[ Hearing it sit up is the second worst noise Yoshiki has ever heard in his life. (The worst was silence.) The thing crunches and cracks, but it's a slippery sound, too, wetness hidden in the rigid snaps.
Don't, he tells her, tells himself, tells the thing, but only inside. His hand clings to hers so hard it feels more like a fistful of bones than a hand, each individual and clutched together only by force. Don't, and he won't look, he won't. ]
Please. [ The thing says, in the dumb speech of a talking animal. ] Stay.
[ Yoshiki's eyes snap open. They're as frozen as the ice rimming that face, crystallized in those pale eyes staring back at him.
He comes away from Lottie in pieces. Arms and hands and the twist of his torso all disconnected and strung back together like a doll severed into a puppet. He thrusts his fists out towards the thing's chest, and before he makes contact he has one stark moment of reckless clarity at what he's doing. He does it anyway. ]
You ain't him! [ He says, words sharp and brittle and shattered in own. ] You ain't either of them! You ain't anything! You-
[ He makes an incoherent animal noise fit to match the thing's unbearable echo of a voice, snarl and sob and wounded cry, and he shoves it again. It's heavy, the thing, heavy and cold. Like slamming his knuckles against a winter stone.
It looks at him. It grins like Hikaru and Hikaru never would, a grin that doesn't fit its mouth, wouldn't fit anyone's mouth, wider than flesh would bear, and all its teeth are wrong. ]
Yo - shi -
[ He strikes it in the mouth with the fist holding the token, and maybe that does something. Maybe it doesn't. Maybe it's all one more sick trick that its head snaps back and rises with a new strange look, dead lip split open. It contorts with more sick cracks, limbs twisting and breaking to pivot beneath it like an insect from hell, and it scuttles back on the trail.
Yoshiki doubles over. The first real sob comes like a knife down through his lungs. ]
cw: body horror, corpse
Don't, he tells her, tells himself, tells the thing, but only inside. His hand clings to hers so hard it feels more like a fistful of bones than a hand, each individual and clutched together only by force. Don't, and he won't look, he won't. ]
Please. [ The thing says, in the dumb speech of a talking animal. ] Stay.
[ Yoshiki's eyes snap open. They're as frozen as the ice rimming that face, crystallized in those pale eyes staring back at him.
He comes away from Lottie in pieces. Arms and hands and the twist of his torso all disconnected and strung back together like a doll severed into a puppet. He thrusts his fists out towards the thing's chest, and before he makes contact he has one stark moment of reckless clarity at what he's doing. He does it anyway. ]
You ain't him! [ He says, words sharp and brittle and shattered in own. ] You ain't either of them! You ain't anything! You-
[ He makes an incoherent animal noise fit to match the thing's unbearable echo of a voice, snarl and sob and wounded cry, and he shoves it again. It's heavy, the thing, heavy and cold. Like slamming his knuckles against a winter stone.
It looks at him. It grins like Hikaru and Hikaru never would, a grin that doesn't fit its mouth, wouldn't fit anyone's mouth, wider than flesh would bear, and all its teeth are wrong. ]
Yo - shi -
[ He strikes it in the mouth with the fist holding the token, and maybe that does something. Maybe it doesn't. Maybe it's all one more sick trick that its head snaps back and rises with a new strange look, dead lip split open. It contorts with more sick cracks, limbs twisting and breaking to pivot beneath it like an insect from hell, and it scuttles back on the trail.
Yoshiki doubles over. The first real sob comes like a knife down through his lungs. ]