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"Ah, I get it. Because you're the passive spectator. You understand other people better than you understand yourself. I guess they say you can't be your own observer."
-NISIOISIN, ZAREGOTO: The Kubishime Romanticist
They bring Nagachika back in pieces.
Little fragmented bits of human pulp that tremble in Yoshitoki’s arms, quivering and howling. Screeching, like a burning man.
Like he is being consumed.
Like he is wrapped in agony.
Like he’s been peeled back and now the air is a scorching reality.
He’s lost his skin and unimaginable pain replaces it.
Juuzou curls out of the way as they abandon Shinohara, who is still enough to be presumably untroubled, and leap to their latest addition. The medics try calming him with what Juuzou takes to be a calming substance. There are words falling around him, shouting that is gagged by the quiet that is the man beside him.
The man who is...
Too quiet.
Incapable of speech.
And.
Not moving.
Unmovable.
As a corpse.
Akira is here too.
They brought her in with a simple assessment of ‘shock’, and plopped her in the back of the ambulance next him, blanket pulled tightly about her shoulders like she was holding herself in. At some point during the silence she tried extending a hand to him but it hung limply in the space between them, and she didn’t seem to realize it had gotten lost. She stared ahead at some point that seemed to help her world make sense.
Or maybe not quite so shattered.
This seems to be a congregation of all the broken things of war.
She is silent as though time stands still around her, but frozen becomes motion when they bring in the other investigator. She moves slowly and jerkily, like a film of damaged frames, responding as though Nagachika’s screams are knocks against a door which she must answer. Juuzou feels this is significant enough to pay attention, but he watches distantly, like staring out the window as the scenery passes by. The same way the sun will light a cloud just the right shade of yellow-gold, the luminance of the fluorescence bleaches Akira’s blonde to white as she stands.
Pretty, he thinks.
“Father it’s Seidou-it’s Seidou-it’s Seidou, I’m sorry I’m sorry, please let me, it’s Seidou we have to, please, it’s him I can’t oh please, oh please stopstopstopstopstopstop, it’s him we have to go back-pleasepleaseplease--FATHER-- DAD WE HAVE TO PLEASE.”
What-is-left-of-Nagachika gurgles and vomits blood, the shouting tearing whatever fragile insides he has. Yoshitoki draws him upright in alarm to prevent his choking. It’s a poor decision as Nagachika screeches from the abruptness. Something else has clearly torn. The doctors start prying Yoshitoki away as they search the boy’s now upright body. The flesh drips from his face and Juuzou can make out his eyes. Around a globe of white brown flickers before focusing.
Akira has made her approach.
Nagachika’s gaze latches on as he weakly wrestles against the hands now pressing him down onto the gurney.
“Mado it’s Seidou we have to go back. Please, stop it. I’m sorry I’m sorry, I’m sorry. They have him--I couldn’t--go back, please--”
Then again comes the moment. There is Shinohara, who is still, Akira, who is frozen, and Nagachika, who is writhing.
And Juuzou, who eyes the blanket Akira dropped, wondering if it really did any good keeping everything together.
His body is still.
His mind is frozen.
His soul is writhing.
“STOP IT! He’s not --MADO, I’m sorry, we have to go back--”
“Nagachika,” Akira is a tableau again until suddenly she’s not. She shakes, legs stumbling before she forces them together, straight, tall. “Nagachika, please don’t apologize.” She leans forward and runs a hand through the boy’s hair, lets it linger at his temple as the staff pins his arm to attach an IV.
It’s not their strength that’s keeping Nagachika immobile. Juuzou catches it in the glassy reflection of the boy’s brown eyes, saturated with tears that carve rivers across the mess of his face. It’s Akira’s expression, her ageless face worn by misery.
Her look of vapid anguish.
An abyss of blue sorrow.
If asked, Juuzou would compare the gaze Akira bestows upon Nagachika in this moment to the gaze of one who falls from the mountain mere metres from its peak.
No, fallen.
Somebody who’d fallen, and understood that despair.
That they would never reach the summit, but still worse, they had almost made it.
Nobody asks Juuzou though. He remains ignored.
“Please don’t apologize Nagachika. I’m the one who’s sorry. I’m so so so sorry.”
Juuzou doesn’t join in on the tears when Akira starts sobbing.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t protect him for you.”
Instead he smiles to himself in despairing realization.
...
They had all almost made it.
Almost.