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Nepenthe
When death comes quickly, it always numbs the senses, it always fractures the heart. But you don't always stop to feel the pain. Sometimes it takes even years to feel everything attached to that death. But when you stand and you can see death coming from miles away, and you know he's coming---it's worse. You panic, or the numbness sinks right into your bones and you never wade through the pain completely. You see yourself sinking, but you think that maybe, just maybe the pain is slower beneathe the surface. And it never is.
When Leon was a little boy he had no experience with the art of compassion. He was like any eight year old child---he spent no time trying to identify his feelings, and didn't think that anyone else had any. He *did* know when he wanted something, and he made sure everyone else knew too . . .
But the idea that anybody else mattered was absurd.
Until he met Tara, a sprite of a girl who had the misfortune one day of telling him to shut up. And of course, he couldn't let that go. It was an insult to the year of age he had over her, and the fact that she was a 'stupid girl'. He had followed her out of his yard, his companions giggling and pointing as he called out all her horrid faults---from the ribbon in her hair to the very idea that she thought she could play with *them*. He didn't even pause for air when the fat tears started falling from her round, trembling chin, only pointed out loudly that she was also a cry-baby. He was still chanting those words when she attempted to run across the street back to her own yard, and was struck by a car.
It was a mere two seconds etched into his memory, with deep grooves that still stung when he recalled all the tears he had inspired in such a sweet, innocent girl. He had held onto the guilt so long, remembering the exact way her small body had twisted and buckled, and skidded across the pavement. How her head had hit the concrete and her gold hair had become wet and clotted with blood. The moment of the crash had been silent, silent as a sleeping bell. The last 'cry-baby' had been cut from his lips as the whole world seemed to die with that little girl.
He didn't feel anything at all in the days that came. A selfish guilt, a fear that he would be blamed for her death. When the officer approached him with questions he had run to his mother's hand, screaming all the while that it wasn't his fault. He had begged his mother not to let them take him away. She should have looked both ways, he cried, everybody knows that. And his mother had assured him that it wasn't his fault, with tears in her eyes that he never saw fall. And she never spoke of that day again. Nobody did.
It was in high school that Tara came back to him. For so long he had forgotten her, had forced her out of his mind and went on with the same boys---chasing girls and looking for small, harmless pieces of danger. And then he actually had a thought about his life. And in that day all the girls and games had seemed useless, the future had become some looming monster. Like a cat he had heard of once, that would sit on the top of a door and pounce upon anyone who happened to pass through it. He knew now that such days would come again and again, but then it seemed that it was an epiphany, and he was changed. She had edged the future then, he saw himself successful, but her tagging along after him with tiny soundless shoes and porcelain cheeks. In a masochistic mood he had one called her his 'imotochan'.
It took him years to realize he was in pain, was still in pain. Real quilt had come with tears. He shed his first tears for her during that spell of panic. It didn't last forever, as he was certain it would. It came back though, became as reliable as an addiction. And she always swept in with it, ribbon twitching.
She was with him that instant, when Jill called. When the pain had diluted so quickly in his blood stream that he couldn't really tell if it hurt, or was just another part of him. There had been tears, absent ones that had fallen, like threads from an unraveling dream. For that moment the world was surreal and distant, a sun so far away that it was one of many stars.
"Did you hear me, Leon?"
"Why are you telling me this?"
"LEON!?"
But he dropped the phone back on the hook, rolled over onto his back and winced as if there had been a knife in it. He stared up into the shadows that gathered on his ceiling, sighed. That's when the tears had manifested to him, he raised tentative fingers to his cheek and came away with a moisture that didn't seem to make sense. It was one of the oddest sensations. To cry and the tears being more like something that had happened to you, instead of something that was happening.
He spent the rest of the morning like that, a staring match with the ceiling in which tears flowed, but were not felt.
* * *
He was on time for work precisely to the minute, a contained sort of look to his eyes. He recognized a few stray glances, whispers that ended abruptly and muffled exclamations of disbelief---the loudest coming from Jill. She extracted herself from some previous conversation and stopped short of shoving him towards the door.
"What are you doing here?! You're not supposed to come in today!!"
"What are you talking about? I *am* scheduled to work today---"
"Leon, let me take you home, please?" She looked up to him with so much concern, it was infuriating.
"I have a damn car, Jill, I can drive myself! Not that I'm leaving---"
"You are!" She strung her arm through his and started pulling him towards the elevator, tightly, as if she were afraid he would bolt. "Don't do this to yourself, Leon. You need to go home and get some rest, think a few things out."
"What I *need* is for you to get off me and let me do my job!"
"Orcot."
"Oh," Leon stopped abruptly and turned back, Jill reluctantly following him. "Is there a new case, Chief?"
The man before him regarded him silently, then shook his head. "Get out of here. Go back home or you're fired. We can't have you coming in here and doing a half-assed job . . ."
"I assure you that I will approach all work with my full ass, Chief" he chuckled softly, until he realized no one else was laughing and Jill was practically squeezing the life out of his arm.
"I mean it, Orcot."
Leon opened his mouth to protest, then sighed. "Fine." With that he flung Jill off and headed back toward the elevator.
"Leon! Wait!"
"I can drive myself," he snapped. He glared back at her as the elevator door slid closed, made it abundantly clear that he wasn't going to be moved on this decision.
*god*, he thought, *they're making such a big deal. People die everyday, the world still goes on.* He was going on too, he wasn't going to be left behind.
But he found himself at a familiar part of town, echoing steps down stairs that he had descended a countless many times. He raised his hand a moment, then hesitated, simply pushed the door in with his foot. He crossed the floor quietly, though with heavy steps, and sought the sofa in the parlor as if an oasis in the desert. All remained silent as he stared up at that ceiling as well . . ."Why am I here?"
"Why indeed?"
He jumped, and for a moment he thought his memories of Tara were coming to life, but the figure that appeared at the side of the sofa was an even greater surprise. He gasped, rose to his feet.
"You're . . .real!!?"
"What? Of course I am real." The Chinese man replied wearily, as if he expected this to be one of the American's strange tricks. He let out a startled 'eep' as the Detective nearly tackled him, his too tight arms keeping him from losing his footing and intimately greeting the floor.
"Leon," D panted, "Please, I cannot breathe!"
"God!" Leon gushed, "They said you were dead!! Why would they say something like that?! Even Jill!!"
D managed to untangle himself then carefully directed his confused guest back to a sitting position. He placed his teacup, which had miraculously survived the ordeal, down on the table. "I can assure you that I am not dead, Keiji-san. But I cannot see Ms. Jill saying such things for any reason . . ." he paused, hands becoming still at his sides, "Though I am touched that you care so deeply."
Leon shook his head absently, not even caring that D did not move to his usual seat, but situated himself at his side on the sofa. "No, Jill can be a real bitch sometimes, but she would never joke about something like that. Why would they think you were dead?" Blue eyes turned up with so many questions, and for once he seemed eager to believe anything that the Count said.
But this time D didn't have an answer or a speech, he had no idea why they would think he was dead. "Perhaps," he whispered, "We should visit Ms. Jill and ask her directly?"
"They've barred me from work today, but I think they would listen if you came with me . . ."
D stared at him with a decidedly puzzled expression. "Why would they 'bar' you from your work?"
Leon choked a second, then sighed, shrugged. "I guess they thought I wouldn't be capable of doing my job---"
"Because I am dead?"
"You're not dead!" Leon snapped.
D waved his words away. "But they feared you would become unstable as a result of my death. Why?"
Leon crossed his arms tightly over his breast, glared at nothing. "I guess because they think I am attached to you or something . . ."
"Well, of course," D smiled suddenly, his hand reaching out and patting the Detective's knee, "Because you love me---"
"What?! I do NOT!!"
"Don't be shy, Leon. You know you do."
Leon shot to his feet, his swiftness sweeping the small white teacup off the table and to the floor. It shattered, small porcelain shards striking his pant-leg, but doing nothing to distract him.
"I DO NOT!! And---"
Leon's eyes snapped open, his disorientation painted ghost-like lines over the edges of his apartment, a moment more of blinking brought everything into vivid lucidity.
"A dream," he stated to the air. Its answer seemed to be the hum of silence. "I was asleep." He sighed, folded his arms beneathe his head and smiled up at the ceiling, and the buxom blonde plastered to it. And for once, reality was perfect and the realm of dreams was flawed. But he glanced at his alarm clock just as it seemed to laugh: 'Think again!!'
"O shit!" he cried, zealously throwing the covers off, "I'm going to be late!!!" It was his typical morning scramble, and he made it to the office only ten minutes after he was technically 'on duty'.
Getting off the elevator he glanced back in time to observe a pass of 'speaking looks' just as the door slid closed. And for a moment he felt lost, alone and sinking in a motionless sea. But he quickly shook himself out. Dreams were just dreams and they meant nothing. An intercepted look did not give any more validity to them than pink rabbits.
He was half-way to his own desk when Jill swooped upon him out of nowhere. He grinned, prepared himself for whatever battle she felt up to today.
"What're you doing?!!" she screeched. He stepped back and lifted his hands in a fashion of vulnerability, but he quickly realized that she wasn't in play-mode. A serious Jill was too dangerous for his tastes, he tried to step around her, but she grasped his arm and swung him back around.
"I'm taking you home. Now!" She snapped, shoving him forward and toward the now open elevator. But he dug his heels into the carpet, became immobile to all her pushing.
"What the fuck is your problem," he growled, no longer amused or in a mood to tease. Jill paused, her eyes turning up to him, and to his utter horror---they filled with tears.
"Leon," she whispered hoarsely, "didn't you get my call last night . . .?" Leon stared as she raised a shaking hand and swiped futilely at her eyes.
"That was . . .just a dream," he stated concretely, though something in him was crumbling, and every wall that went down crushed the breath from him.
"Leon," she gulped, "that wasn't a dream. He's dead. His grandfather came by just a couple hours ago and picked up the body . . ."
Leon said nothing, deep down he had known that a dream between two dreams was often a shaky reality. But still, he couldn't digest what he was hearing. If he had bothered to eat something---he probably would have thrown it up that exact moment.
Jill's hand raised soothingly to his sleeve, but he flinched back as if struck.
"Don't touch me," he hissed. And, as the tears started to spill down her cheeks, it was like watching a movie. All he could see was her, but he didn't care. He couldn't feel anything, except this intense need to not be touched---no matter who it hurt and how badly. He swept past her, cold, almost appearing sickened by her public out-burst. The elevator started down, with him alone and silent inside. The close walls became like a tomb, and he could imagine himself enclosed forever. It was all he could imagine.
"Poor Leon."
He didn't look at her, this wasn't what he needed now. But she grasped his wrist, and clung to it as if she were fascinated by him. He felt soft tresses caress the numbing flesh of his hand.
"Where are you going, Oniichan? What will you do?"
He snorted, but then paused, reflected on her questions which came like soft whispers against his ear. *I don't know.*
"There?"
He shook his head, but lied. With a small 'ding' the door opened. She released his hand as he stepped off, but followed, bright red ribbon twisting about.
.The End.