lindenleaves (lindenleaves) wrote in roads_diverged, @ 2008-04-20 14:23:00 |
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Mitsuru feels a little guilty for having doubts, but Ikutsuki had said he’d be meeting people like him, and that doesn’t seem like what he’s looking at at all.
But before he can say that there must be some mistake, the shorter of the two girls bounds forward, thrusts her hand in his general direction. “Hey. Kirijo, right? Nice to meet you.”
“Kirijo’s my father,” he says. “Mitsuru’s fine.” That hand has scars, he realizes as he takes it. The knuckle on her smallest finger’s slightly bent.
Perhaps the girl notes his uncertainty, but she shows none of her own. “I’m Sanada. Akiko Sanada.” She smiles as if it’s the easiest thing in the world.
But she’s a Persona-user, and Mitsuru knows what that means.
The second one hangs back, and Mitsuru’s left with what he can gather from peripheral glances—crossed arms, the sharp angles of her elbows, the play of shadows about a slender throat. A keenness in the eyes that hasn’t quite become mistrust.
“Oh, this is Shinji,” Sanada says, as if that explains everything.
“I...” Mitsuru tries, because he can’t keep staring and he mustn’t lose balance, “that is... I hope this acquaintance will be to our, ah, mutual benefit.”
Sanada whistles. “You see, Shinji? He really is...” But whatever Mitsuru is is lost in her laughter (he should take offense, perhaps, but somehow...). And then the other one finally cracks a smile. And cracks is the right word, because it’s crooked, imperfect, somehow fragmentary. But it’s a smile, and Mitsuru smiles back.
Then he holds out his hand.
She takes it. “Aragaki.”
---
Back at the orphanage, Aki used to talk about running away every Sunday. They’d be lying on the roof, sun slanted across their faces and no chores to do, and Aki’d start to speak and Shinji’d just lie there, eyes closed to the sun, to the words she knew by heart. Why not? Aki always asked, because she’s the type who looks good in that kind of question.
Where will we go, Shinji said, not even questions after awhile, just words to fill the pauses. How will we live. What if they come after us. But Aki just doesn’t think that way, never has, uses phrases like when we put our minds to something and as long as we’re together, and... Shinji stopped objecting a long time ago. But they never ran away, either—never even tried.
Even so—even though Shinji’s always known Aki’s a dreamer—there’s always been a part of her that thought Aki was on to something. That Aki was right, that they’d... she doesn’t even know, now that it’s all gone.
The woman still isn’t moving.
---
Yukari grits his teeth, lifts the—gun—one more time. It isn’t really—a gun, that is. He knows that. He’s not going to be a baby about this.
(God, his hands are so sweaty. If they slip—does it have to be the head? What if, by accident, he...)
And it doesn’t mean anything, to do this. It doesn’t make him sick. It doesn’t mean he wants, or that he’s even ever thought about... No. It’s just a method, just a means, and the thing in his hands is just a way to power, power that belongs to him, and he has to... his father...
Dammit, dammit, that damn Kirijo does this a hundred times a night, and all Yukari can do is sit here and sweat and shake and dammit, he can’t be crying.
---
The thing is, everything’s gone so crazy, so totally friggin’ shot to hell, even her eyes don’t seem to work right. Like it’s all under a strobe light, or like she’s in some manga, moving frame by frame.
So one second the bag of chips is crinkling slightly under her fingertips, and she’s walking on down the aisle, hoping she didn’t freak out that new kid or something (really, not a natural talker, that girl)—and then suddenly everything is dark and writhing and dead, and something drips into her peripheral vision and she thinks she’s screaming—
And then. Well. She could have gone completely insane. People have lost it over less, that’s for sure. But even though her eyes are blurry and her legs seem to have given out, she’s pretty sure she still has all her marbles. There’s no sudden love of fire or urge to shed blood or desire to commune with her alien zombie mother or something. So. Jun thinks the conclusion is pretty obvious.
Because if she’s not crazy? Sanada-senpai is officially the coolest person ever.
---
It’s quite natural to be embarrassed in such a situation, Mitsuru decides. And the question of Akiko’s attractiveness, is, in fact, completely irrelevant, because neither one of them was in their right mind. That is, if they’d chosen it, that would be one thing, but since they didn’t—well, it’s a completely normal reaction, and a little... awkwardness... is probably unavoidable.
But it has to end. They’re a team, and they need to act like it, and this... sidestepping... simply must stop. So he’s quite pleased to see Akiko descending the stairs by herself. It’s perfect, really. He sets down his cup of tea. “Ah, Akiko, if you have a—”
“I was going out,” she says, showing the jacket folded over one arm. But it’s not a dismissal; she laughs, as if wondering at her own words. “But sure, if you...”
Akiko’s about the last girl who needs protecting, but Mitsuru still feels like he ought to be... gallant, or something. But he doesn’t quite know what that means, not really. “You don’t, ah...” He stares longingly at the tea, but in a situation like this, that kind of crutch is really... “I hope I didn’t act... improperly, but there was nothing I could have...”
He’s pretty sure that’s a faint swatch of pink across her cheekbone, but she smiles. “You don’t have to worry about it. I know it wasn’t you.”
It wasn’t?
“Well.” Mitsuru clears his throat. “One could think of it that way, yes. I just wanted... to make sure we were on the same page...”
“Of course,” she says, laughing again; then, quick and precise, “Your type would be very different, I’m sure.”
The door clicks closed before Mitsuru can think of what to say to that.
---
“You’re such a fucking hotshot, you know that?” Shinji says, and Akiko refrains from pointing out that she’s not the one slouching against a wall in gang territory like she thinks she’s trouble incarnate.
Instead, she tries smiling. “Oh, I think I’m pretty modest.”
“Cocky,” Shinji snaps back, “and oblivious. That’s all.”
“I take care of myself.” And that’s more than I can say for you, she doesn’t add. But she shouldn’t be choosing her words so carefully around Shinji—shouldn’t have to—so, just to prove it, she asks, “And when was the last time you ate something? You’ve lost weight.”
“Mind your own business.”
“You are my business.”
“Not anymore.” Aki ought to punch her for that one. “I thought I told you to stop coming round here.”
“Since when do I have to listen to you?” Her hands won’t stay still. She opens her mouth to tell Shinji she’s being an ass. “I’m worried about you.” Dammit.
Shinji shoves her hands in her pockets, gives her that glare, as if she’s somehow said something spectacularly stupid. “I didn’t ask you to worry about me. Don’t you have people now? Waste it on them.”
Her hands won’t stay still, dammit. “Hell, Shinji, I know we didn’t do anything in the usual way, growing up or... any of it. I was always getting into fights or showing off or making you patch me up or...”
“I got into my share of fights too, you know,” Shinji says, almost smiling.
And Aki grabs her hand, holds it as tightly as she can, and tries to still the trembling in her own. Shinji’s is dry, spindly. She shouldn’t be this thin. “But, Shinji, friends talk, don’t they? You can be strong and still—”
Instead of snatching her hand away, Shinji tightens her grip, nails digging into Akiko’s glove. “I don’t think you get it, Aki,” she says, neck crooked so the words glance off Akiko’s temple. “I don’t want things to get better. So there’s nothing to say.”
And she slips away, passing so close as she goes that one lock of hair brushes Akiko’s lips.
Aki takes the glove off, after, brings the hand to her mouth. But it feels wrong.
Hands won’t do, it seems.
---
The ocean’s just sitting there, massive and unmoved. Yukari thinks that he’d burn it all to steam, if he could. He’d at least whip it out of its torpor, if he could call Ganymede. But he can’t. Power has its conditions.
She’s there, at his side. Followed him. Jun probably sent her. She says nothing, just looks at him with this maddening recalcitrant sympathetic chastising wistful stare. He pretends he isn’t looking.
Then she slings an arm across his shoulders, unapologetically, and her dark hair falls into her face and veils those strange pale eyes, and he thinks about shrugging away but he doesn’t, and they stand there like that and it isn’t all right but he thinks that maybe it could be, one day.
---
“Dude,” Jun says, “that is an awesome outfit. Do you cosplay? Cause I know a couple of guys who—”
The redhead glances up (geez, do bishounen have their own special brand of hair conditioner or something? She’ll have to ask Mitsuru-senpai about it). “Do you mind?” he asks curtly, each word clipped and spare, as if he has a limited budget of them. “You’re blocking my light.”
---
“Want one?” Akiko asks, proffering the grapes, but what she really means is, You’ve come back to me.
Shinji sighs. “I want you to stop throwing them around like that. Great way to choke yourself to death. Besides, you look like a kid.”
“Come on.” She tosses another, catches it in her mouth. Six in a row. She plucks off another. “You sure you don’t want one? Bought ‘em just this morning.”
Shinji says nothing. She’s unbuttoned her coat, Aki realizes. She’s back.
“Well, your loss.” She tosses the grape—
—and Shinji snatches it out of the air. “Will you stop—”
“Hey,” Akiko says simultaneously, grabbing Shinji’s wrist, “what was that—”
But Shinji raises her other hand and her eyes are so serious and for a second Akiko thinks she’s going to hit her, but the fingers land soft instead, curling into her shirt collar, and then Shinji yanks her forward and—
Akiko was right—hands weren’t right at all.
---
She swallows hard on “hands,” sways and nearly falls to her knees at his bedside. “Don’t you know that your hands are...” And she can’t say beautiful, because he’ll ask why and she doesn’t have the words, not like this, not nearly kneeling at his bedside. But she says it anyway. “You have such beautiful hands.”
“I don’t understand,” he says, mouth pressed thin and small. But his eyes are shining.
---
It’s the last thing she should be doing now—running, in spite of everything they’d agreed on. But her legs know what they’re supposed to do, and the rest of her is too torn up to object.
She had to let go of Shinji, eventually. Gotta do our job, kid, they’d said, and she was ready to fight them, ready to take them all on, because no one, no one’s going to put Shinji in a box—
But then Mitsuru put a hand on her arm, shook his head, tears in his long hair. And then—her legs and an empty street. The mocking full moon.
“Who’s the hotshot now, you—” Her voice gives out; her knees go slack. But her hands won’t quit, not ever, and she lets fly at the concrete, willing a scar into every span of skin.
---
The first time he and Akiko are alone, after the funeral, Mitsuru’s in the common room, somewhere in that space of time between the Dark Hour and the dawn. He’s pretending that he needs some air, that his room is stuffy, but the real reason is that the room above his had been vacant for so long, and he’d just gotten used to hearing her pacing up there over his head, the warmth in his chest when he thought about her moving around in that restless way of hers, running her hands over all her old things, and now—
The front door slams shut. Akiko tosses her coat on the sofa. “What are you doing down here?”
Mitsuru stands up without knowing why. “My room was...” But suddenly the only word on his lips is empty, and rather than say it, rather than make it true, he digs his nails into his palms and says nothing.
---
“Maybe you were a bully,” Fuuga says, “but I still... like you, you know?”
Naoki grins sheepishly. “That’s cause you’re such a weirdo, man.”
Maybe he is. He doesn’t care. “Don’t go.”
“Aw, come on.” Fuuga’s almost afraid to look up, afraid to meet the other boy’s eyes, but he’s still smiling. “You think this is the end?” he says. “I told you, one of these days I’ll get you out there playing ball with me n’ the boys. Even if you’re just the damn catcher. And I won’t hear any excuses.” He walks a few steps more, then turns, one hand resting on the door to the roof. “You and me. You got that?”
Right now, he almost feels like he could play ball. “I got it,” he says.
---
He doesn’t remember much of how it started. His grandfather would be there, two or three men in white coats, ballpoint pens clicking against their clipboards. It’s a game, Mitsuru, everyone said, curling his fingers around the metal. It’s only a game.
Everyone, but not his father. His father stood, tall and pale, two-eyed in those days, both wide with something like fear (but Mitsuru had known, back then, that his father wasn’t afraid of anything). He spoke only once, soft and deep and cracked at the corners. Not my son, he had said. Please, not my son.
Mitsuru holds the eyepatch in his hand, and he thinks about how there’s a kind of fear that makes you stronger, nobler. But mostly he prays, Not my father... please, not my...
---
“Jun says Aegis got pretty rattled in class today,” Akiko says. “Something about a new transfer student. Think we should look into it?”
Mitsuru doesn’t move. “I’m sorry. I’m... tired, tonight. Can you guys figure it out without me?”
“Of course.” She bites her lip. “Are you...”
“I’m just tired.”
But Akiko’s hands just won’t quit, even now, and before she knows what she’s doing Mitsuru’s hair is tangled in her fingers. She closes her hand around the lock—it’s soft against her calluses.
“I’m just tired,” the boy repeats, as if by rote. “It’s only that I’m tired.”
---
Yukari squints against the sunset, but his voice rings clear. “You’re an asshole.”
Mitsuru says nothing.
He sighs, uncrosses his arms. “But so am I.”
The other boy’s dark eyes are dim, his hair long and loose and tangled. “Is there a reason I should care?”
“Maybe not about that,” Yukari admits. “But we’ve got to start somewhere.”
---
“You want company?” Akiko-senpai asks, after everyone else has gone upstairs.
Jun’s about to say no, but then she looks at the sketch again, thinks about Chidori puzzling over the lines. “It’s just... this portrait, it’s... well done.”
“Very well done,” Akiko-senpai says, waiting.
“Yeah...” How long did it take him to draw this? When did he start? “Here, I look... pretty, but... strong, too.” She sighs. “I know I’m not either of those things, but all the same... it’s well done. But I don’t want to think... he saw something that wasn’t there.”
Her senpai flexes her gloved fingers, stares at the spaces between them. “I don’t think he saw a lie,” she says at last. “He wasn’t the type to tolerate them. Maybe he just knew better than you did.”
“Yeah,” Jun says slowly, tracing the contours of her own face. “Yeah, I think he did.”
---
It started when Minato saw the axe lying there in that cardboard box. She had a certain versatility with weapons, she said, and axes hit harder than anything, and her sword had gotten worn down and they’d save money anyway.
No one objected. She hadn’t really thought they would.
She’d looked pretty silly, for a while, dragging around a weapon she could barely lift. But she got the hang of it, little by little, thought about the way she’d swung it, how she’d planted her feet and angled her shoulders, and every so often she caught Akiko looking at her with something like gratitude.
And then it came time for monthly upgrades, and, well... why change back, when she’d just gotten the hang of it? Nobody objected.
Now, hearing that voice at her ear, she knows why. And she knows that thing up there doesn’t have a chance.
---
There’s a moment, while he’s still in the air and they’re looking up at him and all the memories are still fresh in his head, and Jun’s hopping from foot to foot and nearly knocking Fuuga into the aisle and Akiko’s looking right into his eyes—there’s a moment when he realizes: nothing has ever been this right.
“You look like such a ponce in those boots,” Yukari says, but he’s grinning.
Mitsuru could say that Yukari himself is the very definition of a ponce (a word which, by the way, he didn’t even know until they started studying together), but he settles for reaching over and tousling the hair the other boy probably spent half an hour on. C’est la vie.
“Come on,” he says, to all of them, and they go.
---
She’s soft and weightless in his arms. Aegis touches her cheek, watches the strain seep from her face little by little, replaced by the smile of a promise kept.
“I will never leave you,” he says, and there is no uncertainty in his voice.
There are other words, better words, in the face of which impossible has no meaning.