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[the sun is setting again by the time the redhead shows up home, mostly in the interest of a bath. they washed the blood from his face, but his shirt sticks in his armpits, his sling sticks to the back of his neck, and his hair is lank with stress and fever (he smells himself and his sorrows too keenly). a bath first, he thinks numbly, and then a (hopefully, this time) dreamless sleep]

[he rarely uses the front door, and it's the back door that clatters open as he pushes it, walking into the kitchen a bit zombie-like; he hadn't had his black hat, so there's nothing that covers the lengths of bandages around his headwound, the way his eyepatch strangles his hair, the bruises and cuts that dapple his visible skin]

[it was maybe noon when carol fell asleep, didn't mean to but it happened anyway, from not sleeping the night before, from too many kinds of exhaustion, from stress. she's still there, slumped at the table, arms curled around her head where it rests on the scratched surface. a half-empty cup of coffee sits by her elbow, stone cold.

the door -- the noise makes her stir, sigh sleepily.

a second passes.

the door.

and her head shoots up, eyes finding him straight away. they're tired, disoriented, still a little red, and they take in everything, all the new hurts.]

Badou--

[pushing her chair back with a loud scrape, tripping over herself to get to him. she was afraid, that's what it was, and it still sits hard and awful in her stomach, and there's always a line telling her don't touch don't touch don't hug him and hold him to you no matter how much it hurts not to, but she doesn't care anymore.

she's going to try. she has to.]

[that sound of chair on floor snaps his focus to a sharp point, and she approaches toofasttooquick; Badou ends up stepping over himself trying to evade her reach, just to smack the brittle bones of his elbows and ribs against the cabinet, like she'd gotten up to beat him instead of embrace him]

[it's so stupid, his injuries ache with the cringe away, and he feels both numb and manic, like livewire nerves have been cutcutcut away at until only a few shredded pink strings remain, holding the whole weight of response on their own]

[(he misses his brother, he misses touching and dicking around and laughing)]

[the croak comes, he's only ever a broken record anymore]

F, fuckoff --

Edited 2013-09-09 03:03 (UTC)

[his reaction, the harsh realization that he's trying to get away from her pulls her up short, and she stands there in front of him, one hand hovering stupidly in the air between them.

she feels pained, and sick, and scraped-out, like someone opened her up and let everything fall out of her to pool onto the floor.]

Shut up, shut up.

[it's hoarse, like her voice was all used up on something else (choking back sobs--)

nowhere else to go, her hand lifts up to his cheek.]

Are you okay.

[he doesn't know what to tell her; his brains stitched inside his head, his bones twisted inside a cast, his mangled, scarred hand exposed to the light, he knows he could never speak a lie louder than these truths]

[(he'd said it to Sakamoto once -- it's hard to lie, about scars)]

[the frown that always slashes his face, gives him that ugly sour expression he usually has, is slack and loose, like the corners of his mouth could use stitches to tighten them up]

[in the end, he shrugs, unable (or unwilling -- at this point it feels the same), to say much at all]

I got fucked up again.

[it's tired, almost too point-of-fact, like a was hard day at the office or a she assigned homework again, but it covers everything pretty well, as far as he's concerned]

Edited 2013-09-09 04:02 (UTC)

I thought--

[she cuts herself off, smooths scraggly hair away from too-fresh bandages, looking at them because it's hard to look at him, like this. despondent.

she's in his business again the way he hates, caring too much the way he's always so quick to reject, and he's not even angry about it. something in her coils tighter, almost ready to snap.]

We looked for you -- Sakamoto said he'd tell me what was happening, but I didn't hear back from him, I--

[it's all out in a rush, and a shaky breath follows it.]

You stupid kid, do you know how much you scared me?

[he blinks owlishly a couple times, like it's hard for him to follow the line of conversation, and not just because she's a bit stop-and-start at it, choked with emotion]

[a twitchingflinch at that touch to his hair, and he informs her blankly]

Don't touch my face. I fuckin' -- I fuckin' hate it.

[he'd raged in the dark with strangers, he'd laughed in the copse with Sakamoto, and then he'd felt like crying with Nill, and now -- now he doesn't feel much at all, apart from a desire to scrape the fear off his skin, and begin the slow task of armoring himself for the tomorrows that won'tdon'tnever stop crashing over him (as much as he wishes they were yesterdays instead)]

[slack mouth corners reveal sleek fangs as they drop further]

I don't care. I ain't need you.

[inflectionless; it's a fact. he doesn't need her, he doesn't need anybody from where sun warms skin and asphalt alike. he'll go into the dark alone and he'll come out with his brother, or he won't come out at all.]

Shut up.

[she wants to grab him, shake him, hold him, do anything to snap him out of how much he doesn't care about any of this, because nill told her, didn't she? he changes. it ruins him.

the lines don't work.

if he can feel something, if he can care about someone, then he's not gone.

her hands clench into fists at her sides, white-knuckled, nails sharp and dug-in, powerless even for how much strength she's gotten back.]

You scared me, you scared him, you scared Nill. I don't care if you don't want us, we're here, we're staying, and you have to stop hurting yourself, you stupid -- selfish--

[a noise, choked-off, awful.]

Just stop.

[it's happening again; he's breaking her, like he always does, and he'll walk away from this with a straighter back and a harder heart, like he always does, because silence made you tough, and that's why Nill was the strongest of them all]

[but he's tired, and with the clarity of the serial insomniac, he realises could just stop all of this from happening, by just -- fucking -- telling her]

I ain't right. In --

[he touches that wounded head of his, lips curling a bit at the bad break bad humour joke in the gesture, right now]

...M'sick. It happens, an' I can't...

[the not-smile fades, and he shrugs again, but it's not an apathetic one, this time -- it's pure hopelessness, there is nothing he can do, to stop these fits that keep happening more and more and he lost hours last night, he's never lost so much time, his knuckles are sore and his mouth still tastes of blood and he doesn't know what's happening to him]

[(he should be more scared, but he can only think about Dave, and how scared Dave might be, if he's even -- )]

It ain't like Fukawa. It's just -- me.

[I'm just me, he'd told her over text, trying to say he was not worth saving; the sentiment remains]

I know.

[everything that's happened, everything that's been said, by him, about him. carol has been piecing it together for a long time now, she just hasn't wanted to see, too afraid of the shape it was all starting to take. every conversation they've had about killing people, hurting people, every word she saw him exchange with that snake in a person suit.

the things nill had said just last night. he's not gone yet, carol told her, only to get back he will be.]

I know.

[everything is gone from her face now except that ever-present suffocating concern for him, and her vision starts to blur with the beginnings of hot, helpless tears that she grits her teeth against as hard as she can. she reaches for his hand, the one unbandaged, not knowing how to fix this -- touch, comfort, it won't work but it's the only thing she can come up with because she is useless here.]

I know. Just let me help you. All I -- ever want to do is just help you.

[that moss green eye flickers away from her face for the first time, to the fingers on his hand. that's the second touch there; he wonders that if he doesn't bandage it tomorrow, everyone he meets will be drawn to those mangled ridges of dead skin, toobigtoofucked for the size of still-growing hands (will it stretch out, as he gets older? will it get bigger, or smaller?)]

[he'd thought it with Nill and he thinks it with Carol now; it's just dead skin, he wants to say]

[that's why she can't help; what's happened is already scarred into him, there is no going back, there isn't even any going forward]

[it's all just going down, down, down -- he can't even see the bottom from here (but can almost smell it at night, sometimes, all dankness and loss)]

[there are some things that instantly offend a journalist. you never tell them you don't know about it and refuse to talk; you never say it didn't happen like that and impose your truth over theirs]

[you can't help and there's nothing you can do, Badou has found, are what is naturally repellent to a hero]

[he says instead, kiddish and clumsy (how vulgar, after that kind of admission)]

I just wanna bath...

[the scar is awful, feels awful under her fingers, and she knows that the scar tissue doesn't stop there. the breaks don't stop at his fractured arm, the loss doesn't stop at his eye--

what do you do for someone when you know where the problem is, but you'll never be able to reach it?

the urge to cry is still threatening, but she won't let herself break, not until he's gone for his bath or he's safe in his bed (safe, what a cruel way to word it). maybe she just won't at all. like it's that easy.]

Okay.

[voice gone too-quiet, too-sad, carol squeezes his hand and lets it drop. ignores his earlier protests, all his past flinches away from her, ignores everything because she has so much affection for this thoroughly wrecked, thoroughly fucked-up kid, and maybe there's nothing she can do to fix any of this, but at least she can show him that.

hand on his shoulder, and she presses a stupidly maternal and useless kiss into the scraggly orange mess on top of his head. draws back, away, into her own space again.]

Go bath.

[it's not something that's happened to him, not since -- since he was small and bright and young, and he didn't know enough to be so fucking afraid, all the time (allthefuckingtime). he knows the reason for the permanent rings under Dave's eyes; the man had always been burning at both ends, and it's not Badou's fault, but it wasn't just luck that he was never taken like those pale-haired kids]

[even if the (Bad Boy) blood isn't there, he's fallen into Carol's life the same way he fell into his brother's -- unasked for, accidentally, haphazardly (ahaha, she went out for smokes, an' three days later, it was just you an' me! is all he knows about his mother, yeah, he was already long gone is what he knows about his father)]

[that press of warm lips, of affection he has done nothing to deserve, has actively fought against at times, doesn't feel like home (Dave's unshaven face, sloppy aim, and toothy grin), but it shakes him, rattles something dusty and out of use deep within his gut (chest? it's so removed from teeth and claw, he can't even locate it). it makes him feel small and uncertain, weak and awful, lost and unhappy -- it makes him feel]

[(he used to ride on Dave's shoulders, when he was little, and even if there was only ever darkness above their heads and below their feet, he knew it was like being in the sky)]

[more narrow, more crooked shoulders shiver -- just once, like a winter wind through bare branches]

[and he nods blearily as he pulls away, not meeting her eyes]

[he's learned a lot, in the past few days]

[(but he doesn't understand a fucking thing)]

Edited 2013-09-10 07:42 (UTC)

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