Author's Note – I found this looking through some old files on my computer. Who knows, maybe someone will still enjoy it after all this time. -Becky
~.~.~.~
The moon and you appear to be
So near and yet so far from me
And here am I on a night in June
Reaching for the moon and you.
~.~.~.~
Section 9 was an elite fighting force and their like was unknown in the military. They were the perfect Special OP team—they knew their strengths and their weaknesses and they acted accordingly. In the words commonly used to describe old comic book heroes, Section 9 'always got their man'.
But beyond their skill in tactics and war and beyond their fancy equipment, they had something more—they had the Major.
If Aramaki was the brains behind Section 9, then she was nerves, the gut and the soul. Even when the day was over and the mystery had been solved, nobody understood the motives or the reasoning behind it quite like the Major did. It made her all the more valuable an asset, and all the more fearsome a foe.
Still, after a mission was just about the only time anyone would ever worry about her. If she was lying in a hospital bed, or had just gotten her right arm blown off, that was normal Kusanagi; But there was something about the look in her eyes when she explained to the others exactly what had gone down in the mind of the killer, or the kidnapper, or the revolutionary, that gave them cause to worry—because Motoko Kusanagi was just that far deep into every case, purposely submersing herself in the feelings and inner torments of the criminals and their victims.
That was why Batou always went after her.
"You okay?"
Motoko watched him carefully. "Yes, I'm fine," she replied eventually.
"That was a pretty rough job, huh?"
"I suppose," she agreed, wondering where he was going with this. "But that's what we're trained for."
Batou nodded understandingly. She didn't want to talk about it—she never did—but she didn't ask him to leave, and so he stayed.
"Do you want to see a movie or something?"
"I don't, as a rule," she replied, turning her gaze toward the large window. "I told you so once."
She had, he remembered. "I just thought that maybe if you wanted to unwind…"
"I'm fine," she said.
"I don't think you are."
It had to be the first time he had ever said that to her, she mused, no matter how many times he must have thought it—the first time that this conversation that they had after every other case had ever gone this far—the first time that both of them had allowed it to go this far.
"I would like to believe that I could handle this alone."
And that—! Was that uncertainty in her tone? Was she showing him uncertainty? The idea was almost too ludicrous—too fantastic—to be believable, but there it was.
"…What's showing?"
And there it was—the chance he had always been waiting for…
Bullseye.
~.~.~.~
I'm just the words, looking for the tune
Reaching for the moon and you.