Chapter Text
He wasn’t supposed to be thinking.
That was the first thing he thought when his eye opened to a stinging pain in his jaw and the slow trickle of heat down his stomach.
Ogata’s fingers twitched. Rifle. Where was the rifle? Where was his gun? He had to finish the job. His bare fingertips met dirt and blood and cloth and he couldn’t find his gun. Underneath his skull he felt the ground shaking, less and less with every passing second. Thinking hurt. Was his gun here? No. The train. His gun was on the train. The train was going away.
In the distance, someone was screaming.
The katana could have fallen with him. Classical. He would bleed out slowly and painfully. At least then it would be over.
Something must have been standing on his throat. He couldn’t make himself sit up. His shoulder wouldn’t move, either, no matter what he tried. Gritting his teeth, he clenched his abdominal muscles, feeling a hot, wet spurt from the side of his stomach as he forced himself upright.
When he opened his eye again the sun had left spots in his vision that blinking didn’t clear away. His throat burned from exertion, but he made himself breathe. He would only have to do it for a little while longer anyway.
He was splayed flat in the grass a meter or so from the train tracks. Slowly, he ran his good hand over himself, evaluating what was left of him.
Glass eye was entirely gone, probably smashed in the dirt somewhere. Shoulder hung loose in its socket, sending pangs of pain through his arm whenever he moved. Leg was mobile, but every time he tensed his calf the muscle seized in pain around the bullet wound. Stomach was still leaking blood, drenching the shirt and uniform jacket completely. Cloak was still loosely draped around him, bloodstains splattered across the hood and shoulder, but the utility belt was gone, taking his knife with it.
His legs wouldn’t cooperate. He dragged himself into a crawl, using his one mobile arm to pull himself forward. No debris. No fallen items from the train. Just his own blood.
The katana was nowhere in sight. If it was anywhere, it was still on the train. Gone. And the next one wouldn’t come by until nightfall—later, if those fucking idiots smashed it into the station. He couldn’t even use that.
Falling back onto his knees, Ogata screamed.
The bullet wound on his face stung when he opened his mouth, but he didn’t care. He screamed until the air in his lungs was gone and he had to gasp for breath, collapsing forward until his forehead hit the dirt beneath him with a dull thunk. Blood and saliva coated his face, sticking to his lips and mouth, dripping in wet circles into the earth. He breathed in, wrapping his arms around his aching ribs, and screamed again.
It sounded like a different person. He would never sound like that. It was ripping his throat raw, and he swallowed thickly against it, choking for a long second on his own spit.
He could see himself, in his mind’s eye. Bent double over his knees in the quickly dampening dirt, hands balled up in his cloak, getting blood all over it, bleeding into the ground, screaming and screaming and screaming. He felt bile rising in his throat and hacked up what felt like nothing at all. More of himself left in the mud.
A hand crawled up his back, piercing his skin with its nails. He retched again at the feeling, dragging his face to the side and shoving his bloodied cheek into the dirt to look up at whoever was touching him, but above him was nothing but darkness and a uniformed figure. The figure’s face warped and twisted until it was his own and Ogata clawed at himself to try and get away. He couldn’t move. He was already moving, being dragged away by the train. He was falling into the center of the earth.
With what strength he could muster he peeled his fingers from the fabric of his cloak and crawled forward a few more steps. If no one came by and saw him, he could bleed out here. It would be slow and he wasn’t sure whether his wounds were bad enough to kill him, but if he needed to he could tear the one on his stomach open a little further. Satisfied, he wiped a bloody hand over his mouth and collapsed onto his back, letting his eye fall closed. No more thinking. No more hand digging his ribs apart and crushing his windpipe. Just a worthless creature dying a worthless death.
The sun was warm on his face.
He didn’t know how long it had been before he heard the footsteps. A hunter, probably, passing by. He hoped they didn’t notice him, though he probably stank of blood and would be pretty easy to spot in a white cloak in the middle of summer. Maybe they would think he was already dead if he held still enough. The footsteps grew closer and closer—if he hadn’t been laying in the dirt, he wouldn’t have heard them. Whoever it was, they were stepping softly. So it wasn’t Sugimoto, back to finish him off. That was fine. He was doing a perfectly good job bleeding out on his own.
The footsteps were nearly deafening as they stopped right beside his head. His breathing had shallowed, and he lay there, mouth open, blood oozing from his stomach, as whoever it was bent low next to him. He heard a sound, an almost animal whine, then fabric shifting, something brushing against the bloody mess at the side of his stomach.
Above his head, another uncanny whine, a sound he couldn’t decipher. He could tell, this time, that it was muffled by something. He wasn’t sure what it was, but he couldn’t bring himself to move. His whole body felt heavy. He had bled a lot. Soon he’d bleed out. The stranger would do whatever they had come for and then leave him alone to decompose.
A bare hand settled on his forehead and brushed the loose hairs out of his face.
What the hell?
He peeled his eye open to see a vaguely brown blur above him. He blinked. The blur came into focus—brown fabric, roughly cut brown hair, pale eyes.
The Russian sniper was here to kill him.
Exhilaration shot through him like a bolt of lightning. The hand on his head moved down to grip—his neck, to strangle him—no, the hood of his cloak. He was dragged upright to a sitting position as the man crouched beside him. He waited with bated breath for the man to tell him to run, or throw him to the ground for a fight without the pretense of their little game. Instead, though, the sniper stared down at him, eyes disturbingly wide. They shone strangely in the light, though maybe that was just his own unreliable vision.
Ogata didn’t say anything. After all the screaming, he wasn’t sure if he could. Besides, his Russian was… laughably pathetic.
The sniper held him upright, moving to grab his shoulders. Both thumbs dug into his chest, pressing hard into his ribs above his heart. There was some kind of expression on his face. He couldn’t tell what it was, but he was staring at the bleeding gash in his face and the hole in his ear. Distracted. With his good arm he grabbed for the rifle—
But the sniper caught his wrist and suddenly he remembered the rifle falling into the ground and he was staring back up at his face again. He struggled against his grip, but the sniper held fast, pinning him to the ground by his bad shoulder. Ogata swallowed another scream, chewing the inside of his mouth raw.
The sniper’s hand shifted. His eyes didn’t look angry anymore. Something else was there. Pity? It looked like pity. Or maybe it was revulsion at how far his enemy had fallen. That was what he would’ve felt, at a time like this. If it was him with this sniper down on his back, entirely at his mercy, he would have…
No, he wouldn’t have killed him. It would have been too easy.
“Give… knife,” he managed, unsure whether his Russian was even correct. The sniper’s eyes widened. He stared down at the still-bleeding wound and shook his head so quickly Ogata heard something click.
Who the fuck did he think he was? He made another grab for the sniper’s utility belt, this time managing to pull the knife free. Finally. His fingers tightened around the blade, metal piercing skin, and he aimed it for his throat, savoring this opportunity to steal the satisfaction from him. Even when he literally had him cornered, he still wouldn’t get the chance to kill him. The sniper’s eyes widened and he shoved Ogata back into the dirt, standing over him and stepping hard on his wrist. Instinctively he released the knife, feeling blood trickle over his fingers. The sniper plucked it from the ground, shoving it back into his belt.
“Give. Knife.” Speaking was getting harder. Was he going to die of blood loss after all?
He shook his head again. Still standing on his wrist, hard enough to keep him pinned, he dug through the pockets of his belt and pulled out a thin pencil and a pad of paper.
Ogata smiled, ignoring the sting in his cheek. He’d ruined the man’s mouth after all. Good. At least it was something to remember him by once he’d blown his own brains out once and for all.
The sniper turned the resulting note towards him and he stared at it. Was his brain really so muddled that he couldn’t understand writing? He blinked, clearing his eyes. No—it wasn’t him, it was the sniper. It was written in Cyrillic. Probably some kind of insult, telling him how ridiculous he was for thinking he could win this fight.
“I don’t know what that says,” he rasped, speaking Japanese just to emphasize the point. “Give. Me. The knife.”
He frowned and pulled his loose rifle strap from around his belt.
“What are you going to do with that, strangle me? I still have a good arm, I can fight back.”
The sniper looked at him without comprehension and grabbed both of Ogata’s wrists, pulling them together in front of him and lashing the rifle strap around his hands until they were bound tight.
“Seriously? What the hell is that for?”
With one raised eyebrow the sniper gestured to the knife, still covered in Ogata’s blood.
“...Are you going to leave me here to die?”
Instead of a response, he reached down and hauled Ogata to his feet. He stared at him open-mouthed for a moment. What was the point of this? Was he trying to kidnap him? That was ridiculous, he had at least as good a chance of winning in a close-quarters fight as that other sniper did. …Although he was wounded. And his hands were tied.
Maybe he was leading him away to kill him. That would be a small mercy, at least. As they walked he could hear their footsteps and others. Something hovered just out of his sight. He swallowed against the lump in his throat and allowed the sniper to drag him through the grass, towards the woods.
Hours passed, maybe. The sinking of the sun was the only thing that told him time was going by. He couldn’t feel his legs. Every step dragged. Were his legs broken? Was he already dead? The sniper pulled him like a dog on a leash, leading him this way and that, until Ogata couldn’t tell how far they’d walked or how long it was until they would reach somewhere that wasn’t the middle of nowhere.
Eventually the sniper stopped and looked around. They were in a clearing. Somewhere for an execution. His chest burned as he was pushed towards a tree, hands looped over a low branch to hold him in place. Good. This was good, this was right. Someone like him should never have existed to begin with. He hadn’t even managed to do that right. The sniper was going to right his mistake.
He was really making him wait, though. While Ogata stood alone in the clearing, dangling from the tree branch by his wrists, the sniper walked around, gathering firewood, putting water to boil, and rolling a fallen log over to act as a makeshift seat. He wrapped the scarf around his neck over his arm and back, supporting it. This would’ve been interesting, maybe, for someone else. Seeing him make camp like this. Seeing how he acted when he was alone.
The sniper hauled him up off the branch and down onto the log. Leaving his hands tied, he dug through his utility bag. A flash of excitement raced through him, but the sniper didn’t take out his knife. Just a cloth, a roll of bandages, and a flask. Ogata felt his eyes slipping closed—but then they flew open again. The sniper’s hands were on the buttons of his jacket.
“What are you doing?” he asked in startled Japanese, pulling away. He didn’t stop, pulling him right back into place. What kind of a fucking pervert—
“What are you doing?” he asked again, in Russian this time. The sniper stared at him like he was stupid. He pointed at the wound, then at the bandages.
…What was the point? He was going to kill him anyway. Was this some kind of sick game, treating his wounds so he could be sure he was the one to kill him? His empty eye socket stung with remembered pain, the feeling of Sugimoto’s mouth drawing the poison from his skull.
The sniper’s hands slid underneath his limp arms and methodically pulled apart his jacket, then his shirt. Even with his arm in the makeshift sling, he was still quicker than Ogata. Falling off a train hadn’t done him any favors. And he wasn’t going to fight it. If he was going to gut him like a fish right now, he wouldn’t stop him. He could feel it now, the wetness of his own blood showering down his skin—
But the blood on his stomach was cold, and clear, and the sniper’s hands held nothing but a cloth.
“Why not kill me?” he made himself say.
The sniper looked up at him, then down at his wound, then back up at his face. He didn’t respond—obviously—and rubbed the cloth over his stomach once again.
He wanted to fight back. Wanted to knee him in the chin, watch him recoil from the pain in his jaw and fall to the ground, run as far as he could and die of exposure in a river somewhere. Strangle himself with his fucking rifle strap and rot in this clearing.
Warm skin touched his bare stomach and he flinched, staring down at the blood staining his skin and the cloth and the sniper’s hands.
He tried not to watch after that. The sting of alcohol. The agonizing drag of needle through flesh. It hurt, he thought, but not in any way that mattered. The pain couldn’t get through the haze of black dots swarming his vision.
The stitches pulled through his abdomen and he nearly blacked out from the sensation. If he was going to die from the shock he was ready for it. He wanted it. He breathed in, then out, savoring the way his skin fought against the thread. It couldn’t have been any worse than the raucous pounding inside his skull. The poison must have still been in his system. He couldn’t stop feeling that squeeze in his throat.
Everyone else had been living like this for their entire lives, he thought deliriously. How were they even walking? Whenever he imagined waking up another morning with this hammering against his skull he wanted to smash his head into the tree trunk behind him until he couldn’t move anymore. He didn’t want to be alive anymore. He would have been so grateful to have died then, with Yuusaku whispering in his ear.
The sniper tied off the bandage around Ogata’s waist and let his shirt fall closed over him again.
“Are you done?” he asked, again in Japanese. He didn’t reply—probably because he had no idea what Ogata was saying, which served him right. Expertly, he twisted the cloth, dripping the blood out of it onto the dirt. Ogata watched without much interest as he poured more water and alcohol onto the cloth.
With a slow, hesitant hand, the sniper reached for his face. He carefully pressed the cool cloth to the wound across his cheek. Ogata hissed in pain—the alcohol against his bare skin stung, worse than it had for the wound on his stomach. Or maybe his face just wasn’t as accustomed to taking a beating. He turned away, dodging the cloth.
The sniper’s other hand reached up and grabbed the side of his head, pulling it back into place.
Ogata stared, hoping his face conveyed the rage he was feeling. He wasn’t a child. No one needed to coddle him, or manhandle him into place. It was fucking demeaning. He didn’t deserve—
He didn’t deserve to decide for himself, anyway.
He gritted his teeth and let the sniper do what he wanted.
It was almost inefficient, the way he was taking his time with him. The sniper rubbed small circles along the gash, patting when Ogata’s face screwed up from the sting, then moved to the mangled top of his ear. It didn’t take too long, but as soon as he was done, he turned the cloth to the clean side and started on the rest of his face.
Over his jaw. Across the mess of stubble he hadn’t gotten the chance to shave. Then his cheek, the dried mess of his mouth, his forehead. He was almost gentle with his missing eye. When he was finished, his hand sat against Ogata’s face for a moment longer before he took out the paper again and pointed at that same sentence he had written before.
“I still don’t understand what that says,” he said, in slow Russian. “I can’t read it.”
The sniper frowned. For a moment he seemed lost in thought. Then he grabbed Ogata’s tied wrists and pulled them towards himself, gripping too tight. He held him there, a muscle in his forehead twitching, for a moment longer, his eyes fixed directly on Ogata’s face, before letting him go again.
…Message received. Whatever the words on the paper actually said, what they meant was I’m in charge here.
He slumped back against the tree, staring blearily into the dark night around him. It was stupid of him to have lit a fire. The two of them were a sitting target for the people who would be coming after him. If there was another sniper out there, they were as good as dead.
But Asirpa’s little gaggle probably already thought he was dead. He doubted Tsurumi of all people was sentimental enough to come back for his body. Tsurumi probably hadn’t even thought about him since he fell off that train. Who would be coming?
The sniper pulled him along by his wrists again, this time closer to the fire. Ogata slid closer to the fire and didn’t pull away, which seemed to satisfy him for the time being. He unwrapped a bedroll and laid it out on the dirt beside the fire, then returned to the log, taking the thick cloth ties that had secured the bedroll to his rucksack and wrapping them around the rifle strap. He tied the whole mess to his own belt and wandered back over to his bedroll.
Ogata pulled on the straps experimentally. The sniper immediately turned to look at him. So if he tried to run, he would wake his captor. And if he wanted to untie that knot, he would need both hands free to do it. He had to admit, it was a very clever setup.
Apparently, this was good enough that he could trust him not to run away while he was sleeping. It seemed foolish to Ogata—what was stopping him from strangling himself with the ties, or strangling him for that matter?—but even the slightest tug seemed to alert him, and he didn’t doubt that, like him, he was a very light sleeper. It was as integral to being a sniper as learning to clean your gun.
He sat down on the log again and watched the other man crawl into his bedroll, stomach turned towards the fire. His eyes were shut, but his breathing was still quick and shallow.
He watched the sniper pretend to sleep for a long, long time. The fire burned down beside them, slowly crumbling into burning coals, but it still hurt his eye.
Without the distraction of trying to figure out what was going on, his head started to feel hazy again. The shapes of the forest blurred together into a mess of lines and forms that could’ve been trees and could’ve been a hundred people here to finally finish the job. It was too hot, next to the fire. His face had started to sweat again and a drop rolled long and slow over his empty socket.
“Yuusaku,” he said, trying to keep his voice down so he wouldn’t wake the sniper. Was that who it was, standing in the trees? Or was it his father? Or Tsurumi, watching him, waiting for his time to tell him how much of a disappointment he was?
Tsurumi had all but crawled into his skull back on the train. Goosebumps rose on his skin just thinking about it. He was probably still alive, hunting him right now. He probably didn’t care whether he lived or died. He was probably dead himself, mauled to unrecognizability by Sugimoto. Ogata’s hands went for his rifle, to protect himself. He couldn’t even use it. The fire was blinding him, especially on a night like this one. Dark, obscured by trees. His night vision was ruined. Where was his gun? He needed his gun. He couldn’t do anything without his gun.
He stared away from the fire, trying to keep his vision clear, until his eyes watered and his head was too fuzzy to do even that.
The sniper’s breathing became slow and calm and even. Ogata waited for a few long moments more, until he was sure he was completely asleep, and crawled across the dirt to lay down beside the fire, his head just barely touching the bedroll. He woke only once during the night: he thought someone had laid a hand on his head.