Title: Blackcurrant
Sometimes Akito dreamt only of blood. It was something he fully understood because of who he was and what he had done, and he smiled all the more during the day afterwards. It did not stop the guilt that was nipping at his heels and the feeling of, I'm sorry, Agito, I'm sorry, so sorry.
They were a shark.
Akito liked to imagine himself a bird because he was an A-T rider. After all, birds were what A-T riders fundamentally were. In his mind, Akito was a bird whose wings had become so soaked with blood that it couldn't fly. The bird fell down, down, down and into a well where it lay broken upon the stones. Akito liked to tell himself this story. He told other people a slightly different one, because this one was far too personal for Akito to say.
When Agito first spoke, Akito couldn't even begin to describe what it felt like - but he knew. He was far from stupid and he was also rather depressed. By that point, it hadn't really mattered. Research on the internet told him that this was a disorder, that something like this happened under severe emotional duress, that he had been was looking for escape and that he was entirely unwell. Akito knew this.
So did Agito.
Hey... hey, Agito. This website says that it's actually--
Fuck, shut up. Don't read those. I'll be here when you need me. Whenever you need me. Shut up and go to sleep.
He chose an eyepatch because he didn't want to see. It was congruous enough to not be questioned too intensely, and the switch became something smooth and easy and simple and practiced. Akito thought himself supremely selfish, because Agito only saw the battlefield and never the sky. Akito tended to gaze at it out of the window whenever his brother was away. When Brother was there, he looked at the floor.
That's fine.
Huh?
I said that's fine, Akito. Fuck! I don't mind spilling blood or anything. I'll do it for you so you don't have to. You're nice. You're too nice, idiot.
But Akito thought to himself, wryly, Ah, but Agito, I think I'm a very cruel person for creating you.
When he had been little, Air Trek was already swelling in popularity. As was in the nature of humans, people could not resist the promise of the sky. They took to it with a passion that soon exceeded many other street sports. Akito could not remember the first time he ever stood up wearing a pair of them, but a photo of the moment had been taken. He had memories of later days. His brother had been crouching with two hands under Akito's armpits to steady him and had said, press down with your foot, it'll take you places.
It did take them somewhere, he supposed.
People had come by to ruffle his hair and call him a genius. Amazing on the Treks, they'd said, he's really one with the sky, ain't he, Kaito?
Things changed. Akito had not wanted to notice until another man's blood had spattered upon his lips and the skin of someone's ripped throat had been slipping off his wheels. He thought now that things had been degenerating even before that battle, with his brother's increasingly cold attitude and long absences and curt words. Akito was kept in the trailer for longer and longer periods of time. It was probably then that his mind began fraying. To love and trust someone so fiercely while being utterly terrified of them at the same time was damaging to a young child.
Akito remembered all of this very clinically.
When he returned home with Ikki to retrieve the checkbook, the sharp flash of fear combined with relief hit him so strongly that his breath choked in his throat. Agito had raged in his head fuck him, fuck him, he doesn't know anything when Ikki's gaze, drenched in pity, had transferred to him from the photos. Akito knew what the other boy wanted to ask - how that had become this. He didn't really know.
He'd come to know other things, though. Up on the roof he'd leant back on the tiles, feeling their edges press into his palms. The cool evening wind had rustled his hair and sent the smell of Ikki's ramen under his nose. Ikki had glanced at him when he'd said it, but Akito didn't think it was a very strange thing to say when one was feeling freedom for the first time in a very long while.
I was thinking about how glad I am to be born.
Perhaps he had only needed that one night to realize it, and it made him slightly afraid. Agito frowned at him fondly and said, Idiot. Nobody blames you.
He set himself on the road to healing.
AN: Summary is taken from Wikipedia's article on Dissociative Identity Disorder. Blackcurrants have a sweet and sharp taste.