Curate, connect, and discover
i've been walking through a world gone blind . // @ Kogami !
playing clever, isn’t he?
it’s only for a moment - a minute twitch of his hand and a perk of his brow that gives away the absurdity of makishima’s words. blindness. blindness. kogami laughs, curt and listless as he meets makishima’s gaze impassively.
“The longing for Paradise is man's longing not to be man.” he quotes, “it doesn’t make me happy that we agree on something like the stripping of man’s conviction in favor of automatized data processing.”
and of course it doesn’t. he’d left without so much as a warning to keep their guard on, after all, tossing aside his own connections for the pursuit of his own personal devil and though he isn’t precisely at Hell’s doorstep, his heart aches with sickness, hatred that’s boiled for too long, a necrosis of the heart. hoping he might see that batard’s face one more time before it all came crashing down, so he could bash it in, had suddenly turn into reality.
fuck makishima, honestly, for even bringing that up.
but it’s enough to rattle kogami’s nerves. he’s certain that he’d been searching for makishima’s face just a moment too long, desperate for a hint that remorse is foreign and that his ghostly silhouette framed in a polaroid hadn’t only existed in his darkest nightmares - the kind that haunt him at night, curled up under the sheets while sasayama’s memory breathes in the back of his mind. when the dark, oppressive silence leaves him with nothing to do but imagine blood - his, makishima’s blood - coating him like crimson rain. makishima’s eyes are clear, he notices, through the distance, through the gun’s lens and amplified only by nebulous contempt. clear and indifferent and offering more questions than answers.
kogami doesn’t lower his gun.
he’s grateful, suddenly, for the privacy that came after the chase, hiding from onlookers as though there was anything else to bury besides the corpse that he will soon make. he’s not killing time. but he doesn’t dare speak of how desperately he wanted, waited for this - how quickly his hunger was reignited when he saw makishima stumble, ragged breathing, blood-stained and snaking his way out into the empty landscape.
briefly, kogami wonders, if he’ll be disappointed in himself tomorrow, so quick to pull the trigger and shove a bullet into that pretty skull. he’s almost certain he would be as he reveled in the weight of metal in his palm, so different from how a dominator felt when his badge still meant something. the taste of gunpowder. the subtle scent of makishima’s blood in the breeze. the way his back is turned and facing him, brittle as a bird. it’s all and the same, the man in the photograph, the shadow in his memories, the man kneeling in front of him. the helping hand that skinned sasayama alive. kogami lets that consume him. he doesn’t want to think about what makishima wants. not here. not now.
“that’s all you have to say? unless you want to piss me off any more than you’ve done. then by all means, keep talking.”
@achroanimus