by Princess of Pain

NOTE: This fic handles a rather painful subject, which should be made obvious by the title. If you believe that you will be offended, please don't read.~

I knew what he was thinking about.

It's not as weird as it sounds.  Gonou was hard to really read.  I still don't really understand him, now that he's Hakkai... but Gonou, he was like staring at a pack of cards that someone else has shuffled, and trying to pick out specific suits just by looking at their backs.  He was a deck stacked against me.  I never held that against him as much as I should've.

But at the time, it might as well have been written on a sign around his neck.  I got home that night late, like always, and he was sitting up in the bed.  It was raining, and he looked awful--like he was going somewhere in his mind that he'd of been much happier not going towards.  He was normally pale, but he looked drawn and pinched in the face, like he'd aged twenty years in three hours.

He was looking down at all the thick, clumsy bandages I'd slapped over his stomach to keep his guts from slipping out.

What else could he've been thinking of, right?  At the time, I didn't know how the hell he'd gotten that trashed, but that really could've been the only thing on his mind.  So I did the thing I do best--and instead of bringing THAT up (because the gods only know what a huge kettle of shit that would have turned out to be), I distracted him.

"The scar won't be that bad," I said, dragging on my cigarette as I sat down.  I kicked off my boots and tossed my jacket on the floor.

Gonou looked over at me, not being able to help but give the mess I'd made a disapproving glance, then said "What are you talking..."

"Oh, the scar that's gonna be on your stomach."  I kicked back in the chair, still shaking the rain out of my hair, and thinking about taking a hot shower to warm the fuck up.  "Won't be too nasty.  You just gotta put a lot of aloe on it after it finally scabs over.  It helps."

His smile was like a knife.  "Perhaps that would not be best."

"What?  You're a happening dude, but the ladies really don't like scar tissue as much as they say they do."

Wow, if I'd had any idea about the shit with Kanan, I swear I'd of never said anything like that.  But I didn't, so I did.  He looked like I'd shat in his bed, or something.  He didn't even say anything, just glared at me.  It gave me the willies.  There was some nasty power behind that smile.  But like I said, I didn't know what that was all about, so I plowed right on.  "The ones on my face--holy shit, you'd think that they had spikes on 'em, the way that chicks go out of their way to even look at 'em, or touch 'em.  Most of my other ones have faded, at least."

He gave me this puzzled look.  It made me uncomfortable, at the time.  I had never really been that in tune with anyone before, Gonou included, and me being able to strike that many notes with him--figure out what he was thinking--in a five-minute conversation was unsettling.  I might not get all that Hakkai does, but now, that shit happens all the damn time.  It's something you get used to.

I wandered over to his (my) bed, wet clothes and all, and sat down beside him.  Once I sat, I shed my shirt.  Wasn't anything he hadn't seen before.  I've never had a big issue with being naked.

The first one I found was the one on my arm.  It's right on the inside of my right elbow--small, dimpled, not really anything anyone'd notice.  I tap my finger against it.  "There.  See that one?  I got that when--shit, I musta been three or so.  Broke my arm so clean through that the bone jutted out."

Gonou winced.  "How?"

I grin.  I'm not gonna tell him the truth.  I wanna cheer him up, and saying "My mother knocked me to the ground, twisted my arm around my back, and kicked my elbow until it bent the wrong way" would just depress him more.  So I told him what I told everyone: "I fell out of a tree."

Then, he was staring at my body hard, looking me over to find other evidence of things that had gone wrong in my life.  He pointed to a nearly-faded one beneath my collarbone.  "What about that one?"

I looked down at it, still smiling.  "Jealous boyfriend.  He caught me banging his girlfriend and stabbed me with a fork."

"A *fork*?"

"It was all he had at the time.  He probably woulda gone for my eyes, but I was out of there too fuckin' fast for that.  I might have kicked his ass if I was older, but I was thirteen at the time."

"Thir..."  His eyes darkened.

"And this one," I said, plunging forth once more, "was a furious father."  I tapped my finger against my upper thigh, which was still clad in my  jeans.  He probably knew the one I was talking about--the thick-but-faint one that hooks at the end.  "He knocked me down in a streetway and jabbed me with his dagger.  I think he wanted to actually cut it off, but I kicked him unconscious before he got the chance."

"And how old were you during that escapade?"

"Fifteen.  Now, this one--" and I pointed to the one that runs down my side in a jilted zigzag formation "--was from this one girl.  Oh, what a crazy bitch.  She..."

I don't think I really understood what I was doing then.  At all.  See, Gonou was so wrapped up in his own pain.  He couldn't see past it.  He forgot that there was more to life than the shit-storm he'd gone through.  Or that he might even be able to move on, you know?  And I kept pointing out my scars, a funny story linked up with each one (making up a funny story for the ones that had none, like the whip-marks on my back), and I wasn't just keeping his mind off of whatever he'd done to get that belly wound, or how he'd pay for it.  

I said, This is my pain.  Look at it.  It's real, it's physical, it's touchable.  Take it in your hands and look it over.  Feel it.  It's different from yours, but our agony keeps a connection between us.  And not just me; the whole damn world.  Don't the Buddhists say that life is nothing but suffering, for those of use too stupid or cursed for enlightenment?  These are how I know I'm real, and this is how you know I'm real, and pain only lasts until it's over.

Life sucks, then you die.  And all you can do is marvel.

So this went on for, God, I'm not sure how long.  Joking, storytelling, scars, touching--it all blurred in my mind.  I'd shimmied out of my jeans at some point, and was pointing out some of my more intimate ones (with my boxers still firmly in place, thanks), and the way he ran his hands over my skin started to get to be a little too much, making me a little too uncomfortable.  So I got up, said I was going for a shower.  I made it to the bathroom door before he stopped me with a question:

"What about those?"

I thought for a second he meant the ones on my face, the only ones I hadn't explained.  I looked back at him, and I saw that he was looking down.  So I looked down, too.

Oh.  The ones on my ankles.

The criss-crossing Jacob's ladder of angry lines that somehow still managed to be red, mostly, though some had faded to a listless pink.  Neat little lines that ran up both sides of both my ankles, stopping just short of where my socks and boots tended to end.  Bulleted on either side of the ladders, a bunch of circular scars.  Burn-scars, about the size of a cigarette.

I looked up at him.  I said the first thing that came to mind, which was the truth.

"I made those."

I stepped back into the bathroom.  I felt weird, almost sick.  I gave Gonou one last glance which, I hoped, was loaded with telepathic commands, begging him not to say another word about it.  I'd kept so little from him over the last three weeks, and all I wanted from him was to not say a word.  I didn't even know what I would say if he did ask.  What can I say?  I was a miserable kid.  Miserable kids do stupid shit that, if they grow up, they don't wanna talk about.  That's all.

And it's not like they hurt anymore.

I shut the door to block my perfect view of his slowly widening eyes.

~owari~

AFTER: I have tried to approach the subject of cutting using the following rules:

1. I am not endorsing or encouraging it.  At all.
2. I am acknowledging that it happens, and observe that Gojyo fits the parameters of someone who would probably cut.

Please do not mistake my intent.

Also, any grammatical errors were deliberately done, to get more of a feel for the way that Gojyo speaks, and not for how my English teachers would have liked for me to write.