Re: [capital pawnshop: hannah & david]
She did wince a little when handle met the soft and unprotected skin beneath the dead man's chin. The dead man, the one on the ground, and not the one with milk bottle eyes and wielding the weapon. Henry, he was the one that was dead, even if he hadn't realized it yet, and Hannah just reached down and rubbed her shin, foot back and knee bent.
She took David's hand, and she wondered if he still wanted to be called David. It was an errant thing of a thought, much like the copper hair that wafted and billowed in the night and kissed her cheek. David talked, words and and the man choked at his feet, and Hannah nodded. "I know. At first, I thought most people were good, and that only some were bad. But I was wrong. There are more bad than good, and he's bad." She looked away from the dead man in the grave. "But the good people are really good and really nice." She meant that as earnestly as she meant the rest, and Henry rolled over.
She wasn't a figment. There was solidity in the fingers that gripped his, and she moved back as he pulled up the shovel and planted it deep.
She considered, considered. She was a hummingbird perched on a flower, a bee perched on a petal. She perched, and then she looked from Henry to David again. "I don't need to see him die." She didn't mind, but she didn't need to, and she thought maybe it should be a private moment. And so she stepped back, and then she stepped back, and then she stepped back again.
Beneath her feet, the earth crunched, and she stopped there. A moment, stopped, frozen, and then she smiled at David. "Make sure you bury him really deeply," she said, this girl who knew about graves dug in flower beds and then unearthed with bones glistening in the midday sun.
Another step in reverse, and then she turned. She knew she would see him again, this David, this wraith that wasn't really a part of her past, but that was part of her past entirely. It shook her, but only some, and maybe nowhere near as much as it should.
But she walked away under the moonlight, and she didn't look back. Not this time.