Chapter Text
“I want to shred you into pieces…” The joy evisceration could bring is singing a sweet agony in my fingertips as they clutch into that pest’s shirt. The burn is the only sensation that even hints at humanity—at blood flowing through my veins rather than mechanisms, screws grinding into sockets.
Any calls from that vermin fall on deaf ears—I’m not here . I’m not anywhere. Or, really, what I am now is just a beacon for that madness. A lonely lighthouse where the only spark is locked away, never to be free. Sanity is trapped behind glass while madness emanates across the landscape, drawing these stupid creatures to their doom. Maybe not a lighthouse then, but a siren with a sickly song.
“Stop!”
There is a sinew that seems to snap in me. That trapped bit of light is drawn to bang against the glass again in some futile attempt because that voice–
Spirit Albarn. Scythe. A name that falls from too many lips. “This guy isn’t on Shinigami’s list—stop it now.”
“I want to live in a world without God.” I hear the drone of my voice, but the words are just sand slipping through my teeth. My quarry is gone—there’s nothing to feed the madness and I’m…
“Do you really mean that?”
“Of course not.” A lie, or maybe—something flutters across the back of my mind as our eyes meet. Emerald green blinks back with neither disgust nor disdain, but some grey mist of an emotion that’s too intangible—unintelligible for me. “That kind of world would be rotten.”
Spirit stares.
Am I a lighthouse?
Is there light somewhere in me?
There’s something in his eyes—he’s looking for a spark. The pause is long enough for that other, now inconsequential, dupe to scuttle off. There’s no recognition in Spirit’s glare, of what he's found in me or whether he’s noticed our newfound privacy. Only a sigh and a slump of shoulders before: “Don’t forget who you are.”
“I’m not anyone of consequence.” The words roll off my tongue as fact but the foundation feels cracked. I am a tower ready to topple into the sea. Who not what . I wonder about that light again—if maybe I should ask him–
There’s a stupid smirk on his face now. What the chattering school girls of Shibusen would call irresistible. “Well, you’re my meister.” Spirit jams his hands into his pockets, slouching slightly while he lets his head tilt to the left. “So remember that. I’m gonna be a deathscythe some day, so you’ve got to pull yourself together long enough to get that done.”
Ah .
Maybe I can pull myself together, stitch by stitch.