This one...hurts. All of it. All of it hurts.

I own nothing. Lyrics are Jimmy Eat World's "Firefight".

soundtrack: "suns that circling go/getting through" – helios

prompt: 32. kill

.suns that circling go

/

this is where our diligence has lead

/

Nezumi is scared.

Bleeding, shredded, and gasping, Nezumi is scared. It's all he can register, all he can even attempt to sift through as he writhes like some fallen prince on a floor slippery with the blood of strangers, with the blood of himself. He's scared. It hurts. Everything hurts, from the crimson swirls of blood blooming over his wounds (shot, shot again, just like before, dammit), to the brute swells of nausea that rip through his stomach from where a hard boot had crushed against him, to the water pelting down on his overexposed nerves that ache even beneath the guise of his clothing.

Then again, pain – vicious, merciless, physical pain, pain that shapes a boy into a man if he welcomes it enough – is nothing new, not to Nezumi. He's been shot, stabbed, kicked, beaten, bitten, punched, yanked, maimed; he's been torn, ripped, thrown, slapped, burned, broken, all but destroyed by man and machine alike. It's the pain that grounds him to his own mortality. It's the pain that he wants.

But this pain, however, is something entirely different. It's stemming from his heart and branching out into every vein until he feels blackened and inside-out; it grips at him with talons and teeth like some horrific bird snatching up a rat to devour. If he could distinguish reality from hell right now – and to think he was the one that pointed out the difference to Shion just moments ago – he'd say this pain was almost imaginary, only felt in breaths and catches instead of torn flesh and frayed muscle. It's a pain he assumed was felt only in lucid dreams, left to be printed in a script to act out on a lonely stage.

He was an idiot, a fucking idiot if he ever thought they'd make it out of this in one piece. He's already half gone as it is, a useless piece of ruined, stoic grace struck down to the floor by steel and fire. Shion's eyes are flashing wild and bright a few meters away, looming over the same man that might as well have shot Nezumi six feet under had Shion not cut in. He's holding a gun as if he was always meant to, as if it's so natural for him instead of cradling paperbacks, makeshift mice, or fragile dreams in his pale palms; but no, no, but that's not right, dammit! That's not how it's supposed to be! Shion should only know the soft, untouched things of this world, all the things that have denied Nezumi since day one but have never mattered that much to him anyway. He's supposed to run his fingertips along the dusty spines of old books that speak of starcrossed love and unfettered youth, not grip creations made solely for death and destruction without so much as a stutter or stumble. He's not supposed to look so towering – hell, Shion isn't supposed to tower over anyone, especially when one is on the precipice of death crafted by Shion's own hand.

In some faraway world, Nezumi can hear himself calling out to him. He's telling him no. He's telling him that he doesn't have to do this, that he never would to begin with – not the Shion that he knows and may very well love, for Christ's sake. It makes enough sense, given the clenching in his chest that he thinks is his heart and the feverish need to keep him as he is, to never change, to never leave him for that dark world of blood and murder that Nezumi has been forced to write off as familiar. But that word – love – just makes everything ache all the more, blood streaming, tears streaming, voice screaming -

Shion pulls the trigger, and it's all over.

More blood. More death. It's all Nezumi can smell, thick and pungent, pure copper and raw dread as it washes over him in heady, hungry waves. It fuses into the fibers of his clothing, his hair, his very flesh. He needs it off. Right now. He needs to scrub it off with his fucking nails if he has to, because it's making him sick, making him shiver like some weak little child that's been thrown into a war without a rifle. And a child is exactly what he feels like right now, through and through, word for pathetic word; slumped on the floor with wide, unseeing eyes, Nezumi is little more than a sixteen-year-old boy that skipped over every delicate age in favor of staining himself with corruption and hate. He's a boy that bleeds red and whimpers when it hurts and loves, loves, even when he doesn't want to. Even when he knows he shouldn't.

Nezumi is, against all delusions of grandeur, human.

Which is why he cries. He cries in hard, choking gasps and soft, bitter hiccups that wrack his shoulders and sting his lungs, every breath aching and sharp as it jumps down his throat. He cries because he's cold and wet and scared, because there's blood on Shion's hands in ways more than one, because he wants to go home, wherever the fuck that might be. He cries because he doesn't understand, because it's all his fault, because Shion killed a man for him, sullied himself for him. He cries because he loves and hates and hurts, and he can't stop.

Yes – yes, he truly has fallen, hasn't he. Not like an angel from grace, but like some dizzy, dying wind that spirals and twists out of control before it touches the ground, only to drift into ash at the first graze of land.

Through the rushing in his ears, he can hear Shion's footsteps approaching him. How much time has passed since the gunshot? There are the faintest traces of words spinning away into dust on his tongue, apologies that ghosted out in the midst of delirious, all-consuming guilt. He doesn't remember speaking them, but he knows they were heard. They are, in fact, the most honest words he's ever spoken in his life.

And then there's Shion's voice cutting through the sound of falling water and Nezumi's own thrashing heartbeat; he sounds shaky, and perhaps a tad lost, but he's as soft of a sound and an air that Nezumi needs right now in order to remain afloat. How foolish of him, indeed, that he would be reduced to actually seeking out tender tones and gentle eyes at this day and age, but he lets that thought dry out into smoke as he collapses against Shion's narrow chest and lets himself be saved a second time.

He'll never believe anyone that says it'll all be okay – he doesn't think it ever will be, not after this - but he has to keep moving. For Shion. Always, always for Shion.