[♥] Anger was easy; it was so warm and natural. It came in a flash, and it came only when it sought its price: the blood and flesh of those whom it so desired, a demon without any qualms for digging its tainted clutches into bare skin and forcing its prizes to the surface. Anger was so increasingly simple, a mere flame within one's core that refused to be requited as it wrecked havoc in a way that would forever remain unchanged, a set source of agony that could always be predicted and perhaps tamed. If one was writhing in the flames of their own fury, then it was an agony so breathtakingly lacking complexity; nothing like the nameless horrors of one's wide range of emotion. In all ways, if you could manage to keep your toxic master at bay for long enough to reap its benefit, unruly wrath was the preferred way to conduct one's self. So free of complication, so comforting ... it was as if one had given into the embrace of a crimson flame without the smoke to coat their pink lungs. If only such a gratifying release had been hers for the taking.
Fear, however, cuts deeper than swords.
There was no trace of the fire of her coveted rage, none at all. What had possessed her fragile frame was a sensation much more deadly, something unbearable and razor sharp. Rather than such a familiar blaze, Sayaka had been petrified in her full consciousness. Crimson froze within her veins, constricting and sending a rush of agony throughout the small bundle of hollow bones and loathing she'd become; fright was a sensation that none could face with a mask of bravery -- the storybooks didn't exactly do their research, per say. Only the dullest of fools could press on through such an altered state of being as this, and thus, she was condemned to suffer. Panic was icy, and merciless. It had no set date, no set price -- such an entity came and went as it wished. It could serve a man's greatest weapon, and only turn to gore the dolt who had once wielded its venomous bite and wicked claw with no regard for who might spot its act of cruelty and betrayal. Many a time had she borne the scars of such a battle -- they marred her porcelain body and ceased the cursed beating of her sawdust heart. Carving away inches of smooth, glassy flesh upon each visit, the beast had grown quite fond of her flavor and never hesitated in coming back for more.
Still in the grip of her poisonous nostalgia, the potency of her burning terror running wintry in temperature and yet so unbearably hot, Sayaka saw nothing of color nor of reality. Unable to grasp material means, she simply bore her dues with glassy eyes and a maw agape in the horrors of her attacker; a creature that only revealed itself to the one who owed their master the pound of gore and torture that is required to allow a miserable life to continue on. Here, in the ominous presence of the boy she'd wished would become a victim of her cruel blade, she had no choice but to accept her terms. Without much contempt, a feeling she desired with all her being if it meant an escape from this fresh hell, Sayaka let out a gurgled scream. Catching in her throat as if it were lined with razors and jagged glass, the cry amounted in little more than added irritation on the other's part. Oh, how she so desperately longed for one ounce of hatred, a small sample of rage that she could direct towards his person, and yet it failed to bless her. When had it ever? When had things ever come easy for a girl so haunted as she, one who had risked even her own happiness for a dream that would do nothing to assist her past instant gratifications, or even lead her down a path worth choosing?
Pulse quickening, an attempt to warm her frozen heart, Sayaka found herself spinning; a dizziness that couldn't be shaken, no matter how much she'd try. Too drained for a struggle, too determined to simply give in, she trembled under not only the weight of her own empty frame, but under the pressure that hadn't escaped her, not even now that she'd all but relinquished her title in the idol industry. Coveted by her employers, the demand for a traumatized idol greater than a fresher face of sugary sweetness and corruptible innocence, she'd had more freedom than any bird that could soar overhead, uninhabited by any earthly means that tied down the caged songbird, her tranquility a sacrifice that had long since been made, she'd had a sense of control that ad never once been hers to command. Not only had Leon taken her health, her flawless, ceramic body, and any lingering sense of comfort she might have gained from her soulless profession, but was he to take this, as well? There was absolutely nothing she could do to stop him; every final drop of her strength had been leeched away. Ebbing into a state that could only have been a sure sign of a second death, one that she feared would prove irreversible, another warbled murmur of helplessness escaped withered flesh. More desperate, less certain, it nearly doubled the intensity of her prior plead.
Tension rose in Leon's frame, his anger much more prevalent. Bubbling to the surface, utterly terrifying and menacing in what it might mean for the safety of the wounded lamb cowering before the wolf, a beast ready to strike with impunity, his ire knew no bounds. Of course he had reason to loathe her very being, as Sayaka well knew the betrayal and hatred associated with an attempted murder -- he'd been the one to inflict such a similar scar upon her psyche, after all, and she was no fool to turn a blind eye to the suffering she'd known so well. Had it not swallowed her, suffocated her with the entirety of its putrid and biased abhorrence, she might have been willing to overlook such an outward display of contempt for her personage in the prospect that she'd never quite shared such a form of sorrow. This, however, was not a luxury afforded to her, and certainly not one deserved for her sinner's guilt. Deaf to the shouts, the pleads, the begging, she simply thrashed about in dulled perception without much cause for paying any attention to the increasingly fiery temper forced upon her. Bearing the brunt of the storm, one that she'd held such a deep reverence for in all its power, however chaotic and destructive, jagged teeth drew crimson ore as she shook with the force so concentrated upon her, upon the sins she'd committed against this monster. Dribbling down ivory, the red a shade much deeper than her milky complexion, the blood was of no concern to its source nor its provoker.
"Ghhck—… da… d… DAMMIT!!!"
The metal studding Leon's fair skin glinted in the dim glow of a sheepish sun, one far too fearful for bearing witness to a horrible reunion as such, and one too inquisitive for where such conflicting emotion could lead once resolved, or rather, if. A collection of pinpricks of light in the dank shadows that their graveyard had cast upon the emerald field of manicured weeds, it only gave his actions much more somberness in their fluid poetry. Voice raw and lips bluish, he reached for the narrow wrists of the idol without further thought as to consequence. Sloth in their imploring pace upon initial fury alone, quickening once thought had been put behind his action, strong hands reached for bird-like bone with a speed unrivaled by even the rapid sinking of a stolen blade that had nearly ended her life months prior once self control had evaporated completely. Azure orbs widened in shock, the reflexes that Sayaka had once desperately depended upon failed her once again as she once again felt the bondage provided by another's hand. Flashes of a crime so similar that had happened a matter of meters away flickered before her eyes, a dreadful scene that still played in her mind with perfect attention to detail, she found herself stuck in the past -- if only for a minute. Even with the time that had passed since the frost tipped flash of steel had pierced her youthful flesh, a material so supple and and yet so rigid, it had not accepted its ruin with grace. Puckered skin and gore had rushed to tattoo the likeness of such a revolting wound upon her supposed perfection. Ruddy hue had stained the thin fabric that had proved its disguise, even the product of such a gash daring anyone to seek it out. Thirteen stitches, they said, and intravenous feedings. Possibly for the remainder of her miserable existence, too. Not only had she been marred, made impure by impure hands, organs had burst at the pressure of a point held against their thin linings.
"S-Stop it! Stop it!" Growling her unfounded commands, each syllable more choked than the last, Sayaka clutched the loose fabric of Leon's collar with stiffened digits. Vying for the chance to inflict suffering upon another if only to ease her own, Sayaka didn't find herself above the mark that such a lowly deed required. Desperate and shaky, her voice no longer holding the melodious and rich quality of molten gold and glassy jewels, it wobbled in her demand. Less obligatory than his influences, the idol couldn't help but diminish in luster with each passing plead for a moment of muted relief. All that she could dream for was a moment where her body didn't feel as if it were caving in on itself, where her stomach didn't scream in protest at even the slightest movement or shift in position, where she wasn't plagued by the flash of steel that had caught her by surprise before plunging into her torso and embedding itself there justly. "Why ... why won't you just stop it?"
"You are… you ARE stupid! For fuck’s sake… LISTEN to what others have to say…!"
Closing in around his target, Leon wrenched her stubborn arms forward in a obstinate grasp that had closed around her frail wrist -- pulling without realization a blow dealt prior to the crumbling structure beneath the thin veneer coating cracked ceramic. Already loosing sight of the decrepit husk of a doll that had once been an object of purity and flirtatious teasing, her skirt skimming slender thighs and the curve of her sculpted body symbols of the pressure upon innocent lust, it hadn't taken much for his absent mind to seize the chance to restrain the feral nature that had settled within Sayaka's core. Still drained, too weary for much more than spewing a stray droplet or two of liquefied iron upon her attacker's garbs, she only coughed her protest. Unable even to howl in agony further, unable to match the intensity of his indignation with shouts of her own, there was nothing spared for her feebleness's reaches. With no weapon for self defense, she could only accept the desperate tone he'd adopted as it became drilled into her head, embedded into her memory. Dragging the light weight she'd become closer to his bruised and beaten chest, a harsh tug on either appendage being all that was necessary, Leon besieged some kind of recognition for his own demons to be satisfied, for his own sense of closure and finality. Though gentler soon thereafter, there was a distinct and subtle alarm to be raised at the sudden ...
"I-I-I --" Rosy petals parted, losing their luster with an unnatural haste to reveal a pallor rivaling the gray of a corpse's fading vibrancy. Still bitten and disfigured from the gnash of teeth minutes prior, the blood seemed the only spot of color upon her sallow complexion. Ivory teeth flashed with pearly sheen behind a delirious grin, only adding to the monotony she'd become with such a crucial blow. Though Leon's touch had grown cautious, feather light and barely present upon cadaverous flesh, it had been seconds too late to reduce the vigor his reach before the blow had been dealt. A hysteric giggle poured from the raw flesh of her lips, a sound as eerie and haunting as the clash of a tarnished silver knife against its wicked scabbard, the only signal to the increasingly real possibility of irreparable damage to the health already shattered by a pierced wall of tendon and sinew. Pupils dilated and madness flickering in the near translucent splendor of her oceanic orbs, Sayaka could manage nothing more than incoherent mumbles and senseless rationalizations. Lulling and slightly crooked, the laughter seemed the worst torture that such an event could bring about for the undeserving murderer who had evoked the fit of dementia that she'd been trapped within. "M-My wrist hurts ... my wrist really hurts, did I fall on it strange? Heh ... heh heh ... what about it? Did you see what happened, huh?" Running her still pink tongue over the chopped rubber that had become her bottom lip, probing the injury for any additional carnage that had ensued in her futile resistance, she implored some kind of solace. All that was asked was some way to pass off her agony as a feverish dream ... was that too grand of a request? Sayaka was only vaguely aware that her words had come as nothing more than a ghost of speech, only dazed when her musings were left unanswered.
Thus, her misery made itself welcome. Curling into the gaps left between tight stitches, creeping in with padded toes and sheathed claws, it settled in for a peaceful slumber among the bruised, swollen canvas that despair had inflected upon her beauty; a cat without the need for curiosity. Purring, bathed in a pleasant warmth that had been afforded to it, her suffering an eternal presence that would not dream of abandoning its loving mistress. The wrist in question swelled in response, throbbing and aching simultaneously with a might beyond its deserving. Shooting up her arm, paralyzingly arctic and yet so sweltering that she could hardly withhold the shrill cry that had followed in pursuit, it was all too familiar a sensation. Reaching its peak within seconds, Sayaka couldn't project the torment that this new fracture brought for much longer. Dying out into a whimper, one so utterly pathetic that it would implore a combination of revolt and sympathy from nearly anyone who had been burdened to hear such woe; her scream had served little purpose other than a meager attempt at releasing the torment that such a snap of vacant bone had shot through her thin arm. The smile twisted into a grimace, a sickening curve to taint the impurity of her mental disarray.
"W-Will you please tell me? Why does my wrist hurt, huh?" Almost to the point of pleading, her need for comfort urgent and pressing, Sayaka murmured her inaudible solicitations repeatedly, each time fainter then the last till they reaching nothing more than the movement of lips. Almost to the point of a whisper, her unease and increasingly unawareness more blatant than the request prior, she felt dazed and blurred along the edges. With a distinctive fuzziness, one that would prove unshakable by anything, even the candy coated pills that had kept her paranoia at bay so many times before, little miracles meant to erase the horrors she'd been subjected to within the soundproofed walls of the doomed structure looming overhead, she spewed a stream of vermilion ore into the gap between her own skeletal corpse and the beaten mass of decayed muscle that she knew so distantly as her killer. Unsure of any ramifications that might come with such an act, she merely allowed herself an absent escape from the hellish torment that occupied her entirely, the ache only increasing as the seconds crept by, so merciless and cruel in their passing as to make their stay so prolific and noteworthy; each moment came as if it were a decade. Simply ceasing in her resistance to the imprisonment that she'd been previously fighting, giving into the blaze of arctic agony that shot up a thin arm with a sense of crazed finality that she'd never wished to produce. A low moan escaped her, and loosened her sense of structure she'd drawn from having some reason to resist, some reason to continue on.
If two were so destined to meet once again, she mused, ones bonded in such a unique way as they were -- namely, a murderer and his victim, -- it surely must be in death. Neither should have survived such horrific forms of mutilation; Leon nor Sayaka still should have been blessed with such a second chance, no matter the terms of health's return. Of course, neither of their cursed bodies had wielded the full vigor of their previous health. It would prove that not even youthful advantage could act as a bandage for all of life's conflicts, and especially not one made from narrowly skirting the ever present reach that death afforded his escapees. Never too far away from a grave left unfilled time that had passed over, allowing her a stolen chance at life that was increasingly undeserved, she'd lived in constant fear -- but not of seeing the one that had inflicted such a cruel fate upon her. Of course, such a thing was mutual, if one didn't count the obvious fact that in her leaving of a four letter clue, she'd condemned Leon to much a similar state. If only she could refuse that letter, that guilt letter containing the details of her acceptance into a school that promised the honing of talents already at their peak. Perhaps, and simply that, none of this would have happened. Perhaps she'd still be onstage, free of any qualms in accepting her manager's advice and counsel, and perhaps Leon would still be vying for his so called dream, one without any founding and without any determination behind it. Sickening was the thought, of course, but comforting all the same.
"…aren’t you tired of attempting to play off the martyr in this tragedy?"
Quivering, limp, and exhausted, her energy already spent on fits of hysteria and torturous stinging that had managed to root itself permanently within gaunt tissue. Every move sent a new wave of fresh agony upwards, tracing the path of her protruding bones and spidery veins that etched over silvery flesh. The pressure upon both wrists, the injured and the remodeled respectively, returned with greater force than before. Wincing, yet unwilling to speak out upon the woefully clear burn that even a mere touch evoked in her crippled extremity, Sayaka could only produce another sickening titter to cope with her own sense of faded reality. It might have been better if she'd simply let go completely, allowed her primal instincts to take over and fight back in a dulled consciousness with might she no longer had. Then again, such a route meant risking another blow, another glimpse of death's emaciated and patient face; that was something that she'd avoid with any means that she could. Even if it meant enduring this .... this excruciating, she dared not provoke an unknowable temper that could strike back in ways that would never turn out well for either party.
"I just want to go ... can I do that? Can I go ...? My wrist hurts ... so bad. And no one's telling me why, can you b-believe that?" Feverish, and yet cool to the touch, pallid flesh lost any floral hue it had once retained with surprising haste. Rose turned to papery white, petunia to tarnished silver, and berry to slate; a lovely garden reduced to nothing more than a hideous wasteland of monotony. The only accent to such a bland scheme was the ruby tint still dribbling down a trembling lip and the dual set of sapphire stones fixed into a size that imitated the glazed, glassy sheen of a girl on the brink of death. A thin layer of sweat formed upon her forehead, pooling above a perfectly sculpted brow that seemed the only mark of her true stature, and glazed flesh that had no business in still retaining blood flow. Finally freed from Leon's whims of his own mental release, one that he must have put off for all this time, Sayaka stumbled backwards with a drunken gait. With oaken legs, she vied for light out of the shadow that his beaten frame provided, a false sense of security to be provided in the temporary reprieve that a peek at the light of a day meant for closure might loan her. Ah, but no such luck should befall as girl like she; her request had been too greedily sought.
Once again taken, forcibly, no less, Sayaka's yelp was the only act of true perception of her situation ... no. Their situation. Curiosity had brought their paths together once again, a pitiable sensation that could lead to such a disaster as this; an indulgence upon her since abandoned adolescence that was sure to lead to bigger and more frightening things. Compelling her attentions to be directed upon his person, Leon had once again seized hold of a skeletal wrist before imploring her gaze to be met. Still whimpering, doleful in its inflection as well as in its childish hope for the heated embrace of someone out of this whole, knotted past that was shared between both corpse-like teens, she saw no choice but to oblige to his unspoken command. Burying her shattered bone and swollen fingers into the conclave abrasion she'd been nursing since her escape from a seemingly eternal abyss that Hope's Peak had served to become, her finicky, azure gaze flickered upwards to meet the pale glower trained upon her person. Furrowing her brow, allowing ianthine fringe to fall over the tips of her dinner plate eyes, she mumbled incoherent nothings before the other had a chance to speak further.
"Y-You aren't that good. No one's that good ... I was going to be replaced. They would have gotten rid of me, just like that ... I did what I had to. I ... I did what I had to, no matter what." Falling back in on his chest, now aware of the spots of sensitivity that had not managed to be repaired by medical miracles, Sayaka cringed once more at the acute sting of her swollen joint as she propped herself upon decaying muscle that he'd lacked to rebuild. Though not particularly fond of the irregular heartbeat he'd sported, though in all honesty, hers most likely matched the abnormal pulse, she found herself losing ability to function: even at her lowered level, that had become second nature. "I've done ... so much. I did it all, all for my dream. I w-would have killed you if I c-could, but you beat me to it, huh, Kuwata-kun? W-Why ... why ... why should I trust you when you act like you're so much better? Y-You're not even real! Not ... not even real ..." Mumbling to herself, admitting her great guilt and heavy sense of responsibility to anyone who dared loan their ear, she couldn't escape the impossible reality of exactly what she'd done. There'd been so much desolation, so much deception to everyone -- even her own heart.
"Maizono, I won’t hurt you as long as… you won’t hurt me. Uh… trust me…! You don’t have to really, I mean… at least trust your intuitions."
Intuitions ...? Something about that didn't sound quite right, not in the slightest. Too free and careless to sound right on his studded tongue, she saw no way to morph such a thing into much more than senseless chatter. Leaving a smear of crimson across her chin, the angular aesthetic only serving to add to the sickly appearance she'd adopted in the presence of her greatest demon, one that refused to be put down just as she resisted such means at extermination, Sayaka tittered over the nerve of someone to deny their wrong doing, to play the knight that even he couldn't possibly believe that he was. Surely even one such as Leon should know just how despicable and how in little possession of sainthood he was; no one could be that dense, could they? Just as she mirrored such contamination of despair and lethal animosity, she was fully aware of how lowly a person she was and exactly how implausible it was that she'd ever overcome such a mountainous feat as righting her wrongs. Was he so naive to believe that playing off his previous vexation and acidity, he was so capable of brushing off her deep set trepidation that his presence inflicted upon her mental health.
"You don't do anything but hurt. You think you're okay because it was an accident? Because you didn't mean to kill me? Let me just say? That you did." With an upward inflection on each word, turning each accusation into a question that required no response or justification. A hot well of tears poured over colorless cheeks, tracing paths through the grime she'd acquired in the struggle as yet another dam broke. Only to make it worse, to give this criminal a sense of superiority over her faded being, was his refusal to show any weakness. Too dogged to cry, too rampant to leave her untouched and on her own, Leon truly was too impish and omnipresent for Sayaka to handle with anything more than duress. "Just like I would have ... you killed me before I could do the same." Nearly ready to release her grasp upon everything -- the pain, the insanity, the improbability of it all, -- she simply refused to bear the blunt of it all for any longer. "Won't you just stop pretending? Stop acting like you didn't do anything wrong, like you're some kind of hero, or I might start believing it." Another sob ensued, whimpers and sniveling punctuating a choppy line of strung together pleads. "You're not some kind of hero, and I'm not some kind of princess that needs to be s-saved." The words rung true, and increasingly so. Having had all the time she'd needed to reach such a conclusion, lying to everyone and anyone who might question the preciousness that had been forced upon her persona, Sayaka trembled in finally speaking such a thing aloud. Hidden for so long, it took a certain degree of strength that she hadn't been terribly aware of's presence to birth such a confession.
"It’s been a rough ride should… no, can we… go back to the bus stop? I know the place’s shutdown but I don’t wanna put our lives at the… stake an’ stuff."
Quite simply, she had no desire to cater to him in the slightest. Sure, she wished for escape from this battleground she'd once attended, the site of her first brush with death and with true dementia, but such a thing would mean admitting submission. Already had she done such, and in far too great a display. Baring her still heart and arched back to the boy who had once marred her health for good, the damage irreversible to even the most colorful of capsules that she could force down her arid throat, Sayaka had truly played the part of the doll she'd always been told she was. Vulnerable, valuable, so easily broken ... she couldn't imagine a more fitting title to bestow upon a piece of still and lifeless pottery like herself. With no ability to refrain from being overpowered by something as meek as a child, or perhaps even the thunderous elements of nature who boasted their strength if used in great amounts, the battered ball player would have no trouble in coercing the demon who had sentenced him to a death crueler than the one he'd gifted upon his first, and only, victim. No matter what could be done with the life force she'd retained ebbing away, no matter what she might attempt, one matter remained that would prove to make her a slave to any whims that he might fancy himself to act upon:
If you want to control someone, all you have to do is to
And Leon had most certainly done just that.
Lowering his arm to his side, coaxing Sayaka to do the same, Leon followed his intended command with a tentative pull. As if afraid he might lose control, might pull something out of a socket, she noted, was the intention tucked away as she dully followed his lead with absentminded obedience. Leaning once more into the warmth his chest exuded, a product of living that she sorely missed with all her essence, she clenched an angled jaw as an aggravated wrist once again wrought havoc on any semblance of numbness that her dizziness and faint breath had afforded. Unable to hold back another sharp cry, simply swallowed the second howl that threatened to signal just how grave her injuries had become as time had dragged on. This unholy wedding of muted grief and the pause in isolation that had proved their initial solace hadn't turned out well for either partyl all of it had become so unnatural and lacking in wholesomeness. Then again, not many existed with a tie such as the one that bound them both, predator and prey. Insipid flesh parted, both lips that had once been colored such an envious shade of sugary tint that could only have been the product of genetic excellence for their soft glimmer, and thus passed a beseeching for sadistic release.
"Why are you still acting like this? Hit me, punch me, stab me again, if that's what it takes! You can't keep up this act you have going, please. Give me a reason to trust you ... because no one can be that good. No one can, no one." Speaking through gritted teeth, she all but hissed her desolation. Wanting a way to detach, a reason to hate someone like him, she craved some kind of sign that he wasn't quite as above it all as he seemed. That there was nothing left he had to hide, nothing to hold against her in terms of morality and goodness; that his innocence was no greater than hers. "No one is that good, no one is. Just stop acting like a hero, please. Please --!" Leaving a mix of blood and tears upon the cotton covering bare muscle, Sayaka screamed her demands into Leon's chest with reckless abandon. Still so fearful of the limited power he'd retained, it seemed so crucial that she pull away with some kind of proof that she wasn't such a monster, that the fault was shared: just like it had always been, she could tell. With an accusatory gaze, glossy and crystalline as always, though tinged with a film that could only be yet another manifestation of her cross to bear, Sayaka muttered something that she'd never hoped to have to say to such a thing to the one person who had driven her to such lengths of hiding a wound that stung and festered and caused her such a centralized feeling much like the crucifixion that had ended the lives of many others -- though so much weaker, -- and allowing the death of a superficial shell that had been her residence for so long.
With great alarm evident within her once angelic tone, fluid and tinged with a tremor of the bravery she'd mustered:
