For Bungou Stray Dogs Rarepair Week 2017.
Day 4: Things left unsaid
huntress
.
Being chased is an experience she has lost touch with over the years.
Nobody expected anything from the scrawny, timid girl whose purpose when she was taken in by the Mafia was but satisfying her brother's only requirement to join them; he and his ability were what really had the Executive's interest. But nobody stopped her, either, when she picked a blade in the training room and asked an elder Mafioso to teach her, to turn the little knowledge she had absorbed to survive in the streets into a refined skill, almost an art. She quickly learnt to take advantage of her innate stealth to make herself useful in spite of not being gifted.
She soon had a glimpse of what hunting was like from the other side, and she refused to let go of that feeling; she climbed ranks by doing as told, her only drive to commit the atrocities ordered by the higher-ups utter panic at the idea of falling back into a world where she was the prey.
Therefore Akutagawa Gin, Commander of the Black Lizard, has fuzzy memories about what being on the losing side means.
Which is the reason she feels like drowning as she zigzags across the harbour, down long streets and deeper inside the industrial estate, pursuers sprinting close behind and gunshots tearing through the night. Somewhere behind lays her exasperation when Tachihara jumped into action without waiting for Hirotsu and the rest of their unit, as well as a glare sharp enough to cut through skin as her colleague's stupid plan backfired; talented or not, it was ridiculously clear from the beginning they were outnumbered.
A growl escapes her lips, muffled by the mask hiding the lower half of her face, when she reaches for Tachihara's hood just after they turn right and drags him through a half open door, into an industrial unit; luckily the idiot is not as stupid as to make a surprised noise as at least twelve men armed with submachines run past the entrance.
Her head swims as their strides fade away, legs give out and she falls on her knees, ripping the mask off to try to catch more air, gulping moist breeze down; her hands land on her chest, trying to slow her heartbeat so that her lungs stop burning.
"Idiot," she grumbles. She hates wasting words like that, but Tachihara is reaching a whole new level of stupidity tonight.
"They would have escaped by the time Hirotsu-san arrived," Tachihara protests. Gin tucks a black lock behind her ear, annoyed at herself when she tries and fails to take a deep breath. "Are you alright?"
Gin looks up at him, a questioning eyebrow raised. Tachihara huffs and looks away.
"I… I mean, if––"
But his words are cut short when something behind Gin moves; she barely has the time to turn around before a single bullet pierces the air above her head, catches a glimpse of a shadow falling to the ground with a thud.
"If you die, the mission will be considered a failure," Tachihara finishes even before the echo of the shot vanishes into the night, lowering his arm.
"Two failures." Gin gets up out of sheer willpower, black hair cascading down her back as her dishevelled ponytail falls undone. "You just gave our position away."
As if on cue, the sea breeze brings the voices of the enemy with them, half-muffled by their feet stomping on the concrete, undoubtedly following Tachihara's tell-tale gunshot.
Gin grabs her blade, her other hand still resting on her chest as she opts to ignore her partner's offended you ungrateful moron; they nearly run to hide behind the container furthest from the entrance, knowing they don't have the time to leave through it. Once there she looks around, searching for another door; such a big industrial unit must have several exits, she reasons.
A growl leaves her lips when Tachihara places a hand on her shoulder. Her instinctive glare mellows with curiosity when the man points at the high windows, though.
"The other doors are closed," he explains in a whisper, though it's not necessary; the enemy is way too loud for Gin's taste, too confident about being able to take two non-gifted people down to bother with discretion. "And if they start shooting here, we're dead."
It is only then that Gin realises why the storage unit looked familiar: the place is used for storage by the Mafia; to be more exact––
"The door was open," she recalls, eyes widening.
Of course it was open. That explains where the submachines they are trying to avoid come from.
For a second she considers the idea of coming out from their hiding place and slicing the men's throats one by one, to finish the task Tachihara started too soon; but unlike him, Gin is too clever to recklessly run to a certain death. Both of them are more than able to jump to the window from the highest pile of containers, pulled up against the wall; the only problem is…
Well.
It is the one full of explosives.
Tachihara seems to have reached the same conclusion. He runs his fingers through red hair, biting his lower lip in visible concern; for a second Gin is glad the men seem to keep where they are in mind, at least for now.
Her gaze wanders across the walls; grey eyes narrow at the alarm button not far from them. She points at it, shaking her head at the talk about giving our position away clear in Tachihara's expression.
Because she knows how those people think. She knows how they think she and Tachihara think, and she knows more because she has been both hunter and prey.
She shakes Tachihara's warning grip off her forearm as he approaches the wall, movements steady except for the still agitated rises and falls of her chest as she punches the button without a word.
The man's frustrated noise is drowned under the deafening ringing that follows; both Gin and Tachihara forget to breathe, though, when the herd of gunmen get closer, stop in the middle of the discontinued row of containers for what feels like an agonising, painfully long eternity to eventually walk in the opposite direction from them.
Soundlessly, the two Commanders of the Black Lizard run behind the enemy, nearly daring to catch air again when they stop dead on their tracks, Gin colliding against Tachihara's back.
Blood leaves Gin's face when she peeks from his side and sees two men that have fallen behind; they approach from the door, arms pointed at them. Without thinking, moving by pure instinct, she throws her blade at the one to the right; she knows it won't be fast enough when another gunshot makes her shudder.
But the impact comes from behind; a burning pain sinks into her calf, lodges itself deep between flesh and bone. She hears more shots mixed with unintelligible screams as she struggles to keep standing, a shocked yell leaving her lips only when she registers an arm surrounding her waist, dragging her between rows of containers.
"Great," Tachihara snarls, letting go of her. "Now we're definitely dead."
Gin's back collides against a pillar, head light as she looks at the trace of nearly black blood flowing down her leg, staining the floor. Her partner climbs up to the closest container, shoots three bullets in a row. He must grumble something more, but the alarm, the screams and the noise invading Gin's mind are too loud as she cuts a strip off her ragged coat to wrap it around the wound; she tries to focus on the men's yelling, on something other than the blood loss and the never-ending ringing that makes her nauseous.
"Don't shoot here!"
"Careful!"
"Stop it!"
Gin shakes her head, makes an effort to keep thinking. If they use their cards well and Tachihara stops being stupid for a change, they might have a chance to get out of this alive, after all. She brings two fingers to her mouth, exhales a high whistle that doesn't fail to catch her partner's attention.
"I'll go deaf if you keep doing that," he complains; Gin doesn't hear his voice, but reads his lips easily. She limps towards him, gestures for help to climb up the container. "Huh?"
"They won't shoot if they think they can hit the explosives," she quickly explains.
"Or they will and we'll blow up," Tachihara counters.
"Then you come up with another great idea."
Tachihara has the decency to look away as he pulls at her arms. "Can you run like that?"
A glare is all he gets as an answer.
But it's the closest thing to a plan they have; there are likely more men waiting for them at the entrance, and despite the caution the ones inside the industrial unit don't hesitate to shoot higher, further from the containers.
The ones Tachihara's bullets don't reach first, that's it.
All in all, they get to the window without further injuries; as Gin struggles to sneak out Tachihara shoots at every man that dares to point a submachine at them. He probably doesn't even aim to hit them, only to scare them enough to stop attacking.
Gin lets herself down from the window, grinds her teeth at the pain running up her leg when it impacts against the concrete. Whatever relieved thought she might have reserved for the moment vanishes, though, the second Tachihara lands beside her, yellow eyes wide with a warning stuck in his throat.
There is no time to ask.
The explosion shatters the glasses of the industrial unit, blast blossoming like a bright, deathly flower that sends the both of them flying into the night. And Gin doesn't know where is up and where is down, closes her eyes because she doesn't want to know what it is that hits her, how the heat coiling around her skin looks. The world roars around her even after something hard slams into her back, crumbling down around her trembling form.
And then it's quiet.
.
Gin slowly comes to terms with the fact that she is lying on her back; the pain raging through her every bone, on the other hand, is impossible to ignore. A whine escapes her lips, despair curling a tight grip around her throat at her barely responsive lungs, at the burning weight pushing her chest down; it takes all her willpower to struggle against it, to keep breathing.
Eyes open barely, blink up at the polluted night covering Yokohama. Gin tries to move, to stand up and get away from the disaster, but all she can manage is turning her head; all around her is rubble half hidden by a smoke of sorts that drives her closer to unconsciousness with every inhale.
A silhouette walks closer among the toxic mist, shapes into a man that looks relatively unharmed as he points a gun at her.
Gin grunts. Where is her knife when she needs it? She tries to push the weight on her chest off once again, huffs out a name in annoyance despite knowing it's useless. When it comes to being helpful Tachihara is never one to count on, despite how handy his ridiculous liking for firearms would come in right now.
But, in the end, it's not necessary. A black spear sticks out of the man's chest cleanly, gun falling from his hand as blood splatters on the ground; an instinctive relief floods Gin's system when the wind brings Hirotsu's serious voice to her ears, accompanied by a discrete cough.
"Tachihara?" she calls again, though, because his presence is the only thing lacking in that familiarity. But the syllables come out feeble and quiet.
If only she could get that weight off her chest…
Gin glares at the blur of red resting on her, tries to move again with little success.
There he goes, being his usual stupid self again––
"Gin."
Is this…?
"T-Tachi––"
No.
"Gin…?"
Grey eyes, identical to her own, look down at the panic raising to her throat, stinging her eyelids more than the smoke that hurts her lungs; but it's the terrible realisation, more than the motionless warmth on her chest, what drags Gin down into an empty darkness.
.
Consciousness comes and goes, allowing her to catch glimpses of conversations as doctors clean her wounds, as people walk by and leave as quickly as they came, black flowers nearly always in the corner of her vision, familiar and soothing.
It's not until she manages to fully open her eyes that she makes her brother's figure out, sitting on a chair not far from what was her favourite entertainment when they were children, arms folded across his chest and gaze fixed on his lap until Gin calls him, voice cracking in her irritated throat.
"How," she starts, "did you find us?"
"It would have been hard not to," he points out, irritated.
And Gin would laugh, would admit it was a foolish question, but her brother's words come with a fear that tightens its fist around her empty stomach; the mop of red hair in her memory is enough to make her feel like she's sinking down into the warm bed, and she has to fight so her lungs don't give out, to keep herself afloat.
"Tachihara…?"
Rashomon answers that question, a petal of a black lily pointing to the opposite side of the bed. Gin's gaze follows that direction, but a curtain is drawn between her bed and, most likely, his.
Her brother standing up catches her attention again. "I have work to do," he only says, and Gin can't help the grateful smile that dances on her lips, tinged with the slightest remorse for worrying him.
Once his steps fade away, though, she gathers whatever strength she has left to sit up. Miraculously there doesn't seem to be anything broken, despite everything; but the bandages tightening around her ribs talk about lacerations that will probably hurt more when her system gets rid of the painkillers, what seems like small cuts and wounds painfully stretching whenever the muscles in her face move.
Standing is still a hard task, though; but Gin drags naked feet towards the curtain, draws it aside to look at Tachihara.
He is awake, a yellow gaze fixed on her, as if daring Gin to laugh at him. His neck is immobilised in a brace, bandages wrapped around both his arms; like Gin herself, he has small wounds scattered across his face, but they don't seem to bother him too much.
And for a second, she struggles to keep standing.
You're so stupid and you're alive and look where your bright idea got us and why did you have to do that. You brainless idiot.
"Hi," is what eventually comes from Gin's mouth, because she doesn't know how to say everything else.
"Hi," Tachihara echoes, eyelids drooping closed. He seems too tired to try to annoy her. "You should rest." Gin raises an eyebrow, not minding he can't see it. "Hirotsu-san probably knows we're awake and is on his way here."
The oldest Commander of the Black Lizard rarely scolds them; their rank usually weights more than their age. But objectively speaking, what Gin and Tachihara did last night resulted in a failure– even though she has no idea of what happened to the enemy, they are partially guilty of blowing one of the Mafia's ammunition storerooms up. Hirotsu hardly ever has to be strict, but Gin shudders at the prospect of the man's reprimand.
And yet, it doesn't worry her, not as much as remembering what Tachihara did last night does.
Because protecting her back is one thing and she had done the same for him multiple times before last night; working well together is nothing out of the ordinary, even if it's through hisses and glares. But Tachihara's injuries are visibly worse than Gin's and he looks so exhausted and fragile and he sheltered her from the explosion with his own body, ignoring every risk he exposed himself to.
And there are no words that feel eloquent enough to convey the way Gin's heart leaps to her throat, still terrified yet incredibly moved, as she recalls the latest events.
So, in the end, a barely audible thank you slips between her lips.
Tachihara opens his eyes, pink creeping up his pale cheeks. "It was my idea what made everything go to hell," he mutters. "And the mission is a failure if you die."
It is too, if you die, Gin wants to reply. But the words won't come to her mouth.
So she steps towards the empty chair next to Tachihara's bed, sits down and waits for Hirotsu's scolding with him, hoping her dark hair covers the blush of her cheeks.
And despite what any objective analysis of last night might say, the mission was an absolute success.
In case you were wondering, yes, Gin has asthma. Having bad lungs runs in the blood.
Opinions? Rocks? Comments?