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The last thing Anasui knows before he dies is pain.
It radiates from the Weather Report-fist-sized tunnel in his chest, so searing it renders his whole body numb. There's a puddle of blood that grows and grows from the open wound, circling around his body like a grotesque halo. Faint memories that don't belong to him flit through his mind—glimpses of Kujo-san's past forcing themselves into his brain from the disintegrating disc still embedded in his body.
It burns a Weather Report-sized hole in his heart, so hot his cheeks run wet with tears. The surge of emotion that wracked his body as Weather Report buried an arm clean through Anasui's chest still lights up his nerves, leaving him to tremble and seize in anger and anguish.
Is this how they felt? The thought flashes in his head, underscored by the panic engulfing his being as he tries and tries and fails to eject Kujo-san's disc. As I broke their bones and ripped out their organs? Is this how they felt as I tore them apart piece by piece, and watched their hearts stutter and stop? This— this is how they felt?
Anasui knows his emotions are volatile beyond measure. He knows how impulsive—how rude, callous and wretched of a creature he is. Like how tsunamis drown and earthquakes topple, it's a part of him that cannot be changed, and cannot be stopped. Whether he loves, mourns or hurts, it becomes an all-consuming fire that burns, a maelstrom of fiery destruction that eats him from the inside out.
This is the part of him that makes him unlovable. This is the part of him that got him convicted.
He knows that he isn't destined for kindness, or love—not anymore. Not after what he's done. Anasui had walked into the prison knowing exactly how he'd be treated: with disgust and contempt, what with the way he looked and the nature of his crimes. But what he hadn't known was that a man called Weather Report would be his cellmate, and that made all the difference.
Weather Report was…tender, in a way Anasui didn't expect and didn't deserve. Weather Report knew how unpalatable Anasui's personality was, and he didn't care. He knew that Anasui wasn't broken, but simply existed the way tsunamis or earthquakes do. Weather Report knew, unlike everyone else in Anasui's life, that it was simply better to gently redirect and tame Anasui's urges instead of forcing him to completely stop. Anasui's heart may belong to Jolyne, but over the years with Weather Report as his cellmate he's gotten addicted to the way Weather Report treated him—like something worth caring for, something treasured.
Maybe this is why he's strangely okay with dying. He'd fallen so hard, so utterly and wholly for the way Weather Report had loved him that this singular act of cruelty makes him want to die . He knows it isn't really Weather Report that killed him, but for a second he thought it was and he can't—he can't let that go.
He feels Jolyne close up the gaping hole in his body with Stone Free, but he knows it's too late. This is the end. This is how he dies. He's fighting with all his strength to stay awake but it's a battle he's very quickly losing. It's fitting, in a way: a wretched death for a wretched man.
He hopes he reached Foo Fighters in time.
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Anasui cracks open his eyes to see the bejewelled night sky sparkle back at him. The wind is cold against his damp cheeks. He feels a solid warmth pressed against his side, fingers laced through his own, and when he sucks in a sharp breath through his nose he smells dewy earth, grass, and the aftertaste of rain underneath the metallic stench of his blood. He's alive.
He tilts his head to see Jolyne kneeling over his body with the back of his hand pressed against her cheek, body shaking with silent sobs. Her other hand, curled up in the shallow dip of his collarbone, clutches her father's disc. A part of him knows he should be giddy with joy over the way Jolyne so obviously loves him, but this time…this time he's too out of it to believe his own delusions anymore.
"Jolyne," he croaks, mind too scattered to think beyond Jolyne's hunched form by his side. He tries in vain to consolidate his thoughts. The disc is safe, Jolyne is crying, he's alive…why is Jolyne crying? "Wh—"
Jolyne gasps wetly, snapping her head up to meet his own vacant gaze. Her eyes are wide and bloodshot, face pale as a ghost save for a smear of bright green lipstick across her jaw. Her voice warbles dangerously as she cries.
"Anasui!" She tightens her grip on his hand, "Anasui, Ana—oh thank god you're alive. You're alive…th-thank g-od…" Jolyne dissolves into incoherent mumbles and wails, hunching over Anasui's prone figure again.
"Help me up," Anasui whispers out a groan, flexing his fingers to get Jolyne's attention. "Please. Jolyne, Jolyne, help me up. "
He takes stock of his body as Jolyne slides a hand underneath his back to push him into a sitting position, and is stunned to find it completely healed. Instead of the haphazardly sewn-shut hole that Weather Repo—Whitesnake punched through his chest, there is smooth, unblemished skin, smeared with blood around the broken straps of his fishnet top.
"Foo Fighters—" Anasui gasps as he scrabbles along the blood-soaked ground in a weak attempt to keep himself upright. Jolyne whimpers loudly in response, arms stiffening around his waist. Had Foo Fighters taken over his body? Only Foo Fighters could heal wounds like this. What—what happened?
Anasui doesn't get a chance to explore that train of thought, because as he looks up in a subconscious search for Foo Fighters, he sees Weather Report's figure shrouded in the dissipating fog, chest heaving slightly as a walkie talkie hangs limply from his hand.
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When Weather Report hears his own voice speak through the walkie talkie it bowls him over so thoroughly he skids to a stop in the middle of the field. It is his voice, but at the same time…it isn't. The timbre of that voice is undeniably his own, but there is a wrongness in the too fast cadence and too loud volume. It's accurate, however, to a terrifying degree.
"You managed to make it out alive," the voice speaks, and he hears Foo Fighters respond with a relieved "Weather Report!"
He stands there, slightly hunched over with the walkie-talkie gripped in his hand, wondering in a daze exactly how someone—or something had managed to impersonate him so well when he hears—he hears—
There's several sickening cracks of bone snapping clean apart, and wet squelches of organs and muscle being exposed and twisted and torn to shreds. It's swiftly followed by screaming, more slashes and splatters of gore…it's a bloodbath.
"F.F.…you bastard! I don't think you realise who you've brought with you!" He hears Anasui gurgle faintly over the sounds of carnage. Anasui's voice is warbly, trembling and choked up like he can't breathe. Like something ripped a hole through his lungs. Weather Report feels a primal fear seize him, snapping him out of his stunned daze and dragging him forward into a dead sprint.
There are many times where Weather Report feels inhuman. Without his memories he feels mechanical—a robot made of flesh and bone instead of wire and steel. He's inorganic: a ghost piloting an automation. He remembers reading a book once in the library, before he decided the TV guides were less confusing. It was a book about a man who stole body parts from graves, stitching them together to create a living corpse. Weather Report felt like that sometimes. Like a mishmash of limbs and organs thrown together and given sentience. A corpse reanimated without purpose.
But Anasui…Anasui made him feel alive.
Anasui existed the way natural disasters did: dangerous, unremorseful, beautiful. Anasui flashed a brilliant hot pink that deterred rather than attracted, like a poison dart frog. He was volcanic; a crater of emotions that bubbled and spat and burned without warning. Just being near Anasui filled Weather Report with life too. Anasui became Weather Report's purpose, and if Anasui left him…Weather Report would just die, all over again. He can't—he can't let that happen.
Weather Report reaches the scene much, much too late.
The enemy has already vanished into the disappearing fog after dealing its devastating damage, leaving Anasui and Jolyne alone in the aftermath of the massacre. The metallic tang of blood is overpowering, and his boots sink into the soft ground with an unpleasant squishing noise. Jolyne's face shines with tears, her mouth twisted in a grimace as she holds Anasui's waist to keep him steady. Anasui, despite the worrying amount of blood smearing his entire body, is completely unharmed save for the stricken expression on his face.
Weather Report has learned to go by instinct when it comes to Anasui, because when it comes to Anasui there is no morality, only what one feels. He is wild and beautiful and ferocious, like the forces of nature that govern the world. Weather Report knew the minute he saw Anasui that it was simply impossible to deny his nature. So that's what he does.
"Jolyne! Anasui!" Weather Report drops the walkie talkie and darts towards the two figures, gently pushing Jolyne's hands aside to hold Anasui in his arms. He frames Anasui's cheeks with a large, warm hand and splays the other across his chest, pressing down where a trail of blood marks the previous existence of a gaping wound. He knows Anasui feels disoriented right now, if his vacant, glazed over eyes were anything to go by. He hopes the careful touch grounds Anasui and gives him some semblance of security, of safety; a reminder that he still draws breath and his heart still pumps blood through his veins.
Anasui makes a horrible sound—a mix between a yelp and a howl and jerks violently, throwing Weather Report's hands off in vicious, feral movements. He curls up blindly into Jolyne's side, eyes darting wildly and teeth bared in an instinctive snarl.
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Anasui knows—he knows that Weather Report wasn't the one who killed him. It's the one thing he knows with full clarity. Whitesnake was the one that had cast a cruel illusion of Weather Report over itself and dealt its damage.
His body and mind don't seem to be in agreement, though, because feeling Weather Report press his hand against the spot where he'd seen them violently coat the grass with the red of his life makes his entire body spark with adrenaline. Anasui knows that Weather Report has the capacity for cruelty—how else could he have ended up in the same cell as Anasui?—but he had never imagined Weather Report being cruel to him. It's a thought that Anasui has never been able to comprehend. But now…now he's seen it. He's felt it. He can't think of anything else.
"Anasui…?" Weather Report whispers, reaching out again as if he was dealing with a frightened cat. He carefully avoids Anasui's chest, opting instead to cradle his face in both of his hands with slow, deliberate movements.
Ah, Anasui thinks, eyes lighting up softly as Weather Report slowly holds out his arms again, fingers brushing softly against his cheeks as if asking for permission, This is the Weather Report I love.
Someone soft, caring, gentle beyond measure—even if the recipient didn't deserve it. Someone who knew that Anasui was as wild as an animal, as catastrophic as a typhoon, and treated him that way. His head clears slightly at the revelation, and instead of the stone-faced, savage expression he'd seen on Whitesnake sees his Weather Report, with his expression neutral but eyebrows scrunched together slightly in worry.
Anasui closes his eyes and leans forward, giving himself up to Weather Report, shuddering out a breath as soon as Weather Report's hands close around his face and shakily nuzzling his cheeks into Weather Report's palms. Weather Report's hands are so large they almost completely engulf his face, cocooning Anasui in his warmth like a baby swaddled in cloth. He feels Weather Report press a warm, lingering kiss on his forehead and gently stroke the skin underneath his eyes in firm, circular motions. The repetitive motions and Weather Report's steady warmth grounds Anasui in the present, calming his racing mind and giving him the much needed reminder that he is alive and no longer in danger. He's safe.
Now that his head's finally begun to clear up, Anasui assesses the scene and finds more and more things wrong with it. Foo Fighters is nowhere to be seen. Foo Fighters is the only one who can heal people the way Anasui had been healed, meaning Foo Fighters had taken over his body like he told them too. Now that he's recovered from his panic, he even remembers Foo Fighters entering his body—a cold sensation had raced up his veins, the feeling of whatever it was in his body going against the tide of his blood flow feeling strange and unnatural. Anasui had barely acknowledged it, too busy trying to cling on to his last shreds of consciousness before Kujo-san's disc crumbled to dust inside of him.
So if Foo Fighters entered his body, healed it, but didn't take over his body, that meant—
"Jolyne," Weather Report murmurs, tilting his head to rest his cheek against the top of Anasui's hat to face her. "Where's F.F.…?"
"No," Anasui breathes, just as Jolyne opens her mouth. He pushes himself away from Weather Report's hands, trembling head to toe from an indescribable emotion, scooting further away from the both of them when Weather Report reaches out to him again and ignoring his and Jolyne's alarmed expressions. "F.F. can't be…no, no!"
Anasui's emotions burn and burn and burn until they burn him to pieces. He's always been volcanic that way, spewing and spitting anything and everything to douse the roaring flames in his heart. It's selfish, to vomit all that molten anger and pain onto poor unsuspecting souls and leaving them to suffer once it's over, and Anasui has always despised that part of himself, but this time he cannot control the righteous rage and despair that consumes his entire being.
"Foo Fighters isn't dead, they're not!" Anasui snarls, digging his nails into the soft flesh of his arms. "I told that bitch to take my body and live on! What's their fucking gambit, huh? Can't that plankton understand English?! Are they that stupid!?"
He doesn't know who else to direct his tirade to, so he turns to Jolyne, who looks stunned at being yelled at by Anasui. She tries to talk, shakily wiping away the tears still cascading down her cheeks, but Anasui scrunches his eyes shut and screams, effectively cutting her off. He feels pain blurting in small crescents across his arms and he lets that pain fuel the fire roaring in his heart, letting it swallow up his entire being and spit it back out as black, black ash.
"Why can't they follow simple fucking instructions!!" Anasui's nails scrabble at the shallow cuts in his arms as he continues shouting, because he knows if he stops he's going to cry, and he absolutely does not want to cry. "I gave them permission! I told them they could do anything they fucking wanted with my body!! And I was supposed to die anyway! It's a fitting way to go for a fucking wretch like me, so why'd they—uumph!"
"Hey, shhhh…shhh…" Weather Report's lips, pressed against the side of Anasui's head, sends pleasant vibrations radiating across his body. Large, warm hands carefully unfurl Anasui's fingers from their death grip on his arms, placing them gently on the slightly mushy ground to let Anasui claw at the dirt to his heart's content, before settling against Anasui's back, pulling him flush against each other. Weather Report shushes Anasui softly again when he makes a loud, distressed keen, and gently guides Anasui head to nestle in the crook of Weather Report's neck, tucking a stray strand of magenta hair behind his ear and peppering soft kisses across his temple. Jolyne's daintier hands come up hesitantly around his waist, and her head thunks dully against his back, drawing closer when a choked noise rips from his throat.
The fact that Weather Report still chooses to be kind; to care for him and love him, despite knowing how monstrous Anasui is makes tears bubble and spill from his eyes no matter how hard he fought against it. He tucks his head into Weather Report's neck and wails, hands clenching and unclenching in the dirt as he slouches fully into Weather Report's touch.
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Weather Report hates it when Anasui talks about himself that way.
Like as if he's someone worthless or wretched, or a monster. Casually, like it's a piece of trivia instead of an opinion forced down Anasui's throat so often he had simply given up and accepted them as truth.
To Weather Report, they were bold-faced lies.
Anasui wasn't broken, or disturbed, or a monster. Anasui was a being so full of love it hurt.
Everyone who had thrown those despicable names at Anasui had never seen the way his eyes sparkled or heard his small, giddy laugh when Weather Report presented him with an antique wristwatch for Anasui to dismantle. They had never seen the way Anasui always, always asked for permission to kiss him, with his fingers shyly pressed against his jaw and a small, sad smile on his face, with all the heartbreak of a man ready to hear a 'no' , as if Weather Report could ever refuse Anasui. They had never seen him the way he was meant to be seen. They had seen the crimes he'd done and simply branded him a cold-hearted monster, forgetting that love can sometimes take the form of a violent, bloody mess.
Anasui doesn't like to admit it, but Weather Report knows the weight of his sins weigh him down, and his crimes haunt every second of his life. He knows that this is the reason why they haven't crossed that final step, because saying it would make it real. Anasui is bold and brash and never afraid to speak his mind, but when it comes to love the only thing he knows how to do is run. Weather Report doesn't mind, though. Anasui may not have the courage to tell him, but Weather Report doesn't need the verbal confirmation. As long as he gets to love and protect Anasui, he's happy.
And so Weather Report holds him as tightly as he can, stroking his hair and kissing him in warm, tender motions. He looks down at the man he loves so much it would take a lifetime to count all the ways.
He thinks, 'if I said you were all that I had to live for, would you run away?'
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