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SHE SHOULD HAVE LOVED A THUNDERBIRD INSTEAD.
Sylvia Plath once said that it's so much safer not to feel, to not let the world touch you. Chuuya Nakahara once said that there's never a time to run away. Fuji Miyamoto once said that she was never going to die.
What is one thing they have in common here? Everyone lied.
Because, if you remain untouched by the world, you will cease to feel the warmth beneath your own fingertips. Because, if you don't run away at some point in your life, you could run into the one thing that ends it.
Because, Fuji Miyamoto died. She died, and took all the beauty in this place with her. For why else should it continue to exist if she wasn't here?
He still remembers it clear as day. When she flew away and took his little heart while she still could.
"Chuuya, darling- you have to let me go."
"No, I won't! I won't, you're- you're gonna be fine again, Yosano's coming and, fuck- she's gonna patch you up-"
(Wheezed, pained laughing. Labored breaths.)
"Does a gunshot wound close to your heart, with- with splinters embedded into your lungs, seem like something that can be repaired...?"
(Harsh pants. Waves crashing. Static crackling.)
"Yosano's gonna come soon, I promise- fuck, don't close your eyes please - I swear she'll make it in five minutes -"
"In five minutes I am gone, Chuuya."
(Silence. Deathly silence.)
"And I would've died anyway-"
"Shut up!" he shouts. Screams, really. Whispers, after a few more seconds: "Please, shut up, Fuji." Holds her up in his arms, the cradling she's missed for years now.
Tries to ignore the blood staining his ripped gloves and battleworn hands. Those good-for-nothing hands that only know how to cause death, and destruction, and grief, at the bottom of it all right next to his lonely singularity.
(It's always lonely in the wasteland of your own doing.)
For a while, there's just the waves lapping at the shore, and his heart already starts to pick up its pace because- what if she's gone and I didn't notice it -
"Oh, Chuuya," Fuji croons weakly, shaking fingertips wiping the tears from his face, smearing red across his cheeks. "My little bird. Do you know how much I love you...?"
He huffs a wet, disbelieving laugh, frantically blinking to clear his vision. "We aren't going to sleep yet, Fu; you don't need to do-"
"Answer... the question. Please."
"No," the redhead murmurs, pressing her face against his chest. "I don't know."
Even like this - with his eyes cast up to the rapidly greying sky, and the blonde's body limp against his - he still feels her smile. "I love you more than any thunderbird."
"But thunderbirds exist only in imagination," he whispers, falling back so easily into familiar patterns. "No one's ever seen them. Heard them."
Fuji laughs, softly. Splatters blood onto his ripped, stained shirt. The next inhale takes more time, and it rattles in her pinpricked lungs. "There's your answer... I love you more than anyone could ever imagine... without any boundary."
"Without any boundary," the words spill from his lips, bitter lemon juice. He thinks that's what grief tastes like. Thinks, I need to ask my friend about that. Thinks that he could've gotten old with her.
(It wouldn't have been an easy life, but... maybe they would've gotten the chance to retire in a house by the sea like they always wanted. The chance at three cats, one dog, and two kids. Mina and Osamu.)
"Chuuya," she rasps out suddenly. Like she knows she'll have to go soon. "Chuuya- tell Mina I never wanted this to happen, and... and tell Dazai to treat her well, because- if he doesn't, I will haunt him until he caves... and you," she adds softly. Weakly. (It is time.)
"Don't board the train without a ticket, okay?" A small, wobbly smile. Tears mixing with ash and blood. A last inhale, and then-
When the sky cracks open like an eggshell, his heart bleeds out of the gaps.
HE CLOSES HIS EYES AND THE WORLD DROPS DEAD.
×××
this one's for @parhkersand i hope i am not the only one whose chest went OUCH writing this
