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The wooden walls feels like a tacky preservation of a place so carefully crafted by his hands and now destroyed like cheap drywall. There's nothing left of the home he loved, though that's to be expected. He left it behind, after all, abandoned and neglected.
In any case, this imitation wasn't built to be a new home. Jamato wasn't here to re-settle. Not after everything.
So it's quite stupid how he curls up in the furthest, darkest corner, choking down coughs caused by the illusion of suffocating air. Every cough that does tear from his throat feels like expelling stones, little lumps that have embedded themself into the back of his throat and latched on like parasites. He swears he can see blood drip onto his clawed fingertips with every hack, wheezing and gasping for air that mocks him in its plentifulness, yet never entering his lungs.
The asphyxiation feels like warm brown hands wrapped around his throat, pressing too hard for too long with a grin and sinister, vibrant violet eyes that stare uncaring into Jamato's own hollow ones. It's not such a distant memory such that Jamato's not yet forgotten the instinct to pull and scratch at long, slender fingers ghosting at his throat. It isn't impossible to resist, but it triggers a visceral fight or flight response that has his fingers twitch minutely.
It's not as if it was afraid of simple memories, either. Not with the multiple delivered letters detailing violent threats to Jamato's wellbeing, ranging from brutality to hands whose touch it's already suffered. Threats of execution, of all the ways Ash would make its life a miserable prison, and they were still coming. Jamato doesn't know how the mafia leader keeps finding it, and it induces a panic like none else.
Its body throbs like a pulse at the reminder of skin on skin and its flesh crawls with the writhing and worming of fingers prodding into places they shouldn't be. Its body doesn't feel like its own anymore, not entirely, and lately the void has been more obedient to the glitch of a man than Jamato itself.
The bookshelves lining the farthest wall where Jamato kneeled are mostly intact, save for the corner where Jamato had carved a little nook that was all but barely its size, somewhere it would remain unseen to intruders despite the obvious quickened breathing. Jamato is not claustrophobic, but sometimes positions like these feels like being locked in a master bedroom lined with satin curtains, barred windows, and a bed made just for it. Then, it used to crawl under the desk in the worst of moments, until it was dragged out by its jet black hair and across the floor like a rag doll.
It's terrifying how much one would do for a man it loved, and Jamato loved Ash. Sometimes it still thinks it does, but there are some lines that can't be rebounded once crossed (and Ash has crossed way too many before Jamato got a grip).
Perhaps it was worse, further, that his first time had been taken by the glitch over his own life mate. The very person, the voidkin and apple of his eye, that Ash was threatening as of late, because of course Ash found out about Jamato's only companion and friend then and for ever.
Jamato may have loved Ash, but he liked Spoke more than life itself. Sometimes, that divine love reaches a point that can't be taken back, no matter the change, and for the voidbug those chains have been imprinted on him like permanent marker in the shape of elytran wings carved out of his own body and gifted by his own hands to a voidkin that would replace him at the first turn.
He can never tell, these days, whether the time with Ash or the existence of a Spoke without Jamato hurts him more. The man who ruined his autonomy and identity, who took his control and played with it like a stress ball, or the man who loved the idea of a companion more than him? What did Mapicc have that he didn't?
He hadn't been gone that long. He really hadn't. Barely even a week. They'd known each other for decades.
It doesn't notice the burning sting of a fresh wound. It notices its soddened fingers first, coated in deep red liquid, and takes a while to even register it being its own blood.
The lumps in its throat finally turn into sobs. Ones it stifles, ones it swallows down in a frenzy to keep quiet in a temporary sanctuary. It cannot fucking lose the effort put into this shoddy build over a pathetic cut. It really can't, such a stupid idea, a stupid bug, stupid, stupid. How did it ever expect to be kept around like this? Of course Spoke forgets it. He has every reason to, every damn good reason to find someone better than it, better than it will ever be because all Jamato can do is be jealous and entitled to opinions based on no foundation, all it can do is be a rigid cunt with no use other than pleasure to a man who rules the world. A king of reality itself that stoops so low as to be nothing more than a defective childbearer, and it still gives. It still tries everything in its power, even when risking its own safety and life, to protect Spoke's life, as if Jamato were plot armour and Spoke was the one wearing it. It does so fucking much for him and gets nothing in return but endless agony and persecution.
All of this, built to protect a voidkin that's forgotten its name within the better half of a week.
In a fit of rage, Jamato tears off his mask and chucks it at the nearest wall. An audible crack resounds, like cracking bones. The sound makes him wince, and not for the mask. He watches it tumble to the wooden floor, damaged and defiled. The sight of it makes him seethe with hate for the bearer of said mask alone.
Of course, all Jamato has been taught these days is that hate needs a home to embed itself into like roots in a garden and be nurtured, and where else to direct a loathing, burning self-hate at anyone but itself?
"Fuck," he blurts, both hands snaking into his scalp and grabbing at strands. "Fuck, fuck, fuck."
His mind is racing. Too many memories unfolding behind his eyelids. Words replaying like a corrupted soundtrack. Hugs that he'll never have the joy of experiencing again. Hands that he'll suffer phantoms of forever. His own body sickens him. Bile rises in his throat. He swallows it. It burns on the way back down. He has no remedy. He never does. He needs something to make it all go away.
Sword, axe - too risky. Might lose a limb. Claws - sharp. Like razors. He hasn't had the chance to clip them in ages.
He needs this. He needs it, needs to make it go away, go away or he'll die, he'll die right here in this maze of wood and books and deepfakes of bygone memories that'll never come back with a man who hates every atom of his being and probably never cared at all the way he did and he's the fool for giving up his ticket to the sky so easily over a love he's never had and he's an idiot who deserves nothing more than to rot in some unknown corner of the world where he'll never be fucking found again unless it was as a rotting corpse of blood and fluids and mutilated skin an-
His claw breaks skin and the first puncture happens and he winces and it feeds the fire.
"You can't hurt me," he mumbles, an insanity that can't be explained by anything other than a deep-rooted sadness that has never been loved. "Not if I do it first."
"You can't break me." He drags the claw across skin and bites his lip, stifling cries.
"Not if I'm already broken." The wound bleeds and the claw digs a little deeper, pushing against exposed muscle and Jamato screams, an accident quickly atoned for by banging his head violently on the wall behind him thrice.
"I hate you," another line drawn right across the first, like the cross of the savior that Jamato doesn't believe in.
"I will always hate you," his voice is husky and rough with madness.
"Just as you do me." Three.
"You never fucking cared for me." Five.
"These aren't for you." Nine.
"I hate you."
"I hate you."
"I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you."
A fast mantra that Jamato whispers in between shaky breaths, claws speeding up and practically scratching the skin apart with every repeat until he can barely comprehend the damage he's doing through the mass of pure, agonising stinging that flares through his nervous system like a rampaging fire.
Blood drips like a broken tap. His arm looks like a scratchpad. Jamato whimpers, a soft, pitiful noise. He's lost his voice, hoarse whispers and delusions in the middle of nowhere.
He hates, and hates, and he paints that hatred onto a canvas made of his own flesh and he doesn't stop until his head feels faint and he loses strength to the point his claws struggle to dig into his skin anymore over the sea of wounds. He hates and he hates the world with it and he hates his own pitiful cries of pain at every destruction of his own beauty and he relishes in it like it's the most alive he will ever be. A fleshbag.
Jamato rubs at his eyes aggressively, suddenly and without warning, a force so brutal it's as if he's gouging them out, but they remain intact and burning with the contamination of blood from his damp fingers and a cry that never goes away and he hates because Jamato is replaceable, and his replacement is Mapicc, and his replacement is the hidden identities of people coerced into wearing chestplates with tacky diamond trims that mean nothing without the sickening praise of the man who loves like toys and Jamato was his favourite toy until he was inconvenient.
It feels like vomiting. It barely represses it.
Someone is going to find it here like this, broken and useless and damaged. Maybe they'll have the balls that a coward like Jamato doesn't have to end its misery forever. Or maybe they'll take advantage of it. It can't bring itself to care enough as its eyes droop and its suddenly heavy head slowly tilts forward with a lack of energy to hold it up. There is so much blood on the floor, on its clothes, its hands, the walls- Blood loss. An obvious indicator. Jamato laughs to itself, pointing out to no one in particular the sheer amount of blood that so obviously says so. After blood loss comes fainting, he reminds himself, as if he were reading a book on anatomy.
He curls into himself so tight he can feel his knees digging into his own ribs, all his strength put into the idea of crushing himself into an unrecognizable mass, like a fly on the wall. A pest. And an anguished wail tears from what remains of his battered voice, as loud and devastated as he possibly can sound, with reckless abandon.
He hopes he doesn't wake up.