So, there's like a criminally small amount of fan work for Kayaba and Rinko, and that needs to change.
Just a heads up (and if you've read some of my other fics, this probably won't be a surprise ;P), this is very much not a happy love story :D
Side note, Rinko isn't even on the FFN characters list. I hate it here. :/
Rinko shivers as the door swings open, hitting her with a soft sigh of cold air.
"...Tadaima," she whispers to herself.
She didn't bring much, but it still takes her multiple trips to move everything out of her car and into the guest room by herself. In retrospect, it's probably a good thing they hadn't been living together, or else she would've never even gotten close to getting her things back with all the police tape.
After that's done, she is quick to close the door; it's cold enough in here, which can't be good for either of them. Repetitive beeping echoes quietly as she turns up the thermostat, almost like birds chirping, except she's pretty sure she scared them all off already.
While waiting for the thermostat to work its magic, Rinko explores the cottage in silence, hands stuck under her armpits in an attempt to warm them. It's not much bigger than her house, and very spartan in the ways of decoration, but she supposes there's no need for anything more, nor is she one to talk either. Most of the decor in her own house consisted of bookshelves, and his mansion was just about the same.
She left behind all the picture frames she owns, packed away in a box at the bottom of the closet. Her few friends would never want to talk to her again anyway if they knew.
Her breath fogs on the glass as she stops by the window, pressing her fingertips to the cool, smooth surface. It feels surreal, being out here in the middle of nowhere. The mountains are peaceful, and quiet, and the endless evergreen forest looms just beyond the glass, reminding her of just how alone they are up here, especially in the dark.
Passing by a closed door on her way to the guest room, now hers, she sits down on the bed and pulls out her laptop, probably her most important possession. Her fingers are about to flip the cover up before she hesitates, then stores it back in its case again. She hasn't been able to bear looking again at the news—even now, almost a month after, people are still talking about it—and if she opens her connection to the real world, she's going to want to know.
Besides, she suddenly realizes she doesn't have internet here anyways. She'll need to ask for the password later.
The thought of talking to him, something that would've once made her look forward to it rather than backwards with longing for a different time, settles heavily in her gut like a cold lump of steel. Her gaze falls on the knife resting cold and silent on the nightstand, clean and unstained.
She's glad it isn't covered in blood, his blood, no matter how hard she tries not to be.
"Pick it up," Rinko whispers.
Hearing voices that don't exist isn't usually something to be wished for, but she tries, tries so hard to imagine the voices of all those people out there in the real world in anguish and fury, and the voices of ten thousand—less than ten thousand now—who are trapped in another world with a guillotine looming at their necks. Tries to hear them shouting at her to end this abomination before it takes more innocent lives.
"Pick it up," she begs herself, her hands grabbing fistfuls of the sheets, paralyzed at her sides.
But there's no one here except her, and no voices, and no resolve.
You coward.
Because of her, thousands, many of them children, have been forced to take up a weapon knowing their lives rely on it, and she can't even bring herself to touch this stupid knife.
Tell me something I don't know.
o0o0o
Click.
Rinko wakes to the sound of a door opening and a sore neck. With a soft groan, she rubs at her eyes, blinking. She fell asleep sideways against the headboard, she realizes, which explains the crick in her neck.
Click.
The second click startles her into full awareness, and she stares at her door, still closed, like a deer in headlights. The sounds came from the room next door, which means…
A light turns on, a sliver of it slipping under her door, half obscured by the shadow cast by something—someone on the other side.
She really needs that wifi password if she's going to be staying here, since her laptop is her lifeline to literally everything, but there she sits, completely frozen, just like she was when she first found him.
Seconds pass. The shadow stays.
It's not fear. Maybe she'd feel better in a way if she was scared. That'd probably be more fitting. But all the fear that is conspicuously absent just takes the form of more guilt.
Finally, the shadow moves away, and the light turns off in the hallway.
Do you care?
Rinko wants to cry, but she blinks back the tingling burn in her eyes. She refuses to curl up and cry when this situation is her own making, when there are ten thousand people (hundreds less than ten thousand now) who are suffering because of her. What right does she have to complain?
Starving now, but completely lacking the desire to get up, she moves to a slightly more comfortable position under the covers instead and closes her eyes; the exhaustion from combing through the mountains for three whole days has made a home in her heart and doesn't seem to want to leave.
The next morning, she finds a note on the table with the wifi password written neatly on it, even though she hasn't spoken a word to him. This string of digits and letters is her key to this place, a silent invitation; once she takes it, she knows she'll never be able to leave.
The house is warm now, at least, but in front of her, the cold winter stretches out for an eternity.
o0o0o
She doesn't actually see him for a while.
Fortunately or unfortunately (depending on the day), Rinko still has school, and work at the Shigemura Lab. On one hand, it's good to have something to distract her; on the other, seeing friendly faces consoling each other (and her sometimes, which makes her feel worse) over the current crisis (which she's already neck deep in) just makes the guilt intensify.
She turns down invitations to grab drinks or food with friends. She wants their company, but at the same time, she doesn't think she can bear the guilt either. Every day, she leaves campus to go straight home to the one person who can understand her situation because he was the one who created it.
Home. Home is where the heart is. It always has been.
He's usually Diving. The few times he comes out are in the middle of the night, probably when no one in the game will know he's missing. He makes no moves to find her in her room, where she's usually hiding, either working or asleep, so they don't cross paths for two weeks until she comes home late.
After a longer than expected day in the lab, Rinko nearly drops the styrofoam box when she walks in and sees him kneeling on the floor in front of the open mini fridge, peering into the decidedly empty container with a mild frown. The days are shorter now than ever, in December, so she didn't want to eat somewhere in town and then drive up here in the pitch black night; it's nerve-wracking enough doing it in the day.
He's so thin, is the first thing she can think, even more of a beanpole than before, and he looks so much smaller without his lab coat. His clothes hang off his frame, draping awkwardly, and his cheekbones protrude noticeably when he turns to look at her, but his eyes—his eyes are still his.
They show only the faintest curiosity as they meet hers before dropping to the box in her hands, and then drifting to the empty fridge.
"Haven't you had any real food for the past two weeks?" Akihiko asks finally, looking vaguely disdainful at the cheap takeout box. Between the two of them, he was always the bigger food snob, especially since he was definitely the better cook and actually enjoyed it, always insisting on making everything from scratch.
Words seem to be failing her, so she shakes her head slowly, and he sighs, pushing the fridge door shut. "What am I going to do with you…?"
He says it the same way he always does. Exasperated, affectionate. Fond. A little teasing. Her short nails dig into the styrofoam as she bites the inside of her cheek. There's a well worn set of teeth-shaped welts there now, from all the times she's felt like crying this past week.
Using the mini fridge as support, he stands slowly, his expression flickering with annoyance as his body struggles to obey his will, and when he stumbles, she's there to catch him, wrapping her arms around his thin waist. She finds she doesn't quite want to let go, even though she can feel the faint outlines of his ribs through his shirt as she presses her face into his neck.
A hum purrs like a whisper in his chest; he doesn't push her away nor pull her closer, instead simply resting a hand on her back, fingers tracing random patterns on her shirt, an old habit he developed years ago.
He's warm enough, but she hates the feeling of her fingers slotting between the too stark ridges of his spine. She has him in her arms, but she knows he's far, far away in Aincrad; she's not sure if she'll ever get him back. Is it bad that she still wants him back?
A tap of his finger grabs her attention, and he mumbles, "There's a grocery store on the way back here. I'll make a list later."
"You know I can't cook like you," she mumbles back into his shoulder, and he chuckles.
"You can learn. It's better than getting takeout every day. I'll leave some recipes." He pokes her in the side almost playfully. "I'm sure you won't set anything on fire again."
"One time, it was one time-"
Her fists curl up tight, balling up the fabric of his too-big shirt. All those memories...did they really mean anything to him?
His thin fingers draw through her short hair as he brushes a kiss against the side of her head—probably just following another old habit—and she lets her hands fall as he moves away. He doesn't stop her from following him, doesn't ask for assistance with the IV drip nor thank her when she gives it anyways. It makes her feel marginally better when he doesn't acknowledge the crime she's willfully committing, but again, it just means that every moment here is a choice that she makes all on her own.
One day, karma will come for her, and him.
Sitting on the floor next to his bed, she rests her hand against his gaunt cheek, the part of it that isn't covered by the NerveGear, and thinks of how he loves that world more than he ever loved this one (more than this one ever loved him), and thinks to herself, Not today.
One day, karma will have them both, but not today, and not tomorrow, and not the day after. It will come for them when they least expect it, but it can't end now, not until he's found what he's looking for. Only then will karma come to take it all away.
For now, it's winter, it's cold, it's dark, and she's tired, so she closes her eyes and lays her head down on her arms, and if she wakes up sobbing from watching children die in her dreams begging for her to do something, well, he won't hear her anyways.
These are going to be pretty short chapters, not quite sure how many there'll be. Honestly, they're more like drabbles loosely tied together. I don't think there's going to be much in the ways of story and plot elements either, but 2% plot and 98% angst was the general idea anyways, so :D
Also, this isn't really part of my Retribution verse (in which I go through the various SAO arcs through the eyes of an OC and focus more on Heathcliff/Kayaba), so Karma (my OC) doesn't technically exist here (which is super weird to me, because she's been part of my writing for a Really Long Time). Although she could be here, and it wouldn't really affect the real world side of the story either way XD Maybe I'll drop in a few easter egg references :P And if you happen to like how I write this fic, you might like Retribution too! If you came here having read that, then hi, thank you for giving this a shot! :D
Anyways, when I first found out about Rinko and her role in SAO, I've always really wanted to explore her character and all of her trials and tribulations during these two years. Right off the bat, yes, she should've killed him or turned him in. She didn't, and four thousand people died. Still, you can blame her for not doing so, but you can't blame her for not being able to. There is a difference, in my eyes. Maybe someone else of a different nature given the same opportunity could've done it, but that's not her. Because she is who she is, she couldn't kill him, and because she is who she is, that will haunt her, and I intend to take full advantage of that.