Chapter Text
From the moment all funds were split across the team and they came down from the high of the job, Edamura Makoto quietly but firmly detracted himself from anything to do with the team.
It’s hard to do, considering how hard Laurent has clung to him all these years, letting him run around free in a yard Makoto didn’t realize was fenced. Makoto will be lucky if he never sees that man again. He deletes his number and the number of everyone else save for Abby and Cynthia the morning everything is transferred to his account, books a plane, and leaves the next day. He leaves his supposed father behind to take a different flight to wherever the hell he wants to be next and goes back to the apartment he was in, before setting to work to pick up the pieces of his psyche. This endeavor would soon become, quite obviously, unsuccessful.
He barely keeps in contact with Abby, the both of them making sure to let each other know that they’re alive every few weeks to a couple of months. He stays in contact even less with Cynthia to get updates on how Kawin is doing.
It’s hard work, getting up in the mornings when you don’t really need to in order to live. For the first few (several, actually) weeks that he’s back in that apartment of his, he lies in bed for hours, orders delivery, smokes for a little bit, and then repeats. Sometimes he likes to spice up the routine by sitting in the tub and staring at the wall for a little bit (read: hours).
He’s not exactly too keen on living, and he's not at a point where he feels like he deserves to live after all that he’s done. Regardless of whether his actions hadn’t been real or had been rectified, his brain had already believed he had done them for quite some while, and he wasn’t about to forget what he’d been made to live through no matter how much of the situation had been faked.
It would be too easy to lie and say that because it had all been a job, none of his actions had mattered. It would be too easy to wash off the guilt and responsibility he had as a fellow human in that situation. He had sold people. Humans. He had fixed his mouth to spew out numbers to attach to kids. Currency, in exchange for a human. He had seen their clientele, the foul, terrible people that come to these… events, and how young these children were. Humans, in exchange for currency. For currency. For currency for currency for currency for currency for currency for currency for currre-
His alarm was ringing.
Another sleepless night.
Another day of lying in bed.
+++
It strikes Makoto, one day, to start making donations to reliable organizations against human trafficking. He even considers volunteering, but decides against it because it would feel too smarmy. He had no right to be around victims when he had been one of the people that had put them in danger like that, had been complicit in it. He’s also not exactly sure he deserves the peace of lying around in his own self-pity considering the things he had done in those two months. But he donates, and he helps them get to foster homes that he invests in, and he does his best to not remember the blank stares that would follow him, not even filled with disappointment because every adult had failed them already. His failure had been expected too.
He should consider therapy.
+++
He does not go to therapy, actually, even though he knows he should and could certainly afford it. He’s just not exactly sure how to explain to a therapist that he thought he had been the cause of his friends’ death due to being betrayed by his father and then had shot and killed said father and then had been a part of the yakuza for about two months where he had been treated like a son by the big boss in charge, all of which had been orchestrated by a Belgian confidence man in need of revenge for a woman that Makoto didn’t even know, didn’t even have an idea of what she looked like.
It was quite a bit to think about now, so he was sure no professional out there was going to be able to unpack all of that.
In the end, it's when he doesn’t respond to the third text that Abby has sent to him throughout the past three weeks that something happens.
It’s either dawn or dusk when a knock on his door disturbs him. Mostly disturbing him because, well, he hadn’t ordered anything to eat. In fact, looking at his phone, he finds that it was at quite an early time in the morning that this knock had arrived. He gets up, with great difficulty, and groans as he makes his way over to the door, shuffling through takeout boxes and wrappers that have piled up over the weeks. He should take care of that.
He opens the door to see the man that called himself “his father”.
The wizard himself had graced Makoto’s doorstep, and Makoto didn’t have any energy in him to say anything except for a very hoarse yet firm: “Go away.”
Oz doesn’t look surprised to hear this, but instead places the bag of groceries Makoto just now notices he’s carrying next to the front of the door. “Abby contacted me to make sure you’re still alive. I also… I brought groceries.”
Makoto doesn’t really have anything to say to that, so he leaves the door open to the man and goes to lie back down.
When he hears Oz moving around and clearing up his apartment, he cries. When he hears the crush of trash being pressed into a trash bag for further meticulous sorting, he pulls the covers over his head, and he sobs. Once upon a time, his mother would’ve done this for him. Once upon a time, he did this for his mother when she was too weak to move about on her own and had to depend on the nurses and him to help her. Oz has no right to do any of this. He gave up his right to being a caregiver the minute he put his son in a situation where he would be willing to shoot him. But Makoto doesn’t have any energy to stop him, so he cries. He cries.
He hears the kitchen sink turn on as Oz probably attacks the weeks-old sink full of dishes, Makoto having given up on that too.
After what seems like hours, the sun now shining through the window and having had his fill of tears and now on the precipice of sleep, he hears his door open. He doesn’t open his eyes but hears movement around his room. He hears Oz settle down beside him, and a wet but warm rag is gently applied to his face, wiping him down.
Oz has no right to take care of him. Oz has no right to assume any position of caregiver. But Makoto is so tired. He’s so tired. He opens his eyes to see what his father has become in the past few months. His hair is greyer, his wrinkles are deeper. He still looks like his… “father”.
“You don’t get to do this,” he croaks bitterly. “You don’t get to- to take care of me like my life matters at all to you.”
Oz paused for a moment, pursing his lips. He exhales, and then, “I know. I’m sor-”
“Save that nonsense for someone who gives a fuck. For all I know, you’re keeping me alive for another con of some sort. God… fuck you, I hope you go to hell. You aren’t my father. Never will be.”
Oz doesn’t have anything to say to that.
So he lies still and quiet and lets him continue because, well, if he’s already here it’s the least the man could do after years of abandonment. When Oz is finished, he whispers a very quiet “I’m sorry” that makes Makoto frown, unsure whether he even heard correctly or not. But he doesn’t care. They’re empty words, and he’s disgusted by their boldness, said to him despite Makoto’s earlier protest against false words. He rolls over, and drifts to sleep, determined to make tomorrow different so that his father won't come to his house ever again.
+++
Tomorrow is the same, but at least this time he brushes his teeth and texts Abby a very short and mildly hostile “I’m fine.” before going to lie back down on his bed.
He considers that a win.