Disclaimer: Gunslinger Girl is the brainchild of Yu Aida. If you don't know who Aharon and Meir are, or what Childville is, please read my previous Gunslinger Girl fanfic, Battlezone.
I Wish it Would Rain Down
It was a moonless night over the Social Welfare Agency, Luna's visage being completely obscured by ominous-looking storm clouds that were disgorging their watery payloads upon the institute's buildings in great torrents. The glow of the street lamps lining the compound's pathways did scant little to ward off the darkness, and gave the sporadic flashes of sheet lightning naught but miserable competition. And ear splitting thunderclaps put paid to the silence that normally reigned supreme throughout the establishment at this late hour.
That last item of noise aside, one might think that such conditions would be ideal for deep, restful sleep. It did not apply, however to one particular resident of the Agency, who lay wide awake in her bunk bed with laboured breathing, her eyes wide open, full of dread and staring at the ceiling. Like twin projectors with limpid blue lenses, they threw images from her memory onto the blank white surface – unpleasant scenes that she found herself powerless to tear herself away from, all-the-more-so given that the weather was providing them with an accompaniment of disturbingly apt sound and visual effects.
Furniture and crockery being angrily hurled around, the thunder's crashing and banging mimicking their impacts against the walls of her former home.
Starbursts of pain erupting, just like the lightning, behind her tightly clenched eyelids whenever she tried to exert even the slightest movements within the confines of her hospital bed.
Tears trickling down her face at the helplessness and hopelessness of it all, mirrored by the raindrops streaming down the glass of her room window.
"Why don't you just die, you sickly weed? I don't want to be your mother anymore!"
Rico Croce loathed rainstorms.
666
He did not initially know what abruptly roused him from his slumber. This sort of downpour was like hen's teeth back in Tel Aviv; whenever joint missions between the Social Welfare Agency and Childville necessitated that he and the other boys fly over to Rome and stay at the former organisation's campus, he thoroughly relished the climate and the corresponding opportunity to blissfully snooze in. (Something to do with the fact that he was found in Europe prior to becoming an operative of the Israeli outfit, probably.) But here he was nonetheless, sitting up in bed at two o' clock in the morning and not quite clear on why he had done so… until his cybernetically enhanced hearing cut through the clatter of the October shower, and the anguished cry reached his ears once more from the neighbouring girls' dorm.
His drowsiness immediately scattered to the four winds and gone, Meir hurled himself from his berth, not caring if Aharon, sprawled on the couch and snoring like a lion, heard him, and tore down the stairs out into the driving rain. Before long, he found his thoroughly-soaked self standing on the front steps of the hall. Forcing the double doors open, he briefly paused to dry his pyjamas off as best he could before hurrying down a corridor and coming to a halt in front of a familiar room door.
"Rico?" he called out softly.
The thunder returned, giving its loudest roar yet, which seemed to shake the entire building to its foundations. Then came the cry of torment once again, from right behind the portal, and Meir barged his way in without any further hesitation… only to have to frantically block a well-aimed kick to his solar plexus and deftly twist aside as another blow nearly connected with his skull. Lunging forward, he caught hold of Rico, momentarily staring with astonishment at her dishevelled hair, bared teeth and half-crazed eyes, and pinioned her soundly against the bedframe, whisking the CZ-75 from her waistband and sending it spinning into the far corner.
"Whoa, whoa, easy there, hard-charger! It's just me," he exclaimed, slowly easing his grip on Rico as her muscles, previously coiled like springs, relaxed, and the near-homicidal look on her face began to soften and fade in favour of a numbed one.
She blinked twice, then gave a shocked gasp. "Meir! I'm so sorry; I could've killed you! What are you doing here?"
"I got woken up by a yell from this dorm. When I recalled that time in Mosul when you told me you hated rainstorms, I put two and two together, figured it was you and decided to see if you were alright. Thought there was special reason to do that since Henrietta's still away on that job in Trentino and you're all alone with nobody to watch out for you." He guided her over to the bed, where they both sat down, catching their breath. "Are you okay?"
Rico looked up into Meir's warm brown eyes, so full of concern. Her cheeks flushed, first with embarrassment, then with something else. "It was so long ago, and such a throwaway remark," she murmured. "Most people would surely have forgotten."
Meir smiled a crooked smile. "Yeah, well – I remember a lot more than I let on, especially to the labcoats here and back home."
A heaviness enveloped Rico's heart. She broke eye contact, staring down at her hands, which she clenched and unclenched uneasily. "So do I. And that's exactly why things go the way they do whenever the rain comes. It takes me back to a time I wish I could forget."
Silence reigned between them for a while. Then Meir sidled over, reached out and put an arm around her shoulder. "Maybe some memories are there to stay. It can't be helped. But the beautiful thing about the mind is that it can make new ones, nice ones, which can overshadow the old and the bad."
The heaviness began to subside, gradually being supplanted by a comforting warmth. Rico looked up at him once more, and it was now her turn to smile. "I think one's already forming," she whispered, huddling up against him.
666
"Did I actually see you grin when those first drops of rain started to fall?" said an incredulous Henrietta as she and Rico returned to their dorm from the shooting range. A sudden cloudburst had put paid to the afternoon's marksmanship practice.
"I suppose you did," the younger girl laughed, amazing her roommate even further.
"You used to hate rainstorms with a passion."
"Once upon a time, yes," mused Rico, her eyes focused far away. "But all that's changed after one night a month back."
And then Henrietta's jaw dropped when Rico suddenly eschewed the shelter of the covered walkway, running out to joyously twirl and pirouette amidst the downpour, gratefully receiving it upon her face like a baptism.
"Now I just can't wait for them to come."
The End