Work Text:
The darkness that claimed Mikey’s heart seemed to have manifested even before his birth; stuck in his mother’s womb, doing everything in its power to make his mother’s life hell as he kicks and pushes his way out like a pack of wolves. Perhaps the darkness had settled there— like an umbilical cord that they could not cut when he was crying (a weak emotion, why did he cry at birth?) and covered in his mother’s blood, while his mother was simply in critical notion. (Shinichiro was the only one present; Makoto was gone, wherever he was, a ghost in their family.)
He wished that, no matter how much it helped him become the person he was today, the nurses had severed the cord that bound him to this abyssal void, spending eternity feeding on nothing but the thoughts of death and violence. He feeds on violence like satiating his hunger, feeds on the end he causes like he is parched, asking for a drink.
All this for him to become powerful, invincible.
Sano Manjiro and darkness are like twins; one of a kind, but they could not live nor exist without one another. They are both a constant in their life, a routine.
He has to keep fighting back these impulses, no matter how many times those voices — god, those scathing, ear-splitting voices — would whisper for him to kill, murder, slaughter those who are in his way.
One kick, and it’d be enough to knock them all unconscious.
A thousand punches and he would be seeing them burning in hell, or whatever kind of afterlife the victim believes in.
(He doesn’t believe in the afterlife; the thought of some god watching him over the clouds as he suffers being gripped by uncountable darkness makes him hate the concept of deities altogether. He would rather die and wake up in a void, where he will have to stare at forever.)
So many skulls lay beneath his feet, beneath his hands; instead of seeing the mortality he has taken away from them, he sees nothing but blurred, obscured faces. He couldn’t care less about them, his mind disputes, and so he throws the skulls away, porcelain and smooth and hard in his hands.
His eyes were cold, lingering on his opponents' corpses and skeletal remains. There was no wave of hope, nor a ray of light, shining from his void-like eyes, forever engulfed in the darkness that has become a torrential part of himself. It was half of his soul, and he could never separate from it.
He walks on them, even when the soles of his shoes shall be covered in blood, the vultures land on the corpses, and he walks towards the horizon of the wasteland he has created in.
Invincible exterior, and an interior that crumbles like a wall.
That is what Sano Manjiro is.
That is all that he will ever be.
Do you want to know Mikey’s theory over why everyone he loves and cherishes, always has to die for his cause?
Makoto.
Sakurako.
Shi-nii.
Baji.
Emma-chan.
Izana.
Draken.
It was simple.
The gods above, seeing his selfishness, and desire to coat his hands in blood, wanted to make everything easier for him.
Or, perhaps — and this one is more sound and logical — it was karma for beating every person that questioned his authority and morality with a single kick, or beating them until they were black and blue.
Maybe it was both.
Whichever it is, he supposes he deserved it. He earned to find himself stabbed to the heart, where everyone he had stored deep inside of himself lingers.
It was penance, for living in this world where he would not learn to be grateful on how to live.
It was punishment, for only thinking about himself.
But why did they have to grab a hold of him by using his friends and family? Why could they not have strangled him at the throat by themselves?
Why did they have to make the others suffer for his wrongdoings?
Blonde hair cascades down to his neck; a perfect contrast to his dark, impure eyes.
Light hair means purity.
Light hair means it was touched by the sun, scrubbed off from the dirt that darkness gives him.
He doesn’t feel as if he was cleaned of his sins; rather, he feels his sins washing him and his body, as if he were in the bathroom while his construed thoughts ring through his mind like a maelstrom of guilt and selfishness. They do not mix together; they cannot.
But Mikey, too, is the epitome of contradiction after contradiction. He was born from one.
Parents who never love each other. Parents who stay because they have to. Parents who made another mistake and thought it was best to stay.
Even when Makoto died from a drunken stupor, having been swearing up a storm about his wife to his lover Karen, completely ignoring the truck in front of him.
(Mikey stares at his coffin. Everyone else cries of pays their respects.)
He wondered why he had decided crying was for the weak.
He didn’t know.
He couldn’t remember.
What a mess.
Sano Manjirou had left his friends immediately after Takemitchy (that self-sacrificing, heartfelt, comforting crybaby that he did not know he needed— nor deserve) returned to his own timeline. And he already knows, with a twinge of his null heart, that he will not be there to see the endgame.
Haruchiyo has seen it.
“You’ll be stuck with your destiny of never being happy.”
At least he accepts it now; he does not have to scar Haruchiyo’s eyes, or mouth as he says that.
(A small part of him regrets doing that, as the pink-haired boy starts to succumb to his madness and obsessions that always, always revolve around him.)
No matter how much Takemitchy would try, he would never dig him back from the darkness that had reared him.
So, he lets go of his hand and finally snaps.
The darkness inside of him reveled in that.
If he got out of Takemitchy’s way, then they would never have to interact with one another again.
If they hadn’t met, then Takemitchy would be living his life happily.
If Mikey hadn’t existed, the trail of misfortunes that follow him to the ends of the earth would not have latched themselves on his friends, the people he has always loved and cherished.
He lets go.
He just did not expect Takemitchy to reach for his hand when he himself is becoming submerged in the darkness he had only intended for himself.
Mikey closes his eyes.
All he wants was for everyone to live.
And him to die.
… Maybe after his birthday.