In Silence

Summary: Oga's thoughts in chapter 221.

Status: Complete. Very short drabble

Pairings: None, unless you really try hard to see it.

As always, thanks sweetgums!

"Pretend like you care!"

His hand twitches.

Oga decides to ignore the demand because, well, he doesn't know how else to act like he cares. This was how he showed he did; crouching on the ground, trying to be on the Furuichis' level as much as possible, instead of shoving Udagawa's hat up his ass.

He shows he cares by not just grabbing the god dammed chibis and taking them to the body. He doesn't do it because those are souls and he isn't exactly gentle and what if he hurts them?

But most importantly, he doesn't do a thing because he's not sure Furuichi wants to live.

Those are pieces of his soul…and yet only one of them is worried about not going back in time. The other two seem to understand they might die and still couldn't care less.

Oga knows he's thick towards most stuff that hasn't to do with fighting, but even he can understand the implication of 4 out of 7 parts of Furuichi's soul not caring about living.

It's a horrible realization and it hurts. taking him back to words he wished he'd never heard.

"Those tissues…they have poison in them. Apparently, if you keep using them, it'll seriously be a matter of life and death."

"I know. So what?"

He thought he'd fixed that problem by the time Lamia had healed the tissue damage, but clearly he was wrong. And he doesn't know how to make it right. And it's not the only thing he needs to do either: Furuichi's current predicament is Oga's entire fault for being his friend and not protecting him enough. The best way to fix that would be to become less close to Furuichi, but his gut tells him this would only make Furuichi feel worse for some reason.

All of this passed through Oga's head as he saw the three chibis fighting. And in the helplessness and anger he felt he couldn't help but be a little selfish…

"This is getting boring." he lied "Why don't you guys duke it out? The one left standing will be the real Furuichi" he suggested, in the hope that the strategic one was stronger as he had more soul pieces and more motivation.

Because he wants his friend alive and happy to be so, and the best way to do that is to get rid of the parts that disagree.

Later, when he's looking at his friend's pale, lifeless body, Oga will realize it wouldn't behis friend if part of him was missing, and so he'll begin to frantically search for the parts that got away.