C is for Child

A/N: Uh, here comes the tragedy I promised XD Anyway, as usual, if you enjoy my fic please leave a review :3 they really help me feel motivated to update and whatnot. Thanks!

-Isis

The boy is led down a twisting, sterile hallway. The lights are bright in their decent, blindingly so as he walks, handcuffed. The screams (he remembers a glossy storybook about banshees) are loud and deafening as he's unceremoniously dumped into a glass room. He runs as the narrow space where he was thrown is cut off by electronic glass. The boy beats against it until his hands are raw and pink, until he crumbles into a heap of pain and anger and tears. The once bright-eyed boy cries himself to sleep on his first night in the therapy facility.

That night, Shusei Kagari died.

He's juggled from facility to facility like a broken toy no one wants. The therapists try remedy after remedy; some are painless and others are excruciating in their torture.

Sometimes, at night, he lies awake as the ghost of needles prick at his skin. He scratches and scratches at the scars on his back until crescent marks replace the pinpoints. It's painful but cleansing, letting him forget the hands and faces that leered at his young, naïve self as they told him "only one more needle and then you'll be able to go home."

…There was always one more.

The nightmares start a week after being flagged.

He's running and running but the road never ends. Just beyond the horizon he sees his family and they're crying and calling out for him as he runs. (But, it's like chasing the sun)

When he wakes in his glass cell there is no mom to read him a story and ease his fears with a lullaby. There is no father to give him a glass of milk and a cookie. There's only cold, unfeeling glass.

So, he cries into his pillow, hoping that after enough tears he'd be able to go home—

But, tears don't grant wishes and miracles don't happen for monsters.

He learns of his parents passing at the age of twelve. The Drones hand him a few of their belongings (what they think he can't hurt himself with) before sealing the cage shut. His hands reach into the cardboard box to pull out a set of hairclips his mother always wore and clumsily fastens them to his own hair. They shine blue (his and his mother's favorite color) and he can't help but smile as the tears roll down his cheeks.

(But the tears feel cold and superficial—monsters never (didn't) cried)

He pulls out a red tie (a gift he had given his dad for father's day) and, after hours of practice, manages to put the tie on correctly.

He rarely takes them off, even after becoming an Enforcer.

He loved blue (it was the color of healthy minds, after all).

Blue skies, freshwater lakes, oceans, they all were beautiful to the young child (but he had only seen oceans in picture books; and he promises himself if he gets out of the facility he would finally see the cresting waves in person).

It was a shame his hue was always a forest green.

That's why, when he can help it, he wears a blue overcoat. It fits snugly to his form and clashes well with his mostly black attire (standard uniform for Enforcers). It reminds him there is a sky and an ocean and one day… one day, he would go and stick his feet in the sand and just feel.

Kagari hated winter. It reminded him too much of death and stillness and... himself.

There was always a little calendar reminder for his birthday on the 3rd of December but he wished the day could be wiped away instead.

It wasn't like anyone was going to celebrate with him. It was protocol to wish said inmate (they were called 'guests' but no one was stupid enough to think they could actually leave on their own free will) happy birthdays, festival greetings, and the like.

The day felt emptier than the rest. Each time the red circle showed up on his electronic calendar (marking him as a pariah) he could feel a tiny sliver of his soul disappearing.

(Even when he was assigned to Unit 1 he keeps his birth date a secret)

He was and always would be, he thought, a prisoner of Sibyl.

What made him bad? What made him different from all the other children? What aspect of his personality garnered so much hatred and shame? (it seemed he would never be given an answer…)

At one point, somewhere between childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, he changes.

The little boy who used to sit on his cot and cry starts to laugh. He jokes with other inmates, thanks the Droids who deliver his food, smiles at his doctors when they come by for visits.

Maybe he was finally tired of being sad. Maybe he thought being happy would get him out of his cell. Or, maybe, he finally realized the cold reality of his existence.

He would always be a pawn of Sibyl—that didn't mean he couldn't be human. So, he grows a second skin, lets the words whispered by people ("monster," "freak," and "murderer," being among some of the more popular names) bounce off of him.

(But the words do hurt and he wants so badly to be accepted by the world who threw him to Hell in the first place.)

Staring down the barrel of his own Dominator, Shusei Kagari smiles. It's not an arrogant, cocky smile he's so well known for; it's a final, accepting one. Everyone died. He had been the cause of many latent criminal's deaths (and the irony of it is not wasted on him). But, he had served his purpose. His time as a pawn was over. His leash was broken and he could finally be rid of Sibyl.

And he hoped, as the light swallowed his form, that he could be reborn someday as someone good, someone who didn't have to be burdened by the blood on their hand.

But the light is searing and painful, ripping into his skin and pores and cells—he's scared, terrified, as he's robbed of life. And, in the end, hedoesn'twanttodie—and he remembers a time not long ago when he was led down a brightly lit hallway—but the memory fades and nothing remains.

Not even a single atom.

(Sibyl hears these thoughts and laughs.)

"What a foolish child, even to the end. Didn't you know the dreams of the hopeless live on in the hearts of the weak…?"

A/N: I just wanted to clarify why I think Kagari would have low self-esteem. Before his death, he tells Choe they are both 'trash'(probably due to their standings as latent criminals). I imagine years of being told you are a horrible person, regardless of the type of person you were at the beginning, would cause a lot of emotional distress. And even the way he acts, the aloof, funny guy act (there is a handful of times where we see his true personality behind the jokes and smiles) is probably a shield against all the people who think latent criminals are trash. Ah, sorry for the rambling, I just wanted to explain why I characterized him in such a way XD Remember, reviews are welcome! I promise the next chap will be funny so stay tuned!

-Isis