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Fujimi's brain has always operated as a sort of delicate pulley system. Not the graceful kind, like the rafters of a theater or a Rube Goldberg machine, with their crisscrossing mechanisms that look complex until you learn enough about them to see the invisible lines of logic and predestiny that guide their movements to their only inevitable conclusions. No, his is more akin to something set up in a terrible hurry meant only to hold out until some outside force arrives with purpose and installs a proper, more efficient system, that has, against all odds, continued to function despite that savior never coming. It is, on a good day, some twenty warbling threads of thought vying for attention at once, fraying to create more wherever they touch. It is his brain, and it keeps him alive.
Its chaos, its noise, is the only thing keeping him moving right now, in the midst of worse chaos outside his head. In the midst of a carved-up street, scabbed with rubble, an active crisis situation with two people unresponsive, he keeps his cool. He has to.
Baku is alive. Yes. Yes. Baku needs help. That's a thread. That had been a very prominent thread, and now that Baku is on his way back home with his sister, it curls inwards on itself, only asserting its presence when it's brushed against by accident. Fujimi is hungry, that's another thread, but one he's grown used to ignoring; it sits patiently towards the back, thin enough that it's rarely intersected.
Some threads have been unwinding for days or far longer. One, spooling from corner to corner and back across like it's building a web, is a song Fujimi heard on the car radio last week, one Nasuka had begged him to shut off because she can't stand Top 40s or anything less than heavy metal. To be honest, Fujimi didn't particularly like the song either, but turned it up anyway to mess with her, only for it to backfire in the form of playing on loop ever since, a radio station in his own head that he couldn't shut off if he tried. That has gone on uninterrupted, regardless of anything else.
And at the center of his mind is a tangle, radiating a bright red and pulsing like the timer on a bomb, that everything else takes great care to veer away from.
Fujimi allows this. He lets the moving parts distract him while he makes phone calls, while he confirms that Nasuka made it to the Yorozu residence safely, while he runs down the list of every administrative task he can think of for the situation until he exhausts it.
Odaka lays, waiting.
Odaka lays motionless.
Finally, there is nothing to do but for Fujimi to wait himself. He sinks to his knees next to Odaka, then, thinking about how long he might be there, shifts to sit with his legs crossed instead.
"I called an ambulance," he says. Fuck, his voice is so hoarse, could he at least sound put together? He clears his throat and continues, "You're- you're gonna be okay. We just have to wait for them to get here. It won't be long."
A rumble of thunder somewhere in the distance, without a hint of a storm in the sky. The sound of sirens hasn't stopped all day.
"People are getting hurt," Fujimi thinks aloud. "Whatever's causing this, it's still out there. Good thing you're here. It'll take three Paranormal Affairs detectives to take on a Black Case of this size." He pauses. "Once you're better, of course."
He sits, quiet. The world goes on around them. Lightning flashes between two buildings, and on instinct, he ticks down the seconds until he hears the thunder. He doesn't have to wait long.
Fujimi wets his lips. "Feels weird not… talking to you."
A breeze ruffles Odaka's bangs, tugging at the bits that are stuck to his face with dried blood.
"Don't feel like you have to talk, though. It's probably better if you don't. You've been through a lot, you just- just rest and save your energy."
He wants to take Odaka's hand again, but he doesn't. Odaka has never been big on physical contact, and Fujimi will get an earful if he wakes up holding hands. Besides, a thread curving dangerously close to the angry awful Thing he's been ignoring reminds Fujimi that when someone is badly hurt, you're not supposed to move them. Maybe that doesn't apply to something as small as a hand, but he doesn't want to take chances.
Odaka's hand is small. Everything about him is very small, laying there. Laying on the concrete on the fucking concrete where something just left him-
In a panic, Fujimi grasps at the first thread he gets his hands on. "Remember how you used to f-fall asleep in the precinct? I-" He's tripping over his words in his hurry to get them out of his mouth, to fill the space. "I would always, um, find you in the break room or an empty office on a desk, you could fall asleep anywhere, it didn't even have to be comfortable. And you were always so surprised when I woke you up because you couldn't even remember falling asleep, and I said you should get that looked at and you said probably but you never did, and I guess you still haven't because this- because you've been asleep awhile now and it's the middle of the day. I'm gonna make you do a sleep study once this is over, and that's a promise, not a threat." He forces a smile to his face, backs away, away, away from the tangle in his brain. He doesn't even hear himself, he's just saying whatever he can to ward off the silence.
The shadows are longer than when he started. The sun is moving in the sky. But that can't be right, because time stopped moving about an hour ago. Every second since then has been dead, like hair once it grows past the scalp.
"The ambulance will be here soon," Fujimi says.
Suddenly, he doesn't want them to come. Doesn't want them to tell him what he already knows.
Doesn't want to think about the last time he saw Odaka, how he was moving and talking and awake, how he could hear Odaka breathing behind him and feel his body, warm from sleep, so close, how he could pretend it was a different, better circumstance.
How that distracted him. How he could've, should've grabbed Odaka and not let him go.
His eyes start to bat. Faster, faster. There's a pressure building behind them.
The tangle, the thought he's been avoiding this entire time even as he loses ground with each second, all at once drops the floor from beneath him:
THIS IS YOUR FAULT
"No," he sobs. He bites his lip, rocks backwards, forward, squeezes his eyes shut. Not happening. "Odaka is fine. He's- no, he's, he will be fine. He will."
THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT
"He'll be fine," he says, louder, unsure who or what he's hoping will hear him. "He got into an awful mess, but he's out now. Whatever he was doing, he's done. There can't be more than this." His breathing comes quicker, unsteady. "What more do you want from him?" His voice cracks, leaving a jagged edge that pitches up whenever he raises his voice. "What else could anyone ask of him?!"
YOUR FAULT YOUR FAULT YOUR FAULT
All the mental threads in the world aren't enough to distract him. Everything points inward, everything is a cliff with no purchase, dropping off steep into the abyss that swallows and crushes and blacks out the light until there is nothing else except the inescapable truth that ODAKA IS DEAD BECAUSE OF ME.
Fujimi's face is buried in swaths of black fabric, one hand, tremoring, desperate, clasped around Odaka's, the other digging at his shirt as if it'll find a heartbeat deep enough beneath. His jaws part, soundless, tears spilling from his eyes, his last shreds of resistance gone.
A few seconds later, his voice rips open, and he begins to scream.