AN: good god how do you combine past and present tenses i can't. also how do you awesome flashbacks because i can't do that for shit either.
i promise i'll go somewhere plot-wise in the next part. but for now, have some more angst.
as always, un-beta'd, so any and all mistakes are mine.
She ends up visiting Raimundo's grave.
Granted, all she'd thought of originally was to get as far away from Chase Young as humanly possible. There had been no firm destination in mind, so Kimiko is surprised when she realizes where she is. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Or what's left of it, at least.
In some twisted way, Kimiko's glad that Raimundo is not alive to see how ruined his home country has become. Chase's volcano eruption had only been the first in a series of apocalyptic disasters which had destroyed the planet and wiped out the majority of the human population. Brazil had not been spared.
Kimiko is only mildly surprised to see the area around the grave looking healthy and untouched by destruction; the runes that she had placed here when she had buried him are still working their magic. The grave itself is nothing special; the marker is just a square, wooden rod with a small mound of rocks supporting it at the base. Omi and Clay have the same ones.
She sits herself down on the ground beside him and tilts her head up to stare at the sky.
"Wow, that's so blue," she remarks with a surprised laugh. "You'd think that a post-apocalypse sky would be a lot more, I don't know, red or black."
Rai, shockingly, stays silent.
She sighs, and lets her gaze fall back down.
"This is the part when you reply with a snarky one-liner that ends up pissing me off," she says.
A beat. Then…
"I hate that he can get under my skin so well," Kimiko bursts out vehemently. "I mean, I know that this is friggin' Chase Young and all, but he shouldn't…I shouldn't—"
She cuts herself off and glares at the grass underneath her flat palm, not noticing when her vision blurs.
"What the fuck am I supposed to do, Rai? Save the world? There's nothing left to save, okay?!" She slaps the palm of her hand hard against the ground, as if trying to provoke a reaction from Raimundo.
Which is stupid, really.
"I'm just so…so…" Lost, she thinks, not bothering to wipe her tears away.
"Alone. I'm just so alone."