RECOMMENDED SONG: I'LL STAY BY BLAS CANTÓ
Kuroo wiped the blood dripping from his nose with his forearm and ducked just in time to avoid another blow from the hunter he was fighting, a tall blond guy with glasses and a sarcastic smile on his face.
Damn he's good, Kuroo cursed. I can't beat him, not with this shitty claws.
Kuroo fought the hunters as best he could, but most of his attempts ended in nothing. His claws were weak compared to the last battle, and his fangs weren't as large or sharp as they were when he was still a true alpha. Being a delta was taking its toll on him, as much as he wielded his claws and launched himself to attack enemies, he couldn't kill them without knocking them out first, and that required a much greater effort than his body could bear. He was covered with wounds that didn't heal, he was bleeding from his nose and from several cuts along his entire skin, he had bruises and various parts of his body ached, right where he had received the blows of the bullets bathed in aconite. The bullets had been removed, but the wounds didn't close. He was screwed up and very tired, but he wasn't going to give up that easily. His red eyes glowed dull compared to those of the other alphas, but he could still see perfectly at night. He had an advantage, even more so against the four-eyed hunter he was fighting. He wasn't going to be defeated.
He raised his claws and launched an attack against the hunter's chest, but it failed to break the protective vest he was wearing. The hunter smirked and raised the weapon, but Kuroo pushed him away before he fired and deflected the weapon's shot. The hunter fell to the ground and Kuroo fell on him, claws raised and ready to lower them to slit his throat. However, he was unable to do so, as the hunter struck him in the face with the barrel of the weapon and Kuroo closed his eyes with a yelp. His mouth tasted like metal, blood spurting from his nose. He grew weaker and weaker with each blow. He was so exhausted that getting up off the ground took an enormous effort that nearly used up what little energy he had left.
The hunter aimed with a steady hand and pulled the trigger, but no bullets came out of the rifle, so he threw the weapon to the ground vehemently and drew a knife from the knife holster attached to his thigh. The shiny steel blade gave off a strong monkshood smell that made Kuroo's stomach turn. The hunter lunged at him again, knife raised, but Kuroo was faster. He stepped out of the way to avoid being hit, but still the blade caught the fabric of his shirt, which ripped from top to bottom and slid off the delta's shoulders like an old rag.
Kuroo's torso was bare, the red mark of Oikawa's fangs standing out on his tan skin. The hunter looked at him with raised eyebrows and a sly smile.
"I thought I was fighting an alpha, but I see that I am not. I thought that you were too weak, now I know why. Do we have a delta in love here, by any chance?"
Kuroo took advantage of the distraction as the hunter mocked him to push him back, but this time the hunter wasn't knocked down. He only took a few stumbling steps back before regaining his balance. He looked at Kuroo in annoyance and lunged at him with the raised knife. The blade cut into his shoulder superficially, and Kuroo almost fell to the ground from the burning pain that spread through his body, a burning that reached to the tips of his fingers but that only lasted a few seconds, because in an instant the entire arm was numb. The poison was much stronger than he remembered, but again it could be from his recent delta condition. He backed away in pain with a grunt.
The hunter lunged at him again, his knife ready to swing, his gaze fixed on Kuroo's bare chest, right where his heart was beating. Kuroo stumbled and fell to the ground on his hands.
So this is my end, he told himself. He closed his eyes resigned and tired, waiting for a death that never came.
He opened his eyes again when the waiting time was extended longer than he calculated. Instead of finding the hunter looming over him, he found him paralyzed in the middle of the battlefield, his mouth open in a silent scream that splattered drops of blood everywhere. Kuroo didn't know where the blood came from or what the hell was going on. The hunter himself looked puzzled, wide-eyed behind his glasses. Then Kuroo looked down at the hunter's stomach, where a knife was piercing him from behind. Kuroo felt even more confused at that image until Oikawa came out from behind the young man with the bloody knife in hand.
The hunter collapsed between them with a thud, dead at last after almost completely draining Kuroo's strength. Oikawa rushed to wrench the knife from the hunter's hand and then ran over to Kuroo, who was still on the ground.
"What the hell was that?" Oikawa yelled hysterically. "Were you giving up?"
"I just stumbled," Kuroo apologized. He couldn't admit that a part of him had given up, had been carried away by pain and exhaustion, and had silently begged for an end.
"Don't use your claws or fangs. Ours are useless," Oikawa said, handing him the hunter's knife. "Use this, but be careful not to cut yourself. It's bathed in concentrated aconite."
"That's why it smells so strong," Kuroo said taking the knife and examining the steel blade closely.
Oikawa nodded and looked at him worriedly. "Are you okay?"
"Yes, thanks to you."
"It's visible."
Kuroo frowned at him blankly. Then Oikawa ran his fingers over the mark of the fangs that he himself made long ago on Kuroo's shoulder. Then he ran them through his own mark, which had been left half uncovered and could be easily seen even at night. Kuroo glimpsed through Oikawa's tattered T-shirt the mark of his own teeth on porcelain skin, and an overwhelming feeling of pride and love crept into his chest. A tiny smile appeared on his lips.
"It's visible," Oikawa repeated.
"Yes," Kuroo said. "It's visible."
Kuroo caressed Oikawa's cheek with his knuckles to wipe the blood dripping from his brow and brush away the strands of hair that fell on his forehead. Oikawa was also full of wounds on his arms, legs, chest, and face; blood was pouring out of different cuts and he looked somewhat out of breath, but he didn't look as exhausted as Kuroo. His red eyes glowed dull in the night, but to Kuroo they were as pretty as they always had been, whether they were alpha's or delta's eyes. Just looking at them he felt that he regained some of his energy. He ran his thumb across Oikawa's lips, wiping away the blood from there as well. The battle seemed to stop for a moment around him as he danced in his lover's eyes.
"Is it weird that I want to kiss you right now even though we're fighting for our lives, Oikawa-kun?"
"Maybe the situation is not the best but..." Oikawa smiled fondly, "the truth is that I also want to kiss you."
A voice shouted very close to them and pulled them both out of the little bubble they had entered. "You're deltas!" the horrified voice screamed. "What the fuck is this, Oikawa!?"
Kuroo and Oikawa turned at the same time to see Terushima, who was looking at both of them alternately with wide eyes and a knife in each hand. His red delta eyes alternately roamed the marks on Kuroo and Oikawa's shoulders.
"Terushima, this is..." Oikawa started, but his voice trailed off as if being unable to give an explanation.
Kuroo tried to continue the explanation, but he was also unable. He had forgotten that Terushima was also a delta under Oikawa's command, but he was different from Kuroo because the reason for his conversion was that Oikawa dominated his pack, not because of a bite. Becoming a delta by the mark of another alpha, as Kuroo well knew, was humiliating. Or at least it should be. But not for him.
"Since when are you a fucking delta?" Terushima yelled, gnashing his fangs.
Neither Kuroo nor Oikawa could answer. They only looked at each other feeling slightly guilty, not because of the mark, but for keeping silent. In a way, it was for the best. Nobody should have known it ever, but in the middle of a battle, the most normal thing is that their condition of deltas came to light when they could not regenerate. Furthermore, the fact that their new status was known wasn't the most worrying thing at the time, but the number of hunters that were still standing. There were far fewer than at the beginning, there were many corpses lying on the ground, scattered everywhere or piled on top of each other, mixed with the corpses of the lycanthropes that had also fallen. Most of the hunters had their necks eaten, a sure sign that Sakusa had passed by.
Then a new voice was heard above the din of the fight calling for Terushima. The voice was located behind Kuroo and Oikawa, and it was that of Bokuto, who similarly to Terushima was looking at them in disbelief. However, unlike Terushima, he didn't seem angry or seek an explanation.
"This isn't the time to talk about that, Terushima!" Bokuto yelled mightily as he elbowed a hunter, knocking him down. "What happens between them is none of your business. Oikawa is still your alpha, you have no right to rise up against him. Return to the fight, there are still many hunters left!"
Oikawa held out his hand to Kuroo, who immediately took it as a foothold to help himself get up off the ground. He wiped the blood dripping from his chin and lip and gripped the knife Oikawa gave him. If he couldn't use his claws, he would find another way to fight like the betas did.
"Be careful, Kuro-chan. Promise me you won't give up until you can give me the kiss you owe me," Oikawa said with a wink before running off to continue fighting.
"I won't, I promise," Kuroo replied with a smile before raising the knife against a new enemy.
***
Oikawa whirled, arms outstretched, knives ripping through the air with a hiss. The hunter in front of him took a step back to avoid them, with such bad luck that he fell to the ground on his ass. Oikawa lunged at him and plunged one of the knives into his arm to keep him still while he cut his throat with the other. He found a second knife next to the corpse of a beta from Kuroo's pack, so he picked it up to make fighting easier. Fighting two-handed, he took down enemies more fluidly than before, faster and more effectively. He always relied on his claws and fangs to fight, although the truth is that he had undergone the same knife training as the betas. He had achieved good handling with knives, he used them as if they were an extension of his arm, which was making his job much easier now that he was a delta.
Another hunter came running to the place where his partner had just been killed, but before he could help him, Oikawa kicked him to the ground and stabbed one of the knives into his left thigh. The hunter groaned in pain as he clutched the leg from which blood began to gush out. Oikawa got up from the ground and looked at him guiltily: the hunter would bleed to death in a few seconds because the knife had pierced his femoral artery. Although his intention wasn't to kill, he had no other choice. But that didn't mean he didn't feel bad doing it.
Oikawa turned to look away from the hunter, but then something— someone made him stop. A few meters from him was Iwaizumi, fighting a beta that he killed a second later after a single shot to the head, perfectly aimed between the eyebrows. The beta fell to the ground inert just as Iwaizumi turned around looking for a new enemy. His eyes met Oikawa's.
The sight in front of him made his blood run cold, made him want to vomit. Iwaizumi had blood splattered on his face, but he didn't have a cut or wound. The blood belonged to all the werewolves he had killed, and Oikawa felt like he was going to faint. He wasn't the Iwaizumi that he remembered from when he was a child. He was a person who looked different.
"So you're here," Iwaizumi said in a deep, somewhat raspy voice. Oikawa saw his knuckles turn white as he clenched the assault rifle. "You are finally here."
Oikawa didn't move as Iwaizumi approached him grinding his teeth. He was paralyzed, not by fear but by the truth that now loomed before him: Iwaizumi still wanted to kill him because he didn't know the identity of his parents' true killers. Iwaizumi hated werewolves and sought to eliminate them because he didn't know the truth. His lure was revenge, and as he moved inscrutable towards him with a glint of rancor in his green eyes, Oikawa understood the extent of his motivation: Iwaizumi wouldn't stop until his debt was paid.
"Iwa-chan—"
"Don't call me that," Iwaizumi cut him off when he came in front of him. His voice was harsh, full of hatred and resentment.
"You have to listen to me, I—"
"I'm not going to listen to my parents' murderer!" Iwaizumi yelled angrily. "I'm not listening to you, Oikawa!"
Iwaizumi raised the weapon and Oikawa finally reacted. He ducked just in time to dodge the burst shot, albeit narrowly, not taking his eyes off Iwaizumi's disgruntled face. He clenched the knives in both hands and scooted over to the side, but Iwaizumi cut him off as if he knew his intentions. Oikawa wanted to raise the knives, defend himself, and get out of there, but he couldn't. He was afraid to see Iwaizumi like this, hating him from the depths of his being but for no real reason other than the one the hunters gave him, a reason that had turned out to be false.
Iwaizumi's eyes seemed to have a life of their own, his pupils a mere tiny dot in the middle of a sea of rage and anger. Iwaizumi's flame of anger seemed to have no end, as if it would burn until Iwaizumi himself was consumed by his own fire.
"It wasn't my mom, and neither was I! Your parents—!"
"Tell that to someone else, someone who isn't stupid."
"I don't kill just for the sake of it, Iwa-chan, I never would."
"You've killed dozens of hunters tonight, Oikawa!"
"In self defense! I'm fighting for my life, what would you do in my place?" Oikawa yelled, out of himself. He was desperate, on the verge of tears. The knives were clenched in his hands so hard that his fingers ached. "You too have killed dozens of werewolves throughout your life, many more than hunters I have ever killed! Why am I the monster?"
"Because you fucking orphaned me!" Iwaizumi snapped back, raising the weapon again. "I trusted you! And you betrayed me!"
"It wasn't us!"
Iwaizumi fired again, and Oikawa crouched low to avoid the bullets again. One of them scratched his arm and although the pain was almost blinding, he didn't fight back. Iwaizumi fought like his life depended on it, but Oikawa couldn't fight back because he didn't want to hurt him. He needed to make him understand that he wasn't the culprit, but Iwaizumi was so stubborn that he wouldn't even let him speak.
"Iwa-chan, this is a mistake!" Oikawa yelled trying to make himself heard over the shots that kept coming towards him but that he kept dodging as best he could. "You have to listen to me!"
Iwaizumi ignored him as he fired once more. The bullets skimmed past Oikawa's head, who again ducked to avoid them as agilely as he could. Instead of attacking, all he did was dodge the attacks he received while formulating in his head an explanation, an apology and a summary of what had really happened regarding the death of Iwaizumi's parents. But he couldn't find the words because he couldn't focus. The smell of aconite made him dizzy, the pain from each blow clouded his mind, and the burning caused by the aconite-soaked bullets that had grazed his skin was so excruciating that he thought he might pass out at any moment. If he continued like this for long he was going to faint, without a doubt.
He dodged a new burst of bullets just in time to prevent one of them from hitting the place where his heart was. He tried to force himself hit back, but all he did was get distracted and lose his balance. He fell to the ground, propping himself up on one elbow. He then looked pleadingly at Iwaizumi, but the Commander only returned a distant look and a fresh squeeze on the trigger of his weapon. Oikawa rolled on the ground and the bullets ricocheted right where he had been a second before.
"It wasn't us! Please!" Oikawa pleaded.
It was in vain. Iwaizumi fired again, so Oikawa rolled on the ground again. Everything hurt, getting up sounded like one of the biggest challenges right now. He couldn't go on like this, he had to defend himself or he would die. He raised one of the knives and directed it at Iwaizumi, but only made a shallow cut just above the knee. It wasn't much, but it was something.
Iwaizumi grunted and lowered his weapon for a moment that Oikawa used to get back on his feet. He took several steps back to get away from Iwaizumi again, but the Commander quickly recovered and fired at him again. A bullet struck Oikawa's forearm, who groaned in pain as tears welled up in his eyes and he fell to the ground again. The aconite burned so much as if he had put his arm in the middle of a fire, it went numb until it was useless. The knife slipped from his hand and fell to the ground with a metallic clink.
"Iwa-chan, please..." Oikawa groaned terrified.
Iwaizumi pulled the trigger, but Oikawa crawled across the ground long enough for the bullets to be embedded in the upper part of his shoulder instead of his chest. He had to remove the bullets, but he was unable to do so. The pain intensified to unsuspected levels, bile rising up his throat, burning his esophagus and making him want to vomit. He screamed, yelped, writhed on the ground with tears running down his cheeks as he moaned in pain.
"Iwa-chan..."
"Stop fucking calling me that," Iwaizumi roared. "Don't act like you know me, you don't! You have no idea what kind of hell my life has been!"
"And you do know me!?" Oikawa cried through tears. "They have haunted me my whole life, you don't know what it's like to live in fear from the moment you are born! Fear that exactly what is about to happen will happen! You're going to kill me with a bullet in the heart and that will be my end, but it won't be yours! You have lived a lie, those whom you consider your companions are the ones who have brought misfortune to your life, not me!"
Iwaizumi lowered the gun and looked at him puzzled. "What the hell are you talking about?"
Oikawa stared at him through tears for a few seconds before standing up using all the strength he had left. His vision blurred due to the agonizing pain he felt throughout his body, he could hardly breathe. It was getting harder and harder to move due to fatigue and pain. He was slow, too slow.
"It wasn't my mom," he repeated once more. "My mom had nothing to do with the death of your parents. What's more, she tried to protect them, and that's why they killed her too."
"Are you kidding me?" Iwaizumi replied with an incredulous laugh, full of sarcasm and rancor. "Your alpha mother murdered my parents."
"No! Those responsible for you and I being orphans are the same, and they are not the lycanthropes, but the hunters!"
"The hunters took me in when I had nothing left!"
"The hunters were the ones who took everything from you!" Oikawa yelled, new tears falling from his eyes.
Iwaizumi's face turned into a scowl of pure contempt that exuded hatred from every pore of his skin. Oikawa took another step back, fearful of the sudden change in attitude in who once was his best friend. Then Iwaizumi raised the weapon again very slowly, stretching the expectation and unease that Oikawa felt to the maximum.
The Commander limped slowly toward him with his weapon raised, and Oikawa didn't move. The barrel of the rifle pointed directly at his chest, the cold metal brushing his skin where his shirt was ripped, but he made no move to pull away. Fear washed over him, but his defiant gaze didn't waver despite the anger on Iwaizumi's face.
"It wasn't us," Oikawa repeated once more, his voice firm and determined.
"I don't believe you."
"You're wrong with me... and with your partner Sugawara Koushi."
Iwaizumi seemed to hesitate for a moment, but a moment later all trace of hesitation disappeared from his face as he clenched his jaw and breathed heavily. "Goodbye, Oikawa."
Oikawa opened his mouth, but was unable to say anything as three aconite-drenched bullets were fired point-blank into his heart. The initial moment after the shot was strange: everything was spinning around him but people remained still, as if the world had become static and he was the one who was literally turning on himself. Then the pain crushed him, his muscles failed him, his entire body burned as if fire ran through his veins instead of blood, reaching every cell, every corner with the poison of the aconite that now flooded his bloodstream. Each beat of his heart was more painful than the last, each beat spread the poison further until finally —at last— it reached the brain. His legs shook, everything was filled with mist and torment, and something inside him broke.
Iwaizumi didn't even blink as Oikawa let out a heartbreaking scream of pain and fear, feeling the taste of death on his tongue. A scream that sounded like a plea for help.
***
Kuroo felt emptiness and crushing grief before hearing the desolate scream that echoed across the battlefield. Everyone seemed to stop around, looking for the author of such a poignant lament, but not Kuroo; he ran straight towards Oikawa as guided by a feeling much greater than he could comprehend, as if his body asked to return to his alpha's side.
He ran towards Oikawa with his arms stretched out to catch him just as he fell. Everything around them was covered in corpses, both werewolves and hunters, but that had been relegated to the background now that Oikawa was in his arms, tear-filled eyes and with a dull, sad look. A wave of gunfire echoed through the sudden stillness.
"Stop, stop, stop!" Kuroo yelled in his alpha voice.
He wasn't even aware of what he was doing or that everyone had stopped the fight, he just noticed Oikawa's absent expression. They both slid to the ground, Oikawa still firmly held in the arms of an exhausted Kuroo. "Oikawa-kun?" he whispered, concern tinging his voice.
Oikawa opened his mouth and let out a pained gasp. Kuroo looked down at his chest and saw the bullet holes in his heart, the blood gushing out, blackened by the poisonous effect of the aconite in contact with it. Oikawa trembled in his arms, gasping for breath and spasming, but saying nothing.
"Hey, Oikawa-kun," Kuroo whispered holding him by one cheek. He felt hot tears spill from his own eyes.
"Don't cry," Oikawa stammered. "It's okay. I'm fine..."
"Of course you're fine, you're going to heal," Kuroo whispered, stroking his cheek with his thumb. He offered him a smile that turned into a grimace of bitter sadness. "You're going to regenerate, you're an alpha."
"A delta... your delta," Oikawa corrected him with a short, tired smile.
Kuroo tried to smile again, but it didn't come out. He was only able to stifle the moan that was about to come out of his throat, but Oikawa noticed, so he smiled at him again. Then he closed his eyes. Tears were still rolling down his cheeks and getting lost between Kuroo's fingers that still cradled his face.
"No, no, no, Oikawa-kun. Look at me. Don't close your eyes, look at me."
"I'm fine, I'm just sleepy," Oikawa muttered. "It doesn't hurt."
"You can't sleep now, you have to open your eyes," Kuroo pleaded. The lump in his throat barely let him breathe, the lonely tears that once fell one by one now had become small rivers that flowed incessantly down his face. "Look at me, Oikawa-kun."
Oikawa opened his eyes very slowly and fixed them on Kuroo's with a cloudy look; they were full of tears, but despite them, Oikawa smiled weakly. He reached up and caressed Kuroo's cheek, wiping away the tears that kept falling. "Easy, Kuro-chan," he whispered. His smile never wavered even though Kuroo could see life leaving his red eyes.
"You told me not to give up until I could kiss you," Kuroo whispered between sobs. "You have to keep your promise. You can't leave now, you can't leave without kissing me."
"Then kiss me."
Kuroo let a broken sob rise from his throat; then another, and then another. He couldn't stop them, he just wanted to cry as he hugged Oikawa's body in his arms, still warm, still alive. He leaned down and kissed Oikawa on the lips, depositing all his affection and love in it, trying to breathe another breath of life into him. Oikawa kissed him back, fragile and delicate, and only then did Kuroo understand that Oikawa was trying to say goodbye.
"I love you, Tetsuro," Oikawa stammered.
Kuroo sobbed. The pain he felt in his heart was much greater than the pain he felt from the blows and wounds of the battle in the rest of his body. Oikawa was saying goodbye to him, and he wasn't ready to say goodbye back. He had imagined a life with Oikawa, with thousands of happy moments and also ups and downs and problems that they would solve together. And now... Now Oikawa was about to leave, and Kuroo couldn't go with him.
"I love you, Tooru."
Oikawa slid his hand down Kuroo's neck to caress the fang mark he had made on his shoulder. Kuroo brought their foreheads together and remained silent, watching as Oikawa's cloudy eyes became opaque and, a second later, he closed them shedding one last tear with a sigh.
Kuroo placed a kiss on his forehead and hugged Oikawa's body one last time, rocking him slowly while whispering again how much he loved him. Oikawa didn't reply again, and Kuroo felt the desolation within him spread like a plague of locusts. He let the broken, choked sobs spill from his lips without letting go of Oikawa, unable to let him go, even though he knew that Oikawa had already departed further, far out of reach.
"Why did you do it?" Kuroo whispered looking at Iwaizumi, who was still standing in front of them with a strange expression of... sadness? Repentance? "It wasn't him. He didn't kill your parents, it was the hunters... Tooru never wanted to hurt you, he wasn't even defending himself while fighting you, I've seen him..." He sobbed once more before he could continue speaking, choking on his own crying. "It wasn't him, it wasn't... He's innocent..."
Kuroo's eyes glowed bright red through the tears, the smaller wounds on his body slowly began to heal, closing the cuts and removing some of the physical pain: an undeniable sign that he was regaining his true alpha status because the alpha that had marked him and turned him into a delta had died.
Kuroo looked at Oikawa once more with tears streaming down his cheeks. He cried and cried for what seemed like hours to him, feeling his heart ruined, devastated, lonely and anguished. He kissed Oikawa once more on the lips, unable to let him go just like that. Then he raised his head and looked up at the star-covered sky with the waning moon shining in the center, recalling all the moments he had spent with Oikawa since the first time they had met, bringing back to his memory the moment when they kissed for the first time, the night in the forest when he realized he was crazy about Oikawa, the day they confessed their feelings after biting each other.
And then, honoring Oikawa and declaring all his love for him like never before, without regret or being ashamed of loving another alpha, Kuroo howled at the moon.
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Long ago you asked me if a delta could turn back into being an alpha, and I said I couldn't answer yet. Now I can: a delta can go back to being an alpha if the alpha who dominated or marked him dies. So Kuroo and Terushima are true alphas again because Oikawa is... you know.
Believe me when I say that no one cried harder than I did with this chapter, my bff is a witness of how badly I was when I wrote it. I can't believe I wrote a >130k words just to write the saddest scene I've ever written (:
3 chapters left. See you in two week, love you,
NAZ, OVER AND OUT!