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Shizuo watches the dark of the room creep away as the sun climbs over the horizon.
The last dregs of Celty’s shadows now long gone under the cover of the moon’s light, casting everything into an eerie brightness no one had realized was absent under the murky cover of her powers encasing the city. The weight of the city’s sins from the previous night and two decades lifted with the promise of retribution before Shizuo shot that opportunity out of the sky when he launched Shinra into orbit.
Was it worth it?
Did he do the right thing?
Thinking about it all makes his head hurt, brings his heart to a stutter with a twist from the knife of regret and uncertainty that hangs over him like a cloud after any of his rampages.
But this was different , wasn’t it?
His own shadow stretches in a desperate attempt to reach for the rest of the dark receding from the sun—he watches the silhouette distort and merge with whatever bits of shade it can cling to, and it almost seems to reflect the tempest raging just under the surface of his skin. Something just feels so intrinsically off . And why shouldn’t it? It seems as if the boiling magma that was the undercurrent of Ikebukuro came to a head, bursting through the shell of normalcy the city seems immune to adhering and uselessly clinging to all the same.
Ikebukuro just wasn’t a normal place, but that in itself is normal for the city.
And by extension, the inhabitants.
Sunlight streams through the hospital window as it settles in place over the skyline, giving Tom the halo of the saintly figure he must be. It’s the only thing that seems to make sense, really, with how he always seems to know what to say and the way his words of wisdom always manage to bring Shizuo to some kind of calmer state. Shizuo rolls his shoulders, feeling the ache on the right side, set back in position and the sling digging into his left shoulder with the motion. He doesn’t flinch away from the feeling, he doesn’t will the hurt down into the depths of the pit of miserable anxiety in his gut.
That’s all it is anyway, right?
Mind over matter, or whatever the fuck.
And if he were honest, it’s not the physical injuries that are causing the pain.
Eyes downcast to the floor and his back to Tom on the other side of the room, waiting for the nurses to give him the go ahead to go home.
There’s an empty feeling settled in his gut, a cold dread pooling in the back of his mind as he replays the previous day’s events on the hospital’s linoleum floor, in the frame of his shadow. The silhouette interrupting the fluorescence of harsh lights beating down on his back. Something missing in the center of it all, instinctually aware of the fact that there’s a missing piece. He can hear Tom shifting behind him, the sound of his hand brushing against the blazer of his suit, another patch of dust found, most likely. Debris from the night’s turmoil.
Shizuo would almost always take Shinra over any official means of healthcare.
But this time he’d decided to take himself and Vorona to the nearest hospital. With Shinra just recently reunited with Celty, and everything settling back into whatever the city tries to pass as normal, he felt it only appropriate to get a real doctor, just this once.
Only, he can’t shake the feeling of something missing.
Like he’s forgotten something important.
It gnaws on his consciousness like a tick; latched and hidden yet known as a subtle sort of discomfort. Instincts ablaze with alarm bells screaming that something is wrong and wrong and wrong. He has
“You okay, man?” Tom’s voice from behind him. Exhaustion weighing the normally cheerful sound down to something hoarse and rattled. “Talk about a wild night, huh?”
He shrugs in response, his own voice lost somewhere between his chest and his throat. All Shizuo knows is he’s so, so fucking tired. Behind him, Tom huffs and shifts his weight from one foot to the other before he finally drops his weight into the guest chair in the corner of the room. No longer haloed by the sunlight streaming in. Shizuo’s shadowy reflection grows darker still as his shoulders curl inward and his head drops down. Exhaustion, he’ll chalk it up to that. It’s the only logical option.
“I take it he didn’t take the break up well?” Tom says, another attempt at breaking the silence.
After a moment of processing, Shizuo’s brow knits together in confusion; “Break up..?” snorted out like a curse. “The hell are you talking about?”
“Ah—” Tom smiles when Shizuo glances over, adjusting his glasses as he continues; “I guess that was his version of a break up then.”
“What break up?” growled through his own raspy approximation of his voice; “Who broke up?”
And Shizuo watches Tom’s head tilt to the left in confusion, then back in understanding, finally to the right; a show of bashful remorse. Pieces fit together in his mind, slowly putting the puzzle together, he watches Tom’s mouth open and then close on whatever it is he was planning to say. Some approximation of an apology, Shizuo can only assume; figuring out how to diffuse the situation. But Shizuo is too damned tired to even get to a rampage, body begging for respite from the stress of the evening, the morning—the day.
Silence settles over the room once more.
The ticking of a clock the only thing bouncing off of barren walls and the muffled sound of life seeping through the cracks in the door.
Shizuo stares at his shadow on the floor.
“Shizuo…” Tom’s voice is different, but Shizuo was never good at picking up on what that means. “I’m sorry.”
“What for?” His own voice is different, and Shizuo has only felt this once before. “I should be the one—I mean. I just. I screwed up again .”
Tom’s silence is encouragement, long ago he’d stopped capitulating to this pattern of behavior, and Shizuo, whether aware or not-so,, was grateful for it. He takes a moment to consider his words, how he wants to express the growing pit in his stomach and the feeling of his nerves being gnawed on like a rat through a wire.
“He tried to kill me for real this time…” is what slips out, shoulders slumped as the last dregs of frustration weigh him down, curling in on himself. “I don’t think he’s ever actually tried to kill me before this. Maybe when we first met.”
That puzzle that Shizuo was missing the piece to, the person unaccounted for. It was so fucking obvious . And he didn’t even think about it until now. He’d been under the impression that of course Izaya isn’t there, why would he be? He always runs before the sticky part of a situation.
Only this time, he didn’t do that.
Only this time, Shizuo knows Izaya isn’t even in the city anymore.
He thinks of Vorona and how her involvement pushed him over the edge. A bystander in their fight and yet she was burdened with the brunt of injury. A key in snapping Shizuo out of the trance that Izaya had put him in. He thinks of the knife in Izaya’s side and the gun in his face and how in that moment he was appealing to Vorona .
How their conceptual monstrous views of their own personhood would never be remotely similar. Too much to explain in such a high-stakes situation. Too much to unpack in front of a crowd of people. Her attempt at saving him from becoming a murderer and his attempt and reminding her that she could never be a monster despite her past.
It was always so easy to forgive someone else before yourself, right?
“Or he wanted you to kill him for real this time…” Tom counters.
This gives Shizuo pause and then a groan as his left hand slaps against his forehead. Dragging down his face, careless of the bandaging on either his hand or cheeks for burns and cuts alike.
He hates it, because it makes sense. He hates it. Because it’s true, and Shizuo knows without a hint of doubt that Izaya would have been content to drag them both down. Physically or otherwise. But Izaya’s never had even an iota of Shizuo’s strength in physicality and by now? Shizuo wasn’t even sure where they stood.
Well….one could suppose that now they had no standing at all.
“But I don’t get it…” groaned into the palm of his hand. “He wanted space, he went underground. He moved offices.”
Each word sounds more and more furious, like some reserve of rage was stored away. Escalating in its desperate petulance as if he could will Izaya back through the force of his words alone, through the grip of the blanket on the hospital bed. Tension winds up and snaps his spine to rigidity, muscles flexing under his shirt and fuck he wants nothing more than to get his hands on that little fucking piece of shit and—-
Only this time, it doesn’t trigger him into a rampage.
Only this time, the only thing he can rip apart is himself.
—And he breathes out a careful exhale through grit teeth. Feeling nothing close to soothed or relaxed after the coursing of adrenaline. A situation he normally would have ended with charging to Shinjuku and yanking Izaya up like the ragdoll he pretends to be.
Pretended to be?
Now there’s a sickening thought.
“Did you try to talk to him…?”
“Talking isn’t really something we do .” His focus shifts to the shadows passing under the door. Back and forth, here and there, room to room; “Hard to believe from him . Not like we really had any talking to do.”
Tom hums, “I suppose you guys never were traditional , I guess I’m not surprised.”
Shizuo’s eyes close, and he tries to remember blurry details from the night. The way Izaya spoke, his body language. It was all so wrong and unlike Izaya that Shizuo can hardly believe it looking back through his own unreliable memories. A sort of silence heavy in his heart and mind and he can’t put a cadence to Izaya’s voice; only the movement of his mouth and the intrinsic knowledge of what he’d said throughout the night. Blood trickling down his chin and that stupid mask he’s always wearing in front of everyone except for—
“Has anyone seen him?” murmured soft, a quick turnaround from the raspy agitation just a moment ago. “Izaya…I mean.”
Tom shrugs, and Shizuo gets the feeling he knows more than his mouth confirms; “Hard to say. Lots of people think they see shadows in the night.”
Shizuo huffs, knowing he can’t press for more. Unsure if Tom is holding back any information for his sake or Izaya’s; there’s no way he can know for sure that his friend would willfully keep this sort of information to himself. But he’s always had a knack for steering them clear of Izaya without Izaya’s own interruption, and Shizuo’s always been good at playing along with that. It’s so much easier when someone is just telling you what to do and where to go. So he follows Tom’s lead without much fuss whenever it happens.
That cold pit of dread in his gut is more fear than Shizuo’s ever felt in his life, all the possibilities of the state he thinks he left Izaya in.
Bones snapped, blood covering every bit of Izaya he could see. Fuck he knocked him through the air like a goddamned baseball? That alone should have killed him! And Shizuo finds himself internally grasping at any strand of possibility that Izaya could have survived, that he didn’t leave Izaya for dead in the middle of the city like he’d threatened to do so many times before. All they knew was lying through their fucking teeth in front of anyone else. It’s the only way to stay safe but now, now, he can’t believe he let himself get to that point. He can’t fucking believe himself.
Even still… “I’ll tell you if I hear anything, though.” unprompted and Shizuo’s head snaps around to look at Tom again.
Tom, who is poking through his phone and looking relaxed as ever. Tom, who just always seemed to know how to get Shizuo to chill out, just like Kasuka in that regard. Instead of a point of irritation this becomes a stabilization tactic.Tom wouldn’t lie about this. Others, he could expect that sort of thing from, of course, they wouldn’t know otherwise. But Tom? Tom knows, and the tension holding Shizuo together melts away. Mouth curving into a soft smile around a word of gratitude before silence settles once again.
The two sit, just enjoying the relative peace of the room and the white noise of people just outside of the door; of white noise of the world outside of the window. Shizuo weighs the possibilities in his mind, the very real and terrifying possibility that Izaya Orihara is dead, literally, and he’ll never see him again.
The very real and terrifying possibility that Izaya Orihara as known by the masses is dead, metaphorically.
Or maybe…in some twisted hopeful way, that Izaya Orihara is alive and sticking to his promise. Dead only by the standards of Ikebukuro rumor mill. And to Shizuo this is the best possible option. Things would be better this way, he’s certain of it. Without Izaya to meddle in the workings of the city and cause more trouble for people.
The twins worm into his mind, two faces identical and much too similar to that face for his comfort. Shizuo makes a mental note to keep an eye on them, whether or not Izaya would want that is irrelevant. But he knows that without Izaya around they might…
He shakes his head, unable to think any further on that matter.
“Get out of your head, man.” Tom’s voice, as if on cue, cuts through the thought instantly, and Shizuo’s never been more thankful. “Let’s go get some grub after this and call it a day.”
Shizuo nods, following the shadows on the ground. “Yeah, that sounds good.”
Tom idles through the conversation, lazily suggesting places they could head to for something quick and easy to eat. What they might be in the mood for, it seems more to gauge what Shizuo might be able to stomach after the night’s events and mostly through the day. As Shizuo counts the gaps in the shadows passing by his room, he wonders if Vorona is even in the same area as he is. If she stuck around or snuck out.
He grunts one way or another at Tom’s suggestions. Muttering about he’ll just find something wherever they go. He can’t even really think about getting anything to eat. It’s all he can do to not just consider going straight home and taking a week straight off of work to recover from the shitshow he’s still waiting to be discharged from.
“Is it cool if we…skip food, maybe?” He starts to ask—
The door opens following a quick knock, drawing both of their attention up and to the nurse with pretty eyes and a gentle intonation with her greeting.
“Mr. Heiwajima? How are you feeling?