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pta-penis-time-awesome · 5 months ago

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@hajihiko and I talked about the aftereffects of All Of That (1 / 2 / 3 / 4), and you know what a good whalloping suckerpunch of angst needs? Some incredibly shameless H/C to follow it up.

(Warning for all the topics you'd expect after the physical and emotional trauma in those first posts.)

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The music had started up again.

Fuyuhiko grimaced at the familiar, bone-deep thumping that ran through the walls and into his body. He could mostly tune out the sounds themselves, but the vibrations were harder to ignore. Instinctively, he moved his pillow over his ear and hoped for the best.

Sleep came only shallowly, and cold soon woke him from it. It'd licked at his shoulder where it poked up over the blanket, but once he became aware of the cold, it was obvious that the blanket wasn't heavy enough to actually keep the rest of him warm.

He could pretend that things were tolerable as he first fell asleep, exhausted by the horrors of each fresh day. But with a few hours' sleep, his body usually woke back up to alert him of all the dangers it faced. That only made things worse. He was in this cell, as alone as he'd ever been, and his captors weren't going to help him warm himself, or heal himself, or feed himself like he really needed. Each night without recuperative sleep just sped his inevitable death a little more.

Fuyuhiko frowned under the pillow he held to his ear. Now that he thought about the music, that song sounded like… those fuckers. They probably thought this was a great goddamn joke to play on him, didn't they? For the first time, they'd gotten their hands on one of the Remnants, and so now they were reminding him of the others. Playing Ibuki's music like that had to be taunting him: we'll get her, too. Remember how she screamed this song at everyone, not too long after they woke up? We'll get all of them. Every last one.

Deeper, glacial cold ran through Fuyuhiko, and he went very, very still.

After they woke up?

He shouldn't know that.

Why did he know specifics? Why could he picture locations? Events? Names? Shit. Fuck. It hadn't worked. The memories were still there to be carved out of him. He was weaker now than he'd been at the start of everything, and he'd do his damndest to hold everything back, but it would grow harder with every passing day.

Fuyuhiko clutched the blanket tight and tried to force himself back into sleep. He needed to shore up his willpower before the torture restarted. He knew he'd be dead, soon enough, so the only control he had was over whether he betrayed everyone he cared about. He couldn't let anyone know anything about the Remnants as a whole, and more than anything, he couldn't tell them one single goddamn thing about Hajime.

Shit. Fuck. FUCK. Why had he let himself remember that name?

Nearly delirious with panic, Fuyuhiko curled in on himself and tried to pass out.

Eventually, the heavy door opened and Knife (or Stain or Red) stepped inside. Fuyuhiko froze, attempting to feign unconsciousness. If it were simply more pain coming, he could bear anything. He'd simply stop acknowledging most of the agony ripping through him, knowing that his body would probably wear out before his resolve did. But if he knew things again, 'probably' was no longer good enough. Torture suddenly mattered, again.

They called his name, and he tensed before he could help it. Damn. That'd been visible. They knew he was awake. It was about to start.

They called his name again, and reached down to grab him by the shoulder. Fuyuhiko flinched, unable to help it, and also couldn't help his grimace when the pillow was lifted away from his head. His good eye screwed tighter shut, like that'd somehow help.

His name. Again. Again. And then he was being lifted bodily out of bed, and Knife's gang was saying…

Saying… what? That didn't make sense. Saying it was okay? That he was safe? What?

Fuyuhiko risked opening his good eye, slowly enough that he could slam it shut if something came at it. What he saw didn't make any sense, either. Who was that? It wasn't Knife, Red, or Stain. Had they brought in someone new? And what was with that look of concern? Were they doing mind games, now? Trying to play good cop, bad cop after spending so long with the same approach?

"Fuyuhiko," the stranger said again, with deep worry running through his voice. "It's okay. It's okay. Look at me."

He did, and confusion slowly ebbed like fog burning off under sunlight. "Hajime?" Fuyuhiko wondered, only for adrenaline to slam into him like taking a punch. "You have to get out of here!" he cried, lunging forward to shove him. "I told you not to come! Fuck! Go!"

"Fuyuhiko," Hajime repeated in an endless, soothing stream. "It's okay. Look around. Look at where you are. You're not there. You're not there."

"Huh?" Fuyuhiko's exhaustion-fogged brain needed a few seconds to respond, and he slowly looked around the room. There were… there were windows.

Windows? His room didn't have windows. Why were there windows, then?

Because… this was the ship. He was on the ship. He'd been back here for weeks, and his memories were back by choice, and Hajime wasn't about to be captured.

Exhaling, Fuyuhiko closed his eyes and relaxed, letting Hajime hold him up with the grip he had on Fuyuhiko's shoulders. "I'm back. Sorry."

"You don't have to apologize," Hajime murmured. "Hey. Wanna look outside? It's sunny."

"I'm fine," Fuyuhiko said shortly, and pulled back. "I didn't have a damn nightmare or something. I was just… confused."

"After what you went through, it's normal to—"

"I'm fine," Fuyuhiko said in an increasingly tight voice, and pulled further away when Hajime reached for his wrist. "Ibuki screaming in the middle of the night just woke me up. S'normal to be tired when you can't sleep. Gonna let me get dressed?"

Hajime hesitated, then nodded and stepped back. "Right, sure. Sorry. Glad you're fine."

Fuyuhiko mutely nodded, and made a show of waiting for Hajime to leave so that he could dress for the day.

They'd sailed back north, at least for now. There was a military base the group knew of with pickings too good to pass up. That must have been where Hajime got the supplies for his dumbass (spectacular, overwhelming, incredible) move with the satellites.

This wasn't a commitment to settling up here, but they couldn't stay back on Jabberwock for long, and this little bay had apparently served them well enough. It was getting colder each day, though. Pretty, Fuyuhiko thought as he leaned on the railing and looked up at how very low the snowline had pushed into the evergreen forest surrounding them. But cold.

He folded his arms, enjoying the warmth of a sweater that he never would have been seen in while representing the clan, and appreciated the view. For about three minutes.

It wasn't unusual for Hajime and Peko to talk at length. For one, she'd trained herself on a lot of monitoring equipment, as had others. She, the Imposter, Mahiru, Nagito, Kazuichi, and Sonia all took shifts watching and listening for anything of note.

But those two were also the most likely to be concerned about Fuyuhiko. After his embarrassing confusion this morning, that had better not be motivating their latest conversation. Fuyuhiko watched them from a distance, talking and nodding and gesturing, and frowned when Hajime walked off first.

Toward Ibuki.

Goddammit!

"No," he hissed as he ran across the deck and grabbed Hajime by the arm.

"I just thought I could tell her to keep it down at night." Hajime shrugged. "Everyone else would probably appreciate it, too."

"I said I could handle it." Fuyuhiko's eye narrowed. "Don't say one fucking thing."

"Fuyuhiko—"

His eye drew into a mere slit. It glinted warning.

"Fine," Hajime relented. "But I think you should know that this is normal. I'm just trying to help, and it's nothing to be ashamed about."

"If you don't stop Ibuki, then is Peko gonna?"

"I…" Hajime rolled his eyes and walked off. "I'll talk to Peko."

Okay. Good. Fuyuhiko watched until he was sure that neither of them would attempt to talk to Ibuki, and wandered off toward breakfast.

That night, it was cold again.

Fortunately, music didn't blare, but the metal walls creaked ominously with the same winds that kept Ibuki below deck. Winter had arrived with a hunger, by now, and the narrow inlets along the coast funneled gusts right toward them.

Fuyuhiko curled into a ball under his blanket and tried to think of anything but cold running through his mind on repeat. Logically, he knew that it wasn't truly that bad in his room. A vent over the door radiated heat and he'd worn warm enough clothes to bed. Even so, his bed was up against the metal wall and it seemed to leech heat directly out of him and into the Canadian winter on the other side.

And all those dark memories coiling themselves around his mind thrived in the cold.

His door clicked. Annoyed, Fuyuhiko turned toward whoever had come to wake him up.

One of two expected faces was there, and it was the one who wouldn't just hand an extra blanket to him and make a silent exit. "I raided an empty room," Hajime explained, gesturing to the blanket in his hand.

Fuyuhiko sighed, about to argue that things had been spread evenly through the cabins, but stopped his own argument before he made it. It wasn't like they needed to keep those empty cabins stockpiled; they wouldn't be picking up any passengers any time soon. "Thanks, but…"

"But?"

But. But. He didn't know. The protest had been instinctive.

Hajime nodded slowly, closed the door behind him, and walked further into the cabin. "Mind talking?"

"Maybe," Fuyuhiko said wryly, and sat up. The blanket came with him and his legs folded snugly inside where it draped off his shoulders. As he sat up, he noticed an odd glow outside the portholes, like moonlight and starlight had been smeared flat against the glass. At some point, it'd started to snow. The gleaming reflection off each individual flake was dim, barely there, but there were so many of them.

Hajime sat on the other end of the bed and draped the blanket he'd brought around his own shoulders. "I'd keep waking up with his memories as my dreams."

Ah. Fuyuhiko considered Hajime, aware that his expression had slid toward sympathy in the not-really darkness, and said nothing.

"That happened again a few weeks ago, actually," Hajime continued. "When I did the satellites, I just kind of shut down all of my emotions so I wouldn't chicken out. That night, Sonia looked at me like I was… like I was someone else. Well, we started sailing for Jabberwock. A few nights into the trip, I thought about the satellites again. I remembered how she'd looked at me, and pretty soon… it wasn't me, that night."

Fuyuhiko shifted his weight on the bed and adjusted his grip on the blanket he held. "You didn't say anything."

"Right." Hajime shrugged. "I'm used to it. And I'm pretty practiced with coming back around, by now. But I guessed you weren't, yet."

Fuyuhiko laughed darkly, remembering how hard Hajime had needed to work to shatter the memories that had captured him. "Yeah. Well. What gave it away?"

"How'd that memory thing work, again? The one your dad taught you?"

The topic change caught him off guard, and Fuyuhiko needed a moment to catch up. "Uh… when there's enough pain that your brain can't think about anything else, you force an image into your head. From that point out, if you get asked about what they were trying to carve out of you, all you'll be able to remember is the new image."

Hajime's hands tightened around the blanket he held until the knuckles went tight and pale. "Right," he said after a measured pause, in a strained voice edged with outrage. "Sounds… really… handy."

Fuyuhiko smirked. It had been, but after a few desperate 'thank yous,' Hajime would never sincerely admit to that again.

"Anyway," Hajime continued, visibly trying to squelch his anger. "Think about what you just said: 'your brain can't think about anything else.'"

"Yeah, and?"

"Our brains have limits. They can only take so much. You know that, because you deliberately used your brain's limits as part of your plan." He scooted a little closer. "Well, this is just the other side of it, I guess. It's what came along as part of using that plan to." Hajime halted, swallowed, and needed a moment to continue. "To save me."

When Fuyuhiko remained thoughtfully quiet, Hajime reached for where Fuyuhiko's hand held the draped blanket shut. He ran his fingertips along a raised line on the hand's back. "You're not weak if you get a scar after you're cut, right? That's just how it works."

Fuyuhiko sat in silence for a while, then snorted faintly. "Don't pull out your Ultimate Therapist on me. Jerk."

Hajime smiled.

Sighing, Fuyuhiko tilted his head back and studied the ceiling. These stark cabin walls did look unfortunately similar to the place he'd been held for months. "So. How long's it last?"

"There are treatments we can try, if you want to."

Fuyuhiko looked uncertainly at him. "Treatments? Would I… what, have to bring Mikan into the loop?" Because there was no way.

"Don't have to. I haven't, for me."

Well. That was a positive, at least. “Didn't you say you had another bad night just recently?"

"Yeah," Hajime acknowledged. "Now that you mention it, next time we hit that military base, maybe we can check what they've got stockpiled in the pharmacy. For both of us. But even with just some mental exercises and techniques, it's a lot better than it was. I'll probably always have some bad nights, but if they're only an exception, I can deal."

Fuyuhiko nodded slowly. "Okay. So, I'd just talk with you, then?" He wouldn't with anyone else, but he could do that.

"Right. As much as you'd be up for."

Shifting awkwardly below his blanket, Fuyuhiko hesitated, then met and held Hajime's gaze. "Would you be up for it?" That earned a confused look, and he clarified, "If I start talking about exactly what they did to me, and you know it was for your sake, what's that gonna do to your own head?"

That apparently hadn't crossed Hajime's mind before it was pointed out. Concern, sympathy, and heartbreak passed through his expression in equal measure.

"Right." Fuyuhiko laughed faintly and pulled his knees tight against his chest. "We make quite a pair, huh?"

"I… look, if it helps, don't worry about my reaction. Really. It's exactly like you said: you did that for me. If me hearing about it helps you, then that's what we're gonna do."

Except that the most likely option would be Hajime needing to squelch his emotions to handle what he was hearing, and locking down his feelings did fuck-all for his mental health. "It's just gonna be you and me cycling around like this, huh?" Fuyuhiko drawled. "Each of us shoving the other out in front."

Hajime went quiet again before looking back up. His shoulders slumped slightly in resignation, for he apparently admitted that his plan had bit off too much, too early. "Okay. Then… we'll do that some day, but let's compromise right now. Let's just try to figure out what sets off your bad nights so we can hopefully avoid them. That's a good first step. Right?"

"Fair enough. But one of them is loud music, and you're not gonna mention one goddamn word of this to Ibuki. If she knows something, the whole ship'll know."

"Right," Hajime mused. "It's quiet tonight, but…" He trailed off, then asked thoughtfully, "What about ear plugs?"

"That's…" Fuyuhiko considered what it would be like if he could only feel the vibrations without any music. It might feel close enough to a ship's ongoing movement that he could convince himself that's all he was feeling. "That could help, actually." He probably should have thought of that, but he'd tried to forget his bad nights as soon as he woke from them.

Hajime grinned. "Okay, good start. Anything else?"

Fuyuhiko looked away, uncomfortably aware of how he'd been gripping his blanket like some child in a crib. "…Being cold."

Sympathy slammed into Hajime's eyes: the same overwhelmed look that Fuyuhiko remembered being directed at him while stuck in a hospital bed, when he didn't know who was staring at him in broken disbelief. "Oh. Right. Of course."

Fuyuhiko's grip flexed around the blanket. It wasn't like he was that invalid, still. It was fucking winter in fucking Canada, of course he couldn't shake off the cold.

"Uh…" Hajime scanned the room with increasing concern, clearly aware that he'd run up against the edges of Fuyuhiko's mood. "Here."

"Here?" Fuyuhiko repeated, expecting the other blanket to be draped around him. Instead, a warm set of arms embraced him around the blanket he wore, and Fuyuhiko blinked in surprise. "Uh," he managed.

"Mikan tells me I run a full degree warm," Hajime said with a grin. "Can you feel it?"

Still too surprised to protest, Fuyuhiko sat there and felt the warmth seep through the blanket, and then through his clothes, and then into him. It seemed to unknot muscles that had been tight ever since they returned to northern latitudes. "Yeah," he admitted, and relaxed.

The heat burrowed deeper and a long breath sighed out of him. "This is nice," Fuyuhiko conceded. He probably wouldn't let himself say that if he'd ever been able to get a full night's sleep. As winter's presence became inarguable, a full night's rest became impossible. Most nights weren't bad ones, not like the day before, but he always woke up midway.

He was soon so slack, so relaxed, that it took him a minute to realize his position had changed. "Huh?" Fuyuhiko blearily wondered as he looked up from the pillow he'd been laid against. Once made comfortable, his body had apparently decided to reclaim the sleep it'd missed. Immediately.

It took him another moment to realize that Hajime was also reclining, having arranged the blankets on top of them both. He noticed Fuyuhiko looking at him and lifted his eyebrows in silent question. This okay?

Fuyuhiko blinked at him in slow motion, still in awe of what it felt like to be warm, again, and to not feel alone and abandoned inside a steel cage. "You don't have a pillow," he pointed out, like it was suddenly, deeply important.

"Could raid another empty room."

He tried to say 'if you go, hurry' and 'don't lift the blankets too much.' All that actually came out was a soft, sleepy, "Mmmm." It was kind of funny, Fuyuhiko thought as he drifted off with surprising speed. Here was the person he'd gone through hell for, and yet, next to him, he had confidence that his memories would be kept safe from returning there.

Hajime grinned a little at the noise that had come out of Fuyuhiko as he toppled rapidly off the edge of consciousness. "Maybe tomorrow for a pillow."

"Mmmm," Fuyuhiko agreed, and felt his body relax out of the tight knot he'd automatically made. It was warm, finally. And no one could ever find them. That was good. That was…

Sleep took him gently but deeply, and lasted until morning.

#OGMHHGGH this ruled so much holy shit

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