Catarina (catdevigri) wrote in no_true_pair, @ 2011-06-22 11:22:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | ! 2011 eight characters challenge, author: catdevigri, crossover: durarara!!/fma, pairing: kimblee/shizuo |
There Is No End To This Emptiness. (DRR!!/FMA, Kimblee/Shizuo)
Title: There Is No End To This Emptiness.
Author: catdevigri
Fandom: Crossover - Durarara!! x Fullmetal Alchemist
Pairing/characters: Kimblee/Shizuo, some implied Shizuo/Izaya
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Post-apocalyptic Tokyo! This is a depressing fic, filled with both on-screen and off-screen death and very little hope! >_>
Word count: 2,157
Prompt/challenge you're answering: Maybe someone else survived the catastrophe, but right now Shizuo doesn't see anyone but Kimblee...
Shizuo's thoughts clamored for attention, fighting one against the other for priority. Where was he? What was going on? Where was the Tokyo skyline? Last he'd remembered, he'd been chasing Izaya down the street...the ground began to shake...something had hit him in the head? It hadn't really hurt, but...
"Good afternoon." The voice belonged to a dark-haired man. He was dressed in a slightly worse for the wear white suit. "I was worried about you for a while there. When I found you, you weren't even breathing."
Shizuo sat up. The back of his head ached, just slightly. He remembered a little more of what had proceeded his blackout. A sign had fallen from the side of a building- one of those big lit-up ones that hung from buildings advertising manga cafes or karaoke on the second or third floor. He supposed it made since to pass out after taking a hit like that. When his eyes took a quick scan of his condition, he noted that his clothes were somewhat more tattered than when he'd last looked at them. His socks actually felt damp. "Not...breathing?"
The man in white pointed off to a body of water several yards to their left. It sloshed rhythmically up against the rocks and broken blocks of concrete that seemed to make up its boundary. "Well, your head was underwater when I found you."
"This...this is Tokyo...isn't it?" Shizuo wanted to be sure of what he said, but he hadn't seen anything yet that would confirm this belief.
"Sure enough," the man shrugged, "At least it was Tokyo. I'm not sure if you would want to call it that anymore." Shizuo did not answer, trying to take all of this in. "I apologize for having to be the bearer of such bad news," the other man added. Considering the state of the city, his outlook seemed somewhat less grim than would be expected.
Shizuo didn't dwell on it though- there were more important things to be thinking about. Tom. Celty. Shinra. Kasuka. He shot up, wobbling just slightly before finding his center of balance. "Well, thanks for the CPR then, but I have to get moving," he gave the stranger a nod, then felt his pocket for a package of cigarettes that weren't there (his wallet, though possibly damaged, remained).
The man in white made a useless attempt at brushing himself off, then ran a hand over his hair (it was actually tied back pretty neatly, so Shizuo assumed all this touching of his person was just some weird habit). He followed Shizuo as he walked, although he moved a considerable degree slower. He already knew the blond was moving forward on a veritable fool's quest. "If I were you, I wouldn't bother letting myself get worked up about it," he said mildly.
Shizuo paused and fixed him with a hard look. He didn't like the sound of that, but he would hear the man out. "I'm willing to come along and search with you, but, you know, you've been out for hours. I walked through a decent stretch of city to get here. I was in Ueno Park when it happened. I saw a lot of devastation." He took a breath, saw Shizuo needed to hear the harsher words within him, and chose to deliver them, "Other than you, all I've found are bodies."
Shizuo took off running.
The man in white shrugged and followed at a distance, keeping his casual but deliberate pace unaltered.
In the days that followed, the devastation of Tokyo was not something Shizuo wanted to discuss. His usually tireless body ached from the labor he had pushed it through. His sole companion in this midnight of the soul had less strength than him, but was clever enough to overcome any difficulties that arose. Where Shizuo threw himself blindly at piles of rubble, groping about for a hand stretched toward the sky or a tiny voice calling for help (but the hands he found were cold and the voices silenced), the man in white, Solf J. Kimblee, tiptoed behind, lashing curtains into pulleys, turning tables into levers.
He blasted holes in the earth and Shizuo did not care enough to ask how as they buried Tom, Kasuka, others he had known and still others he had not. There were too many to handle them all. "I lost my own younger brother when I was close to your age," Kimblee said. From time to time, something appeared to amuse him. Shizuo saw him become hungry and tired and dirty, but never sad. He was not Japanese, but he spoke the language adroitly and Shizuo did not inquire as to his origins. In the too-deep darkness of the starless night, Kimblee hummed to himself and Shizuo wondered if maybe there was a hell, this was it, and Kimblee, all garbed in smiles and white, was his own personal devil sent to torment him. ...But did your demons rubs your aching shoulders, fry you eggs over a campfire, and find you a damaged vending machine full of cigarettes?
Kimblee tinkered with a radio, but there were no broadcasts. As far as Shizuo could tell, all of Japan had shared the same fate. For all he knew, he (along with Kimblee?) was the last man on earth.
Of those he never found, he could not believe he could live and Celty not survive. Izaya too he couldn't help but picture somewhere out there. Others among the lost remained unknowns.
Kimblee was resourceful. Together they cooked and scavenged and squatted in empty apartments. Cigarettes were Shizuo's extravagance. Coffee was Kimblee's. They shaved side by side, gazing into a cracked mirror in a train station restroom. "You look funny with a beard," Shizuo ventured.
"Either way, you're handsome," Kimblee answered, not missing a beat.
Kimblee was like Izaya that way- good at making him feel awkward. With all the world turned upside down, he appreciated that touch of familiarity. Talking to Kimblee a little each day...well, maybe it was keeping him human. He doubted he was doing more for Kimblee than amusing him. One couldn't die of boredom.
Shizuo's dark roots started showing sooner than Kimblee's gray. "I wasn't gray before the disaster," Kimblee objected petulantly, "This is a completely new development." He dyed over the gray using supplies from a drugstore and a bucket of water taken from a decorative pond.
Shizuo, not half as vain, turned down his offer to help with a bleach job. "I'll go natural. Who's there to impress?"
"Perhaps me?" Kimblee suggested in a small voice that was difficult to pinpoint as joking or not. Was Kimblee somewhat attracted to him? It was a bizarre thought, but still Shizuo wondered.
It was on the day of the turned down dye job that Kimblee returned to their current camping site accompanied. The tiny girl in his arms- Shizuo did not know enough about small children to guess her age- was hungry and squalling. Her brown hair was pulled into two tiny braids. It was gratifying to learn there was someone else alive, but that did not temper his concerns that he would harm her as he held her. Gingerly, Shizuo accepted the fussing burden as Kimblee bustled off to try and find some decent means of feeding her.
"Your daughter," Kimblee took to calling her as quickly as he returned.
Shizuo shook his head and transferred her back to Kimblee's arms for bottle-feeding. He handled her easily, with the same confidence he took to every task Shizuo had watched him approach. Kimblee fed her and burped her and gently stroked her hair. Whether anything about her other than her sheer desire to live, which he remarked upon, touched Kimblee it was impossible to tell.
"You should name her," he suggested, firm in tone, their second night as a trio, awakened by her cries.
"I can't," Shizuo turned him down.
But Kimblee never seemed easily deterred by any of his statements. "You can. You should," he insisted. When she quieted and slept, he laid her on her back on the futon between them.
"Azusa," Shizuo dubbed her the following morning, finally brave enough to feed her.
"Explain it to me," Kimblee said, rolling back the top of a tin of kippers.
"Catalpa. The wood was used to make bows for priestesses to drive away evil." It sounded nice though. That was the main reason. Heiwajima Azusa. Her mood and complexion gradually improved.
For three months they staggered about Tokyo and its environs together, as a trio. The only evidence they saw of other living human beings suggested that they had packed up some mementos and left the city. In Shinjuku, Shizuo was happy to see no sign indicating an untimely end for Izaya- his game board was set up, the pieces arranged mysteriously, no dust upon them. How did a man so connected by his cellphone and the internet fare in a post-electronic age?
"Dad is making your dinner," Kimblee told Azusa as Shizuo minced slices of daikon tinier and tinier. He always called Shizuo "Dad" to Azusa. He tickled her stomach, brushed her hair, and sang to her in a very soft, private voice, as if purposely making sure Shizuo could not hear.
All of it encouraged Shizuo to treat her the same, but he couldn't call Kimblee anything but "Kimblee."
Then one night Shizuo awoke to Azusa vomiting and feverish. From the first aid kit he had assembled, Kimblee attempted to dose her with medicine to reduce the fever, but she couldn't keep it down. Shizuo felt himself go ice cold, the only heat in him leeched out as drops of salty sweat. Kimblee's cleverness had limits. His strength was empty. Listless and pained, Azusa persisted. Kimblee bathed her burning forehead with his handkerchief. Shizuo did not sleep for three days.
When she died, Shizuo turned angrily to Kimblee. Suddenly he was sure his personal tormentor had rescued Azusa (or, all at once he was struck by a more chilling image, stolen her) already knowing she would die. He had only wanted to play 'house' with Shizuo for the purpose of further breaking him.
Kimblee buried her deep without crying.
"You're not even human, you cold bastard," Shizuo spat.
"I don't mean to hurt you," Kimblee reached for his dangling hand.
Shizuo flinched away and wouldn't let him take it. "You don't really care about Azusa. She was nothing more than a doll to you."
"I wanted to see her continue to express her strong will to live," Kimblee answered. The barbs seemed unable to sting him. "I'm as disappointed as you are."
Shizuo sat down and slumped over. He saw that there was nothing to be gained from arguing about it. Kimblee just didn't feel- at least not in the way an ordinary person would. ...And maybe it wasn't, as Shizuo had been initially inclined to believe, his loss. In the past world, sure, but in the current world...
"I'm very sorry," Kimblee placed his hand on Shizuo's shoulder. This time Shizuo allowed it. Kimblee pressed a handkerchief into his hand- it wasn't the same one Shizuo had seen last time. Where did he keep getting them? It wasn't until he raised the fabric to his face that he realized he was crying.
He awoke the next morning in Kimblee's arms, unable to really regret what he had done. If they were all but the last people on earth...if everyone he loved was gone forever... He refused to despair. He would take what comfort he could from the only person that fate had seen fit to align him with.
"Good morning, Shizuo," Kimblee pressed his lips up against Shizuo's forehead with a kiss that straddled the line between passionate and brotherly.
Even when Shizuo actually sought out his kindness, Kimblee continued to be consummate tease. Hadn't he been acting like he wanted to get into Shizuo's pants practically since they met? Shizuo watched him silently as he fried a couple of duck eggs. Even now that all refrigeration devices should have failed, he always managed to find eggs when he wanted them. "My own guardian demon," Shizuo thought. He still harbored suspicions that Kimblee wasn't human.
A warm summer wind blew through humid Tokyo and a gentle rain began to fall. Shizuo tried not to consider what effect the weather would have on the many unburied bodies that remained. Two months, then three, then four without seeing anybody.
"I wonder what it's like in Kyoto," Kimblee mused for what seemed like no particular reason.
"Are you suggesting we head toward Kyoto, Kimblee?" With no other direction, Shizuo was willing to take it.
"Whatever you like," Kimblee maintained his ambivalence.
Shizuo reached out and took his hand, pulling him along to the west. They were probably headed toward no one and nothing, but what else could be done? Kimblee maintained his neutrality and squeezed his hand.