Authors note: Never thought I could write a fan fiction before until this little number started playing on a loop through my skull. It's only a two shot but I've got some ideas for some scenes that come before trying to work themselves out. Let me know what you think of it:)
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters and I don't make any money from this.
Incidentally 'By demons be driven' is a song by Pantera and 'Gods and monsters' by Lana Del Rey.
I forgot to add but the itallics in this chapter are lines taken straight from the manga.
Gods and monsters.
Despite his best efforts he can never drink enough to numb the ache. There is a gaping, sucking black hole that exists in the hollow space where his heart once was; he cut it out and threw it in the ground on top of the pine box they had laid her in. What beats in his chest now is the echoing drumbeat of the rain as he watched them pile the earth in on top of her; he wanted to scream like a child, beg them to stop.
His mind likes to play tricks on him after he has poured so much Bacardi down his throat that even the air tastes of it as he draws it over his tongue and down into his lungs. As he raises the bottle to his lips again (he can't recall the last time he bothered with a glass) he catches the ghost of her flit by out of the corner of his eye. A flash of maroon tresses and sun-kissed skin wrapped in denim. He squeezes his eyes shut; Wills himself not to look, only to be defeated by the sound of her familiar, derisive chuckle. He turns knowing that she won't be there, cursing himself because he does it anyway and still takes it like a sucker punch when he doesn't find her standing there with that flippant smile that belongs to him and only him.
He tries to take another mouthful, his hands trembling so much that he manages to spill more on the awful Hawaiian shirt that he staunchly refuses take off (despite the fact he abhors it) than he manages to pour in his mouth. The bottle is almost empty and he forces himself up onto his feet to try and find another. His head is swimming like it's holding the whole of the south china sea and the room is tilted, spinning so much that he is pretty sure that he is walking on the fucking walls. There's nothing in the fridge, or the cupboards, save for one dusty can of beer that has been there so long that he can't even remember buying it.
"Beer's like piss water. Gives me no buzz at all."
His rage flares, the sudden need to destroy seizing him; a pitiful mimicry of what hers once was. With a roar, a broken battle cry, he hurls the bottle and though it misses it's mark it still explodes in a hail of glass and alcohol against the plasterboard walls. His whole body trembles. His stomach feels like it is folding in on itself and he painfully dry heaves twice before it empties its scant contents onto the floor.
He collapses when his knees finally buckle under his own weight and he has to claw himself up onto the bed, desperately grasping for her pillow in a futile attempt to save himself from drowning. He presses his face into it, inhales deeply and is devastated to find that this last trace of her has completely faded. With the realisation, the parts of him that have been slowly flaking away finally crumble to ashes; it is 'the straw that breaks the camels back' and his grief escapes him in great keening howls until there is nothing left but the void.
When unconsciousness finally takes him it refuses him the mercy of a peaceful sleep. He dreams in memories. Fragments sharp, like shards of glass; shattered and haphazardly stitched back together. They overlap, fold back, reflect upon themselves until he can no longer find the seams.
"What I did in the past is no different from what I do now…"
Her hazel eyes are vacant when they stare at him. Through him. Not even seeing him. He's nothing more than a pile of disposable flesh and blood and bone.
"I stole. I killed. I did all sorts of vile crap. My story ain't worth shit." That never stopped him asking though, with his voice and with his eyes.
"What do you want written on your tombstone?"
He can smell the faint chamomile of her shampoo. A cigarette 'kiss' in the back of a police car after he angrily reminds her that she is the 'God' that created him.
"I know an outfit that's looking to hire a crew member…"
She offers him a small conspiratorial smirk, the barest quirk of her lip, at the sight of the shock in his eyes. She had the documents for the folks from Langley the whole time.
"I wont ever put my ass on the line for you like that again, you got that?!" He can feel the heat of her skin where her fist collides with his face and with it comes a blinding moment of clarity. She had come for him because she wanted to save him. Needed to save him; perhaps as much as she needed to lie to herself.
"Go ahead. Keep running in circles like a dog. Killing me will say more about you than anything else!" She frustrates the hell out of him. She pig headed, stubborn… and deep down terrified of him; though she hides it well behind the armour of her fuck you attitude. But he can see her truth now. She is spilling out through the chinks.
"Fuck you! This is the only way I know how to live my life, damn it!"
"Don't look"
She hasn't yet realised that he's there. There is only thirty foot between them and yet it feels like a million miles. He watches her play with the kids, a notion that is so surreal that had he not seen it himself he wouldn't have believed it ever happened. She looks younger with that honest smile painted on her face.
"It'll scar you. Don't look."
He watches her demonstrate for them the proper way to die. She keels over, drops head first to the ground. The image is double exposed and for a moment there are two of her lying there. He thinks she's still playing but she doesn't move. There is blood pooling around her belly. His heart skips a beat; first for a few seconds. Then minutes. Hours. He is left counting out time in place of his pulse. Six days, seventeen hours, forty three minutes.
"That's when I take out my gun and kill you."
He watches her balletic dance of death with morbid fascination. He's rooted to the spot. His skin itches with the desire to fold and worship at her altar of gunpowder and lead; even though he knows that it's grotesque.
"Quit whining, dipshit. Life's a ride. Might as well have some fun or you'll miss out, Mr. Japanese." He thinks that she's sick 'cause the whole time she's grinning like the Cheshire cat but what does that make him when he stands in awe of her? A shiver runs down his spine; she is going to be the death of him.
"You're not gonna live long if you keep this shit up, you stubborn fool."
That night in Japan, while she was so high on painkillers that he wasn't sure that she was herself, she had both nervously and wantonly pressed her lips to his. She tastes of blood and gun smoke. He wasn't sure what had changed. Whether, for once, she had been truly afraid of dying or whether he had reached her with his words in the park.
"I didn't come back to stay. I came back to forget."
He never wants to forget.
She tries to speed him up, feverish in her demands. He tries to slow her down wanting nothing more than to take his time. To worship her. To prove to her that if you stop to wash the blood away there just might be something more buried underneath.
There's too much blood.
He hears the small hitch of her breath as he playfully traces his rough fingers up and down her spine.
She hisses though her teeth when he presses his hand down on the wound desperately. The blood is seeping through his fingers; so dark that it's almost black. He doesn't know how to stop it but that doesn't keep him from trying to force the cracks of her back together with just the strength of his bare, blood slick hands. She already knows, he can tell by the look in her eyes.
Eyes of a killer. Eyes of a discarded child. Eyes of a corpse.
He blames himself. Worries that he had somehow made her soft, made her second guess herself and not react as quickly he knew she could. "You're a silver bullet that doesn't know where its going. One that can even kill an invincible monster."
"I stole. I killed. I did all sorts of vile crap."
He wonders if maybe that was the point.