andrew_in_drag | House of Cards: 26/?? (Reply)

Title: House of Cards
Author:

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: THE GHOST

For Toshiya, the next few days seemed to blur together, and he had difficulty disentangling the fact from his fitful dreams. Kyo was an unseen but heavily felt presence, tucked away ill in some corner of the house, but that didn't stop Toshiya from falling into nightmares that saw the shateigashira stalk him as he navigated strange landscapes, forests where mirrors grew from the ground and turned slowly, distorting the true paths; places where the sun was a distant pinprick and sand rippled like water underfoot. In his dreams he was never found, but the implied threat lingered like a fog over his waking hours. He tried to talk himself out of it, but the fact remained that Kyo was yet to punish him, and now that the fact of Uruha's death had sunk in, he was terrified that he might meet the same fate. Locked up in the cell, it seemed entirely too plausible that at any second a shot would ring out, and he would slump to the floor; that a strong pair of hands would clamp around his throat or a knife would be thrust squarely between his shoulder blades.

And he didn't want to die. After everything, that was a relief: that life could be bad but he would still want it; that he might never escape but it would still be worth it. Every time the floorboards outside the cell creaked and he tensed up, every time Die brought him food and he jumped, even every time he flinched when he heard cars pull up outside: all of it was proof that his life, miserable as it was, was something he desperately clung to.

When the nights grew long, he wondered why exactly that was.

On a grey, rainy morning on the last day of November, Die unchained Toshiya and silently helped him to his feet.

“Time to go,” he said.

“Go?” Toshiya asked, “Go where?”

“Back,” Die said simply.

“But...but Kyo...?”

His unasked question hung in the air, but Die just shrugged.

“He told me to take you away. I asked where, but he told me to stop being an idiot, so I figure there's only one place he could have meant.”

“Oh.” Toshiya hesitated, knowing he should keep his mouth shut but unable to fight the question rising in his throat; it was the same question that had been on his mind every day since they had been betrayed: “But what about...what about my punishment? And what about Aoi? Is he—?”

“Aoi's gone,” Die interrupted gently.

There was an uneasy quiet filled only by the sound of the raindrops pecking against the windows, and carefully Die took Toshiya by the arm and started to lead him downstairs.

“Oh,” Toshiya mumbled, “Well, that's...it's good. I mean, he's free now, right?”

“He was always free,” Die said, “He only ever worked to help Uruha. But...”

There was a heavy pause.

“It wasn't so simple,” Die continued at last. “You know...he saw a lot...too much, you know?”

They had stopped on the small platform that broke the stairs into two separate flights where they took a right angle, and they showed no sign of continuing on. Die wasn't holding Toshiya anymore, either: he was standing and facing him quite casually, leaning his weight against the wall as he wrestled with words.

“He had to sign something,” Die confessed, “A – a confession. We cleaned off the gun and...he had to put his fingerprints on it.”

“You made him touch the gun?” Toshiya breathed.

“And – and say it was him who killed Uruha. Yeah.”

Die watched nervously as Toshiya's face changed. His jaw set and impossible though it was, his eyes seemed to darken, become harder: it only occurred to Die later that, in that instance, he looked eerily like the shateigashira.

“Die,” Toshiya said, “I want to see Kyo.”

“What? No, you can't.”

“Fuck off,” Toshiya said bitingly, “I want to see him. Now.”

“Toshiya—!” the younger man had made to start heading back up the stairs, and Die grabbed his arms quickly, “You can't go in there and scream at him, he's sick!”

“Oh, bullshit! If he's well enough to run his little empire from his bed, he's well enough to see me!”

“Toshiya—” Die struggled to hold him, “Stop!”

“No! He's hearing me out, he's going to—”

“He doesn't want to see you!” Die burst out. “He told me to take you away because he doesn't...he doesn't want to.”

“He'll see me soon enough anyway,” Toshiya argued, “When he comes to visit!”

“I...” Die bit his lip as Toshiya stared at him, and shook his head lightly. Gradually, the tension seemed to leave Toshiya's arms and shoulders and face, leaving him looking young and vulnerable; he opened his mouth as if to speak, but said nothing.

“I don't think so,” Die said softly. “He's – I just don't think so, Toshiya. I'm sorry.”

He was relieved when the younger man looked away from him, staring firmly off into the corner to hide his face.

“He will come,” Toshiya muttered firmly. “He won't stay away. He'll come.”

And Die didn't say anything, and when he touched Toshiya's shoulder, the other man flinched him away violently.

He allowed himself to be led, though. Out of the house and into the car, where the angle was so steep that he couldn't possibly see the gap in the blinds above; the gap where tattooed fingers pushed the slats apart; where dark, sad eyes watched him leave.

It was still raining when Shinya clipped on Miyu's lead and coat and hustled her out of the front door for some exercise. His heart was beating very, very fast, and because of it he kept her close to him. He could feel her reading his fear: when he hesitated on the stone steps, she didn't tug or chew at his pants leg; instead, she sat very still, her pointy little ears stiffly upright and alert.

“It's alright,” Shinya said, both to himself and his little dog. His hands shook slightly as he opened up his umbrella, and he tried to smile down at the chihuahua reassuringly. She continued to stare up at him; evidently, she wasn't buying it.

And no wonder, Shinya thought bitterly: he wasn't even buying it himself – his own stupid lies and he couldn't make himself believe them. He was afraid in the kind of primal, instinctual way that belies all horror films and campfire ghost stories; there was no fear of attack, just a deep, creeping dread that held him absolutely in thrall. When he had been a child, his greatest comfort was to hide himself away. In the tiny, ramshackle house that he shared with his mother, he found the biggest cupboard – a linen closet on the upstairs landing – and tucked himself neatly away inside it, breathing in the thick woollen smell of old blankets and closing the door firmly against the light: there in the dark he would sit all day, listening to his own quiet breathing and his own quiet heart. In a world of uncertainties, the cupboard was the only place he had ever found that felt safe. His mother didn't bother him when he was in there, and she would only tug him out into the light on days when the social worker was planning a visit.

His mother said the social worker was a bitch and banged her open palm against the steering wheel when she drove him to school the next day. She would always drive Shinya to school after a visit, and Shinya knew that it was because the social worker asked her why his attendance record was so poor.

If it had been particularly bad, she would call the social worker a bitch and a cunt.

Bad words. They got under Shinya's skin and made him itch. They still made him itch years later, standing on a rain-swept street in the city, even though they made him smile as well. It was a smile that was more like a grimace. He dropped down next to Miyu and pulled her sturdy little body against his, burrowing his nose into the short ruff of fur around her neck.

He was supposed to go down to the police station and give them all the tapes from his recording equipment; he was supposed to give a report where, he knew, he would have to talk about the gunshot that had woken him up and scared him so much, and they would ask what he had seen even though he hadn't seen anything; even though he had just lain curled up like a stone in his bed, with Miyu clasped safely to him.

Who fired the shot?

Was it Die?

And who died?

Unaccountably, he wanted Die to be with him very badly. Even though it was impossible, he thought that if Die had been there, he would have had the courage to go into the police station and give them the tapes and ignore every single commuter on the subway. He would pretend they were just so many ghosts, and that any hand that tried to touch him would slide right through him like he was made of air, and any voice that tried to speak to him would simply unravel like yarn into the years that stood between them.

“We'll just go around the neighbourhood,” he told Miyu, “Okay?”

He was kidding himself, of course, but that time it seemed a little easier. He got back up and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, trying not to think too hard about where he was going. When he reached the mouth of the subway, he picked his little dog up and hugged her to his chest, feeling her steady heartbeat against him: she wasn't afraid.

He climbed down three steps, and a warm blast of fusty, soot-smelling air hit him, feeling like it could knock him back; a few seconds later, the stairway shook with impending footsteps, and he quickly backtracked. What looked like hundreds of black and grey commuters came storming out of the darkness, all brisk efficiency with their briefcases: Shinya hid his face in Miyu's fur.

Just ghosts, he thought desperately, just ghosts.

But he knew he was fooling nobody. They weren't the ghosts: he was. He had spent an entire childhood creeping through the darkest places, trying to disappear completely, and look what had happened: it had finally worked. A flash of uncommon anger surged through him: the social worker may have been a bitch and a cunt but maybe, he thought, his mother had been...maybe his mother had been a bitch, too.

The power of the word made him shiver on the street.

He whispered it aloud and it tasted unfamiliar over his tongue; had a roughness to it that he didn't like. Who had his mother been, really? He pictured her tall and willowy and standing by the table that had come only up to her waist and yet been so high for him; a striking woman with long, black, witch-like hair. It was one of the only concrete images he had of her: the rest seemed vague and indistinct, sliding in and out of focus like an old movie. Had she been happy to have him, once? He supposed she must have been. Yanking on his hair and hitting him after his father had left, she had choked suddenly on her own yells and stopped as suddenly as if he had spoken. He heard his unasked question in her answer; why did you have me?

“I just wanted a little baby to hold,” she had said, so sadly that she had started to cry, and she pushed him away repeatedly but then let him come to her: had stroked his bruises and closed her eyes. It was something so sweet, no heaven could have dreamed it up: a child taking care of an adult.

He took a deep breath, and started down the subway steps again.

House of Cards: 26/??

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