I need a fill

Of violence to bust up the silence for real

Traumatized, ain't gonna hide how I feel

~

~

Shouta was slowly despairing as he and Hizashi were running out of warehouses to check. They still hadn't found Y/N and Shouta was wondering if she was even still alive. They had figured out who had her - or they rather had a good idea of who it could be. And the chances she was still alive with that crowd were... slim.

But still, Shouta knew he wouldn't be able to even try and function normally before he didn't know for sure. He had to find her, even if all there was to find was a corpse. He was glad to have Hizashi looking out for him, though. He probably couldn't have done it on his own and he definitely wouldn't be as far as he was right now, if it hadn't been for Hizashi constantly helping him out with this.

But after coming back from checking all the warehouses in yet another part of the city, he felt like he just couldn't go on with this. There hadn't been a sign of her being alive in ages and Shouta couldn't be certain that he would even get another sign from them. Maybe that one email and the video would be the last thing he'd have of her. Maybe that's how he'd always remember her - tied up to a chair, scared, frightened, shivering and dirty, wounds all over her body. He sure hoped not.

"You wanna go and check more places or call it a night?" Hizashi wanted to know. Shouta sighed. He didn't know. He had no idea what he should do. He knew he wouldn't be able to properly help her if they found her now, because he was tired and exhausted. But he also knew that he would never be able to forgive himself if she died because he was too late. It didn't matter what he did.

"I don't know, Hizashi. No idea." Shouta replied with a sigh, before he noticed a small package on his doorstep. He furrowed his brows as he looked at it. Hizashi didn't really seem to mind. The thing was... he wasn't expecting any packages. So what the hell was this?

"You want me to stay over again?" Hizashi wanted to know. They had been going back and forth between their places, but throughout all this time Hizashi hadn't ever let him stay on his own. It was clear that he was worried about Shouta and rightly so. Shouta didn't really trust himself to be alone.

"Yeah sure. This package has no sender." Shouta then replied, as he was looking at it. It was really light and small. There was a stamp from the post office on there, but no sender. That was weird. Shouta had a bad feeling about this.

"No sender? That's odd. Don't you wanna open it?" Hizashi asked. Shouta nodded, but he couldn't shake the terrible feeling he had when he just looked at that package. Something about this was so, so wrong. He took the small pocket knife he was always carrying out of his pocket and quickly cut the tape to open the package. Inside of it was a small letter and a little wooden box.

"What the hell...?" Shouta mumbled as he looked at the box. There was a weird smell coming off it. He handed the box to Hizashi, so he could hold it while he opened the letter. Hizashi was eyeing up the box.

The letter was written on some torn out sheet of paper, probably from a notebook. It looked like it had been scribbled in a hurry. Shouta raised an eyebrow as he started deciphering the message written on it. The handwriting was really bad and difficult to read and it took him a while to make sense of it.

Just as he was finished reading, he heard a gasp coming from Hizashi. Shouta looked over at him, as he was holding a hand over his mouth and looked pale. He looked like he was about to get sick. Shouta wordlessly took the box. He knew he was right to have a bad feeling about this. He knew this was some sort of bad news... but what the hell was in that box?

Judging from what they knew... that the Shie Hassaikai had her... it couldn't be anything good. And judging from Hizashi's reaction it had to be something that was at least a little stomach churning. Hizashi could be a little sensitive about things like that, but Shouta was pretty sure this time it was really that bad.

He took a deep breath before looking inside the box. It took him a while until he realized what it was. They were nails. Fingernails. Some of them had blood sticking to them. Shouta couldn't even react at first, he was just staring at them, trying to make sense of how Y/N's fingernails had gotten inside that box, but the answer was pretty clear, he just didn't want to believe it.

"They... they ripped off... her nails?" Shouta gasped, still staring inside the box. This couldn't be true. This was ridiculous. Why would they do that to her? Just to get to him? They already had him completely beside himself. What more could they want? Was there something he was missing?

"Show me the letter." Hizashi told him. Shouta gave him the piece of paper with shaky hands and closed the wooden box. He didn't want to look at that anymore. He really wasn't sure if he could deal with this any longer. He was seeing evidence of Y/N being brutally tortured and there was nothing he could do. It was slowly but surely breaking him into tiny little pieces.

"If we figure it out fast enough... what do they mean? There was no sender you said?" Hizashi replied. Shouta nodded and looked up into the sky, taking a deep breath, trying to calm himself down.

"No sender. There was a stamp from the post office, though." Shouta said and handed him the box. Hizashi eyed up the stamp and then looked at Shouta with wide eyes. He clearly had some sort of idea.

"Shou. It's not far from here. If she's in a warehouse that is close to that particular post office then there is only one that we have pinned down. Come on, let's get back in the car, we're going there right now!" Hizashi said, grabbing his arm and pulling him back down his driveway and towards the car. Shouta was still trying to process what was going on and where they were going, but Hizashi was probably in a much better position to make a judgment like that right now.

"A-and we're going there now?" Shouta wanted to know, as he climbed in the car, not sure what the hell was even going on and what Hizashi's plan was once they got to the warehouse.

"Yes, they said, if we're quick we might still see her. That means they must be moving her at some point, so we might still have a chance to find her!" Hizashi exclaimed and started the car. Shouta was confused. He was in absolutely no condition to be fighting off anyone right now.

"And what will we do once we get there?" Shouta asked. For once in his life Shouta didn't mind Hizashi's reckless driving. He wanted to get there, he wanted to know and see that Y/N was still alive, but if they were going to move her anyway, how would they find her again? And what... what if she wasn't alive?

"We'll see what the situation is. Even if we can't do anything right now, if she's still there, we can watch them, see how many people there are, what the schedule is for people watching her and especially how they're keeping her. And if they move her, we can follow them and find out where she is, in case we need to prepare more for this." Hizashi explained as they were flying around a bend.

"That makes sense... I just... I can't think straight anymore..." Shouta said with a sigh. For the first time he felt how exhausted he really was - how he hadn't been sleeping properly, how he hadn't been eating properly... he wouldn't even be able to kill a simple target like this.

"It's alright, Shou. We'll see what we can find. And then we make a plan to get her out of there. For now we are just staking out the place." Hizashi tried to calm him down. They went around another bend.

"Hizashi, what if she's not there? What if she's dead?" Shouta asked again. He didn't even want to imagine her dead or missing, but... both were a realistic possibility at this point in time.

"If she's dead... well, let's hope she's not. There is no way we can just assume that she's dead. And if she's not there, then they already moved her and we'll just have to keep looking for her. But we have to try at least." Hizashi answered and brought the car to a halt. There was a huge warehouse stretching out in front of them, but the parking lot was suspiciously empty.

"Are we here?" Shouta wanted to know. Hizashi nodded and Shouta sighed, leaning back and looking at the roof of the car. How the hell was he supposed to be able to do this? What if they just found her corpse in there? How would he even cope with that? Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to go in there.

"We are. Come on, let's go. We gotta be careful, though. Can't get spotted by anyone." Hizashi said, opening the door and quickly climbing out of the car. Shouta felt like he was getting overwhelmed once again, especially when he thought back to the nails he had gotten in the mail.

"Okay..." Shouta replied, taking another deep breath. He followed Hizashi to the entrance of the warehouse, Hizashi looking inside carefully, before walking inside ahead of him. The hall was empty. There was no one in there, but it looked like people had been here for quite a while. There was a mattress in the corner and a few chairs around the place. Did that mean...?

"Looks like there is no one here anymore." Hizashi muttered, before punching the wall. Shouta didn't even know what he had been expecting. The way things were going lately, it was pretty clear that they wouldn't get to her in time. Anything else would have been close to a miracle at this stage.

Shouta felt numb. He didn't even know what to do with himself right now. He was just feeling empty inside, as if everything had just stopped making sense. He slowly made his way to the chair that was in the middle of the room. There was some rope laying around it that had been cut. It was probably the rope that they had used to tie her to the chair. It looked like the same chair from the video after all.

Shouta looked down at it, running his hand over the arms of the chair. He noticed some blood on the ends of both of the arms and some underneath. There were some pliers lying beside the chair as well. Was this where they...? Shouta felt sick, just thinking about it, and he was used to seeing some bad stuff.

"Shou? Are you okay?" Hizashi wanted to know. Shouta looked up from the chair and back at Hizashi, not sure what he was supposed to answer to that. Was he okay? Probably not, but he wasn't really sure how exactly he was feeling. He was pretty sure that he wasn't okay whatsoever.

"I... I don't know... Looks like she's been gone for a while, doesn't it? S-she's... she's still alive, i-isn't she?" Shouta asked, his voice quivering, as he was looking back down onto the chair. That blood was just... that was just from her fingers bleeding, right? It wasn't... it wasn't enough to be from anything else... right? And they would have left her here, too, if they had killed her, wouldn't they?

"I'm... I'm sure she is... we should probably... I don't know... look around and see if there are any clues as to where she is?" Hizashi suggested. This was one of the first times that Shouta had seen him unsure about something, since Y/N had disappeared. Shouta hated seeing him unsure about something. He was always worrying and unsure of what to do, but Hizashi? He always had a plan. When he didn't have a plan, things were about to go south really quickly.

"Sure. Let's... let's do that." Shouta replied, feeling like all strength had just left his body. What point was there to this when they would probably never find her anyway? There was no point. It was useless. He was useless. He had promised to keep her safe, but here he was, utterly failing at that. Why had he not just taken her and run away with her? It would have been so much easier. The chances of them being found and caught were slim. And even if her boss had sent someone after her, to get her back, he would easily have been able to fight them off.

But here he was, trying to play by their messed up rules, and he'd end up with her dead. Dead after being tortured for days, maybe even weeks or months. He wondered what she was thinking about. Was she thinking about much at all? He couldn't imagine that there was much more than pain on her mind. And if she thought about him, it was probably about how he had abandoned her.

That's what Shouta would be thinking, if he was in her situation. That he had abandoned him. Forgotten about him. Moved on. Found someone better. Fuck, but he was trying, wasn't he? How the hell had this happened in the first place? It made no sense. It made absolutely no sense. He almost had her, he literally was a few hours too late. But that was it. She was gone.

Shouta moved on from the chair and towards the mattress in the corner. Was this where she had been sleeping all this time? If it was... well, at least they had given her a mattress and a thin blanket. Shouta bent down to see if there was anything that might clear up whether she had been here or not. Maybe something that would indicate where they had brought her after this place.

There was some hair on the mattress - (h/l) (h/c) hair... Shouta felt his eyes filling with tears as he saw it. This was Y/N's hair... he was absolutely sure that it was her hair. She had been here. She had slept on this mattress. There was no way it was by any chance someone else. Shouta slowly and carefully pulled back the blanket and gasped when he saw the mattress underneath.

It had small blood spots all over it. She must have been bleeding from a lot of different wounds. Small enough, but still. The part of the mattress where her face was, was stained as well... she must have been crying at night. There were a bunch of small rocks and pebbles gathered next to the mattress. Shouta wondered what they were for... he heard Hizashi's footsteps coming up behind him.

"Shou? Are you alright?" Hizashi wanted to know. Shouta just shrugged. Hizashi really should know by now that he was definitely not alright. He could barely hold back the sob that was threatening to escape his throat. His eyes wandered along the wall, until he noticed something. It looked like there was something scratched into the wall... what was that? He took a closer look.

"Shou? What's that?" Hizashi asked and leaned in closer as well. It was some writing... 'Shouta.' It said 'Shouta'. She had definitely been here. She had been thinking of him. She had been using the small pebbles next to her mattress to scratch his name into the wall. Was she hoping he would find it? Was she trying to tell him something? Shouta let out a loud sob.

"Shou..."

"She was here... she was here, Hizashi." Shouta said, his voice quivering, as he knelt down beside the mattress. He couldn't believe that he had been so close to finding her again... just to have her taken away once more. He never thought anything could hurt so fucking much.

"It's okay, Shou... we'll find her... we'll find her again..." Hizashi said, squatting down beside him and hugging him, as he was still crying. He couldn't believe that something like that would happen to him. Of all the people in the world with messed up lives, why would it be happening to him?

"I... I don't have a plan yet, Shou, but it'll be okay, I promise! We'll go back home. We'll think it through. We'll come up with something and we're going to find her, alright? She's still alive, she must be. We're not going to stop until we find her. We're not going to give up, okay?" Hizashi said to him. Shouta nodded, before sobbing into his shoulder even more. Of course they'd do that, he knew that. But there was another thing that was bothering him. The writing on the wall.

"I know... I know... B-but..." Shouta started, but he didn't even know how to start telling him what was bothering him. Hizashi looked at him, a questioning look in his eyes. Shouta took a deep breath.

"The... the writing... She's... she's been thinking about me. And I can't stop thinking that... I failed. I failed her. I abandoned her and left her alone and now she's in this situation, because I wasn't fast enough. And she is thinking about me and how I forgot her and betrayed her and... I just... Even if we find her, I can't get over the fact that... she'll probably never forgive me..." Shouta explained. He wasn't sure if he was making any sense to Hizashi. He was barely making sense to himself.