❝ well, we can't have that, can we? ❞ it's far more a compulsion of selfishness than anything else / this rejection of satoru's rejection of his own crimes, his own culpability, half truth or no, but ( ... ) satoru isn't an idiot ; never has been. always too sharp, too intent, too intelligent, sometimes far more than anyone could ever presume or expect from him. self denial can only take someone so far, protection of the self can only carry one so far —— satoru knows because he must know, he must accept that which suguru has wrought / because HE WILL ACCEPT NOTHING LESS THAN THE WHOLE OF SATORU, refuses pieces or parts or scraps, he will not sate himself on pieces of satoru / he'd rather have none of him than fractional portions.
he's always been strangely selfish when it comes to satoru / covetous of him, his attention, his whole being, dwelling in that strange liminal space at the heart of him and the fringes of him and everywhere in between. consumed in him / consumed by him / CONSUMING HIM IN RETURN / the relentless cycle of infinity and the void and the impossibility that stretches between them inexorably, unendingly, absolutely. ❝ since when have you ever chosen the easy way out? don't disappoint me now, satoru. ❞
yet, the crux of it all is something as simple yet profound as the years that stretched and the chasm that yawns between them, purely vertical, perhaps able to be crossed in a single leap, yet who would want to risk it when you could fall into the infinite void beneath? NEITHER OF THEM ARE SCHOOLBOYS ANYMORE / the childish compulsion to be selfish with satoru's time and attention and whole being, as if suguru had been created to fill in the gaps of him, as though he had been born months later as a matched set, other juvenile, ridiculous, absurdist things / they're years and hundreds of dead bodies separated from that, the blood stained path that suguru follows not one that satoru will follow him down. not precisely. not exactly / not the way he once did, when suguru was his MORAL COMPASS and they begged at and played at living in each other's pockets / perhaps satoru feels guilty, for all of it.
unbearable in concept, even. nearly.
the path that suguru has chosen was his, wrought by his own hands, chosen with open eyes and an open heart : declared as he looked into the eyes of two emaciated, fearful, abused girls who had wept with relief when he had delivered to them their retribution, placing it at their feet before taking both of them into his arms and carrying them away, simply telling them don't look as he stepped over bodies and bodies and bodies and a veritable river of blood. SUGURU REGRETS NOTHING / thinks at times of haibara's cold, dead body / yet it is not regret but rage that fills him at the memory, at the knowledge that sorcerers are DEMANDED to place their lives on the line, to sacrifice themselves, all for the safety and wellbeing of vermin who would never understand, never know, would sooner cage them and lock them away and destroy them than ever attempt to understand, let alone THANK THEM.
this path was inevitable. from the moment that he had determined his initial true reason for living ( to protect the weak ) it was only a matter of time before he would learn. before he would realize. before he would see this world as it truly was. satoru had no role in it / he had every role in it / satoru, the strongest, tasked with only the most dangerous, the most perilous / shoko, caged and commodified and ——
❝ they certainly did, ❞ once he had wanted satoru to meet his parents / he'd been certain they would have found him amusing, at the very least / he thought that his mother would have ADORED HIM and his father wouldn't have quite known what to do with him, but alas. vague affection fills him, lightens his tone, for all that it's morbid / for all that they shouldn't speak of the dead, ❝ my unerring devotion to my morality is thanks to them, you know. always speaking of the importance of ethics and morality ( ... ) my mother was quite taken with confucianism. ❞ cruel, perhaps. but the truth. perhaps it was this action that had truly and decisively warped satoru's perception of him. changed him from the boy he had loved so much to some unknown creature, formless and terrifying in that loss. it doesn't matter much anymore though, does it? his parents are long dead, buried in a location only suguru knows, honored and loved still, in spite of it all.
he huffs out a bemused laugh / satoru's absurdities amusing as always / the smile on his face threatening to be blinding. perhaps it would be, to anyone who was not as well studied in satoru's smiles as him, to anyone who hadn't picked apart every last curve and shadow and millimeter of it available to him with the devotion of a saint, determined to commit ever last line of it to memory, always studious : even in this. maybe especially in this. ❝ only on sundays, ❞ an offering / followed by another, vague and lacking in most details, just enough to sate curiosity, a piece of candy pressed into a warm palm in the middle of a springtime day because suguru had so conveniently found it when satoru was flagging, draping himself over his desk with loud sighs and listless fidgeting, utterly unable to remain still. ❝ if you must know, i have a raised platform, though of course when i meet with my family we're often around a table, ❞ equals in every way his family, naturally. how else would they be? how else could he stomach them?
❝ am i? oh, silly me, ❞ smirk curves wider / he entertains the mental images longer because of course he does, because he's wont to, because satoru knocking his head on things because he's SO ABSURDLY TALL is the sort of humor that a child would laugh it, certainly, but the idea of someone as thoroughly powerful as satoru being laid low by a small doorframe ( ... ) the jokes, almost literally, write themselves. ❝ your lack of an answer is an answer, you know. ❞
❝ clarification leads to understanding, sa—toru. ❞ senseless lecturing, alll of this waffling —— the glee on satoru's face the utmost of his fixations, like a singular star in the sky / satoru's hands on him, roaming, pressing, perfunctory and playing at possessiveness. he curves his palm against satoru's low back, a heatless branding, hand gripping at his elbow, like and unlike the past / but the past only has bearing in that it was where they had started, where this fixation had taken root, where they had started revolving around each other as though they had a GRAVTIATIONAL PULL tuned only for each other —— the past is in the past, they are here and now, pressed against each other / latching onto each other / apparently intent on following this disastrous road / like birds flitting around each other, pecking each other, intent and absorbed and hurtling towards the earth. ❝ you've always been terrible at subtlety, ❞ nails dig against satoru's back, muffled by fabric, a subtle thing, a harmless thing, an avaricious thing : desire is hungry creature / not unlike the void / not unlike infinity —— ??? ❝ can you blame me? it was so amusing, watching you toe around the subject, trying to be coy, ❞ as if they hadn't known, as if they hadn't presumed / though he supposes satoru hadn't, hadn't wholly known, fully known, bravado buoying him as it often does.
because he had left him behind / because suguru had left satoru behind, an act that would have seem IMPOSSIBLE mere weeks before he had carried it out —— and he does not regret. he does not anguish over it. he did not offer satoru a place beside him / it would have been insufferable, the never ending clash of morality / lack thereof / SATORU WOULDN'T HAVE UNDERSTOOD / suguru refuses to entertain the idea that perhaps, perhaps he could have. perhaps if he had taken nanako and mimiko to him, perhaps if he hadn't done all that he had done ——
pointless theoretical, not to be entertained ( and he doesn't, really, when he states he does not regret HE MEANS IT / even at the cost of satoru, himself. )
❝ i suppose it can't be helped, ❞ as if there would have been any way for satoru to know, as if there could have been a way for him to solve a puzzle missing over half of the pieces —— this is wholly on SUGURU'S TERMS / or was / now it's on both of theirs / equals in all ways that matter, mirrors of each other, twin souls, soul mates, other insufferably saccharine things : tooth aching things, this connection, this obsession, this absurd IMMOLATION OF THE SELF, reaching for each other all the same —— a tender show of violence, as if they were shearing layers of the other's heart away, sheet by sheet, blood sticky on their fingers.
( perhaps they simply would have been tender, once upon a time. he thinks they would have / the affection that he held for satoru once upon a time pure, shadowed only by possessiveness / lacking in this intrinsic violence he feels now / this desire to CARVE OUT A PLACE FOR HIMSELF IN SATORU'S BONES, bone chips flying, marrow bared not to the world but to suguru alone —— perhaps. another useless, pointless theoretical. )
satoru pulls at his hair / he lets his lashes flutter in response, action to reaction demanding a reaction / smile turning sly, as though speaking of their respective deaths is as demure a subject as possible / he supposes that for THEM it is. he tips his head up, placing traction against satoru's pull, scalp stinging ever so slightly / when he speaks it's with teeth, a hint of them / suguru has always liked satoru mean, just the way satoru had always like him mean. maybe this, too, was inevitable. ❝ is there any other order for us to go? ❞ a plain statement : suguru will die first, surely, a simplistic sort of deduction given, oh, the entirety of their lives —— a star burning brighter and BRIGHTER until it collapses, destroying all around it in return / maybe even satoru.
oh, a hint of skin, a sliver of satoru's back / he presses his fingers against it, nails tracing gently over fine, pale, delicate skin. so few scars, the barest of one on his forehead to suguru's recollection / he wonders if satoru has collected any more / aches to sink his teeth into them. ❝ you might keep my body? forever? i suppose you could circumvent decay well enough, ❞ he takes satoru's jaw in hand / an almost gentle gesture / tracing his thumb along the line of it. ❝ how romantic, ❞ the most honeyed of coos.
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