year. he looks older in a way toge himself looks, but everything else is the same. the same tired eyes, big and emotion filled. the same nose and lips and smile. the same hair even if its longer now, thick and dark and shiny, falling over his forehead. the same worry as okkotsu looks over toge like he's an injured baby bird.
inumaki doesn't know what to say, can't say anything at all. just looks at yuuta and hopes the boy understands everything he wants to say, everything he wants to ask.
( i miss you. i missed you. you look different. you look the same. how are you here? why? why am i here? what's going on? what happened to everyone? what happened to me—)
"i'm sorry," is all yuuta says before he leans down and encases inumaki in his arms. he's so much bigger than inumaki remembers him to be, wider and stronger as inumaki falls onto him, face buried into okkotsu's neck. it's too much, everything is, but all yuuta does is hold him tight against himself, rubbing circles on his back, looping on the lines of the talismans that cling to him and what's left of his arm. yuuta is warm against his bare skin, fireplace and hot cocoa heat, an incense burning smolder that warms inumaki from the inside out. "i'm gonna make everything okay."
yuuta smells like cedarwood and pine, of musk and something sweet. it reminds toge of smiling on a hot summer day, and of playing hide and seek in the woods, of lingering smiles and peck-on-the-cheek kisses, of the hug he's getting right now. reminds inumaki that he's good, and that if he isn't, he will be.
so he nods against yuuta's neck, encasing himself in okkotsu's warmth, and breathes.