Work Text:
“There’s six of us. We’re missing one person.”
The soldier frowned at him, nonplussed. Hajime let out a shaky, exasperated breath. He wasn’t sure if the man would’ve understood him even if he did speak Japanese—the ringing in his ears was still painfully loud. He couldn’t tell if he was speaking at a normal volume.
“Us.” He held up five fingers and gestured frantically at himself and the others. With his other hand, he held up one finger and gestured to the woods. “We’re missing one.”
That seemed to work a little better. The soldier nodded, then turned his head and spoke into the radio strapped to his shoulder. He gestured for Hajime to follow him down the hill.
He didn’t realize how badly he was shivering until he turned around and saw Tsumiki, practically vibrating from the cold. Sonia and Souda were kneeling on either side of Kuzuryu, struggling to hoist him to his feet. The other soldier approached them and Sonia went rigid, something wild flashing in her gaze.
If I had the opportunity to do so, I would kill you too.
A year ago, he never would have expected something like that to come out of Sonia’s mouth, but after everything that had happened this winter, he had no doubt that she’d meant every word.
The soldier called out to him and Hajime jolted. Despite his instincts screaming otherwise, he turned his back on the others. Maybe Sonia would go for her rifle, put a bullet through the back of his skull before he knew what was happening. The thought filled him with sickly dread but at the same time it felt right. He’d been expecting to die in these woods for a long time. Finally getting to leave didn’t seem right.
A hand clamped over his shoulder and he flinched, but it was only one of the soldiers, physically guiding him down the hill towards that otherworldly light. He stumbled through the snow, clumsy on his numb feet. His legs were starting to shake from the effort of holding him up. He still didn’t know where he’d gotten the strength to carry Kuzuryu halfway across the forest, but he had a feeling that secret reserve of energy had been entirely spent.
The helicopter lights grew painfully bright as they moved closer. Hajime winced and narrowed his eyes to slits. If it weren’t for the soldier’s hand on his shoulder he probably would’ve walked straight into a branch.
His feet landed on something cold and solid and he stopped.
The lake. The helicopter had landed right on the frozen surface of the lake. They were going to have to walk across the ice to get out. His next breath knifed through his chest. He could barely hear over the ringing in his ears. If the ice cracked he wouldn’t be able to hear it.
And if he did hear it, would it even matter? A warning hadn’t saved Sagishi. They’d fallen through the ice and thrashed and left white scratches on the surface with their nails. He could still remember the sound of them coughing up freezing water.
The soldier jostled his shoulder and said something in Russian, impatience audible in his voice. He brought his boot down on the ice and Hajime stiffened, but the impact only produced a dull thud. He pulled Hajime towards the helicopter. Its blades were still running, whipping up the thin layer of snow that had settled on the surface and turning it into a cold, stinging spray.
The helicopter was so much heavier than he was. It would break the surface before he did. A small, deranged part of him wanted to laugh at the idea. Of course things would end that way. Of course he’d make it within a few steps of actual rescue before it literally fell out from beneath his feet. Maybe he’d be lucky enough to get dragged under too.
The ice didn’t break. The whir of the blades became deafening, filling up the space in his ears that wasn’t dominated by constant ringing, and Hajime winced at the icy wind that bit his exposed flesh. The soldier had to practically drag him the last few yards to the open door, where a third soldier was waiting. Even with help, it took Hajime two tries to climb up into the cabin.
It really did feel like he was being abducted by aliens. He took in the smooth polyester of the seat, the wiring attached to the headsets, the blinking lights on the front dashboard. It didn’t feel real. Maybe this was only a dream—the explosion had killed him, or he was dying from hypothermia, and his brain was firing off random signals before shutting down for good.
Movement in his periphery startled him. The others were climbing into the helicopter. Tsumiki tripped four times before making it inside. Hajime moved aside to make room on the back seat and she sat with her arms pressed against her sides, as if she were afraid to touch him. Sonia climbed in next, followed by Souda, who clamped his hands over his ears as soon as he was seated, eyes roving wildly around the cabin. Hajime looked past them and frowned.
“Where’s Kuzuryu?” He had to shout to be heard over the roar of the helicopter’s blades.
Souda was still covering his ears. Sonia gazed stonily out the windshield as if she hadn’t heard him. Tsumiki glanced at him and flinched.
“They’re s-sending in a medical evacuation helicopter for him.” Even though she’d raised her voice, Tsumiki’s words were barely audible. “One of the soldiers is staying to administer first aid until it arrives.”
Hajime lifted his gaze to the wall of trees beyond the shore of the lake. He couldn’t imagine what Kuzuryu was feeling at the moment—cold, in pain, blind in one eye. He doubted Kuzuryu would draw any comfort from his presence, but it didn’t feel right to leave without him.
The soldier who had helped them inside had returned to his seat at the controls and was speaking rapidly into the radio. Hajime leaned forward to look at the small digital display on the control panel, as if he could glean anything from it. They were still going to look for Komaeda too, right? However the soldiers had found them, they could use the same method to look for him.
Assuming he was still alive. Assuming the explosions hadn’t…
Hajime let out a shaky breath. Maybe there was nothing left to find. They would never find Komaeda and Hajime would never know why he’d tried to kill all of them in the end. He’d have nothing left of him but the ringing in his ears.
All four of them startled when the door slammed shut. The other soldier settled into the copilot’s seat, then turned around and shouted something in Russian as he made a diagonal gesture across his chest. After a long moment, Sonia reached behind her for the seatbelt. There were only three—the backseat was meant for three passengers, though none of them were taking up a significant amount of space. Hajime pushed the one behind him towards Tsumiki and sat against the very edge of the seat, pressed against the freezing metal of the door.
The helicopter lurched, taking his stomach with it, and panic filled him as the ice slowly began to recede. They were moving, rising into the air, and oh god, the helicopter was so small, one tiny malfunction and it was going to plummet back to the earth and he wasn’t wearing a seatbelt—
That’s fine. The bleak thought flashed through his mind, caught in the maelstrom of panic. If we fall I’ll definitely die, and that’ll be fine.
He kept telling himself that, repeating the words like a mantra, as the trees became a snow-capped sea far below and the helicopter lifted them into the night.
The nurses examined them one-by-one in a small room that had clearly seen better days. Hajime couldn’t settle on closing his eyes or leaving them open. The overhead lights were unbearably bright and hurt his eyes, but it startled him every time the nurse touched him. The bruises on his face had numbed somewhat since he’d left the cabin, but now they hurt worse than ever. He wondered if they looked as bad as they felt.
His feet certainly did. They were red and swollen and they burned like they were being held in boiling water. He wanted to ask for pain medication but none of the hospital staff spoke Japanese. Sonia was acting as their interpreter but he didn’t know where she was at the moment.
The nurse was speaking again—he couldn’t tell if she was talking to him or herself. He let her voice fade into the ringing in his ears and looked away. His gaze kept coming back to the sharp edges of the counter in the examination room. The dull silver curve of the sink faucet. Everything in the room felt wrong and alien. He wondered if he was ever going to be able to look at a television or a candy bar or a bottle of medicine and accept that they were normal things. That they were part of his life again.
They were going back to Japan. The thought made panic rush up like vomit. They were going to put them on another plane and send them back and he was going to see his parents again. They were going to ask what had happened. He was going to see the Fujisakis and they were going to ask about Nanami and he was going to have to look them in the eye knowing he’d been the one to take a knife and cut her to pieces.
He flinched as the nurse touched his shoulder. She was still speaking, looking at him with worried eyes, and he realized his cheeks were wet with tears. She rubbed his upper arm, speaking in a soft, soothing tone, and he could feel her sympathy through the language barrier.
She wouldn’t be doing this if she knew what I was. He wiped his face with a shaking hand. The comfort she gave him just felt like another thing he’d stolen.
She put him in a wheelchair once the examination was over and took him into the hallway. She stopped by a small workstation to enter something into a computer, and he took took a moment to rest his eyes. His temples pounded.
He wasn’t sure if it was a minute or thirty before the creak of another set of wheels made him open his eyes. He squinted and watched another nurse round the corner with another wheelchair. His heart jumped so violently he felt it slam against the inside of his ribcage.
“Oh, hello, Hinata,” Komaeda said. “It looks like you survived too.”
Hajime sucked in a shaky breath. Maybe it was the fact that he’d spent the past couple of hours around people who hadn’t been subjected to months of malnutrition, but Komaeda looked even worse than he had in the cabin. His hair was stringy and lying flat against his skull. His face was disturbingly gaunt, his intact arm so thin it looked like it was about to snap in half.
But he was alive. They’d found him. Hajime was overcome with the urge to push himself out of the wheelchair and wrap his arms around him.
“In fact, it looks like the bombs didn’t kill anyone. The pile I set aside for myself didn’t go off at all.” Komaeda let out a dry, raspy attempt at a laugh. “What a spectacular failure. Pretty typical of me, huh?”
The urge to hug him faded as soon as it had appeared. Part of him had hoped that the others had been lying or confused when they’d claimed Komaeda had been the ones to set off the bombs. It would have been easier to believe the explosions were just some fucked up accident, one final disaster in the series they’d faced since the crash.
“Why would you do that?” Hajime rasped. “Why did you try to kill all of us?”
The other part of Komaeda’s statement hit him and he shuddered. He’d tried to kill himself too. He’d sat next to a pile of explosives, maybe at the same moment Hajime had held the knife to his stomach, and believed it was the last thing he was ever going to see.
“I suppose you missed part of what the others did.” Komaeda glanced at the nurses, who had their heads bent together over the computer monitor. “I think you saw Sonia shoot that one Russian. Souda finished him off, and she and Kuzuryu killed the other. I left around the time they were preparing to eat the bodies.”
Another, stronger shudder ran through him. He’d suspected as much, though he’d tried not to think about it. After Sonia had fired that first shot, it had become clear to him that if she was willing to kill their would-be rescuers, she would have no qualms about killing him. He’d been seized by terror, by the survival instinct he wasn’t able to crush no matter how hard he tried, and he’d sprinted out of the cabin during the chaos.
“You knew we weren’t leaving those woods,” Hajime croaked. “So you decided to put everyone out of their misery.”
“Well, that’s only part of it.” Komaeda’s expression darkened. “I was incredibly disappointed to see everyone spit in the face of hope. They all failed to shrug off their despair and crushed their chance of rescue. It was at that point that I realized the experiment had run its course.” He locked eyes with Hajime, an unsettling glint in his gaze. “I wish I could apologize to Kamukura face to face. I hope he was able to glean something useful from the experience regardless.” A soft smile touched his lips. “In a way, I’m glad you survived, Hinata. Maybe there—”
“Shut up.” The ringing in his ears had doubled in volume as soon as “Kamukura” had come out of his mouth. “How can you still call this an experiment after everything that happened? We’re talking about our classmates’ lives. You clearly didn’t care about them if you could just stand by all those months and watch them die one by one. I asked you after Pekoyama died when any of this was going to be worth it, and even back then you knew it was never—”
“Shh.” One of the nurses put a hand on his shoulder, making him flinch. He realized he’d been shouting. His throat was raw from the effort.
Komaeda regarded him with wide eyes, his composure just barely there, like cracked porcelain. “Hinata—”
“Don’t. I don’t want to hear anything more from you.” He twisted his neck to look back at the nurse, tried to convey his desperation with his eyes, which he realized were filled with tears again. “Please, can we go? I-I can’t—”
Thankfully, she seemed to understand, and exchanged a few words with the other nurse before taking hold of his wheelchair and pushing him down the hallway. Hajime kept his eyes locked in front of him even after he passed Komaeda.
He was still breathing hard by the time he was situated in a hospital bed, an IV taped to his arm. Tsumiki was already in the room, curled in a ball on her own bed. She didn’t look up or acknowledge him. Hajime sat back and tried to keep his limbs from shaking. His headache was getting worse.
That’s fine, he thought to himself. Maybe I’ll die anyway. Maybe I’ll go to sleep tonight and never wake up. Maybe there was a reason I had to live up to now and not a day longer.
If it weren’t for him, Komaeda would have died in those woods. And there was the sick irony—he’d saved Komaeda, who had tried to kill all of them, and it was only that murder attempt that had gotten them rescued in time. Those explosions were the only reason he hadn’t died on the edge of that cliff.
It made him sick, thinking of the two of them, the people they’d hurt, the fact that they’d ended up saving each other anyway.
It made him realize, finally, what Tanaka had been talking about last winter—the serpent that swallowed its own tail. Nourishment and pain, whole and vanishing all at once.
With shaky hands, Hajime pulled the blanket over his lap and waited for the others.