#/ he very much broke composure and freaked out r.i.p.

[inun4ki]

"How long have you been hiding this from me?" [ from yami]

angst meme / accepting!

"Stop! Stop looking at them!"

But he couldn't escape Yami's gaze, pinned to his chair by worsening exhaustion, as meager streams of blood trickled from flesh that'd been flayed by Kaede's own hand time and time again. It was ugly and foul, framed by the yellow-red colors of inflammation and infection, strange gloves long-discarded, torn to meager shreds in the pitch of an alleyway. Some gashes crossed into others, some scabbed over while the rest were raw and open, one down to the tendon where pain tolerance and force of will were almost useless. Dried blood, caked on and crackling, webbed between them all, so many lines and rips and holes shorn through his skin.

The truth was evident, an inevitability, and it was only a matter of time before Yami discovered it - until he discovered the requirements of Kaede's techniques, and the harm he'd purposefully brought himself besides. He knew, yet still he fought to retreat, willing his legs to move, carry him away to some place without any eyes or false concern where he could hide, hide, hide. Yami didn't need to know everything - Kaede would've been satisfied if he'd known nothing at all. None of this was real anyway, and it couldn't be Yami's job to care, not when--

Wide eyes rimmed with an emotion he lacked the strength to conceal, he refused to return Yami's stare, his heart burning to retreat and recoil.

"It's-It's none of your business! This isn't what I came here for!" he snapped, his voice uncharacteristically frantic.

In his desperation to flee, Kaede's heels dug into the grooves between the tiles beneath him and pushed with what little strength he had, his chair squealing across the floor. Not much distance was forged between them, but it was enough. He withdrew from Yami entirely and forced himself to stand on his feet, cradling his arm against his chest as his wobbling knees threatened to give out. Clenching his teeth through the agony now violently twisting through him, he tried everything in his power to remain stolid and upright, but especially to maintain a cold distance between himself and Yami, going so far as to clumsily storm toward the door to his apartment. Guided only by the terror of being seen.

He didn't want this. Yami wasn't supposed to know anything about it. He wasn't supposed to care. He wasn't supposed to ask questions like he cared. He wasn't supposed to treat those injuries. He wasn't supposed to know they even existed. He wasn't supposed to see them at all! Because it complicates things. It's all pity and sympathy over the necessity of it, never any understanding, and he didn't know Yami well enough to be secure it was neither. He had to hide it, disappear for another several months, tend to his own wounds, and never broach Yami on familiar enough circumstances again. He couldn't bear it, couldn't bear anyone at all knowing.

And before he knew it, he was running out of the door, stumbling, fumbling, falling over himself in the hallway. But it was fine, it was fine, so long as no one could see. Panting, heaving breath after breath, blood dripping onto his clothes, his hip deciding now was the time to act up, forcing him to trip and fall into the next unit's door. With nigh unfathomable effort, he scrambled to his feet and continued on as stubbornly as ever could have, grasping at the stair railings with all his remaining strength.

Away. He just had to get away. Away.