#kgrb

later, when shiba gave his testimony, did he just recall the fights, leaving out the demands of the mikaboshi because it didn't matter, fuck them all, this meant war! or did he remember every single word spoken to him, calmly, dispassionately, with an even voice, like this outcome had always been inevitable. did the words reverberate in his head, buzzing in his ears, churning in his stomach, seared into his memory?

do the words still echo inside shiba, twenty years later, every time a plan goes awry, urging to retreat and regroup, while chihiro charges on. every time chihiro chooses to keep fighting, to stake his life, does a shiver run down shiba's spine? every time he screams that they need to get out now, does he flash back to lying in the dirt, crumpled, broken, humiliated. when he asks chihiro why he won't remove the scar, does he think of when he got his around the throat removed? when chihiro talks of never forgetting hatred, does shiba think that he doesn't need a visible reminder, that every time he swallows, he feels the phantom pain linger. does he not stop chihiro from his revenge mission because shiba understands overwhelming, engulfing, swallowing emotions of grief and rage and helplessness like only survivors understand? when you have been left alive not by luck or mercy, but by scorn and derision. when you have to lie there, wounded, traumatized, surrounded by death.

work: kneel in loose dirt fandom: kagurabachi rating: E relationship(s): uruha yōji/misaka natsuki tags: canon divergence | relationship study | manga spoilers through ch92 | explicit sexual content | wet & messy

work summary:

The lure of going there was enticing in the way of giving into anger and inflicting bloody murder; like wedging a blunt nail beneath a barely-healed scab and tearing. Exhilarating like exerting your emotions was, just before you chose to act on them: that split second before your actions took you somewhere you could never come back from.

Or: for Misaka Natsuki perennially, always, Uruha Yōji.

ch_01 preview:

It couldn’t be him. Uruha was dead. Natsuki’s thoughts stalled out on that tangent, He’s dead, Uruha’s dead, it can’t be— He felt the words tactile enough to touch, a near-tangible mantra, each individual character so impressed upon the fore of his mind that they soon appeared nigh-visible before him. Superimposed over the tall, clean lines of the ghost who now stood before him. It couldn’t be Uruha. Uruha was dead. But it was, and Uruha wasn’t.

ch_02 preview:

“Really—why the hell does it matter? Why do you care?” And then Natsuki turned his chin up and his head to the side, and he faced Uruha for what might’ve been the very first time by own volition. Relented to look at him and see him. See what the humiliation ritual, corpse excavation, two-fold vivisection wrought as they rendered it expressly alive, let it loose to wreak havoc.