impartial interrogations

[another chance #04]

Takizawa knew he had fucked up. No one needed to tell him that much, the taste of blood spelled it out clear and simple for him. Ah, there was the thing with having no recollection of the last- minutes? Hours?

He knew he had fucked up and the quinque at his throat only served to drive that home. The weight on his chest made it uncomfortable to breath but he continued the cycle of shallow inhales and heavy exhales as fragmented memories came back to him. He could remember the crunching of bones as they snapped beneath his teeth and he could remember turning around a second to late and horizontal cuts over his chest and and- and...

And this time he had had nothing to fight for, no life but his own to defend. So here they were, Takizawa on his back, no longer bleeding but with an even larger hole in his heart and Houji was on top of him, about three inches away from committing murder.

Seconds passed without either of them speaking and in this silence a realisation dawned on Takizawa. He didn't want to die, not like this.

How funny, oh how absolutely hilarious that the man who had given him back his will to live, given him something as silly as hope, would be the one who took it all away. He wanted to laugh and cry at the same time.

"I never wanted it to end like this, ya know that right?" He asked, a little desperate. If this was the last moments they would spend together he wouldn't miss his chance to tell Houji what he really felt. He wasn't sure what kind of a response he had been expecting. Anger? Or perhaps disgust? He got none of that. Houji only smiled sadly.

"I know. You could have run when things turned ugly and you were dying. You didn't even have to come to rue island in the first place, but you did."

Takizawa thought that might have been worse than anything thrown at him with the intention to hurt. Because hurt was something he was accustomed to, scorn something he had learnt to expect. This entire situation was just too... too absurd for him. What reason did Houji have to care about someone like him?

"Don't drag it out. Just do it." All these emotions was making Takizawa anxious. He couldn't get up, not without getting stabbed in the neck so he settled for shifting uncomfortably.

The weapon came an inch closer, then stoped again. "Come on." Don't make this even more painful for me.

"I... can't." Now Houji was making that expression again. The one Takizawa had only seen once, somewhere in the depths on cochlea. Pained uncertainty, a little bit of shock and a lot of fondness.

"What kind of, of cruel joke is this?!"

"It's not." A loud clatter resounded as the quinque was thrown to the side. Houji somewhat awkwardly moved away, now sitting on the floor with a heave sigh and from this angle Takizawa could see that he was more injured than he had let on.

His shaking hands reached out, then retracted and clutched his robes. He didn't dare to touch.

A hand, belonging to neither of them made contact with his back, and as he turned in panic Akira was sitting behind him, hand outstretched, swaying weakly. Then she fell to the side, hitting the floor with a dull 'thud'.