Chapter Text
The hospital afterwards. Catatonic. Still, unblinking, silent. His bloody nose plugged, his sheets having to be changed often because he’s bleeding from the other end too. His entire family comes to see him, hug him, weep for him. When Light does nothing but blink slowly, one disgustingly swollen eye delayed, the doctor assures his parents he is not brain damaged, and that after such extensive trauma, Light just needs some space. His dad argues but takes a final, tear rimmed look at Light’s expression, before he relents, leaving a bag of Light’s belongings, and Light is alone in his hospital bed.
Nurses rushing in when his heart monitor starts beeping erratically, his purple face as his body struggles to draw a breath with the plastic bag he has tied around his neck, his sleep shirt sleeve as his rope. His family is back, and his dad is screaming at him, demanding that Light not give up.
“Can you just say something?!” His dad yells, his glasses falling down the bridge of his nose, his bloodshot eyes glossy, face red. “Goddamn it, just talk to me! And tell me- tell me why, and I’ll do anything to help you! Anything!”
“I need to die.” Light replies, apathetic. “There’s no other way.”
His mom bursts into shaking sobs, and she’s holding Sayu into her chest. That’s a shame, his thirteen year old sister shouldn’t have to see this.
And really, Light doesn’t understand the disconnect at all. He falls silent again, but the questions marinate in his head while he supposedly heals. He has stitches in his asshole, both of his ankles are crushed (beyond repair, he assumes), and he’s suffering a painful infection in his colon from the assault. He’s been shitting pretty much nothing but blood. His face is a collection of lumps and bruises, and one of his front teeth is missing. He remembers the feeling of that tooth hanging by a thread from the punch, and the following attack that actually forced the tooth out, how he'd blindly felt around on the floor for it, hoping it could be salvaged (it could not). Would his dad be able to live with this shame? Of having a rape kit performed on him by indifferent nurses, of trying to use the provided bed pan to take a shit, and having anal prolapse?
It’s fucking ridiculous that he’s seen as unreasonable and unstable. It’s rational, logical. It happened in one day, and will take months or years to heal from. And the nail in the coffin? It was recorded and posted on the internet.
All over the dark web. Light’s not stupid, it’s the first thing he looks for when his mom brings him his laptop. It’s not even difficult to find once he gets to that particular underside of the internet. He’s a snuff film star of a pretty boy gangbang, being viewed by hundreds of thousands of chronic sadists, men praising the sight of his butchered body, thanking Light’s rapists for providing such stimulating content, and fawning over the way Light’s voice sounds when he screams himself raw. Over the way he bends and twists when he’s forced down, a heavy, sweaty body on top of his, and reamed. The way hope drains out of his eyes when the man tucks away his cock, stepping aside to reveal another assailant.
So turned on by the color cum turns when it’s mixed with blood, and the way Light stretches, stretches, and is finally torn in a blur of bloodcurdling agony and tears and pleas that no one really seems to pay mind to. He kept passing out, and waking up in the same hellish situation, and eventually he stopped crying about it. Twelve continuous hours, multiple broken bones, a host of criminals. He had tried to keep track for when he was rescued, so he could report them, see them brought to justice. But they began to blur together. They were all the same, partaking in the forbidden apple (or, maybe the forbidden cherry, in this case), the hideous nature of mankind. They take, and take, and take. They’re all the same in the end. No justice, no saviors, no god, no masters.
He doesn’t bother showing his dad, who would probably have a heart attack at the sight. If it was taken down, it’d be promptly reuploaded. It was never going away. It was going to escape the constraints of the dark web, flooding porn sites that every jerk off junkie had access to, and people would be none the wiser that Light wasn’t just some fucked up, desperate masochist pretending to be resistant. If they could even understand his Japanese ramblings, given it’d probably be consumed by people from other countries. Inaccurate subtitles added, where Light’s squealing in pleasure, proclaiming how good it feels, and pleading with raw delight for more horrific treatment from all his repugnant, lust sodden lovers.
Would his dad like to live like this? The most shameful moment of his entire life being posted for rape fetishists to get off to? Being hailed as a porn star, at seventeen years old?
“Does it still hurt, Light?” Sayu asks, mom conked out in one of the clearly uncomfortable plastic chairs, and his dad outside having a cigarette. Her pert, childishly plump face is just as sad and droopy as everyone else’s. It’s ineffably pathetic to be pitied by his little sister; to be rendered so helpless that a preteen girl weeps for the swift death of his honor. “I don’t understand why you’re not home yet. Your face looks a lot better than it did…”
And really, Light’s tried to avoid talking to her. To all of them, but most of all her. He doesn’t want to know how his parents explained this entire situation to a thirteen year old. If they even explained it at all, or just told her that Light had been through something traumatic, hurt in a way she wasn’t old enough to understand.
So, he just nods. Because it does still really, really hurt. His infection is still rampant even though it’s been a few weeks now, it’s miserable to go to the bathroom because his backside and his penis are still sore and raw and healing (he hates that word), and his entire face still feels like one big bruise, especially his mouth, making eating almost impossible. A feeding tube in his nose, running down his throat and into his stomach. He didn’t have much of an appetite anyways, it’s a blessing in disguise, his jaw being so broken he has to have precious calories forced into him. A host of X-rays are pretty much guaranteeing he’ll start sprouting tumors left and right if he manages to survive this (he doubts it).
His jaw realignment surgery comes and goes. He’s kept in the hospital still, and they’d put the dental implant in while he was under, too. His jaw’s wired shut now, so he has a reason, at long last, to not talk. He doesn’t have anything to say.
Then, the wires get removed. And Light’s once again expected to take steps towards normalcy. And he guesses that physically, yeah, he’s fine except for his still crushed ankles wrapped in twin casts, and his broken thumb. His stitches are gone. His urethra is finally back to normal size, so he hasn’t pissed the bed in a while, and can even relieve his bladder without it burning like molten lava. His rampant anal syphilis, and the resulting proctitus symptoms, are finally out of his system, too. It’s been four months.
Light wants nothing to do with his life.
He tries to show them all as much, as adequately as he can when he’s confined to his hospital bed—self strangulation leaves his throat a patchwork of bruises, a failed overdose after cheeking his medicine has him getting his stomach pumped, and he even humors the hospital staff via trying to stab himself in the chest with a pen. It only earns him more restriction, a host of tranquilizers, a psyche evaluation he lies through so he doesn’t get hauled off to a padded room for the rest of his miserable days.
Because he’s healing but he has an excellent memory, on top of being able to view the excruciating entirety of his own assault whenever the sick, self torturing urge arises. He remembers the entire thing, and every feeling he experienced during it. He thinks he experienced the entire expansive range of human emotion in just one day. And now, he’s lived his purposeless life to the fullest. This is all he will ever be, even if he manages to continue collecting meaningless achievement after meaningless achievement. The teenager who got gang raped in one of the safest countries in the world. Did you hear? The kid of a cop just got gang raped in one of the safest countries in the world.
It sounds like a fucking joke, and it feels like one too.
And the subject of school makes Light feel physically ill. Thrown back four months in his progress, and the social repercussions of coming back to school after something like this. No matter what his dad does to hide it, people are going to know. Maybe they’ll see it in his face, see it in his honeyed eyes, the entire scene, the entire snuff film visible even in his gaudiest of fake smiles. Rumors are going to spread, and they’ll start getting the story wrong, a game of telephone turning Light into a flamboyant gay whore who went on some spectacular, STI riddled sex streak for four months, that’s why he’s walking funny, and that jaw thing was because he just sucked too much dick.
“What are you going to do then?” His mom asks, exhausted, Light’s plate growing cold on his lap. She brings him homemade meals but once again, it’s difficult to find the will to bring the chopsticks to his mouth when he’s brought back to being throat fucked virtually every time he opens it. Or maybe his mom’s cooking just fucking sucks, who’s to say? “If you don’t- don’t go back to school, get your diploma… all your potential… Light, I don’t want you to regret this- this dark patch, forever. You can still be-“
“A whore.” Light interrupts blankly. “I think I’d make a fantastic whore. A call boy, I think, is the more frequently used term.”
She wipes her wet eyes and sighs shakily, clearly tired of crying. “You don’t mean that, Light. Don’t say that. You’re stronger than this.”
“No, I’m not.” Light replies, holding an apple and watching the red reflection of his face dance on it’s waxed surface. He sees it in his own face, his soiled state, his broken pieces, his inadequacy. He feels like those men didn’t break him, they broke him open, and something evil is starting to claw it’s way out. Something he could’ve gone his entire life not even knowing of its existence. He can’t kill it, so he must kill himself instead. And it’s so easy for his mother to say he’s strong, that he can survive this and move on, because it’s not her. She’s an outsider looking in and she’s not even looking too closely, squinting to avoid getting the full picture, which is horrific and disturbing. “When is my discharge date?”
His mother rattles it off to him, mistaking the question for excitement, for a flash of hope she’s so sure Light must be hiding. When his ankles heal (badly; just another ailment to add to the growing list, the fact he may as well throw his tennis racket away, because walking will now forever be a hurdle), he leaves at night, and doesn’t take much with him. He takes the essentials, which includes his father’s debit card, unfortunately. His dad will get over it one day. His entire family will. They have to know to some extent that Light’s been dead from the moment his trousers were pulled down to his ankles and he was bent over.
He takes a taxi to an ATM to withdraw the college funds he’ll now never use, and then to a hotel.