Ginoza thought the first postcard was a bad joke.
The image was of a street where the neon signs of the shops were layered so thick that they seemed to consume the sky itself and there was only brilliant neon light and the street below teeming with life. It wasn't so very different a scene than one might see in the busier parts of the city, but there was a sense of electricity to the people of the postcard world that the people of the city lacked. He could look at this picture and he knew this was a place outside the system, a place probably lousy with crime and death, but also a place that was buzzing with life. It steals his breath away, looking at this image of a world beyond the one he knows. He flips it over to see where it's from, who sent it, but finds only one question answered as the postcard was sent from within the city, his name and the address of the bureau printed in a hand he doesn't recognize.
The only telling fact about it at all was that the address was printed in the MWPSB-preferred style for latent criminals (just his name and the word 'ENFORCER' written below the general MWPSB address). Because when you're a latent criminal, even when you're working as an Enforcer, nothing is truly your own anymore, not even your address… not even your name. Not even this postcard. When he died it would be boxed up along with the rest of his belongings and disposed of since he had no family left to speak of.
Still, the method of address was telling enough to give him a clue as to who had sent it. After all, only someone who was familiar with the MWPSB and the practices of the CID in particular would know to address it that way. After all, corresponding and interacting with latent criminals in general was typically frowned upon, so few people did so willingly and only a bare fraction of those would care about the preferred method of addressing correspondence. His family was dead and he had only one true friend to speak of, even if Ginoza had been too stubborn to be much of a friend to him in recent years.
He flips the postcard back over, looking again at the image and wondering why he would bother to send him such a thing. Where had he even gotten it in the first place? For all that it was clean, the yellowing back carried a sense of age like it had sat in a box somewhere for years. Maybe it had. Still didn't explain why he would have stopped in the middle of fleeing the country to send him a postcard of all things. It was just so… sentimental.
There are no answers to be found in the image either, but he keeps the postcard all the same. He might not be certain that it was Kougami that sent it, might not ever know for sure, but he's trying to learn to listen to his gut. He'll never be like them, never be able to sniff out answers the way they did, but he wants to try to be himself at least. To trust in his own instincts for once and learn to be someone… better and more honest with himself than he was before, when Dad was alive and Kougami… Shinya was still within reach. He agreed to this job because someone has to do it, that's true, but that wasn't the only reason.
So, he pins the postcard to the wall in his new room and hopes that he's right.
A few days later, he receives another postcard. This one postmarked from Hong Kong with another image of a busy street, this new road is filled with paper lanterns. It's beautiful and he pins it to the wall beside the first. The following week a postcard arrives from Bangkok. It's boats on the water, buildings with tall, ornate spires and a blue sky wide and cloudless behind them.
And so it continues. Weeks pass and the cards keep coming and by the time the seventh postcard arrives, he knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was right about who is sending them. The seventh postcard is a novelty card promoting Kougami's brand of cigarettes and is the most ridiculously blatant thing he could possibly have sent. Ginoza doesn't laugh aloud when he sees it, but it's a close thing. He's never really understood Kougami's sense of humor, which is quirky at best and terrible at worst, but he knows well enough what it looks like when Shinya Kougami is having a laugh at his expense.
He also knows that Tsunemori keeps a pack of those cigarettes in her purse and the stink of those cigarettes clings to her for days after a particularly nasty case. He's always torn on those days whether he himself finds that smell to be a comfort or just an irritant. Kougami had picked the habit up before they ever met, but he can remember standing out behind the school during breaks, playing lookout (mostly for his own benefit as Kougami never seemed to much care if he was caught at it) while Kougami smoked.
Ginoza had only tried smoking once and that had been more than enough. It had been when they were still in high school, just shortly after they'd met, and he'd followed Kougami out and around the side of the school building during break one afternoon. He'd been startled when Kougami shook out the cigarette, lit it and took a long drag, exhaling the smoke slowly. He must have made some comment about it, because he vaguely remembers Kougami telling him that it wasn't a big deal.
Then Kougami had offered him a drag from his lit cigarette with something that had seemed like a smile, but which he'd eventually come to understand was actually the smirk of an asshole who knew exactly what he was doing. However, as Shinya Kougami had seemed (in those brief shining moments before he actually knew him) to be the coolest person imaginable, Ginoza had leaned forward and allowed Shinya to put the cigarette to his lips.
One far too deep drag later, he'd ended up bent over the nearest trash can throwing up what felt like everything he'd ever eaten while Shinya laughed his damn fool head off behind him.
Several half-assed and one heartfelt apology later they'd found themselves on the road to becoming the very best of friends. Though Ginoza never had been able to trust anything Kougami said when he had that damn smile on his face again.
The postcards kept coming. They didn't arrive every day or even every week. The schedule was instead odd and irregular, purposefully or so it seemed, with postcards arriving every day for a time and then sometimes only once or twice a week and occasionally only once every couple of weeks. They would arrive posted from cities Ginoza had seen on the news, places he's read about and sometimes from places he's only ever heard of in his father's stories of before. Stories he'd tried so hard to forget or ignore at the time, but that he now longs to remember.
The remembering, however, is a trick he can never seem to fully manage. Instead he finds himself with only fragments: a turn of phrase or the name of a place or his dad's laugh, gruff but not unkind, when something struck him as funny. He can remember with perfect clarity the way Dad shoved his hands in the pockets of that coat he always wore or the way he'd gesture and move while he was telling some joke or recounting something that happened while he was a detective in the years before the Sibyl System came into wider usage. But, no matter how hard he tries, and he does try, Ginoza can never quite remember what any of those jokes or stories were actually about.
He doesn't doubt that Kougami remembers those stories. Shinya never seems to forget anything… even when Ginoza finds himself desperately wishing that he would.
Sometimes, he receives postcards from places he's never heard of at all and Ginoza marvels at his own ignorance and at how wide the world seems when you're trapped in a single place with only a hollow purpose and a life full of regrets for company.
The postcards are never signed and there's never any sort of message beyond the image itself, but he prefers it that way. He wonders sometimes if Akane… no… Inspector Tsunemori receives postcards as well, but he never has been able to bring himself to ask and she's never mentioned it. She's also never commented on his postcards when they arrive even though he knows she's seen them all. It was an Inspector's job, after all, to inspect their Enforcer's mail.
On his darker days, he wonders if these postcards are truly for her, but sent to him because he's already tainted and it's an Enforcer's job to take the risks so an Inspector doesn't have to. In the end, of course, it doesn't actually matter. He'll never know for sure, so it doesn't pay to dwell on it.
Sometimes, once every few months, Ginoza receives a slim, brown envelope in place of the usual postcard. These envelopes are always filled with cheap 4x6 snapshots. A garbage can overflowing with empty liquor bottles, a dog-eared paperback lying open on a bench, a man in a dirty coat sleeping on the front steps of a large building built from fading red bricks, a bridge arching high over dark water, a beautiful spotted mutt of a dog running across a crowded park. They're primarily just nonsense, normal everyday images that, nonetheless, seize at his heart with cold hands and squeeze.
There's always that moment of unreasonable panic when he looks at those pictures. That bracing thrill of fear that sticks in his throat and causes his hands to tremble. The inescapable worry that in sending those photos, Kougami has given too much away. It comes with the arrival of the postcards as well, to a lesser degree, but the churning in his gut is so much worse with the pictures. The pictures are personal in a way a postcard isn't. They speak to specific times and places, of the shop where they were printed, of a thousand tiny things that all together scream: he was here. He breathed this air and walked this street and if you go here you will find him.
The first time he received a batch of those photos he had held them so hard he'd crumpled them on one side. With all these little clues it would be child's play for any enforcer or investigator worthy of the title to find him. Might as well just draw them a map and send them that really. It would be a simple matter for the system to track him down, bring him to justice. If he were in Japan every time he insisted on sending Ginoza a picture or a postcard, that bastard would be running along a razor's edge with death waiting on either side. It's such a very Kougami thing to do that it makes him angry, because that man never changes. Just does what he wants and damn the consequences.
Intellectually, of course, he knows that it's fine. That the reach of the MWPSB doesn't extend beyond Japan and so, as long as Shinya stays out of Japan, he is as safe as it is possible to be from the threat of elimination by the Sibyl System. That it doesn't truly matter how many stupid pictures or postcards he insists on sending because there is nothing to be done with them. Still, the instinctual reaction is always there, that terrible icy, sinking feeling in his gut. Ginoza had started making a point of opening the envelopes in private after the first few just because he didn't want the others to see his reaction to them. It was bad enough as it was without the added embarrassment of others seeing him having a panic attack over a picture of a flock of geese.
Worse by far was the fact that he couldn't begin to comprehend why Kougami sent them at all. There was never a note, never any rhyme or reason to the postcards and pictures that might convey some sort of message or meaning behind them. And, if Kougami was just sending him these things at random (which was the only thing that made any sense) he couldn't imagine why he even bothered. They hadn't seen each other since that day. They hadn't spoken more than they absolutely had to in years. Of course, that was his own damn fault for being so unfailingly stubborn and hurt and afraid and spectacularly stupid. But, his fault or not, that didn't make it any less the truth. Of course, Kougami had never given any indication that his feelings towards Ginoza had changed at all. So perhaps they hadn't. It was perfectly possible that Shinya had continued to think of them as friends and still did even after his demotion, even now that he'd left Japan. Maybe those postcards and pictures were just his way of staying connected to an old friend. On his better days, he liked to imagine that was true.
On his darker days -which to be honest are far more frequent- those postcards felt like a punishment. Because no matter how many postcards or pictures he received, Kougami was gone beyond his reach as surely as Dad was even if not in quite the same way. He'd missed all that extra time with them for… nothing. He'd ended up in the same place he'd always feared he would and now it didn't even really matter to him that he had. He simply didn't care anymore if he was an Investigator or an Enforcer, it made no difference at all. All that mattered now was doing what good he could with the time he had left. Just doing the job because someone had to and so it might as well be him.
Why not, after all? What else was there for him to do besides sit in a detention center and stare at the walls? So, he was an Enforcer. He was trying to live on past his own failures that had, in the end, had so little to do with his mental health and absolutely everything to do with the way he'd handled his relationships with the most important people in his life. And every time he thought he had a handle on it. Every single time he thought that he'd finally come to terms with this life… that he was at peace with his fall and his decision to be an enforcer… another damn postcard arrived. Another damn batch of pictures that just seemed to scream: See, Ginoza, it isn't so bad down here. I don't need you at all and I'm doing just fine.
He wonders sometimes what he'll do when the postcards stop.
Because he knows some day they will.
Some day he'll wake up and realize it's been a month rather than a week or a few days since he received the last. Maybe he'll manage to hold out hope that it doesn't mean anything for another month or two past that, but eventually he'll come to terms with the fact that they've stopped.
Will he be relieved? Will he finally be able to resign himself completely to this life?
Will he be able to deal with what it might mean?
Or will that be the thing that finally breaks him? That finally sends him spiraling over the edge.
Because if those postcards stop coming, it might simply mean that Shinya's finally forgotten them, forgotten him, and moved on completely as he wishes sometimes- on those darker days- that he would.
Or it might mean that he's dead. That he's died some ignoble, anonymous death in the wide, wild world and there's no one around to mourn him or send condolences to the people he used to know.
That, either way, he might never know for sure.
Would he be able to handle those possibilities?
To handle the idea of just never knowing what became of him?
To handle the idea that Shinya Kougami, like Schrödinger's cat, might just continue to exist forever in the space between those options; that his fate will always be a question and never a certainty. Will he be able to live hoping for the former and in perpetual fear of the latter? Would he be able to continue to work cases, live out his life as an Enforcer that way?
Or would he take those piles of photos and postcards and run. Run and leave Japan and everything he'd ever known behind to follow Shinya's trail into the wide world. Use those postcards and pictures as a map to seek an answer to all the questions that plague him. Not just the answer to whether Shinya Kougami is alive or dead, but to all those other questions as well. The questions he's thought of and the questions he can't bring himself to think of. Those that quiver half-formed in the darkness of his fragile, angry heart.
He's been dating the pictures since he received the first batch, smoothing them out and printing the area and date from the envelope's postmark on the back of each.
He tries very hard not to think about what that means.
He pins the latest postcard ('Wish You Were Here… Sunny California' written in curling font across an image of a long stretch of beach below a bright blue cloudless sky with the dark waters of the Pacific Ocean stretching out to the horizon) next to all the rest. Three years of postcards and at some point he just started layering them one of top of the other. He never gets a postcard from the same place twice so he knows Kougami hasn't settled anywhere. He doesn't know what he's searching for, but he half hopes he never finds it.
In the early hours of morning just before dawn, as he lays awake glaring through the darkness at where he knows that last postcard to be, he allows himself to admit (if just for a moment) that he wishes he was there too.
When he sleeps he dreams of waves lapping against a far off shore and sometimes he sees Kougami, not as he must be now, but as he was when they were young. He'd recognize that stupid hair anywhere even though Kougami is turned away from him and facing that endless ocean. He lays sprawled in the sand, wearing the same suit as he always had on the job, but his feet are bare.
He can smell the sea, feel the spray on his face even though he's standing far, far away from where it laps against the shore chasing ever closer to Kougami's heels.
He often wakes from these dreams to find his pillow damp and the taste of saltwater on his lips.
"You know," Akane murmurs, fingering the damp postcard that has been laid out on the desk to dry. She touches the wear lines that indicate that it is normally folded in quarters and has been opened and tucked away hundreds of times. "I've always wanted to see the ocean."
"It's not nearly so blue here," Ginoza replies, feigning disinterest, but unable to keep his shoulders from tightening defensively. He normally keeps it tucked away these days, out of sight in his pocket, but the pursuit this morning had soaked him through to the skin. If he didn't lay it out it wouldn't dry properly and he… doesn't want to lose it.
After all, it's been over two months since he received it.
"It's beautiful," Akane comments, smiling at him in that wane, bittersweet way she does these days. He's never quite certain if that smile is a result of what Kougami had done or his own changed status or something completely unrelated. He only knows that that wasn't a smile he'd ever seen before that day. "The ocean, I mean. Do you think they have similar criminal systems in… this is from America, right?"
"I don't know. I know similar systems have been implemented in various parts of Europe, but the news cycle rarely mentions much of the world beyond that. When they do they always speak of it in terms of it being a lawless land full of latent criminals, deviants and corrupting influences."
He doesn't say that he hopes it is. That he hopes those Western lands are as unmonitored and chaotic and beautiful as they seem in those postcards. That he hopes that they're the sort of places where Kougami is free to be a detective again if he wants. Where he only has to run if he feels like it. He doesn't say any of that, but then she's always been an excellent detective herself, so he assumes that it isn't something he needs to say for her to understand.
"Me too," she whispers and he smiles.
He thinks, in another place or another life, that they would have been great friends.
There is no postcard that month or the month after.
No postcard or envelope at all since 'Sunny California'.
He listens to the sound of rain pelting the window and reads the case file again and tries not to think about whether the cat is dead or alive inside that box.
Another three months pass and he finds it's simple to focus when he's on the job. When he has a case, he devotes himself to it utterly. Analyzing clues, determining motivations, planning the next move and the move after that. It's a simple matter to focus with the rush of adrenaline pulsing through his system and his feet slapping against the pavement as he chases a suspect, paralyzer in hand.
It's far more difficult to keep that focus in the hours in-between when there is no criminal to track, no case to solve.
Six months pass and sometimes he wakes up in the middle of the night and it takes him a disturbingly long while to remember where he is. It takes him far longer to remember why he's still there.
On good nights, he dreams of the days before Dad became an Enforcer. He dreams of his mother's laughter, of Shinya's smile when they'd both been deemed qualified to work for the MWPSB, of Shinya's arm flung carelessly over his shoulder at their graduation ceremony.
On bad nights, he dreams of Dad dying in his arms, of the night he found out Kougami was going to be reclassified and that he would become an enforcer. Of that terrible yawning chasm of guilt that had been so quickly overwhelmed by cold fury at having been betrayed once again. The taste of bile lingering in his mouth as he tries to pull himself back together, because they left, they always left and why had he expected Shinya Kougami would be any different.
The days are paperwork and working out and cases. He's rarely alone during those hours and he prefers it that way.
At night, when he's awake- which he is more and more frequently these days- he stares out the window and wonders if this is what his life will be like now. Dime whines at him softly from his pen and Ginoza pushes away from the window to go run his fingers through the husky's soft shaggy fur.
The nights seem very, very long.
Nine months since that last postcard and he misses him with an ache that he should have felt years ago when he'd woken up in the hospital to find Akane sleeping in the chair at his bedside. He'd known in that moment that Shinya Kougami was gone. Known she hadn't been able to stop him from the sadness that lingered in her expression even as she slept. In some ways, he had been glad.
Fiercely, defiantly glad that the monster that had killed his father, had killed so many other people and had almost killed him was dead. But it was a lonely and terrible thing to realize the price that Kougami had paid and would continue to pay for dolling out that piece of justice. Still, he thought it was probably a good thing that Kougami was gone.
He still remembered that confusing, paralyzing moment when the chief had stood behind him and laid a hand against his paralyzer and the gun had switched to lethal enforcement mode. When the chief had urged him to kill the enforcer… to kill Kougami… his friend. No, it was good that Shinya was gone. He would never have been safe here, even if they had captured Makishima and he'd gone to wherever it was they would have taken that evil son of a bitch. He didn't understand it, couldn't understand it or reconcile it with what he knew about the system, about justice, but he knew in his heart that Shinya Kougami would not have lingered much longer in this world even then. That he would have died a terrible, anonymous death just like Kagari, because he had little doubt that Kagari had received a similar judgment even if he would probably never be able to prove it or even voice his suspicions aloud.
So, no, this was probably for the best. It was better that Shinya was safe and far from this place, that he was free even if it meant he was a fugitive. He could be satisfied just knowing that Kougami was alive out there somewhere, running and free. Knowing that would be enough, it would have to be.
He longs for that certainty now.
It's a Tuesday and he's got the few things he needs wrapped up and tucked deep into the pocket of his coat. He hopes no one will think to question the fact that he chose to wear heavy work boots instead of his usual dress shoes. Since the forecast calls for rain, he's fairly certain they'll excuse it away even if they do notice the unusual occurrence.
He's managed to convince Inspector Tsunemori to allow him to take Dime along on today's investigation and that's certainly a relief. He's far too fond of the husky to leave him behind and he'd chosen most of the variables in his plan to facilitate taking Dime with him when he left. That had actually been the most challenging part of making a plan once he'd finally made the decision to do so. It was difficult enough to plan an escape for one; it was a logistical nightmare to plan an escape for two. It was fortunate that he'd discovered several opportunities for exploitation when he was an Inspector and he'd picked up a few more besides since becoming an Enforcer.
It was strange to think that, when it came right down to it, he was far more his father's son than he would have ever have cared to admit. Once his decision had been made, he'd had little trouble getting the tech he needed to exploit weaknesses in the system, he'd even ended up using some of Dad's shady contacts to get supplies, bribe officials and buy his space on the freighter that would carry him out of the country. Weeks ago, he'd burned the postcards and photos Kougami had sent him. Tsunemori had looked at him with such sadness in her eyes when he'd told her he was done holding onto the past. Now he carries only a list of dates and places written on the last postcard Kougami sent. Worn soft by age and use, it remains where he has always kept it, folded up and shoved deep into his pants pocket for safekeeping.
Wish you were here, the postcard said.
With any luck he would be soon enough.
He does feel a bit guilty for the reprimand Tsunemori will be facing for his behavior. But not so guilty that he's willing to stay. He's spent almost five years as an Enforcer. It's a job he agreed to do because someone had to and he's finally tired of being that someone.
"Enforcer?" Inspector Tsunemori calls after him as they move through the rubble and trash that clogs the third floor hall. He's been moving further and further ahead with Dime beside him, clearing room after room on the right side of the hall while she's been checking the rooms on the left. The building was once a cheap motel, now it's a frequent hideaway for latent criminals and less desirable elements. It's due for demolition at the end of the week so they'd been tasked with doing due diligence on the property to be sure there weren't any nasty surprises waiting for the health and safety crew that would be overseeing the destruction.
"Inspector?" He responds blandly, shoving open another door, paralyzer held at the ready.
"This floor seems quiet. I'm going go ahead and take a look on the floor above. Can you finish clearing this floor on your own?" He glances back at her and she's standing in the middle of the hall, her paralyzer aimed at the floor. It's unexpected, it's against protocol, but it will make slipping his leash considerably easier. She meets his gaze with clear eyes and a blank expression, "Be careful, Enforcer."
Then she's turning, jogging away towards the stairs and he's left alone with the knowledge that she probably knew what he was up to from the very start. They'd understood each other much better since he'd become an Enforcer. He really should have expected that she'd know, that she'd understand even if she'd never consider leaving herself.
If he makes it, and it's a big if, he makes the decision to send Akane a postcard.
After all, people change.
But that's a problem for tomorrow.
Today there's no point in squandering the opportunity he's been given so he drops his paralyzer where it will be easily found and jogs back down the hall to the window at the far end. There's an old fire escape on that side of the building, rickety and falling apart, but solid enough to hold his weight if he's very,very lucky. He shoves the window open and ducks through onto the wet landing beyond. Metal clangs beneath him as he plants his cybernetic hand against the grating and the rain is a light drizzle that flattens his shaggy hair in moments. The water drips uncomfortably down his neck as he leans back inside to issue a series of sharp, quiet commands to Dime. With a soft bark, the husky is already off and moving almost before he's finished speaking as if he knows exactly what Ginoza wants from him and it brings a smile to his face.
With Dime safely away, he pushes himself to his feet and takes the stairs down two at a time; the ladder attached to the last landing has long-since fallen away so it's a long, hard drop to the pavement below. Then he's off, hobbling a bit at first, but eventually running full-tilt down the alley, splashing through the shallow puddles. His suit is damp as he hits the street and moves into the crowd activating a Komissa projection as he makes his way across the plaza. A blow on the whistle he'd kept in his pocket until now will call Dime to him. He has faith, as he moves into the empty street beyond the plaza, that the pup will be able to find him without difficulty. He drops the Hanako projection and ducks into a narrow street lined with darkened shops, cuts down an alley and finally steps out onto the next street which is crowded with early evening traffic.
The rain is heavier now, as he'd hoped it would be, and he uses the poor visibility to snatch an umbrella from a street vender on the corner with a silent apology and steps into the crowd, popping the umbrella open and raising it over his head. He blows the whistle again and keeps moving, blending easily enough with the bustle of the early-evening traffic. The street-level scanners in this district had been brought down for repair an hour before as part of the standard yearly maintenance schedule. They'd be back up in another ten minutes or so which is how long he has to make it out to the harbor where the sensors have hacks in place to keep him anonymous long enough to board his ship.
An hour later, with Dime at his side and nothing to his name besides some cash, a whistle and a well-worn postcard, he is leaning against the railing of the ship watching the lights of the city fade into the distance. And even if nothing comes of this, even if he spends the rest of his life looking for a ghost, in this moment he doesn't think he'll ever regret this decision.
There's a man waiting for him in his cabin.
A man who's kicked back on his bunk, reading some English paperback Ginoza doesn't recognize and wouldn't care about even if he did.
The face of that man is both strange and familiar and he hopes he doesn't look as shell-shocked as he feels.
"Hey. Came to pick you up," the man says, setting the book face down and open on his chest. An easy smile turns up the corners of his mouth. It seems like a lifetime since he's seen that smile aimed at him.
He feels an answering smirk curve his own lips. It feels fragile, trembling and unsure, but also more genuine than anything he's felt in a long, long time.
"Hey."
-fin-