Dystopia - Am imaginary place of total misery. A metaphor for hell.
A long time ago, the universe made it pretty clear that Renji Abarai wasn’t really cut out for existence. And, while he’s not such a self-martyr as to say it’s something that consumes his thoughts every day when there are much more important and immediate matters to attend to, at times it’s hard to imagine that every year following that decision hasn't been a solid punch in the face. A reminder; this is what you are. This is what belongs to you. A broken nose and piles and piles and piles of shit to bury yourself in it.
It’s still in him, he thinks. Just a little. A gentle reminder. He’s getting better at not hating himself but it’s a flux and a flow and an ebb. To remember the shit, and the mud, and the gore, and slime, and how it’s still running through his veins. He’s a feral child and he bleeds liquid spite, black like oil. You could peel him open at the skin and find something soft and warm but all that’s underneath it is teeth and blood. Enough teeth to shred you with, and enough blood to drown you.
He thinks about it sometimes, when he looks down at the broad paws of his hands, all dislocated knuckles and callouses hard like stones and scars that didn’t quite heal right, and realizes he hasn’t broken anything in the for a while. And then his immediate thought is to correct that.
That’s what powerful people do, Renji has long-since realized. They wreck objects and people and lives, and then sink back into the comfort of their supreme ability to push weakness away. They don’t care when little people get hurt.
Renji doesn’t want to be little. He wants to be big. Huge enough to swallow skyscrapers and crush the stars in heaven between his teeth and grind them into bone dust. He wants claws to tear flesh from bodies, and horns to spear hearts like arrows, and a tail to slam into the earth so hard it quakes and everyone can feel the fury that surges through him every day.
He wants to put his fingers in his mouth and pry his jaw open, so wide open. So wide the bones in his face dislocate and the skin at the corner of his lips split apart like a unreal, gruesome grin stretching from ear to ear. He’d rip the teeth out of everyone who did him wrong, did his loved ones wrong, and put them in the gaps of his own gory maw until he was full of fangs and excessive hatred, and then he’d tear through every thread of the universe until it fell down like a marionette puppet. And then he’d eat that up, too.
Renji wants to be a monster. A demon. A vile beast, so he won’t have to feel the things that drain the strength from his arms and the will from deep inside his bones, this fragile flutter of humanity that has been cultivated by friendship and love. He wants to be hell incarnate.
Maybe that’s why he needs to be kept so close, to the people who need him to be a real person. Or at least an animal that can be domesticated and subdued. Renji the Loyal. Renji the Companion. Renji the Lapdog. Renji the Thing That They Groomed and Trained Best They Could.
Because if he’s on his own, Renji will ruin things. He’s made out of spit and tar and broken nails. His striped, scarred, mottled hide has knives sticking out of it from before he could articulate pain. He will tear open bloody new mouths to howl from in his own flesh and he will scream and scream and scream and scream and ask why he is cursed with set-backs and inadequacy and hurt when all he’s ever asked for was to simply feel like he’s great and terrifying and adored,
And his only answer will be the echo of his own voice back.
