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The whole world has fallen apart.
To Teru Minamoto, the world does not fall apart. If it were to fall apart, it would be at the edge of his own blade.
Maybe that was exactly what had happened.
Everytime he shut his eyes, he saw his little brother’s dead body.
That was, of course, because Kou was dead. It was a sentence that felt so wrong, so terribly disjointed, that it made Teru want to claw off his own skin until he could relieve himself of the weight that he was certain would never leave.
Kou was dead.
Dead, dead, dead, gone, dead, dead-
At the edge of his blade, meant to exorcise the thing taking him over that felt far too real, Kou had vanished into nothingness. He’d died at Amane’s hand, probably in fear and helplessness, and Teru had watched him vanish from this world altogether.
The sight of his bloodied body, bent in all the wrong places, and wide, empty blue eyes was one that would certainly haunt Teru for the rest of his life. Right now, it appeared every time he closed his eyes, and sometimes when he kept them open.
So Teru didn’t close his eyes.
His head was bleeding and his friends were likely dead around him, the water freezing his unfeeling skin, but he kept his eyes open. Kou was dead at the bottom of a well right behind him, the stench of dead bodies strong and pungent, but if Teru shut his eyes, he’d see it all over again.
Kou was dead.
There was only one thing Teru feared in the entire world, and it was for Kou and Tiara’s safety. Only one was threatened on the regular, even if he never could have imagined it happening. He never let his thoughts trail down the path of Kou dying, because if he thought it, he was opening the world up to the possibility.
Kou died.
He died alone, and scared, and at the age of fifteen-
“President?”
For a moment, Teru thought he’d really gone mad. His head was fuzzy and warm.
An unclear amount of time ago, he’d slashed Amane one last time. The black goop hadn’t risen yet, and it appeared that they’d temporarily put an end to the tormentor that killed his baby brother.
Akane was sprawled on the stairs, unconscious, probably dead. There was blood dripping down them. Teru didn’t remember how that happened. On the other side of the room, face up in the water, had been Aoi.
Teru moved his gaze to see the shape appearing in front of him.
Blessedly, it wasn’t Amane.
Everyone was dead, and all Teru could see was Kou’s body at the bottom of that well. He saw his toothy smile as he vowed to be an exorcist at every different age, because he’d always made that vow, unaware that it would lead to his death.
“President.”
A hand landed on his shoulder, and Teru reached for his sword. It wasn’t there. Was it in the water somewhere? He supposed that it didn’t matter. Yashiro must have escaped by now.
Everything had always been to protect those he loved, and there weren't many people who fell under that umbrella. Teru was perfect, because if he wasn’t, Kou would be asked to be perfect. He struck down every supernatural, because as long as he did it, Kou would get to be a kid.
A kid who was dead-
“Minamoto!”
Teru blinked away the image of Kou’s dead-- dead, dead, dead-- body to see Aoi in front of him, glasses lost long ago and forehead dripping blood.
He was alive.
Two of them were alive.
“Yashiro made it out.”
Yashiro was going to fix things. If she didn’t, Teru was going to die in this cursed house, and that was the only other fate for him. There was no life without Kou. There was no point.
Yashiro was going to go back in time and undo whatever the clock keepers had changed. She would bring back the old timeline, and this would all be a bad dream. If Teru was lucky, he wouldn’t even remember it.
(Wouldn’t remember Kou’s dead body.)
“She’s going to fix this,” Teru said, his voice hoarse.
Aoi moved closer to slump in front of him. Teru made no attempt to move, content slumped against the well.
Kou was dead beneath him.
Dead.
Teru’s head turned before he could stop it, looking at the red-stained bricks of the well.
A hand landed on the side of his head, strangely gentle, and brought him away from the sight of Kou’s body. He wouldn’t be able to peer down from here, but it was too close for comfort. He was right behind him.
In front of him, Aoi had a hand on his face, which Teru would usually kill him for.
“Just keep looking this way.”
For the first time, Teru realized just how strange Aoi’s voice sounded. It was him, but it sounded like he’d been strained, like orange juice without the pulp. The pulp was the best part, according to Kou.
The dirt on Aoi’s face had been sliced through by wet stains from his eyes. His eyes were dry now, even as they unsteadily glanced to their left, where the staircase with Akane’s body ascended.
Without thinking, Teru’s hand landed on his cheek, as if he was going to slap him.
“Eyes over here,” Teru murmured.
A harsh noise ripped itself out of Aoi’s mouth, something between a laugh or a sob. For a moment his face scrunched up, before it went slack again. Brown eyes looked at Teru, and Teru kept his gaze on Aoi. They were surrounded by their dead loved ones, hoping against all odds that this would all disappear before they knew any better.
It would disappear, or they would die. There was no living in this world, not for Teru.
“Do you think she’s dead?”
“It doesn't matter,” Teru said, sounding slightly more like himself.
Both of their hands had retracted, but they didn’t move their heads, as if they were still being held in place. Everytime Teru blinked, he was forced to see Kou’s body.
Teru didn’t know how to cry even if he wanted to, but he felt like this was a moment that called for it. He remembered crying after his mom died. He’d held Kou on the couch many nights, all by their lonesome, as Kou asked pointless questions through sobs. He always tried his best not to let Kou see the tears welling in his own eyes.
Was that the last time he cried?
Did Kou ever remember that this wasn’t their world? He must have, if he came to this house. Teru hoped that he didn’t. He hoped that he got to live in a world where their mom was alive, if nothing else.
If he didn’t get to live at all.
He would be alive. Yashiro would fix it, or Teru would die here, too.
“She’s gonna fix it,” Aoi murmured, more to himself than Teru, if he had to bet.
This time, it was Teru who made the noise. Something rapidly welled up within him that he couldn’t keep down, and suddenly, it ripped itself from his lungs. He wasn’t sure if it was a laugh or a sob, either. Based on the sudden shock crossing Aoi’s face, he wasn't the only one.
“It’s either that, or we die down here,” Teru said, feeling hysterical.
Aoi didn’t laugh, but he didn’t make fun of him, either. It was absolutely unprecedented.
He supposed that it was an unprecedented time overall.
Teru had been knocked off his high horse. The moment they got through those doors and saw Kou pulling Yashiro to her death, whatever had been keeping him together all these years snapped. He’d known, even as he hoped for anything else, that Kou was already dead. He had a sixth sense for these type of things. As he jumped down the staircase, sword raised as he screamed Kou’s name, the tether that had kept him functioning for so long fell apart.
There was no mask to put up, no perfection to be achieved. There was no point in exorcising anything, or in convincing Aoi that he was anything other than what he felt.
Teru was suddenly reminded that he was only human, he was only a teenager, and he was only a brother. He was nothing more than that, not in the face of such a devastating loss. Even when his mom died, he had Kou to live for. Now, he couldn’t imagine ever going home to Tiara without him.
Years after years of throwing away any chance of a normal life, pushing himself to be the best exorcist his family had ever seen, were wasted. Yet, that fact meant nothing when Kou was simply dead. He wasn’t mourning for himself; no, Teru Minamoto had no idea how to feel for himself, and he wasn’t going to start now. He could only see the life that Kou would never live, not in this world.
Did he cry as Amane killed him?
Another hoarse sound ripped itself from his throat, and this time, Aoi’s eyes softened, rather than widening.
“Did you do the paperwork for student council?”
Teru suddenly saw Aoi again. He hadn’t looked away, because if he looked away he’d be faced with the dead body of his little brother, but everything had become fuzzy. He blinked and saw Kou, hair matted with blood.
“Of course I did,” Teru said, as if he hadn’t just been untethered from everything that made the student council matter.
“Did you see those insane requests from the photography club?”
Teru tried to hold his eyes open, fearful of seeing Kou’s body again. Aoi’s lip was quivering, but there he was, talking about student council.
He grabbed the lifeline, probably saving them both.
“The drama department is worse, even if we can’t tell anybody that.”
There was no way to say for sure, but Teru swore that he saw Aoi wilt with relief.
“Don’t be a prude, it’s for a fun purpose. They get to be excessive, just this once.”
“And last year, and the year before that, and the one before that…”
Teru wasn't sure when he first saw Aoi, but he remembered the first time he took notice of him. He tried to be aware of everyone, to keep up appearances, but that was a talent that took years to refine.
He and Akane had been at some sort of event, paired together because they were voted the two top students, and Aoi had interrupted everything to confess his feelings to Akane. It had been so annoying. Teru found it obnoxious, so he flirted with Akane just to piss Aoi off. It became a game of sorts.
The moment Aoi got to high school, he’d arrived in the student council, where Teru had been contentedly making space for himself during his first year. He could still hear the huff that Aoi let out when he saw him.
Their song and dance continued, even as Teru found out that he was a supernatural. If anything, that fact made Teru more open to interacting with him, if only to keep an eye on him.
It became nice, talking to someone who was aware of the same otherworldly elements that he was, even if Teru would never in a million years admit it. He watched Aoi confess to Akane every other day, and he never stopped annoying him in response. Sometime during this school year, with the continuous turbulence, he’d accepted that he liked Aoi’s presence. He trusted him to a fault, and he could let down the mask of perfection with him, even slightly. That was more than he ever did with anyone else.
If there was anyone that he had to be stuck with, waiting to be reset or to die, it would be Aoi.
“You just hate fun,” Aoi grimaced.
“No, I find flirting with Akane very fun.”
Aoi’s eyes widened and his mouth opened to shout, but he quickly froze as if he’d been struck. His head shifted left, and Teru raised a hand to press against his cheek before he could. He shouldn’t have brought her up, but it was a habit.
“Sorry,” he murmured, not used to apologizing so casually.
Aoi blinked, taking a deep, shaky breath. Teru could see his baby brother, dead at the bottom of a well, wishing for the wellbeing of a boy who died long ago. He saw his smile in those final moments, the same smile that Teru could remember a thousand times before. It was the same smile he’d see in the mirror, if he were able to conjure such a pure thing.
“Are you gay?”
The question punched the image of Kou away and brought Teru back to reality, sitting in the water, leaning against the wall that housed his dead brother.
If the circumstances were different, Aoi would have been cackling.
“Sounds like you could be.”
A noise came from Aoi, but this time, it was a scoff. He rolled his eyes hard enough that it must have hurt his steadily bleeding injury, but he didn’t react. Teru didn’t feel much, either.
“How many times have you seen me confess to Ao-Chan? Don’t be stupid. You’re deflecting.”
“You could swing both ways,” Teru shrugged, the act sending pain through his entire upper body.
“You’re deflecting,” Aoi repeated.
Teru chuckled, more habit than anything. There was nothing in him that could laugh, not anymore, maybe not ever again, even if this was all resolved. He’d merely become used to it, but right now, he needed that.
“I never thought about it. It doesn’t matter too much to me. I’ll be in an arranged marriage to continue the Minamoto line, and that’s that.”
Aoi huffed, his eyes scrunching slightly in what must have been pain. Teru couldn’t tell how he was injured beside his head, but it didn’t matter. They weren’t surviving in this world. Nothing would matter, and Yashiro would restore their world. Kou would be alive. He had to be.
“If you had a choice, though?”
Teru looked at blue pupils surrounded by brown. He’d always found his eyes so captivating, so he supposed that now they were suitable to stare into. They were much better than the image of Kou’s lifeless blue eyes--
He shuddered and refocused on what he could see. Blue pupils, brown irises.
“I’ve never really found anyone attractive. I don’t get how people have crushes without knowing someone. Even if you’re… a lot when it comes to Akane, I can at least respect that about you. You know her.”
Teru knew that Akane hid beneath layers of fake smiles and kindness, similar to himself, but Aoi saw through more of it than either of them thought. He had to, having known her for so long.
Aoi frowned, and Teru realized he’d mentioned Akane again. It was painful, the shadow of her unconscious body in his peripheral vision and the fact that she and Aoi were so terribly inexplicably bound together. Teru would lose it if Aoi kept mentioning Kou to him.
His head began to turn instinctually, but a hand stopped him before he could. He forced his eyes open, away from the horrifying image of Kou’s body.
“Well I guess you just don’t really let anyone know you well enough to get there.”
Blue irises, brown eyes, like the fall leaves when the blue sky shone between them. No disaster, no death, just leaves and the sky behind them. This world needed to be destroyed.
He hoped that Yashiro was finding success.
The world was getting fuzzier.
“You’re probably right.”
Aoi’s eyebrows went up, the shadow of what would have been a smile on any other day appearing, “That’s a first.”
“Don’t let it get to your head.”
“You’re one to talk.”
It was impossible for Teru to smile with Kou’s body appearing when he had to blink every few seconds, but he might’ve, in another world.
Another world.
Their world.
“Let’s talk about this again in our world.”
Aoi swallowed again, clearly grappling with the fact that they might never go back. Teru couldn’t accept that. There was no living in this world, not now.
“Okay?” Teru asked, his voice cracking. Aoi didn’t acknowledge it.
His whole body felt weighed down into the water beneath them, tingly and heavy. The bad feeling he’d had ever since they entered this godforsaken house had multiplied infinitely, sitting on his limbs and body like a thousand pound weight. He couldn’t move even if he wanted to.
Even when Akane woke him up after Amane’s attack, Teru had thought about remaining still. Then Akane explained that they needed Yashiro to get away, and that spurred him into action.
He wasn’t moving again, not in this world. He was probably on his way to bleeding out.
Unconsciousness would be a blessing.
“Okay, yeah.”
Teru could feel what little grasp on his control he had slipping away at the image of Kou’s dead body that wouldn’t stop appearing in his mind. He would never get it out, not really. His little brother was dead, and he was the one who exorcised him. Teru wished there was someone to take care of him, the way he tried to take care of Kou.
He’d failed, though. Kou was dead.
“Did you do your homework?” Teru choked out.
“No, actually,” Aoi jumped at the opportunity to speak. “I need to.”
“What class?”
“Math.”
“Is it still statistics?”
“Yeah. I can do it, I just hate it.”
Teru opened his mouth to mock Aoi, well aware that Akane helped him on much of the statistics homework, before remembering her body on the stairs.
“That’s what you’ll say next time you ask for help, I’m sure.”
“I’d die before asking you for help, Pres.”
They stared at each other in silence, trying to keep up the playful rivalry the way they always would.
Aoi wilted first, letting out a shaky breath as his eyes got too glassy for Teru’s liking. If Aoi fell apart, Teru would fall apart, and he would fall hard. He’d never fallen apart before, not really. Kou was dead behind him, though. He wasn’t in this world anymore, wasn’t waiting to send Teru a text, cook dinner, or say something naive.
Teru’s throat felt clogged.
“This is torture,” Aoi laughed wetly.
Teru huffed a laugh before cutting it off, the lump in his throat getting too close for comfort. He couldn’t fall apart. He wasn’t allowed to fall apart.
If he fell apart, it would all fall on Kou.
Except Kou was dead.
The sob that Teru was trying desperately to keep down came out with his next breath. His eyes stung for the first time since his mom died.
A cold hand landed on his own in the water, squeezing at unfeeling fingers. Teru took deep breaths and swallowed down the rest of the lumps threatening to come out.
He squeezed the hand back, lost in the leaves and the sky peaking between them.
Nothing was okay. Nothing might ever be okay again.
“Can I sit beside you? I’m getting dizzier.”
Teru was a little scared for Aoi to move; scared of what he would see if he wasn’t lost in his eyes. But, for this to end, they needed to be able to go unconscious.
He nodded and nudged his head to the right, where Aoi wouldn’t be able to see Akane as well.
Aoi moved with slow, staggered movements that Teru’s slowing mind only halfway picked up. In the two seconds that he was left staring at the wall instead of Aoi’s eyes, his gaze wandered behind him.
When he looked over, wishing for a hand to guide him away, he saw Aoi’s eyes wide and teary gaze, stuck on the stairwell. He lifted a hand and pushed his head against the back of the well, turning on his side with labored breaths to fully obscure his vision.
They were back at their stalemate, staring into each other's eyes.
Fresh tears slid down Aoi’s face, and Teru wouldn’t dare make fun of him.
Neither of their breaths were even as they adjusted, shoulders against the well and the opposite hands still linked. It was unclear whether their shaky breaths were from the strain of the movement or devastation of the situation.
“Do you think we’ll remember this?” Aoi’s voice was frail.
“I don’t see why we wouldn’t,” Teru’s own wasn’t far off.
Aoi’s lips curled in what could have been a cry, if he let it, “Damn. We’re never getting over this, are we?”
Teru scrunched his eyes before immediately opening them again, faced with the sight of his little brother’s open mouth in death. Did he cry out when Amane killed him?
If he spoke, he would cry.
He stared at Aoi, who didn’t question it at all.
Everything was becoming hazier.
Teru wasn’t sure what possessed him, but he took a deep, wobbly breath.
“I just wanna give him a hug.”
It was nothing more than a broken whisper, loud when he didn’t want it to be as his voice cracked. He didn’t care about anything else, not until that happened. All he wanted was to hug his little brother. He wanted to see the light in his eyes and the breaths that he took.
His eyes burned.
The hand wrapped around his fingers squeezed, and he squeezed back, hardly conscious of what he was doing. He was merely a consciousness in a void.
Aoi nodded, as if to say you will, without being able to guarantee it. He seemed so determined. It made Teru feel small, something that he wasn’t used to. The patch of sky within the leaves was small behind the glossiness in Aoi’s eyes.
There was a splash as Aoi lurched forward, his free arm wrapping around Teru’s neck.
It took a moment for Teru’s slowing mind to process the hug.
He’d really wanted a hug.
He wrapped his own free arm around Aoi’s waist and leaned his head onto his shoulder, wishing for his eyes but finding comfort in the warmth of a living body. All Teru could see was a tangled mess of reddish brownish hair, and that was good enough.
The hand on his neck was shaky, but so was Teru’s arm around Aoi’s waist. He hadn’t noticed until now.
“The sooner we pass out, the sooner this is over,” Aoi said tersely.
“Guess you can never say I torture you again, compared to this, huh?”
Aoi’s chest shook against Teru’s, but he didn’t think it was laughter. He felt Aoi’s breath on his neck, clearly trying to hide his own gaze from the room around them.
“We’ll see about that,” Aoi murmured.
Teru’s eyes stung horribly.
He wanted to see Kou, alive and smiling. Even crying. Anything but dead.
“I won’t shut my eyes.”
Aoi leaned back, and Teru almost leaned forward to chase the warmth, but he was met with Aoi’s wet eyes once again. Neither of their arms moved from around the other, but this way, they were able to look at each other.
Teru felt the small amount of sanity he had left unraveling, along with his consciousness. He would be out soon, if he could without shutting his eyes.
“Then let’s just stay like this. We’ll pass out, or she’ll fix things.”
Teru nodded, unaccustomed to listening to others but needing the solidarity more than ever.
“The clock keepers are gonna kill me,” Aoi’s voice was getting hazier. Teru wasn’t sure if that was his own consciousness fading, or Aoi’s. Maybe it was both.
“We’ll take care of that.”
It was an empty promise, but one that they both knew Teru would follow through on, if given the chance. If it came to that; if they ever woke up outside of this room; if Kou was ever alive again.
Teru stared at the leaves, and the sky, and everything in between. If he looked away, he would fall apart altogether, and he wasn't sure he’d ever be able to come back from that. If they got out of this, he still had to be there for Kou. He had to remain stable enough to give Kou a life worth living, if he ever breathed again.
Leaves, the blue sky, and the rain all around it.
Teru would never be sure if they were in that room for minutes, hours, or days, trapped waiting for their reality to change from this horrible ending.
Eventually, his mind paused enough for his eyes to fall shut without any visions behind them, and he was freed from the miserable reality he never thought could be possible.
He was going to hug his brother, and he would never let go.