Entry tags:
Holly Heights Mailbox + Phone + Inventory

1448
Gau Meguro
Father:
Mother: Dahlia Hawthorne (
coreopsideae )
Sibling: Minatsuki Tamaki (
medacium )
Mother: Dahlia Hawthorne (
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Sibling: Minatsuki Tamaki (
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Voicemail
(555) 587-8423
(555) 587-8423
"Hello, this is Gau Meguro! I'm sorry that I can't answer you right now, so please leave a message and I will get back to you as soon as I can!"
Beep!
Beep!
Earned inventory:
-- Salary from the Agito, working as a waiter/staff from November 10th 2013 onward
-- Regain coupon, gained from the sticker event
-- Regain coupon + $1200, gained from being on island 11 for the castaway event.
--Receipt for $200 + banner with COMPLETE FAILURE on it from paintball event
-- Salary from the Agito, working as a waiter/staff from November 10th 2013 onward
-- Regain coupon, gained from the sticker event
-- Regain coupon + $1200, gained from being on island 11 for the castaway event.
--Receipt for $200 + banner with COMPLETE FAILURE on it from paintball event
--$200 receipt + t-shirt that reads I SURVIVED DARE-PALOOZA AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS STUPID T-SHIRT from dare event
Re: [Voice]
A-are you, is this, Meguro? Gau?
[it's maybe the first time he's ever used his first name to his face]
[Voice]
[Words come tumbling out in the tiny pauses between stuttered breathes, and Gau clings to his phone like it's the last thing in the world keeping him from falling off the cliff.]
Re: [Voice]
Hospital?
[but he's already running, and it's the second time in as many days, his feet pounding asphalt and his heart pounding his rib cage]
[Voice]
[Where was Raikou, if Badou was alive then Raikou could be too, or he could be-
The thought glued him to the bed where he sat, and continued to sit as he struggled to control his breath.]
Re: [Voice]
[he's running too fast to talk, so he answers Gau's panicked breaths with some ragged, dumbass panting of his own -- the hospitals in sight, now]
[Voice]
[Gau wishes, wishes he could just stop this panting, just so he could properly ask a question that he desperately needed to know, but the name by itself is all he can ask.]
Re: [Voice]
[and the doors rock on their decrepit hinges as he bolts through them]
[the fucking lift's still broken, god damnit]
[takes a wheeling turn towards the stairs]
[Voice]
...Maybe he won't be so far, when Badou finally arrives.]
Re: [Voice]
Shit, fuck --
[ -- useless and ignored behind his eyelid. soon he's fucking finally on the third floor and racing back to the room he'd been in hours earlier, listening to Nill breathe and trying not to fucking lose it]
[don't let it be fucked up, don't let it be a horrifying joke, don't let it be my bullshit head -- ]
[Offline]
It feels like, with every breath that's just a touch slower than the rest, it pushes out small tears from the corners of his eyes, which collect in the basin of his eyelids.
Breathe, breathe, he just needs to breathe.]
action
[and Meguro's there, he's fucking alive, sitting up and staring at Badou like he's about to puke or pass out or maybe start crying]
Re: [Offline]
[he paces forward, looking at that alive face, and it comes out in three sharp bullets;]
I -- you -- fuck --
Re: [Offline]
F-fucker -- !
[Offline]
And he felt pain, red pain, flash across his face, obscuring any claim to vision the boy had.
(He had to breathe and he couldn't, he had to breathe and all he could do was gargle blood down his throat, it was that memory all over again, the suffocating memory of his death).
Instantly, he stumbled backward, unseeing and hazed eyes wide, covering his nose desperately with his hands but still standing, unbelievably.
(He's terrified, terrified beyond belief that the same madness that drove that man to knock him to the ground had infected Badou, that Badou would do the exact same, but with the viciousness Gau knows has been building up for some time.)]
S-ST-!
[He scores the room for a weapon, a pole, anything to strike the other boy away, strike him down, kill him if he had to-
Such thoughts reflected in those green, wild-looking eyes.]
Re: [Offline]
[after that knuckle-bruising hit, Badou's fists fall out to his sides, still tightly clenched, shaking, but not going after the boy; his own eye is wide, terrified as well, as if he'd been the one who'd gotten a punch to the face after reanimation]
[Badou knows what fear for your life looks like, because he's seen it and worn it more times than he can even count, can even remember. seeing it in Gau, a part of him thinks finally because this place was never to be trusted, no one should have been, and another part of him thinks shit because that look is on him, and he doesn't want it there, it hurts and it makes him even angrier, even more incoherent]
[he doesn't move forward again, standing rooted to the spot with the latter emotion -- maybe this is where a hug would come, or a round of tears, or a babbled I was I was so fucking worried, but all he can miserably blurt out with fear and anger making him twitch and shake is]
Wh-what the f-fuck, Meguro?
[Offline]
Waves of pain from his smashed nose brought new tears with each round. He curled into himself, facing his shoulder to Badou, trying to stare at him and the ground and for a weapon and anything else as he yelled, with shaky break and a choked sob-]
I-I don't understand-!
Re: [Offline]
[it's a sobering thought, an actual thought instead of those drowning, suffocating feelings, and Badou latches onto it almost feverishly]
You fucking died.
[his voice is hoarse, like he'd been yelling]
But it wasn't -- it wasn't like you just got shot, an' we found the b-body, you an' some other assholes disappeared and then there were these fucking, clues, an'. People started croppin' up dead, the missin' ones. It was a fucking game -- the fucking Landlord set it up -- nobody knew where you were, an' if you were alive or not, an' then this shit -- your notebook, or somethin', it turned up all bloody an' -- tomorrow, the feed said.
[it's the hardest part of the story to relay, even with his mouth working faster than his brain]
But I, but nobody found you still an' then you showed up here, an' you didn't -- you didn't move --
Re: [Offline]
Re: [Offline]
So what the fuck happened? Where were you? What -- what'd he do to you?
[Offline]
It didn't matter what Badou said next, or that Gau would be disappointed later that he failed to listen to such important information, or that it aligned with what conclusion he had already come to himself.
The confirmation itself, those three words spat at him, are what make his entire body freeze, those rapid and panicked breaths stop short and he's sliding down to the floor, facing Badou and arms open at his side.
(Blood drips onto his chest, and it's a depressing thought to think that if he weren't in a hospital gown and in that stupid sweatervest of his, he wouldn't even care right now)
Gau Meguro, the boy who always stood up to whatever force was headed this way, never backed down and always had a word to say, was temporarily crushed by just three words, thrown to the ground and left wordless.
"What'd he do to you?"]
....
He... Before I could...
[Words weren't coming because he felt his throat crushing in, like that man's hands were on it again, it was suffocating-
He had to take action, in what way he could. Gau Meguro was always taking action, and he couldn't stop now.
In the end, it was easy for Gau to raise his shaking hands, place one over his mouth, and wrap the other around his throat...
...because he felt them there already.]
Re: [Offline]
[some of them screamed, while rough hands clutched at too-thin limbs. some of them cried in high whimpers, asking for moms and dads they probably never had in the first place. some of them just snuffed out, like candles, leaving a darkened face and loss dripping out of every pore like wax]
[just because he's seen it before doesn't mean he's numb to it, doesn't mean he isn't sometimes (often) there himself, heels dug into a razor's edge of sanity when all he fucking wants to do is jump the hell off it, because it hurts too much]
[Badou doesn't move quickly, jerkily, like he usually does. it's with slow, nearly braindead movements that he approaches the other, softlysoftly, not as if Gau were some kind of spooked animal (that's how that metaphor goes, doesn't it?) but as if Gau were some kind of person, that needed a moment of something gentle after life ...hadn't been]
[he's not gentle, but Badou doesn't mind (has never minded) lying, and it's with quiet, gentle movements and quiet, gentle breath (that don't match the angry eye and the tight stitch-together of thin lips) that he sits beside the other boy]
[after a moment, he extends out an arm not around his shoulders (not so close to the neck, because Badou hated it when people touched his face, hated it) but around the elder's lower back, just beneath the ribs (he can just feel them against the pads of his fingers, blunt and young and stupid, like they are)]
[Badou doesn't ask are you okay, because he's not, he might never be after this, but he does say in a blank, half-broken tone (not gentle -- he can only lie so much to himself)]
I'll kill 'im, if you tell me who it was.
[Offline]
(But he wasn't touching his shoulders, or his neck, and despite having more of the space around him occupied, Gau felt the pressure at his throat lessen.)
The question, the "kill", snapped him back to cold, drafty reality in an instant.
Gau was quick to act, but not irrational. He knew what he saw, who did it, and the consequences of it. But that wasn't the entire story, and he knows that it won't be solved with murder as vengeance, not now, not when all the facts weren't in place.]
Badou-san...
[He shifted slightly, and maybe it was just a coincidence of how their bodies were positioned, but his head came to slightly rest against the bone of Badou's shoulder as he looked down to the ground, away from Badou's strangely angry eye and strangely comforting posture. It couldn't be comfortable, but he wasn't moving. Not yet.]
How... How many more victims are there?
Re: [Offline]
[his head feels like it's wrapped in cotton, because it's sinking in, that this isn't a conversation with himself, that Gau is breathingbleeding against him, and his pulse is rapid and, for now (always just for now, that was for damn sure) unended]
Eight -- nine.
[nine, including you goes unsaid]
[Badou's not soft, nor sturdy; he's not the type of person that you'd lay on for warmth, or lean on for support, all slapped together hurriedly with cold angles and unabashed bird-bones]
[but if Meguro -- if Gau just needs a body to hold onto, a body that isn't hurting him, he can be that, at least (but only messily, unevenly; the blood from Gau's broken nose will stain both their clothes as testament to that)]
Weda, Barnaby, Balfour, Aoi, Japan, Tsugumi, Yozora, an' Tessa.
[the list is rattled off thoughtlessly, because he hasn't thought much about the other victims (there isn't enough room in his heart or lungs for empathy, all poked through with holes of loss as they are)]
[he doesn't let it go; he'll gladly sink his teeth in hard to anything that squirms]
I mean it. If you tell me -- since when do you ever shut up, anyway...
[(except that time you were dead, a few hours ago)]
[Badou trails off, hot fever at his throat like phantom hands are at Gau's]
[Offline]
It was lost in the flurry of hyperventilation, tachycardia and shaky memories, but the room, his body and limbs, were cold- very cold, cold enough that shivers ran down his spine between stuttered breaths.
He rattles off the names of other cold, dead bodies who had great injustice committed against them, and Gau could only feel warmth.
He knew it was clouding his vision. As the last of the bitter names was spat out, Gau moved his cheek from Badou's shoulder, took a deep breath, and stared into the other boy's eye, bloodied and pale and living.]
...Badou-san, you can't kill him.
[Completely assured, and rebellious on two counts. It was clear it was not dropping the honorific any time soon, or doubting his statement.]
I believe in equal justice. I believe that my killer should be punished for what he did to me and what he did to the other victims. Trying to kill him and putting yourself in danger isn't justice! It's not worth it!
[His voice cracks like a twig and he bites it back. Experience fuels his words and he sees a boy about to sprint down the same path that Raikou took him by the hand away from.]
Even if he is killed here, he'll only come back. He'll come back, and if he was so willing to murder that many people, he won't find punishment for his actions.
...
Raikou-san will want to kill this man as well. [He knows that much for certain.] I can't let it happen this way.
[He narrows his eyes, pleading in the face of his own racing thoughts-]
Until there is a true justice system in this place that actually will serve as punishment... You can't sacrifice yourself!
Re: [Offline]
[Badou hasn't believed in justice for what feels like a long, long time]
[violence has proven itself, over and over and over again, to be easier to find evidence for]
It'll just fall through the cracks. Get forgotten.
[it was funny, to think of how many times he'd been told people aren't like that here. it was really fucking hilarious, with a boy next to him, cold and pale and risen from the fucking grave]
[Badou's arm around the other doesn't tighten (boy-animals don't like to be constrained, even if he was pretending he wasn't one), but it doesn't falter, either]
That's what happens.