A Social Experiment Pv Flash & Kazuo Closed

It had been some time since he’d seen Selim. His assumption had been that his senpai had been avoiding him since the unfortunate night in the Astronomy Tower back in January. He hadn’t realized that Selim had been avoiding everyone. That he had somehow managed to even avoid the questionable attentions of his Head of House. He didn’t know if Selim was actually attending classes since they didn’t share any but at his appearance, Kazuo had a sneaking suspicion that he wasn’t. Even the most oblivious Professor would surely notice the Slytherin boy’s unstable state.

An act of questionable judgement, following Selim down to the basement where hags were said to lurk. It was obvious that Selim had slipped further into the despair-filled caverns of his own mind, further away from lucidity, abandoning even the semblance of sanity. Yet he could hardly refuse. There was the contract, of course, but Kazuo wasn’t nearly so finicky about such meaningless attempts at rigidity as Selim or Jack. No, he followed Selim down to a room that had the nightmarish appearance of a Silent Hill game because the older boy clearly needed help and yet continued to be neglected by those who should have been responsible. He didn’t know what he could do but he knew that he would not do nothing.

See first with your mind, then with your eyes, and finally with your body.

Selim left him alone in that room, running off to do something, and Kazuo pondered briefly if this was a trap. Had Selim, so intent on hiding his pain, found himself treating with the hags? It wasn’t an impossible option though if he had made a deal with them, Kazuo would think the boy would become more stable, not less. He wandered around the small room, examining the makeshift bed, the questionable looking surgical tools, and the snacks and water. Was this where Selim was choosing to live? A devil-turned-rat in a cage of his own making? It was… sad.

Selim’s return, with one bagged roommate as his prize - and not the one he would really have expected - was no more enlightening to Kazuo than anything else he had witnessed so far. He remained a silent observer as Selim tied up the unconscious form of one Flash Holmwood, questionably affable and possibly even charming Slytherin. Had Flash done something to provoke Selim? Unlikely though not impossible, he supposed. It was in the words Selim spoke that perhaps revealed his motivations. Twisted, broken motivations.

”I'm doing a little... social experiment kohai... One that will show me if I can detach a metaphorical leech on my side."

Kazuo shifted his gaze from the prone form of Flash to the insanity of Selim’s gaze. He remained silent, eyes shifting, taking in every shift of movement, every odd facial expression, every word uttered. He watched and he listened, his usual smirk absent in the face of this strangeness. While there was something fascinating in the way Selim had devolved, something he wanted to understand, the actions Selim seemed willing to undertake in this demented state put himself and others at risk and that concerned Kazuo.

”Akuryo.” Kazuo rolled the puppet’s name around, letting it slide off his tongue with a sigh, shaking his head. “Cause and effect… hmmm. I think I remember you.” Though he was, in theory, addressing the rabbit’s words, it wasn’t the rabbit he set his eyes on. He looked directly at Selim as he spoke. He would not play to Selim’s insanity. “A sliver of a person, a noh mask, a single expression. Protection. From your own darkness.”

He didn’t know if Selim was even listening. The boy had chosen to scream nonsense at the wall. Hearing things, seeing things, Kazuo couldn’t even begin to fathom. Then the confusion and the repetition. His gaze shifted to the wounded arm and he frowned briefly.

“Very well. A social experiment. I presume this metaphorical leech is Holmwood? And your intention is to scare him away?” Kazuo had a feeling his questions would fall on deaf ears… or rather be lost to the insanity that gripped Selim but he asked anyway. Any information he could tease out of Selim could be useful. “You are attempting to rid yourself of emotional connections? For what purpose?”

He moved slowly to the makeshift bed, keeping his movements easy to track as he examined Flash for injuries. “What is Flash Holmwood to you, Selim Faust?”

@Selim Faust @Flash Holmwood

Awaking with pain was already an unpleasant experience, but there was so much more wrong with it. The smell, murky and stifled, the chill in the air that made its way onto exposed skin. Inch by inch, the fog of his consciousness tried to formulate a vague notion of his situation before he was truly awake in any capacity, translating that into idle dreamlike feelings of struggle. Starting to writhe uncomfortably before it had even dawned on him, the tug of restraints was a brand new sensation for Flash.

Once pulled on, he would awaken with a start and a gasp, his opening eyes not alleviating any of the panic that had already set in. It felt wretched, his immidiate impulse was to yank his arms, each time with increasing effort, but recieved only sharp pain against his wrists for the trouble. It was dark. At first, all he could hear was his own harsh breath, desperately trying to keep up with his rapid heart beat.

Was he tied up? Why? Could it be a stupid prank? He prayed it was. Flash bucked in the bed, trying to brute force his way out, but he was fastened suspiciously well. The panic that had started to build truly set in. This was wrong, so very, incredibly wrong. Weak, pathetic noises like that of a small wounded animal would escape his lips as he uselessly fretted in place. The feeling of not being able to defend himself became more horrifying the more it dawned on him.

"Who's there?!" Flash could tell people were around, though his senses were blurry and disoriented. "Release me!"

It was less of a command and more of a plead.

@Selim Faust@Kazuo Shimada

"I have become insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity."
- Edgar Allan Poe

The rabbit let out a familiar dark laugh at the kohai's words. "Protection from his darkness? I am his darkness." The rabbit's head tilted as Selim pulled some dried meat from a bag in his pocket, eating it swiftly. "An admirable guess though, little badger."

The next words from the Hufflepuff's mouth arrived after the scratchy repeat of the earlier introduction. Their contents made Selim raise a brow, a faint flicker of what he used to be "First two guesses are wrong. It wouldn't be much of a social experiment if I maimed the culprit now would it?" His head snapped over, cocking, the breathing pattern of the unconscious boy had shifted, he was awakening.

He walked over to the table, checking the boy's pulse as he shifted slightly. A bruise was forming from where Selim had pinched the main artery to his brain as a temporary shutdown, the capillaries under the skin burst and trying to heal themselves.

"As for ridding myself of emotional connections? In a way, I suppose, but it's less of an effort to resign myself to solitude and more to keep them from brutally dying by my hands." After he finished the physical examination, he wondered if he had accidentally knocked the boy's head. When they fully awoke he'd check their pupils.

He turned back to his kohai, as if about to elaborate, only for his gaze to get drawn somewhere else, locked onto the nothingness of another bare wall. For a while, he just stared, as if enraptured by something. Then he scowled, shaking his head as if desperately trying to rid it of a fog.

"What was I going to say...?" His unfocused gaze pointed to his feet as he tried to search through the rapidly deteriorating labyrinth of his mind palace. Finally, he scraped together the fragments of his recent memories. "Oh, yes. As one of my favourite poets put it. I have become insane with long intervals of horrible sanity. So for the majority of the time. I'm unstable, and as the leech discovered those times are when I act based only on feral emotions. The leech was almost killed by my hand in a fit of anger." He glanced up at his kohai's gaze, his own eyes flickering with the battle inside his mind. "I'd rather not go to Azkaban at the ripe old age of twelve so it thought it prudent to try and detach the leech that is drinking my poison."

He snapped around again abruptly, growling like a feral animal. "For MErliN's SaKe- WouLd you sHut Up!" The annoying voice of that cursed monotone man and his strings of nonsensical sentences quieted. Of course, only Selim heard it in the first place. He clawed at his scalp, hissing as if in pain, before glancing up again, stilling as his eyes once again shone with a lack of recognition at Kazuo's presence. For a while, he stared before he seemed to remember what had happened in the past few moments.

"Oh yeah."He stood up straight once again, temporarily ignoring the struggling boy on his table. "What is Holmwood to me? Simply a means to an end. He's the key to locking away the leech."

Finally, he walked away to his dormmate's side, muttering incomprehensibly under his breath. He ignored the question and the cry for release by the Slytherin, instead, pulling out his wand and trying to light it. It did light, only to flicker like a dying lightbulb. Growling the boy slammed a hand against it, muttering the command again with an air of irritation. Eventually it buzzed to light like a fluorescent bulb.

Bending over the Slytherin he pried his eyelids open, shining the light in them (His wand in his mouth) and watching to see if the pupil dilated properly. He did the same to the other.

The torches around them flickered, dancing with unseen ghosts.

"Wakey, wakey little bird." Aku crooned as Selim pulled away heedless of the results of his examination.

He pulled the tray closer, holding a scalpel aloft in the torchlight. It glinted cruelly.

"I hope your not the queasy sort, kohai." He gestured to an empty bucket in the corner. "If you are, try not to vomit on the floor, aim there."

He glided around flash, pale form looking spectatorial in the firelight. Making sure the binds were secure, he waited for Flash to become fully aware before he'd begin.

Kazuo noted the bruising on Flash’s neck but nothing else that looked particularly problematic. Not that he was a healer, of course, but Flash didn’t appear to be bleeding… yet. His eyes shifted to the surgical tools, lips thinning to a line. He remained beside the bed as he addressed Selim, once again ignoring the puppet to address his senpai directly. “No, Selim. You have tried to separate yourself from your trauma.” Kazuo responded to the puppet-commentary. “A defense mechanism gone horribly wrong. An ethical barrier, I suspect, a way of distancing yourself from the things you have had to do to survive.” His tone was mild as he spoke, as if he was simply observing something and making commentary on it. It was intentional of course. He was emotionally invested in Selim but the older boy’s behaviour was too erratic so he chose to be as non-threatening as possible.

As he listened to Selim’s almost lucid answers to his questions, pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place and for a brief moment, his expression shifted to one of sympathy directed at Flash. Then it was gone, hidden behind practiced passivity. “Burnett. Jack is the leech. Brutally dying… No. I can see that you believe in the truth of your words but your logic is faulty-” He paused, growing still at Selim’s outburst, once again screaming at things only he could see. “Bangarang.” Kazuo muttered as he watched Selim rave, waiting for the moment to pass and noting the momentary disorientation that seemed to follow these outbursts.

Selim has lost his mind. He has Flash tied up in the bloody basement. Surgical tools. I feel like I’m in a survival horror video game. Very exciting. I always hoped my magical education would involve torturing my fellow students. He hoped his internal dialogue conveyed the sarcasm that would have dripped off his tongue if he’d been speaking aloud. Unravelling this mess might be beyond me but I’ll do what I can to protect Flash.

Once Selim recognized him again, he continued speaking. “You think hurting Flash will send Burnett running away from you? Where did you get that idea? No… this isn’t a plan to chase someone away, as much as you may have convinced yourself of it.” Kazuo’s eyes narrowed and his head tilted slightly as he studied Selim. He watched his senpai struggle with the simplest of spells, hand drifting to his own wand, tucked in its holster on his left thigh. Though the second attempt proved successful, Kazuo’s fingers lingered on the top of his wand handle.

“Hurting Flash will hurt Burnett. You want to hurt him.” Kazuo continued with his analysis, talking in the hopes of holding Selim’s attention but also to draw out reactions. Fishing for information, searching for threads he could use to weave a better picture. “Why do you want to hurt Burnett? Is it because of the distance that grew between you? What happened at the fight club? You grew attached and when Burnett struggled with what happened, your fragile psyche couldn’t handle the rejection.”

It was a dangerous line of thinking, the potential to backfire was high, digging at Selim’s emotions. Yet he needed to keep Selim talking, to convince his senpai to open up to him. His gaze flickered down to Flash as the boy seemed to come around, clearly confused by his surroundings. “Flash…” Kazuo spoke his name quietly, hoping he was aware enough to recognize Kazuo’s voice. But what could he convey to Flash at that moment? Warning? Pointless. Flash obviously knew there was something wrong. Assurance? It would be hollow. He had only a faint idea of what Selim was planning and no solid idea of how to prevent the oncoming disaster. Flash had no reason to trust him anyway. A sigh escaped his lips, unintentional, a small reveal of his uncertainty.

“海千山千 (umisen,yamasen)”(Ocean thousand, mountain thousand - a Japanese proverb referring to the sly old fox, someone who’s seen everything and can therefore handle any situation, usually through cunning) Kazuo murmured to himself, almost as a mantra as his mind raced.

@Selim Faust @Flash Holmwood

There had been sound, but none quite distinguishable. Some loud, some quiet. They were there, but they weren't responding to his pleas for help. That was probably a very bad sign. Instead, incoherent screaming, and a wand being flicked around haphazardly. Flash would strain away each time, flinching and wheezing as each successive attempt to wrench his arms free caused more damage. He wasn't thinking about minimizing damage right now, he was trying to do anything at all. As the wand sparked into bright light, he'd would have to close his eyes quickly and tuck his head into his shoulder.

His mind was running all over the place, incapable of piecing the information together quickly enough. He thought about Valerius, and about Vladimir. How many other people would be happier if he was dead? It must have been his own fault he was here, right? Said the wrong thing, made the wrong choice. Opening his eyes again with a sweat laden grimace, he was aghast at whose hand he saw reaching for his face. Selim. It didn't make any sense, which was so much worse.

Reaching for his eyes with his grimy skeleton fingers, Flash struggled to get away, snapping at him with his teeth like a rabid dog if he kept trying. "Don't touch me! Stand back!" He would yell, though the heightened situation made his voice unconvincing as a threat. It warbled with a panic that had him near tears, he could tell his hands weren't coming out of these fastening. Not only that, but he had no reason to think Selim could be reasoned with. He had his own values, ones that came from cold logic devoid of humanity.

Someone else's voice could be heard, quieter and calmer. As he said his name, Flash squinted to try to determine the source. Was it Kazuo? The first year? Why was he here, what on Earth was happening? Well, it hardly mattered for the immediate future, as there was suddenly only one thing that Flash was worried about, and that was the scalpel in Selim's hand. As it entered the range of the light casually, a high-pitched whimper escaped him, stuttered by his quaking breath.

"Kazuo stop him!" Flash yelled, this nightmare only mounting with every conscious second. His voice was starting to rasp, but was healthy enough to be loud yet. "He's a murderer, dammit! He murdered Victor Moore!"

Of course, Flash had only heard it second hand, and the rumor involved some sort of shadow that looked like Selim. Still, Flash was not in a position that warranted painting Selim in a charitable light.

"I have become insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity."
- Edgar Allan Poe

He glanced back at his kohai with a raised brow, Aku laughed. "Perhaps. Though you're no psychiatrist little boy, so out of the two and a half of us, I and Selim believe it more likely than our guess about the unique situation is more accurate. Though trauma obviously has a part of it, it set us on this path and we've chosen to continue walking it."

The commands from the blackbird were met with apathy, Selim roughly pinned him down with the hand controlling the puppet. "Tsk, tsk, little bird. Shouldn't you be smart enough to know that thrashing will do more damage? Especially to your joints?" He roughly cupped the boy's chin, grip tight with hands that smelt like sanitizer. Cold yellow eyes staring down at him. He let go soon after, turning away impassively, "Do what you will though. If you dislocate or break your ankles it just means I won't have to worry about you running away if you escape." He didn't bother trying to finish looking at the boy's pupils though. His words weren't slurred so he assumed there was no concussion.

After that Selim turned back to his more coherent companion, taking a moment to process his words with a dry expression. He easily ignored Holmwood's thrashing, as if he had done something like this before. Waiting for him to finish his untrained assessment, his eyes took in the younger boy's full form, he saw his hands hovering over what he assumed was his wand without actually having to let his pupils focus there. "You seem to enjoy making observations about my mental state without any actual psyche training behind them. Don't you?"

He strolled over casually, looking him in the eyes. Then promptly slammed him against the wall. Aku's sharp teeth, which seemed to have grown in number over the months, were digging into the kohai's wand arm. His other arm roughly grasped his shoulder, pinning it to the cold stone. His deadly eyes stared into Kazuo's, like a wolf staring down prey. "I'm not one to be hurt with mere rejection kohai. In fact, at this point, I'm used to it. No, unlike you seem to think, this is simple. He's annoying, I'm inches away from killing him wherever I see him, just like I am with you, and with that pinned bird." Pulling the teeth out of the boy's arm, Aku slipped down and grabbed the wand of the younger child.

Selim pulled away, eyes narrowed. "The fact of the matter is, that Jack is more triggering then you. His lack of self-preservation tempts me to simply slit his throat whenever he comes near me. His insistence to fix me like I'm some broken doll just makes every voice inside my skull that much louder." He prowled toward Flash after stowing away the other boy's wand, grabbing the scalpel once more. "And until he finally realizes that I don't want him near me, I will tear apart every sane person he's connected with until he has nothing left."

Flash's yelling made him hiss in annoyance, everything was loud enough he didn't need some rat screaming in his ear like a lost puppy. "That's the social experiment. To get that boy to realize that some people, aren't worth the cost of saving."

Flash's cries for help finally pushed his self-control over the edge. Harshly, he brought the scalpel down on the palm of Holmwood's hand. The instrument did exactly what is was made to do. Leaning down he stared at the boy's face. "Shut. Up. everything is loud enough as it is without your annoying voice bursting my eardrums. If you don't stop talking, I'll sew your mouth closed. Trust me, I've done it before."

He turned away, leaving the scalpel embedded in the wood, and, well, Flash. "I admit you're the first person to actually accuse me of that murder though." His voice had calmed as if he had put all his rage into that one action. He ignored the screams if there were any. "Though that's hardly the only murder I've done. Seeing as how murder is all my life is based upon... among other unsightly things."

He cleaned his hand of red.

Obviously, he wasn't about to be swayed by the words of eleven and twelve-year-olds.

He stared darkly at his kohai. "If you want to leave go. It's not like I expected you to be totally fine with this gruesomeness. You aren't me. I've only met one person who could possibly handle what I've grown up with... and he's also somewhere in the dungeons doing Merlin-knows-what."

A light, impassive scoff. "Trying to stop me will do nothing so I suggest you stop wasting brainpower on that."

Turning around he shifted to the much more threatening surgical implements, beginning to sanitize them. "Besides, Jack will find us... eventually. How many pieces this little bird will be in when he does accomplish that is entirely up to how soon he does though."

His eyes were drawn to the struggling of Holmwood, the boy straining against his bonds, clearly panicking. Would he have reacted any differently if their positions had been switched? Likely not. Unfortunately, Flash’s panicked yelling was counterintuitive to his attempt to distract Selim, to keep his attention off Flash as much as possible. How to convey that to the panicking Slytherin without making things worse? In the end, he couldn’t.

He had drawn Selim’s attention, that much he had managed to succeed at. He continued the dialogue and it was an effort to keep his voice steady as the horrifying scene continued. “Not yet. No, not yet but I can say with assurance that it is rare for someone in your state to be able to clearly see the true pieces of your own fractured psyche. That is why psychiatrists exist. I make my observations in the hopes that I might be able to provide a perspective that will help me understand how to reach you-”

He paused as Selim approached him, tensing as he met his senpai’s gaze. His instincts screamed at him to back away, to get out of reach but he forced himself to ignore them, to clamp down on the fear that twisted his gut. He would not cower. He would not turn away. He would not run. He would face this because he had to, to help Selim and to help Flash. When his back hit the wall, his lips parted and his breath whooshed out in a yelp. He gritted his teeth, baring them at Selim as the older boy’s ridiculous puppet bit into his arm. “Inches away from killing him.” He repeated Selim’s own words back at him. His hand reached for his wand but Selim was faster. A weapon lost but it was not his only one. Magic was a tool, without it he was weaker but he was not helpless. “If that were true, he would already be dead. There is something in you that prevents you from going through with it. And it isn’t a fear of ending up in Azkaban. If that really was the one thing holding you back, you wouldn’t reasonably be doing any of this. What you are thinking of doing will just as easily end your sorry ass in prison as straight-up murder.” It was an undeniably logical truth. Torturing Flash, torturing him, torturing Burnett, it was all the same. The Selim he had met at the beginning of the year had prized rational, logical thought. Could he reach him with it? Draw back some of that lost boy?

He didn’t have a chance to find out, didn’t have a chance to act. As he feared, Flash’s shouts pushed at the edges of Selim’s precarious rationality. He drove the scalpel into Flash’s hand and Kazuo flinched. His eyes tracked to the wound, watching the blood seeping from it as his mind raced. Panic gripped his chest tightly, a pressure that threatened to take his voice away.

No. Nonono. I need more time. I need to stop this. How. Talk, kitsu. Talk to him. Keep talking. You have to find something.

“I’m not leaving. Why bring me here if you were just going to dismiss me? What was the point? To scare me with this? To imply that I would be next? His voice wavered but he pushed away from the wall, forcing himself to take several steps toward Selim, staring back at the older boy with defiance. “I don’t presume to know your suffering because you refuse to share it and who was I to try to drag your pain out into the light of day? Maybe that was my mistake. I also made the mistake of assuming someone would see what I see, what Jack sees, and would step in. I was wrong. And so you continue to suffer and to degrade. You aren’t a doll. But you are broken. A child who has suffered unspeakable abuse at the hands of those who should have cared for you. A child, Selim. We are all children.” He ran a hand through his hair, disliking the honesty that was about to roll off his tongue. “Children doing the best we can with what we have. Children who care about each other but who are full of our own insecurities and immaturities. We’ve all made mistakes and some of those can’t be undone. But if you keep going, Selim, you will cross a line that none of us can pull you back from. If you fear expulsion, if you fear Azkaban, if you understand that walking this path will absolutely doom you, then please, for the sake of the child you should have been allowed to be, for the sake of what’s left of your sanity, please stop.”

@Selim Faust @Flash Holmwood

Selim's voice had taken on such a sickening lilt, admonishing his attempts to escape as though he was giving useful advice. To what, just take whatever he felt like doing to him? Of course he was right, which only made Flash more unsettled. He didn't want to stop fighting.

With his fingertips, he tried to understand the binding, but it was out of reach. The time it took for Kazuo to go on some kind of diatribe wasn't enough, and even then, he was trembling too much. Selim was distracted momentarily, but Flash couldn't make out what they were talking about. Was Kazuo negociating his release, or was he just the next victim? Looking around did not help his situation-- he was surrounded by cold darkness, and a tray of surgical tools.

He would still try to squirm his wrist out, the sweat beading his arms making it feel like with enough time and effort, there might be a chance he could slip his hand out. He didn't have that time, though, and it was punctuated by Selim stabbing his hand through. Though he insisted Flash be quieter, this would elicit the loudest wail yet, tapered by the sound of crying. He twisted and jerked around, wanting to alleviate the pain, but instead needlessly wore himself out further in exasperation.

From that, Flash was comsumed by the pain. It throbbed, stung, burned. It wasn't like he wasn't used to getting hurt, but in every instance before this he had been fighting back, or was taking risks to gain advantages. This pain was senseless, and was only a harbinger for what more he might expect. How had he been so careless, after Selim had been clear about how unstable he was? Regrets flooded his mind as sobbing whines replaced his struggle.

Flash knew how to talk to people, make them like him, make them do what he wanted, but he had never been taught how to negociate for his life. How to talk down a madman. Selim wanted him to be still and quiet, was it smarter to comply? Was his will to live only making things worse? He didn't know Selim well enough to guess. With physical retalliation impossible, all he had was his words.

As Selim returned to his bedside, cleaning other impliments threateningly, Flash realized his vision was spotty, and his breath was labored. The wound in his hand was certainly bad, but the fear and adrenaline were making it worse. He didn't have any semblance of the face he normally wore amongst his peers-- calculated, friendly, and in control-- he was just a child now, looking up at Selim perplexed.

"Please... stop..." Flash whispered, unknowingly reiterating Kazuo's sentiment. The wet lines on his face were already attracting the grime in the choking air.

"I have become insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity."
- Edgar Allan Poe

His voice was cold as he observed his underclassmen with impassive eyes. "What's stopping me from killing him? What's left of my sanity is, and that sanity is rapidly degrading." He walked up beside Flash, bandages in one hand. "What I'm trying to do here is get everyone the hell away from me before I can no longer restrain myself from doing what I've tried to fight against for so long." His tone growled out between gritted teeth. "And if the only way to do that is to become what my father wanted me to be for so long, then I will become that."

If he had to keep his madness sated with acts like this, so be it. Selim would rather that than be surrounded by the corpses of the innocent he had once hoped to be like.

Flashes scream made a ghost of bile rise in his throat. It didn't show on his face as he stared down at the boy he had once conversed with easily in the Slytherin common room. The contrast of then and now was stark. It made any hope of getting out of his personal hell dwindle even more.

His head throbbed with the contrasting emotions, making him growl. Aku crooned in his ear hauntingly, the hand holding the bandages clenched as he refused to translate the words for his 'companions' to hear.

Reaching down he pulled the scalpel free, ignoring the familiar scarlet. Grabbing bandages while Aku pinned the boy's hand, he wrapped up the wound tightly. His subject dying from the loss of blood was not favourable.

After wiping the implement down, he poised it over the other arm of his dormmate, locking away the part of him screaming to stop with the grimness of a soldier going into battle. He paused at Kazuo's next words. Straightening and looking up with that same impassive gaze, the dim light of his internal conflict danced behind the flinty cover on his strained solemn expression.

"I brought you here to see." He didn't elaborate, pausing at the desperate words of the younger boy. It had been a while since anyone called him a child. His eyes flickered dimly with a glimpse of exhaustion, and urge to rest. He looked away.



A beat of silence.

Then his tone rang out, sounding dead, much like the time Ruka confronted him.

"So be it. Perhaps in Azkaban, I'll finally be put to rest." His vocie was empty with the implications of those words.

There was a moment of silence, his gaze was dull, glazed over during that time as he let the noises that haunted him wash over him. He was pulled out of it by Flash's pleas, his eyes flickered down to the boy prone below him, memories of similar situations Selim had been forced into danced in his mind, but he ignored them.

"Until then, until I'm no longer a... threat." He paused, fingers twitching as the exhausted visage of him was washed over once more by that unhinged, cold being from before, drowning his thoughts. "I'll do what needs to be done." This was said with a smooth voice restraining a maddened lilt. An attempt to control the threat of insanity.

"You're all so dramatic. This little bird will be fine once he's sent to the hospital wing. You wizards are always able to erase physical signs of trauma. This won't be any differant~" Aku spoke as if activated by the change in Selim. "At least he'll be alive, no?" The rabbit chuckled darkly, "That's what they all said about Selim... this is no different."

The raven-haired boy brought the scalpel down, face uncaring as his puppet spoke. A line of red was drawn on the unmarried arm of his dormmate as if he had been drawing on parchment with red ink.

"Everyone reacts differently, copes differently with pain. I'll admit for us, we were also a bit... curious, to see these results played out by this little blackbird. To see why we were... different."

Selim pulled the blade away, hand shaking, he seemed to force it to still whatever emotion was causing the tremor. A breath was released, lids over his pale yellow gaze lowering lazily.

Suddenly he jumped, dropping the blade on the tray while he looked around warily as if reacting to a startling sound. His heart thudded at the presence of noises only he was subjected to the torture of. Chills curling up his spine, he took a moment to calm his thudding heart, flinching occasionally.

Finally, the violent trembling fell to mild tremors, and he let out a breath. His mind was agitated from the tense situation, aggravating the sights and sounds only he could witness. He tried to ignore the gut-curdling sights around him that had arisen with his inner conflict. Instead, he focused on cleaning the blade, readying it for its next use.

"Stopping this will make it worse, Kohai. No matter what I do, my sanity will wither and die. There is nothing I can do to stop that... so I've chosen the next best thing, keep people away from me whenever that inevitably happens." His tone became cold. "Jack refuses to stay away, so I'll make him. It'll spare me and him of the pain."

He walked back over to Flash, observing the new wound, and binding it much like the last one. "If I don't, his insistence to help will kill him."

He paused, feeling the ghost of familiar fingers caress him. Eyes widening, he tensed, going still. Bile crawling up his esophagus, he arched his back, spinning around as if expecting someone to be behind him. His heart thudded in his chest, he fought off the tears of fear, taking ragged breaths. The urge to simply break down was there, but he forcefully ignored it, smothering the memories.

The mental action did nothing to stop that feeling of wrongness residing in his own skin. It felt tight, smothering, he backed away from the boy on the table, gaze distracted as he clawed at his scabbed arm, eventually causing it to bleed. He took a few deep breaths, swallowing harshly. Occasionally his form trembled, though he paid no heed to it, eventually slowly walking back to the tray. Squirting some sanitizer on his hand, he coated his torn-up arm, hissing at the sting.

A moment of time was spent looking down at Flash, memories raising at the eerily similar situation to the one that haunted him... but he wouldn't go that far.

Slowly closing his eyes, he forced his attention away from the sensation of insects crawling under his skin, invading him. His eyes stung.

"I suggest you stop trying to help me too, Kohai." His voice was an eerie monotone. "I'm trapped in my own hell, I'd rather you stay out of it." His flat gaze drifted over to the boy. "Nothing you can do will help. Focus on someone else."