Disclaimer: I don't own Noir, I'm just a fan. All other characters, named or unnamed, are completely fictional and similitude a mere coincidence. Really.
Note: I'm French, I write in English: constructive comments/criticisms on wording and style as well as substance are welcome. Help me improve!
-------------------------------- Blood Flames of my Mind ------------------------------
The crisp stillness of late nighttime blankets Paris under its dark, intangible veil.
All is quiet in the flat. Moonlight flows through the open windows in opalescent threads, spreading ghostly pools of subdued radiance that chase shadows across the age-worn parquet floor as they go their slow, silent, uncaring way, enfolding the glossy whiteness of a tea pot, the sleek plastic casing of the still-open laptop computer and the perfect smoothness of a bare arm in a single cold embrace.
Mireille shivers slightly, as if from a sudden draft.
The air is still, dry as the taste of dust.
Kirika is her usual introspective self, a mute, pensive presence by the left windowsill, her breathing so soft as to be almost beyond hearing, pale skin made ethereal by the moon glow, dark hair half-covering her delicate features. She looks serene and composed, a perfect icon of oriental harmony, her gaze drawn to the silent, feathery enchantment of the night sky.
Only the sight of her hand gripping the wooden edge of the window with desperate strength, joints turned white from the crushing pressure, shatters the illusion.
Slowly, almost against her will, Mireille turns her head towards her partner and friend. The muscles in her jaw twitch slightly, nervously, her lips made thinner by the tension. The azure orbs dart from shadow to light and back, briefly glance by the breakfast table, barely noticing the two cups and their now long-cooled content, wander towards the place where the younger girl is sitting, almost pleading in their awkward search for support.
And stop short, as the blonde lowers her head, letting the golden locks slide over her face and hide the haunting in her eyes. Her hand blindly crawls across the pool table, toying with discarded bullets and an empty magazine, before closing reflexively over the matte-black handgun next to it. Long fingers gingerly stroke the cold surface, moving along the edges in a parody of a lover's caress, slowly tightening their hold.
Mireille's face suddenly distorts into a mask of loathing. Her eyes snap shut, and, with a strength born of raging grief, she flings the gun away. It slams against the wall with a sharp, metallic sound and clatters onto the floor.
The muzzle ends up pointed in the blonde assassin's direction, its dark hollowness mocking her mutely, shooting silent shards of memories back into her mind.
-----------------------------
Mireille crouches behind an overturned table, making herself as small as possible. Around her, there's only the shrill buzz of bullets whistling by her precarious haven of safety. The muffled staccato of automatic fire at close range is everywhere.
Wood splinters suddenly fly a hairwidth off of her face, making her jerk her head the other way. She dares not look out. Even with her looking opposite to the balcony, the dark hall is alive with the flashing flames of gunshots.
It was definitely a bad day, and going worse.
A quick glance left - she sees a lithe shadow darting between two columns, followed a split-second later by a hail of fire. Kirika, drawing attention. Thought and action as one, she springs forward and up, tumbles away from the quickly disintegrating piece of furniture, and jumps for cover again. A shadow upstairs moves in her field of vision, and she snap-fires in a single, fluid motion, sending her target sprawling backwards convulsively as he riddles the ceiling with bullets.
She barely reaches the safe place she was aiming at behind the marble stairs before the following burst sends sparks flying everywhere. A tiny sliver of stone flies by her left cheek, leaving a thin gash, nearly blinding her.
Close. Three shots left. Not enough.
She takes a short, hissing breath, then crouches nearer to the edge of the stairs, mentally taking her aim. Suddenly, she snaps out of cover, whirls around, and squeezes the trigger. The triple pump of recoil jams back up her arm even as she draws back. No time to check if she hit - she must trust the fading scream coming from upstairs. Then another, and the clatter of an Uzi falling off the balcony, as her partner, in a single clean shot, dispatches another opponent.
Two more down. Still three to go. And Vignal, their target, probably awakened and on his way to safety.
She ejects the magazine and rams her first spare into place. Risks an eye out, a quick peek at the other side of the large hall. Kirika, a mere shadow huddled behind a column, coolly waits for an opportunity to fire. For a split-second, their eyes meet.
Mireille nods. Her partner still has four shots left. That's one spare.
She closes her eyes, mentally counts out to three, then dashes out of cover and across the room, breaking pace and direction midway through and jumping forward to reach the right edge of the stairs, beating a long burst by a strand. She recalls having just heard Kirika shoot three times, and now, everything is quiet.
Confidently raising her gaze, she looks upstairs - into the business end of a gun.
The man grins. His finger strokes the trigger.
The sound of gunshot is deafening.
The man jerks backwards. Mireille stares sideways, just in time to see Kirika finishing reloading, walking out of cover. The blonde woman casts a quizzical look at her younger friend, who shrugs and apologetically replies:
"He was behind the dresser."
Mireille quickly scans the balcony. No lights, no noise - no one alive.
"We must hurry. Vignal certainly fled through the rear stairs, but he's crippled. We'll catch him in the greenhouse. I'll reach the rear exit and block him - you go after him straight."
A quick nod from Kirika, a circular glance to re-orient, and both sprint their separate ways.
------------------
Jacques Vignal curses as his bad leg buckles under his weight again. He winces in pain as he stumbles, barely keeping himself from slipping and tumbling down the stairs. He risks a glance behind him - no one, not even a shadow, and not a sound either. The firefight is over. Maybe he should go back...?
No. His gut feeling screams him to push forward. And Jacques has survived this long by trusting his guts, sometimes over his brains. He wipes the sweat from his brow, licks his lips - god, what he would give for a cognac - and takes another step. Half a floor to go, then a short corridor - then the greenhouse. If he can get out of the mansion, he will be safe. Help will come. All he has to do - get out of here.
Where had he tripped? His life had been an unbroken string of successes and breakthroughs. From his early days as a syndicate arm breaker, then snuffer, then second man. He had kissed the right behinds, greased the right palms, and spilled the right blood. His ascension of the underworld ladder had been a textbook example of a well-managed power play. He was rich now, a man of influence, ready to sit at the round table of the powers that be. He had everything a man could want, and every gun needed to protect it.
Or so he thought.
He stifles a groan, stops to catch his breath again, feeling like hell. His left leg is a world of hurt. All that because of that stupid horse ride fall. He was going to die because of a five-second lapse in attention two weeks ago. Any weakness was too much of a temptation in his line of work, and he knew it, but he had felt strong enough, prepared enough.
Obviously, he had been wrong.
He reaches the door leading to the greenhouse, hobbling slightly from exhaustion. His hand closes on the doorknob, sweaty palm slippery against the cool metal. He opens, his breath short, trying not to make too much noise.
Light. A surprised, childlike voice.
"Monsieur Vignal!"
A slip of a girl, ten years old at most. Long, blonde hair, carefully combed and held in place with pins. Eyes wide open in a mix of awe, fear and overwhelming respect, their light brown hue speckled with golden flecks. White T-shirt, loose pants - everyday wear for a child that age. He knows he should recognize her, but his mind cannot focus. He must run. He must escape.
"I... I am sorry, I could not sleep, and granddad usually lets me in here..."
Nobody in sight. No threat. Who is this girl? Maybe he has lost them. Maybe he can catch his breath, just one second.
"Is anything wrong, Monsieur Vignal?"
Cécile Armand. His gardener's granddaughter. He fumbles forward towards her. She is unarmed, and he is a grown-up, large, strong. And a syndicate man. Maybe she truly means him no harm... His vision blurs slightly. The leg buckles again, and this time, he trips and staggers to his knees.
"Monsieur Vignal, what's wrong?"
A rush of small feet, and she is next to him, small hands on his arm and shoulder, eyes alight with fear and worry, her voice full of childish, genuine concern. He remembers her grandfather: a good, honest, trustworthy old man. A fool, but a fool you can rely upon.
Maybe she really cares, maybe she really wants to help. Besides, he still has the gun. Its weight makes him feel better, think clearer.
"Are you hurt?"
His voice is a hoarse wheeze, tinged with pain and exhaustion, hurting his parched throat.
"My leg... hurts..."
"Do you... want me to go look for help?"
"No... just help me... stand up..."
His hand grips the girl's shoulder, using it as a crutch. He tries not to lean on her too heavily - she might cry out. If only it hurt a bit less...
A sound of a door closing. The one that opens on the garden. His way to safety.
He raises his gaze. A stunning blonde woman stands ten steps before him, cool arctic blue stare piercing him to the bone, a living image of defiant feminine perfection, her breath slow and unhurried.
The black gun in her hand, bullseyeing him, turns perfection into deadliness.
Cécile gasps audibly. He senses her freezing in fear. Yet she cannot see the woman - she's facing the back of the greenhouse. That means...
He feels a cold draft running down his spine, as if Death herself had just blown her icy kiss onto his back.
------------------
Kirika coolly takes her aim. It's an easy target, really. Six or seven steps, no cover, good lighting, the back of an obviously crippled man. She could kill him blindfolded.
If that frightened gold-brown stare was not piercing her soul.
Reflexively, she shifts onto her right feet, trying to find a better line of fire, all the while keeping her eyes fixed onto her dread-frozen target, anticipating his smallest movement. One clean shot through the heart, and it's all over.
The girl. She saw them.
The gun is cool in her hands, the aim steady. Just one flexing of the finger...
She will remember.
Fifteen steps in front of her, Mireille is slowly aiming as well, frowning with focus and concentration, slowly lowering her gun to line it up with the man, all the while getting out of Kirika's line of fire.
The girl's eyes widen in sudden realization.
The gun, in Kirika's hands, feels cold and heavy. Her finger resting on the trigger seems cast in ice.
The man suddenly drops, grabbing the girl and pushing her straight between him and Mireille. Instinctively, Kirika squeezes the trigger. The soft 'pop' of both shots thunders in the silence, shattering the transient illusion of timelessness.
Two red stains spread on the right side of the man's shirt.
The girl is standing, stunned, her hands still grasping the man's shoulder and side, her clothes half-torn by the grip of his dying strength.
Kirika feels her hand shaking slightly.
Mireille's eyes widen in horrified disbelief.
A thin trace of crimson appears at the brim of the girl's lips.
The man's arm crawls. Kirika hears, as in a haze, the soft rasp of metal on concrete. Even as her mind goes numb, instincts take over. She shoots without thinking, nailing him to the floor.
The girl slowly falls over, blood spreading in blooming carmine roses on her T-shirt from the two gaping wounds in her upper chest, the light in her eyes dimming like stars dying before the dawn, unspoken words drown in the darkening red dribble barely held back behind her closed lips, fading strength leaving her limbs, her skin slowly turning ghostly pale.
Her lifeless body slumps over the man's in a mute thunder of world's ending.
-------------------------------
Mireille jerks her head back in instinctive rejection of the discarded weapon, tears brimming at the rim of her eyes, swallowing back a strangled sob, searching desperately for a hint of forgiveness.
A soft, delicate touch on her shoulder stops her, transfixed. She shivers under the shy, fluttering contact of slender fingers on her bare skin, then slowly turns around to meet her friend's eyes.
The dark brown orbs are misted with the silvery glint of inner grief, tears pooling like tiny pearls of heartache washed onto the windows' edge of her soul by the searing storm of shock in a mute plea for help. Any hint of rage, any drop of self-loathing that Mireille was feeling is instantly lost in those depths of velvet sorrow.
In the past, she would have hesitated, faltered, retreated into herself, closing her heart for fear of being wounded even more, shutting Kirika's pain and concern out before making herself vulnerable.
That past is gone.
She wraps her arms around the younger girl's waist, pulling her close, drawing strength and comfort from the embrace even as she gives all she has to the one person who is her whole world, burying her face in the sweet, subtle fragrance of Kirika's skin, weaving a hand upwards of her back to the nape of her neck and through the thick, ever-tangled hair in a gentle, soft, comforting stroke, shivering under the cool, moist contact of trembling lips hovering over her ear. Slowly, with all the tenderness she can muster amidst the haze of pain, she pulls Kirika down until their eyes meet again, closer, even closer, until the world beyond recedes into nothingness and all that remains are the twin wells of unbridled emotions.
Then, surrendering to the grief at last, she closes her eyes and let the tears flow away, mingling with Kirika's into a single crystalline trickle. She can feel her friend's heart pounding, its quickened pace a perfect counterpoint to her own, as bottled-up guilt wracks her slender frame with sobs. Gentle touches are crushing grips now, arms locked around each other's body, fingers dug in clothing and skin like a drowning man's hands clenched on a lifeline.
Slowly, as tears subside, Mireille becomes dimly aware of her surroundings again, of Kirika's body pressed against her own. She feels her partner's hands locked in her back, still grasping fiercely, the soft tickling of uncombed dark hair against her still wet cheek. The fleeting bittersweet smell of the girl's skin and the warmth of closeness bring their gentle kind of healing on her own wounded psyche. When her friend speaks, her whispered voice is lilting music to the Frenchwoman's ears, the slight, sweet way she has of inflecting sounds to wrap them around her tongue and lips in that unmistakable Japanese accent underlining the shy concern and loving care the words themselves convey.
"Are you all right, Mireille?"
Mireille cautiously opens her eyes. Nothing has moved. The moon is still high in the sky, still bathing the flat in its cool silvery glow. The world is as it was, and still, in that fleeting second of shared grief, another door to the future was opened. Yet, she doesn't want to cross it right now, and she replies, in a low, ragged whisper she barely recognizes.
"I'll be."
"Would you... Please?"
A lapse in her soul-song, shyness battling with longing.
Mireille closes her eyes again, her arms tightening their embrace around Kirika, her fingers roaming through the thick black hair, her lips murmuring words in the girl's ear so that no one else can hear them, so that what they share remains their secret.
The moonlight has crawled a long way across the floor when they reluctantly relax their embrace slightly, facing each other, almost touching. On their lips, a pending question, begging for release.
"Will we ever forget?"
Mireille is surprised that she voiced it before her friend did. Kirika was always the one to ask thoughtful questions and, even if Mireille often had the same nagging doubts encroached in her heart, they were a long way from being given shape and uttered. The whispered reply surprises her even more.
"Do we have to?"
She lets the question sink in, nest in her mind. There is something beyond the obvious, instinctive answer... a soul-search, a quest for that elusive peace of mind they both so desperately need. It never was that easy, though, and still is not.
"Memories define what we are."
Kirika replies almost instantly, her voice a murmur, her tone quiet yet ringing with newborn confidence.
"That is not true. How we feel about our memories define what we are."
Another silvery flash of insight. Moonlight dances in Kirika's eyes, specks of pure white glow in deep, dark pools of liquid chocolate. Mireille can't help marveling at the expressiveness of her partner's stare even as she is held ensnared in its enfolding, tender warmth.
Slowly, almost against her will, the truly painful words come to her own lips.
"Will she ever forgive us?"
The thought burns in its acute need for recognition. Mireille unconsciously holds her breath, her heart fluttering, her mind locked in on that simple yet so overwhelmingly urgent question.
Snuffing a light out. Can that be forgiven?
Kirika's reply breathes back to her, even as she can see the words forming slowly and deliberately on the pink lips so close to her own, as if each sound were an archway of stone carefully raised in a silent, hostile river, adding its own range to the bridge that is meant to cross the dark waters.
"Will we ever forgive ourselves?"
The question brings back a flash of too-recent images. Golden locks held by bright-colored hairpins. The smooth, fair skin of a child's face under the crude yellow-white light of the greenhouse. Hazel eyes widened in fearful surprise, flecks of innocence dancing like golden wisps of faerie fire. A bright, young flame, now only alive in their memory.
Mireille locks stares with Kirika, feeling her own thoughts and will tuning in to the flow of the girl's emotions. Here is her soul mate, a woman with so few memories of her own that she treasures each single one. Mireille, who has lived her years to the fullest, still has trouble dealing with the sharp pain of remembrance, but the joyful candlelight in her mind's eye is all the understanding she needs.
We exist and then are gone,
except in the memories of those we leave behind.
There is no horror worse than being forgotten.
"Only if we keep her in our heart."
----------------------------------------- End -----------------------------------------
Moving away from "introspective re-writing" for the first time (well, not entirely...). I hope it comes out all right.
Inspiration: I merely asked myself what would be the impact of the killing of a child on our two heroines, given their background. Accidents do happen, and some can trigger life-long grief. Yet, there's hope as long as there's life, as the saying goes. An interesting paradox.
The quote is from a Shadowrun short story, "Tailchaser", by Paul R. Hume.
As for the "deep, dark pools of liquid chocolate" that are Kirika's eyes, have you honestly seen something deeper, more tender and that gives a warmer feeling than melted dark chocolate? :-)