Leashed | • • • | Blue Exorcist

Failing

Yukio's POV:

I passed the small, cylindrical container between my hands, reading all sides of the label:

Duloxetine 30 mg capsules
Take 1 capsule by mouth, once daily to treat symptoms of depression.

The container rattled as it moved, the pills resonating like a maraca. With a sigh, I pushed down on the child lock and twisted off the cap. I tipped the cylinder to the side and tapped the edge of the orange plastic, a blue and white pill falling into my palm. I popped the capsule into my mouth and grabbed the glass of water I'd placed before me. I sipped at the liquid for a few moments, allowing my thoughts to consume me.

I'd been on antidepressants once before. It was a brief period of only a month or so. I was twelve at the time, and hormones were beginning to ransack my mind and body. I'd been in the process of gaining my Dragoon Meister. All the pressure finally ate at me until I became a hollow shell. I recalled vividly the conversation Dad had with me, the ensuing doctor visits, and the way I'd felt on the medication. Thankfully, Dad let me stop the pills after we realized I just needed someone to confide in. After that, Dad became my go-to whenever my brain started to fry. It never mattered what he'd been doing, or who he was talking with at that moment, if I said I needed to talk, he dropped everything and let me vent.

I closed my eyes, grief striking my heart. Now, I didn't have him anymore. And while Shura says I'm worthy of her concern, I still don't want to be a bother. Not while Rin is possibly off in the psych ward, hacking his own arm off.

The intrusive thought caught me off guard and I choked on my water. I slammed the glass to the counter and began coughing, shoving my face into the crook of my elbow.

I hated hearing the words, and thinking them was an entirely different story. Self-harm, suicide, psych ward, cutting, hanging. The thought of my idiotic - but well-meaning - twin's name entering the same sentence as the former... it made me queasy. Rin tried to smile through hardships, bear every burden, and was selfless when others needed him. I've come to realize that it's become his downfall, but that didn't make the drastic turn of events any easier. I knew my brother as a strong-willed, emotionally stable individual. Yet, for a long time, he's been quite the opposite.

Memories of falling threads and crimson droplets invaded my head, and I closed my eyes.

Even the memory of the night he was admitted wasn't that traumatic. I recalled the sudden shock I'd experienced when the passenger door opened. The fear in his crystal blue eyes as he dangled outside the vehicle. The nausea the enveloped my stomach when his sleeve drifted upwards, revealing inches of mutilated flesh. Even the sight of the broken flesh on his neck paled in comparison to the events in the ICU. I wasn't sure what unsettled me more; the gruesome sight of his attempt, or the aura he had whilst digging his nails into it.

He'd held no limitations to the fact that I was there, inches away. Had he even heard me while I'd basically thrown my heart to the ground before him? Was that the reason he'd acted the way he did? Did he hate me?

I'm sure he wasn't fond of me, I was the first one that found out about his actions. And because of it, he was being monitored twenty-four seven. I'd been the catalyst to his loss of freedom. If I'd left him alone when his tie was just shy of strangulation, he'd still be here in the dorms, falling asleep in my class, and pissing me off with his jokes.

I realized, with a sudden jolt in my chest, that I was wrong. Chances are, Rin wouldn't be here. He'd tried to kill himself twice before he was found out. He'd tried to kill himself after he was found out. Just what would he have done if I'd let things be? An image popped into my mind and I gasped. A lifeless body sprawled on a mattress, with sickly gray skin. The bed dyed a russet color, stained by the dried and wet blood of the boy. Long lacerations littered his arms, and the wounds no longer wept, leaving a clear image of the anatomy that lay beneath the flesh.