Work Text:
Blood. There was so much blood on the walls, on the sheets, on the floor, and it kept drying. It was like watching a corpse go cold. Takumi's lifeblood was slipping through Eito's fingers and he had no idea how to make it stop.
A soft shushing noise caught his attention. He froze. There were arms around him. When had the monster gotten so close? How she gotten into--no, he was awake now. Why was he sitting up?
“It’s okay,” she soothed. “There’s nothing on the wall.”
Eito bristled. There should be something on the wall. There should be bloodstains. He had trained himself not to move in his sleep, but Takumi’s stupid body did not…
That might be his fault, actually. He was the one who had started sleepwalking with this body.
He was the one who had first picked up the goddamn knife she was sliding out of his hoodie pocket.
“How do you keep finding this?” she mumbled. “It’s the same knife, even. It’s got the little pockmark at the edge of the blade.”
“It’s mine.” His, Takumi's, theirs. She kept taking it away, but the stitched-together boy had slipped it back into his hands after a particularly bad...episode. Eito was no longer fully in control of his emotions. He didn't know why he needed that knife, but he did, and taking it away just because it was a danger reminded him of his doctors. He was good; he was patient; he could endure a few hours of discomfort. But after those few hours, he remembered that enduring was how he had gotten here and screamed until his classmates brought back Takumi's murder weapon.
“Takumi…” she stared at him, her lavender eyes filled with pity.
Eito hated pity.
She quickly looked away and set the knife on his nightstand. “You shouldn’t be sleeping with that, regardless. Why were you clawing at the wall?”
“He might be in there,” slipped from him before he could stop it. She stared at him. He stared back at her. “The…the blood on the walls,” he continued, faltering carefully. If he could not seem sane tonight, he supposed feigning madness was his next best option. Sirei wasn't here to see it. “It’s his. Can’t you see it? I have to…” he clutched at his arms. “I have to get him out, I have to—“
“Takumi.” She pried his trembling hands away from his arms and laced her fingers in between his. “It’s okay. Eito’s dead now. You killed him.”
Tears glistened in her eyes. They looked like diamonds. She was so stupidly, unfairly beautiful in Takumi’s eyes. The moon given a human persona.
His instincts warred. She was a human. He killed humans.
She was the moon. His name meant “defender of the blue moon.” He was supposed to defend her. Protect her.
“You killed him five hundred and six times over. Don’t try to dig him up.”
Eito wondered if he was only pretending to be insane.
“Five hundred and seven," he corrected.
“Five hundred and seven,” she easily amended. At least she was listening to his insanity. That was more than he had gotten from his doctors and parents.
“Nozomi,” he reminded himself.
She squeezed his hands. It felt… warm. Reassuring. What a strange reaction to human contact. "Are you feeling better?"
"There's blood all over the room."
She pressed her lips together and squeezed his hands again. "There isn't--" he bristled, no matter how gently she said it, it was still a dismissal-- "but do you want to go outside?"
Eito's irritation faded. She was right, after all. There wasn't blood all over the room, and outside sounded amazing. He let go of her hands and moved to the edge of the bed. He wobbled at first, but he paced around easily after a minute or two of getting used to walking. He took the knife from the nightstand and slipped it into his hoodie pocket.
"We should get you a sheath," Nozomi muttered. "You're going to slice your clothes and stomach open with how restless your sleep has been." She looked down at her clasped hands. "Maybe something like the Holy Jumonji Sword's pajamas...? No, that might be too flimsy..."
That was a name Eito hadn't heard in a very long time. "Can we go see Kyoshika?"
Nozomi winced. He watched the way her muscles scrunched up to make the expression, fascinated. "...If we stop by the Rec Room first," she replied. "Let's get a sheath for your knife and some cleaning supplies. Maybe some flowers?"
For the graves. Kyoshika had a grave. "Fake flowers?"
"They would have to be. I..." She looked down at her hands again. "I don't think the Courtyard is a good idea right now, and that's the only place in the school with real flowers."
The Courtyard wasn't a good idea, no. Eito didn't trust himself to step in there and be normal about it.
...That was a phrase. "We could...go outside," he mumbled, trying to chase that thought down. Was it Takumi? Or was Eito mimicking Takumi so well that his thought patterns were being infected? That was an unpleasant idea.
"N-not tonight, Takumi." He blinked and looked up at Nozomi. "The Revive-o-Matic doesn't go beyond the Wall of Fire."
Oh. That was fair. Eito wasn't sure he trusted his mental state enough to go out of revival range. This body was too used to suicide.
He nodded and quietly followed her down to the Rec Room. The halls were quiet. He could feel the tension draining from his shoulders as they moved further away from violence and sound. It was better out here without people. Peaceful. Nozomi was quiet, and the darkness and her company soothed his frazzled nerves.
The Rec Room had more lights and sounds, but it was still dark enough that he wasn't overwhelmed. They customized a simple white leather sheath for the knife together. Eito fiddled with it, sliding it on and off the blade before he kept it on and twirled the knife. The sheath stayed on. Better. She was right. It was less of a danger this way, and he still had it within reach. This worked.
"I'm sorry, can I use some of the materials you gathered to make the cleaning supplies?"
Takumi's hoard? Eito eyed it, then looked back up at Nozomi.
She was human, abhorrent, pure, beautiful. Takumi loved her so much.
"It's fine." Eito walked over to the couch and settled down on it. His legs were beginning to ache a bit, and his head felt like it weighed several pounds. "The materials are for the benefit of the team."
Nozomi smiled at him and got to work.
Eito closed his eyes and immediately found himself back in Takumi's room. He hurried over to the bed and picked up the bloodstained blanket. The blood was still drying. Where was Takumi? If Eito reached down deep enough into the recesses of the blood, could he pull him out? What was hemoanima, if not a sea of life and soul?
Who was Takumi, if he couldn't get back up?
A soft ding woke him. The faint smell of lemon piqued his curiosity, so he opened his eyes.
She stood near the Gift-o-Matic with a bucket in her hands, the few colored lights of the room turning her into stained glass.
Her. The moon. Glass. Precious, fragile. "Nozomi," he reminded himself. Her name was blurred by his exhaustion. "Lemon for the headstones?"
She looked down at the bucket. "Mmhm. Kurara liked this soap." She walked over to him, eyes scrutinizing. "I can wait to go down there if you want to sleep here tonight," she murmured. "If I'm washing the headstones, it's probably better to do it during the day, so that the sun can dry them."
Pragmatic as always. It was a miracle she loved Takumi. She was too good for him. He was too depraved for her. He belonged to Eito, body and soul.
But not heart. That belonged to her. Takumi had made that very clear.
Eito patted the couch next to him. "You're tired too."
She gave him a small, sad smile before she set the bucket down and sat next to him on the couch.
"You worry too much about me," Eito murmured.
"I don't worry enough," she replied, and for the first time, sharpness entered her voice. Eito sat up a little straighter. She stared directly into his eyes. "I told you that you don't have to carry everything on your own. Clearly, I haven't proved it."
Eito slowly blinked and tried to gather Takumi's shattered remains around himself. He had to be Takumi in this moment. "It's my responsibility to lead you. To protect you. All of you."
Except me. Never me.
There were tears in her eyes again. "That doesn't mean that you have to deal with everything alone. You keep...you keep slinging gravestones around your neck, Takumi. They're going to strangle you someday. I...sometimes I think they already have."
"It is my choices that led to those gravestones," Eito insisted. “Wading through the consequences of my choices is my responsibility. Darumi, Kyoshika, Kurara, Eit…” his eyes widened. He pressed his hands against his chest. He hadn’t… he had placed his name in there automatically, but he knew Takumi wouldn’t count him among the gravestones. Would he?
No. Bad. Wishful thinking. That’s not what Takumi would say. He was supposed to be Takumi right now.
“It’s not your fault,” Nozomi whispered. “You made impossible choices and did your best to see them through. I just wish you would let the rest of us help you.”
Killing Eito was not an impossible choice. Takumi knew what he was doing. The fact that Nozomi had asked—
Eito stared at her, a realization hitting his sluggish, sleep-deprived mind. It was her. It had been her that had suggested that Takumi spare Eito’s life, despite everything. It was a little hard to tell, since she looked and sounded so different from her awful, monstrous form, but she had defended him. It hadn’t changed the outcome, but… her frustration made a bit more sense now.
“I’m... sorry. I haven’t been listening to you.”
“That’s not…” she closed her eyes briefly, and then held her arms out.
Eito stared at the invitation. Curiosity won out over fear, and he moved closer.
She wrapped her arms around him. Her embrace was warm. He cautiously curled up in her grasp and rested his head on her shoulder.
She smelled like fresh detergent and dust bunnies. Eito knew where the dust bunnies were from. He smelled like them too, after all.
She began running her fingers through Takumi’s thick red hair. Petting him. He couldn’t move away. He didn’t want to move ever again. This was nice.
He felt the hitch of her breathing, though. He sensed the worry radiating off of her like poison. Here, in her arms, he felt more awake than he had in two days.
"What's wrong, Nozomi?"
"...Hiruko and Shion have been arguing with Sirei. He suggested using DRT on you," she replied after a long moment. "None of us want him to."
Right. Sometimes, around people who looked beautiful, Eito forgot about humanity and its sins. Sirei was the embodiment of all that he hated.
Sometimes Eito wondered if the Takumi that had descended on him in the gym had died at the hands of that tiny robot. The brainwashing could have erased key parts of him. Eva, clever and kind and desperate Eva, had been nothing but an empty shell for weeks, long before Eito sank his knife into her back. Perhaps Takumi had been lost long before Eito had ever had a chance to truly face him again. No one had been able to stop any of Takumi's deaths. Not even Nozomi.
"I don't want him to either," he replied. "Does he really think it would help, at this point?"
"I don't know." Frustration slipped into her tone. "For the record, I don't think it will. Neither does Hiruko. You've been..." she hesitated.
"Tell me," he insisted, keeping his tone soft. "I should know, right? I should know how I've been hurting you."
"You haven't been hurting us, Takumi," she murmured. She hadn't stopped stroking his hair. "You've been recovering, that's all. No one can die that many times and... bounce back afterwards. You're... just not recovering fast enough for Sirei."
It had been two days. Two days. Eito felt indignation rise in his chest. He was having a hell of a time mentally, and he knew that Takumi was a weaker man than him. Sirei was an idiot. All of these people were idiots for thinking that the robot had any real concern for them. They were disposable tools to the rest of humanity, nothing more. Eito would know.
Disposable tools had no say in how this war went. That meant that Hiruko and Shion's arguments wouldn't hold weight for long. Nozomi clearly didn't want to stress him out by telling him, but she had told him. She had warned him. She was doing him a kindness. It would blow up in her face later, most likely, but he could not afford to reject kindness right now.
Eito needed to pull himself together. He had to put on the mask. Two days was more of a reprieve than he was used to, even, so he needed to stop slipping into tantrums and fits of madness. For Takumi. Clawing at the walls wouldn't bring Takumi back. It would get them sent to the electric chair.
"Thank you for telling me. I'll...I'll try to be better. I can still fight. I promise I can still fight."
"I believe you." She curled up around him. Eito wondered if this was what a mother's embrace was supposed to feel like.
He wouldn't know. He would never know.
"I'm so tired," he whispered. Takumi was always tired, he'd found.
"I know, Takumi, I know." Her breath shuddered a little. "It's been...it's been rough since he died. Do you think you can sleep?"
"Yeah." He absolutely needed to. He closed his eyes with a soft sigh. "You should sleep, too."
"I will," Nozomi promised. "No running off on me, okay?"
Eito gave an amused huff, but he slipped into darkness before he could properly respond.
He wasn't in Takumi's blue room this time. He was falling into an black abyss, the smell of blood stinging his nose.
This was what peace would be until he stopped falling. He would take the reprieve and hit the ground running again.
Sirei would find Takumi Sumino a reliable tool again in the morning. Distant and changed, but no longer a drain on morale. Eito would make sure of it.