Erosion
Saiseki gets confrontational. PG-13, 1,432.

If he puts his mind to it, Saiseki’s capable of bringing down entire walls with one swing of his fist.

He usually doesn’t put his mind to it. Usually. Today’s unusual.

“Sayre!” he roars; the laboratory assistants (he can’t take the time to identify them right now, and the white coats and glasses make them all look the same, anyway) scurry out of his path. He sends a table filled with vials of pale blue liquid and trays of syringes flying into the nearest wall. "Sayre!"

“Don’t frighten the help, Saiseki-kun,” a familiar voice singsongs. Robin Sayre strolls out from behind a row of blindingly white cabinets, tapping a pencil against his chin. “Help’s hard enough to find as it is.”

He manages to grab the front of Sayre’s shirt and lift the bastard into the air in about two seconds. Still, Saiseki gets the distinct feeling that Sayre’s letting him do this, letting him have a little temper tantrum if that’s so important to him, and that thought makes him want to dismantle the medical wing of the Mitsugi compound by hand. “Don’t play games.”

“Life’s so dull without them, though. Wouldn’t you agree? I’m sure that Isame would.” Sayre gives him a sidelong glance, that infuriating smirk of his firmly in place. “Well, if Isame could speak properly, at any rate, then I’m sure she’d agree with me.”

He slams the doctor into the nearest cabinet—the sound of shattering glass should satisfy him a little, but it doesn’t. Sayre’s glasses are knocked askew by the impact, but every other part of him looks perfectly composed, perfectly unharmed. “Bring her back,” Saiseki hisses as he wills his voice not to break. “I know you can!”

“Your confidence is simply touching.” He reclines into the cabinet, as though resting on broken glass were the most comfortable thing in the world. “Really. I’m moved. I’m doing my best not to cry.”

“So do it,” he grits out. He’s not going to resort to bargaining with this—thing, not when it’s all his fault in the first place that this happened. Sayre has to set it to rights. And even as Saiseki thinks that, he sees himself genuflecting before that bastard, begging and pleading with him for Isame’s sake. He shouldn’t have to do that, shouldn’t have to go to those lengths to get her back. But he would. And Sayre knows it just as well as he does, which is why his grin’s getting even more insolent.

“Can’t,” Sayre says airily. He extracts himself from the cabinet sinuously, with all the grace of the snake that he is, and flips to his feet.

“Bullshit,” Saiseki snaps. “You gave her all those drugs, you kept her in this godsforsaken place for days, you—destabilized her, and you can damn well bring her back!”

“Funny thing, that. I wish I could.” He removes a few shards of glass from his long black hair; the edges bite into his skin, but no blood flows forth. “But I really can’t. It’s easier to break things than it is to fix them, after all.”

He’s lying—he has to be, that’s what Sayre does. He lies, he cheats, he deceives, and everyone knows it. And everyone still listens. But Saiseki refuses to listen this time, because he knows that Isame’s still somewhere in that quivering heap of shadows and wraithlike limbs and unnatural geometries. When she looks at him, he’s seen something like recognition in her eyes (when she remembers to form eyes, that is). “I’ll protect you,” he’d told her all those years ago—it felt like he’d said that in another lifetime, but it couldn’t have been more than four or five years ago, all told. He repeated it to her when she appeared at the entrance in his quarters and collapsed in on herself, writhing on the floor as her skin smoked and hissed and her limbs coiled and flopped like overcooked noodles. “I’ll protect you.”

He won’t break his word to her, not ever, which is why he punches Ni squarely in the jaw and smiles grimly when he feels something crack under his fist. As he staggers backward under the force of the blow, Saiseki advances on him. “Fix her!” he howls.

Sayre’s glasses slide down the bridge of his nose, he’s laughing so hard. The break in his jaw doesn’t seem to bother him at all—in fact, Saiseki watches the livid red swelling dwindle away to nothing. That’s not right, a voice in the back of his mind says. I didn’t think he had any abilities like that…it must be some drug cocktail he’s created that’s letting him do this, that’s all. “You’re so funny when you’re angry,” he gasps once he’s regained enough breath to speak. “It makes you even more stupid than you usually are.”

Saiseki’s hands tremble at his side—he’d love nothing more than to pound that creep within an inch of his life, but he’s not going to gain Sayre’s cooperation that way, he sees. He doesn’t have time to think of another response, though, because Sayre waltzes off towards a tray of medical supplies that Saiseki hasn’t gotten around to destroying. “I only want to say this once more,” he says as he picks up a syringe filled with a nasty yellow liquid. “She’s damaged. Permanently. Nothing to be done. She’s even more useless than she was when she came to me for help, if you can believe that.” He chuckles lightly.

“DON’T SPEAK OF ISAME THAT WAY!” he bellows, and he’s startled at how violently the words come out. He’s never felt like this before, hot and twisted and sick inside, so much so that he can barely see straight. “You betrayed your promise to her, you–”

Is it his imagination, or did Sayre’s eyes just narrow? Good. Saiseki presses on. “People like you; you’re the ones who told her all her life that she wasn’t good enough as she was—who are you to decide that? You never knew how generous she was, how kind, how beautiful…” They never knew how infectious that wicked little laugh of hers was. How she’d take the time to talk to Keiko when the rest of the compound shied away from the girl. How she worked herself to the bone to develop the preternatural grace that every Mitsugi but herself seemed to possess from birth. “A man like you isn’t worthy of Isame.”

The syringe shatters on the floor. “Don’t talk of things you can’t possibly understand.” Sayre’s stopped playing games, finally; the smiling mask is sliding off as though the surface beneath it has iced over. “I hardly pressured her to make the choice that she did. She has only herself to blame, and at this stage, debating her motivation serves no purpose.” He turns back to one of his worktables. Saiseki can tell that he’s being dismissed, but he plows on ahead anyway. That’s what he does best, after all.

“It’s not her fault,” he insists. He spins Sayre around so that the doctor’s facing him; Saiseki won’t be ignored. Not now. “It’s never been her fault. It’s your fault, your responsibility, your mistake, and that’s why you have to fix her.”

There. He’s said the truth as simply as he could. The doctor’s mask is almost off now, and for the first time Saiseki considers that he might not come out of this laboratory alive. Shutting his mouth would be the smart thing to do, but Isame would never have shut her mouth at a time like this, and since she—can’t speak for herself now, he’ll have to do it for her. “Your mistake,” he repeats slowly, letting Sayre catch every syllable.

The mask falls, just for a split second, and the rage is etched so deeply on that marble façade that Saiseki can’t help but give pause. But somewhere deep inside himself, he knows that he can’t keep Sayre off balance for much longer—and almost as soon as he realizes that, Sayre arranges his face back into that catlike smile. “This line of questioning really is fascinating—you’re quite the sparkling conversationalist, after all—but duty calls.” He waggles his fingers in dismissal and vanishes down the corridor to the left.

Slowly, Saiseki trudges out the door. Sayre’s assistants are careful to bob and weave around him.

Everyone’s moving. Everything’s shifting. As he walks, he can feel the winds of change wearing away at his edges. How long will it be before he’s nothing but a pile of rubble?