Chapter 2: Never again the same: Part 2
Notes:
divin' straight into the juicy bits this chapter ᐠ( ᐛ )ᐟ
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
An illusion.
It had to be an illusion, didn’t it? Something like Clara’s Toybox magic, or something like Orobas’s Trauma bloodline ability. It couldn’t be real. It couldn’t be real.
But could a mere illusion feel like this? Could it sear his skin like fire? Could it sting and needle at him like barbs? Could it pry open his ribcage and grab his lungs and wring the air from them until he was dizzy, until he was sick?
If it couldn’t, though, and it was all just as real as it felt, then Iruma couldn’t afford to just sit on his heels, numb with disbelief, as the blood drained unremittingly from his severed arm. With Kiriwo’s presence all but forgotten, he recoiled from the hand around his chin, scrambled out of his uniform’s jacket, and clumsily, falteringly tried to wrap it around the end of his upper arm. The fabric slipped loose again and again, and as his shoulders shuddered from panic that he couldn’t forfend, Kiriwo watched with an expression full all of fondness.
“You really are something, Iruma-kun,” he remarked. “So quick to get right down to what needs to be done, and with nary a peep to boot. But, y’know,” he reached for the dismembered arm and gathered it into his lap, lips pursed in contemplation, “I may’ve jumped the gun a bit there. If I was gonna take off an arm, I really shoulda taken the one with the Ring of Gluttony.” He leaned in a little closer as greed crept into his features. “I wonder if I can just take ‘em both?”
Get away, the alarms in Iruma’s head shrieked, his hair clinging to his brow and his shirt sticking to his back as he clamped his teeth down on a blood-wet sleeve and pulled hard against the awkward knot he’d managed to tie.
“No, no, no,” Kiriwo said, and he pulled back with a shake of his head, “I gotta be careful here. I’d have hell to pay if I overdid it and you ended up dying.”
Get away. The thick cloth didn’t do nearly as much as he’d hoped it would to staunch the bleeding, and his one-handed, unsteady grip couldn’t draw the jacket tightly enough around the wound for it to function as an effective tourniquet.“But, like, it’d be a waste not to make a little more of this situation, wouldn’t it? Maybe just your fingers…?” Cheeks flushing pink, he touched a fingertip to lips that parted with anticipation. “Hey, Iruma-kun, whaddya think? If I took the fingers off your right hand one by one, how many would it take to make you scream…?”
Get away.
A frigid chill crawled down Iruma’s spine, and he immediately, frantically reeled backwards, failing to find the coordination to get his feet underneath him and run. Unable to answer to the instincts carved into his body, he could only squeeze his eyes shut, suck in a ragged gasp of a breath, and call out in vain to help that he knew too well couldn’t reach him in time, “Azz-kun, Clara–!”
All at once the evening shadows retreated from the amber light that flooded the woods, and a familiar, comforting warmth brushed gently over Iruma’s shoulder as a bolt of flame sailed past. The barrier that Kiriwo hurriedly raised in his defense withstood the fireball and scattered it into sparks, but he was forced back nonetheless as Asmodeus swung mercilessly through the heathaze with a sword of pure fire magic.
“I apologize for butting in of my own discretion, Iruma-sama,” he said, gritting his teeth as his blow glanced off of yet another barrier, “but it sounded like something strange was going on, and I–”
“Iruma-chi!” Clara was close on Asmodeus’s heels, and as she arrived at Iruma’s side, she all but fell down next to him, the color draining from her face as her hands hovered helplessly around the end of his arm and the soaked, dripping jacket wrapped thereupon. “W-Wh– Your…!”
“I’m– I’m okay,” Iruma said, and it wasn’t true, it obviously wasn’t true, but Clara was distraught nearly to tears, and he couldn’t help but try and force his mouth into a shape resembling a smile for her. But for all his pretense, his hand still reached out, caught hold of the hem of Clara’s shirt, and clung as if she might vanish should he so much as look away. “I’m…” his breath hitched, shoulders rounded, “glad you two came.”
Clara’s cry and Iruma’s frail response pulled Asmodeus’s attention behind him, to his friend’s crumpled posture and to the blood spilled all over his clothes and to the piece of him that was missing - a piece that Kiriwo Amy held over his shoulder with unrepentant nonchalance.
Flame whirled around their surroundings, swathing the trees and forming a ring that enclosed them within its perimeter. “How dare you,” Asmodeus said in a voice that was like a growl, that was like a beast on the verge of rampage. “How dare you…!”
Kiriwo tapped Iruma’s wrist lightly on his shoulder and hummed. “Long time no see to you too, Asmodeus-kun,” he greeted. “I can see that you’re awfully mad at me about somethin’, but I wonder just why that is? I mean, isn’t this basically the sort of thing we demons are supposed to do to humans?”
Iruma blanched.
“Don’t you dare,” Asmodeus snarled, loosing a flurry of swordplay and sorcery that broke Kiriwo’s barrier only to be forestalled by a second that he had raised behind it, “try to distract me with nonsense…!”
“Nonsense, huh?” Kiriwo repeated, preparing another barrier to replace the one that cracked and shattered from the unyielding barrage. “Well, that sure is a convenient way to dodge an inconvenient idea. Buuut,” he peeked past Asmodeus, “the person in question sure isn’t making a face like it’s just nonsense, now is he?”
Iruma’s features paled to chalk white as he turned Kiriwo’s words over and over in his head and searched feverishly for the possibility that he had misheard.
Human.
Human.
But the possibility that he prayed for didn’t exist. The veil had at last been torn away, and Iruma, left exposed, pulled away from Clara for fear that she might pull away from him first. He needed to say something. He needed to make some excuse or give some explanation. At the very least, if he just asked his friends to trust him, he knew that they would, no matter what Kiriwo said.
Wouldn’t they?
But as Asmodeus followed Kiriwo’s gesture, as his eyes turned to him and his brow knit with confusion, Iruma’s head emptied for all but the pounding of his heartbeat, and he failed to choke out more than a word, “W… Why–?”“Why do I know?” Kiriwo finished, and he gave a shrug in return. “Well, I had the honor of hearing it right from your own mouth, when you thought that you were all alone and no one would hear.” The firelight danced in his narrowed eyes, glinted against each drop of blood that fell from the severed elbow cradled in his grasp. “And it kinda makes sense, doesn’t it? When you really think about it. Those fireworks, for one thing - no one in the school had ever seen anything like ‘em before, but you talked like it was all common sense. And isn’t it a bit strange how before you enrolled at Babyls, no one in all the netherworld had ever so much as heard of a demon summoning another demon as a familiar?
“But,” he smiled blithely, “I know that’s just circumstantial evidence, so I’d be happy to listen to your side of all this, Iruma-kun. So, let’s hear it: Are you a demon? Or are you a liar, drinking up the admiration of the demons flocking around you while you laugh behind their backs at their ignorance?”
“Wh–?! I-I didn’t–! I was never–!”
The very suggestion, though, was enough to change Asmodeus’s expression, to turn his confusion to indignation, to insult and to hurt. It was an expression that wanted for rebuttal, that denied what he had heard and promised to accept any explanation that would refute it.
But Iruma had no such explanation to give, and the guilt that he had long buried under excuse after excuse after excuse came welling up and stung at his eyes.
This wasn’t an illusion. It was a nightmare.
Through the fugue of his heartache, Iruma became aware of the sound of Kiriwo’s elated laughter. “Aww, I’ve really gotten carried away here,” he said without the barest hint of remorse. “I’m for sure gonna get an earful for playing around so much. But since I’ve already gone this far,” his gaze, glittering with delight, shifted from Iruma to Asmodeus, his fingers twitching up, “I might as well go all the way, right…?”
A spark of recognition, and with it an urgency so harrowing it made his head spin, lanced Iruma through his core, and he unsteadily, desperately gathered himself onto his feet and leapt for Asmodeus, losing his balance as he grabbed hold of his friend and sending the both of them tumbling down to the ground.
As they fell, the hem of Asmodeus’s long jacket, trailing behind them, was sliced in two by the barrier that appeared where he had stood.
For a moment, Iruma couldn’t move. His arm throbbed, his ears rang, no amount of air seemed like enough to sate his lungs. Eventually, dazedly, he managed to lift his head from the other’s chest, his voice a flagging murmur, “Azz-kun, are you okay…?”
Asmodeus looked back at him with eyes wide with bewilderment, and his mouth opened and closed again and yet again before he finally made a sound, “I–… Iruma…-sama…”
With a wince, a sharp breath, and a great deal of effort, Iruma maneuvered himself into a slightly more upright position. “You’re not– You’re not hurt, right?”
He gave a small shake of his head, which Iruma answered with a bittersweet smile.
“Thank goodness.”
“Wow! Your reflexes really are incredible, Iruma-kun,” Kiriwo commented. “Is that something all humans can do, or are you just special?”
Iruma flinched at the interjection and turned his eyes from Asmodeus’s. It hurt. It hurt even more than his hewn-open arm, and he wanted nothing more than to swear that he’d never once reveled in his lie, that he’d never wanted to lie at all, that he’d agonized so much over it, so much, so, so much. He wanted to apologize for being such a coward, for hiding behind Balam’s warnings against letting anyone else find him out and behind Amuryllis’s affirmation that mere secrets were no form of betrayal, for letting it drag out until this was how they learned the truth.
But it was all just excuses at best, a play at pity at worst, and conniving all the same. A lie was a lie, and it was the right of the deceived to decide how they felt about the deception without having to endure the deceiver’s pathetic attempts at justification.
“Kiriwo-senpai probably,” he said, and he sluggishly, stiltedly, feebly moved first onto his knees and then began to heft himself onto his feet, “doesn’t really– really care about, h-hurting you and Clara… but he will, if you stay here. So, take Clara and– and get far away, okay?” Iruma pressed his thumb against the underside of the Ring of Gluttony and spun it onto its third setting. He didn’t know what he hoped to do, but he was certain of just one thing, “I absolutely… absolutely won’t let him hurt you two.”
A beat passed, and then Asmodeus rose as well. Rather than move away, though, he stepped in front of Iruma, his hands wreathed in fire and his shoulders so taut they trembled, and Iruma, baffled, blinked at his back.“W-Wait, what are–?”
“Well, isn’t this a surprise?” Kiriwo said, his smile cooling. “Maybe I’m misrememberin’, but isn’t etiquette one of the main tenets of the noble Asmodeus clan? I’d never’ve expected to see their brilliant young heir take the side of a liar.”
Iruma’s attempts to parse the situation were interrupted by the sensation of arms wrapping around his middle so unexpectedly that for a moment spots swam across his vision.
“Iruma-chi is not a liar!”
It was Clara’s voice at his side, her hands fastened around fistfuls of his shirt and her head bowed against his waist as she wailed, “Iruma-chi never said that he was a demon! He never said that he wasn’t a human! What he said was…” She raised her head, her eyes all full of tears and defiance, “He said that he loves us! And that we’re important to him! And that’s all true, so he never lied…!”
The declaration loosened the barbs in his chest, and in their place spread a warmth that Iruma was hesitant to acknowledge but eager to accept, a sense of relief and of gratitude that he would have struggled to put into words even at his most lucid.
Just what was it that had scared him so much that he couldn’t tell his friends the truth sooner? He already couldn’t remember anymore.
As if to snap Iruma violently back to the reality at hand, Kiriwo heaved an exasperated sigh. All traces of excitement had disappeared completely from his expression, and left in their place was a shadow of distaste. “Well now,” he said dryly, “that’s a charitable interpretation if I’ve ever heard one.”
“That’s enough,” Asmodeus spat, contempt thick in his tone, as the flames around them shuddered. “I will not tolerate so much as another breath of disrespect towards Iruma-sama - not from you, and not from myself.” He glanced back over his shoulder with a mix of emotions painted upon his features that Iruma couldn’t fully pick apart. “Clara,” he said, “bandage Iruma-sama’s injury as tightly as you can and contact his home at once.”
Clara sniffled and scrubbed her eyes with her fists before raising both hands to her forehead in salute, and she patted her pocket and began to pull out a large sheet.
“A-Azz-kun…?” Iruma said. “What are you–”
“Obviously, I’m going to burn this unsightly worm who had the gall to transgress you until not even his ashes remain.”
“Not that it isn’t a treat to be the target of that much bloodlust,” Kiriwo said with disappointment palpable in his tone, “but it looks like things are startin’ to get away from me here. No thanks to all my overindulging, I’m sure.” He hefted the limb into a more stable position, adjusted his grasp, and looked to Iruma with a serene, chillingly affectionate smile, “I truly did have a fantastic time today, Iruma-kun. I’m gonna call it quits here for now, but I just can’t wait to see what kind of despair you’ll show me next time.”
“‘Next time,’ you say,” Asmodeus growled, fangs bared, and the fires around his hands swelled as he launched his scorching assault, “as if I’m going to let you leave this place in any other way but as a puff of smoke in the wind!”
The flame that burst forth seemed for a moment to swallow the entire forest in its ruthless radiance, embers swirling in the air as the treetops swayed in the heat that gusted out in waves. But when the inferno began to ebb, it became apparent that there was nothing at its center but an expanse of charred earth - and an almost perfect square of grass untouched by the fire.
“Kiriwo Amy!” Asmodeus roared, and the dwindling cinders lashed out anew, as if alive, as if in frenzy. His wings spread from his back, and he at once took to the sky. “Don’t you try and run away from me, you bastard…!”
“Azz-kun!” Iruma called out after him, and he wanted to tell him to wait - Wait, it’s dangerous! Come back! - but without even realizing that the words never left his head, a feeling of static superseded all his other senses, and in the next instant he found himself slumped against Clara’s shoulder.
“Iruma-chi! Iruma-chi, what’s wrong?!” he slowly realized she was saying, and he shook his head.
“Just… a little light-headed,” Iruma slurred, aware all over again of how hard it was just to breathe. He attempted to take his weight back onto legs he found too unsteady to hold him up and instead sank to the ground. “I’m o–”
“You are not okay!” Clara immediately, vehemently objected, her hands shaking as she steadied him on his way down and guided him to lay his head on her lap. “J-Just… Just relax, okay?” she said, tears quivering on her lashes, as she reached for the sheet she’d pulled from her pockets and began tearing off long strips of fabric. “Clara-oneechan will fix you right up in two shakes of a lickety-jiff! A-Ah, wait, I gotta…”
Carefully she plucked at the jacket tied around the shortened arm, but the cloth had bonded to the wound as the blood saturating it had started to dry, and disturbing it brought on a fresh shock of pain so sharp and so abrupt that Iruma couldn’t help but cry out.
At once Clara flinched back. “I’m sorry–!”“I-I’m okay,” Iruma insisted again, and then again, as if he might somehow coax the words into turning true if only he repeated them enough, “I’m okay. I’m okay…”
Clara took no apparent comfort from the reassurance, though, her lips pressed into a thin line and her brow tightly pinched. “I’ll– I’ll call help first!” she decided, hurriedly fishing for her phone. “U-Um, uh… Pera-sama can call the chairdemon, so…”
“I can… call Grandpa directly,” Iruma offered around breath that weighed like lead on his chest, and he turned his palm up in request for the phone. “I’m… kinda worried about all… all the bleeding, s-so can you help me out with the bandaging…?”
With a small nod and a smaller murmur of understanding, Clara left the phone in the other’s custody, took a long, deep breath, and once more set about undoing the knotted jacket. As she did, Iruma, biting his lip against the pricks and stabs of the open end of his arm meeting the air, keyed in Sullivan’s number and brought the hellphone to his ear.
It rang once, twice, and the call connected. “Grandpa,” he said, “um–”
“Iruma-kuuun!” greeted Sullivan’s voice on the other end, all enthusiasm and affection. “You don’t usually call at this time of day! Is there somewhere you’re going with your friends? Stopping for something to eat on the way home? I’ll keep it a secret from Opera for you if you send me a photo!”
Iruma’s mouth opened to reply, but no words came. All the panic and dread and terror and hurt and heartache and horror that he’d swallowed was a lump sticking in his throat, and the more he tried to push it down, the more insistently it came back to the surface. He’d been so scared. Even now, he was still so scared.
“Iruma-kun?” Sullivan prompted once more in a tone that was much calmer, much gentler, and tinted warmly with concern. “What’s the matter? Did something happen?”
The next breath he took pushed the lump loose, and Iruma’s voice broke into sob after disconsolate sob.
So much would never again be the same.
!Not Mine!