[This pain isn't his to endure — that much, Akira is aware of — but it hurts just the same. Solomon's voice is a salve, the relief temporary, but it grounds Akira enough to keep him from losing himself entirely.
He's never felt this hurt, this lost, this pained— or maybe he has, just once, during the time he awakened to the second self within him. If he'd lost control then, his Shadow would have swallowed him whole. This is the same, and yet it isn't, because everyone is dead, gone, and it's his own hands that caused this.
...No, no, no. He didn't do this. The man beside him did. Still, still—
Pulled aside, Akira's vision swims in and out of focus, but he measures every inhale, every exhale, until he can see more than just the fuzzy outline of the man in front of him.]
Instinct? What do you...?
[Disembodied voices scream and Akira violently jerks, but he can't escape them. He can't ignore them, and he certainly can't save them, right?
Right?
No, no, no. Akira's hands scrabble along the ashen ground, giving into the impulse to do something, anything, to turn the tide of destruction and bring this nightmare to an end. Logic is thrown out the window in favor of burying an incisor in his thumb and biting down until blood gushes from the tip. He'll draw that circle, he'll make that sacrifice, because his life is nothing in comparison to what's been lost. Instinct will draw the shape, and Akira's blood will follow.]
If no one can help, then—!
[Then it isn't people he needs. It's those beings that lie in the realm between the waking and the dead.]
no subject
He's never felt this hurt, this lost, this pained— or maybe he has, just once, during the time he awakened to the second self within him. If he'd lost control then, his Shadow would have swallowed him whole. This is the same, and yet it isn't, because everyone is dead, gone, and it's his own hands that caused this.
...No, no, no. He didn't do this. The man beside him did. Still, still—
Pulled aside, Akira's vision swims in and out of focus, but he measures every inhale, every exhale, until he can see more than just the fuzzy outline of the man in front of him.]
Instinct? What do you...?
[Disembodied voices scream and Akira violently jerks, but he can't escape them. He can't ignore them, and he certainly can't save them, right?
Right?
No, no, no. Akira's hands scrabble along the ashen ground, giving into the impulse to do something, anything, to turn the tide of destruction and bring this nightmare to an end. Logic is thrown out the window in favor of burying an incisor in his thumb and biting down until blood gushes from the tip. He'll draw that circle, he'll make that sacrifice, because his life is nothing in comparison to what's been lost. Instinct will draw the shape, and Akira's blood will follow.]
If no one can help, then—!
[Then it isn't people he needs. It's those beings that lie in the realm between the waking and the dead.]