Work Text:
He would write a sentence or two, or even a paragraph, and erase it furiously a moment later. He would sometimes take entire finished pages, tear them apart, and toss them in the trash to be eternally lost. His hands ached from the amount of writing he’d done - both of them, for when one hand grew too tired, shaking and trembling, he would switch to the other.
How long had he been writing? He had lost all concept of time. That didn’t matter anymore. More importantly, what number page was he on? At what point in the plot…?
When he would write her name, he would write it slowly, beautifully, lingering over each katakana.When he would write his name, he would write it as fast as possible, the kanji sloppy and awful. That person didn’t deserve the honor of even having his name written… and he hated seeing it.
Whenever Tohya had to see ‘Battler’, it reminded him that he was not Battler… but that he had once been him.
He sighed as he finally finished the last page of the work. It wasn’t as if it would be the final draft, of course… Even if he could come up with the ideas, he was aware that he was a poor writer, and that Ikuko was far superior in that respect. But it was a rough draft, a detailed outline mixed with certain lines or bits of prose that he thought would fit perfectly at so-and-so point.
Tohya knew that if he dared to try to proofread it, he would end up destroying the entire draft. He always felt that his writing was flawed, imperfect, inferior. After rereading Sayo’s works, so elegant and precise, over and over, as well as Ikuko’s… he fully understood that. Tohya comprehended and accepted the fact that his hands and his mind were pathetically, laughably incapable.
He sighed as he took the pile of pages and placed it in a binder for safekeeping, and then checked the time. Ikuko always kept such an odd schedule that even he could never know if she was available at any given time or not, but surely 5 AM in the morning wouldn’t be convenient for her…
He sighed, trying to resist the urge to reread, to look over his words. In order to better resist that urge, he turned the lights off and got into his bed, pulling the blankets up over him until even his head was covered.
Tohya took a few deep breaths. Surely, he could sleep and wait until morning. …No, wasn’t that awful of him? Right now, somewhere, Ushiromiya Battler’s little sister was suffering, and Yasuda Sayo’s soul was writhing in agony…
So right now. Right now. Didn’t he have to take every second he could to do better? It was his fault, after all.
If only Hachijo Tohya hadn’t been born, Ushiromiya Ange would still have had her brother. If only he’d held onto their hand more tightly, had opened his eyes before they’d jumped, hadn’t told them to live when all they wanted was to die, they might still have been alive.
But he was the one that was alive. And Ushiromiya Battler was ‘alive’ too, a shadow always haunting him, creeping in the back of his brain. Like if he let his guard down… Hachijo Tohya would be killed, and that stranger, that old friend, Battler… would take his place.
He wished that Ikuko was here right now. He needed her. Her hands were always so cold that they reminded him of where and when he was. Her words were always so kind, always guiding him in the right direction, pushing him to write more when he needed it, because it was painful to write sometimes.
Should he have felt guilt or disgust for killing Ushiromiya Battler’s family over and over, when it was meant to be his own? Should he have felt regret for the pain he caused Ushiromiya Battler’s childhood friend… and the author he so admired and emulated? He didn’t feel any of those things. That was precisely what made writing so chilling, what made him have to start and never, never stop.
He ‘should’ have felt those things. Because he didn’t… he was reminded of the ‘wrongness’ of his existence.
Even though he was twisted like this, Ikuko would smile at him, gently placing her hand over his. And she would tell him to do it for Ange’s sake, for Sayo’s sake, for his fans’ sake. She would tell him that she loved working with him, a small smile on her face, and weren’t they a partnership?
So, he was endlessly grateful to Ikuko. Without her, Tohya wouldn’t have been capable of doing anything. Perhaps he would have even died, would have let Battler kill him. Though really, since it was her that had saved him from becoming roadkill in the first place, it was a pointless hypothetical.
Tohya didn’t want to think about living without Ikuko. She didn’t love him, and was merely his friend, his savior. And yet… he loved her. She always drew away when he reached out to her, busy and reticent and quiet as she was, like he was reaching out to the moon hung in the sky above.
So he understood that he was too pathetic to be loved by anyone. Hachijo Tohya was her partner in writing, and her partner in writing alone. That was all he had been given, and he was satisfied with that.
This was his atonement for everything.
As Tohya thought over this quietly, there was a small knock at the door. He got up and answered it.
“Ikuko…” he whispered quietly. “It’s an early hour.”
“I saw your light was on earlier,” Ikuko replied, dressed in a nightgown that clung too close to her skin. “So I came to see.”
“I finished the draft,” he said. “But I didn’t want to bother you…”
She shook her head, chuckling quietly. “Oh, don’t worry. There’s never any harm in trying, now is there…? But you truly shouldn’t stay up so late,” she scolded. “It leads to sloppy writing.”
He winced. “Ah, well… I…”
She sighed. “It’s fine, Tohya. I’ll be vigilant when looking it over later.”
And now he’d gone and made extra work for her, hadn’t he… He clenched his fists, despising himself all the more.
“Sorry… shall I get it for you, Ikuko?” he asked.
She stepped into the room, from the light into the darkness. “Tohya. Are you looking at me?” She placed one hand over her chest and smirked.
“I’m looking. I’m always looking at you.” And at no one else. Who else did he know, besides the maids that refused to meet his eyes?
“What is it… that you want to do, when you look at me? I was wondering about that. So I decided that I should ask you… Show me.”
…Did she… mean…?
“Would you close your eyes?” Tohya asked, and had to fight a wince the moment the words left his lips, far too similar to words from a lifetime ago.
She shook her head. “I want to see. Go ahead…”
So he drew close to her, closed his own eyes… and kissed her lips for the briefest of moments. It was his first kiss as Hachijo Tohya. He didn’t feel anything special except a slight warmth, and the urge to smile… so he smiled.
Ikuko merely looked amused as she met his gaze. “I see. If you’d like, Tohya, I can help you out in that way as well. Though, you understand my feelings for you don’t match yours, yes?”
“Of course,” he replied. Because how could Ikuko settle for a broken, fragmented person like him? She deserved far better. “For… for tonight…” He was thinking that this was enough for tonight.
“Do you want me to sleep with you…?” she asked quietly.
Now that he’d been given the idea, he nodded. Someone to be with him, so that he wouldn’t be alone. Even if it was - no, why was he thinking that? If it was Ikuko, surely he wouldn’t be tormented by so many thoughts and memories and dreams.
“I’m sorry, but not tonight… but good night, Tohya. Could you give me your draft? I’ll go over it and make corrections to discuss in the morning,” Ikuko answered.
…Of course he’d demanded too much of her. He was always demanding too much of her. “Sure,” he said, and gave her the binder. “You have a good night as well.”
Ikuko nodded and left, leaving Tohya behind. He didn’t have anything now, his writing taken from him to be put into the hands of someone far better, far more skilled. Not that that was even ‘writing.’ It was just a draft of an outline, just the skeleton and rudimentary basics of a story that Ikuko had to put so much work into turning into something that people could actually enjoy…
He laid back down on the bed for a moment… and began writing in his head. She would notice if he turned the lights on. So, within the internal world of his mind, he crafted a story, and then tore it apart. Over, and over, and over…
Because he was too pathetic to be able to put those dear to him to rest, too pathetic to solve the dissonance between himself and Ushiromiya Battler, too pathetic to be loved by Ikuko, too pathetic to go visit Ange.
In short, Hachijo Tohya was a person that failed at everything he did. At that thought, he sighed. He already knew that, and had known it for a long, long time. He was merely swirling around in the stew of his own self-hatred, slowly being dissolved in the broth and froth of his own emotions.
Tohya didn’t want to hate himself. Surely no person wished to do so. But because he hated Ushiromiya Battler, he had to compare himself to him. Unlike him, Battler had been very friendly, and was beloved and missed by many. Unlike him, Battler had parents who loved him.
Being so inferior to the person one had once been, was born from, whose body one shared… would make anyone hate themselves.
The one thing he had over Battler was that he knew the truth, and he did his best to understand Sayo. So in Banquet, he’d almost spitefully written Battler to be so angry, so confrontational, so cruel to Beato…
And yet, in the end, it was all framed as correct, as heroic. So that those who had reached the truth would watch Battler, and condemn him, hate him, just as much as Tohya did.
In the end, Tohya was tired, and knew that even he, who was so prone to nightmares, might be able to sleep peacefully with him this exhausted. And yet, he found it hard to sleep. His mind continued to race with thoughts about Battler, about Ikuko, about Sayo, about himself.
So, at times like these… he took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and recalled a story he’d imagined for himself many times… In which Asumu hadn’t died.
Battler and Sayo were happily going to the same high school together, oblivious to the sins of the Ushiromiya family. In 1986, nothing of note occurred. And in 1987, Battler graduated high school… and in 1989, Sayo would graduate high school, too, and they would be attending the same university…
It was a comforting story, even if, or perhaps because, it was one in which he did not exist. Thinking of that miraculous world, in which everyone but him could be happy… Tohya drifted off to sleep.
Despite everything, however, now that he existed… Tohya wanted to live. Almost everyone wants to live, and is only driven to the desperation of abandoning that wish in extreme circumstances. The desire to live is imprinted deeply on humans.
However, the desire to never have existed wasn’t so easily countered by human nature. And that desire… could transform into a desire for death as well.
Hachijo Tohya had not yet realized that that was the case. However, surely, in the near future, as Battler and Tohya grew painfully closer as he continued writing forgeries… that day would come.
At that point… would Hachijo Tohya be able to die?