lied
she'd said yes this long ago,
ages ago, she really had.
"You've been out here for forty-eight hours straight, man. I think you should stop."
He looked back, shivering as the clear streaking liquid covered his body, soaking it to the bone. The rain was merciful, perhaps; if he waited long enough, he might catch something and die nice and slow -- a fitting end to torture.
He bit his lip anxiously and a bit helplessly as he peered at the man in front of him, leaning against his black umbrella silently. The rain continued to pour steadily, encasing everything its gentle touch could penetrate with a slicked back quality, sliding back everything green with an ill tinge. The clothes he wore were soaked already, even though he had been only standing in the spot for two minutes, and with an umbrella at that. It was like the morning of their non-wedding day; it had rained. It had rained, and she was too happy to go; and she had abandoned him and, hell, what was he doing there? He was helping a friend, the only true friend he had left. Did he care? No. He drew, hours, on thin pages in the back of his room on a wooden table that he had had since then, full of drawings of blonde-haired angels and red-eyed baseball players sitting on grass in the middle of the morning who said that honestly, she had said yes, once upon a time.
"That's it."
He started, staring, focused in an instant. "What?"
Yamcha grinned sullenly, teeth gleaming white as the only thing that was white and not gray against the sleet that covered them both in pieces of dreams and promises. He remembered that grin. He knew what it meant. He knew what it meant, damn it, damn it all.
"Do you remember that year we went up to Mount Paozu for Christmas?"
He swallowed. "Yeah…"
"And remember how Gohan got that gadget toy f-from--" he broke off, not wanting to say it (she'd said yes, she had, she had this long ago really, she really really had). "And he was thrilled, you remember. He took it wherever he went..."
He and wondered what had gone wrong; why he was standing here, in the middle of nowhere, comforting a man older than him on a planet that was likely to be destroyed with no one to defend it except the two of them and a thirteen-year-old boy. Why it had gone this way and had left a young mother with a baby no older than two, with wide cerulean eyes and a curiosity left unknown. Why he had even been born. Things weren't simple for them. They never had been.
"He loved that god damned toy," Yamcha laughed throatily. "And… then, one day… it fell into the creek by the house… and all the gadgets in it popped... and he was devastated..."
"She got him another one," He said. "The same one, Yamcha."
Yamcha shook his head violently, almost tumbling over with drink and exhaustion. "It wasn't the same. The thing wasn't the same, Kuririn." He glanced back at him with bloodshot eyes, and smiled, and Kuririn knew that he hated Bulma then, and knew that that was the only thing that was right, and that everything else was wrong. "Nothing's right anymore. Nothing's the same."
He didn't care about the rain. He sat down slowly on the sopping grass next to his best friend, holding the umbrella over their heads as they peered into the churning colors above them. Black colored with gray and flashes of white, while the droplets fell down their faces mixed with the salt water forming trails down their cheeks.
"We were fine," Yamcha whispered, staring ahead of him, ignoring the hot liquid pouring out of the corners of his eyes and the blurred surroundings. "We were fine."
"I don't know, Yamcha." Kuririn blinked slowly, tasting the words in his mouth. "I don't know."
The other rubbed his burning eyes with the back of his hand, wincing as the callused skin touched the sensitive area. "It was her, Kuririn. Only her."
He didn't say anything. He didn't need to.
Yamcha gave one, shuddering sob before slumping, defeated, darkened, defeated. "She was mine. She was mine! All mine… he took her… all mine…" He gave out a sob of a laugh, suddenly reaching into his pocket and drawing out his lighter, and staring ahead as Kuririn calmly reached over and took it from him, throwing it 200 feet away effortlessly.
"You said you'd stop, Yamcha. You said you'd quit."
"I lied." He gave a half-hysterical giggle. "I lied about so many things…"
..........
(dedicated to my dear something washed ashore, whose stories give us hope every day.)