Escape artistry

22. Black silk bandage (now)

"He used to be a fan of his."

A warm, dry hand on my shoulder. I wished it was Tobirama's hand, and that it held mine, making my hand feel like a tiny bird in a nest, protected.

"He was on the show when you had been invited to be his assistant."

The rustling that I knew meant the shaking of a head.

"Of course, just being a homophobe isn't enough to do what he did to you. He was a schizophrenic. Released from hospital just the week before. Mr Larson blames himself."

"There are many factors", I said dully. "If I had taken him on the subway, it wouldn't have happened. If he had not been released from hospital, it wouldn't have happened. If it had rained and we had taken a taxi, it wouldn't have happened. I can go on and on about this."

"You don't have to tell me that, Mr Uchiha", Tobirama's agent, the one who sat next to me at my hospital bed with his hand on my shoulder, said.

I didn't miss the intonation.

"He won't answer my calls. Or my texts." I smiled sadly at the agent's direction. "The worst part is, I can't cry about it. I can't fucking cry about it because I don't have any fucking eyes."

But I could cry. Even if I couldn't shed tears, I could cry. That was what I did now, hugging my knees to me, seeing the mountain that was my life ahead of me and feeling as if I had to walk over it barefoot with only one leg.

The agent hugged me to him, and for the first time, I realised he was like a father figure to me and that I had never had one of those. It felt nice.

I hugged him back, contemplating all the information that had been passed on to me in snippets over the last few days. On Time's Square, a mentally ill man in his forties had thrown acid in my face. I had been lucky, the doctors had said, because he had thrown it in a slashing, horizontal motion instead of splashing it upwards, meaning the acid had affected my eyes only, and not my eyes and my face. I asked them what the point was of having my face intact when I couldn't see it. They'd had the good grace not to answer.

My eyes had been burned so badly, I had gone blind before the ambulance came, which was within two minutes. There was nothing to do to save my eyes. They had removed them to prevent infections, and done some skin transplants on the skin around the eyes that had been affected. I didn't need a bandage anymore, but still wore one, a silken one, to not feel as exposed. They told me it was black, but how could I double-check that? How could I ever know if anyone was telling me the truth if I couldn't see it?

When I had woken up, Tobirama hadn't been there, and I had seen no trace of him since. Chris and Sandra had visited me, of course, and my room was filled with so many flowers, I knew the story had leaked to the media because I didn't even know people enough to send me all of the bunches I had been sent. The nurses confirmed many were from fans of Tobirama who wanted to show their support for me and our relationship.

But there didn't seem to be a relationship to support anymore.

The last evening before I was written out, Chris came to visit again.

"What are you going to do?" he asked.

I sighed. I suddenly felt like laying my head to the pillow and sleep for hundreds of years.

"Get my apartment fitted for someone who is blind. Learn Braille. Learn to operate a guiding stick. Get a guide dog. Try and-"

"I mean about you and him", he said sternly.

I thought about my friend, the closest one I'd ever had except Tobirama. The thought of never again see his toothy smile, his excellently coloured ebony skin, the funny socks he always wore to convince himself he was not like other guys, made me want to lay down and die.

"I've had enough. I've had enough of it, Chris. He can't just keep disappearing out of my life whenever something happens he believes he cannot handle. I don't have it within me to fight something like that."

I expected him to become angry with me, to stand up, pace back and forth and demand of me that I tried.

"Are you certain?" he asked instead.

The question took me by surprise.

"Of course I'm not certain!" I said, a bit more forcefully than I had intended.

I had answered without thinking, but there it was. He didn't need to demand anything of me because he already knew what I wanted. I already knew what I wanted. And both of us knew that Tobirama was a very, very damaged man that sometimes had to be shown he deserved good things by force.

"Will you take me to his apartment tomorrow?" I asked Chris.

Maybe, I didn't need to be able to see in order to feel the full span of Chris' grin.