Work Text:
The bombs had taken things from him.
An eyebrow.
An earring.
An eye.
Little things. Things he still had another of.
Josuke could put his residual earring in with shaky hands, skin taut and aching where his muscles shifted, where he lifted his arms. He could squint at it through his rigid eyelid, stretched like melted wax over a right eye that still thankfully worked. At least he could say that much, right? Two eyes, or one-and-a-half. Better than nothing.
And he could tuck his half-fried hair behind his good ear— good, how funny to call it that, when with its ragged bullet-holes it’d once been the bad one —and he could pull the rest of his hair in front of the burn, in front of the piercing that’d sealed when the heat of the blast melted his jewellery to his skin. He could keep his head down, and the frizzy, choppy curtains could shield him from view.
Hair melted, it turned out. Melted like plastic wrap, shrinking, fizzling. He could almost think it was nothing but a bad perm.
His back itched and screamed when he hunched over. It was tight now, all the skin, melted and solidified into ugly pink wrinkles that’d once been black and charred. At least it’d healed. At least it only hurt a little now, all the time, whatever he did, whatever position he took. He’d been burnt down to the nerves. Back and leg and arm and shoulder, all throbbing, unmoving, constricted. Josuke thought of them as taken, too.
When he stood, his leg hurt, like it was being stabbed all over again. And when he bent, or if he breathed too deep, it was his stomach. The thick, jagged scars pulled tight as stitches, crisscrossing. Impalement here. Surgery there. Tiny flecks at the top and bottom of his abdomen which he could pair together, which he could name. Laparoscopic splenorrhaphy. One, two, three times, before it was too far gone and they removed it. Josuke couldn’t feel the hollow in his guts where the organ had once been, but he could imagine it. An emptiness that never left. A collapsing. Another thing that had been taken.
And when he walked, he had to grit his teeth sometimes, had to keep his head down so noone would see him flinch. But the pain was nothing new, right? It’d been hard since Keichou’s landmine. This wasn’t taking. Just a reduction, maybe— two toes, sandals and stability, then flexibility, comfort, running, jumping…
But he could walk, now. And everyone said that he should be grateful for that.
He didn’t know how to sleep at night. Every side of him— front, back, left, right —ached at the pressure of his weight on top of it. Sometimes he slept upright, curled head in knees despite the protests of his stomach and back. Sometimes he sat by his window and didn’t sleep at all. Sometimes he threw up from the pain. And if he did sleep for any number of hours, it’d be broken, explosions striking him in retrospect and making him feel like he was dying all over again. Another thing. It was another taken thing. Rest. Peace. Happiness.
The bombs had ripped things from him. Little things. Things that seemed to get bigger every time he looked. He didn’t know his own face in the mirror anymore; didn’t recognise the feeling of his flesh. He hurt, and he never stopped hurting. And sometimes he didn’t want to be grateful he’d survived.