IA; Pain
Title: In Actuality
Summary: Five truths about Heiwajima Shizuo.
Chapter: 3/5 - Pain
Heiwajima Shizuo forgets to feel pain.
He's perfectly capable of hurting; but throughout his life, he's experienced so much physical pain that eventually, it lost its hold on him. His tolerance for pain grew, that would be the normal way to phrase it, except that his tolerance never really did grow, because he could tolerate any sort of pain from a very early age. And he did.
For one touted as superhuman, Shizuo spent a lot of his childhood in hospitals.
There were broken bones; there were torn muscles; concussions when he dropped something very heavy onto his own head in his shock at being able to lift it; more broken bones, from slamming his knuckles through walls, fences, metal; cramped muscles; broken bones again; cracked ribs; doctor-created incisions to remove the tips of needles that had broken off inside his skin; broken bones yet again and seemingly forever; and once, chicken pox.
All this, before he even hit twelve years old. Yes, Shizuo was well acquainted with pain as a boy, and even from the start he never complained about it. It was self-inflicted, after all, and he'd been the stoic type right from the start. So he didn't say a word, just ached and ached and ached.
His sweet tooth got started when the nurses grew fond of him after his third hospital visit, and began to bring him lollipops whenever they entered the room. His liking of milk was originally an effort to help his bones grow stronger to prevent them from breaking all the time, a suggestion from Kasuka. He spent more time in a hospital room than in elementary school, probably, and wore casts like most other kids wore braces.
And through all of this time, only once did Shizuo fail to feel the pain he was in. But that one time was the precursor to all the others, the reason why today he can get shot twice and not even notice until he falls, why he can take a pen stabbing straight through his hand and just get a little annoyed at having to glue it up or something before the blood gets all over his clothes.
The first time Shizuo fails to feel pain is the time his parents are investigated for child abuse. A woman visits Shizuo in the hospital and speaks to him quietly, soothingly, with great concern and sympathy. She assures him he's done nothing wrong when he tells her being in the hospital so much is his own fault, and asks him if his parents told him that.
He kind of laughs at that and tells her everyone knows it, and her eyes get wide and her lips press together, and she says she sees. The conversation continues in that vein for a little while, with Shizuo a little confused and a lot distracted because pain medication never seems to relieve him nearly as much as everyone tells him it's supposed to, and his broken ankle and toes (from kicking a concrete water fountain in the park and cracking it almost in two, breaking the pipes) really hurt. Because he is so distracted by the pain, he doesn't understand what she's thinking for the longest time, and it's only when she asks him if they ever touch him too, that he realizes something is wrong.
He denies this vigorously, denies his parents' ever doing anything wrong, because it's obvious he is the abnormal one and they do their best to help him, and she looks at him like she sees right through him. And then - then she brings up Kasuka. Then she tells Shizuo that it's his responsibility as an older brother to protect Kasuka, from their parents.
The next thing anyone knows, she's screaming and Shizuo is roaring and throwing his bed at her, the heart monitor, anything he can find, and she runs and he chases her, chases her all the way out to the parking lot while yelling swearwords he's not supposed to know and demanding to hear if she still thinks it's his parents' fault. The poor woman, terrified, drives away and never comes back, and Shizuo stands in the parking lot, shaking and muttering violent threats under his breath for the next fifteen minutes.
It's only when he turns to walk back to his room and apologize to the nurses and maybe get a lollipop to help him calm down, and instead crumples to the road right in front of an oncoming car, that he remembers his broken ankle. The car smashes into his side and sends him skidding across the pavement, breaking his arm for the seventh time; Shizuo lets out a quiet sort of grunt at the returning and added pain, and limps back inside under his own power.
That's the first time Shizuo forgets about pain. He switches hospitals after that and the nurses at the new one don't give him lollipops but he figures that's about what he deserves anyway for wrecking so much expensive equipment, so he doesn't complain. Anyway, it wasn't too long after that when Shizuo's body began to really adjust to its strength and his hospital visits grew less and less frequent.
The second time Shizuo forgets to feel pain, he is almost fourteen and has far less noble reasons. He has just met Orihara Izaya, and he is so angry that all other emotion has gone out the window, including any response to the knife slicing through his skin. Something about the other boy activates a switch on some deep, instinctual level inside of Shizuo. Something about Izaya is just wrong, just awful and cunning and sadistic and really screwed up. And he just - from first sight, he's a pest. A bloodsucking flea.
Izaya makes Shizuo want to punch him. Just until his head flies off and he's no longer recognizable as being once purportedly human. That's all.
And every time Shizuo, being really a decent person when you get down to it, starts to feel guilty about taking this attitude, Izaya does something like send a gang of twenty guys after him. A gang of twenty guys wielding makeshift weaponry. A gang of twenty guys wielding makeshift weaponry, who force Shizuo to get violent.
Shizuo HATES having to get violent.
And it's like he can tell, from the moment he sets eyes on this Izaya guy Shinra's been trying to introduce to him, that Izaya is going to bring this sort of shit into his life. So Shizuo gets mad, right at the start. Mad enough to not even register the attack that Izaya has landed on him, let alone to spare any feeling for the pain it caused. And though the knife-wound is far from the worst injury Shizuo's ever received, it has arguably one of the largest effects on him. Because from then on, Shizuo starts to forget to feel pain more and more frequently.
At first, it's probably because Izaya never allows him time to recover. He sends groups of thugs after Shizuo so frequently that any wounds Shizuo acquires don't have the chance to heal over before being reopened, even with Shinra's expert care. But Shizuo thinks it would be stupid to waste time in a fight worrying about his hands hurting from the last time he uprooted a metal pole and stabbed them on a jagged edge of it, for example. Even if the guys Shizuo is fighting are no match for him whatsoever, they at least deserve to have his full attention, as a matter of decency if nothing else. So Shizuo begins to get in the habit of ignoring, then even forgetting about the pain he's in.
But he does still feel pain, out of fights at least, and sometimes in them, until he is in his early twenties and has just been fired from his precious bartending job (because Izaya, THAT FLEA, has framed him). Released reluctantly from the police station, Shizuo's in heavy debt and probably on parole or something, he wasn't listening all that closely.
Even though it's been a few days, and Shizuo has calmed down enough to answer the police officers' questions for the most part, he is still so very incredibly murderously furious. So when, upon reaching his apartment, he finds out that he's been kicked out for not paying his rent, Shizuo gathers his belongings, walks a few miles until he is in a somewhat seedy area, picks a sturdy-looking wall, and calmly begins to punch it.
Again and again, continuously for at least an hour, Shizuo steadily punches the wall. When it crumbles into rubble, he just moves to the next and starts punching again. Shizuo feels that if he stops punching, he will collapse, or cry, or just start to absolutely lose it, because honestly his life has just been ruined.
That job was his last hope, Shizuo's last desperate chance - and it was honestly succeeding, too. It wasn't exactly a matter of whether Shizuo enjoyed bartending or not, because he would have loved that job regardless, simple on the basis of still having it. And Kasuka was proud of him for that, he brought Shizuo a gift and reprimand and hope for the future, and life was starting to work in Shizuo's favor for once, for the first time, and he had really thought he would be able to become a calm and peaceful person.
And then Izaya ruined everything.
Shizuo doesn't even have it in him to be angry at Izaya right now. Because a flea will be a flea and he should have expected something like this, but after a few months he got complacent. He started to feel content, maybe even happy.
But now he has been taught better than to ever attempt happiness again - or something like that, anyway. There's probably some bitter irony or metaphor or life lesson here, but Shizuo doesn't give a crap about that. All he cares about right now is the punch-breathe-punch rhythm he's got going and how it is keeping him somewhat sane. He certainly isn't going to stop punching just because his hands are shredding under the repeated collisions, leaving bloody spots on the stone, and causing Shizuo a sharp, agonizing pain with each new impact.
This goes on for a while. Shizuo has long since lost track of time. But he's knocked down three walls so far, so it's probably been a while when a ragged figure darts down the alley towards him. The scruffy man is fleeing another, much cleaner figure, who yells with a familiar voice, "Stop! Quit running, it's not going to help- Shizuo, is that you? Stop that guy, please!"
Shizuo spins around mid-punch, catches the runner by the throat, and lifts him off the ground. All this was done pretty much automatically, because the voice that called out to him was one he recognizes from middle-school as someone to trust.
"Tom-senpai?" Shizuo asks in mild disbelief.
"Shizuo! Thank you - this jerk's actually pretty fast. How have you been?" Tom slows to a stop in front of Shizuo, with a genuine smile at his old friend, and no care whatsoever for the guy currently dangling in the air by his throat, struggling in vain and letting out choking noises occasionally.
Shizuo ignores the guy in his grip, too. Tom would have said something if Shizuo was doing anything wrong, and the guy looks like scum, anyway. "Um, okay. I guess."
Tom has always been good at seeing through Shizuo, or maybe it's the blood cascading from Shizuo's fists and the three collapsed walls that clues him in, but he plays it cool and only says, "Hmm. Shizuo, do you want a job?"
Shizuo shouldn't be surprised, that's just like Tom. But at the same time it comes so perfectly exactly when he most needs the offer, that he is totally overwhelmed and perhaps even a little bit joyful. He forgets about the pain he is in.
"Actually, I just lost my old job," Shizuo says, surprising himself with how casual he sounds. "So, yeah, I could use the work. Thanks, Tom-senpai."
Tom smiles at him, and begins to lead the way out of the alley. He doesn't explain what the job is, and it doesn't even occur to Shizuo to ask. Instead, they chat and catch up with each other and continue to ignore the now-unconscious guy Shizuo eventually just slings over one shoulder.
That day, Shizuo does more than forget the pain - he forgets the injury altogether, and only remembers it when reminded by Tom offering to wrap up his fists in gauze. And if the cut from Izaya's knife has one of the largest effects on him, the broken knuckles Shizuo gave himself that day definitely have the greatest effect.
That was a turning point for Shizuo. After then, he never even bothered to feel the pain in the first place, until he was staring straight at the cause of it, and not often even then. He couldn't say why exactly that encounter made Shizuo become this way. It just did, and Shizuo is very good at accepting such things without question.
Ever since that day, Heiwajima Shizuo has had no room left for physical pain. Instead, other things fill the gap. Sometimes it's just emotional pain; sometimes more pleasant emotions. Sometimes it's nothing but a lazy sort of ennui, no mere broken bones enough to affect Ikebukuro's greatest beast.
But eventually, it becomes habit. Nothing really injures Shizuo anymore, not accidentally anyway. And since whenever he is injured, it tends to be from the deliberate actions of one of his enemies, any sort of painful sensation now typically registers to Shizuo as 'someone is being very irritating' rather than 'ow'.
In fact, Shizuo doesn't think it's all that special, being able to forget pain. No matter how much Shinra raves about it, Shizuo remains unimpressed by his ability.
Rather, he is sort of envious of people who do feel pain. Shizuo doesn't understand why they would let the pain get to them so much, since even when he did feel every hit, he still never let it show or stop him from doing anything. But the rest of the world has never been so stubborn, and pain stops them dead in their tracks. They cry and carry on and behave in ridiculous manners - and other people comfort them, take care of them.
People treat the injured like children, except that even as a child Shizuo was too strong to accept such treatment so he doesn't recognize it that way. He only sees that when other, normal people are in pain, they are almost never left to suffer through it alone, in the way people's faith in his strength mean he was and often still is.
This is the reason, though Shizuo doesn't realize it, that ever since that meeting with Tom he has forgone physical pain. Because at that time, Tom could see the damage done to Shizuo's hands, but he could also see the damage done to Shizuo's soul, and that was the one he moved to fix. Shizuo values that sort of comfort far more than any that superficial bawling might bring. And yet he does envy the more fragile examples of humankind, because they can find comfort whenever they want it, whereas Shizuo can't. He wouldn't let himself, even if he could.
Shizuo has always been strong enough to stand on his own, and in all likelihood he always will be. It's marvelous, the way he does it, amazing, incredible, lonely.
But he can't change his essence, and so Shizuo does not register physical pain, does not complain about emotional pain, and continues standing tall, as he has always done. He does not mention that to him, the weak seem much happier.
-----
I am not sure how old Shizuo was when he met Izaya - I just know it was in high school. If anyone knows, tell me and I'll edit that to make it more accurate. Also, I totally made up how Shizuo got his job with Tom, in case that wasn't clear enough.
Other chapters: Anger, Love, Happiness
Summary: Five truths about Heiwajima Shizuo.
Chapter: 3/5 - Pain
Heiwajima Shizuo forgets to feel pain.
He's perfectly capable of hurting; but throughout his life, he's experienced so much physical pain that eventually, it lost its hold on him. His tolerance for pain grew, that would be the normal way to phrase it, except that his tolerance never really did grow, because he could tolerate any sort of pain from a very early age. And he did.
For one touted as superhuman, Shizuo spent a lot of his childhood in hospitals.
There were broken bones; there were torn muscles; concussions when he dropped something very heavy onto his own head in his shock at being able to lift it; more broken bones, from slamming his knuckles through walls, fences, metal; cramped muscles; broken bones again; cracked ribs; doctor-created incisions to remove the tips of needles that had broken off inside his skin; broken bones yet again and seemingly forever; and once, chicken pox.
All this, before he even hit twelve years old. Yes, Shizuo was well acquainted with pain as a boy, and even from the start he never complained about it. It was self-inflicted, after all, and he'd been the stoic type right from the start. So he didn't say a word, just ached and ached and ached.
His sweet tooth got started when the nurses grew fond of him after his third hospital visit, and began to bring him lollipops whenever they entered the room. His liking of milk was originally an effort to help his bones grow stronger to prevent them from breaking all the time, a suggestion from Kasuka. He spent more time in a hospital room than in elementary school, probably, and wore casts like most other kids wore braces.
And through all of this time, only once did Shizuo fail to feel the pain he was in. But that one time was the precursor to all the others, the reason why today he can get shot twice and not even notice until he falls, why he can take a pen stabbing straight through his hand and just get a little annoyed at having to glue it up or something before the blood gets all over his clothes.
The first time Shizuo fails to feel pain is the time his parents are investigated for child abuse. A woman visits Shizuo in the hospital and speaks to him quietly, soothingly, with great concern and sympathy. She assures him he's done nothing wrong when he tells her being in the hospital so much is his own fault, and asks him if his parents told him that.
He kind of laughs at that and tells her everyone knows it, and her eyes get wide and her lips press together, and she says she sees. The conversation continues in that vein for a little while, with Shizuo a little confused and a lot distracted because pain medication never seems to relieve him nearly as much as everyone tells him it's supposed to, and his broken ankle and toes (from kicking a concrete water fountain in the park and cracking it almost in two, breaking the pipes) really hurt. Because he is so distracted by the pain, he doesn't understand what she's thinking for the longest time, and it's only when she asks him if they ever touch him too, that he realizes something is wrong.
He denies this vigorously, denies his parents' ever doing anything wrong, because it's obvious he is the abnormal one and they do their best to help him, and she looks at him like she sees right through him. And then - then she brings up Kasuka. Then she tells Shizuo that it's his responsibility as an older brother to protect Kasuka, from their parents.
The next thing anyone knows, she's screaming and Shizuo is roaring and throwing his bed at her, the heart monitor, anything he can find, and she runs and he chases her, chases her all the way out to the parking lot while yelling swearwords he's not supposed to know and demanding to hear if she still thinks it's his parents' fault. The poor woman, terrified, drives away and never comes back, and Shizuo stands in the parking lot, shaking and muttering violent threats under his breath for the next fifteen minutes.
It's only when he turns to walk back to his room and apologize to the nurses and maybe get a lollipop to help him calm down, and instead crumples to the road right in front of an oncoming car, that he remembers his broken ankle. The car smashes into his side and sends him skidding across the pavement, breaking his arm for the seventh time; Shizuo lets out a quiet sort of grunt at the returning and added pain, and limps back inside under his own power.
That's the first time Shizuo forgets about pain. He switches hospitals after that and the nurses at the new one don't give him lollipops but he figures that's about what he deserves anyway for wrecking so much expensive equipment, so he doesn't complain. Anyway, it wasn't too long after that when Shizuo's body began to really adjust to its strength and his hospital visits grew less and less frequent.
The second time Shizuo forgets to feel pain, he is almost fourteen and has far less noble reasons. He has just met Orihara Izaya, and he is so angry that all other emotion has gone out the window, including any response to the knife slicing through his skin. Something about the other boy activates a switch on some deep, instinctual level inside of Shizuo. Something about Izaya is just wrong, just awful and cunning and sadistic and really screwed up. And he just - from first sight, he's a pest. A bloodsucking flea.
Izaya makes Shizuo want to punch him. Just until his head flies off and he's no longer recognizable as being once purportedly human. That's all.
And every time Shizuo, being really a decent person when you get down to it, starts to feel guilty about taking this attitude, Izaya does something like send a gang of twenty guys after him. A gang of twenty guys wielding makeshift weaponry. A gang of twenty guys wielding makeshift weaponry, who force Shizuo to get violent.
Shizuo HATES having to get violent.
And it's like he can tell, from the moment he sets eyes on this Izaya guy Shinra's been trying to introduce to him, that Izaya is going to bring this sort of shit into his life. So Shizuo gets mad, right at the start. Mad enough to not even register the attack that Izaya has landed on him, let alone to spare any feeling for the pain it caused. And though the knife-wound is far from the worst injury Shizuo's ever received, it has arguably one of the largest effects on him. Because from then on, Shizuo starts to forget to feel pain more and more frequently.
At first, it's probably because Izaya never allows him time to recover. He sends groups of thugs after Shizuo so frequently that any wounds Shizuo acquires don't have the chance to heal over before being reopened, even with Shinra's expert care. But Shizuo thinks it would be stupid to waste time in a fight worrying about his hands hurting from the last time he uprooted a metal pole and stabbed them on a jagged edge of it, for example. Even if the guys Shizuo is fighting are no match for him whatsoever, they at least deserve to have his full attention, as a matter of decency if nothing else. So Shizuo begins to get in the habit of ignoring, then even forgetting about the pain he's in.
But he does still feel pain, out of fights at least, and sometimes in them, until he is in his early twenties and has just been fired from his precious bartending job (because Izaya, THAT FLEA, has framed him). Released reluctantly from the police station, Shizuo's in heavy debt and probably on parole or something, he wasn't listening all that closely.
Even though it's been a few days, and Shizuo has calmed down enough to answer the police officers' questions for the most part, he is still so very incredibly murderously furious. So when, upon reaching his apartment, he finds out that he's been kicked out for not paying his rent, Shizuo gathers his belongings, walks a few miles until he is in a somewhat seedy area, picks a sturdy-looking wall, and calmly begins to punch it.
Again and again, continuously for at least an hour, Shizuo steadily punches the wall. When it crumbles into rubble, he just moves to the next and starts punching again. Shizuo feels that if he stops punching, he will collapse, or cry, or just start to absolutely lose it, because honestly his life has just been ruined.
That job was his last hope, Shizuo's last desperate chance - and it was honestly succeeding, too. It wasn't exactly a matter of whether Shizuo enjoyed bartending or not, because he would have loved that job regardless, simple on the basis of still having it. And Kasuka was proud of him for that, he brought Shizuo a gift and reprimand and hope for the future, and life was starting to work in Shizuo's favor for once, for the first time, and he had really thought he would be able to become a calm and peaceful person.
And then Izaya ruined everything.
Shizuo doesn't even have it in him to be angry at Izaya right now. Because a flea will be a flea and he should have expected something like this, but after a few months he got complacent. He started to feel content, maybe even happy.
But now he has been taught better than to ever attempt happiness again - or something like that, anyway. There's probably some bitter irony or metaphor or life lesson here, but Shizuo doesn't give a crap about that. All he cares about right now is the punch-breathe-punch rhythm he's got going and how it is keeping him somewhat sane. He certainly isn't going to stop punching just because his hands are shredding under the repeated collisions, leaving bloody spots on the stone, and causing Shizuo a sharp, agonizing pain with each new impact.
This goes on for a while. Shizuo has long since lost track of time. But he's knocked down three walls so far, so it's probably been a while when a ragged figure darts down the alley towards him. The scruffy man is fleeing another, much cleaner figure, who yells with a familiar voice, "Stop! Quit running, it's not going to help- Shizuo, is that you? Stop that guy, please!"
Shizuo spins around mid-punch, catches the runner by the throat, and lifts him off the ground. All this was done pretty much automatically, because the voice that called out to him was one he recognizes from middle-school as someone to trust.
"Tom-senpai?" Shizuo asks in mild disbelief.
"Shizuo! Thank you - this jerk's actually pretty fast. How have you been?" Tom slows to a stop in front of Shizuo, with a genuine smile at his old friend, and no care whatsoever for the guy currently dangling in the air by his throat, struggling in vain and letting out choking noises occasionally.
Shizuo ignores the guy in his grip, too. Tom would have said something if Shizuo was doing anything wrong, and the guy looks like scum, anyway. "Um, okay. I guess."
Tom has always been good at seeing through Shizuo, or maybe it's the blood cascading from Shizuo's fists and the three collapsed walls that clues him in, but he plays it cool and only says, "Hmm. Shizuo, do you want a job?"
Shizuo shouldn't be surprised, that's just like Tom. But at the same time it comes so perfectly exactly when he most needs the offer, that he is totally overwhelmed and perhaps even a little bit joyful. He forgets about the pain he is in.
"Actually, I just lost my old job," Shizuo says, surprising himself with how casual he sounds. "So, yeah, I could use the work. Thanks, Tom-senpai."
Tom smiles at him, and begins to lead the way out of the alley. He doesn't explain what the job is, and it doesn't even occur to Shizuo to ask. Instead, they chat and catch up with each other and continue to ignore the now-unconscious guy Shizuo eventually just slings over one shoulder.
That day, Shizuo does more than forget the pain - he forgets the injury altogether, and only remembers it when reminded by Tom offering to wrap up his fists in gauze. And if the cut from Izaya's knife has one of the largest effects on him, the broken knuckles Shizuo gave himself that day definitely have the greatest effect.
That was a turning point for Shizuo. After then, he never even bothered to feel the pain in the first place, until he was staring straight at the cause of it, and not often even then. He couldn't say why exactly that encounter made Shizuo become this way. It just did, and Shizuo is very good at accepting such things without question.
Ever since that day, Heiwajima Shizuo has had no room left for physical pain. Instead, other things fill the gap. Sometimes it's just emotional pain; sometimes more pleasant emotions. Sometimes it's nothing but a lazy sort of ennui, no mere broken bones enough to affect Ikebukuro's greatest beast.
But eventually, it becomes habit. Nothing really injures Shizuo anymore, not accidentally anyway. And since whenever he is injured, it tends to be from the deliberate actions of one of his enemies, any sort of painful sensation now typically registers to Shizuo as 'someone is being very irritating' rather than 'ow'.
In fact, Shizuo doesn't think it's all that special, being able to forget pain. No matter how much Shinra raves about it, Shizuo remains unimpressed by his ability.
Rather, he is sort of envious of people who do feel pain. Shizuo doesn't understand why they would let the pain get to them so much, since even when he did feel every hit, he still never let it show or stop him from doing anything. But the rest of the world has never been so stubborn, and pain stops them dead in their tracks. They cry and carry on and behave in ridiculous manners - and other people comfort them, take care of them.
People treat the injured like children, except that even as a child Shizuo was too strong to accept such treatment so he doesn't recognize it that way. He only sees that when other, normal people are in pain, they are almost never left to suffer through it alone, in the way people's faith in his strength mean he was and often still is.
This is the reason, though Shizuo doesn't realize it, that ever since that meeting with Tom he has forgone physical pain. Because at that time, Tom could see the damage done to Shizuo's hands, but he could also see the damage done to Shizuo's soul, and that was the one he moved to fix. Shizuo values that sort of comfort far more than any that superficial bawling might bring. And yet he does envy the more fragile examples of humankind, because they can find comfort whenever they want it, whereas Shizuo can't. He wouldn't let himself, even if he could.
Shizuo has always been strong enough to stand on his own, and in all likelihood he always will be. It's marvelous, the way he does it, amazing, incredible, lonely.
But he can't change his essence, and so Shizuo does not register physical pain, does not complain about emotional pain, and continues standing tall, as he has always done. He does not mention that to him, the weak seem much happier.
-----
I am not sure how old Shizuo was when he met Izaya - I just know it was in high school. If anyone knows, tell me and I'll edit that to make it more accurate. Also, I totally made up how Shizuo got his job with Tom, in case that wasn't clear enough.
Other chapters: Anger, Love, Happiness