「ᰔᩚ」 :: izana kurowaka! x fem!reader & 'ultraviolence' by lana del rey.
warnings: toxic relationship dynamics, emotional abuse, manipulation, possessiveness, unhealthy attachment, codependency, isolation, childhood trauma, abandonment issues, psychological dependency. this work does not romanticize or condone abusive relationships. written as a character study.
i don't really think izana would ever fall in love with someone he met a few months ago, or even after a year or two. he isn't the kind of person who would wake up one morning and decide to trust someone simply because they were kind to him. if anything, kindness would make him suspicious. after everything that happened to him, affection became something conditional, something that could disappear the second someone found somebody better.
i think, if izana were ever to let someone remain beside him, it would have to be someone who had always existed in the background of his life. not necessarily because he loved her from the beginning, but because she became part of the scenery before he realized she was there. someone whose presence slowly rooted itself into his routine until imagining life without her felt... wrong.
reader was another child at the orphanage.
izana never spoke to her at first. he had no reason to. every thought he had revolved around shinichiro—the only person who made that lonely building feel temporary. every visit became something to survive for. every goodbye hurt a little more than the last.
she was difficult not to notice.
she was quiet in a way that wasn't peaceful, always lingering near the edges of rooms as though waiting for permission to exist. she smiled too easily at strangers and apologized for things that weren't her fault. the staff described her as obedient, but izana thought she simply looked... empty. like a child who had learned far too early that taking up less space meant surviving longer.
eventually, curiosity became observation.
without anyone realizing, izana learned everything about her.
the adults talked too much.
he pieced together fragments overheard through half-open doors. a mother who had viewed her daughter as another source of income. a wealthy businessman who wanted the inconvenience erased before anyone could tie his name to the child. money exchanged. threats made. an abandoned little girl delivered to an orphanage because killing her had become more troublesome than forgetting she existed.
when they eventually left that orphanage years later, izana made sure those records disappeared with them.
he took every file that mentioned her.
every document containing the names of the people who had discarded her.
he never told reader why.
perhaps because he wanted to be the only person who knew where she had come from. perhaps because, in his own twisted way, destroying the trail felt like severing the last invisible thread connecting her to a world that had never wanted her.
she belonged beside him now.
they first spoke after another child cornered her behind the building.
reader never defended herself. she never knew how.
violence had always been easier than words.
by the time someone pulled him away, the other boy was unconscious, blood dripping onto the pavement while reader stood frozen with tears filling her eyes.
he looked at her scraped hands before speaking as though stating an undeniable fact.
reader nodded immediately.
that should have irritated him.
instead, it fascinated him.
she never questioned what repayment meant.
from then on, staying beside him became less of a choice and more of an unspoken rule.
she followed because he asked.
she stayed because leaving never crossed her mind.
everyone else assumed izana had become strangely protective of the timid girl from the orphanage.
kakucho understood the truth long before anyone else.
there were invisible lines around reader that only izana could draw, and everyone else was expected to recognize them without explanation. conversations lasted too long. smiles directed at someone else lingered too long. even kakucho—perhaps the only person izana genuinely trusted—wasn't exempt.
if kakucho made reader laugh, izana's mood soured.
if she instinctively walked beside kakucho instead of him, he quietly stepped between them until she drifted back to his side without thinking.
reader had become frighteningly good at reading silence.
a slight tilt of his head.
a pause that lasted one second longer than usual.
the coldness settling behind violet eyes.
those tiny changes were enough to make her apologize before she even knew what she'd done wrong.
she genuinely believed she'd upset him somehow.
izana never corrected her.
reader wasn't trapped because she was physically unable to leave.
she simply couldn't imagine anywhere else existing.
the orphanage had taught her abandonment.
izana taught her certainty.
they were different kinds of prisons.
he never had to lock the door because she never reached for the handle.
that was the cruelest part.
in his mind, none of this was abuse.
he had given purpose to someone the world had discarded, and in return she remained his constant—the only thing that never chose someone else.
he didn't realize that he had slowly become the entire shape of her world.
reader mistook dependence for love because she had never been taught the difference.
perhaps the tragedy of them isn't that izana wanted to own her.
it's that neither of them understood there was another way to love.
even during those final moments, after kakucho threw himself between the bullet and the person he considered family, i don't think izana suddenly became selfless.
he was capable of sacrificing himself for kakucho because that loyalty had always existed somewhere beneath the hatred.
but if, before that moment, someone had asked him what should happen to reader if he died...
i don't think his answer would've been to leave her behind.
selfishly, almost instinctively, he would've thought she should come with him.
not because he hated her.
because in the fractured logic he'd spent years building, she had always been his.
he erased every path leading away from him.
how could a bird survive outside the only cage it had ever known?
the heartbreaking truth is that she probably would've followed.
not because she was forced.
but because she loved him with the blind devotion of someone who had forgotten where her own life ended and his began.
and that's exactly what makes their story a tragedy instead of a romance.
there were nights when tokyo belonged to no one but them.
the city looked prettier after midnight.
all the noise became distant enough to pretend it wasn't there, reduced to headlights sliding across rain-soaked pavement and the occasional train disappearing into darkness. reader always thought the world looked softer then, almost forgiving.
he thought the night was simply honest.
they sat on the roof of an unfinished building, legs hanging over the edge, the skyline stretching endlessly before them.
reader had stopped asking why he liked high places.
perhaps because he always looked less trapped above the city than inside it.
perhaps because he liked being somewhere no one could reach him.
he didn't look at her when he asked.
he took off his jacket and dropped it over her shoulders before she could refuse.
it smelled like cigarette smoke, rain, and something metallic that never quite washed away.
she pulled it closer without thinking.
his gaze remained fixed on the horizon.
"...because i wanted to."
reader smiled to herself.
she'd grown to love them.
with izana, silence was never empty.
it was where most of his affection lived.
"...do you remember the orphanage?" she asked eventually.
"i still think about the garden."
"there wasn't much of one."
"half of them were dead."
"...the purple ones weren't."
he finally looked at her.
"...you always liked those."
"because you called them stubborn."
"...they grew through concrete."
"don't compare me to a flower."
his expression didn't change.
she watched him for a long moment.
there were nights when she thought she could almost see the little boy he'd once been.
the one who waited by the orphanage gate whenever shinichiro was supposed to visit.
the one who still believed someone could choose him.
she wondered if he knew she remembered him like that.
"...you're looking again."
"...what is it this time?"
reader rested her cheek against her knees.
"...i was just thinking."
"that you've always looked lonely."
his shoulders stiffened almost imperceptibly.
she reached over and brushed a loose strand of pale hair away from his face.
the gesture was so familiar neither of them reacted to it.
"...i just wish someone had loved you sooner."
something flickered behind his eyes.
gone before it could become anything softer.
she answered so simply it almost sounded obvious.
as though there had never been another possibility.
the wind shifted between them.
for the first time that evening, izana turned completely toward her.
"i loved you before i knew what love was."
"...you should've hated me."
"you were terrible at it."
she laughed through her nose.
their fingers intertwined almost awkwardly, neither of them accustomed to tenderness.
"...people leave," he murmured.
reader looked down at their joined hands.
his grip was firm enough that she could feel her pulse beneath his fingers.
just impossible to forget.
she understood the question hidden beneath the statement.
she leaned forward until their foreheads touched.
close enough that his breathing became her own.
"...i don't know what tomorrow looks like."
it wasn't the answer he wanted.
"...but if the whole world forgets your name..."
her voice dropped to something almost lost beneath the wind.
"...i'll remember how it sounded when we were children."
for someone else, that would've been enough.
love had never been enough.
it had to drown out every fear he'd ever carried.
it had to promise forever, because forever was the only thing he'd never been given.
he opened his eyes again.
"...if they try to take you from me..."
reader already knew the rest.
he didn't need to finish.
the sentence had lived between them for years.
she lifted his hand instead and pressed her lips against bruised knuckles still marked by old fights.
not to sanctify the violence.
only because, somewhere along the way, she'd begun treating every wound he carried as though it belonged to them both.
"...then stay with me," she whispered.
that was always the tragedy of them.
they spoke the same language.
they just never meant the same things.
