Identity Disorder {A Juuzou Suzuya Story}

Epilogue

Today fades into yesterday
Tomorrow stays forever a day away
I am barely alive
Slowly treading water
I am barely alive
Under a blood read skyline
I am barely alive

Reaching my hand down to you

Drag me out of the water

Pull me down from the clouds

"You are so pretty, Emiko. Can I have your children?"

"Juuzou, you are high."

Amused coffee ground eyes rolled in their sockets as she supported the ragdoll's weight on her shoulders. Juuzou giggled and grinned in response, tightening his almost head lock grip around his doll's neck. His pale strands tickling her skin and body weight causing her to scowl in annoyance.

"High on you, my angel!" 

He pulled Emiko closer in an almost genuine headlock almost causing the two to tumble coming up the stairs and causing Emiko to contemplate choking him in his sleep.

"Juuzou! You are depending on my weight to not fall the fuck over, dumbass." Emiko snarled, trying her best not to shove the drugged man. Her furious glare did not seem to touch the man but he did adjust back to simply leaning on Emiko for support. 

He is crippled, Emiko. Pushing him down the stairs would be frowned upon.

Once the two were finally in the new living space, Juuzou was sprawled onto the pale couch immediately. Emiko being tired of the man's shenanigans and his refusal to simply use crutches. 

Brown eyes flickered to the bandaged limb and Emiko felt her betraying heart twist painfully. Holding her breath and gritting, she waited for the feeling to pass. Guilt and sadness caused her stomach to turn and her mood to worsen inside. 

Juuzou lost his right leg during the infiltration of the twentieth ward and Emiko blamed herself every moment since he was hospitalized. She had no idea how she would have stopped a monster like the One Eyed Owl but she was desperate to say she could have prevented his hurt. 

Looking at his resting form on their new couch, his crimson eyes were shut and his hair was laying wildly on the cushion. The image reminding her of his hospitalized form and nearly sucking the air from her lungs. 

Her Juuzou in crispy white linen and pale as snow. His eyelids puffy and red from crying while his limb laid bent in multiple directions. The only comfort was the rise and fall of his chest underneath his blankets of the hospital bed. The doctor told her he was stable multiple times and would simply require a leg amputation. 

Nothing but scratches and dark bruises otherwise.

But she swore she could not breathe properly or rest until she saw his scarlet eyes once more. 

Even worse at that point, she did not know how she was going to discuss Shinohara's condition with him.

The entire situation was more devastating than she let on.

"Have I ever told you why I call you my angel?" Juuzou mumbled tiredly and Emiko kneeled near him to hear his words better. His gaze lazily stared at her blank expression before watching her shake her head silently. She could not come up with words when it was so hard to not see him in his incapacitated form.

A small smile lined his lips as he looked at her through his eyelashes and Emiko fought hard not to melt.

"So pretty and so scarred, you are like an angel that fell victim to the world."

Emiko scoffed with an annoyed glance, trying not to buckle under the tender words of the exhausted man. She told herself he may not mean them and that he was simply still on heavy amounts of opioids.

"I am not an angel, Juuzou. I have done wrong many times. I have killed and am volatile." 

"I personally believe that if an angelic being fell from the sky and tried to live in this world of ours, I think even they would commit many wrongs. You are not less of an angel for responding to the world you were succumbed to."

Crimson filled her warm cheeks and her lips frowned at the flutter of emotion in her chest. The backs of her eyes stung at the gentle tone that left Juuzou's lips and her throat grew sore. 

Emiko snapped and gave sarcastic manner so regularly that she forgot how crippled being treated fragile made her. No matter how angry she tried to be in response of soft words and cushioned embraces, her inner child sobbed desperately. She just wanted to be able to not have to defend her exhausted being. 

Juuzou and his unpredictable feathered words was the reason for her crumbling resolve. But with the loss of his mentor and his harsh injuries sustained from the raid, she fought her need to lash out. 

The cost was the hot tears that fell down her flushed cheeks. Dribbling down her chin and falling to the floor, Emiko wiped them with the backs of her hands while standing from her squatted position. Staring up at the ceiling, she willed them away as much as she could before her wet hand was grabbed. 

Looking back down at the pale man on the cough. Juuzou offered a bright grin to his Emiko. Squeezing her hand, he tugged her on top of his resting body into a laying position. His grin only softening at the sensation of her wet face pressed into his neck.

The two laid on the couch silently outside of her sniffles that occurred every once in a while. The soft grin on Juuzou's lips fell after some time in the quiet and dread tugged his gut with the moment to contemplate the last few days. His amputation did not feel as big of a deal as it should have. It was a signifier that he needed to get stronger and better. 

But acknowledging the loss of Mr. Shinohara...

This was a hard pill to swallow.

"Because being volatile leaves room for mistakes that you may not be the one to pay for. I learned that the hard way Juuzou."

"Do you blame me for not being strong enough to fight for, Mr. Shinohara?" Juuzou whispered quietly in the silent room. He closed his eyes for a moment as if he feared the room would implode with his question. His flinch seemed like he braced for the woman laying on top of him to explode with emotion.

But he was met with another soft sniff and another round of lone tears pressing against the side of his warm neck. 

"You looked dead in that hospital bed. I blamed myself for not going with you like I initially threatened to." Emiko mumbled with a scowl. Her expression hidden and her discomfort with the topic almost causing her to try to escape the room. But she remained where she was for multiple reasons.

One of them being her fear that Juuzou would actually die. 

In that moment, Juuzou only rested on the couch and was apparently fine. But the image just kept coming back again and again. It caused her to act so out of character from the very moment she finally saw the crimson gaze once more.

"I have told you before, I am not letting you go. You're mine and I will always come back to you. Though it was a good thing I never promised I would come back whole." 

Juuzou laughed with a wicked grin and Emiko sat up to glare at the man with glassy eyes.

"You had no choice but to come back alive. I will kill you Juuzou Suzuya, I mean it."

"Just as I will kill for you and always come back to you, Emiko Arima."