Disclaimer: Not mine; never mine.

Warnings: Dark themes and sads. Future chapters will contain mental illness, self-harm and attempted suicide.

Allure of Darkness

chapter 1 - the aftermath

Sometimes you talk about the future.

It's a subject that always seems to sneak up without warning - or at least, that's how you see it. No matter how many times Ryo starts talking about the pro leagues, or Fubuki about the day his beloved baby sister will come join the three of you at Duel Academy, your chest always goes tight and your words almost always die, unspoken, before they reach your lips.

Sometimes you manage to whisper "You'll forget me," but that makes it worse than saying nothing at all; Ryo always frowns at that, and Fubuki always protests, and neither of them ever understand. "Don't make that face, Fubuki, you will -"

And they did.

(It's your own fault, of course, and you know that. You do. You made a choice and followed through, and you thought of most of the consequences -

But none of your plans ever involved being rescued.)

You don't have to face that for a while.

The teachers send you to the infirmary while they figure out what to do about you, and you don't mind sleeping the days away. When uou're in bed with your eyes closed, focusing only on your breathing and the pounding of your heartbeat in your ears, it's almost like being in Darkness' world again. As long as you don't try to think...

Ayukawa-sensei encourages you to attend the graduation party - to be with your friends, she says, as though you have any left - and you do, but the bright loud chaos of Duel Academy hits you like a tangible force and you end up hiding in a corner, picking at food that settles like lead in your stomach and wishing you were back in the quiet of the infirmary.

Only when you see Fubuki do you finally join the crowd.

Even after all this time you remember your manners; you apologize for the trouble you've caused, because it's the right thing to do, but the words ring hollow. You can't remember how to feel sorry. You... can't really feel anything at all.

(All this trouble, all this effort, and you've come out of it with every hurtful memory intact. The only thing you've forgotten is how to exist.)

You don't remember returning to the infirmary after the party, but you wake there to find Fubuki keeping you company. He's fallen asleep in a chair by your bed, still wearing that ridiculous costume - and his fingers are threaded so tightly through yours that you can't separate your hands. It's awkward, foreign, and you think that maybe that should bother you. Maybe it isn't right for something as simple and human as touch to seem so very strange.

But at least you can feel this awkwardness; at least you aren't completely numb, or, at the very least, at least you are beginning to thaw. You sit quietly for a very long time, staring at your joined hands and turning over a million what-ifs and but-whys in your head.

You reach no conclusions.

Fubuki finally wakes, grinning like a fool even before his eyes are fully open, and when the sight of that smile doesn't make you explode with pent-up everything you think you might be okay. Then he reaches out with his free hand to brush your sleep-tossled bangs out of your eyes, and the gesture is so much more than you deserve and so Fubuki, and -

And you cry. You cry harder than you've ever cried - harder than when your parents died, harder than when you'd wake in the middle of every night convinced that your two best friends had left you all alone. You try to apologize through the tears but you can barely speak, and all that comes out is "I'm sorry, Fubuki, I'm so sorry," over and over choked out between sobs, because in the end, you were the one that left.

You can't cry forever, though, and when you run out of steam and your tears die down to little hiccups Fubuki is still there, still smiling. "But Fujiwara," he says, "everyone was stupid back then. Me and you and even Ryo was stupid, sometimes, because we were kids. And that's okay! Remember what I told you last night?"

You sniffle a little, and wipe your eyes on your sleeve. Somehow you feel better for having cried. It proves that you still know how. "...this is a place where a student's growth - and mistakes - will be accepted. I remember."

But it's not as reassuring as it was last night. The school year is over, and suddenly you are much too old to be a high school student; your mistakes are too large for even Duel Academy to bear. Fubuki might have only just graduated, but he is Fubuki; the rules are different for him, and always have been.

You aren't Fubuki, so you have no excuses.

"No one blames you." Fubuki strokes his thumb over the back of your hand like he's comforting a girl, or maybe his sister; you aren't sure, anymore, where the difference lies. "Not me, not Ryo, not Asuka or Sho-kun or Juudai-kun or Manjyome-kun or - or Honest, or anyone that matters."

There's a name missing from that list, but you don't even think to ask why you don't matter.

(The inconvenience with no parents never matters, whether it comes to your home, or your schooling, or even, apparently, your own guilt.)

Crying is exhausting, and no one complains when you drift back to sleep. The escape is short-lived, though, and soon Fubuki is bouncing back into the infirmary with all the incomprehensible energy you remember.

"Nervous?" he asks.

It seems like a fairly reasonable question, on the surface. You have a lot to be nervous about right now. But you don't think Fubuki is asking in a general sense; it's more like he forgot that conversations usually start at the beginning, and skipped right to the middle to save time.

"About what?"

"About leaving, silly!"

The razor-sharp pang of fear those words inspire is stupid; you know that even as it settles down into a barbed-wire knot deep in your chest. Duel Academy isn't any safer than the outside world its students came from - thatworld at least follows its own rules, and by returning to it you will be far safer from dark magics and the dark whispers of beautifully destructive power. But maybe that's the problem.

When you try to tell Fubuki this the fear twists in your chest like a knife, and what comes out is dull and sensibile. "I don't have anywhere to go..."

"Didn't I tell you?" Fubuki flops down beside you on the hard infirmary bed, flings an arm easily around your shoulders with no regard to the way they tense under the weight. "You're coming home with me!"

Sucker, whispers the knife, and your heart momentarily forgets to beat.

There's an answer to counter every excuse you can come up with. Asuka isn't going home for the break, so there's plenty of room; there's money tucked away in some bank account in your name to pay for your share of food and rent; it will be good for you to have company while you used to being alive again, and that you don't want what's good for you, necessarily, doesn't factor into anyone's plans. "It'll be just like old times!" Fubuki says, and you know he's talking about all-nighters in each other's rooms - you and him and Ryo thick as theives - but it feels like something else entirely.

"Just like..."

being young and small and scared, going where strangers tell you because you doesn't have anywhere else and never, ever, a say in the matter

"...old times."

(But there is nothing pleasant about nostalgia.)