The Get Backers belong to their creators, not to me.
Midou Ban and the Mourning Woman
Ban knew only one person – at least, only one person who didn't want to kill him – who might have some answers about his peculiar dreams. But he couldn't face her without coffee, and so it was that the Get Backers found themselves, once again, at the Honky Tonk.
"Ban! Ginji! Are you back already?" Natsumi greeted them with an enormous grin.
"Shouldn't you two be out looking for work?" Paul asked mildly, not even glancing up from his paper.
"Can it, old man." Ban took a seat at the bar, and Ginji flopped down beside him.
"Did you guys want breakfast?" Rena asked. Ginji tried to smile and Ban leaned away from her.
"Are you cooking?" he asked warily.
Paul did look up from his paper at that, but only briefly. "She isn't, not that it matters. I only make breakfast for paying customers."
"Can I get breakfast for them?" Natsumi tugged at Paul's apron string, and the café owner sighed.
"Do you ever take home any of your paycheck, Natsumi?" he demanded. A smile was her only answer, and Paul relented.
"Fine, I'll put it on your tab. But only because I don't want Natsumi to starve." He folded the paper and knelt to open the refrigerator beneath the bar. "Actually," he said, rummaging around below, "it's probably a good thing you're here. Someone came looking for you yesterday, just after you left. And she did say she would be back this morning."
"Anything interesting?"
"She didn't say. But beggars can't be choosers."
Ban scowled at the older man, who ignored him and began to cook. Natsumi poured coffee for both Get Backers, blushing prettily when Ginji beamed his too-cheerful-for-early-morning smile at her. She wiped counters and washed dishes, chattering animately with his partner while he sipped on his coffee, waiting for their possible client.
They didn't have too long to wait. Comfortably full and armed with an actual plan-of-the-day for once, Ban was gratified when the tinkling bell on Paul's door announced the entrance of an obviously distraught young woman.
As she related her story, Ban found relief in having something other than his dreams to focus on. The girl's boyfriend had proposed earlier that week, but her engagement ring had been slightly too large, and she dropped it. The night before, she had participated in a festival at one of Tokyo's shrines, and the ring had fallen into one of the shrine's fountains. She felt positive that the ring was still there - it wasn't clearly visible - but could not search for it herself. Her parents were taking her to Europe for two weeks as an engagement gift, and they were leaving early the next day.
"Please, my fiancé would be so upset if he found out. I won't see him today, and I'm leaving first thing in the morning, but I know he'll meet me at the airport when I come back. I have to have it before I leave." The girl was obviously well-to-do, and considering how easy the job was likely to be, the reward was actually pretty generous.
"We'll find it," Ginji promised. "Don't worry about a thing."
"Leave it to us," Ban affirmed confidently.
The Get Backers left the Honky Tonk and went directly to the shrine to keep their promise. Getting in proved a little tricky; the shrine was closed to the public. But they were the Get Backers, and locked gates could hardly be considered obstacles. The small staff that cared for the shrine never made an appearance, and they more or less had free rein over the more secluded areas of the complex.
The fountain that had swallowed her ring was not the garden fountain they had expected, but a rather large pond with an artful spray of water streaming up from its center. They spent most of the day up to their knees in the cold water, combing through the sandy banks of the pool. A number of interesting things turned up in their search: coins, jewelry – nothing as valuable as the lost engagement ring, which had boasted a substantial diamond, a couple of pairs of sunglasses, and, bizarrely, a pair of panties and a rusted, water-logged – but still loaded – revolving pistol.
It was nearing nightfall before they found the girl's ring.
"Ban-chan!" Ginji called in a singsong voice. "It was platinum, right?"
"Yeah."
"With a big pink diamond?"
"Yeah."
"And engraved with 'Pookie?'"
"Poo… what?"
Ginji thrust a triumphant fist into the air, and Ban caught the unmistakable sparkle of a diamond in dying light.
"Good job, Ginji," he congratulated his partner. He pulled a face; now that their objective had been completed, he had leave to notice just how cool it had become. "Brrr. Let's return that and get our reward."
"And dinner," Ginji agreed fervently.
"Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you!" When they returned the lost ring, the girl crammed it onto her finger and beamed at them. "They said you were the best. Believe me, I'll be recommending you to my friends."
She cut them a check for 50,000 yen and sent two very self-satisfied Get Backers on their way.
"An easy job, for once," Ban exulted around a mouthful of grouper.
Ginji nodded his agreement with enthusiasm and dug into his sashimi. "No Yakuza."
"No idiot Hevn getting us in over our heads."
Ginji swallowed. "No Akabane."
"No mind-altering drugs, personal vendettas, or magic."
"No Akabane."
Ban chuckled, feeling magnanimous. "You said that already, dummy."
"I'm extra-happy about that," Ginji returned with a grin.
Ban closed his eyes in sheer bliss. "And none of your stupid friends complicating things! No Thread Spool! No Monkey Trainer!"
It was a sign of how happy Ginji was that he didn't even argue the point, just continued to plow through his food.
When they had eaten their fill and had begun to slow down, Ginji leaned back in the chair across from Ban and gnawed on the inside of a cheek anxiously.
"But, Ban-chan," he said, "You know, we didn't make it to Maria's. Are you going to be okay tonight?"
Ban made a rude sound by way of response, but really, he wasn't sure. Having something to do had kept thoughts of the longhaired woman from his head, but she'd shown up in his dreams the past two nights. "Don't worry about it," he told his partner. "We'll get to Maria in the morning."
"If you say so, Ban-chan." Ginji didn't look any more convinced than Ban felt.
They opted to stay in the Ladybug again, even though they could have splurged on a motel. Soon it would get colder, and sleeping in the Ladybug would get a lot less comfortable the colder it got outside. Ban parked – illegally, for the sake of appearances – beside a decorative water sculpture near an office building, feeling specially good-willed toward fountains.
Of course, about as soon as his eyes fell closed, the dreams began again.
The braids of the wig that adorned her shaven head swayed ponderously as Merit-Set watched the dying sun fall, and she often reached up to touch them.
Rehema had called for a razor, after declaring her protected status there in the Theban necropolis, and had shorn her dark, tangled hair from her head. The hair remained among the tombs, along with her old life and her old name; she was Merit-Set, now, a name Rehema had given her, a name that identified her as 'Set's Beloved.'
Now, only three years later, Rehema, beautiful, innocent, perfect Rehema was dead. Tonight was the interment ceremony for Rehema's mummy; she would lie forever beneath the temple grounds, hidden in a rock-cut tomb for eternity, guarding the temple she had served in life.
Merit-Set cared nothing for the god of chaos for whom Rehema had named her. Rehema was her chosen deity.
"There will be a storm tonight," East told her grimly, breaking into her thoughts and seating himself beside her on the temple steps. "The animals are frantic with anticipation."
"It is also written in the sky, if you had eyes to see it. Rehema is bidding us goodbye, Beast-Who-Is-Not-A-Man."
He turned disapproving eyes on her. "Why do you insist on that name? She asked you not to use it."
"Because you had so many more years with her than I. Because you defended her, and I was not able to do so. Because she loved you." Bitterness rose in her throat, and she lowered her face into her hands.
East's voice echoed her bitterness. "It was you she showered her affection on, you she reserved her sweetest smiles for. You were her greatest triumph, she said, the lost thing she retrieved from the shadows. She loved you as well, Merit-Set."
"Don't call me that. Set destroyed her, the moment she used his power in full. I want no part of the red god who took her from me. I am Merit only, now."
She rose and crossed her arms over her breasts, holding herself against the approaching squall.
"She protected the city, and fulfilled her duties. Her sacrifice ensured the survival of thousands, and I had rather she die happy than live in regret – you, of all people, should understand that." As East spoke, the resentment faded from his tone, to be replaced by an aching sorrow.
Merit nodded, and a solitary tear slipped down her face, black and dirty with the khol that rimmed her eyes. "What will you do, now, East? Where will you go?"
East came to his feet and stood beside her, fixing his eyes on the sands that had begun to swirl in the distance. "I traveled ten years to come here, over oceans and deserts, driven by a nameless desire. I found satisfaction in serving her. Perhaps it is time I returned home."
Merit nodded stiffly. "Carry my best wishes with you, then. I will not send you away as an enemy. Rehema," she choked on her name, "would not have wished for that."
"Come with me."
"With you?"
"There is nothing for you in the Black Land now. The Shiki clans know something of being outcast. You may find peace with us, for a time."
Merit breathed deeply of the evening air, charged with the energy of the coming storm.
"She would have liked that, for you and me to come to an accord."
"That was my thought."
The winds had approached near enough to disturb her heavy wig, as if Rehema herself were urging her to accept. Merit had never questioned Rehema's judgment. She didn't now.
"Then let us be gone, Beast-Who-Is-Not-A-Man." She attempted a smile, and he attempted to return it.
"Shall we not wait until after she is buried?"
"No. She claimed me from the desert. I will not watch the desert take her."
"I'm sorry, Merit."
"Idiot. Don't apologize for such things."
"Yet I am sorry. You alone must carry her memory, now."
"Until men are myths, my friend," Merit swore, taking his spotted, withered finger in her slim young hand, fresh and healthy and brown with the sun.
"Merit…" East's breath came and went like a ragged wind. This day had been many years in the making, and they both knew the end drew near.
"Shush. Save your strength for your children."
"I never… hated you. I never… wanted you to have to continue alone."
"I am destined to be alone," she replied simply.
"Yes… But, a final gift, for you… my friend. May your own strength protect you… from the solitude… from the centuries." He raised his frail hand to her face, a face as smooth and taut as it had been the day they met in the Theban necropolis. "My friend... Awake."
Ban groaned as his dreams wakened him for the third night in a row. The Shiki clans? He'd convinced himself that the dreams had been fabricated by another; now, he was more confused than ever.
Rehema's nature and power spoke strongly of Ginji; East had to represent Fuyuki. Come to think of it, the priestess had possessed four companions – four guards, as it were.
Did that make him Merit-Set… Merit? The outsider, who stole the charismatic, would-be martyr from his former comrades?
No, that didn't make sense. While it was true that he seemed to empathize with her, he couldn't make himself believe that he was unconsciously casting himself as a woman who had lived during the Middle Kingdom period of Egypt. Other than the people they knew, they had nothing in common. Nothing.
Ginji snorted softly in his sleep. Ban watched him for a long while, as if he were memorizing his partner's face, the rhythm of his breath, the way his eyes shifted slightly in whatever dreams occupied his slumber. His mind insisted on replaying the scenes from Merit's life as he did so; Rehema's death disturbed him. She was too like Ginji, Merit and East too like himself and Fuyuki. Watching the moments before Rehema's interment shook him more deeply than he cared to admit. Three years was such a short time.
Dream, vision, or otherwise, this night's images would remain concealed in the dark places of the Snake Bearer's memory, well away from his happy-go-lucky partner.
Ban silently slid the key into the ignition and started the car. Ginji didn't stir as Ban pulled away from the fountain and merged onto the almost empty street beyond.
What was it East had said? That Rehema had found the lost Merit in the darkness and retrieved her? Glancing at his slumbering partner, Ban almost believed that East's words reverberated so deeply within his soul that they had to have sprung from his own, secret thoughts.
Almost.
In the city, with its cars and sirens, its heaters venting from office buildings and apartment towers, and its occasional whistling, rumbling trains, there is a continual mechanical hum that passes for silence in the evenings. Ban had known silence in all its forms. He had explored underground caverns where the silence was deafening, the weight of the stale air a constant reminder that one had been swallowed by the earth. He had experienced the silence of the outdoors – of the forests, where birds and animals and the rustle of leaves ensured that one was never entirely alone, as well as the silence of wide-open spaces, where one was accompanied by nothing but the wind. He knew the pregnant stillness that could divide one from friends and enemies alike; he knew it so well that he generally could foretell what the silence preceded: a fight, a revelation, an ending.
Yes, Ban recognized many of the infinite faces of silence. Never before this moment, however, had his own intellect failed to engage him. A thousand possibilities and courses of action should have flooded his thoughts. His frustration should have been met with a scorching anger and an even more intense curiosity.
But as Ban guided the Ladybug to Maria's home, he could think of nothing but Merit. The empty expanse of lonely years that had awaited her upon East's death consumed his mind, and he could feel nothing but the loss of Rehema, whom she had loved. Within his genius, his own voice failed to rise above the echoes of Merit's solitary existence and her terrible sorrows.
Whether by another's devising or by his own folly, Ban was becoming obsessed. And he was afraid.
Oh, I know. An evil place to leave. If you want more, click on the little options menu bar to your left and leave your questions, commments, snide remarks, etc. :) I hope you're enjoying my little forays into the past; I've always had a passion for historical fiction. There will be little tidbits of other times and places as the story progresses, so if you'd like to see a favorite era represented, just leave a review or send me a message, and I'll try to accomodate you.
