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Night falls over Shibuya, and the battle finally grows still. The members of the Shinoa Squad, battered and bruised and weary, finally cease their flight, coming to a stop amongst the ruins at the outskirts of the city. Yuu looks over his friends– his family – and feels exhaustion finally crash over him as he realises that they are, at long last, safe (or as safe as they can be, given the circumstances).
Almost as one, the group collapses to the floor. Yuu finds himself leaning into Mika’s shoulder, eyes drooping closed as Mika wraps an arm around his side. Mitsuba is leaning back on her hands, staring up at the sky with glazed eyes, while Yoichi sits with his knees up, face buried in them as he trembles. Shinoa lies flat out on her back, limbs spread out starfish style, her eyes closed and mouth gaping open as she sucks in wheezing breaths.
Kimizuki sits alone, several feet away from the rest of them, legs crossed with his sister’s head in his lap. Mirai is cold and pale and growing stiff, her chest still and unmoving as Kimizuki threads his fingers through her hair. His shoulders shake, and he’s so quiet that it takes Yuu a moment to realise that he’s crying.
He slowly untangles himself from Mika and crawls over to his friend, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder. Kimizuki stiffens up below him. “What,” he says, voice hoarse, “do you want?”
The rest of the Squad stirs, their attention turning to them. Yuu swallows. “I’m sorry, Kimizuki,” he says, voice quiet. “I know how much you loved her.” Kimizuki barks a bitter laugh, his chest heaving as if it hurts. Yuu winces. “It’s going to be okay. We’ll fix this.”
“Fix this?” Kimizuki grinds out. “And how, exactly, do you suggest we do that?”
Yuu forces a smile, feels it plaster onto his face unnaturally, like trying to cover a stain on a wall with the wrong shade of paint. “Well, Guren’s going to do his ritual thing, right? He’ll bring them all back! Your sister and our family and Yoichi’s sister and…”
Kimizuki is stiff as a board beneath his hand. Behind him, Yoichi stirs, lifting his head from his knees. “Uh, Yuu…?”
Yuu turns his head to look, to respond, but before he can, Kimizuki suddenly moves , grabbing Yuu’s wrist and yanking it, twisting it to the side. Yuu yelps as the momentum of it throws him down against the ground, his head knocking against the pavement with a thunk that leaves starbursts behind his eyes. He groans, pulling his arm out of Kimizuki’s grip and glaring at him.
“Hey!” Yuu snaps. “What was that for?” The others are beginning to move now, Shinoa sitting straight up, and Mika on his feet, eyes wild as he stares at Kimizuki.
“That man,” Kimizuki snarls, “Killed my sister. Do you understand, Idiot Yuu? He killed her! He’s not going to save her.” Yuu feels like he’s been slapped; he stares, slack-jawed, at Kimizuki, whose face is twisted in a fury and agony that Yuu suddenly remembers feeling himself, that burning feeling that kept him going for all those years after his flight from Sanguinem– how did he forget?
“I– I don’t–” He stammers, but can’t find the words he wants to say. “That wasn’t him, it was his demon–” Kimizuki laughs again, a strained wheeze that turns into a sob halfway through.
“He
made
that choice, Yuu! He chose to become a demon, just how you chose the same. And you protected us. And he
didn’t
. How can you still trust him? After everything he’s done? He killed 90% of the human population, and you’d let him do it
again
?”
“He regrets it!” Yuu cries. “That’s why he’s doing this, to bring all those people back!”
“If this ritual works the same as it did the last time, it’ll kill all the rest of us to do so! How are you so stupid?! Guren isn’t going to do his damn ritual. We’re going to stop him, because if he doesn’t, the world will end again! So no, Yuu, my sister isn’t fucking coming back . None of them are. They’re dead . They’re all dead.”
Yuu can’t breathe. He can only stare. He can’t keep Kimizuki’s gaze, and his eyes flick over to the other members of the Squad, waiting for one of them to jump to his defence but– nothing. Mitsuba’s fists are clenched, her brows furrowed, while Shinoa is largely expressionless, only the thin line of her mouth betraying her true emotion. Even Mika won’t help him– is that a glint of approval in his eyes, or is Yuu simply seeing things in the dim light? The only one who seems even slightly on his side is Yoichi, who is just staring, wide eyes filled with tears.
“Of course,” Kimizuki continues, voice bitter, “It’s alright for you. You got your family back . That’s why you were so okay with their murderer hanging around us for so long, right?”
Yuu shakes his head, scrambling back. “Wh-what? No! That’s not–” Words fail him. The world spins around him; had he really hit his head that hard? And why can’t he breathe?
“You know, I always thought you were a reckless moron , jumping into danger the way you did– but, well, you’d been through some shit, and I guessed that was just how you coped with it. But now? Either you’re a naive idiot who can’t tell the difference between someone who’s genuinely on your side and someone who’s clearly just using you, or you’re just as morally deprived as those murderers!”
Kimizuki’s yell echoes through the night. Yuu can barely see through the tears. He can hear his own breathing, as loud in his ears as thunder, but he can’t feel it, feels breathless, feels like he’s drowning on dry land. The world tilts and blurs, and he feels warm, wants to tear off his clothes and expose his skin to the cool night air, but can’t find the energy to move. His stomach bubbles, and he fights back the urge to vomit.
“Kimizuki-kun!” Shinoa’s voice sounds far away, like she’s on the other end of a long hallway, but there’s no mistaking her stern tone. “That’s enough!”
“But–”
“I said that’s enough! Look at him!”
There’s a moment of silence, and then movement, though Yuu is in no state to tell who or where it’s coming from. The city ruins are far away now, distorted and blurry, as he sits on the bloodstained floor of Sanguinem, staring at the dead bodies of his siblings. A figure stands tall in front of him, and through the tears, he can’t make out its features– one moment, he thinks it might be Ferid, claws stained with blood, and then the next, it’s Guren he sees, holding the sword he’d used to stab Yuu through, and– oh, that must be why he can’t breathe, right? He’s bleeding? He must be. He blinks and the figure blurs once more, and now it is himself he sees, horns protruding from his head, Mirai’s corpse lying limp at his feet, and–
You’re just as morally deprived as those murderers!
The shout echoes in his head, and oh god, he’s dying, he must be dying–
“Yuu-chan!”
Mika; that’s Mika’s voice. In the maelstrom of everything, he latches onto it, reaches forward with his hands and catches hold of an arm, and clings to it for dear life. He feels arms wrap around him, pull him into a cool embrace. “It’s okay,” he hears Mika say, voice tinny and distant. “Whatever you’re seeing, it’s not real. You’re in Shibuya, with me, and your Squad. You’re okay, you’re safe, no one’s going to hurt you…”
A sob heaves it way out of his throat, hurts like he’s choked up a stone, and he falls into Mika as sobs wrack his body. A hand pulls itself through his hair, comforting, and Yuu closes his eyes and lets it all fall away, lets himself be held and cry and not think, until he’s dried out and there’s nothing left in him. Awareness slowly fades back in, and he feels Shinoa at his back, not close enough to touch but close enough that he can sense her there. He blinks open his eyes and sees Yoichi and Mitsuba, crouched closer now than they were before, both looking concerned, but too scared to approach. Kimizuki stands above him, behind Mika, staring down with wide, shocked eyes, as if he hadn’t expected this to happen.
What had just happened?
He pulls himself away from the comfort of Mika’s embrace, rubbing his eyes to rid them of the tear residue. He feels the eyes of his friends on him, concerned and wary, but he only has eyes for one person.
“Do you really think that?” he asks Kimizuki, and is shocked at how his voice sounds, weak and shaking, barely louder than a whisper. The silence carries it. Kimizuki squares his jaw.
“Yes,” he says resolutely. Shinoa’s head snaps up to him.
“Kimizuki-kun,” she says warningly, but Yuu cuts her off with a laugh as he buries his head in his hands. She goes very still, staring at him.
“None of you said anything,” he says. “None of you helped me. Do you all… Think that…?”
“Yuu…” Mitsuba sounds troubled.
“The Lieutenant-Colonel…” Shinoa sounds exhausted. “I’ve known him for a long time, and I still don’t understand him. But I don’t think he has your– or any of our– best interests at heart. I don’t think we can trust him.”
Her voice is firm. Yuu feels something break inside of him– or was it broken all along, and he only just now noticed?
He looks up at Mika, gaze pleading. “Mika?” he whispers. Mika doesn’t meet his eyes.
“I… I don’t trust him. I don’t trust him near you. Whatever he’s planning, I don’t want it to happen. I… I know you trust him. Love him, even, maybe. But he’d kill you without a second thought if he thought it was necessary to reach his goal. You… You know that, right?”
Yuu stares at him. His head aches. “I’d be dead without him,” he says, finally, brokenly.
“I’d be dead without Ferid,” Mika says. “It doesn’t make him a good person. It doesn’t make his actions right.” He reaches out, and Yuu flinches away from his hand. Mika looks hurt, but doesn’t push the issue. Yuu staggers his way to his feet, looks Kimizuki in the eye.
“I’m… sorry,” he says. That, more than anything that’s happened so far, causes surprise to flash across Kimizuki’s face.
“You’re… huh?”
“I’m sorry,” Yuu says again. He feels weightless. “About your sister. And about what I said. I… was wrong. I’m sorry.” He bows his head. There are words stuck in his throat, and he worries for a moment that he won’t be able to say them, before a sob breaks the dam and they all come tumbling out. “Do you really think I’m like… Him?” He’s not sure who he’s referring to– Guren? Ferid? Someone else, that vague figure in the back of his memories?
“I…” Kimizuki lets out a shaky breath. “I think you’re an idiot. I think you have a good heart, it’s just– in the wrong place sometimes.” He sighs. “And I’m sorry, too. I went too far.”
Yuu shakes his head. “No. I needed to hear that.”
The idea that Guren is a bad person, is a murderer , feels wrong, still, foreign, like a name made up of letters he can’t quite pronounce. The dim hope he’d had, that one day the rest of his family would be here again, that he could go to sleep with them curled up around him and not dream of their corpses, has grown cold and dim, and he knows that before long it will vanish, like smoke between his fingers.
Guren is a bad person. Your family is dead and never coming back.
Things he thinks he’d known, deep down, under layers of hope and optimism and denial, now stripped away and exposed to the open air. It stings, like a raw wound, but he knows that it will scab over in time. He’s learned to live with worse before. He remembers Guren, sat by his bed, telling him to find something to live for– he forces the memory away, and looks around at his squad. Shinoa, concerned, hovering, expression scarily serious compared to her usual jovial grin; Mitsuba, upset, staring at the ground, her hands balled into fists as she fought back whatever she was feeling; Yoichi, hands covering his mouth, gaze flicking rapidly between the rest of them, clearly uncomfortable with the tension; Mika, watching him, regret and pain and relief mingled in his eyes; Kimizuki, sorry and solemn and unmoving.
“Thank you,” Yuu whispers, finally, and turns. “I’m going to sleep. It’s been a long way.” He staggers off, still shaky on his legs, and feels their gazes bore into his back. No one follows him. That’s okay. He ambles into the nearest building, where a rotting couch is pressed against one wall. He falls into it, uncaring, lets his eyes droop closed.
Everything is cold and terrible and confusing and he is so, so tired. So he’ll sleep, and hopefully the light of morning will grant him some clarity, and things won’t feel quite so bleak.