A/N: Because I hate with my everything the notion that Nezumi is a ~wandering free spirit~ by nature and I want these idiot boys to be happy already, but Nezumi is a stubborn little self-sabotaging headcase and that tends to get in the way of happily-ever-afters. So, this fic: Nezumi is forced to confront his core beliefs about love and freedom and reevaluate the role of fear as his primary motivator. This is a highly personal fic – Nezumi and I are very similar creatures.

THIS IS A NOVELSVERSE FIC with spoilers through the end of the series, including spoilers for No. 6 Beyond. You don't have to have read the novels/Beyond to make sense of the differences, but it helps. Also sometimes I steal stuff from the anime, heads up. There's smut later on in the fic, (watered down for because I'm paranoid but full versions will be posted to my tumblr and AO3 of the same name), but none in this first part, so I'm leaving the rating at T until then.

This is a first draft and needs HEAVY editing, it's wordy and awkward in places and I still kind of hate it but I said I'd post it on the 7th, so here it is. Any kind of feedback is loved!

WARNINGS FOR PART I: vague allusions to sexual violence; graphic descriptions of gore and body horror in the final scene

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part i
in city and in forest

prolog

He's read through some religious texts. The old abandoned library store room had a few major books when Nezumi and the old woman first moved in, and he added more over time as he found them scattered across the ramshackle marketplaces of the West Block. He'd liked the old worn Bible for its aesthetic value: gold leaf on the edges of the tissue-thin pages, a thick red leather cover, a navy blue silk thread tassel for a bookmark.

It wasn't that it was dense – though it was – and it wasn't beyond his level of understanding. Nezumi never finished the Old Testament because he read to Sodom and Gomorrah and could no longer believe in a God, even for the sake of make-believe: the Mao Village was far from Sodom and the city's soldiers were anything but angels, but the forest and the people burned all the same.

But Lot's wife turned back and was struck dead on the spot, her body became a pillar of salt. There's punishment for those who look back. And Nezumi wasn't turned to a pillar of salt, and he didn't die, but he saw, and his punishment was seeing.

At least you, at least you must survive...

The price of looking back is memory. Nezumi keeps his memories in the thick scars like worn leather stretched out across his back. He will have these scars for as long as he is alive and for as long as he is alive, he will remember. He'll remember all of it.

It's not the fire he should fear, he tells himself. He should fear people. It wasn't an act of God, it wasn't the work of angels that smote Mao to a barren field of bone and ash, it was the will of man, and when Nezumi turned away from humanity and human warmth he did not look back.

He's reminded of a poem by an American[1], written before the last great war. It's not prophetic, no more than anything else, but it asks about the End and it asks: fire or ice.

Nezumi knows what it's like to watch his world end in fire.

He resigns himself to ice. It's said that when you freeze to death, right before you die, you stop feeling cold, you stop feeling numb, you feel a false warmth and you grow tired and you fall asleep in that warmth and comfort and never wake up again. And so he thinks, as long as I can't feel it, I'm safe. The cold means I'm still alive.

And as long as I am alive, I will remember.

. . .

"Whoever lives wins. Don't feel guilty about having survived. If you have time to be feeling guilty, work on living a day longer, a minute longer. And once in a while, remember the ones that died before you. That's good enough."

"Are you saying that to me?" Shion questioned.

"Who else could I be talking to?"

"It sounded like - " Shion hesitated. "Almost like you were telling it to yourself..."

-No. 6 volume 1, chapter 4 (translated by 9th Ave)

. . .

"Did he mourn?"

"What?" Nezumi asked from the other end of the room. Shion did this sometimes, he'd ask spontaneous questions like this as if Nezumi could possibly know the context.

"Lot, in the Bible. When his wife died, did he mourn?"

Nezumi was thankful that Shion was buried somewhere in the rows and stacks of books and could not see his face. "How would I know?" he said, and masked his unease with a sneer. Shion was always like this, always asking impossible questions like this, like Nezumi knew all the answers. "I wasn't there."

And maybe Shion really needed to be told that – he seemed to think that Nezumi knew everything, had seen everything. It was annoying.

"Well, I assumed you've already read it, and thought that maybe you would know."

Shion stood up in a rustle of cloth and the sound of his footsteps drew near. Nezumi bit back a sigh behind bared teeth and tried to hide himself in his book - East of Eden, appropriately enough, and now he'd irrevocably lost his place. He held it up to his face as a shield and pretended to read anyway.

"But what about you? What do you think, Nezumi?"

Did it matter what Nezumi thought? Nezumi's thoughts on the subject wouldn't change what had been written, and were the story real, Nezumi's opinion could do nothing to reverse the firestorm and the staggering loss of life.

But Shion emerged from the bookshelves he'd painstakingly, lovingly organized, and he sat on the old chair across from Nezumi on the bed, and his eyes were wide and trusting and to him it did matter what Nezumi thought.

Shion was dangerous. Nezumi was used to people – men, usually, filthy and drunken and handsy – idolizing Eve, but never Nezumi. Nezumi was a gutter rat, cutthroat loner, untrustworthy spiteful piece of shit who knew how to use a knife and how to hold a grudge. But Shion, wide-eyed, city-boy Shion saw him as Nezumi, and he saw Nezumi as some kind of ideal. He was too caught up in the color of Nezumi's eyes to see the blade at his own throat.

Nezumi answered anyway. He knew he shouldn't, but he acted on impulse before he could stop himself, and this was exactly why Shion was dangerous. He said, "Why would he? He sure didn't show any sympathy toward his daughters when he offered them up to those animals at the door, why would Lot feel any sadness for his wife?"

Shion carefully marked his page with the blue tassel and closed the book, and ran his thumb along the gold leaf of the pages. He would probably not open it again. He set the book down out of order on the nearest shelf and hesitated, then looked back at Nezumi and admitted, "I don't think he was a righteous man."

"Careful, Shion. You're saying you're a better judge of character than God? That's blasphemy." Nezumi smirked, and it was fake, but Shion would never know the difference. This, he knew, this he could deal with, dismiss Shion's words as the ramblings of a fool and kill the subject before it tread any farther onto dangerous ground. He continued to pretend-read his book, eyes tracing over the same lines again and again but registering none of it; he'd lost his taste for religious allegory entirely, at least for the evening.

But Shion had his x-ray eyes and he saw through the book and he saw through Nezumi and he said, "I'm serious, I don't understand how being willing to hurt his daughters like that proves that Lot is righteous. What kind of God would be okay with sparing anyone at the cost of making others suffer?"

East of Eden dropped unceremoniously against the pillow, his page lost forever. It took Nezumi a considerable amount of effort to not throw it. Shion just couldn't let things be, he had to pick and pick and pick at things that should just stay buried and Nezumi's scars still itched and burned sometimes like they were fresh because he'd never really healed. "What would you do then, His Almighty Shion?" he spat and the words were bitter, laced with malice and newly unearthed hurt.

His cruelty went unnoticed. Undeterred, Shion caught his glare with those unbearably kind (naive, foolish, foolish) eyes bright and he said, "If I were in Lot's position, I'd offer myself."

"Just pretty words." Nezumi looked away. The honesty in those eyes was unbearable. It made his skin crawl. "What makes you think you'd be so selfless when your life is on the line? You're only human. You'd want to survive."

Drop it. Stop talking. You don't even know what you're saying, Shion. Be quiet. Don't talk about it, don't drag it into this room.

Shion still was calm and all soft edges, everything Nezumi was not, especially now. All the tension in the air passed right over Shion's head like a boat skimmed across the surface of a lake. "It wouldn't be easy," Shion said. "I'd be afraid. I wouldn't do it because I'd want to, I'd do it because I'd have to. If they were after someone I cared about...if they wanted to hurt you, Nezumi, I'd offer myself in your place. And that's not even righteousness, that's just – that's what you do, when you love someone. You protect them."

Nezumi stood up, stalked across the room – ignoring Shion and his sickening vulnerability and the concerned words that Nezumi missed in his haste – opened the door and slammed it shut behind himself and leapt up the stairs two at a time and broke into a run. It was raining; he didn't care. He was a mess of nerves and anger and old, old memories and he ran blind in the night as far away from Shion as possible –

Because Shion was telling the truth, and this was why he was dangerous. He was a sheltered, stupid fool, he had no grasp of, couldn't even begin to understand the reality of the situation, that it was something that could happen in the West Block. He would offer himself up and he'd be torn apart and Nezumi would feel Shion's pain as if it were his own. (I'm sorry, he thinks to his memory of the old woman, I'm sorry I couldn't do what you told me to do. I'm too weak. I'm sorry.)

"What do you think, Nezumi?"

What would he do if it was Shion they were after? (The nebulous They – everyone, everything, because when you are a prey animal you live your life by the gospel of fear.) Could he throw Shion to the wolves, knowing full well what they would do to him?

Of course not. Nezumi knew what men do to you when you're young and helpless and alone. Shion wouldn't make it. Even if he survived, it would kill him, and Nezumi would have the rest of his life to remember.

(I should be used to this by now, what's one more loss? he told himself. But one more loss could break him because he never recovered from everything else – everything he's lost, everything taken from him. Sometimes the enormity of it falls on him all at once an avalanche and he struggles just to breathe beneath the ice and snow knowing he is alive at the cost of everyone else, he is alone and he must carry the suffering of his dead alone. Sometimes he thinks he'd rather be a pillar of salt; sometimes he thinks surviving is the worst punishment. Sometimes he thinks surviving is the worst thing that ever happened to him.)

He'd already lost. Shion ruined him.

Breathless from running so fast through the heavy mud, Nezumi slowed his desperate sprint to a walk, to a stubborn slogging crawl, and then finally an exhausted stop. If the rain kept up this way it would bring death to the West Block along the low-lying path of the flooded river.

His blood rushed in his ears like the rain, like the river, frenzied, overflowing, roaring in staccato time with his fiercely pounding heart. He was at the summit of a hill overlooking the top of the demon city No. 6's fortress walls. He hadn't meant to go there, he hadn't meant to go anywhere but away, and wasn't that just the worst of clichés?

His veins thrummed with restless energy, his closed fists clenched and unclenched uselessly. Anger grew and built as tension in the muscles of Nezumi's shoulders and down his legs and arms and settled like sickness at the back of his throat and the base of his stomach. For every light he saw lit beyond the city wall, there was a person, or a family.

Because what no one ever talks about, when they talk about Sodom and Gomorrah, is that there were children there.

Nezumi looked upward to the blackened sky and screamed. All of the hate, all of the hurt, all of the anger and loss and everything he carried and suffered in silence screamed out into the clamor of the storm, one small voice against the howling of the wind, one lone mournful voice lost amongst the rain.

Was this how Shion felt on the day of the typhoon? This frantic electricity running underneath his skin, the wordless instinctive knowledge that something was wrong, something inside him was broken but he didn't know what or how to fix it. Would he feel like this forever, was this the entire rest of his life? He'd been so angry for so long.

Nezumi screamed until his throat burned raw and his voice stuttered out with his breath, but all the anger was still there boiling just below the surface, like a poison; maybe he would never leach it fully from his blood, maybe it was a toxin and it ruined all the rest of him until all that was left was anger and hurt.

When I destroy No. 6, he thought. When I shred it apart with my own claws and teeth. Then, then – this will all leave, this will all wash away.

But for now, there was no grand epiphany, no dramatic flash of lightning and moment of sudden clarity. The storm continued on, No. 6 continued on, the world continued on. He was just a stupid little boy standing alone in the dark and freezing rain like it would do him any good. All that came of this childish stunt was his clothes were soaked through and he was cold.

He stood immobilized on the hilltop under the weight of the rain, too drained to move, hands numb from the cold. And he knew that cold was as cruel a killer as fire, that there were those in the slums who would freeze to death, if not tonight, then the next, when the river overwhelmed its banks and flooded them out of their homes, when the frosts came and claimed all it touched and entombed in ice. Nezumi had four walls to return to, he had a furnace for heat and the insulation of hard-packed dirt and clay surrounding his underground room. He was of the lucky ones, he knew. All he had to do was return to the old library store room and this cold could do nothing to harm him. But he could not move – not yet. And maybe this was arrogance, but Nezumi had never been a humble creature. 'Arrogance' was a kinder word than the alternative.

When the moment passed, when he could move again, Nezumi turned away from the lights of the city and descended back into the barren outskirts of the slums. Something close to shame coiled at the base of his spine where his scars began and clawed across the skin of his lower back like a brand. Embarrassment, he realized. He'd acted like a bratty child, like an idiot, like every accusation he leveled so unfairly at Shion.

His upper lip curled back. Shion would want an explanation, and Nezumi didn't have one. Shion would ask questions, he'd make assumptions, he might pick at the wound until he found something dangerously close to the truth. It shouldn't bother Nezumi, whatever Shion might think of him, but dammit, it did.

He didn't want to think about Shion. Nezumi concentrated instead of the sound of the rain, the knife's edge of the wind against his frigid skin, the muffled noise of his footsteps tracking through the mud. This brought him halfway back before the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck prickled and then he heard –

"Nezumi! There you are, I've been looking for you!"

Of course you have, he thought, you can't just leave well enough alone. What he said was, "You shouldn't have bothered. I'm not stupid, I wasn't lost. I don't need you to come pick me up."

It was dark with no moon or stars and too wet for a lantern, so he did not see Shion clearly until he jogged closer: he was wearing Nezumi's jacket over his cardigan and the superfibre cloak over that. "I know," Shion said, "But it's raining so hard, and you weren't wearing a coat...I didn't want you to catch a cold, so I brought your superfibre and jacket out for you, but then I couldn't find you..."

I didn't want to be found. "Idiot," Nezumi said on reflex. He was too tired to be properly angry. "I'm not that fragile."

Shion only blinked at him and cocked his head to the side, curious, confused, like one of Inukashi's goddamn dogs, and began to pull the cloak off over his shoulders. "Shion," Nezumi said, almost sighed, "Seriously, don't worry about it. I'm already soaked through, you might as well keep wearing it and stay dry."

Shion scowled – closer to a pout, really – but let go of the cloak and let it settle back over his frame. "What was the point of me coming out here, then?"

"Not my problem. You're the one who chose to do it." Nezumi started walking again, and Shion trailed behind, matching his pace.

For a blessed, quiet moment, it seemed like Shion would not bring it up, but then, of course, he asked, "Why did you run outside like that? Are you okay?"

Well, that was a loaded question. "You were annoying me," Nezumi said without looking at him. It wasn't a lie, but it wasn't the full truth either. "I was trying to read and you wouldn't shut up, so I left to get some fresh air and a break from your pointless airheaded babbling. That's all."

"Nezumi, you're wearing slippers."

Nezumi glanced down at his feet – he was, and they were spectacularly ruined by mud at that point. "You really pissed me off. I wasn't thinking too hard about appropriate rain attire, as you've already noticed."

"Don't be so defensive. And I wasn't being that annoying."

"You've obviously never listened to yourself talk. Also, you can't actually get sick from being out in the cold, that's just a myth. I would have thought you would know better, Advanced Track."

Shion scowled at him again, but not unkindly. "Because No. 6 is such a reliable source of information," he said, so exaggeratedly sincere that Nezumi couldn't fight back his laughter, unfettered and genuine.

"Touché, Shion. Well played."

And Shion smiled at him, and it shouldn't have made Nezumi smile back, but he did, and something unfamiliar in his chest constricted tight enough to hurt.

They arrived back home shortly after. Shion did not bring up Nezumi's sudden disappearing stunt again, either satisfied with Nezumi's half-assed excuse, or simply by now accustomed to the dramatic vicissitudes of his roommate's temper. For whatever reason, Nezumi was relieved. If Shion saw that side of him, if Shion caught him vulnerable from wounds that ran deeper than skin deep, it would be too late, they'd become too attached, they'd destroy themselves. This wall between them was only for the best.

But sometimes –

Shion pulled the superfibre off over his head in the hall before opening the door to their room. He turned away from Nezumi and shook the water out of the cloak the best he was able. Water that had pooled in the folds of the fabric slid effortlessly off the waterproofing and flew off with Shion's vigorous shaking and speckled the walls, flickered the flames of the lanterns that lined the hallway. It had served its purpose: Shion was mostly dry, save for mud caked halfway up his shins and rainwater on his hair and face from the sideways force of the wind. Good, Nezumi thought. Shion shouldn't have to be wet and miserable because of him.

Shion turned back to look at him expectantly. "What?" Nezumi said. "Don't tell me you locked us out. I don't have a key on me."

"No! I um, I didn't think to lock it," Shion admitted, then added quickly, "But that's not the point. The point is, you'll drip on everything."

"Shion. I am not stripping in the hallway."

"Picky, picky. Just the slippers, then."

"When did you become the boss of me?" Nezumi griped, but obediently kicked the trashed slippers off regardless. Shion had a good point: they were something of a lost cause.

"When we started sharing a room. You're terrible at picking up after yourself. You'd still be living in squalor if I wasn't around to keep the place clean."

Nezumi scoffed. "Squalor. At least your vocabulary has improved."

Slippers from the Black Lagoon no longer an imminent threat, Shion unlocked the door and Nezumi followed him inside. Shion's back to him, Nezumi noticed the awkward fit of the jacket: loose over his skinny too-narrow shoulders enough to be comical, sleeves covering his hands to his fingertips. The sight evoked... something, some upwelling of soft emotions for which Nezumi did not yet have a name. Something close to security, safety, the warm rush of air from the heater that greeted them as they crossed the threshold together into their home.

His chest hurt again, like the something was trapped within the skeletal prison of his ribcage and it strained against him to be freed; if he surrendered to it, if he let it escape, it would break him open down along the vertical line of his sternum, it would go tearing through the delicate tissue of his heart and lungs on the way out. If Nezumi let it, the feeling would shred him apart.

Shion shrugged the jacket off along his arms and offered it to Nezumi with a sheepish smile. "It doesn't fit yet."

"Yet?"

"I'm still growing."

"You tell yourself that." He took the jacket and hung it haphazardly over the back of the old high-backed chair, and said "I'm taking a shower. Don't expect for any hot water to be left over."

"I never do. You never leave any hot water. That's another bad habit you need to work on, Nezumi!"

"Yeah, yeah, complain complain. I someday aspire to meet Your Majesty's high standards of appropriate roommate conduct, but alas, today is not that day." He wasn't looking, but Nezumi practically felt Shion roll his eyes at his back before he shut the bathroom door behind him.

Even the lukewarm water burned his skin at first. Nezumi ran cool water from the bathtub faucet over his numb hands until his fingers protested in sharp explosions of pins-and-needles, then slowly increased the temperature as tolerance built. He began to shiver – good, he should not have allowed himself to reach the point where he stopped.

True to form, Nezumi stood beneath the spray of warm water for as long as the water was warm. Afterward, he was still shivering, still cold, as if the rain hadn't only chilled his skin and bones but also drowned his capacity to feel warmth.

Belatedly, he realized he'd neglected to bring a set of dry clothes into the bathroom with him.

Nothing short of a house fire would get him back into the soggy pajamas he'd relegated to the corner opposite the bath, so Nezumi wrapped a towel securely around his waist and risked it. He opened the door a crack and saw that the room was dark, Shion had already put out the lamps and gone to bed.

Nezumi extinguished the bathroom light and both rooms plunged into the complete darkness only possible underground. Even nocturnal creatures such as Nezumi could not see when there was absolutely zero light, but he knew the layout of his room so well he did not need sight to navigate. He opened the door fully and stepped out –

- and almost tripped over a pile of something at his feet and fell face-first onto the floor. (He caught himself at the last minute, of course.) "What the fuck," he mumbled under his breath and crouched down and swept out an arm to find what had tripped him: a haphazard stack of sleep clothes that likely had once been carefully folded, placed beside the door where Nezumi could find them.

There it was again, that soft feeling, sentimental and cloying. It was dark, and Nezumi allowed himself a gentle smile, because only the dark would know.

He ditched the towel and changed into the dry clothes, but it was not until Nezumi padded barefoot to the bed and clambered over Shion and slid under the blankets to lay down at Shion's side that warmth returned to his frozen limbs. Nezumi's back to the wall and Shion's back to him, Nezumi felt... safe, or at least something close. Nothing else, no one else in the world made him feel like this, like if he relaxed into the soft bedding of his nest, if he closed his eyes to all the reasons why he should not and fell asleep defenseless with another warm living being in his bed, maybe when he woke up, everything would be okay, the nightmare of the past twelve years would melt away with the coming of the dawn and all the rest of his life would be nothing but this, security and warmth and the steady rise and fall of Shion's chest.

An illusion, he knew. No. 6 would still be there in the morning, and Mao would still be gone. Shion was still dangerous. But in the dark, in their warm bed, it was easy to pretend, for at least a little while, that this could be forever.

"Are you awake?" he asked in a hushed whisper. As expected, no response. Shion slept the dead-man's sleep of one who knew nothing of true fear. And that was good, Shion should never have to sleep lightly for fear of death or pain, and Nezumi did not wish to take that from him. He shifted closer until the fronts of his legs tucked behind the backs of Shion's, and all of his front curled around the arch of Shion's back. He crept an arm over the dip of Shion's waist and let it rest there on top of him, and he leaned his nose into the downy hairs at the back of Shion's neck and breathed in a shivery sigh. He knew he shouldn't, but...

- sometimes Nezumi thinks destruction might not be too bad, if it meant he was no longer so alone, and this was exactly, exactly what made Shion dangerous.

I'm leaving anyway, he told himself. After I've destroyed No. 6. I'll leave this place and I'll be free. For now, I can indulge myself in this warmth, in the comfort of his presence. For now.

Until then. Only until then.

. . .

But time passed, and those halcyon days were lost to the passage of time. Nezumi mourned the loss as he mourned any other: he buried the hurt beneath his anger and underground, it festered, it became a cancer, it ate him from the inside out.

The ghosts of Mao haunted him still in his dreams and in his songs. So in the transport cars, Nezumi sang. He sang for all the things about to meet their end, for the lives of the people in the car, for the death of his simple life together with Shion.

A song won't save anyone. He can't save these people, his hands are full enough keeping Shion alive, keeping himself alive. Nezumi sang in elegy, in apology. He sang as a salve for his own conscience, which stubbornly refused to die. Inukashi was wrong - he wasn't a demon, not really. Were he a demon, this wouldn't hurt so much.

He sang to the people of green fields and rivers. He sang about a lost paradise, a world long departed, a world only real for himself. To the others there, his words spun a fairy-tale. This would never be real for them. They had never seen the forest or the mountains and now they never would. So Nezumi sang.

(It's not enough, it's not enough.) [2]

Surviving is the worst punishment, memory is the heaviest burden. He tried to not feel it. He tried to close himself off, but he really wasn't a demon, he still possessed his human heart. Shion reminded him of that. Shion kept him human, and to be human is to feel pain. So he swallowed all his hurt, he harvested the hurt of everyone around him and planted it within himself so that it would grow.

Soon, he thought. Soon I will kill the demon city and I will kill it in your memory, I'll carve your names into the rubble and then you can rest, then we can all rest. I can't save you. I can't mourn for you – if I let myself feel it, it would kill me. But I can sing for you, and I can kill for you, and I will lay you to rest with my own ghosts. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

Shion did not know what came next. Nezumi clutched him close and focused on his heartbeat – no matter what, he would keep this heart – just this one – alive. Shion he could save. Shion, he must save.

I'm sorry, Nezumi thought. The words sat heavy in the back of his throat, unspoken. Like a prayer: I'm sorry. Empty words that solved nothing, he knew, but still they bubbled up and stuck like thorns on his tongue. Of all his sins, this was the most vile.

Shion was still soft. Life in the West Block had roughened his edges and wicked the fat from his bones but it had yet to reach his eyes. The Correctional Facility would rend through him like a forest fire, burn him into nothing but the smoke from a furnace.

Nezumi knew what came next.

"We're going to hell together."

Shion didn't even know what 'hell' meant, but soon, he would, and it would be all Nezumi's fault. What a terrible way to repay a debt.

Shion was warm as always. Living people are warm. (Maybe Nezumi has been dead for a long time.) Nezumi held him close and indulged in that closeness one last time, and promised with his life to keep Shion warm and alive.

. . .

The Correctional Facility ends in fire, too.

Shion carried him out of the fire. "It's okay, you're going to be okay, just hold on," he said. Shion spoke nonstop in a steady, soothing murmur like moving water over his wounds. His knees trembled under Nezumi's weight.

"Don't worry about me," Nezumi rasped. "Save yourself. Leave me behind."

"Don't be stupid. I'd never leave you behind, never. It's okay. We're going to get out of here together, alive. Hold on."

And it was so like Shion to carry him, after everything, after Nezumi dragged him through hell and murdered his best friend. How had Nezumi ever thought him weak? Shion had been carrying him since the night they met.

"Idiot. Clueless natural. You'll die. We'll both die. Leave me. At least you, at least you must survive..."

The arc of history is a circle. Nezumi cursed Shion with every foul word he knew, he slipped in and out of consciousness between insults. "Stupid. I hate you. You're hopeless. Hate you."

"I know," Shion told him. "It's okay. It's okay. You're going to be okay."

Shion gently laid him down on the cold metal of the operating table. With a pair of surgical scissors he cut vertically along the line of Nezumi's torso and cut his shirt off him and peeled away bloodstained strips of ruined fabric to flutter to the floor. When he cut again, the scissors sank shallow into his flesh and snip, snip Shion sheared through the fatty layers of skin and lean abdominal muscle up to his sternum in an autopsy Y incision. Nezumi watched on in detached fascination from very far away, as if watching a play, as if it all were happening to someone else. Only dress rehearsal. Not real.

Shion sliced him open down his middle and dug both hands inside him. "It's okay," he said. He grasped onto something wet and soft in his gut and tugged a red tendril of viscera out the gaping hole. "It's okay. Everything will be all right. Trust me."

He pulled and kept pulling Nezumi's insides out, thick bloody ropes of intestine he coiled around and around his wrist like a snake. Nezumi felt nothing, only hollow. "What're you doing?"

"It's okay. Trust me. It's okay."

The intestine came to an end and Shion unraveled it from his hand and draped it in great loops along the nearby countertop. He plunged back in and scooped out handfuls of slippery entrails: kidneys, gall bladder, stomach. Raw and dripping and himself half-dead, Nezumi could still identify them.

Nezumi remembered – he was four again, before the Massacre, he watched his mother's elegant hands shovel the innards out a fresh-killed deer carcass and sort them in steaming piles in the red snow beside her. The deer's deep brown eyes stared at him unblinking, and Nezumi cried as only children can for eyes that would never again see.

"My konezumi, [3] don't cry," she told him.

But Nezumi was inconsolable. "It's dead, it's dead," he sobbed. The price of living was this blood on his mother's hands, and his own, for all that had died so he may live.

Large intestine, lungs, liver. "Hush now and listen," she said, stern but not unkind, "Don't cry. I will tell you a story told to me by my mother, and her mother before her, back to the Myth Times when animals lived in villages like people." Nezumi's crying tapered off; he sniffed and wiped his eyes and bit his lip to quiet his whimpers – he wanted to listen.

She continued: "At the end of the Myth Times, the Changer gathered a council of all the animals about to be transformed. He asked them what they wished to become when the Myth Times ended and the world was reborn, how they wished to serve the People who were to inherit the land and waters, to cherish and protect in exchange for food and shelter."

"Deer was kind and brave. He offered his body to feed and clothe the People yet to come. He said that nursing mothers and their young were to be left alone, and he himself would run when chased, but if the rules were respected and we respect his offering by using his body well, he would return to the land every year to serve the People."

"So, konezumi, don't cry. We are fulfilling a birthright and a promise. By respecting Deer's gift we are respecting him" [4]

Her beautiful words tempered the ugliness of death, and his tears slowed to a final stop. He brushed his little hands along the still-warm pelt of the buck and whispered, "Thank you."

"It's okay," Shion said, "It's okay," but there was no beauty in the blood on his hands. My fault, Nezumi thought. I'm sorry.

The lights flickered and died, the room shook like waves, they were underwater, everything was slow and muted as it is underwater, quiet and peaceful. Shion broke his ribcage open and clawed into his beating heart, mashed it to a pulpy mess that caught under his fingernails and in the grooves of his skin. "It's okay. You're going to be okay."

Shion hollowed him out completely until there was nothing left of him. Emptied him out until there was nothing left.

"Survivors are the victors, right? Are you really ready to die?"

The Correctional Facility burned, and the city would soon after. This was a victory. He'd won. What else was left?

Nezumi stood on the precipice, uncertain. If he surrendered to death, Shion would blame himself. Shion would be alone to carry the weight of the horrors witnessed and the horrors done unto him. Shion would become cold and hollow like Nezumi, the Shion who Nezumi knew would cease to exist.

"Don't die! Open your eyes!"

Nezumi made his choice.

And then he woke up.

. . .

endnotes: end chapter 1 of 5, ~6000 words.

[1] Fire and Ice by Robert Frost. Overused to the point of cliché, but whatever, it fit too well to ignore.

[2] Select lyrics pulled from Sorrow by Pink Floyd:

the sweet smell of a great sorrow lies over the land
plumes of smoke rise and merge into the leaden sky
a man lies and dreams of green fields and rivers
but awakes to a morning with no reason for waking

he's haunted by the memory of a lost paradise
in his youth or a dream, he can't be precise
he's chained forever to a world that's departed
it's not enough, it's not enough

[3] konezumi = little mouse. Nezumi was given his name by the Elder in the underground cave but shush, the idea of Nezumama using this name for him was too cute to pass up.

[4] Story adapted from a creation narrative of the Yakama Nation in Washington state, USA. Most Pacific Northwest and many other Pacific Rim indigenous cultures have stories about a Changer figure and animal-people. Later in this fic I expand on Nezumi's heritage some more – for my purposes I'm placing the Mao people and No. 6 in the Russian/Chinese Far East, just north of Japan. I still have a lot of research to do here!

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Finally, the title of this fic and the chapter titles are lyrics pulled from the Leonard Cohen song Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye. It is required listening for this fic and wonderfully appropriate for the pairing – go listen to it right now!