[ti]private[/ti]Anabasis

Verai approaches, and despite the sickness that continues to wrack him, Kazuki feels calm, as if the knots in his body have unwound. This is because he knows the man would not hesitate to subdue whatever threats come this way, whether it’s him or something else.

Funny question, though.

“It’s just a flesh wound,” Kazuki croaks, pausing for another retching fit before he continues. “I look like I got chewed up and spat out. Better not touch me.”

For once, he’s grateful the man can’t see him. There’s no denying it’s blood, though. The substance pouring out of his wounds has the look and consistency of tar, but it’s got this heated metal tinge to it—boiling plasma. Melted flesh.

Listless eyes move to notice Verai's company, the absol that stares at him as if she can look inside him, at what lies underneath. Exactly why he chose her. "And you finally left the cat out. See? Told you it would be useful."

He lays his head down on the stone that surrounds the pit. It's cold. Refreshing. He concentrates on the sound of the shrine's humming, wondering why he continues to bleed. "Man... what the hell? Why isn't this thing healing me? Do I have to pray to it now or some shit..."

He watches from the ground as Verai moves towards him, muscles tensing with every step—

—only for Miu to intervene. He breathes out of relief. Her wide eyes remain trained to him, but her paws never touch the corrupted puddles. The absol’s stature makes her a prominent wall, strong enough to redirect the grown man in armor.

“Good cat,” Kazuki mumbles. Very, very good cat.

Verai cuts himself to demonstrate the shrine’s healing power, confirming that the shrine is working perfectly fine. Kazuki’s hands drag across the stone, moving under him, smearing tar. He tries to push, only for his wounds to ache in protest.

“Shit.” Alright, no sitting up for now. He slowly flips himself so he can lie on his back, bleeding over the edge of the abyss.

He turns his head to see Verai kneeling down beside Miu, asking him what he’d been doing.

His head thrums as he tries to recall, but he can see it: The look on Domino’s face as he left her, the light calling out to him as a siren’s song, the roots suffocating him to death.

Verai’s voice in words he has never uttered.

‘There's no need for that. We are not enemies.‘

“Promise you won’t get mad?” Kazuki laughs mockingly, stifling the urge to cough. He doesn’t want concern. And he definitely doesn’t want pity. “I went back to Mistra.”

“Don’t fucking start. I had to. My cat couldn’t stay awake, and I wasn’t getting answers from anyone.” He doesn’t say you weren’t there. Maybe Verai could have stopped him if he was. He wouldn’t have gone in with him on his tail, but it would’ve only prolonged the inevitable.

He shuts his eyes. “It can talk. The parasite. It was talking to me, in my head. It used your voice.”

He falls silent, as if waiting for it to talk again, but there’s only the ambience of the world around him. His mind is empty.

“It tricked me into doing something, and it—killed me. I don’t remember anything else after that.”

The question and its follow-up silences him.

“I haven’t checked.” He wants to say he was just waiting for a safe opportunity—can’t check for shit if you’re in the midst of horrors, after all—but knows in his gut that he’d be lying there, motionless, gagging into the glorified toilet bowl well past a reasonable hour had Verai not intercepted.

Which is some cowardass shit, quite frankly.

He pulls out the ball from his pockets, thumb hesitating only a second before pressing the button.

A ball of green fluffs lands on his chest. It’s practically the size of a glove, but he finds he can’t breathe anyways.

And then it stirs.

Twitching and convulsing, until Sprigatito lifts his head, opening his mouth so wide it looks like he wants to eat his trainer’s face.

<aaaaaaaAAAhaaa…> His eyelids open as if he hasn’t opened them in 10 years. He moves to paw at them, wash up his face—only to find himself lifted.

“Ha—HA!” Kazuki cackles maniacally—pausing to wince and curse as he exerts his wounds—but he doesn’t care. Sprigatito is lifted above him, pink eyes staring bewildered and then delighted as he’s tossed up and caught like a baseball.

“IT WORKED! FUCK YES!”

Kazuki pauses—Sprigatito giggling where he lies over his trainer’s face like pillow, his bushy tail swishing excitedly.

Green eyes peek from the curly kitten fur to where Verai sat, the man’s gaze lidded, heavy, despite not turned to him. The concern in his voice is palpable enough to leave something sour on Kazuki’s tongue.

“I’m—better.” His head faces forwards to the sky beyond the fog. Sprigatito has settled on his chest, sniffing at a cut on his collar that refuses to heal. He tries to lick it, only to gag and draw back—<Yuck!>—and then try to clean it again.

“Since I got the parasite, it hasn’t felt like I’ve been alone up here. In my head; my body. Made it hard to tell how much anything I did was mine.”

His mouth curls into a nasty snarl at the memory of being made spectator in his own skin. “And fuck that shit. When I kick your ass, it’s on my own terms—no one else’s.” He remembers them clearly: the unfair kills that spat on his pride, the press of Verai’s lips against his and yet not. The bitterness that curls in his gut burns an unsightly green. “You don’t know how badly I wanted to rip this thing out and tear it to shreds.”

His chest rises and falls. Sprigatito has gone from trying to groom him to grooming his paws with fervor. Kazuki shuts his eyes.

“But I don’t feel it anymore. It’s quiet.”

The words are said like the first breath of a man who had been drowning.

He hears Verai shuffle against the grass, approaching. He’s about to tell him to stay away when he’s pulled off the ground— Kazuki sputtering in protest, Sprigatito hopping off his chest—and is held.

Kazuki tenses. His whole body freezes— partially because of the pain; his wounds— and mostly because it’s— Verai.

“What the fuck are you…” His hands scramble over the man’s back, weakly trying to yank him off, but Verai is holding on tight. His words— always so infuriatingly earnest. It makes Kazuki want to scream; spurs an instinct to tear apart the veneer— to prove there is one at all.

His fingers scramble over pristine metal, hopeless to damage it— at best staining with the tar pouring from his wounds. And even this just drops down, easy to be washed away.

Kazuki grumbles, words muttered into the junction between Verai’s neck and shoulder. “Since when were you touchy?” He slumps against him, sinks into the hold and lets it contain him wholly.

For a little while, he allows this, staying uncharacteristically quiet as he looks off to a point past Verai. And then he grabs his shoulders, prying him off so he can meet his eyes.

“Why the hell didn’t you want to talk about the arena?” They’ve been putting it off since. He visited him to deliver Miu and not once had they mentioned it, swept it just like the rest of the incidents.

His nails dig futilely into metal. “Who is Pheasant?”

A switch was flipped. Verai tore him off, Kazuki’s nails scratching metal plating as he sputtered in protest. He’s knocked back as Miu bowled in-between them, every alarm firing—and though she’s acting precisely how he had planned, Kazuki couldn’t help resent it as Verai was out of reach, curled in on himself as if about to hurl on the grass.

“At the—the arena. From last time. With the Parasite,” Kazuki grit the words between his teeth, hands scrambling over Miu. He had the urge to push the absol away and reach for Verai, but knew better than to tempt it. He already had enough wounds.

“Do you believe me now? You have to believe me. I got that name when that fucking abomination was using my body—I couldn’t do anything, but I watched it all happen.” It was absurd. He didn’t know what happened with the texts that came after, but he can’t even fault them—it all sounds like bullshit.

His eyes searched Verai’s. “It went in, didn’t it? Your head, your—memories. I don’t know who Pheasant is, but the parasite said it knew him after it—after I touched you.”

He grimaced, prying his hands from the absol. Falling back to sit cross-legged on the grass.

When it matters most. A pretty corpse.

“He was someone important. Wasn’t he?”