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lilacxquartz · 4 months ago

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Don't Make Me Feel Alive I Final Chapter

kenjaku x reader

chapter summary: your body finally caught up with you.

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12. Time

You later woke up somewhere different, recognising that you were no longer in the barren wasteland that you were otherwise in the middle of before. No, this was the opposite. Somewhere lush, green and almost calming. Serene, even. The dark sky slowly fading away into a blur of orange and blue as out went the night and in came the early morning.

Slowly sitting up, you felt weightless almost. A part of you had wondered if you actually were dead this time or perhaps even in the process of doing so. However, as the amulet sparked an electrifying jolt deep into your heart, the reeling pain leftover that settled was a sure reminder.

You were still here.

For now, at least.

Besides you sat Kenjaku, just barely brushing shoulders with you. Both of you were tucked seemingly far, far away from the rest of everyone else. At least nobody else seemed to be around. You had to wonder just how far you were from the city you were for the two of you to just recover like this out in the open.

His elbow rested atop of his bent knee, his eyes half lidded as he stared off into the horizon. For once, he didn’t seem to be in a playful mood, nor was he bitter. He just looked neutral. At peace, even. It was the closest to normal that he could ever look.

“Am I okay…?” you asked, pushing yourself up against the tree as well. The position he had you lying in before was uncomfortable and your neck felt stiff as you sat to rub the nape.

He flicked his gaze over to you, sagging his shoulders at the sight, seeming almost relieved that you were finally awake but he didn’t say anything at all to imply anything of the sort. Instead, he adopted his usual tone.

“Sure are,” he replied, tilting his head back and closing his eyes. He still seemed worn out himself, but he couldn’t quite rest yet. There was still a long way to go before he could even dream of doing that.

You nodded as your eyes fluttered, adjusting to the world again, “And it’s over… or?”

“Not just yet,” he wearily said, “you’ve slept through the worst of it, though.”

You considered asking him if he he also slept, out of perhaps what was naïve politeness, but judging from how spoke and how he looked, you tucked away your question and gulped it down instead. If your suspicions were correct, he hadn’t rested at all.

You instead just nodded again, briefly remembering the period where it all went dark right in the middle of the battlefield. Sighing, you didn’t even want to think about how that looked, feeling an odd sense of embarrassment form in the pit of your stomach.

“How did we make it out…?” you went on to ask, not quite understanding at all how he made it out from there to where you were now (and with you in tow).

Kenjaku simply just smiled in response, enjoying teasing you with the mystery of how he operated. You knew him very well at this point, but he liked withholding some things from you if he could help it. Especially if it meant that he could mess with you. Always, if that was the case.

“Don’t you worry about that,” he dismissed, dipping his head back down, “besides, there’s even more to look forward to.”

“Yeah, if I even make it that far,” you replied with a hearty cough, leaning back as the battery flickered again. This time it made you twitch a little more violently than before as now the pain could now be felt in your chest this time.

Faltering for a moment, Kenjaku repositioned himself to get a better look at the pendant. He slipped his hand underneath the stone with an unreadable look on his face, attempting to study it with great care.

“How long has it been doing that?” he frowned, flipping it around, noticing the crack embedded in the pendant and having the dots finally connect in his head. A faint alarm went off in his mind as he felt dread for the first time in many, many centuries.

“Since, um, since…” you spoke, sitting up a little, “since when you made the adjustment, right before we left.”

He stared at you for a couple of seconds before he blinked at you with an unreadable expression, however bordering almost anger, “And you didn’t think to tell me?”

You shrugged in response, attempting to play it off, “I thought it was nothing because it still technically worked.”

He sighed a deep breath, narrowing his eyes as he inspected the amulet further. From what he could see, the energy wasn’t recycling itself anymore due to the inflicted damage, which meant that the energy had a potential to stop for good when the final amount gets eaten up by your body.

This particular possibility caused him to freeze a little, his demeanour suddenly shifting into something rigid. At a glance, you could have sworn that he looked slightly panicked almost, wary even, despite his body language not clearly giving it away quite yet. Initially, he didn’t quite understand what the jittering meant as a symptom, but just as it happened again, he finally started to get it.

(And what a bitter realisation it was.)

With each and every jolt, the energy dropped considerably lower.

It was draining at double the rate than it was before.

Internally, he cursed at himself. Wondering why he decided to try and make such a big adjustment at such a critical time, right before everything went down. You would have been just fine with occasional breaks after all, it wasn’t as though the action was constant.

Pulling him away from his spiralling thoughts, your hand brushed against his robe as you drew out your arms to stretch, sounding utterly exhausted as you yawned, “...So tired.”

“Wait…” Kenjaku whispered, feeling something slightly off. The pendant’s light was fading and you were slightly unresponsive. This couldn’t have been a good sign. Not at all. In a last ditch effort, he attempted to press some energy into you instead, just like before, finding that he couldn’t do so because the damage had already taken its toll and your end now seemed irreversible.

The illness that you carried, no matter how much he delayed it, still ate away at your very insides and with the pendant failing to function properly, death didn’t have a reason to wait anymore.

It was painful for you too. Both mentally and physically to feel yourself deteriorate so quickly. It felt as though you were melting away into your pain; the disease finally sinking its claws into you. It was both comforting (to become free of) yet terrifying, knowing that beyond life, there was nothingness waiting for you.

“Ah,” he involuntarily uttered, his face adopting a conflicted expression as the amulet finally darkened, realising that it might in fact actually be too late to help you.

Your eyes drooped shut against your will, surrendering to the pull of eternal slumber. Your body closing up shop as it gently succumbed to the void. This time, there was nobody else who could pull you back up to the surface though, the lifeline finally cut, forcing you to drown away in the deep end.

Your senses blurred as everything shut down; the sounds of your own breathing—wind blowing, heartbeat thumping—everything slowly being replaced with a sickening silence and yet, with it, no pain, just peace, no fear; just a definite end.

Kenjaku simply stared at you with a growing sense of disbelief, almost refusing to acknowledge the possibility that you were actually leaving him. His body stiffened despite his hands adopting a faint tremor, noticing that your complexion was finally paling—that your breathing finally halted.

(Were you… actually… dead?)

For a good moment, he almost refused to believe it. Thinking that you were actually just messing with him, exacting your revenge for when he was rougher with you earlier on but the deafening silence was genuinely beginning to unsettle him.

“Wake up…?” he nudged you with an unsure scoff as the corners of his lips twitched. His eyelids fluttered as he took in the sight before him before a stiff gulp retreated into the back of his throat, forcing him to process this whole development.

He repeated himself again, pushing at you to do so, finding that your skin was already quite stiff. So sickeningly cold and completely devoid of life.

Kenjaku remained planted against the grass, rooting himself next to you as he stared at you with a now blank glare. His own breathing became rigid, forcing himself to take deep breaths as he finally got it. Slowly, he forced himself to return back to normal, to swallow down anything that could have resembled emotion at all.

You were dead—no question about it, which meant that he no longer had to care again. It was a subtle shift in his demeanour, but he seemed much colder, almost bordering emotionless.

“Well, this was a huge waste of time…” he muttered to himself quietly, finally acknowledging that you were actually gone, “all of that time, all of that wasted effort… only for you to just… die.”

Yet as pulled himself away from your lifeless company, a sliver of determination crept back into his resolve, daring him to change reality. To go against what he knew about life and death.

He bitterly scoffed as he took in the sight of the battery again, attempting in what was a strained final effort to fire it up again by dispensing a huge surge of energy within it, watching as it held onto a glow as it fired up again yet leaving you still extinguished.

Noticing this, he balled his fingers into fists in frustration; gulping, sighing so deep that the exhale almost hurt him, rippling through his senses; reminding him that some things just weren’t destined for change. That some things were just simply not meant to be.

Remembering his own agenda, he knew that he couldn’t stick around and sulk forever, so he simply just moved you from leaning against the tree to flat on your back against the grass instead.

Maybe the kindest thing he could do for you, was to let you actually rest.

For good this time.

“Goodnight, [name],” he said a final time, pushing himself up to his feet and walking away.

However, just as he was in the process of leaving, he heard something.

Something impossible.

“Ah, my head hurts…”

Freezing, he turned around slowly, thinking that maybe he had finally lost it. Maybe this was the problem with getting close to people. There was simply no way that he heard you say that, after all. Surely, it must have been a trick of the mind.

Yet as his eyes settled on you, there you were. Alive and awake. The pendant shining impossibly bright and finally stabilising into a constant glow instead of pulsating like before.

“You’re… alive?” he asked you, pushing down any hint that made him sound distressed.

It wasn’t something that he wanted to share. Especially not with you. The feeling was almost too humiliating and it made him feel vulnerable, even. Grief was something that he wasn’t unfamiliar with but in his time alive, he simply learned how to move on because time never paused to wait for anyone.

(Yet it did for you…?)

“I-is this your fault again… somehow?” you asked warily, feeling bad but not quite horrible.

“I hope so,” he said, shaking away his troubled expression. He quickly crouched down beside you, studying your face as though to ensure that he wasn’t hallucinating. Had you asked him about his momentarily saddened demeanour, he would have told you that you were simply just seeing things.

You frowned in response, “So, I’m still stuck with you?”

Kenjaku’s lips eased into a relaxed smile, helping you back up to your feet as he waited once again to help you recover, “For as long as I can make it last,” he said, pulling you towards him, “I’m never letting you go now, you know.”

(Even if it meant destroying himself in the process.)

Sighing, you reluctantly followed suit as he walked forward, frowning as you still felt the aftermath of your disease weigh you down regardless, forcing you back down to the ground as your knees involuntarily anchored, causing you to cough out blood as you spluttered.

“Or… maybe you are dying after all,” he sighed, his tone laced in slight resignation. He knew that death wasn’t always immediate. Sometimes life was cruel and held on even on its final hinges, needlessly extending the suffering.

“Feels like it’s going to be soon this time,” you croaked out.

“I think the pendant will keep you going actually,” he considered as he stared at the rock, “but you would effectively be a walking corpse.”

He paused, having a slight idea in mind. Something that he discussed with you earlier. It was surely insane though, but he was already crazy enough and the possibility was eating away at him in unbridled curiosity.

Taking the pendant away from you just far enough for you to not leech life from it, he hesitantly watched you take your final breath. Just moments before however, he corrupted your soul with a touch of cursed energy using Mahito’s technique from having absorbed him earlier, combining it with idle transfiguration but in a slightly different way.

It was risky, it was insane but it could work. It could. As he reapplied the pendant—his palm pressing it to your chest—he leaned back to assess the aftermath, hoping, almost silently praying that his idea would work. He’s done worse before in the name of evolving humanity, so why not in the name of being selfish?

(He didn’t want to let you go, after all.)

He sighed as he involuntarily tapped his index finger against the grass, impatiently waiting for the experiment to come into effect. Surely you had enough of a will to take whatever hatred or even anger to come back into the living realm, if even just to spite him.

And then finally, just as he was starting to lose his last shred of hope.

Something happened.

Electricity crackled through your body, something stirring as waves of currents rippled through your frame. Your joints crackled and twitched alike, sparking jolting energy into your body; your appearance becoming something not quite exactly human but retaining what made you, you at the same time.

For the most part, you managed to retain your form at the cost of a change in your abilities.

With not a single lingering shred of the disease left behind.

“Is… is this still you?” Kenjaku warily asked, watching you wake up. His eyes never left you; glued to your body with dedicated fascination.

“Still me,” you managed to reply after a while. It was a surely odd predicament you were in, but you didn’t quite hate your current existence. It was strange, though, you didn’t quite need to breathe anymore. Your heartbeat didn’t echo through your body anymore either. If anything, all of your emotions finally made sense now too; the fear finally gone from your mind.

“Looks like I’ve finally fixed you then,” he said as he forced himself to calm down at the sight. Death paintings were one thing; vengeful spirits caused by idle transfiguration were another and it was almost maddening to think about. “Can you finally keep up though?”

As you got up from the ground again, you seemed to be able to move a bit more fluidly now. Kenjaku watched you closely, his eyes trained on every detail of your being. One thing in particular that he noticed was that the pendant now seemed to fuse with your body, making him wonder if you could keep up with him between vessels in the future.

Torn between maintaining a rational mind and surrendering to his feelings alike, he closed off the control your technique per the binding vow, murmuring to himself as he felt a transfer of energy on and off the more times he repeated it.

“Still works,” he continued to mutter, pulling you in closer as though to hug you, “you’re actually stuck with me.”

You pulled away from him, finding that he wasn’t letting you go, “What are you doing right now…?”

However, your question did remind him that he was being a little too erratic right now. He cleared his throat promptly, straightening his posture before finally composing himself and pushing you away.

“Nothing at all,” he said in his usual tone, taking a step back from you and walking with a fixed direction in mind.

You sighed as you followed him along, pretending to hate him too, despite there actually being a spark of something else fluttering between the lines.

Even though you’d both never admit it.

(At least not on purpose.)

Smiling to himself, making sure that you couldn’t see it, he couldn’t wait to show you his grand plan to come to work.

To watch as it all unfolded.

With you.

Always you.

(Forever you.)

~~~

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