speaksoftlylove | FIC - Fragile Things

dangan ronpa/leverage
ishimaru + parker; route cr/au
1400 words

There are times when he's almost all right again - times like the night that he'd found himself outside in the snow, and he didn't remember deciding to go there but apparently he'd decided and he'd stood up from where his sister had left him and quite simply gone outside, wandering to the outskirts of the city and just flopping down in a snowbank to stare up at the stars until she'd found him again. She had been agitated with him that night, and then the agitation had turned into upset and he hadn't protested at all when she'd pulled him forward into a hug, fingertips buried in his hair. He didn't understand why she was so upset; after all, he'd been around the entire time. Not where she'd left him, maybe, but still around.

Everybody had to be somewhere.

But he'd almost been all right that night, or at least he thinks he might have been; the cold against his back, the snow spilling into his coat and soaking his clothes, had sent such a shock through his system that he could almost feel it without having to think about it, and the sky was beautiful that night - it was brisk but it was clear, and the stars were out, and overall it was just kind of a good night for appreciating.

He wasn't happy, but he was there in a way that didn't just qualify as "being somewhere", and that was more than could be said on most days.

But when she talks to him she smiles, and lately she hasn't been upset; he hears everything she says because of course he does. Her words kind of slide a bit, though, in ways that he doesn't like, and it just leaves him feeling cold and irritated and he can't find it in himself to ask her to leave him

(because the last time he'd said that it'd been to Naegi-kun, and Naegi-kun had left him, and now he's alone and he doesn't know where he is but he thinks he's still upstairs in that classroom with all the drawings on the blackboard and he doesn't like them but he can't make himself stop looking at them, like maybe if he studies the distorted images of Monobear long enough he'll summon the real thing and he'll ask him for his brother back and then he can stop feeling sick every time he tries to eat because even if the texture is nothing alike all he can think is we don't know whose body we're eating)

and so tonight it's another hotel room, and it's almost a good day, and he wants to listen to her when she talks.

So he does.

She has those scarves in her hands when she joins him by the window, and they feel good against his face; some days they don't, and those are the days he almost protests - some days they remind him of that time that Naegi-kun gave him something like this in the school, and he'd been so startled by it that he'd handled it badly and demanded to know if it was a bribe. That had been kind of on the embarrassing side and even he'd known it, but he'd accepted it and later that night he'd wrapped up in it and pulled the width up and buried his face in it, grinning like a child; the memory hurts, and so do those scarves on days like that. Most days, though, they feel nice - they manage to keep him there (in that way that actually counts), and so he lets her do it.

Their routine is disrupted tonight when she leaves the room eventually - he waits for her to tell him to follow but she says it's just for a bit. He believes her, though; in his experience, if someone is going to go away for good, they never talk to you first.

He wonders, vaguely, if she hates him; he'd hated his grandfather for a long time, even though he'd acted like he didn't. He thinks he'd know if she hated him - even if his sister is like him in that she wants to help people, she's a better person than he is because if she hates someone she'll at least have the decency to act like she hates them; somehow, though, that thought doesn't stop the strange, twisting fear driving hot barbs through his insides like thorns.

But because she'd said something to him first she comes back, and it takes a moment for the thorns to retract a little, leaving him feeling sort of like he's bleeding out; her hand feels good against his hair, though, and the box she's holding in front of him is something to look at, and so he looks at it and when she points out certain ones he'll eat them.

He's gotten a little better at eating on command, even though it still makes him feel sick; he does it mechanically, because he'll fall over if he doesn't, though if he can get away with skipping meals he does - because he'll still be fine without them, so why bother. At least by now he understands that there comes a point when he won't be fine; the last time he'd found that point had been when they were still in the house, and he vaguely remembers his brother asking him if he was okay because he looked a little out of it, and Togami had said that that just meant there was no difference to how he'd been for the last good while, and the next thing he knew he was waking up on the floor and his sister had been...cradling him, kind of, and she'd been making a weird noise whenever anyone came close.

He probably should have told her to stop that; all he could think at the moment that it'd felt nice to be held, and he'd shifted a little to bury his face in her shoulder.

But she's not letting him do that sort of thing anymore; he eats when she tells him to, and even if he's never really liked candy, what matters to him right now is that she likes candy and she'd smiled when she brought them over so that must mean they're important. The caramel-centered ones are apparently the best, and so they eat those first; it occurs to him that this is the first time in his life that he's received chocolate from a girl on Valentine's Day.

Before Hope's Peak, he would have said that it didn't matter because such a thing was inappropriate, that it was a distracting, wasteful tradition that shouldn't be encouraged and school wasn't the proper setting for it even if it was appropriate in any way; he doesn't like thinking about that time - Before Hope's Peak - because it just makes him think about how much of his life was also distracting and wasteful, and that tends to just set him off again.

He doesn't decide to stop eating but his body does it anyway, his hand resettling in his lap, and he's very, very tired.

It occurs to him later, as they lie in bed - something else he never would have done with a girl Before Hope's Peak, but this is his sister and so it's okay - that he doesn't know what they're running from; he just knows they've left the chimes behind, there are no more bodies being discovered and no one waking them up at seven in the morning (and he's never told her why he always, always jolts awake at seven), and maybe, if they run far enough, they can leave the school behind, too.

He sighs a bit, and when he buries his face in that hollow join between her neck and her shoulder she nuzzles against him, and he listens to her talk; he knows deep down that he probably won't, but he finds himself thinking that maybe tomorrow he'll be able to tell her that even though he doesn't like candy he wants some more of those chocolates, the ones with caramel in the center.

They're the first things that haven't turned to ash as soon as he's bitten into them, that haven't made him wonder who they're eating; they're the first things that have actually tasted good in months.