Regrets Made Known PV Ruka Burnett-Tân Closed

It hadn't been closure.

As much as Ruka had wanted and needed it to be, the conversation he had finally had with Jack about everything his dorm mate had done to him had not even come near to giving him the closure he really needed. He'd wanted to let it go, move on, put it down to a one-time lapse in judgment on Jack's part, a singular mistake to never be repeated on Selim's part, but how was he supposed to do that when he still couldn't touch Jack without the fear of brushing against an aching wound, could still see a faint limp in his step every so often, no matter how much he tried to hide it?

How could he be expected to just let that slide?

So instead of moving on from it, Ruka had taken to keeping an eye on the person responsible for all that pain. It was easy enough between classes, his randomly showing up outside first year Slytherins' classrooms could be put down to him wanting to see Jack and make sure he was alright whenever possible, but during free times it was different. Selim didn't seem to be sticking to meal schedules, didn't seem to be part of any House Teams, seemed to be avoiding Jack as much as Ruka was trying to seek him out.

So confronting him had been difficult.

It wasn't as if Ruka was even sure what exactly he wanted to say to Selim; He could barely be sure that he'd be able to keep himself from outright strangling the Slytherin the second he laid eyes on him. All he knew was that he needed to get the closure he was so desperate for, needed to hear the second side of the story, needed an explanation, a good reason for why he shouldn't be running to tell a teacher and get Selim expelled this very second. No matter how much Jack insisted that Selim had only acted upon his request, there was no doubt in Ruka's mind that there could have been an alternative. A better way, a less painful way. The fact that Selim had chosen the one he did made him dangerous in Ruka's eyes. A liability. Shouldn't be at this school, shouldn't be allowed to roam these hallways, shouldn't be treated like all the other harmless students only eager to learn.

Except, when Ruka did finally manage to track him down, on a Saturday of all days, close to lunch time, it seemed like Selim was already punishing himself worse than expulsion could really do to him. The way other people walked past him like they could barely see him made sense; He was barely the shadow of a person, a walking corpse, expression vacant, goal unclear.

Ruka had watched him disappear into an unused classroom, had watched the door closing behind him, had marched up towards it with such intent that he couldn't even pinpoint the exact moment in which his mind had told him to stop.

One, Two, Three

The fingers against his thigh were tapping restlessly, his left hand on the hilt of his wand ready to draw and attack if need be. He had been so ready to storm in and make Selim pay for what he had done, but wasn't he already paying? Wasn't the knowledge that he had done something so gruesome to someone he claimed to care about punishment enough?

So Ruka had stayed outside the classroom, standing in the middle of the hallways and ignoring the people grumbling in annoyance as they needed to sidestep him. What did they matter? They had no idea about anything that was going on, were as blissfully unaware as Ruka wished he could have been.

He sighed when he finally did decide to enter the classroom. A grave decision, nothing he could just step away from again. If he was going in there then there was no coming out, not really. He could feel a piece of his soul separating itself from him in the quest of torturing Selim the way he had tortured Jack for the rest of eternity. It was going to stay there forever.

Wordlessly, Ruka pushed the door open, took a meaningful step inside, waited for the click of a lock falling into place before he dared to let his gaze drift around the room. Selim was not difficult to find, curled up against a wall, seeming smaller even than the objects strewn across the floor around him. He was barely there but yet so terrifyingly present that Ruka immediately felt like breathing had become harder somehow.

He moved quietly through the room, dropped his bag next to Selim's on the floor before sliding down along the wall himself, sitting at a safe enough distance to make sure he wasn't going to just reach out and attack the boy by his side.

The silence stretched on for a seemingly endless moment, only the sound of Ruka's fingers tapping an insistent One, Two, Three against his thighs providing any break from it at all. There were so many things he wanted to say, so many things he wanted to do, had obsessively thought of this moment for days now, had dreamed about it like an addict going through withdrawals, waking up in cold sweat with this insistent longing in his chest for something he couldn't quite define.

"I know," he finally said. Not the words he had imagined himself saying when he finally got the chance to confront Selim, but they would do for now. He knew. Selim would know. It was enough.

With a small sigh, Ruka lifted his hands to cover his face for a moment, rub the palms across his tired, hateful eyes, brush the resentment away somehow, but it was no use. He wanted to feel pity, wanted to look at Selim and think that he deserved mercy, but all he could see upon looking at the other boy were the scars uglily stretching themselves across Jack's pale skin like the remnants of a painting gone bad, all colour erased but the canvas not quite salvaged. He could trace them all in his mind, could see them so clearly he felt bile rising up his throat at the thought.

There was no pity inside him, no thought of mercy or forgiveness, only the black sludge of anger and resentment coursing through his veins and burning him up from the inside like the fire he so loved to play with.

"There is no reason for why you shouldn't be dead right now," he told Selim coldly, eyes fixed on the open bottle on the ground next to the Slytherin. The amber liquid was unfamiliar but gave off a pleasant albeit faint scent. "Except that he cares about you."

It's the only reason I'm not killing you.

He wanted him to know, wanted him to drown in the knowledge that his dorm mate's - his victim's - affections were the only thing keeping Ruka from bloodying his hands.

"I think he's an idiot for doing so," he continued, couldn't stop himself from talking, couldn't help laying all of this bare in front of Selim whether he wanted to hear it or not. "I think he's naive and the second you laid a finger on him you should have been dead to him." He was proud of how capable he was of controlling the rage in his voice, how he was keeping his voice from shaking at every word. It almost sounded like he had rehearsed this moment in front of the mirror every single days for weeks.

He hadn't.

"But you aren't."

Should be.

"You aren't and I've heard all the excuses for why he doesn't want you to be."

Excuses of a child, idiotic, trusting, affectionate. Shifting blame from Selim to Jack himself as if he had personally traced a knife across his own skin, had inflicted his own wounds, painted his own scars. Excuses that weren't enough for Ruka to accept and move on.

"Now I want to hear yours." Two sides to each story. Ruka needed them both to see clearly, to know what to feel exactly. "I want to hear exactly why you think you shouldn't be dead right now."

WARNING, dark content ahead, read only if you think you can handle it.

"Guilt is perhaps the most painful companion to Death."

@Selim Faust

There was nothing.

Selim did not even deem it worthy to look up at him, and Ruka hadn't expected him to. He was of no relevance to the other boy, wasn't an actual threat because what damage was there to do to someone who had already gone through the things Selim had gone through?

He said as much, voice scratchy and numb, nothing there that Ruka could take in and dissect the way he wanted to, the way he did with other people. People who weren't a lifeless shell only looking for the opportunity to rest. Selim was dead already, had been dead for years, but he wasn't. He was right there, sitting only a short distance away from Ruka, living, breathing, talking.

For a moment, a long drawn-out moment, there was silence, as if to give Selim's words the chance to spread out, press themselves into every nook and cranny of the room, allow Ruka to breathe them in so they could pierce his lungs from the inside. He wanted to feel bad for the things he had said to this boy who was already nothing but a shadow of a child, but he couldn't bring himself to. Selim deserved to feel bad, deserved to beat himself down for what he had done.

The explanation to justify what he had done came drenched in self-loathing, signs of regret lacing Selim's voice as he talked of the pain that made him who he was, the only thing he had to share, the only thing he could show Jack to help him understand.

He didn't make eye contact once.

Ruka watched, didn't blink when Selim removed his shirt, laying bare the scars across his skin. They were familiar marks stretching across an unfamiliar body, almost a replica of what had been haunting Ruka's dreams for nights. He had expected them, but seeing them made him inhale sharply anyway.

It wasn't like he was not used to scars, was covered in them head to toe himself, some bigger, some smaller, some self inflicted, some the result of reckless behaviour and other people's ruthlessness. Yet, it was different. His scars had collected over time, had come with the life Ruka was used to living, but Selim had been ripped from his life, had been wounded and scarred by people he hadn't wronged. Selim's scars were not the memory of a rough life, they were marks, a branding, a symbol of helplessness.

Still, it didn't matter. Jack's scars had been inflicted in the span of a day, a messed up, contradictory symbol of trust neither he nor Selim would ever be able to wash themselves off of.

The words coming from Selim's small, scarred, shivering form were biting their way into Ruka's soul, gnawing and tearing at him, trying to rip him apart to dig out the empathy that was hidden inside him somewhere. All the things Selim had gone through, everything he had experienced had made him into this shell, turned him hollow. There was a deep seated longing for things to end inside him that Ruka could relate to, had struggled with himself for years and even more so since his dad had passed away.

The death of a child, even just symbolically, wasn't something Ruka could just ignore. He could feel a kinship to that at least, the feeling of being older than one really should be, of having left behind the child he always wanted to be. As much anger as Ruka could feel bubbling inside him at the mere sight of him, there was also something stabbing at his heart, causing him a horrible aching in his chest each time he took a breath.

He could do nothing but listen and watch as Selim stood up and spread his arms, welcoming Ruka's every instinct like it had been everything he'd been waiting for. It was so different from the cold, emotionless robot Ruka had met just over a week ago; The boy in this room had given up, was broken and vulnerable like Ruka would have never expected him to be, his lips stretched into something resembling a smile but without the right emotion behind it.

"If I did you the favour of ending it," Ruka said slowly, pushing himself back on his feet as well, moving a bit closer towards the other boy. There were no knives in his hands, no indication that he was in any way capable of inflicting injury on Ruka should he come too close. "You wouldn't be able to repay it. Jack would hate me for it and blame himself anyway. The only person getting anything out of that would be you." There was no point in giving in to Selim's request, no matter how much Ruka wanted to give in to the temptation, wanted to wrap his hands around Selim's neck and make him feel all the anger and fear and frustration he had caused with his actions.

Instead, Ruka stepped closer, eyes locking with Selim's, a deep frown creasing his forehead. He thought he understood, could see things a little more clearly than he did before. Selim welcomed the prospect of everything ending, hated what he had done seemingly as much as what had been done to him, was a cracked vase threatening to break apart at any moment. What he wanted was for someone to smash it, eliminate it because trying to fix it would cause too much agony, too much of a struggle.

"There must have been another way," Ruka said quietly, voice still steady but laced with desperation. Nothing in the world should have given Selim the right to do what he had done, nothing justified it, nothing was going to make it right again. "I would have never..." He broke off there, unable to lecture Selim about what he personally could and couldn't have done. What did he know about what he would have been capable of had he been in Selim's shoes? He had no right to talk, the same way Selim hadn't had the right to hurt Jack.

With a heavy sigh, Ruka closed his eyes, pressed the lids shut almost forcefully as he suppressed a sob, swallowed it down with a gulping sound. He could feel tears stinging at the back of his eyes but he wasn't willing to show them off. Selim had called him needy and pathetic before, and Ruka was not eager to confirm his statement any more than he had already done.

Instead of succumbing to the tears, Ruka took one last step forward, stepped right into the offering of Selim's arms and wrapped his own around the other boy, pulling him close and unwilling to let go.

WARNING, dark content ahead, read only if you think you can handle it.

"A walking corpse, a lost soul, a broken child who just wants peace."

@Selim Faust

There was something inexplicably painful in the disconnect between Selim’s voice and the expression on his face. The empty smile didn’t match the endless agony pouring from his lips and it made Ruka’s own breath turn ragged and shallow. He could barely understand the meaning of the words the other boy muttered, too caught up in trying not to lose himself in the cracks of Selim’s voice.

“Weak?” he repeated numbly, lifting a hand to stare at the palm contemplatively, eyes tracing the fine lines stretching across pale skin. What was the implication of Selim’s words? That Ruka was strong? Possessed some kind of strength the Slytherin couldn’t bring up? It was a ridiculous notion when most days he felt like he was barely able to deal with simple conversation. “We’re all weak in our own way,” he rasped, shaking his head to himself as he dropped his hand again to instead scratch across his thigh with an edge of discomfort. What was there to say?

Every fibre in Ruka wanted to comfort the boy in front of him, offer him something other than the pain that was coursing through him, but how could he? How was he supposed to just forgive and forget when the reminder of why Ruka loathed him so much was etched across Selim’s body like that?

“You couldn’t have known torment from him,” he said quietly, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment. “He would have wanted to show you anything but!” As far as Ruka was aware, Selim was someone Jack cared about with all he had, someone he was willing to do most anything for, so how could Selim possibly say that he knew nothing but torment? Why wasn’t the care and affection he had surely gotten from Jack enough?

As Ruka enveloped the other boy in an embrace he had expected resistance, had expected Selim to struggle and fight, but instead he just seemed to go numb in Ruka’s hold, his own arms hanging uselessly at his sides, his body neither tense nor relaxed. Ruka assumed it had to feel like this to be hugging a doll. Something lifeless and compliant, something that was dependant on outside forces steering them whichever way.

The words from Selim’s lips made Ruka chuckle drily, a humourless sound that he quickly muffled against the Slytherin’s bare shoulder. “Yeah,” he said, voice drenched in bitterness. “I suppose I am.” He wasn’t sure what exactly Selim was accusing him of, who he was comparing him to, but Ruka was painfully aware of the fact that he wasn’t so different from everyone else roaming the castle walls, no matter how much he told himself he was.

Tightening his hold on Selim, Ruka pressed his own wet face to the crook of the other boy’s neck for a moment before pulling away only slightly to be able to look into amber eyes, search them for the most prominent emotion he could find. “Just like everyone else,” he repeated, voice cracking halfway through. “Does that make me just another tormentor in your life?”

WARNING, dark content ahead, read only if you think you can handle it.

"A walking corpse, a lost soul, a broken child who just wants peace."