Work Text:
a dusty stack of photographs
of times I cried, but mostly laughed
commit the past into blue flame
acrid smoke, cowardly shame, god damn it
There's a difference between feeling and knowing. Hitori has learned about it firsthand.
Knowing is easy for him. It's a fact, a theorem that has been proved, a law, something that he's consciously aware of, and since he's a mathematician, something he can work with. Knowing is a cold and hard truth, unchangeable even if everything around it denies it, only ever so inexorable in the presence of contradiction.
Feeling is a hint of a smell, lingering taste in the back of your throat, a hunch you can't quite prove, something you try to catch, but that flies away leaving you with only residue, a promise of existing in your hands, like a feather of a magical bird. Feeling is like everpresent gentle ebb and flow of water around your ankles, gentle murmur of waves that has a chance of becoming a storm that will drag you along into the ocean, smothering you in the dark depths. Feeling is fleeting and uncertain. Something that is both possible and impossible and a potential of one turning into another.
Hitori knows they're all dead. He feels like they're alive.
He can sense the smell of food cooking, a slight whiff of something burning because no matter how many recipe books Nageki has read, he never can quite grasp the proper time to take the pots off the stove or turn the heat down. "It takes a lot of practice", Hitori would catch himself saying to an empty kitchen, only smelling of cheap alcohol and something rotten in the back of a fridge, filled with takeout boxes. Nobody cooks here anymore. There's no point. There's no trying to stretch out meagre finances for groceries to feed ten people. There's no studying nutritional values and facts to make every meal as healthy as possible for the growing ones. There's no Nageki, caught off-guard, trying to hide his flustered face, promising next time he would get everything right. Hitori is no longer even living at that place and still he would see dozens of pictures pinned on top of each other on the fridge, fighting for space, for a chance to be seen, racks of mismatched tableware they all gathered through the years since little ones would often break a plate or two from the set, house plants lining the window, Kokoro's pride and joy. But as he opens the door, he could only see off-colored wallpaper with moldy spots that he no longer can discern from wallpaper's ugly print. Sure, Nageki was here once too, but no more.
They got a tiny flat together, on the outskirts of the town, agreeing it would save them a lot of money, knowing, but never mentioning the true reason - they both wanted to get away from the remnants of the orphanage as far as they could. And while their flat was small and cheap, they two could work around it, turning it into a home once more, a place for just the two of them, tired and broken and fed up with the world.
Hitori no longer can bring himself to clean. He can't find the strength to move his body, so he falls asleep on the same dirty bedsheets, desperately trying to not search for Nageki's scent on them. It's useless. He will trip over one of his books or find a green hair in the sink one day. It's inevitable and he knows it. He will still see what's left of his once happy life and break down crying. Because he no longer needs to uphold a status quo of the oldest one, the strongest one. He will curl on himself crying, retching, nails leaving angry red stripes along his skin as he howls in pain, like a child he never had a chance to be.
Sometimes it's not the smell that get's him, it's the sound. He would hear the television set he no longer owns, some ridiculous theme song of a sunday morning cartoon and the voices of Pyonpyon and Yuusuke bickering about what Pretty Coore is the strongest until Momo chides them for watching cartoons made for girls. The thumping of feet as Nacchin and Tsukkun run up and down the stairs, eagerly counting steps just as Hitori once taught them. The scraping of Kanta's crutches along the wooden floor. He would hear children, all around him, faint, but still clearly present, laughing, singing, playing.
At times his vision betrays him and he sees a colorful toy, sticking out in some corner, clearly left by someone who forgot the rule about cleaning up after themselves. Hitori would reach for it, only to grab at nothingness.
Hitori feels them around, even in that apartment barely big enough for two. Hitori knows they're not there, they can't possibly be there, but he still wishes one day to just stumble on accident into that cozy house filled with friends and family. He wishes he would close his eyes and all the mold and disrepair around him would disappear, turning out to just be cruel tricks of his imagination. He knows it's not possible, but he still feels like it is.
Sometimes his delusions aren't that kind to him. He would feel the stickiness of the floor covered in blood that just started to congeal, see a barrel of a gun pointed towards him, prompting him to jump forward, to shield from harm those who were no longer there. People in police uniform forming a line outside the gates. Bodies, small and big ones, on top of each other, distorted, broken, lifeless. He would feel the weight of Nageki's body against his own as he pries his brother's bloodless fingers from the cabinet door behind which he hid. He would feel Nageki's body spasming in violent, but horrificaly silent sobs and wish to wake up from the nightmare. Of course, he never does. because he knows, it's not a nightmare. He knows.
He's bleaching his hair in the dingy little bathroom with rusty leaking faucets as the lights go out in the whole flat. It happens, the circuitry is in dire need of maintenance, but no one is willing to pay for it anymore. So he's forced to stumble towards the front door in the dark to flip the breakers. And as he's palming along the walls, Hitori suddenly can see just one light, flickering at the edge of his vision and he's sure that if he turns the corner, he would see Nageki curled up in the armchair, looking even smaller than he already is, with a book clutched in his hands, reading attentively, pointer finger absentmindedly tapping against the spine of the book. Hitori doesn't question that feeling, that presense of someone around as he takes shaky steps towards what used to be Nageki's room.
There's nothing. Only dust and cobwebs and things he would never have the heart to touch again.
That night he downs half a bottle of whiskey. He doesnt trust sleeping pills or maybe he trusts them too much now, and still. He falls asleep at some point, in a drunken haze, desperately wishing to see those amber eyes just once again in his dreams. The eyes that were once shining, full of hope, Nageki's eyes, his face usually so serious, brightening with a small smile. Maybe he'll see them all. There would be no blood or gunfire and children would only cry when they scuffed their knees or lost a game. And Nageki, his Nageki, his little brother would lift his head from another book and say, smiling, "Hitori, welcome home". They would all be happy.
Hitori reaches out to Nageki, to tousle his thick green hair, but once more his fingers touch the empty air before him.
He would go to sleep every night, trying to blur the line between feeling and knowing or simply hoping he would just go insane and will continue living, surrounded by ghosts, believing in them. He would spend his days wishing he would never wake up from his pleasant dreams, but he always did. He would try to never fall asleep so that he'll never see those nightmares again, but he still does.
He would cut neat ladders of scars into his arms an legs, letting the razor kiss his skin dozens of times in a row, watching blood gather and drop in rivulets. He would watch it fall, trickling down just like it did years before, as he tries to pay for his family's lives in his own blood, but no matter how hard he tries, how deep he cuts, his pain would never outweigh the pain his children must have felt and it would never bring them back.
He can't help but feel like he deserves it all. The visions, the nightmares, the pain, the ghosts shuffling in the hallways of his empty flat, flipping book pages, smelling of blood and fear and soot and ash.
He could have saved them. If not all, maybe just one, the last one, the most important one and still.
He knows Nageki is dead. Just like he knows that he was the one who sent him to die.
at times I'm truly terrified
cause dope and booze don't help to hide
they used to mask a weakling's hurt
it's just like painting over dirt