Ronin Warriors Fan Fiction ❯ Crimson on Blue ❯ Crimson on Blue ( One-Shot )

Crimson on Blue
By Djinn Hashiba-Maxwell

Summary - a short perspective piece. Touma's life is no bed of roses.
Warnings - disturbing imagery, angst.

*~*~*

I grew up alone, mostly. I was an only child, my mother was a journalist and my father the quintessential mad scientist. He could stay holed up in his lab for days, forgetting to eat, forgetting to sleep, pursuing some illusive breakthrough that would change life as we know it. I don't really know what he did specifically. I was too young to understand it when I lived with him, and when I was old enough to know what 'photophosphorilation' was, I had stopped caring. My father had very little to do with my life. Most of the time he forgot to feed me, or buy me clothes when mine were worn out. We were actually quite well off, if you must know, but I always was forced to dress like a pauper. I got used to it after a while, but the jeers of the other children still stung.

Kitchen knives - the serrated ones for cutting meat - cut deep, but the wounds aren't very clean. They take a while to heal, and they always leave scars.

My parents got divorced when I was four. I can't say that it really changed my life much. Even when they were married I never saw them both at the same time. On the rare occasions that my mother was actually in town, she would take me out to lunch or a movie, ask about school and my friends, comment on how much I'd grown. The sort of thing you'd expect from a pleasant aunt, but not from a parent. I called her Yuki, not mom, at her request. She was friendly, engaging, even concerned about my welfare, but at the important times - my first day of high school, when I won first place in an archery contest, when I needed a shoulder to cry on - she wasn't there. I think it made her uncomfortable when I treated her like a mother . . . so I didn't. I secretly hated the time we spent together, where I would treat her like a casual acquaintance and she would treat me like someone else's child.

"Touma! My, how you've grown. How old are you now, eight?"

"I'll be eight on October tenth, Yuki-san."

"Oh yes, that's right! I'll be sure to send you something. How is school?"

"Fine, Yuki-san. I am at the top of my class."

"How wonderful! You should be very proud, Touma."

I lied to her about my school, as you would to someone whose interest was only shallow social pulp. I didn't tell her about the older kids who ganged up on me in the courtyard almost every day, the twelve-year-olds who paid me to do their math homework for them, or the teachers who hated me for already knowing everything they tried to teach me. Even if I had told her, it only would have made her uncomfortable, because there was nothing she wouldn't want to do anything about it.

A straight razor is good for a smooth cut that heals cleanly. You can watch the blood well out of the straight, shallow indentation, and it doesn't hurt too much. No, it hurts just enough.

I met Shuu when I was seven, purely by accident. I wasn't in many classes with kids my own age, and mostly my peers made a special effort to ignore me. I was grateful for this, as being ignored was a lot simpler than being persecuted. Shuu was in my gym class one semester; short, a little on the chubby side, lacking a bit in coordination and finesse, but unfathomably strong. Much like he is now, really. When I first saw him I immediately pegged him as a bully. With strength like his I thought he must be into pushing weaker people around. I'll admit my perception of the world was colored by my own experience, but that made sense to me.

Shuu took an immediate liking to me, or so he says. The way I remember it, we were playing soccer and he kicked the ball to hard, hitting me in the stomach and knocking me down. I of course thought that this had been done on purpose, and responded rather badly. To be frank, I told him off using words that a seven-year-old ought not know. Shuu, typically, was not put off.

I'm really not sure how Shuu and I became friends. My memory of those years is fuzzy at best. Shuu thinks it's a defense mechanism. I'm in no position to argue. But what I do know is that when I was nine and fell down the stairs in my house, his mother was the one that drove me to the hospital, and waited while they put my arm in a cast.

Shuu thought my father had hit me. I think he still suspects that my father was abusive, but he wasn't. In order to hate me that much, he would have had to care, and he didn't. Not in the slightest.

Sometimes I think I wish he had hit me. At least then I would've know he knew I existed.

You can hold your hand over a candle for almost four seconds before the skin starts to burn. It takes a little longer than that for it to sizzle and crackle, and give off that sickening smell.

It was on a Saturday when I tried to kill myself. All the other guys were off with their families - Seiji in Sendai visiting his family dojo, Shuu up at the family restaurant, Ryo at his cousin's house by the ocean (his father is a photographer, and was out of the country at the time), Shin at home with his mother and sisters. I was the only one staying at the Yagyuu mansion. Of course Nasutei had made it clear that I was welcome to stay, since my father was too busy for me that week, as he was the rest of the year as well.

Maybe it was the fact that I was without my friends for the first time in so long, it reminded me of my isolated childhood. Maybe I had too much time to think - for the first time it occurred to me that perhaps the others were only friendly to me because I wore Tenku. Maybe it was the cool, impersonal letter from my mother. How are you, how's school, sorry I couldn't see you for your birthday, Christmas or New Year's. Don't write back, I'll only be at this address for three more days. Maybe it was the e-mails I got from Shin and Shuu, talking jokingly about how glad their parents were to see them after so long. Maybe it was just something that had been building in me for a while, that just happened to snap just then. But whatever reason, I sat down at the kitchen table and pulled a kitchen knife - not a serrated one, but one of the sharp, smooth ones for chopping vegetables - across my wrists.

I'm told that most people slit their wrists in the bathroom, since the blood is easier to clean off tile and ceramic, or something to that effect. I really can't imagine that anyone about to kill themselves would have the presence of mind to think ahead to the clean-up. I know I didn't - I just walked down from my room, picked up the knife, sat down at the table and pulled the blade across my wrists. I remember my distinct lack of surprise at the pain. I had cut myself enough in the past to know what to expect.

Nasutei was teaching that day, wasn't supposed to be home for another two hours. I felt kind of bad, after I had done it and before conscious thought stopped, that she would have to find me. But that was really the only thought of regret I had. It didn't occur to me that I would be missed. They would find someone else to wear Tenku - Tenku deserved something better than me, anyway - and everything would go on as it had before.

I think my last conscious thought as I rested my suddenly impossibly heavy head on the kitchen table, was how nicely the crimson of my blood looked soaked into the bright blue of my hair. As if the two colors belonged together.

I woke up in the hospital, an IV dripping precious red fluid into the crook of my arms, monitors hooked up to various parts of my body. A slow steady beeping was my first assurance that I was in fact alive. I blinked up at the ceiling, wondering how I had got there, when I saw the blonde hair draped over the edge of the narrow hospital bed.

Seiji?

Later, much later, Seiji told me that he had come back from Sendai early, because he had a bad premonition. He's always been a bit sensitive to the supernatural, Seiji has. I blame all the mediation he does, he sees things too clearly. He's the one that found me draped over the table, blood soaking into my clothes and hair, wrists slashed almost to the bone. He must have been there shortly after I lost consciousness, or I would not have survived.

Seiji was sitting in an uncomfortable, stiff-backed chair beside the bed I was in, leaning forward so that he could rest his head against his hand on the bed. That was when I noticed something I should have earlier - he was holding my hand in his, clutching it rather desperately even in sleep, his forehead pressed against the back of my hand.

I only intended to sit up, but my movement caused him to jerk awake. He blinked at me in surprise, violet eyes wide. I was a little annoyed - I was the one who should be surprised, not him.

"Seiji," I asked quietly, "how did I get here?"

And suddenly he had his arms around me (carefully, so as not to dislodge any of the tubes I had sprouted) his face buried against my neck, and he was crying. I had no idea what to make of this, really. Seiji? Crying? Weren't those two things mutually exclusive? Seiji hardly ever laughed (unless it was that evil I'm-going-to-rip-out-your-spleen chuckle) let alone cried.

"Why, Touma?" He demanded of me. "Why would you do something like this?"

At that moment, I couldn't have answered him if I wanted to.

I think I used to cut myself to remind myself that I really existed, since my father never admitted or acknowledged that I did. Sometimes, when you have no friends and no family that matters, it feels like you're not real. Depersonalization they call it, I looked it up. You're afraid that you're not a real person. Pain makes that go away for a short time, so that's why people with certain disorders indulge in self-mutilation. It reminds them of who and what they are.

Writing this is supposed to be part of the recovery process, but now I only feel worse. I know that the guys want to know why, but I don't think I can tell them the truth. They all have such happy lives, and I've finally realized how much I matter to them. I can't weigh them down with the knowledge of what my childhood, my family was like. I refuse to do that to them.

Before, I didn't tell them because I thought they didn't care. Now, I won't tell them because I know they will.

-- Hashiba Touma