Very brief mentions of Gin x Kira and Matsumoto x Toushiro
Good Life- Francis Dunnery
Words Unspoken, Lines Unread
Softly now,
You owe it to the world, and everyone knows that you're my favourite girl
But there are some things in life that are not meant to be,
I'm not meant for you, and you're not meant for me
They stared at each other, two shadows in the dying sunlight, a compromise of light between two worlds. A distance between them that never was before, a gap they could not reach across. A tension, a darkness, and, at last, a voice.
"Why?"
Her voice was pained, quiet but tinged with emotion, and a smile was her only response. He had nothing to say to her that would relieve all the questions burning inside of her, nothing that could even begin to heal her, to mend her, to bring her back from the brink of despair again.
Her face bunched up in a frown of desperation.
"Was there nothing that could have kept you here?"
He turned his back to her, beginning to walk away. He couldn't… or, rather, he wouldn't, and her hands fisted by her sides in rage.
"Was I not enough?"
He stopped, and she stared in despair at his stoic back. They stood there in silence until he eventually turned around, his smile still there but with a little less strength than was quite normal. The rest of his face firm and serious, and she noticed in that strange, absent minded way ones sub-conscious sometimes does, that there was a vein throbbing in anger on his neck, at the curve up into his chin.
"You couldn't have done anythin' to keep me there."
She shook her head, not denying it, but as if she was trying to shake out an irrational or unwanted thought from the darkness of her questioning mind.
The mind appeared to win out.
"Nothing I could have done would have been enough?"
She watched him in anticipation. Either she would be haunted with the regret that she didn't do enough, or plagued with the thought that she never was, never could be, enough.
"That doesn't matter now."
She sighed audibly, and half-smiled.
"I see."
He began to walk away again, and she contemplated staying silent, letting him walk out of her life, and not for the first time either.
She slumped, and broke the tension.
"Could anyone have done anything?"
There was a long silence as he continued to walk away, and she began to wonder if he wasn't going to give her a reply at all.
"… No."
Here's to our problems
And here's to our fights,
Here's to our aching
And here's to your having a good life, from me
The air was heavy and quiet. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, looking at the ground, wondering if he would ever say anything. All there ever seemed to be, now, was silence between them. She longed for the days of laughter and jokes, for long conversations and light hearted banter.
She swallowed down her nerves, and went, again, for the truth.
"I… I miss you, Gin."
Their eyes met just as she said it, then his flashed quickly away before she could read them for a response, a reason, an answer.
There was a pause, and she did not dare look at his face for fear of what expression she would see. She wasn't sure that she really wanted to know what, exactly, he was thinking right now.
She heard him sigh, a light exhale of air barely audible.
"I know."
A pause, as she hoped he would continue, but he didn't, so she did.
"I thought it would be the important things, but it's not, you know. It's all the stupid things, mostly."
A grin of bitterness, nothing more than a cold twist to the mouth, flew over her mouth like an ominous bird.
Gin nodded, as if he did, and just for a moment, his smile slipped, before it came back, staring out into the distance at a point just over her shoulder. The tension was almost palpable in the air.
"I know."
There was another long, drawn out silence, as she wondered if he was going to say anything.
No, she decided, enough.
So, with frustration building, she broke it, half in anger, half in desperation.
"Do you miss me?"
He said nothing, simply stared, and she risked looking up at him. His forehead was creased into deep frown lines, and his smile looked distinctly unreal.
She smiled, though not through humour, and cut off any reply he may have been preparing.
"It's okay. Part of me doesn't want to know."
Softly now, you owe it to yourself,
And don't think that you will be left on the shelf
Because there is someone for you
And there is someone for me,
"Do you think you will ever come back?"
He raised one long eyebrow at her, almost patronisingly, and she blushed under his gaze, suddenly self-conscious in a way that she normally would never be.
"Can you really see that happenin'? Me being welcomed back, open arms?"
A faded smile swept briefly across her face. She wondered at what moment along the way she had wondered those naive questions herself. There must have been a point where she had slipped into foolishness, but she couldn't have pin-pointed where, exactly, that was. Grief is a long road.
"You're right. That was a stupid question."
There was another drawn out silence.
"Will you be lonely?"
"No."
"Oh... Why not?"
"I have other things to occupy me now."
A look of hurt flashed across her face, and Gin was glad he was not looking at her, because he knew if he saw the look that was bound to be there, he wasn't sure what he would do. He was pretty sure it wouldn't be a rational thought, and taking her into his arms now would not help anyone.
Her voice was lilting, and would have been described as coquettish, had it been intentional. Tears welled in the corners of her eyes, but she refused to let them spill.
"I… I'm going to miss you, Gin."
No matter how much he wanted to, how much the sight of her made him want to, no matter how soft and tempting he voice was. Regardless of how much he knew he could comfort her, and how much the feeling of her warm, familiar body might comfort him, too.
He smiled at the distance.
"I know."
He couldn't help himself that time, he turned to look at her properly for the first time, and could see the sorrow etched across her face. He took a step back, then swiftly turned and walked away, his back to her, out of the moment in the past secretly divulged in the present.
Like me, you'll meet them eventually,
Here's to my lover,
And here's to his wife, here's to your children
And here's to you having a good life, from me
"Will you forget about me?"
He rolled his eyes at her, but she wasn't looking at him. Not anymore. He wondered if he should read something into that, something important that perhaps he was overlooking in his own efforts not to read too much into these conversations, brief and painful, that they shared in secrecy.
"Will you forget about me?"
She blinked, deciding that honesty was the best tactic when such childish games were brought into play in attempt to avoid answering questions.
It had worked so far, after all.
"No. Never."
She watched the strange play of emotions on his face, the way that his smile slipped slightly at the sides and the brief frown that appeared on his forehead, disappearing as he touched his temple lightly, perhaps subconsciously. She watched the moment where tiny wrinkles appeared in the corners of his closed eyes, and the pulse on his neck, where she could still, despite it all, see the proof of his heartbeat.
He sighed.
"Maybe you should forget me."
She found herself smiling, almost in a way that wasn't sad.
"Maybe I'm not very good at that."
He laughed, quiet and humourless but not perhaps as cold as either of them had expected, and the conversation would've stilled if she hadn't been quite so persistent.
"You never answered my question."
"I have no obligation to."
She smiled.
"Please?"
He didn't speak for several seconds and she was sure that this time she had pushed it too far, that he would leave, leave her and the conversation and the last thin thread that still clung onto the past, rather than be forced to answer such a personal question.
"I will miss several things."
"Like…"
"People. Places. Sights. The sky."
"Kira?"
"Yes."
Bitterness swept her face. She should have known that about him, Gin would be absolute, honest.
"Me?"
Now, he did go, leaving her question unanswered, again.
Loudly now,
You've lost all your pain, you're married with children and happy again
Now I'm regretting the moves that I made,
Fatal mistakes are so easily made
"Do you have any regrets?"
He smiled. Always with the questions. When would she accept that the real questions were what she was not asking, and that he wouldn't answer them, regardless of what she said?
"Well, have you?"
"Some."
"I won't ask what they are."
He nodded, and she wondered if he was grateful for that. Did he appreciate that she was respecting his secrecy, for once?
There was a pause, and he gave in to the urge to ask.
"Do you?"
She smiled, and looked into distance, as if recollecting things long past.
"Of course, I'd be lying if I said I didn't. I think anyone who claims they have none is lying."
He stared at the curve of her lip, tilted slightly more upwards than normal. Her lips were always so full, so warm, so tempting, and now they had lost that tight drawn out line they had had for so long.
When did she start smiling again?
When did the light come back into her eyes? When could she start to look at him full on again? When did the grief leave her voice? When did she start to stand up straight again?
Where did the sorrow go?
"Are you not going to ask me what my regrets are?"
"No."
"You don't change."
"Some thin's don't."
She smiled.
"Some things do."
He looked at her, at her smile and her warmth and her energy, at all the things he could no longer call his, at all the things he was sure were now for someone else alone. He wondered, briefly, if Kira had gotten his little spark back too, and decided that he didn't want to know.
"Indeed."
The silence fell, and this time, it was her that walked away first.
Enough of my problems,
They only cause fights,
Forget that I rang you,
"What did you ever feel for me?"
She balled her hands into fists as the expected look of indifference swept over his face again. The sorrow had gone, but the rage remained, built up inside of her, inescapable.
"Did you ever feel anything at all?"
He sighed, heavily.
"You don't need to know the answer, not now."
She found herself glaring at him, an anger rising up that she hadn't felt in so long, hidden down too deep, in that primitive, archaic animal inside. It had been masked too well with grief, but Gin knew all too much about masks to ever have been deceived. His life was surrounded with them- literal ones, eerie and white in the eternal twilight of the years, and metaphorical ones; fake smiles, dead eyes, cold laughter. That was his life.
She glared at him.
"Why won't you give me a straight answer?"
He looked away, and she noticed suddenly that he looked tired, older, and she sighed, relaxing her fists again, flexing her fingers out, feeling her anger seep out of her with each movement.
"What did you feel for him?"
Gin knew who she was talking about. He haunted his mind almost as much as she did. His dreams were of blonde hair, flowing over shoulders or covering eyes. Two blonde heads, walking slowly away from him, out of the darkness.
"What do you feel for him, now?"
Matsumoto sighed.
"He's only my Captain, you know that."
"Yeah, course I do. An' he's only got very pretty and a fair bit taller these last few years."
"Shut up."
"Normally it seems like you're just trying to get me to talk."
"I know."
"You don't have to deny it, abou' him, I mean."
"I know. And you don't have to about him."
"Captains and Lieutenants, huh?"
"You never answered my question."
"Nothin' says I have to."
"Will you ever answer a straight question?"
"Will you ever learn, and stop askin' them?"
She smiled sadly.
"Is this what it has come to?"
There was a pause.
"I think you shou' go."
He stared at her retreating back. It seemed, each time they met, that there were more and more things that they simply couldn't say to each other, more and more words unspoken between lines that neither of them were trying to read any more.
And promise you'll have such a
Beautifully happy, and
painlessly
romantic
A tension, a darkness, and, at last, a voice.
"Are you happy?"
A gap they could not reach across.
"Are you?"
There was a silence as she pondered the question, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.
A distance between them, more so than ever before.
"Yes, I think I am."
He rested his hand, just briefly, on her cheek.
A compromise of light between two worlds.
"Then that is all that matters."
Two shadows in the dying sunlight.
He turned, and left, for the last time.
He shook his head as he walked away from her.
He would never see her again.
No more, no more, no more.
Never again.
Good life, from me
He turned just once, in the dimming sunlight, to see her retreating back.
He paused, and considered telling her something.
Three words that should be so easy.
He shook his head, and left.
No more.
She already knew.
Argh. This has taken so long to write, and feckin' hours to put in these stupid lines that KEEP messing up, and I really hope that it turned out okay. Reviews would be wonderful.
NT-x