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Syringe. Sedative. Rope. Video set.
(A stuffed animal embedded in searing nostalgia.
The photograph of a face he has no right to even look at.
Disturbing reports, the ones of a patient who Maeno Aki failed to save—Tsugino Haru’s prayers to the impossible.)
Everything is ready. Ready to finally, finally cure Tsugino, then both leave this sordid cemetery of a hospital in one piece. With Ushirono Fuyu, too. Maeno hopes so, at least.
All he has to do is go to the Director’s Office. To manage this, he rushes to the sole elevator as silently as he can, mentally cursing himself for insisting on checking whether any more valuable documents were left on the lower floors. And so he scrambles and stumbles and, eventually, succeeds to enter the elevator. He almost heaves a sigh of relief as he relentlessly slams the close button, when a loud, metallic clang freezes his blood.
Slender and awfully familiar fingers, there, are keeping the door open. (He misses when they were linked to his own, when it was only them, their nearly-instant trust and shared terror.)
Maeno immediately tosses himself at Tsugino, putting everything into pushing him back or, failing that, immobilizing his hands. But Tsugino is faster—damned ZENO symptoms—and he easily wriggles out of his hold to then force the door open and slip inside in turn.
The door closes behind him. Maeno feels like a prey. Feels like he’s already lost.
“Tsugino…” comes out in a sickly-sweet voice, steady and silky. (Expectant and deadly.) Still blissfully unaware of the full truth and his very own name—not that he would care in this state, anyway. “Say, can I kill you? I think I’ll feel better if I kill you. Pretty please?” he asks as he approaches Maeno, steps growing hungrier by the second.
His eyes are abnormally widened, his cheeks an unusual pink, and his smile is one of a predator. He looks nothing like the guy Maeno was handcuffed to, and nothing like the patient he followed for weeks either. (That is, if you forget the incident. Once again, one of Maeno’s gravest failures. Does he even ever learn? Perhaps Fuyu was right. No, it can’t be. He knows why he became a doctor, and he knows he was right about Tsugino and every other patient. They all deserved another chance.)
It unnerves Maeno. He feels the urge to apologize to Tsugino. (To hold him against his heart and let him devour everything he needs, everything he wants and craves until nothing but satiety is left—Maeno’s punishment for not being able to offer another cure). Maeno wants Tsugino to pray again, to have hope again.
(In him in him in him he must he will he can’t he won’t not again never again this is his sin this is his redemption this is his apology)
He wants to be the one to grant him salvation. (So pretentious. So pathetic.)
Of course, he can’t say any of this now, which is why he instead presses the second-floor button and all but lunges forward, syringe in hand. Tsugino apparently had the same idea, although for once he is slower than Maeno and barely can effloresce the elevator board before Maeno crashes into him. Their collision results in grunts, yells, and harsh breaths against prickling skin—so out of place, this token of life.
The digit atop the door changes to four. They exchange fists, knuckles, elbows, knees, feet. Then it changes to three and suddenly Tsugino’s attention isn’t on Maeno anymore but on the display panel again. When Maeno understands what Tsugino’s about to do—mess up everything so they’re stuck in here for God knows how long—he rushes headlong to plunge the syringe in his back, through the fabric of his clothes—and prays for it to function.
It seems like it does. Sinks in, through wool and skin like butter.
Blood splatters at the same time. It’s Maeno’s.
Seems like they both got each other. Stalemate.
It hurts. Gnaws and throbs and spreads all over itself and even further, trying to corrupt his insides. It floods. Swells and radiates and erupts outward. Spills and spills and escapes, his very life. It devours. Feasts on his guts, empties his stomach. It burns. Inflames, pulsates, and lacerates. Hot, too hot. So hot it steals his body's warmth. He shivers.
It hurts. The few last drops of sedative he urgently injected into himself—a makeshift anesthetic—dazed him enough to mostly block it out, but its effect is rapidly vanishing. It now hits him full force.
He’s not gonna make it. He’s gonna pass out and never wake up but at least, Tsugino and Fuyu will leave cured and alive. (And without him, and he’ll be left to rot here alone forever. It’s all he deserves, after all.)
A tiny part of him, childlike and buried deep inside his heart, resists. Almost throws a tantrum at the idea.
He chuckles.
He thinks of Natsu and feels even more desperate.
Tsugino’s eyes—which were previously stuck on Fuyu, anxiously awaiting his awakening—fall on him, filled with surprise soon turning to worry. Maeno likes these eyes. He feels comforted by their big, dark irises. (A coating obscurity in which he wishes to sleep forever. Somehow, this body of ink doesn’t feel as scary as the sea. He wouldn’t even mind drowning in it, he thinks.)
“Tsu—I mean, Maeno,” Tsugino catches himself, having learnt the truth from the actual doctor just earlier in the hall. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yep. Perfect,” Maeno shamelessly lies as he stands up from Fuyu’s bed, where he was resting a bit. Fuyu himself is still on the floor, tied up just like Tsugino was before him—just in case the sedative wouldn’t work. “I just gotta… look for something,” Maeno explains, to justify the sudden and intensive search he begins, scouring the room high and low.
It hurts it claws it shreds it burns it burns it burns—
Desk.
—he can’t he can’t anymore he needs an anesthetic he can’t he—
Drawers.
—needs the pain to stop to stop to stop he’s gonna pass out he’s gonna give up he’s gonna—
“Maeno! Something is wrong, isn’t it? Just tell me. Please.”
Sweet, sweet voice. Beseeching, honest, and honey-like. Maeno would gladly oblige, if he could. He really would. But he can’t and he barely remembers why at the moment, he only knows that he can’t. The pain is all he sees, feels, and remembers.
“Don’t worry ya,” he slurs his words, mouth coated and tongue unpleasantly thick, as dismissive as he can sound.
As if that would reassure anyone.
He can’t think clearly and that’s maybe why he startles and retreats, when slender fingers wrap around his wrist. Tsugino’s pained expression snaps him out of it and he halts in his rummaging, about to apologize and find another lie to hide behind.
Some jackass who just woke up doesn’t seem to agree to that, though.
“Are you really that foolish? Can’t you see that he is obviously hurt in the abdomen?” he huffs, standing up.
“He isn’t a doctor, Fuyu,” Maeno flatly deadpans.
Tsugino looks between them both with furrowed eyebrows, back and forth and gaze lingering on Maeno’s midriff. Not so different from a lost puppy, Maeno thinks with a little smile.
“You, don’t talk to me. And he indeed isn’t a doctor, yet you both believed that firmly for the last hours, didn’t you?” Fuyu mocks, folding his arms with a haughty expression.
Considering Tsugino, he has started moving toward Maeno—who pointedly ignores that fact.
“Yeah, and whose fault was that, Mister Exhibitionist?” he retorts instead, eyeing the other’s exposed torso.
To this, Fuyu makes an indignant noise and closes his yellow jacket.
Tsugino, him, chuckles—which earns him a deadly look from Fuyu and a tender one from Maeno.
“So…” The latter starts, still unmoving from the shelves he’s slumped against, too scared of the pain to move without a reason. “Dear Doctor Ushirono, now that everyone’s back to normal, we’d like to ask you to—”
This time, it’s Tsugino who shuts him up with a heavy look. Very annoyingly and predictably, it makes Fuyu snort.
“Lift your shirt up, please. We first need to check your injury. We’ll see the rest later,” Tsugino inquires, tone gentle nonetheless firm, leaving no room for contestation.
“For once, he isn’t wrong. Listen to the apprentice nurse, Doctor Maeno,” Fuyu sneers, now seated at his desk.
“Just shut up, you,” Maeno hisses, grip tight on his shirt. (Trembling.)
The pain is engulfing him, yet his fear still battles fervently. (Hesitating, oh so hesitating and unsure—every inch of him, every unshed tear.) There are too many risks at stake, in letting Tsugino know so carelessly ; he could remember everything ; heartache and guilt could consume him ; his ZENO could resurface. And what could be worse than letting Tsugino drown again, lose himself again—than to fail, again ?
Ah, that won’t do. He definitely, utterly can’t have that.
“Eloquent.” Obviously, Fuyu is mocking him. Although strangely enough, it feels like the few aggressive words Maeno offered him aren’t what he truly addresses here. Almost as if he could see through him like glass, and hear his every thought. Perhaps an extra feature of his memory device, for all Maeno knows.
Tsugino shakes his head, exasperated. After which he redirects his attention to Maeno—all anguish and dread, this attention. His eyes are pleading and it hurts too fucking much for Maeno to find the strength to resist longer.
(This is a bad idea this is okay you just are so weak you can trust him it hurts do something do anything you just have to stay careful)
It can’t be that bad if he doesn’t tell Tsugino he was the one to do this, right?
Sighing, Maeno gives in and lifts his shirt up. He winces as he removes the makeshift bandage, painfully and disgustingly stuck to the wound. Upon seeing the injury, wide and leaking and meaty, Tsugino’s breath hitches. His frown drastically deepens.
“How… how did you get that ?” His voice is shaky. Fuck.
Please please please be stupid for once and turn off that needlessly intelligent brain of yours.
“Can’t you use your brain for two bloody seconds ?” Fuyu snaps, as always disagreeing with Maeno—and even with his mere thoughts, apparently. In any other situation, Maeno would have laughed at the coincidence. This is not any other situation.
“Seriously Ushirono shut it—”
“It was me, wasn’t it,” Tsugino realizes, face unsettlingly blank and now staring at his hands.
“Congratulations,” Fuyu affirms, a sardonic smile on his lips. His eyes, them, stay black and piercing as stone.
Maeno doesn’t say a thing. That jerk did all this just because he saw that it annoyed him, which worked. Great. Fucking great. At least he will be able to verify that twisted theory of his. Soundlessly, he spots another syringe of sedative lying on the desk and stares heavily back and forth between Fuyu and the thing. Which he quickly registers as useless altogether, since Fuyu already has it under his gaze, ready to jump at any moment.
Oh. He also had that theory, then. And did this on purpose.
The bastard.
Silence envelops them. Maeno’s injury still hurts like hell, but the adrenaline keeps him awake.
When Tsugino looks up, both of them are about to react.
But the only addition to his expression is tears welling up in his eyes, and the only words he utters are a string of apologies.
“Why… why didn’t you say anything ?” he articulates before wiping his tears away, and starting to gather medical supplies.
“I didn’t want you to feel guilty.” It’s a half-truth.
“Idiot,” is the answer that comes.
Deserved.
Fuyu rolls his eyes and then begins helping too, albeit begrudgingly.
When Maeno is patched up and his abdomen anesthetised, they finally can move on to analyzing Tsugino’s memories. He comes up to Maeno before lying on the bed.
“Don’t do anything stupid again, okay? I don’t know what I’d do if…” he falters, looking away in tender—oh so tender and aching—distress, before snapping back to reality. “What I know, however, is that whatever you see in there, we can do it. I know we can. Alright?”
“Alright,” Maeno answers with a smile as genuine as he can give—and which, hopefully, eases Tsugino’s worries a bit.
He will try his very best.