Alcacoke Island
Ayato sat cross-legged in the middle of his padded cell. He was thinner, with out-grown facial hair, and bags under his eyes. The effects the facility had had on him were apparent. The doctors had kept him here under his own advice. He was not safe to those around him otherwise. Not with his ailment. They monitored him 24/7 in this place, making sure he didn’t hurt himself or others. He was left alone to his thoughts where he had to relive the deaths of his father and sister, his time as a terrorist, his time as a therapist, treating Clay, treating Shanks, Sasuke, Chopper and Victor, the chopping of Chopper’s leg, his intimate moments with Yosano, and his removal from the university. All these thoughts swam around him at all times. There wasn’t much else to do here. He had a pencil he was allowed that he used to mark off the days. Time within the facility passed at an odd rate. Sometimes it felt like it was going slow, never fast. But regardless, Ayato’s memory was patchy, he would forget weeks at a time. The room was always kept too cool, and in the mornings Ayato would place his hand against the coldness of the wall just to feel anything - just to remind himself he was alive.
He had no visitors. Except one.
Every day, that Mario burst into his cell at exactly 4:20. The short man would step out of the shadows, grinning fiendishly, evilly twirling his moustache and carrying with him shells - blue, green, and red. He juggled them in his hands as he shouted, “it’s a-me Marioooo,” and launched the shells at Ayato, multiple at a time. Helpless to defend himself, Ayato was forced to face the brunt of these brutal attacks. The man would loom over Ayato and laugh a booming laugh, showing off that whenever Ayato’s exceedingly beautiful Yosano appeared (Mario called her something else, and seemed quite into talking about her breasts) Mario would refuse to let her see Ayato, and one of Mario’s men had even seen her silently crying in her car after one refusal. Sometimes, Mario’s just-as-twisted brother Luigi would accompany him. He’d carry with him bob-ombs and mini chain chomps - military grade equipment he had smuggled from God knows where. They would then take turns using these ammunition on Ayato, relishing in his every cry of pain, licking their lips in sadistic pleasure. Sporadically, Luigi would force Ayato’s face back, pinching his nose, cackling, while Mario shoved mushroom after mushroom down Ayato’s throat.
“Take a-that, shove it a-down, shove it a-down your mouth,” he’d shriek with pleasure as Ayato gagged with tears in his eyes.
It was endless emotional and physical abuse, day after day.
It was one of those mornings where Ayato had his face pressed against one wall and stared at the one adjacent to it. If he focussed hard enough, perhaps he would hear the footsteps of the nurses through the walls. It was then that he heard the click of the door being unlocked...
Whenever the door opened, Ayato knew it could only be Mario, the one he dreaded. That day, when the door slowly started to open, he looked up in shock, his heart already beating wildly out of his chest, his muscles tensed, breathing ragged, before he reminded himself it was not yet 4:20. It could not be him. Please, please not him. Not yet. “Damn you, Pavlov,” he muttered to himself, trying to control his baselines. This conditioned fear response every time the door opened was probably not healthy to have.
“Ayato,” he heard, and he looked up out of his haze to the silhouette at the doorway - the light surrounding the yakata-clothed person like a halo, making it impossible to distinguish who it was.
“Oh, my dear boy…” the silhouette - a man - Fukazawa? His ex-boss, the man from Oxbridge - or was Ayato simply mistaken, confused - he moved and the light shone onto the man and illuminated his every feature, his hair shimmering silver in the white industrial lighting, his brows furrowed, jawline sharp and clenched, “What have they done to you?” Fukazawa stopped before Ayato, his lower lip trembling, and in the silence of the day he brushed his fingers over Ayato’s forehead in a whisper and brushed back misplaced hair.
Ayato could hear his own heartbeat, the way it mimicked the clip-clopping of his ex-patient’s dumbass hooves. He hardly even noticed the tears wetting his cheeks, not until Fukazawa fell onto his knees before his ex-employee, the one person who had caused significant positive change to Oxbridge in an exceedingly short amount of time. Who else would be able to draw Shanks out of his Yuki-related trauma, help Victor gain back his confidence, who else would be able to stand a one-on-one conversation with Chopper for like, three hours a week? Where was the man who sat on the couple-of-million dollar sofa that Fukazawa had bought him, the man who had gifted Fukazawa a beautiful piece from the same series simply as a token of their friendship? Fukazawa had even considered starting an employee of the month award, but had decided against it simply due to his laziness. Oh, how he regretted that now - how he regretted it!
Fukazawa dropped to his knees before the silent and wholly broken ex-psychiatrist, using a gentle grip against the back of his head to guide their foreheads together.
“It’s okay, dear boy,” the silver fox said, voice trembling, “I’ve got you. I’ve GOT you.”
Ayato’s body quaked with sobs, though he was yet to make any noise apart from heavy breathing. His eyes were squeezed shut as he cried, and Fukazawa joined him, unable to imagine the level of pain Ayato was in. Just a handful of weeks ago Ayato was level-headed, responsible, and now he was tortured and pained.
“I’ll fix this,” Fukazawa promised, squeezing the back of Ayato’s neck reassuringly and leaning away to kiss the man on his forehead. “Dear friend of mine, I am so sorry you had to go through this.
“I’m so sorry.”
-
An hour and some minutes later, Fukazawa sat cross-legged before Ayato. The man’s head was still tipped toward the floor, his eyes bloodshot and puffy. The headache throbbing over Fukazawa’s temple felt like some kind of sinus infection, or as if someone had wrapped his temple with hundreds of plastic bands and squeezed it to oblivion.
“I thought,” Ayato began, the first words he had said since Fukazawa had arrived, “That I would get help here, that I would get better...that I would remember what I did to terrorise your school. I thought I'd left my terrorist days behind me. But I can’t even properly apologise to you because i don’t remember doing any of it, and…”
“You don’t remember?” Fukazawa coaxed gently, “Do you know who one hell of a butler might be?”
Ayato shook his head, lips pursed together.
Fukazawa’s lips set in a hard line, “I see.”
He had suspected as much. He sat with the ex-counsellor, holding the boi’s hands in his grip. But soon enough too much time had passed, and he knew his time would be better spent absolving Ayato of the accusation than comforting the man. The only thing Fukazawa could do too help Ayato now would be to get him out of this dastardly place.
Fukazawa slowly rose, straightening the length of his yukata. “I will bring you to justice, Ayato-san.”
Ayato’s eyes, large and wide, stared blankly at Fukazawa. Fukazawa turned to sweep out of the room, turning for one last, long, significant look at the young, broken man.
Ayato struggled between his conflicting emotions; upset at Fukazawa leaving, an odd spark of hope at Fukazawa having ever been there. If Fukazawa thought he was worthy enough to visit, maybe he was a man worth something after all. Not just a monster that had hurt the people around him, but a man deserving of Fukazawa’s ongoing friendship.
-
Fukazawa stood by the floor-length window of his office. He was throwing cigarette butts out of the window, but it was clear from the two whole cigarette packets on the floor that the man had been chain smoking for quite a long time. Not just that, but the whole room smelt like stale smoke.
He stared out at the Oxbridge grounds pensively. He couldnt put his thoughts on paper, couldn't have evidence for conspiracy against one of his own students...but still. But STILL. He knew what made the most sense, but without having the power of numbers - or his fellow Oxbridge professors - he would be classed as another crazy, he’d end up beside Ayato instead of getting that poor, wounded soul out of there. Just the image of Ayato’s worn, haggard face; his un-blow dried hair, the shimmer absent from his eye, the beard covering his youthful face, prominent jawline, clear skin, made Fukazawa’s heart spasm painfully. The poor boi needed Oxbridge the most, and in his hour of need Oxbridge had abandoned him. How dare someone manipulate a vulnerable person and blame them for a heinous crime they had not committed??
“Fukazawa?” Tomoe pushed open Fukazawa’s ajar office door and stared at the sun-smattered, angsty length of the silk-yukata laden professor. “Would you like some company?”
And so Tomoe stood beside the aged professor, smoking through his own pack of cigarettes - he’d swiped them off Sanji when going to pee in the common room toilets, he’d also had the foresight to steal some of their bog roll and Chopper’s spare prosthetic - and they stared out to the prestigious university Oxbridge university. Soon enough their silence turned into words, and their words turned into pain, and Tomoe couldn’t help the anger boiling in him when he realised that perhaps the wrong man was at the mercy of both a-Mario and NON-magic mushrooms…
-
“There is a criminal at large,” Fukazawa addressed his professors. Hawkeye rose a brow at Hawkeye, who looked towards Shanks and Mustang in turn, who each turned to Tomoe and Victor respectively while Kakashi flicked through his favourite book (Chopper’s Will).
“And no,” Fukazawa continued, “It’s not our drug-dealing students, they are harmless. The drugs they are selling have gone under many-a human trial, as we all would know.” Hawkeye and Levi fist bumped. “But alas there is an unfilled gap in this room that cannot be filled by any of us, that honourable chair that we always leave empty within these meetings, of course the chair of our dear Ayato. Hopefully he will be returning to it sometime soon so we can replace that photographed picture of him. Nothing is nearly as good as the real thing.”
Kakashi looked toward the empty chair. Upon the chair was a framed photo of the disgraced ex-professor Ayato Kirishima. It was an old mug shot back from his terrorist days, though much of the photo had been cropped out to make it look less prison-y. It was the only picture Fukazawa could find of Ayato’s face - the boi was very much a wallflower.
Shanks and Victor nodded solemnly at Fukazawa’s words, they understood the value of that smart, brave, handsome and gentle man more than anyone. Shanks missed him like an ache between his ribs. He’d give anything away to have Ayato return, even his remaining arm.
“Is he recovering well in the institute he’s in then, Fukazawa?” Victor asked excitedly.
“Alas, unfortunately that is not the case. Arguably the poor boi is more broken than he has ever been. Thusly we must take immediate action, for I have reason to believe that he was wrongfully convicted of the crime of chopping Chopper’s leg. And for that we are all to blame, as we did not protect that vulnerable man as we should have.”
Victor cried silently, the haunted look on Fukazawa’s face merely attested to the hardship Ayato was currently going through.
“Why would he have admitted to a crime he didn’t commit?” Levi asked skeptically. “I don't even admit to crimes I DO commit. Not that - uh -” Levi cleared his throat, “This isn't on record, is it?”
“I don’t care what any of you think,” Fukazawa said from deep within his chest, staring at a spot above all of the professor’s heads with a raging inferno in his gayze, “Before being my employee Ayato was my friend, and before being my friend he was almost a brother-son-nephew hybrid. We are, as one from the 1900s might say, kindred spirits. I have never met someone who has reminded me of myself this much. A powerful, beautiful, yet tortured young man, who merely wanted a fresh start within these aged, aged walls. And who are we to deny him that, his simple human right? A fundamental right. Oh Ayato, I cannot even stand to sit on the beautiful chair you bought for me, it is simply heartbreaking!”
Victor was crying harder, hiding his head in his hands. Kakashi handed him a strip of Chopper’s will to blow his nose on.
“For you, dear boi - dear Ayato, dear son-brother-nephew-grandson. I shall launch a private investigation using the world’s second-best detectives; Ranpo is too busy with school. I already have a suspicion of who it is. But soon the only prison walls you’ll be trapped in are those of Oxbridge, and it shall be a willing sentence you shall oblige to.
“FOR AYATO!” Fukazawa held his fist in the air.
“FOR AYATO!” the rest of the professors cheered.