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Shattered glass and cement dust floating through the air, shattered glass digging into the back of his skull. Izaya watches, watches the dust begin to settle and the glass glittering in the spackled light of the night sky. It’s always easier to see the stars from this high up. Maybe he preferred heights for that reason. Maybe he was disillusioned into believing he was one of those unreachable stars. Maybe, despite it all, he wanted to be sought after and admired the way humanity maps out and follows the constellations. Invisible from the city streets with the light pollution blotting them out to nothing—but here above the city, visible to those who bothered to find a way to see them.
Even here, at his lowest.
He can still see..
The twinkling lights surrounding the moon unmarred by any clouds or city lights.
From the top of the tower, every light looks like a star, doesn’t it?
That first ring, muddled and distant as it is, pierces through the fog of Izaya’s mind. Eyes half-lidded barely sliding over to the side as if he’d be able to will the device to silence. But he can’t answer the phone, even if he wanted to. He slips back into unconsciousness shortly after, phone flashing the notification signaling a missed call. A voicemail.
When Izaya is finally in shape enough to be back on his own, to be autonomous once again, he’s already had that phone put on silent. He can’t bring himself to disconnect it, to let it go. It was his personal phone.
It’s got everything in there.
His arms are still broken, it’s difficult to maneuver it at all, but one of his nurses was kind enough to turn the ringer off.
Izaya does not bother to look at the number that calls. He couldn’t even say he felt much inclination to pay any attention to that phone in the slightest. It’s better this way.
He knows that, not only for himself.
But for Ikebukuro as well.
Yes, yes. He did everything he could.
But he’d always be the villain in Ikebukuro.
It didn’t matter how many people he’d talked out of suicide, it seemed his colleagues only ever seemed to care about the ones he talked into it.
It didn’t matter how many people he ended up helping, it seemed everyone was already convinced he was the one ruining them.
It didn’t matter.
It..it doesn’t matter…
Ikebukuro is happier without him, and he would learn to be happy without Ikebukuro, too.
Yeah.
Right .
As if he could truly be happy without the city that created the creature he’d become. As if Ikebukuro could avoid the responsibility of its collective hand in the caricature of a monster it had created for Izaya. As if it wasn’t the fault of everyone involved making him a more sinister force than he ever attempted to be…Izaya had only tried to fit himself to the box the city had designated for him
He’s browsing through catalogs of wheelchairs when a dull sound breaks the monotonous ticking of a clock. A rhythmic buzzing from a long forgotten filing cabinet over by his desk. A sound that could have gone ignored should the television have had any sound. But there’s an ice cold pit forming in Izaya’s gut. The sound of the vibrations mimicking a tone memorized so clearly it immediately brings the dread surging from the roiling anxiety up into the back of his throat. The book in his hands shaking, eyes unseeing on the pages splayed open in front of him. The only vision behind his eyes the dust and rubble from that night.
The feeling of asphalt and rock digging into his knees and a blade between his ribs.
A gun in his face.
And laughter.
Laughter bubbling up from the depths of his chest with the last wheezing breaths his lungs are able to muster in a finale fitting for the both of them—as if it wasn’t only his own life on the line. What a joke.
The weightlessness of flying through the air. Glass falling around him in a spray of glittering moonlight and every fucking star in the sky when the sound of his skull cracks dully against office tile carpet. Glass and carpet fibres slicing along his palms and stuck to the fur of his coat. Trapped in windswept locks weighed down only by the blood seeping from his scalp.
The innate realization that he's still breathing despite it all. Conscious against all odds.
Limping through halls; through streets eerily devoid of life but his own pathetic excuse.
And of course.
The man following him.
Spitting glass with each agonizing step.
Then silence.
“Master Izaya.” Sozoro’s voice jolts him back to the present. The first half of his sentence lost in the muddled swamp of memories. “Your tea.”
The next time it happens, Izaya is at his desk. He’s browsing through forums and minding everyone’s business but his own. The shock of the steady muted sound from the bottom of his filing cabinet startles him from the levity of cloud nine—almost as if he’s back in….back in….
The rush of air in his face, the sharp ache of landing on the balls of his feet on the concrete roof of the building. The pain shooting up to his knees and spiking through muscle and bone and the tinkling sound of uninhibited cackling emerging from his open mouth. Interrupted only by the thunk and crack of concrete as Shizuo closes the distance between them. His heart rate climbs and it’s so, so, so easy to blame it on the chase instead of the pit clawing its way deeper into his stomach at the mere suggestion of Shizuo coming into arms reach—
Izaya is sweating, trembling and hunched over his laptop, ashen as the day he woke up in the hospital. Something wet lands on his clenched fist—sweat probably—no.
No…
Something soft, plush, drapes over his shoulders and Izaya can’t bring himself to startle at the warmth it brings; spine bowing under the weight of it as if the burden of past sins were laid bare over his back. The brush of fingertips passing between the blanket and his body leave a heaving wail in their wake, disturbing the illusion of stillness before the surface tension of whatever masks Izaya managed to patch together into a semblance of the man he used to be.
The wind rushing past his face, the edge of a rooftop slipping beneath the sole of his boots. The wind rushing past his face as the pull of gravity yanks him from the safety of solid ground into a freefall—the force of the air whipping the fur of his coat and the fringe of his hair into his eyes and stinging his cheeks and fuck fuck fuck —he’s falling. Izaya Orihara doesn’t fall. In the same moment he realizes he’s falling does he feel the snap of his spine arching opposite the way he should be curling. The wind just as relentless though less of an attack as the hand gripping the front of his coat twists at the wrist and suddenly Izaya is yanked back upwards into an arc he’d hardly describe as graceful. The huffing of Shizuo’s breath the only sound hitting his ears instead of the thumping of his own heart or feeling the grit of the rooftops against his cheek and beneath his fingers. Nails clawing at the solid ground with timid softness as if he can hardly believe he’s getting out of this with only a bruise.
“Idiot.” It’s Shizuo talking. That same harsh grumble Izaya knows to be frustration overlaying some other tone he’d never quite been able to place. Shizuo in front of him, facing away. Shizuo hunched over. Shizuo slamming his fist into the gravel of the rooftop with only enough force to send a few pebbles up around his fist like dust. But it’s Sozoro’s face when he turns to look at Izaya. The shock enough to snap his back straight and knock the stability of his desk chair to the wobbling precipice of falling backwards.
And it all hits him again, the wind rushing past his face. The moment of zero gravity as he realizes he’s falling—only Sozoro catches him under the arms. The chair clatters to the hardwood floor in a cacophony of sound that stills to silence that lasts way too long.
Izaya huffs, chest heaving as wide eyes take in the surroundings of his office. His current living quarters. He can hear Sozoro scolding him—but the words bleed into one fluctuating noise. Nothing but a muffled swell of sound pouring from moving lips and a beard that looks too prim and proper for someone who just ran to catch their boss. In a scramble of limbs and yelps Izaya claws his way to the bay windows—similar enough to his old office in Shinjuku. But smaller. Painfully, woefully smaller and when he finally drags his body over to the glass he presses his whole face into the cool, smooth surface. Reveling in the way it drags the heat from his face. When his vision focuses on the streets below he’s overwhelmed all over again—tears springing forth and steaming the glass more than just the huffing of his lungs could allow.
“It’s not….It’s not….”
Sozoro sits quietly behind him, blanket draped over his lap where it landed when Izaya fell. He watches as Izaya collapses and crumbles into nothing more than a shadow of the child he must have been before. He watches as thin fingers sprout from the line of Izaya’s shoulders and dig into the fabric of his shirt—twisting and yanking at the thing instead of his own skin. Watches as Izaya shifts his weight from the window and back onto his rear while lurching forward to curl in on himself even tighter than he seemed to do at his desk.
His forehead flush against the window, tears streaming openly down his face mixing with snot as a horrendous sound rips from the depths of his chest and claws its way out of his throat. In a motion so quick Sozoro misses it—Izaya’s fist reels back and strikes the window. The hollow ‘ thnk ’ of his knuckles knocking against the glass followed by another and another and another anotheranother—
Sozoro watches the collapse of the tower.
Izaya Orihara wails .
He cries and screams and punches and punches and punches until his knuckles are raw and bloodied and the skin tears like wet paper but the glass doesn’t even bear a scuff deeper that blood smeared across the slick surface.
And when they peter out to nothing more than a few pathetic little whimpers does Sozoro hear the sound of something buzzing. Muffled and quiet, a quick sound out of place in the scene. It’s with a huff he stands, shaking the blanket out and carefully approaching the man curled into a ball in front of the window.
“Why don’t you get rid of it?”
The question strikes Izaya as strange, head tilting and brow quirking at the wording of it. “What are you talking about?”
It’s Himari. Shuffling cards at the table for her and Haruto to play some game the boy made up. Haruto shakes the dice in a cup and tilts his head in a mirror of Izaya’s position. Watching the exchange between the two.
“The phone.”
“What phone?”
Himari rolls her eyes and draws two cards. Picking up a different deck and shaking her head in what looks like exasperation. “You know which phone.”
Curious, Haruto and Izaya glance to the array of cellphones charging at the desk next to his laptop. Haruto’s brows furrow, perplexed by the statement. Izaya picks up an innocuous looking one, battered and if he looks closely like it may fall apart with even the slightest adherence of pressure. Even from his own week hands.
“You’ll have to be more specific, you know. I go through more phones than I can keep track of.”
Playful, tight and snipped in the way he speaks. Sozoro’s eyes narrow in recognition as he enters the room. “And yet you cling to that one.” He mutters plainly, setting a cup of tea down next to Izaya’s hand and making sure the ceramic bumps into knuckles that still bear ghosts of scars from battles he’d rather not mention.
“I can’t be sentimental?” Izaya’s smile only gets tighter, lashes fluttering in a show of innocence he knows Sozoro would never fall for.
“You could be, if you ever truly allowed yourself the luxury.” The bodyguard responds the same as always.
Gliding away from Izaya’s desk and moving towards the table with the kids to place down their drinks as well. Tea for Himari. Hot cocoa for Haruto. A myriad of quips run through Izaya’s mind but the words that tumble from his mouth aren’t even close to what he would have said six or seven months prior to this moment right now.
“Is that supposed to mean something?” with the same sharp intonation Namie would have used.
Though the smile plastered to his lips is all Orihara.
Sozoro glances back, hardly raising a brow at the question. Offers nothing remotely similar to a response when he turns and walks away. Izaya’s anger surges, fist clenching in his lap. Teeth grinding into his tongue to keep it from spilling more information than it already has. More than enough to show what a sore subject this stupid little phone is. He’d break it, if only he could. And for a moment he just might, the way his fist grips that battered phone in his hands and the subtle creak of plastic under his weak fingers when—
It vibrates.
A number on the screen more familiar than he’d ever admit to anyone who doesn’t already know.
The number flashes and a contact name he can’t even form the syllables of and suddenly all Izaya knows is the crisp cool air of the spring evening burning his throat while he limps along streets too empty to be normal. His foot no more than deadweight behind him as the sound of metal against pavement bounces off the walls of the city behind him. Not far, just far enough.
If he can just make it—
Just a few more feet and he’ll be—
There’s a warm glow in the distance of downtown Ikebukuro just thrumming with life and if he can just show them the monster he sees then maybe, just maybe this time violence can solve everything —
Only there’s no one truly there, is there?
Just a bunch of red-eyed zombies following the orders of their mother. Just a cacophony of a violent breed of Saika just waiting to give their bumbling mother just what he wants and Izaya won’t even have a clue until it’s too late.
That a true monster would never see a human man as one of their own—
Izaya waits on the rooftop. Feeling the crisp wind blowing across his face and the steady presence of his bodyguard behind him. Meeting with someone or other. An exchange of information but as he waits and waits and waits and waits and waits and waits all he can think about is that night when the tower crumbled beneath his feet and sent him reeling in zero gravity to the unforgiving pavement below. Only he never quite lands…falling and falling until Sozoro touches his shoulder with the tips of his fingers. A subtle motion from behind that could have gone unnoticed by anyone else. It feels like he jumps nearly out of his chair—though the only show of surprise is the subtle tilt of his head in the man’s direction.
In doing so he spots the figure of the man he’s supposed to meet.
A scrawny thing looking halfway decomposed already.
Oh but time waits for no one, and the world keeps on spinning. It’s only natural that Izaya Orihara keep moving too. It’s not like he can just hole up and…and…
And what , exactly?
There’s no choice but to keep rolling on today and the next day and the next day.
Even when Izaya returns to their condo with Sozoro to meet the kids. Even when Izaya finds himself glancing at that old, beaten up cellphone. The one he can’t bring himself to part with. It’s so much more than a simple phone. The final thread holding him to Ikebukuro and everyone he once knew. When he finds himself tucking it into his pocket before heading to bed and staring at the screen as if willing the damn thing to ring just one more time .
How many hours has he spent lying awake and staring at that little device at the bedside table?
How many dreams that feel too real where he finally picks up and answers the call?
That leave him waking up disoriented with scraps of memories and remnants of a conversation that never happened?
Isn’t he only human too?
Not that anyone has ever afforded him such kindness, to be fallible and desperately human.
Not that he ever afforded Shizuo such a courtesy.
Just thinking the name makes his stomach churn and his heart clench painful in his chest. As if that monster strength were able to transcend the distance of time and terrain to grip that delicate, tender organ in a vice so miserably real that Izaya lurches forward to curl into himself, tearing at his arms in the worlds worst attempt at self-soothing. A reaction that’s only allowed in the solitary darkness of the room he’s claimed for the night.
In the midst of his thoughts running circles around his head and the imagined scent of American Spirit sky blues still lingering in a chokehold is when it happens. That next call. And despite having just spent the past few hours desperately willing the damn thing to ring the sound of it’s vibrations against cheap particle board disguised as wood brings his blood to ice and any motion stopping dead in its tracks.
Hesitant.
Terrified.
Wide eyes slide across the room in the darkness until the dim light from the phone catch in his peripheral.
A shaky hand reaches out, fingers barely skimming the surface as the last few vibrations send the caller to voicemail. In the quiet of his room his breathing feels so loud, heaving as if he can’t catch his breath. As if all of the air is forcibly knocked out of his lungs just the same as getting thrown through a window might. Eyes locked on that little phone but seeing nothing but the past in the dark when it’s light cuts off.
The silhouette of the room lost to the projection of his last night in Ikebukuro.
Izaya Orihara isn’t sure how or when he falls asleep, but when he wakes its in a cold sweat and a knife pointed to Sozoro’s throat as the bodyguard stands frozen next to the bed. Cold eyes flick from the bedside table to the blade and follows the line of Izaya’s arm up to the half-panicked expression just in time to watch the mask slip on in the same moment realization unclouds the sleep-addled gaze directed back at him.
The knife disappears as quickly as Izaya had produced it; “What are you doing in here”
“Your medication.” Sozoro stands upright again, a tiny tray of medication still in his hand.
Izaya loses sleep more than he’d like to admit, if it’s not his final night in Ikebukuro clawing at his back, its the way Himari and Haruto remind him just a little too much of Mairu and Kururi at times. It’s the way he nearly calls for his sisters instead of the children, the way Mairu and Kururi’s names still live at the tip of his tongue when he has to wrangle Himari and Haruto out of childish tantrums every so often.
He wonders if it’s them calling, when the vibrations of an incoming call start up and the phone comes to life with light streaming through the cracked screen—he wonders if it’s them leaving messages.
He watches Himari and Haruto argue over something mundane, Himari’s cold demeanor betraying the fondness in her voice while they debate some flavor of candy or whether or not melon soda is better than the classic flavors. In their place he can clearly remember Mairu and Kururi holding a similar argument, one he was able to quell with a pile of little treats and their favorite juice at the time.
For a moment, Izaya considers checking his call log, his voicemails. But the last time he looked the number of missed calls and messages was so high he couldn’t bear to face the reality of who might be trying to contact him.
It’s better this way, right?
Not knowing?
Some information is worthless, after all.
Besides, even Tsukumoya wasn’t interested in trying to find him to keep up their banter of misery. A shame, truly, Izaya had hoped at least he’d be willing to follow him wherever he went. Even if it was to keep up whatever fucked up sort of relationship they had.
The introduction to Nec was at least proof enough the bastard was looking out for Izaya’s faux death.
He’s not sure if this is supposed to comfort or threaten.
But he finds the strings of fate tugging him back to Tokyo all the same.
The calls are harder to ignore, nearly constant for a while. The constant rumble of an insecure structure ready to cave in on itself at any moment. Izaya can’t bring himself to look at the thing long enough to put the vibration to silence or let the phone die. It lives on his bedside table, attached to a charger near permanently. Which is better than feeling the phone go off all day in his pocket.
“Why don’t you turn it off?”
Izaya’s head tilts and his fingers pause over the keys of his laptop. Gaze passing over to Nec and watching her set up shop in the corner of the most recent penthouse Izaya has rented for this new job.
“Turn what off?” he’s ready this time, less off guard.
“That old phone you keep babying in your room. I can hear it going off again from here.”
Her tone is less annoyed and more inquiring. A genuine curiosity to rival the disinterested apathy Himari first presented her question with months ago. Haruto stands next to her, varios wires and cords in his hands and ready to pass over the next one she needs. He and Izaya lock eyes for a moment, brief as it is, and Izaya has to look away in a mere show of his own disinterest. A chuckle bubbling from his throat.
“Don’t be silly, I have to keep all of my phones on, just in case.”
“In case of what?” Haruto chimes, passing Nec one of her wires. “Emergency?”
“Something like that…” Izaya muses.
Sozoro enters with Himari not far behind. The conversation moves swiftly away from that phone trouble, instead further into making sure everything is unpacked and set in it’s place as properly as it can be. They’ll be staying in this little town for a while, or so Izaya says. Whatever ‘a while’ means for him could mean anything to the others. Irrelevant, really. Thanks to Nec and Sozoro she has little to worry about and less time to be around him. It’s Haruto who tries to pry, but Izaya laughs and sends him on his way with enough money for him and Himari to go get a little treat in town.
Nec accompanies them, not without the monetary bribe for a little treat of her own.
And when it’s just Sozoro and Izaya left in the condo is when he can finally allow the slump in his shoulders to weigh the rest of him down to resting his cheek against the desk. Izaya sighs, quiet contempt at the state of things, the way he misses the past.
The way he regrets .
The way he knows even if given the chance he wouldn’t have done anything differently. Because this is just who he is. In the back of his mind he can hear the phone vibrating but without the reaction of anyone else, he’s unsure if that’s a real occurrence or an imagine one. Not that any of it matters. The tower crumbles under the weight of itself, it falls because it refuses to be maintained. Izaya Orihara knows that this is the only way, the only way to end the vicious cycle of suffering he’s subjected himself and everyone around him to for the past decade.
Even if anyone else was just collateral damage in the long run.
He can’t help but wonder if Shinra would feel this sort of regret if he had truly let Celty go to be where she belongs.
Such a shame he won’t be able to find out the answer.
Even if he did, would it be filed under the things he keeps in mind? The things he remembers about Shinra that he has to pretend he doesn’t remember? It’s hard to keep track of all of that after all. To appear as if he gives as little thought to the doctor as he’s given in return. After all, it was always all about Celty. Izaya knew that. He knew that.
Not that it eased the sting at all time and time again.
While the kids are out on the town, Izaya and Sozoro make their way to a different part of town. An building with a penthouse suit for rent on the top floor; one Izaya, despite Sozoro’s dissuasion, is intent on having a space for only himself where the kids can’t follow. In an ideal world, Sozoro wouldn’t know about this place either. That’s already one person too many who could turn on him if provided the right reason and reward. But as his hand maneuvers the buttons on his chair, as the whir of it hums and accompanies Izaya everywhere he goes, he’s painfully reminded that he does need to afford his trust to a bodyguard.
Even if that bodyguard won’t always follow him around.
Even if that bodyguard wants him dead just as well.
Huh, funny thing that is, isn’t it?
The irony isn’t lost on Izaya. But Sozoro is so much more polite about wanting him dead, and Izaya can’t deny that he appreciates an honest man.
They return before the children do, a shock to Izaya, considering how long these things can normally take. But he spends the afternoon idly ordering furniture and and things for this little apartment as well as the other one. Things for Himari and Haruto to play with and learn from for their studies. Things to keep his entourage occupied while he takes care of the boring work of collecting information, of sifting through what’s useless and useful. Having deliveries and maintenance scheduled for deliveries to his private apartment as well, mostly to appear furnished. What if he wants to go there and take a break from Nec and Sozoro and the kids? Izaya had always valued his privacy. He can’t deny that living with this many people has been a stressor he’d not accounted for when they all came into his space.
The damn thing is always going off. Always.
Izaya ignores it. He has to ignore it. Spending time rearranging his desk and ignoring the insufferable sound of that phone against anything but fabric, but a pillow or a comforter to muffle the sound of it vibrating against the surface of whatever it happens to be on. He catches a glimpse of the caller more often than he’d like to admit—and fuck it hits him like a truck every time.
“Izaya. See ya.”
The gravity of those final words. The way Izaya can perfectly picture Shizuo’s expression as the words leave his mouth. In the absence of the usual wrath and fury dripping from his maw instead replaced with the cold determination of a predator stalking it’s prey. The weight of it enough to knock any playful taunts off the tip of his tongue as he responds. He’d finally crossed a line, he’d finally done what he thought impossible.
“Ah…goodbye it is, then.”
The finality of it all.
Izaya’s hand hovers over a pen and the phone’s vibrations finally— finally —stop.
But Izaya’s hand is still shaking. He’s still hovering over that pen as if he might pick it up. To the outside observer he appears distracted, lost in thought perhaps. But Izaya is watching the scene replay in his mind. He’s seeing the rooftop from atop a steel beam, he’s watching the door to it open up and Shizuo collapse to his knees and instead of the excitement he felt in that moment pushing the heft of their fate to the sidelines he feels as though his feet are covered in cement and he’s about to step off the edge.
“Izaya—”
“ What. ” he snaps.
Only to see Haruto’s face as he flinches and takes a step back away from the desk. Instantly, Izaya’s face softens, a hand raising to pinch the bridge of his nose and will the panic-struck frustration out of his voice, out of the tense line of his shoulders pulled taut and ready to snap.
“Sorry…I’m sorry, Haruto, what is it?” the irritation bleeds from his voice replaced with something softer. Something closer to feeble exhaustion coloring his tone.
“I was just wondering…” the boy begins, meekly now. Izaya remembers Kururi’s voice. He remembers how Mairu would get when he snapped at her as kids. “If we could play a game.”
He remembers his sisters begging and pleading him to play with them. He’s thirteen years old and entertaining their minute desires. Izaya finds them in the pen and pad on his desk, just waiting for the scribbles of a smaller hand and an endless imagination to fill the blank space with designs only a child could parse through.
Haruto’s request is innocent enough, but the ache in his chest twists like a knife in the ribs. Imposes like a gun in his face. And though he manages to keep his voice steady and light he can only hear the hysteria and wheezing of that awful night.
“Sure, go get the game board.”
‘Go on and do it then, monster.’
“I’ll finish up and join you in a moment.”
The screech of metal dragging behind each slow and steady step as Shizuo looms closer.
Haruto’s face lights up with joy and Izaya can only see the shadows in Shizuo’s eyes as he almost wins and gets exactly what he asked for. The boy runs off and Izaya slumps, hand heavy on the pen it had hovered over for who even knows how long before it catches the bulk of his weight to balance him from banging his head into the glass.
It’s a good thing he went out to get that apartment separate from the others, a place to be alone and process his thoughts and feelings when he needs privacy. Rather than sending the kids out every time he needs to go somewhere.
Izaya is jumpy .
There’s not really another way to describe the way he acts lately. Struggling to keep his composure, to keep the mask from slipping around the wrong people. He often waits for Nec and the kids to find their own ways to make the hours pass by, to finish the day and head to bed. Izaya hides in his room, unpacking pieces he’s managed to salvage from that night. It’s not as if he was able to go home and gather any of his belongings.
It’s not as if he left of his own volition.
Spread over the comforter are his phone from that night. A knife he managed to keep on his person despite it all. Keychains that got ripped off of his keys in the fall through the window. The shattered glass should have been long gone, but when he shakes out that old coat to find whatever he could there’s a small pile of it that gathered in the pockets. A pen he’d forgotten was tucked into another one. These strange little pieces of the night bring a weight to the room, a weight he’s uncomfortable with bearing alone, but it’s not like he can share it.
It’s not like Shizuo had ever bothered to take responsibility for his role in their game, anyway.
Arranged in a way that has no real reasoning, or at least nothing that Izaya would be able to name. The phone..that phone . Ever since the day he snapped at Haruto, he’d silenced it. Silenced for real this time. The vibration no longer able to startle him into a state of stasis, that should be a relief, right? Shouldn’t it?
But it’s not .
Izaya finds himself checking it significantly more often.
Finds himself waiting for the number of missed calls to tick upwards.
But it doesn’t .
The worst part of the whole situation is how badly Izaya wants it to ring. He knows now, he knows exactly who is calling. He knows it’s not Shinra or his sisters or Tsukumoya or Kadota or anyone he should be giving a shit about. He knows it’s Shizuo. And every time that phone vibrated previously all he could hear was the weight of Shizuo’s casual farewell thrown as easly as he could throw a telephone line or a stoplight.
As easily as he could wield a steel beam.
Izaya sits in front of the remains of his previous life contemplating the meaning of everything as best he can. Trying to find the pattern with which to make sense of what he’d managed to save. The remaining pieces of what could have been a normal end of a day before he took that first step to destroying the structure of the tower. To find a reason for being hung up on that city that doesn’t care if he lives or dies or makes it back or stays away.
Could he ever return?
Sure, if he has a death wish.
But if Shizuo is calling this much…there’s some reason. There has to be?
He shouldn’t care about whatever reason Shizuo has for calling, it’s irrelevant. Shizuo ended it. Just as he started it. Casually and without a thought in the world about what Izaya could have truly wanted. Could it have been different? Who knows.
Probably.
But, more likely…probably not .
Friendship wouldn’t have fixed them, but Shizuo’s muscle with Izaya’s wit…they could have been anything. Anything but this . But it wouldn’t have been different.
Shizuo would have thrown him away one way or another, that much is clear. And Izaya frantically moves to gather these objects before Sozoro can come to the apartment to find him and see what he’s been working on.
A memorial.
He shouldn’t linger on the past, and if he throws it all away then he’ll have to move on. It’s not like he could ever go back, anyway. Everything from the bed is swiped into a cardboard box, hastily pushed beneath the frame with no intention of ever retrieving it. Izaya wheels himself from the bedroom of his apartment and then moves towards the main door. The door opens, and he’s surprised to see Sozoro standing at attention just next to the doorway.
A gloved hand pushes flat against the door and holds it open for Izaya to wheel through, wordless and absent of any inquiry as to just what he was doing in there. Just a bodyguard waiting to escort his charge back to their shared living quarters.
Sozoro doesn’t ask. So Izaya doesn’t tell.
And somehow, that’s better.
Izaya dreams.
Of course he dreams, he's just a person after all.
He dreams of standing at the top of the world, balanced on a steel beam and looking down on the whole of humanity as a beast growls and rumbles loud enough to shake the very foundations of the structure beneath his feet.
He dreams of the concrete giving, swaying with the force of the vibrations reverberating through reinforced steel and crumbling beneath the soles of his boots.
He knows he's dreaming, yet the spike of fear and adrenaline is indistinguishable from that night. He knows he's dreaming because he's standing, because there's no pain radiating from the soles of his feet up the column of his spine. Rebar snaps, concrete crumbles. Izaya is in a free fall and metal twists and he's surrounded by steel and concrete and rebar and he knows he'll be crushed by all of it.
By the weight of his mistakes.
One might assume he'd have a semblance of peace once that phone was no longer in his peripheral. Once the calls were no longer at the forefront of his mind. That he might finally begin to leave Ikebukuro behind the same way the city forgot all about him.
One might be wrong.
Izaya gets less sleep than before. So paranoid and wide awake waiting for the buzz of the phone that's not even in this apartment. Not in this hotel or that or anywhere near him. He finds himself going crazy looking for the device when weeks have passed with nothing. Sozoro and Nec had offered him a semblance of grace by not voicing any concern or personal interest about the phone.
Himari too, she stayed quiet about it. Even took a few sheds of joy at his growing anxiety. Izaya had observed on more than one occasion the way she pulled Haruto’s attention from his frantic search. Izaya had even given up with the mask and attempts at keeping it under wraps.
Perhaps he shouldn't have.
Perhaps it would have been better if he hadn't allowed himself the privilege of looking for the phone in silence over the course of months and then suddenly tearing the shared home apart looking for it.
Perhaps he should have paid more attention to where he'd put his things.
Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.
A shame none of those things happened.
It's only when Haruto offers to help, offers gently in that way only children can manage to do. With their whole heart before they know anything of the cruelty of the world, of the beauty and sorrow and horrible things that can happen. And logically, logically Izaya knows that Haruto is genuine when he asks. He knows that out of anyone he shares living space with it's Haruto who is the most trustworthy.
Which means he's the most likely to hurt Izaya.
Suddenly Izaya is thirteen years old and Haruto is Mairu. Suddenly the walls of the apartment fall away and all Izaya can see is the aftermath of cruelty only a stupid child can inflict on another. When he told them they were only half of a person without each other.
When he accused Haruto of taking the phone.
He doesn't need to see the way the others look at him.
He doesn't need to see the way Himari shoots daggers with only her eyes or the way Nec freezes at her laptop.
The silence says more than any of them could.
“I'm sorry.” He says, hands shaking on the arms of his chair. Too afraid to move them, too afraid to pinch the bridge of his nose or look away from Haruto's eyes welling up tears. “I'm sorry. That was uncalled for.”
He can see from the corner of his eye, the way Sozoro's shoulders drop just the slightest bit, tension released. He can hear Nec mutter under her breath and Himari breeze through the room to wrap her arms around Haruto's shoulders and pull him in and guide him from Izaya's path.
And Izaya wordlessly manages to direct his chair towards the door.
“Master Izaya—” Sozoro begins, ready to follow.
“Stay here, Sozoro.” Theres nothing but the flat disappointment of a man who's lost everything. “Keep an eye on the kids, please. I have something to take care of.”
And the door closes behind him.
It's funny what you think of, in the middle of concrete dust and shattered glass. It's funny, because what Izaya should have done was make sure he could still move. But Izaya remembers his first thought when he realized he'd landed. He remembers thinking about that first time they met. How coincidental that truck coming had been. How easy it was was to convince Shizuo that he'd planned it.
It's funny, Izaya thinks, and he wonders what Shizuo thought as he flew through the air twisting from the impact of the trucks bumper hitting his back.
It’s the right thing to do, that’s what Izaya will tell himself at least.
To disconnect the phone, to remove the ability for it to be called. It’s the only way to put his mind at ease, to banish the ghosts of the past from haunting him any longer. He’s spilled enough blood over Ikebukuro, skulked the streets of Tokyo far too long and poured too much of his heart into the thumping pulse of the city that wished him no less than dead. It’s the right thing to do in order to move forward. To push himself into something better .
He can be better…right?
Every human deserves a second chance, Shizuo was proof enough of that. But Izaya could never be so lucky to gain the good graces to be granted such a commodity. He knows this. He knows this better than anyone ever has—Shizuo not counted.
Shizuo was the only one who sniffed out the vile creature he was right away, the only one who treated him the way he should have been treated.
“Sir?” Izaya’s attention drawn up by the girl calling out to him. Her customer service-ready smile blinding. “Did you want to reserve the number? In case you find the phone?”
Months pass, and Izaya falls into something close to normal , but not quite there. He almost forgets about that old phone, he almost moves on. The lack of calls and blocked forums on his browser help realign him with himself. The kids and their studies, Nec and her wires. Sozoro and his training. He spends time teaching Himari and Nec self-defense. And Haruto, to Izaya’s dismay, spends more time trying to emulate him rather than the noble bodyguard charged with their safety.
When he finds he needs to recharge, to free himself of any masks and responsibility he finds himself in that little studio he’d leased previously. Wheeling around it in a daze as he wonders where the phone could possibly be—and he’s reminded of the box. The memorial. The private service he’d held alone in the bedroom of this lonely little unit.
Such a simple little thing.
The box, the phone.
The weight of it in his hand—the weight of it not in his hand.
Carefully he pulls the box from beneath the bed, propped up against the frame with his chair parked and hiding his silhouette from the doorway. As if doing something wrong, as if robbing a grave.
But Izaya is only human, after all.
He aches, he hurts.
His chest twists when he sees the little device in the box, powered down from lack of charge and he can’t place the emotion that swells in his chest but he knows that it hurts he knows that it burns and he screws his eyes shut, curling over the phone clutched to his chest with the shudder of a sob barely held back through grit teeth.
A plea of forgiveness, of sorrow and regret spilling from his lips in a flow of desperation that would never see the light of day beyond the walls of his own little oasis. And maybe Izaya shouldn’t have cut the line. Maybe he shouldn’t have reactivated it so soon after cutting it. Was he so weak? Was he truly so fragile that he couldn’t bear to truly cut ties with the city he loved so dearly? Was it the city he missed? Or was it the man?
The same one who shattered every bone in his body and didn’t think twice about whether or not he deserved to die? The same man who strikes the chilling fear in every nerve of his body and why couldn’t Izaya let it go?
He’d crossed the one line he’d thought impossible to cross.
He lost the one person he was desperate to keep.
And now?
None of it matters, Izaya can’t go back to Ikebukuro.
He wails. Sobbing hysterics and clutching the phone like a lifeline. The last remaining thread and Izaya can’t stand the thought—something so definitive. Something so small. It hurts more than anything has ever hurt him. His sisters, his life.
It’s all over.
As far as Ikebukuro is concerned, Orihara Izaya is dead.
And what better place for Orihara Izaya to be? Six feet under in an unmarked grave or perhaps the bottom of Tokyo Bay.
Really, it just depends on who you ask.
Shaky hands move to charge the phone, desperate to see the screen light to life and prove that he’s still alive. As if his own mortality runs on this little lithium-ion battery. And maybe he spends more time than he should waiting and watching until the screen, cracked and shattered, comes to life clasped in his hands and he’s been here all day but he can’t leave until he knows the phone is on. Until he knows the phone works.
And when it does cut on, when it chimes a little welcoming tune it reminds him of being welcomed back home. At least being welcomed in the only way he’s ever been before.
The screen flashes, and notifications pile and spiral out of his field of view before the lock screen dims the light, finish setting up? Flashing across the top of the screen.
(192 missed calls) and Izaya can’t believe, he can’t believe he’s looking into it. Desperately hoping to see more than just one number. ( 57 Voicemails ) but they’re all from one number. Finally scrolling through the call log in disbelief and horror and despair when the number is the same for every single call.
The only thing he can think, that he can even begin to consider
…is why?
He spends close to an hour on the floor of the bedroom, box of remaining possessions from that night at his knees and the phone plugged in. It takes effort to climb into his chair. To bring himself back out to the open floor of the living room and back into the light of the sun. In a daze he finds himself thumbing back to the call log, looking away only to glance around the empty area, a place to live. A place to be. Alone.
Solitary when his bottom lip quivers and hot tears gather and spill down his cheeks. The sound ripping from his throat more akin to that of a wounded animal than a man— why.
Why!?
Why like this !? Why now!?
Izaya is at a loss in the ruins of his apartment.
Laying on the floor with the phone laying in his palm, fingers curled loosely around the device. Eyes focused on the ceiling above like it might hold the answer in the plaster tiling, like the outline of light fixtures might offer any semblance of understanding. As if there is anything further to understand about everything. In so many ways Izaya was foolish, he was arrogant and now he pays the price for that arrogance. And in doing so he takes the blame for Shizuo’s as well.
He was always the monster, never the knight.
Or worse.
He was the tower, not the monster nor the knight.
Not even the damsel trapped inside.
But the tower itself.
Destined to fall to the strife of conflict between human and beast and damsel alike—doomed to suffer the consequences for a shaky foundation and shoddy maintenance.
Sunlight bleeds through the windows as it wanes into the deceiving warmth of evening hues. Darker early…a new year but the same old empty feeling hollowing out his chest. He wonders if reactivating the phone line was a good idea after all. It had only been a week…closer to two. But the day is heavy and he’s at least grateful for the solace of solitude in the wreckage of the apartment his current companions have never seen. From his spot on the floor he can’t see the people below, but he can hear the hum of traffic and murmur of humanity bustling. It’s soothing, in it’s own way.
For a moment, he closes his eyes.
For a moment…he’s back in Shinjuku.
For a moment…everything is as it should be.
And when the phone rings he doesn’t even think twice about picking it up, voice ragged and raw from his earlier breakdown—
“Hello?”
But the voice on the other end isn’t Sozoro’s. “Izaya?”
Air catches in his throat, biting back the gasp that threatens to slip through his teeth and suddenly the illusion shatters like those windows.
Like the tower.
He’s not sure how to keep his voice level, how to keep the boy inside his heart from bursting into tears and desperately begging to come home come home come home —
“Sorry, you have the wrong number.”