damned_institute | Night 61: M-A Block Hallway

That was too close. Renji shoved Daemon back. This would be a lot easier if the man would just shut the fuck up and hit him, anyway. "Don't matter anyway if I get killed, does it? Sure didn't take the last time!"

Daemon went carefully still, his golden eyes glinting dangerously for a moment before he gave Renji a half-lidded look. "So I was right," he murmured, his voice soft, almost a croon. He didn't step closer again after the push, but he didn't move out of the way either. "What game do you think you're playing, Renji? And in what fucked up way have you reasoned that it won't matter if you get yourself killed? What would your Rukia say to you right now if she'd heard those words fall from your lips?"

It was Renji's turn to go quiet, clenching his teeth so hard that his jaw popped. "I imagine she'd start out by fucking calling me Kyle," he snarled, but somewhere in the last word, his voice cracked. "And then she'd tell me to stop playin' with my imaginary friends like Daemon and let the nice doctors help me. The fuck do you think she'd say you asshole!?"

He lunged forward so he could shove Daemon again. "You fuckin' happy now? Anything else you'd like to know? I could tell you a fuckin' awesome story..." Another shove, though this one lacked the angry conviction of the first. "A fuckin' awesome story about bein' drugged half out of my mind and stuck in a fuckin' tiny room in a fuckin' strait jacket for an entire fucking day. Wanna hear that one too?" An even weaker shove.

"If that's what it takes, I'll listen to every fucked up one you've got," Daemon returned, his voice heated, but it wasn't with anger. He gripped Renji's arms when the shoves weakened, dragging him up again. "At least she's fucking alive, Renji. She's not out of reach. And as for the other..." His expression tightened for a moment but he met the redhead's gaze, his own intense. One hand cupped at the back of Renji's neck, keeping the physical contact for a moment. There were wounds here, so many of them, that it was like maneuvering a minefield.

"As for the other, you bide your time. You grit your teeth and endure it. You don't give them more openings, you don't let them break you. You're a Shinigami, Renji. You're a threat, you're more dangerous than a lot of these others. So yeah, you get to see more fucked up shit. Because you're one of the few who can pay them back in kind. But not if you give up, not if you're careless, not if you've got some kind of deathwish. You're one of the best fighters I've ever seen. I don't want to see Landel or that fucking doctor or even some stupid fucking rat lay so much as a scratch on you."

He gave Renji a shake, his gaze narrowed into a glare. "You're alive. So is Rukia. So are the others. Make a gift of what you have. She's somewhere. She's alive, even if she is fucked up. She's not here, that's a start. That ups her survival chances above you and I by quite a bit. But you're no good to her dead for no reason. Who's going to know to look after her if you don't?"

Renji fought against Daemon grabbing him, though he felt strangely weak. Still, he managed to land a glancing blow here and there before he just gave up, going limp like an angry cat that had been scruffed.

He shook his head, laughing. "You don't fucking get it, do you. Yeah, Rukia's alive. Good for her." More and more anger gathered in his words until he was shouting again. "She was thinking about all the lies before she disappeared. She was starting to fucking buy into them. Guess everything I could give her wasn't enough, huh?"

His shoulders sagged. He was tired of this fight. "So yeah, I'll go looking for her. Because I'm a fucking pathetic dog and I don't know what else to do. But she ain't gonna be happy when her stray comes home."

And there it was, the sick, heavy truth of it. Daemon's fingers shifted, tangling in spiked red locks and he dragged the other man closer for a moment, his eyes sliding shut with regrets.

"Listen to me," he said softly. "They were getting to her. Yeah, I can see how that could happen. Part of me wishes I could buy it too, some days. But I don't, and I can't give in that easily. I can't afford to. But if they started to get to Rukia, it wasn't because of you." He tilted Renji's head up, his own gaze intense as he met the Shinigami's eyes. "Rukia loves you, Renji. I saw it. I felt it. Maybe they thought this would be the knife that cuts the deepest - and they would have guessed right, but that doesn't change the facts that exist far beyond the fucked up boundaries of this place. You're forgetting you're her stray. And when you get to Rukia - the real Rukia, she will be happy. More than. And I suspect that if she knew you thought otherwise, she'd kick your ass. Or attempt to. Or at the very least draw very creative images of it occurring."

Renji finally just gave up and leaned on Daemon. That was okay, he told himself. The expression he directed at his friend was too bitter to be called a smile. "Yeah, well, I learned early on that sometimes love's not enough." He sighed. "Look, I... let the nurses kill me once."

And fuck, it hurt to admit that.

"I let 'em do it. I was kind of... fucked up. But it didn't work. It'd be real stupid to try to do something like that again. Trust me to think up new kinds of stupid."

Daemon tilted his head slightly, letting the Shinigami lean against him, his own arms loosely snaking around Renji. He knew how skittish the redhead still was with any physical contact and he didn't want to push this too far. Not on top of everything else.

"I suspected... something like that," Daemon admitted softly. "Although I'm relieved you're not stupid enough to try it again, because I would track you down in whatever realm you ended up in and kick your ass back to the living ones."

"But Renji," he added, his tone a little more serious now. His fingers brushed absently over one of the dark tattoos on the Shinigami's neck, the touch soothing. "If you learned that early on, you learned the wrong thing. It can be. Sometimes... sometimes the timing's just not right."

"Just... don't let 'em do that to me again." At this point, he'd already lost his shit this badly so it felt like it didn't really matter any more. He buried his face against Daemon's shoulder. "Don't let 'em lock me up like that again. I can't. I can't do it." It was a stupid thing to ask, he knew it the minute the words passed his lips. It wasn't like Daemon could do a fucking thing.

Renji's shoulders tensed at the feeling of a hand on the back of his neck, but he didn't push Daemon away. He wrapped his arms around the man instead. It was okay, he told himself. "Stop trying to make me feel better, asshole," he muttered into Daemon's shoulder. "You suck at it."

Daemon's arms tightened momentarily around the redhead as he closed his eyes, his face impassive as he leaned his cheek against the top of Renji's head. "I swear to you," he murmured softly, his voice intense. "I will do all in my power to keep you safe. You're not alone here, Renji. You're not. I'm not leaving you alone."

He chuckled softly at the muttered words, something distant glinting in golden eyes. "I suck at this version of it," he agreed mildly. "Back home I'd be getting you blind, stinking drunk right now. Or offering up other methods of distraction. This talking shit is overrated."

Renji managed a suspiciously damp-sounding chuckle. "I'm holding you to that. You better not fuckin' disappear again."

He laughed again, and it sounded steadier this time. "Well, you're the one that wanted to talk. I wanted to go kill shit. How about next time, we do what I want to do?"

"You're not getting rid of me that easily," he murmured with a soft chuckle, keeping his embrace loose but warm about Renji's shoulders. He gave the man another squeeze. "Besides. Someone's gotta be here to drag your ass out of the trouble it seems so fond of attracting," Daemon teased gently.

"And we usually do what you want to do," Daemon pointed out with a crooked smile. "It wasn't working so well this time around. It was either this or make you freak out and punch me again."

Renji finally pushed Daemon away, though gently. He scrubbed at his face with one hand, sniffed once, then squared his shoulders. "Well fuck. I'm always happy to punch you," he said.

He sniffed again, rubbing the bridge of his nose with one knuckle. "So what're we gonna do?" he asked quietly. "We gonna escape, or gonna get revenge?" One shoulder twitched. "'Cause I want blood. But I think we've established I ain't in my right mind. Haven't been for a while."

"I always want blood," Daemon replied with a sharp smile, then gave a shrug. "But this isn't just me. And we don't know enough yet to make that decision. Forget what I saw for the moment. We don't have all the pieces to make sense of this puzzle yet so until we do, we take things one step at a time." He held out a hand to Renji, simple, waiting.

Daemon was used to working solo. He was used to walking into a mess and walking back out with it fixed, the walls stained red in his wake. He was fully prepared to do the same this time, even if he didn't walk back out. He wasn't sure he had anything to go back to, even if he did. But Renji did. And he was going to see to it that the redhead got that chance.

Renji glanced at Daemon's hand, a slight look of confusion on his face, like he wasn't sure what to do with it. After a moment he clasped Daemon's hand. "Guess so. But I'd feel a lot better just havin' a goal to drive for."

He always felt better when he had a goal. Then he could just put himself in a mode where he'd keep fighting or die trying until he got there. It was a more comfortable place for him than not knowing what the hell they were doing.

"Well, anyway, I guess for tonight it's just hunting."

"Every night, it's hunting," Daemon agreed wryly, squeezing Renji's hand a moment before tugging him towards the other end of the hall. "Let's just focus on wiping out whatever stupid piece of fodder this place throws at us until we find our way to the person we need to kill to go home. He can't hide forever. In the meantime, what did Sora want us to take care of tonight? I didn't have a chance to ask. You distracted me with plotting evilly laughing notes."

"Yeah, I guess you and me got all the time in the world, when you come down to it," Renji said. He just didn't like having to be patient. Particularly not when bad shit happened every day in this place.

He did his best to remember what exactly Sora had said. "He wants us to find some kind of area that needs to be cleared out, though the only place I remember always having monsters is that hallway where they take people to be tortured. He also said to just explore. Pretty open-ended."

"Probably more than most, at the very least," Daemon drawled, shaking his head. "Must be that moisturizer Badou wants us to bottle."

Tucking his hands in his pockets, Daemon pondered that a moment. "Well, something tells me you'd know more about the best places to find a fight than I would. I'll follow your lead tonight. Are we equipped well enough to handle clearing out the bigger bad things tonight?"

Renji snorted. "Well, that's why we're such good lookin' motherfuckers. I figure next time I see him, I'm gonna tell him we live so long cause we eat our vegetables or something like that."

He considered the options. There was almost always something up in the torture hallways, and he'd encountered nasty things in the kitchen and the basement before. And of course, the Sun Room. Daemon had said to forget the prophecy for now, but Renji wanted to feel like he was doing something.

"Let's hit the basement. We'll just make it a quick run through the Sun Room, because if there's someone in there we don't want to deal with that." He shrugged again, looking at the mop handle. "Better than we were last night. If we wait 'til we're well-armed, we'll never get a fucking thing done. I can fuck something up with this. Hell, I can fuck up things with a pen if I'm desperate enough. Wish I had that sword Ed made for me, but... wish in one hand, shit in the other."

He headed down the hall.

[To here]

Edited 2012-02-06 14:38 (UTC)

Night 61: M-A Block Hallway

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