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“Ah, Shun... One day you’ll miss being gifted flowers.”
Nowadays, he thinks about this a lot. It wasn’t meant to be something impactful. It wasn’t meant to hurt him, to squeeze at his heart and echo in his mind over and over.
Back then, his mother had said that to him in a light, teasing tone, when he, in the height of his teenage years, complained about her habit of gifting him flowers every time he did something “good”, in her eyes (the thing was: in the eyes of Shiori Kazami, her child did nothing but good things).
Back then, he had just huffed, and his mother had just laughed and walked away. That interaction had lasted less than five seconds.
Now, at her hospital bed, he repeats that phrase in his head. Memorizes her voice, burns her smiling face into his memory, as his hands shake, holding hers (they’re cold, far too cold), as his eyes get blurry with his own tears (he can’t see her anymore, and he wants to, he needs to, but he can’t).
He’s hiccupping and crying and making a scene, but they let him. As the beeping of the monitor slows, they let him cry, scream, throw a tantrum, because they know. With the death of Shiori Kazami, comes the death of her son’s youth. Shun Kazami is no longer a child.
He’ll miss being gifted flowers.
Shun Kazami has a habit. A habit of never letting his wounds fully close.
As a kid, he really didn’t think much of it. He’d hurt himself, either by a training accident or due to one of his escapades with Dan that went a little too far, and either his mom or auntie Skyress would scold him and kiss it better, then scold him again when he poked at one of the more sensible scrapes.
When they weren’t around, then Dan would go and get himself just as hurt, and Shun, fussy thing that he is, would focus on his friend’s health rather than his own, then he’d puff his chest in pride when Dan told him how cool he was or laugh at his friend’s misfortune when he’d boldly declare that he’d “beat ya some time!”.
It was only after his mother’s death that these wounds started to hurt a little more. Just after that, Dan had to go, move to another country, and then Skyress leaves, giving him nothing but a phone number and a farewell hug. And suddenly, it’s just him and his grandpa, training and training and trying to distract himself, because those wounds cannot be kissed better, and he couldn’t just slap a bandage on it and hope it healed on its own.
Habits are habits, however. And just like the scrapes on his hands and knees from when he was a kid, he prods at them, lets himself remember and pine, and so, they are kept uncomfortably open, exposed.
Which means that, after so many years, they had just festered into something bitter.
Now, at the ripe age of thirty, after some last confessions on his grandpa’s deathbed and some investigation of his mom’s old contacts, he comes across “Wavern”, and he learns of his mother’s work and legacy. He takes her mantle, becomes a member of the Order, and hopes, in his heart, that he’s doing something right.
Of course, nothing is that simple. And life just revels in mocking him in every way possible.
The automatic doors to the building open and he feels old wounds open all over again.
Shun doesn’t know how to feel.
He feels trapped, when he sees Dan at the reception desk, and Shun doesn’t even manage to run, because Dan recognizes him immediately (He shouldn’t be able to. They haven’t seen or talked to each other in more than ten years).
(He’s laid-back and energetic, as always, and the thick, red sweater he wears doesn’t hide the fact that he had gained some muscle. There’s a tiredness in his eyes, though. One Shun can’t quite understand yet.)
He feels small, because he the first thing he sees when the elevator doors open is Skyress. Same emerald-green dress, same dark green coat, same long, black hair intertwined with feathers, and same piercing, sharp yellow eyes that force him to look at her.
(There are lines of age now, but they don’t do much to change her appearance. Shun has to take some time to register the massive burn scar marring half her face, and he gulps drily to try and prevent the uncomfortable feeling in his throat when he sees it)
He feels jealous, because the moment they get to their floor and to the office, Dan is suddenly running and seizing a young, bespectacled boy into a hug, and Skyress, although way more graceful, ignores their little group and goes to talk to an older, redheaded man, who is smoking by the open office window.
(It meant that they had moved on with their lives, that Shun wasn’t as important to them as he was back then. And although it’s only natural, and they have no fault in that, the bitter thing in him gnaws and claws at his heart for the implication)
He wants to feel angry, because Skyress still treats him like a kid and almost strangles “Wavern” when she finds out he’s from the Order now. He wants to feel angry, because Dan greets him with a wide smile and a half hug, as if nothing had happened, as if he wasn’t gone from Shun’s life since their teenage years. He wants to feel angry, because the redhead man (Drago, he is told, an old friend of Skyress and Dan’s mentor in the Order) and the blonde, bespectacled boy (Marucho, who was as new to all of that as him, but not as much) greet him into the group as if they were old friends, as if they had the right to just take a seat in the private space of his heart.
He wants to feel angry.
But he can’t.
He can’t, because Skyress still cared for him, gave at least some explanation as to why she had left, showed some sort of righteous anger at the idea of his mother’s wishes being disrespected (and although Shun never stopped caring for Skyress, although he was grateful for what she had done, he couldn’t forgive her quite yet for leaving him behind).
Because Dan had missed him, smiling at him like he was some sort of returning prodigal son, and talking nonstop, throwing an arm around his shoulder and laughing all the while (he was still warm, so warm it burned, and he hated the fact that he couldn’t find comfort in his friend like he did years ago).
Because “Wavern” had told him more about Shiori in the entire evening than what he managed to get from his grandfather in 15 years (Shun still feels betrayed. It’s his mother they’re talking about, after all, and he wonders where “Eve” and the Order was when she died).
He can’t feel angry, because now he’s part of Ordo Veritatis, he has some of the people he cares about back, and he finally has a perspective (even though it’s muddy, and forces him to face far too many ghosts of his past, it’ll have to do).
So, instead, he trains, like his grandpa taught him to. He practices, runs, and just trains, trains, trains until his muscles ache and he hears the telltale meow of his cat, Aelia, begging for food. When the time comes, he goes to Marucho’s house, as was requested. He helps the team prepare and without a word, they set off.
The mission is simple enough: find a missing team that disappeared during a mission. They receive the name of the town they were last seen, some photos and documents retrieved by the Order, and Marucho makes sure that all of them are armed to the teeth, a strange paranoia of him that Drago and Skyress had approved.
The trip, to Shun’s dismay, isn’t quiet. Most of the team, he finds, are either connected by old friends or are old acquaintances already, and, unlike Shun, most of them are willing to talk their ears off, reconciling after a long time apart. It’s by his own choice, yet Shun still feels left out.
When they arrive in the designated town (Vestroia. What a weird name.), the investigation leads them to an old bar, home for one of the two biker gangs in town. They get there, and the gang, named Vestals, offers information in exchange of entertaining them with some challenges.
One of the bikers, Ace, challenges Dan to an arm-wrestling match, while another, Ingram, challenges Skyress to a game of darts. Both of them are in their field, and Shun knows that, so it comes at a surprise for him when he cheers Dan on in a moment of almost loss, and later joins Marucho in their little celebration when Skyress hits all three darts in a perfect score.
Dan, distracted, broke the table in surprise in a moment of both his and Ace’s miscalculated strength. Thankfully Mira, the bar owner, just laughs it off.
Skyress just stared at him, incredulous, and Shun, when he comes back to himself, feels like a little kid again. He feels Drago pat him on the shoulder, and he strangely doesn’t feel as bad as before.
At the third challenge, a rival gang barges into the bar. The Vexos are haughty, and arrogant, and he wants to beat them up so badly (“No violence against innocents” be damned), and in the moment Spectra, their leader, takes out a gun and points it at Drago’s head, “challenges” him to a game of Russian Roulette.
Shun has a few moments to look at Dan’s furious face, Magnum pistol aimed at Spectra’s head, then at the other gang member (a blue-haired man), pointing a gun at Dan’s head, ready to shoot, and the bitter thing in his chest turns into panic.
He makes a decision.
He swipes the gun from Spectra’s hand. He looks the man in the eye and, without a word, points the gun at his own head.
Click.
The chamber was empty.
He tosses the gun back at Spectra, and he doesn’t take his eyes off of him until he leaves, and only then does he notice the whole team on him, with Drago and Skyress scolding him on recklessness and Marucho rambling over gun safety and the danger of what Shun had just done. He feels overwhelmed by the attention, and when he tries to look elsewhere, he ends up looking at Dan, surprisingly stoic. His reddish-brown eyes burn at him, in a way that’s so familiar it hurts.
Shun feels cared for, but he’s not sure how to feel about it.
The old wound pounds at him, but it doesn’t hurt as much.
They gain the respect of the Vestals, and with that comes both freedom and information. It’s a simple community, after all, and few are brave enough to anger a biker gang.
They use their new friends' leverage as much as they can, searching every nook and cranny of the town. It ends up leading them to an abandoned sanatory, which ironically does worse for Shun’s sanity than he thought. The entire building is old, covered in a thick layer of fog, and the temperature is far too cold for his liking. “The barrier is thinner here.” is the only answer he gets, from a strangely stoic Drago. Both Skyress and Dan are apprehensive as well, which is weird.
Shun had yet to get used to the sight of a shotgun at Dan’s hands, steady despite the slight shaking of his grip, or the claw-like gloves at Skyress’s hands. He is no stranger to combat, but aside from Shun himself, ironically, all of them seem ready to kill.
He soon finds out why.
The first time he finds one of the creatures (“A blood zombie.” Dan tells him, after they escape, while Marucho bandages both of their wounds. He wouldn’t stop shaking.), it jumps at Drago, and he has a brief moment of panic before Skyress is yanking him backwards and Dan starts opening fire. Seconds later, he jumps back into the fray, kicking the creature’s maw off.
The second and third time are just as disturbing, as the things jump and bite and claw, a twisted version of what was once a living creature their flayed flesh dissolving into blood and goo after a deadly shot. It’s disturbing, far too disturbing, and their exposed muscles, twitching and convulsing before they fully melt away, remind Shun that they were once human, and he can’t help but imagine them agonizing and trembling before slowly succumbing to their deaths, enveloped by the fog’s merciless cold.
It’s cold...
Cold...
Coldcoldcoldcoldcoldcoldcoldcoldcoldcoldcoldcoldcoldcoldcoldcoldcoldcoldcoldcoldcold-
He’s shivering, suddenly, and he warps his arms around himself in panic, and he can swear he can see his breath, mingling with the fog. He looks around, and there’s nothing to cover himself with, and the room is getting colder, he sees the corners of his fingers turn white, then he sees the blue creep up the extremities, and he can’t help but feel that he’ll freezeandburnandthecoldistearinghisskinoffhedoesn’twanttodie-
He feels a weight on his shoulders, and there are soft feathers tickling at his cheek. He looks, and there is Skyress’s trademark feather coat, now fitting almost perfectly on his shoulders, when it used to be so big on him. He looks up, and there’s Skyress, tired smile on her face, and he doesn’t feel comfortable on the look she gives him, or the small pat on the shoulder Drago gives him. It’s complacent, pitying.
As if they’ve seen that before.
He looks down, and the blue in his hands is gone. The air comes in puffs, but it’s almost invisible, and he recognizes the paleness and the trembling as products of his far-too-fast beating heart. He breathes, like his mom used to guide him, and forces his body to relax. He straightens up, as if nothing had happened, and finds some form of sick comfort in seeing that both Dan and Marucho looked shaken as well.
He fixes the coat around himself, but he still feels cold.
In the end, somehow, they manage. Even if Shun hadn’t taken Skyress’s coat off of him, even if Dan now handles his shotgun with some sort of obsessive fascination, even if Shun stays up all night, waiting for the hospital room to let him see Skyress, because she had thrown herself in between them and the monsters far too many times.
“You are new to all of this.”, She had said, when Shun had called her out for it, “Me and Drago, we wouldn’t forgive ourselves if you got hurt.”
And with that, that bitter thing was back, eating at Shun’s chest. The petty part of him wanted so badly to remind Skyress of the years he was left alone.
But his caring side was stronger, and so, when the nurse had finally called him (“She’s been asking for you.” she had said), Shun had rushed over, as fast as he could without being impolite, and had to hold back a sigh of relief at seeing Skyress well. Tired, a little haggard, with bandages all over her torso and face, but well.
He doesn’t pretend to be graceful. He rushes over, hands hovering awkwardly, in a loss of what to do, and Skyress sees something in him, because the next minute she’s ushering him to call one of the nurses.
He does so promptly, with the calmest expression he could get, and when he finally gets back, he sees Skyress’s tired face, marked from age, morph into a smile Shun could only describe as impish:
“This is my godson, the one I talked to you about.” She says, as if they were at an afternoon meetup instead of a hospital room, “Isn’t he handsome?”
It takes a few seconds, and Shun feels the blood rush to his face. He curls up a little, like when he used to, when he was just a bashful little boy, and tries to hide his red face in between the feathers, as the nurse covers a giggle with her hand.
“Yes, miss Skyress.”, the nurse tries, between giggles, to say, “He definitely is a charmer.”
He leaves before Skyress starts telling the nurse the entirety of his childhood. He hears the laughter fading to background, and can’t help but muster a tiny smile.
Later, when they’re healed, and finally managed to rest, the Vestals invite them all to a party. Apparently, a travelling member of their group, Baron, had come back to make a show.
It is strange thing that they all accepted to go, even though Dan is the only party animal in between them. But Drago had insisted, and Skyress was the one who had said they needed something to distract themselves.
“Savor these little moments.”, is all she says.
Shun didn’t like the way she had said that.
When they arrive, it is a far more receptive welcome than last time. Baron turns out to be quite the friendly guy, even though he is built like a wall (Later they discover that he’s at least six years younger than them, and Shun burns the image of Dan’s affronted face to his memory). They see no problem in helping him set up the music equipment, and although Drago excuses himself at some point, saying he has to take a smoke break, things seem peaceful, for once.
But of course, life couldn’t let him have peace.
And so, after more time gone than it should be comfortable, Dan asks for Drago. And when they leave to investigate, one of the Vestal's friend, a lady called Tigrerra, is dead, there is a clear trail of blood leading to the forest, and, to top it all off, Drago is nowhere to be seen, save for his lighter, stained with blood beside Tigrerra’s corpse.
They don’t have time to go before Baron finds them all outside. He freaks out, and the explanation they give him is far too rushed, but he trusts them. He cancels the party, asks for Ace and Mira to trust him, that he’s going to help them retrieve Drago from the forest.
Ace hands Baron a Magnum pistol and tells him to be careful.
They set off, and Shun can feel Dan’s panicking, as he disobeys Skyress’s orders and leads the charge deeper into the forest. Even with Shun’s training, it’s almost impossible to see. The branches are too thick and it’s too dark, and he only manages to get better vision when he sees a red beacon in between the trees.
He wished he didn’t.
Drago is there, wrapped in a semi-transparent cocoon (still breathing, thank God), unconscious on the ground. Behind him, at the barks of the trees, on the ground, everywhere, spiders as big as Shun’s arm crawl around, their pincers clicking in clear hostility, as they slowly swarm and surround them, predatory and intelligent and oh so wrong. He can’t even take a step anywhere, as he hears the hiss and click of one of them behind him, above him, probably underneath him as well, and it’s suffocating and it’s wrong, wrong, wrong-
He hears Baron shout first, and then he sees it.
The thing is massive. A spider at least three times their size, with thick, black fur and a massive red symbol carved onto its abdomen. Its paws gave away instead to long, furred, human arms, gangly and muscular, bending in unnatural ways, as its clawed human hands scrape the grassy floor and leave dents on the tree barks. Its pincers, bone-white and scythe-like, click and expand to give way to a far too big mouth, as rows and rows of teeth glistened in the low light, the saliva shining red under the glow of the symbol, dripping like fresh blood.
And suddenly, Shun feels far too small. As if he’s back to being a little kid, and the monster under his bed is far too real.
To call themselves prey is a luxury.
Skyress is the only one who doesn’t hesitate. Her voice cuts through them all, authoritative through the panic, and Dan finally snaps out of it, running towards Drago’s prone form, doing his best to shoot any of the smaller spiders that come near them. Baron, thankfully, is not a pushover, he punches and bashes more than he shoots, and both him and Shun make more than enough firepower to keep the spiders away from Marucho, who snipes them a safer route back the way they came, as the swarm chases them like an unified unit.
The swarm doesn’t seem to settle, the spiders managing to get good bites at them, their quantity heavily outclassing the group’s. Shun feels as the fangs pierce and scratch at his legs, and when they sink into his arm when one of them manages to cling to him mid-punch, and thankfully they’re not poisonous, but they thrash and tear, and Shun has to remember all of his lessons in self-control in order to not vomit at the repulsive sound of tearing and gurgling that comes with them feasting in between their escape.
(They end up tearing at some of his clothing as well, and the night breeze scrapes through his skin, mockingly, and he can feel himself trembling again. The need to survive is far stronger than the instinct he has to huddle closer around himself and pray he won’t succumb to the cold. Neither option is a good way to die.)
It’s due to Baron’s cry of alarm, and the distant light of the bar, that a cruel reminder settles onto their minds, mocking.
If they ran back to the bar, not only would they expose civilians to the supernatural, and many of them would be killed.
If they stayed, they’d be overwhelmed by the spiders, slowly torn to death, with no one to rescue them.
In the end, it’s Skyress who makes the decision.
She stops, while the rest of them run, and for a moment in his terror, Shun is confused, but then this feeling is replaced by panic, as Skyress runs towards the giant spider, sinking her clawed gloves into the monster’s torso. Shun screams, he screams and screams and screams his throat raw, and then there are strong arms around him, dragging him away, away, away from Skyress, and he thrashes and kicks and screams, even though he knows he shouldn’t, and he becomes irrational. He reaches out, and he can only watch as the spiders swarm around her, and he barely hears her shout:
“Shun! I love you!”, then, to someone behind Shun, “Take care of him! Take care of my little boy!”
As if under a trigger, he elbows the person holding him, manages to struggle free, and then he’s running again, this time towards the direction of the swarm. He hears people panicking behind him but he doesn’t have it in him to care. He nearly dives onto the nearest spider like a wild animal, and there’s strength in desperation, and the sound of flesh being torn by metal is marked by the sickly crunch of exosqueleton as he tries to keep those things from swarming her.
But then, she stops, as if hypnotized by the symbol’s glaring red glow, and the spiders finally manage to swarm her. Shun can’t look away, and his screams can’t drown out the sound of flesh being shredded apart, of bones being snapped in two, as he watches as Skyress, his second mother, whom he finally had back, whom was willing to once again fight at his side and be family again, gets her skin torn from muscle, limbs broken and ripped from body, head smashed and entrails spill onto the swarm, as the gut-wrenching sounds of gore and Shun’s horrified pleas fill the entire forest.
There is a second voice screaming. And a third, and a fourth, as Shun is yanked away again, and a flare sizzles past Shun’s peripheral and hits the giant spider’s mouth.
It bursts into flames, its smaller underlings squirming and screeching as the licking fire quickly consumes them, as the smell of burning meat overwhelms them and makes them want to choke. In front of that giant pyre, they all collapse, tired, heaving and clearly hurt, the warmth of the fire melting away the rush of adrenaline and letting the pain of the spider bites and their aching muscles to collapse them onto the muddy earth.
It was over.
Shun forces himself to get up. He pries away from the person holding him, and crawls closer to the pyre. He kneels at the pile of spider limbs and mud, where Skyress’s mangled torso stood, limp, at the very top, burning away into already exposed flesh to charred bone. Without a word, Shun huddles closer, and he doesn’t have the energy to cry, not yet.
He barely pays attention when the flames trickle down and start to burn the grass and the trees around them. He barely pays attention when rain starts to pour down on them, extinguishing the fire and soaking Shun’s already trembling frame. He barely pays attention to the Vestal’s distant cries of alarm coming closer. He only reacts when he feels familiar, strong arms slowly wrap around him, trying to gently coax him to look away from the now coal black pile of charred bone and black mud in front of him.
He takes one last look at the mockery of a pyre in front of him, and he remembers. Remembers back when Skyress was just the cranky lady that sometimes visited his mom, back when she used to take care of him when mom was away for work, back when she’d take him to the park, to a playground, to wherever he wanted, even without his grandpa’s approval, back when she first told him of her pilot days, when she laughed at his starry eyes, when she scooped him up and placed him on her shoulders, said that one day, when Shun was older, she’d take him to fly with her, to see the sky and the clouds and the stars up close, back when their laughter filled the room, amidst grandpa’s complains, when Shun said he’d be a superhero when he’d grow up.
He remembers, and he pines, and he prods and stabs at his wound, who used to be so old, and it bleeds. He finds it in himself to cry, to let his tears mix with the rainwater, to bury his face into the figure’s shoulders, barely caring for the itchy feel of the soaked wool. The cries that come out of him are strained, rough, foreign, but he doesn’t care. The trembling of his arms, the paleness of his hands, the blue that slowly creeps up at him like a parasite, they’re all too real, but he doesn’t care. Shun’d rather freeze. He’d rather die. At least then he’d be able to follow Skyress to where she was going, at least she wouldn’t be leaving him again.
It’s cold. Far too cold.