TRAGEDY | Shouyou Hinata (Murder of Crows) ✓

CHAPTER TWELVE

There was blood on Hinata's face.

It sat along his cheek in a faint smear, almost rubbed off with the sweat glistening on his skin, but you could tell it was fresher than the blood on the floor, which had dried to a dark brown stain. This was bright and vivid, too colourful against the ashen shade of his skin. It made your stomach turn and wrench, as though you had swallowed a spanner.

"Sh-Shouyou..." you stammered, each breath passing between your lips in short, contractive bursts. "What... what happened? Whose blood is that?"

The boy hadn't lifted his eyes from the floor. He hadn't moved at all. He was simply stood in front of you, his body hunched forward at a slight angle, his arms hanging limp at his side, unmoving. You couldn't see his face. It was covered in blood and shadow. Grey and red clashing.

"Please... tell me what's going on. Where's your mother? Where's... where's Daichi?" Your voice was no more than a whisper, but it still sounded too loud against the boy's uneasy silence. You were reluctant to hear the answers to your questions. You were scared of what he would say.

Hinata stirred briefly then, his head twitching, lifting a fraction, and you glimpsed hooded eyes, the ghost of a melancholy smile. "He tried to take you away from me," he said, his voice a hoarse croak. "So I had to stop him. I had to... I didn't have a choice."

You felt your breath catch in your throat. Your heart skittered a little in your chest. "Who, Hinata? Who are you talking about?"

"He was going to take you away," he repeated. "I couldn't let that happen. I had no choice."

"Hinata, hurting someone - that's something done by choice. Just tell me where Daichi is and-"

"No. I'm not telling you, just for you to leave me and run off to him." He lifted his head fully now, struck out at an angle, his eyes wide and unblinking, glistening amber. Puppet's eyes.

"Then is he okay? Just tell me that," you urged..

Hinata ignored the question.

"I did it for you, [F/N]. I did it to protect you." He drew his lips into a thin, bloodless smile, holding out his hands as if expecting you to take them. You saw blood crusted beneath his fingernails and took an involuntary step back, your foot coming down hard on a piece of the shattered vase. It broke beneath your heel with a staggering snap.

That's when it struck you, when it really sunk in - the reality of what he had done. So much blood... Daichi and his missing mother. Hinata had hurt these people. That which you thought could never have been possible from the naive, cheerful boy you had once new, had suddenly and abruptly turned into a gruesome reality. Hinata was a killer. A murderer. Cold and ruthless, the dark eclipse of the sun.

When you saw him lunge forward, you moved quickly to the side on reflex, his fingers barely brushing your arm, leaving a cold trace of red on your skin. You stumbled over more broken pottery, watching the confusion fall across Hinata's face like a shadow. Then he turned to face you again, his movements stiff and mechanical, like a puppet on strings.

"Is Daichi still alive, Hinata?" You gasped, fumbling away from him as he reached for you again, his mouth still locked in that strange little smile. You saw nothing but the thick shadows around his eyes, the blood smeared along his cheek. "I need to know if there's still a chance to save him-"

"It's too late for him. It's too late for all of them. But not you. I can still protect you!"

You lunged out of his way and scrambled towards the door on the other side of the room, blood pounding in your ears. The boy that was chasing you was not Hinata, not anymore. This imposter was dangerous, ruthless, capable of violence. Nothing like the old Hinata, the Hinata that had a smile like melted sunlight and eyes like liquid bronze. That Hinata had been smothered, hidden away between the darkness in the imposter's eye and the cruel, sinister curling of his bloodless lips.

"Hinata, please stop this," you cried as your left arm struck the doorframe of the kitchen with a loud smack, and pain shot down to the tips of your fingers. You tossed a glance over your shoulder and saw he was gaining on you with frustration. "Crap." The only escape route in the immediate vicinity was the back door, but you had a sinking feeling that it wasn't going to be open.

"Why are you running away, [F/N]? You're not the one I want to hurt." His voice was oddly calm now, no longer choked up with emotion. You weren't so sure you liked it any better. His composure suggested that something deeper than reckless emotion was driving him to act like this. As though something important inside of him had come loose, a thread that had somehow snapped, and now everything else was unravelling too. His moral instinct had been compromised, tainted, and now he couldn't tell right from wrong. There was a thin line between love and obsession, and the two had blurred for Hinata the moment he had realised the fragility of the human condition.

"You hurt them," you snapped, spinning to face him again as your back hit the kitchen table. "You hurt your friends. Why Hinata? What did you possibly hope to do by killing people?"

The smile slipped for a second, and you glimpsed something - uncertainty, hesitation - flicker across his eyes. "I did it for you," he said, recovering. "I did it so that you could be safe." It was the same excuse, the same reason for every knot and chink in his moral armour. For you. He killed for you.

"But I don't want that, Hinata." You gripped your throbbing arm and stumbled backwards around the table, struggling to take your eyes off his. Hinata followed, walking in bloody footprints. "You could have protected me without hurting our friends. You didn't have to go that far."

Hinata head twitched suddenly, jerking to the left. He bared his teeth. "That bastard didn't have to go as far as killing Natsu but he did!"

"No, he didn't," you agreed, the words thick in your throat. You tried to swallow but your mouth was too dry. "But you - doing this - doesn't make you any better than him."

You realised your mistake even before you saw his eyes glaze over. Before you saw his body grow rigid and stay very still, his burning gaze on you.

Without waiting for him to make the first move, you turned and lunged for the door, fingers scraping the handle as you pressed all of your weight against the heavy frame. A short, strangled cry pushed past your lips when the door gave a shudder, but didn't move, and you saw your own terrified face reflected in the glass before something connected with your head and your legs gave way.