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Raiden is woken up by the moonlight shining through the window. He turns over and sees Shin standing in the middle of their shared room holding a switchblade, arm outstretched and dripping blood.
Raiden doesn’t say anything, he doesn’t know what he possibly could say in this situation. He feels like he should go get an adult, but there are no adults to go get. It’s just him and Shin and all these people who don’t care about them, who will be dead tomorrow and who will curse Shin under their breath as they die.
Shin laughs — it’s the first time Raiden has ever heard him laugh, and he doesn’t like it. It’s wrong, somehow, thick with blood and vinegar and venom. He says, “I guess I’m not.”
“Come on,” Raiden says decisively. He’ll do something, he’ll help Shin even if only in the most superficial way. He has to, or he fears that Shin will fall apart, mangled like the scraps of so many overexerted juggernauts.
Shin doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even acknowledge that he’s listening, but he lets Raiden grab him by the wrist and drag him to the common room — they don’t have a proper infirmary, but Raiden knows there’s a first aid kit in there, though he has no idea how well-stocked it’ll be.
Raiden pushes him onto the couch, and he sits there obediently. It’s strange having Shin be so docile. He doesn’t answer to anyone, and yet here he is, letting Raiden push him around. He’s always got a distant look in his eyes, but right now his gaze is empty, hollow, like he’s looking at Raiden but not really seeing him.
Raiden retrieves the first aid kit from its shelf, stored with the boxes of handgun ammo and the long-expired fire extinguisher. He brings it back to the couch before inspecting the contents — it’s woefully barren, just a few band-aids, one roll of gauze bandage, some alcohol pads, and what looks like an ordinary sewing needle and a spool of thread, which must be someone’s idea of a joke… Raiden hopes. He’d sooner walk around with an open wound than he would let another processor with no medical experience stitch him up.
Shin speaks for the first time since they left his room to ask, “Do you know what you’re doing?”
“Not at all,” Raiden answers. It shouldn’t be too difficult, he’s just gotta clean the wound and then bandage it. It’s not exactly rocket science.
Shin makes a noise somewhere between a scoff and a laugh. Well, at least he’s talking. Raiden’s gonna take it as a good sign.
As Raiden begins wiping up the blood that’s begun to dry onto Shin’s forearm — starting away from the actual cut, since he figures it’s better to work from the outside in — he asks, “Y’know that story about the lady with the green ribbon?”
Shin shakes his head.
“I’m no good at telling stories, but it’s like there’s this woman and she always wears a green ribbon around her neck. And she’s dating this guy and everything is great but he’s never seen her take the ribbon off, not even when she sleeps. And they get engaged, but he can’t stop wondering about the ribbon. So the night before their wedding, while she’s asleep, he unties the ribbon and her head falls off.”
Shin is silent for a few seconds, and then he seems to realize that Raiden is finished talking. “What happens next?”
“That’s the end of the story. The big reveal is that the ribbon was keeping her head on.”
“Oh.”
“This is the first time I’ve seen you without that bandana.”
“Oh.”
Raiden knows better than to ask about the scar around Shin’s neck, but it’s all he can do not to stare. There’s something strangely artificial about it — a sort of Frankenstein scar, almost. Like his head was severed and then sewn back onto his body.
Shin winces as Raiden dabs at his open cut with an alcohol pad. He’s got his eyes fixed on the ceiling, blinking back tears, when he says, “You can ask questions. I don’t care.”
“Oh. Okay. How’d you get the scar?”
Shin is holding back something, Raiden can tell, some emotion he can’t place. Something turbulent and uncontrollable, something that won’t lie still. “My brother killed me.”
No almost . No tried to .
Raiden tears open the packaging of a gauze pad and presses it to the cut. He doesn’t say anything, he’s not sure what he’s supposed to say.
Shin says, “I’m gonna kill him, one day.”
Raiden really does not know what to say to that. But this is also the most he’s ever heard Shin talk, and he doesn’t want him to stop. He asks, “Where’s your brother now?”
“Died,” Shin answers easily. “He’s Legion now.”
“Huh?”
Shin’s shifty eyes dart away from Raiden, towards the dark hallway behind him. His gaze is distant, unfocused, when he says, “I can hear them. The Legion. I hear them all the time .”
Raiden presses a strip of gauze to Shin’s arm and begins securing it with a bandage. “I… I don’t understand.”
“There are thousands of them, and they’re always screaming, and I can’t stop hearing them , and my brother is one of them, and he hates me. He hates me even more than he did when I was alive.” Shin’s voice is shaking ever so slightly. He doesn’t sound scared, exactly, but he’s vulnerable. Without his bandana, it’s like the mask of the reaper has come off, and he is so very small.
Raiden ties the bandage and tightens the knot firmly. He asks — cautiously, because he has a feeling that he’s treading a little too close to the edge with this— “Is that what I hear when we connect on the PARA-Raid? The Legion?”
Shin nods. “People can’t handle it. Everyone who links up with me dies. I- I keep killing them. I keep telling people not to connect to me and no one ever listens and everyone always dies and it’s my fault .”
His hands are shaking, his lower lip is trembling like he’s trying not to cry. Raiden isn’t quite sure what to do. He knows how to comfort people, but Shin is a different beast. Raiden didn’t even know he had emotions until tonight.
Awkwardly, Raiden pulls Shin in for a hug. He half expects the other boy to push him away, but Shin goes limp without a hint of resistance.
“Hey,” Raiden smiles, tense, bitter. “I’m not dead yet.”
“Thanks,” Shin says softly. “For sticking around.”
He drops his head, burying his face in Raiden’s jacket. When he speaks, he sounds once again detached, empty -- the panic is gone without a trace. “You’re the first person who’s ever stuck around.”
There’s no sadness in it, no emotion at all. It’s a simple fact.
Raiden gently separates himself from Shin and pulls the other boy to his feet. “Let’s get you to bed.”
As Raiden brings Shin back upstairs, he can’t stop thinking about what he said. About the Legion, about people dying, about it being his fault. Raiden feels like an idiot. He had no idea. He’d convinced himself that he and Shin were friends, maybe just because Shin seems to hate him less than he does everyone else, and he didn’t even know anything about him.
When they get back to their room, Shin returns to his bed without a word. He doesn’t get in it, though, just stands there, looking between the bed and Raiden as though he’s unsure of himself, suddenly awkward in their shared space.
Raiden is so goddamn tired, it’s gonna be hell waking up tomorrow. He wants nothing more than to collapse into bed and get his much needed rest.
But he decided long ago that he will make Shin his friend, and he knows what he has to do for that to happen.
“Hey.” He walks over to Shin, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot in front of him. “Look, a reaper needs a companion, right? Otherwise you’ll get lonely.”
Shin doesn’t say anything, but his lips twist into something that’s not quite a smile, but fairly close.
“I’ll be your dog.” Raiden insists, holding out his hand decisively. “I’ll watch your back, since you’re always watching everyone else’s.”
When Shin parts his lips to speak, he looks like he’s really smiling, just for a second. He takes Raiden’s hand. “You’re gonna regret this.”
Raiden grasps Shin’s hand and shakes it firmly. Once, twice, three times to seal the pact.
He says, “I’ll follow you to the ends of the Earth, so you’d better not lead me astray, Reaper.”
Shin lets go of his hand. He turns his head away, raises his shoulders defensively; Raiden can’t see his face enough to make out his expression. “I won’t. Just don’t leave me.”
When he speaks, he’s got that barely-concealed shakiness in his voice again, that vulnerability that Raiden is so unused to hearing from him.
“Of course not.” Raiden tries to project confidence into his voice, like it’ll rub off on Shin, somehow. “I don’t break my promises.”
He’s caught off guard when Shin steps forward and leans his head against Raiden’s chest. There’s nothing guarded about his tone, no holding back when he mumbles into Raiden’s shirt, “Stay with me, then.”
Raiden obliges without a word — he’s not sure what he would say, really. He gets into Shin’s bed with him, even though it’s a tight fit, it’s really only meant for one person. Shin is tense, but he does seem to be trying to relax. He curls up, his head nestled under Raiden’s chin, and Raiden wraps his arms around him awkwardly. And they lie there, bodies tangled together, and Raiden holds their fearless Undertaker until he falls asleep.