#extremely funny that im pretty sure this thread started by me saying 'bigby should meet aiba' and that has yet to happen

[blowyourhousedown]

... He isn't scared.

Not one flinch, not one whiff of sour fear-stink, not anything but a series of comments so bizarre that the combined wrong-footedness is enough to bring Bigby back instantly (discombobulated, for more reasons than one).

"Just - fuck. Just hold up a minute," he finds himself half-begging, staggering a little from the suddenness of the rush leaving him. Wasn't a hallucination? And what the fuck is this about an assassin?

There's something else, too - something more worrying than either of those, that his mind can't put together until after a few deep breaths and a fog-clearing head shake. Either Ryuki's world, and Ryuki himself, are much different than Bigby had assumed, or this kid's natural survival instincts are all kinds of fucked. People and animals (and people who are animals) have natural, bone-deep fear responses to Bigby letting loose: it's basically written into their DNA. Trying to hide it or being trained to overcome it is one thing, but not having any reaction at all....

Does it have something to do with the hallucination issue he mentioned? More importantly, if Ryuki reacts to Bigby this way, does he also just stand there with platitudes when something a lot less inclined to hold back is menacing him? Because if so - in this fucking place - Ryuki has just shot to the top of Bigby's current list of worries.

"Okay. Okay, there's a whole lot to unpack there, and I am absolutely not letting any of that go without circling back around to it, but kid - I shouldn't have lost it on you like that, and I'm sorry, but that's also kind of my entire point here. I wasn't exaggerating about any of that. And the flowers just made things worse - I was incredibly close to hurting a whole lot of people that day, and you were at ground zero."

Ryuki blinked and stood back when he saw Bigby's face change, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. It was obviously a hallucination, but it felt unfair that his brain would do this when Bigby was so obviously upset.

"Ryuki... you're not hallucinating this. This is happening, I see it too."

'You... do...?'

That gave him pause, brows furrowing as it started to hit him just why Bigby was so upset. It wasn't because of the flowers, or anything like that- it was because of this... transformation thing. This whatever it was that made him say he was so dangerous, and Ryuki hadn't been taking him seriously at all.

"So that... wasn't a hallucination...?" He blinked again, eyes darting over to where Bigby had punched the wall. And yet, he wasn't scared. If Bigby truly was a threat, then it was his duty as a member of ABIS to put a stop to him- but Ryuki didn't think that was the case. If he really was so ruthless, he could've killed him already.

"But you haven't lost control yet, have you? You're not the only person I know with a bad past, Mr. Bigby. Maybe our world is different, sure... but that part's the same, at least." He paused, trying to think of the best way to put things. He wasn't going to spill Date's secrets to someone he didn't even know, but... "Someone I look up to very much used to be an assassin. He could probably kill me without a second glance- but I know he won't. Because he doesn't want to be that person anymore, he's changed."