streetwalkers | (no subject)

[ he feels hollow. there should some kind of emotion there, he knows it - he's just shot his best friend in the shoulder, but still... there's nothing. he should be angry at masaomi for not understanding him, regretful for what he'd just done, fearful after seeing the other boy's face. ...but no. there's nothing.

he can't react in time to do anything but fire the gun again, as he's rushed at. there's no aim - he doesn't have the time to try to aim for somewhere else non-vital in hopes to incapacitate him. ]

[By then Mikado's firing almost at point blank. He's pretty much guaranteed to hit. And maybe a normal person would stop, when a bullet slams into his side. Kida does stumble, for just an instant, and gasp. But that's it -- he doesn't want to lose his velocity. If he's going to fall, he's going to do it on top of Mikado. And that he does, throwing his whole weight into his friend to take them both to the ground.

It hurts. His body and his heart both hurt so much he wants to die -- he is going to die, thanks to Mikado. And really, he could just let himself go and end the timeline like that. But the thing is, he's not sure it'll actually end. He doesn't know if they all start over, or if his consciousness will just jump to the next in a series of parallel worlds. And in the event that this world would go on without him, he can't let it go on the way it's going. So he tries to get the gun, even though it's hard to think straight through the pain and all the conflicting voices in his head.]

[ even if it's a weakened masaomi who's been shot twice, he still wins out in sheer strength over mikado. the gun is broken from his grip, torn from his hands with a whispered swear.

things... weren't supposed to turn out, this way. this isn't how he'd planned - not at all. he was saving dollars, sucking the poison out of ikebukuro. he'd been doing a good job at stamping out all of the badness in this city and drowning himself in it instead. a good job, but not a complete one, so he reaches back up for the gun, trying to push kida off. ]

[He can't let Mikado have the gun back yet. Not until he's done what he needs to. So he's not really taking a careful aim. It's frantic, the gun clumsy in his shaking hands and his vision swimming with tears and simple dizziness. But he presses the gun against a random spot on Mikado's chest and fires -- it's probably not the heart, but a lung's fatal enough.]

[ in an instant, everything stops. his chest erupts into so much pain that it almost circles around to no pain at all, and when he tries to take a shaky breath in, the only thing he finds is his mouth quickly filling with the thick taste of copper.

he knew, from the second that he saw the crowbar in masaomi's hand, that this is where it was going to end. he'd always known that someone was going to show up to "stop" him, just as he'd been the one to show up and "stop" all the other non-ideal people in dollars and in ikebukuro. by becoming some vigilante of twisted justice, to others... he'd fallen right into the darkness that he was chasing away.

no... it was more like... he'd succumbed to the poisonous darkness of both "ikebukuro" and "ryuugamine mikado" and had been swallowed whole.

he can't push his broken and dying body to make any sounds other than wet, choked out syllables that don't have the chance to form words. his eyes are unfocused and hands have no strength, but he manages to put all the strength in his body into clasping weak fingers around the barrel of the gun and making eye-contact ]

[He really, really doesn't want to look into Mikado's eyes. He has a hard enough time doing that when they're happy -- right now, it's torture. But somehow, once their gazes are locked, it feels like he's trapped. He's stuck, staring down at the same blue-grey that he swear he could get lost in forever if he just had the courage, on good days. In happier timelines. Faced with that, he can't muster the strength to be angry. What shows on his face is guilt, heartbreak, sorrow, and the overwhelming love that makes the rest of it a hundred times worse.]

I'm sorry...

[He barely chokes it past the tightness in his throat, and once it's out the stopper on the rest comes up with it. He goes from barely held in check to sobbing in an instant, repeating that apology in a hysterical whimper as he tries to break Mikado's grip and move the gun up between his eyes. Only he knows he's apologizing for so, so much more than what's happening right now.]

[ each second is an hour, each beat of his heart feels as if it's pushing concrete through his body and out the wound in his chest and filling his mouth. his mind is fuzzy and there's nothing around them - it's almost as if they've been pulled from the alley and placed into a plane of existence that's only them. ...somewhere that mikado would have preferred living. somewhere that's close to what he was trying to create.

...there's part of him that's glad this happened. somewhere deep inside him, choked into silence and inaction by dark, inky tendrils is the idealistic young boy, the filling for the boring, normal, innocent shell that everyone else sees. someone who knew that in order for this to end right, he needed to be ended.

it's not hard to break the grip of a dying person, and as the warm metal of the gun is pressed against his face, the corners of mikado's mouth turn up as he slides his eyes closed. ]

[His own breaths are sharp and shallow, sliding into hyperventilating as the crying and the hole in his insides keep him from breathing deep or steady. He has to brace himself with his injured arm, palm scraping on the pavement next to Mikado's neck, but he's hardly feeling the pain now. He grits his teeth as he pulls the trigger--

-- for a moment, his ears ring, and it seems like the world has paused --

-- and then he drops the gun, hit with the familiar sense of failure and a wall of self-loathing and grief that leaves him feeling like he's been violently, forcibly gutted and hollowed out, in a way that nothing could possibly ever fill back up. He doubles over til his face is pressed into Mikado's neck, ignoring their mixed blood all over both of them, and it's only the fact that's he's completely breathless that keeps him from screaming until he whites out.

Just like he always does.]