Notes: A conversation between Kougami and Yayoi following Sasayama's death and Kougami's demotion. Found myself becoming a fan of their dynamic after their scenes in episode 12 so this was heavily inspired by that.
x
"It's fine," he says, in response to that look of hers. She barely shows anything but that calculated poker-face to anyone around here. As much as he finds it a welcome change, the timing's all wrong. He's good with faces and inferences, trends and extrapolation, with picking apart defence mechanisms and patterns etched in chaos. Compassion, however, solid and genuine, is far outside the usual scope of his day. Still, he's seen her and that she's good at it. She reaches out to victims of loss with heartfelt touches and a few words but always the right ones. The thought that she may see him as such a victim now makes him flinch but she's already taking a seat on the bench beside him.
"Talk to me," she says, without any preamble. "You just lost your job, not to mention, your friend."
And so he does, with the words he knows, to the point and without fanfare. "I just want to know who did it," he says, because there's nothing else to say, nothing truer anyway. "Gino's mad because I can't let it go. He's going through all the channels to keep me out of prison, worried that no amount of therapy is going to take my mind off the case. And he's right."
"He's not going to let you go to a facility," she says. "He needs you on the team. Coefficients aside, you're a good detective."
"Not so much anymore," he says. "Sybil-"
"Titles are stupid. You'll never stop being who you are." She slides closer to him, takes his hand and he lets her. "Besides," she says, "it's not so bad, being an enforcer."
He exhales, slow, doesn't really know how to explain it to her when it's been the thing that saved her.
"You know," she says, "you were the first person I met who worked for Sybil and didn't make me want to throw up."
His lips curl involuntarily. "Thanks. I think."
"Sybil," she says, quieter now, "makes everyone cold. I liked Rina because it felt that the cold hadn't touched her then. Don't get me wrong, you can do detached and calculating like the worst of them and still, I always thought that it managed to never touch you."
He laughs, short and wry, feels like a bit of a fraud really. "If it's about the guitar strings, it was just leverage, Yayoi. It was going to be whatever it took to get you to help us." He almost feels guilty about it now but her hand is here and warm in his hence almost, but not quite.
"It's not about the strings. You were a smart cop, Ko. Bit of a jerk, giving me the dead dominator," and she smirks at nothing in particular, maybe a ghost of a memory, "but I'll never forget the first time I held it."
No, he thinks. One tends not to.
"And later," she says, "I remember thinking, if that guy can do this and still keep his head on straight then I can too."
He smiles, remembering the girl in the facility, her eyes widening through the glass. He squeezes her hand once before dropping it.
She still takes cares of her nails even if she has never picked up the guitar again to his knowledge. He asked her once, twice, and she waved it off each time, said something about having no time or interest even though he knows that she could get her hands on all kinds of contraband as an enforcer. It's as if once Sybil decides you're past saving then the lines don't seem to matter as much. It's freedom, in a sense, if it can be called that. Freedom inside the confines of a box.
"Sometimes, I think it was a good call." She gives him a curious look. "You," he says. "Here. I like to think it was your call though."
He admires her tenacity even if the lives of enforcers are not things generally meant to be aspired towards. He knows what it's doing to his coefficient to ruminate like this, but then, figures it probably doesn't matter if he's already past saving.
"Of course it was my call."
"Then I'm glad," he says; there's enough on his conscience as is.