Chapter Text
The night ended in a blur.
He confessed all of his sins. He fought with his brother. Then… what?
Nishiki put his hand to his head, massaging his scalp. He blinked his eyes open, squinting at the harsh light. He groaned and attempted to stretch out but was only met with a searing pain all over his body. He tried to hold himself, curl up into a ball in a sad attempt to lessen the hurt, but he only grabbed at bandages. His face is wet and his mind is confused. There are noises and voices he's unable to register but all he can register is the deep, dark feeling of… what? Guilt? Shame? Both? Neither? Or something more?
Eventually, he passed out once more.
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It took a while for Nishiki to accept the fact that he was in the hospital. To remember the events of that fateful night. All he wished to do was to die. He regretted everything. From the moment he killed Dojima and onward. Maybe even stuff from before then, too. But what he regretted the most is that he was so incompetent that he wasn't even able to blow himself up properly.
He should have died, it's what he deserves. Now he's just sitting in a prison cell, rotting away in what he eventually learned to be an unmarked private prison. He's tried to end it all again. And again. And again. He's hit his head over and over against the walls, the floors, the bars, the dingy furniture. He's scratched at himself so much he bled. He's skipped many meals, attempted to flood the cell, talked back to the guards, picked fights with other inmates, pretty much anything one could think to do to end a life, he's attempted. Unfortunately he survived every attempt, usually from his own cowardice.
He is certain that the guards only keep him alive for their own amusement. The sick irony of them killing their own inmates, passing their deaths off as illness, and watching one try his hardest to be one of those many. It makes him sick to his core. But who was he to judge? He was probably worse than all of them combined.
Eventually, Nishiki grew tired of his desperate attempts. He tried for years and all he did was ache. He found it was better to turn off everything and become something of a mindless drone. Wake up. Eat. Sit outside. Eat. Back to his cell. The cycle repeats. The weight of his sins that he tried so hard to shove off rested so heavily on his shoulders it was almost visibly apparent.
He once told his brother many years back that he was nothing without him. He's only proven those words to be true. For ten years he grasped that man's shadow, holding onto it as tightly as possible. Built himself a cardboard empire of filth that he stood atop of, dressing it like it was something to be proud of. But the dragon loomed over it and his people fawned over him. As much as he despised how everyone spoke of him, he could never bring himself to truly despise the dragon himself. Every day he had wished for him to return so he could follow him. Then immediately after was disgusted that he would even think that and buried himself under his filthy emperor disguise. Now that he was fully away from the dragon's gaze and the empire had fallen, he was entirely empty.
For a while, Nishiki would pretend like nothing changed. Act as though the prison cell was his apartment and start the day like any other. Drag himself out of bed, put on his fancy clothes, do his hair, and get to work.
Of course that didn't last. Though the cell was not unlike his apartment, decorated with the consequences of his insecurities, his prison jumper was nothing like his usual patriarch outfit. Outside of prison, his clothes were like a mask he put on so he could pretend to be better than himself. Inside, it was another reminder he was one of the worst. There was also the matter of his hair care. He used to slick it back. Obviously there was no hair gel in his cell. Why would there be? Why would he even be afforded the simplest luxury that everyone he used to know had? He was inspired by the first time he ever styled his hair in such a way. He didn't have the… other party involved in that matter but surely he could try it again. He scratched his scarred arm to oblivion, so that eventually it drew some blood. He tried to run it through his hair but it was nowhere near enough for it to do the job. Not that it mattered. His head was shaved when he was transferred from the hospital to the prison. He didn't even try to wash it out.
Nishiki had no clue how long he's been staying in this wretched place. He had never asked the doctors and nurses how long he was out, where he was, how anyone was doing. The usual questions. He didn't even think to ask those. Even if he had, he didn't think he'd last long enough for the answers to matter.
Now, where there were only prisoners and guards, he did not trust even the date to be told to him. He did not keep track of days, either. What was the point if he didn't know the start date? Or that he prayed for every day to be his last? He could barely tell night and day apart anymore. It didn't matter. The days didn't matter, the time didn't matter, prison didn't matter. He didn't matter.
Every day was now a habit. No reason to care for the details. Not like anyone important was there to watch him. He used to care so much about that. Even when he was alone it was as if all eyes were on him. Now, there were plenty of eyes, but he has given up. Not like any of those eyes would ever look up to him the way he wanted for so long. They would never reward all his hard work or report to someone bigger. He felt nothing toward them.
In the end, he felt nothing toward everything, really. The bed on which he slept was dull. The food he ate was bland. The sky he watched for an hour each day was empty. The other prisoners were faceless. The guards were just batons. He couldn't feel a thing. The laughter he once enjoyed with his brother was gone. That confident smirk he donned when showing off his possessions was no longer there. The tears he so often shed were but a shadow on his face. Maybe someone was finally proud now that he got rid of that weakness.