kokuyoyo: (And the cops are back.)
Chikusa ([personal profile] kokuyoyo) wrote in [community profile] thenearshore2019-06-03 07:49 pm

[closed] with eyes sunk so deep in our skulls

Who: Chikusa Kakimoto, Ken Joshima, Nanako Dojima
When: when Hakkai disappears
Where: The empty lot in the Central District that used to be Temple Li Tieguai, later Temple Nanshe
What: Chikusa and Ken have lost two gods before, but it doesn't get any easier. Even for the third time.
Warnings: codependent teenagers reacting badly to loss, as usual



As had happened twice before, the disappearance happened so suddenly that it took a moment for the pain to set in, not too unlike how the brain would need a moment to accept the loss of a limb.

The Temple of Iron Crutch Li had been by no means been an enormous or extravagant temple in the pristine beauty of the Central District, but that had only served to make it all the more notable a landmark. The tall and sturdy red brick walls had stood out from the complicated designs of other temples, and the scent of herbs had wafted out from behind its simple decorated walls. It hadn't been a huge place, with enormous bedrooms or fancy kitchens... but it had been everything to some of the people who'd lived in it.

Just as utterly, it's now nothing.

As with the times before, not everything disappears. The bags and suitcases Chikusa had packed underneath their bed frame a long time ago, filled with spare clothes and poisons and rations, those had stayed. Chikusa's massive collection of beanies, although not the drawers that he'd kept them in, is still there and in a pile on the ground. A lot of their snacks, most of them Ken's, are scattered about.

There is a framed picture, drawn for lighter and brighter times.

There are letters.

There is not their bedroom, a little bit cleaner in recent days with renovations and expansions but still as full of their things as it had always been. There is not the herb garden, carefully maintained even by the two of them for chores, full of calming and comforting scents always found their way into the temple. There is not the kitchen, or its attached dining room, two places they'd all spent so much time in with food theft and conversation and an ease couldn't be found anywhere else.

There are not the things that matter.

There is not their god.
junkyarddog: (The darkness that you fear)

[personal profile] junkyarddog 2019-06-04 04:41 am (UTC)(link)
The smells are gone.

It hits Ken before anything else, before he's even opened his eyes. Smell is wired to a part of the mind deeper down than most others even when referring to entirely human sensibilities, and Ken is...well, he's still entirely human, technically, but he's also got added animalistic layers to him that react to scents even more strongly. And all of Temple Li Tieguai had been suffused with so many smells - herbs and medicines, mostly, unless Hakkai or Chikusa were cooking - and, in their room, those lingering hints of strong cleaning supplies and the pepper spray they'd been trying to scour out. (Almost all of it was gone, but to Ken's nose there was still a bit of it that perhaps only replacing the floorboards could ever have completely gotten rid of.) Many of the herbs and medicines had been almost overpowering to Ken's nose, but as time went on he'd adjusted, even come to associate them with home.

Having them suddenly be gone is...well, it's like waking up to your home being gone, except that that's literally what's happening. But it's that feeling on a level that punches straight through to the gut, that skips straight to the full acuteness of grief and loss without even pausing at denial, or realization, and not even giving a nod to comprehension. Ken wakes up distressed before he even knows why.

He shoots bolt upright, looking around at what is essentially his worst nightmare. Waking up in an unfamiliar room instead of your own bedroom is an alarming, distressing prospect for anyone; how much worse, then, to wake up on the ground to the realization that your own room, your own home and your own family (or at least part of it) are completely gone, as if they never existed.

He's vaguely aware that Chikusa is next to him; it's the only reassurance there is to be had right now. But he can't tear his eyes away from the emptiness around them, at the unfamiliar ground that he's never seen before because a temple used to sit on top of it. He feels like he can't breathe. He feels like he's still asleep, that this is some incoherent dream he'll wake up from. It can't be real. Hakkai can't be gone.

Ken can't accept it. It's too much to ask of him.

"Hakkai-sama...?" He hadn't known he was going to speak, hadn't planned on it, hadn't even realized he was capable of it. And the voice doesn't sound like his own. (Or, at least, his voice hasn't sounded like that since back when he was only a number, not a name.) It's small, not so much scared as stunned.

Tears slowly begin running down Ken's face, although the rest of him is still frozen. If he reacts, if he treats this as real, then...that'll make it more real. It can't be real. It's a dream, or an illusion, or a trick. They wouldn't take Hakkai from them, too. Things can't hurt that much without just killing you.
junkyarddog: (And you never realized)

[personal profile] junkyarddog 2019-06-21 05:19 am (UTC)(link)
The realization is slowly sinking into Ken, like a leaking faucet dripping water onto a dry sponge. Chikusa's clinging to him, his partner's tears(Ken isn't even truly aware of his own), the wailing of Pookie, the congregation of animals slowly coalescing around them. Bon presses himself up against Ken's back, either seeking comfort or offering it or both.

But Ken's body, still stiff with shock, doesn't unlock. The usual emotional outburst from him that one might expect - like the howls of grief when Axel vanished - doesn't come. He stays frozen, no longer from disbelief or a lack of comprehension but because he simply can't get past what's been put in front of him. It's not quite that he can't accept it; with every passing second, reality asserts itself a bit more cruelly. It's more that Ken's reaction is so strong, so painful, that it can't get through. It's like trying to force a watermelon through a straw. And Ken doesn't know what to consciously do with himself, either. Consciously, he has nothing, and subconsciously the emotional backlog is so massive that it's caused complete gridlock.

The closest thing he has to a coherent thought is that he ought to comfort Chikusa, help him feel better, but that's like thinking he'd like to jump to the moon. No matter how much he might want to, he has no idea how he'd even begin to do it, or if it's something that's even possible to begin with. It's impossible to act on it.

For the first time ever, Ken is the one disassociating away from his pain.
junkyarddog: (Who was fitted with collar and chain)

[personal profile] junkyarddog 2019-06-24 03:09 am (UTC)(link)
Ken wants to speak. He wants to react. But he doesn't know what to say, how to react. It feels like he's being pulled in so many directions at once that he's essentially hovering in place, with no force acting on him strongly enough to actually move him in any particular direction. Each opposing desire balances itself out so perfectly that he's essentially locked in a kind of stasis.

He leans into Chikusa's touch a little - more because it's easier to lean than to not - but that's about all the reaction he can muster. His eyes can't even decide what to focus on, simply looking at nothing in particular. It's more than not knowing how to stop whatever it is this is; he doesn't know how to start doing anything else right now.
junkyarddog: (Who was born in a house full of pain)

[personal profile] junkyarddog 2019-07-04 08:51 pm (UTC)(link)
Ken tries to meet Chikusa's gaze, but focusing feels hard - it's like some inner instinct, telling him that if he moves, if he does or changes anything right now, he'll get hurt. (And in a way, it's technically true - if he shakes off the dissociating away from his pain, he'll have to feel it, actually deal with it.)

But at Chikusa's words, he stiffens minutely as everything in him rejects everything about Chikusa's idea. No. It's almost more sensation than thought. Picking up their things - it's the first step after Hakkai's departure. The first step to having to move on, to having to deal with the fact that Hakkai is gone. It is in fact the first act of Life After Hakkai.

Ken doesn't want that. He wants the opposite of that so strongly that his brain has basically shut down all non-essential functions of his body rather than deal with the reality of Hakkai's disappearance. So Chikusa gets a reaction, sort of, in that Ken closes his eyes. That's all, but it's the closest thing Ken can manage to an absolute refusal to even consider what Chikusa's suggesting.