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“What the fuck, Power?”
So it was that bad. Power could have maybe tell from the amount of blood that’s pooling in her cupped hands under her chin, but she didn’t think that it’s—what’s a normal amount of blood coming out of your mouth, anyway? She wants to ask this to Denji, who’s rushed so quickly across the hallway that the groceries he’d been holding had clattered noisily on the floor—she hopes there aren’t eggs in there, Aki’s always been so pissy if they broke the eggs on the way home—but when she opens her mouth, a rush of more spit and blood comes out and drips into her shirt.
“What the fuck? What happened? God, we left you home alone for like, two fucking hours—” He hovered around her some more, unsure of what to do, before whipping his head around so hard that she could hear the crack of his bones. “Aki? AKI!”
“WHAT!”
“COME OVER HERE! RIGHT NOW!”
The footsteps near the front door get closer, and closer, until the bundle of that ridiculous topknot appears from behind the doorway. He takes his time to still take his shoes off, eyes cast downward, although he steps on the heels rather hurriedly. “What, why the hell are you yelling? What is it?”
Aki looks up. And then he drops the groceries on the floor, too.
There was a whole lot of clattering and thumping as he rushed towards the couch and kneel by her side. “Get a—get a towel, tissues—” he practically slaps Denji on the shoulder before grabbing Power by the shoulders and swaying her body around. “Pow—what happened? Did you fall?”
Power shook her head. She didn’t understand why these puny humans that called themselves her brothers were so alarmed over some amount of blood.
“What happened, do you remember what happened?” He kept asking, using the towel Denji offered to wipe the blood off her hand and chin and mouth. “Did you hit yourself anywhere? Power—come on, don’t be like that, you gotta tell me what happened.” And then, because she must’ve been frowning, Aki added: “I won’t be mad, I promise. Please.”
Power shakes her head again. Just as Aki was sighing harshly from frustration, she nudged her closed fist against his arm until he noticed it enough to pay attention. And then she stretches out her fingers. Resting neatly on her palm is a small bloodied tooth, soaked so red you could barely see its real colour.
For a moment, all Aki and Denji did was stare and stare right back at her open palm. Then she coughed up some more thick copper-tasting spit, and the blood wouldn’t stop flowing no matter how much cotton she’d bitten down in the empty space that the tooth left, so to the emergency room it is.
“I don’t know how she could’ve knocked out a tooth like that,” Aki confessed to the doctor that’d spent the past hour wrestling Power down as she tried to bite on his fingers. He had this past habit of being overly honest for the sake of being a good kid, even if it meant telling adults things he probably should have kept to himself. He guesses that little kid he used to be still hasn’t left him, even after all these years. “I left her at home for two hours at most and she just—she was just bleeding there when we got back.”
The doctor hummed. “She wouldn’t tell you how it happened?”
Aki laughed dryly. “Would’ve been easier to pry a murder confession.”
She smiled. “Well, that’s how it usually is with kids like her, but we examined for fracture or blunt force trauma to her jaw, and she seems to be in the clear. Though—she seemed to have been picking on the wound, and that’s why it’d bled that much.”
He could sigh out a breath from his tight chest at that, at least. “Right, yeah. She tends to do that.” It was typical for Power to never be able to leave an open wound alone, picks and scratches on them even as it scabs over. He had no idea what her deal with blood was. Aki glanced at the gap between the curtains to catch a glimpse of the two blonde heads huddled up inside. “But uh—is her tooth just… gone for good, now?”
The doctor perked up and clicked her tongue at that. “Quite the opposite, actually. I’ve come to identify this as primary canines rather than permanent,” she held up the now-clean tooth safely contained inside a plastic jar between her gloved fingers, “meaning—this is her baby tooth that she lost, and while I examined her it seems that she still has a couple more left to lose.”
Aki frowned. “Baby tooth?”
He couldn’t recall his childhood from before all that clearly, which he’s eternally grateful for—but he remembers a thing or two about pushing and pulling a loose tooth all day long, and his father holding him up in the air as he threw a freshly lost tooth up in the air. So that the new ones will grow straight and high, he’d told him as he patted him on his back. Hell—even if he didn’t remember any of that, it was common sense to know that all your baby teeth should’ve fallen off at twelve the latest, right? Even Taiyo stopped having holes in his teeth when he was eight.
Why does he remember that?
“Mr. Hayakawa?”
He shook his head. “Sorry, I—uh, I was just confused. Shouldn’t she have lost it all some time ago?”
“That’s what I was hoping to ask you,” the doctor said. “You’re her legal guardian, correct?”
Aki felt a pang of shame at that. “Yes, but I only gained custody of her about four years ago, and I don’t recall ever having her tooth fall off when she was younger…”
The doctor nodded. “Well, though it is unusual that she still has primary teeth remaining at this age, I’d say it’s harmless for now. It’s still best to get her checked with a dentist soon, however—we still don’t know the underlying cause, after all, and to get a full scope of her developmental milestones. Just to be safe.”
“Right,” Aki said. He didn’t know what else to say; it was another thing to add to the list of bizarre things that Power already is.
“I’ll leave you to get discharged in a few moments,” the doctor smiled at that. “And oh, before that, I’d like to make sure—would you like for us to discard the tooth?”
Aki suddenly felt a strange wash of a feeling he couldn’t quite explain. It was a familiar sort of strangeness, though. When was a kid he often felt hot and cold and sad and confused all at the same time, sometimes for hours and hours, and he could never shake off the awful feeling no matter how hard he tried. Now, standing here as an adult with two heads to look after and a car mortgage to pay off, his chest still hurts harder the more he thought of that little tooth tucked between a stranger’s gloved hand. He didn’t understand why. It was just Power’s loose tooth.
He keeps it anyway.
Are teeth alive? Will I poop it out if I eat it? Is it going to grow back? So does that mean I can knock out all of Denji’s teeth?
Those were only a few on the list of questions Power kept on annoying the living hell out of Aki with, once the blood had stopped for good. She’d already tried to eat the dental gauze she’d been given, which Aki had to fish out of her mouth himself, and as they drove home there were a list of questions she had to ask about this new and exciting function of her body.
What do you do with the tooth? (Whatever you like. Do not eat it.) What did you do with your tooth? (I threw it up in the air, or the ground. Depends on which jaw that lost it. It’s an old tradition.) When did you lose it? (When I was eight or so.) What other body parts can you lose? (NONE.)
For dinner Aki had to make soup, with all the hard bits boiled long enough to become soft and barely needing any chewing, which made her feel like she was eating baby food. She didn’t mind the noodles that melted in her mouth, but she does very much mind the vegetables even when Aki insisted that she wouldn’t taste it if she swallowed very quickly—she hated them on principle, thank you very much—so she spat them out and spooned the rest for Denji to eat.
Then there’s the whole fiasco about brushing her teeth. Power hated it, too; hated the way those long hard bristles feel in her mouth, even when Aki said he’d gotten her the baby toothbrushes so it was designed to be extra soft (she hated hygiene routines on principle, too)—but really that was even worse, because she is not a baby! She pushed and bit on Aki and Denji when they tried to wrangle her into brushing her teeth, and so they had to be content with just mouthwash, which Power considered agreeable enough as her highest form of mercy for these puny humans who so deeply cared about something as stupid as hygiene.
But in the dream—
In the dream Power is returned to that little closet of a room in the suburbs, tucked under the blanket that’s always been too thin to even offer some sort of false comfort. Sometimes, though not as often as Power hears her footsteps enter the other room through the thin walls—sometimes, when she’s gotten bored or empty or particularly frustrated, she comes in trying to find her, too.
In the dream, though Power is never exactly sure if it’d been a dream or not—she’s watching her enter the room with a calm, steady stride. This is where her body starts aching, even when all she’s done is kneel beside her bed and stare at her with those eyes, those eyes. Power hated her eyes, but they were what she remembers the most after all these years. The feeling of her cold, slender fingers tracing under her oversized sleep shirt. All that shivering, knowing that she’ll never be able to get herself warm ever again, except when her hot mouth resides over her neck and chest and collarbone, her sharp teeth digging into her skin. All that pent-up loving, even when Power knows it was never really what she wanted it to be. It’s better than the eight-year long emptiness that she’s left with.
In the dream there’s a soft glow of a streetlight penetrating the thin curtains that covered the window, and in its wake was a beautiful white horse watching from the corner of the room washed in all its glittery glory. As her blood dripped all slow and sweet over her skin, her lips, filling them up so good, Power stared. It was the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen. She couldn’t bring herself to look away until Miss Makima very softly cupped her cheek at tilts her head to face her, held her as softly as she would hold Denji, held him because she loved him—all she’s ever wanted was for her to love her, too, hear her say Power, baby,
“Power—hey, hey—”
It’s a warm hand that cups her cheeks, this time, hushes cascading out of their mouth as Power recognizes her body enough to start failing her heavy limbs in place. She couldn’t lift her body no matter how hard she tried, couldn’t look around the spinning room, couldn’t make a single noise out of her stupid mouth.
“It’s okay—shh, calm down, Pow, it’s okay,” the voice—Aki’s voice, soft and low by her side. “You were crying. Are you alright?”
Power shakes her head, tries to shake off the palm that’s trying to wipe her spit and tears away. “The horse—the horse, the horse, where’d it go?”
“Hm? Horse?” Aki frowned. “Hey, what’re you talking about?”
“The horse—it was here, there was a white horse nd’I ate it and—”
“You—okay, OK, hold on,” he tries to say, but it only frustrates Power further the more he looks at her as if she was crazy—she is not crazy, she isn’t crazy—
“I know you’re upset, I know—stop that. Stop.” Aki grips her arms on a lock around her chest, and he’s so strong, always has been, but he’d never—he can’t—“I’m not mad. I know you’re upset. But you have to calm down.”
He then inhales, slow and calm, deliberately pressing his chest against her back for her to feel him. Feel—no. No, stop, she doesn’t want to think of those things—Aki loves her, the right kind of loving, the one he's supposed to—he loves her like that. Doesn’t he?
“Course I do,” he murmurs to that, and only then—with a sudden pang of embarrassment, only then Power realizes that she’d been feverishly murmuring every thought in her head out loud. She couldn’t stop herself. “Of course I do. Breathe with me.”
With each breath, Power slowly begins to lose the panic that she’d brought with her from her dreams, from that house and that creaky bed and the horse that watched over her. Has it always been there? Where did it go?
“Hey,” Aki cuts the thoughts off once again, even when she’d bitten her lip to make sure she hadn’t been rambling it again; it was embarrassing enough as is. He slicks back the sweat-plastered hair on her forehead, slowly moving back to pet her hair. “You’re clammy. Does your mouth still hurt?”
Power shook her head. Her tongue instinctively grazes upon the empty gap that it left, searching for the faint metallic aftertaste of blood still clinging to her gums. Then she said, out of the blue: “The horse. The horse, I want it back.”
It was almost whining, the sort of childish whining that Aki would’ve never tolerated on a good day, but tonight he just held her a little tighter and said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Pow. Was it—was it from the dream, that you had?”
Power nodded. She felt like a child again, trapped in the body of a child, in the mind of a child, but it was all so confusing because she had never been one—she was a thing, that’s what she was, an empty shell of those porcelain dolls they’d show behind glass cases for everyone to look at, all those people—”Before, it was from before, from—back when—”
She couldn’t make all the words come out right in her mouth, so in the end Power just sat there biting her lip and crying again. Aki held her, petting her hair and keeping his arms around her even when the snot gets all over his sleeve, even when she keeps whining on that she wants it back, she wants it back, I want it back. Why can’t it come back?
“What is it?” Aki whispers, sort of sadly. He looks sad. Power has never seen him look sad before, except for the times she’d caught him secretly smoking late at night, when she’s supposed to be sleeping. Being sad was Denji’s thing—it wasn’t Aki’s, and it wasn’t hers. She didn’t know what changed. “Power, what is it you want, hm? What horse, sweetheart?”
Hot shame washes all over her again when she shakes her head. “I dunno.”
Shuffling. The bed suddenly creaking, mattress dipping under an added weight, and some primal instinct lodged deep in Power’s body made her flinch and hiccup a strangled gasp, trying to get away from the figure approaching her before she even knew what was happening—
“Pow—hey, hey, it’s okay,” Aki held her tighter, keeps her tucked safe in his arms. “You’re okay. It’s just Denji, look.”
“Yeah, s’just me Denji, I'm sorry—I didn’t mean to scare ya,” Denji says quietly, moving into what little space is left between her body and the wall. “Hey. Look what I got you.”
Under the dim glow of the streetlight that penetrates the drawn curtains, Denji held up something between his pointer and thumb. It was—a tooth, her tooth, miraculously white and clean from the blood that it’d been drowning in that noon. Power remembers having sat there very still for hours and hours, staring at the grotesque red in her cupped hands. It felt good, losing a part of her body like that. It was familiar.
“Is it going to come back?”
She feels Aki’s breathing, soft and steady against her temple. “Yeah, it’ll start growing back in a few months. And then you'll have a new tooth.”
“I don’t want it to be new,” she sniffled. “I want it to be like before.”
"It'll be just as good as before—matter of fact, it'll be even better."
"But I don't want it to be new. I want it to be like before."
“I know,” Aki just says, eventually. “I’m sorry.”
Power reaches out for the little tooth, which Denji lets her have. She feels the bumps and ridges of its top and bottom against her skin, pinches it between her fingers and rolls it around, stares and stares at it for what felt like hours. And then she moves to put it in her mouth.
The response was immediate, as if they’d been expecting it—Denji exclaimed in alarm while Aki gripped on her wrist so hard until she couldn’t move, and Power started crying all over again. They didn’t try to take away the tooth—she didn’t think she could bear it, if they did—but Aki and Denji secured their arms around her, like in those movies when someone’s trying to keep the other person from doing stupid things like beat someone up, or jump off a bridge. Power thought about it, thought about all the things she’s lost and will lose, even things tucked in the furthest parts of her body, where it should’ve been safe. But she will never be safe again. It’s all gone.
“I want it back,” she keeps on saying, the same keening noises Denji used to make when he cries, back when they all first left that house for good. Maybe she misses it, too; misses that little room and that creaky bed and the thin blankets and the cold, misses that white horse when it stares at her in the night when it happens and misses it when it’s gone by the morning. Maybe she misses Miss Makima, too. None of it made sense. But you’re not supposed to lose parts of your body, either, so maybe nothing ever will make sense. It made her feel renewed with fear, even when she’d lost a lot of things a long time ago. She’ll never have it back.
“I know, Powy, baby,” Aki just says, cups her chin and all the tears that come with it. Tucks her head against his collarbone where she could feel his heartbeat thumping in her ears, where it feels safe, even when she knows she never has been, and never will be. “I know. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
She stared at that tooth under the soft glow of light for the longest time. It looked almost as clean and white as her horse.