Burial
A Get Backers Fanfic by Rabid Lola
A/N: Yes, I will update The Promise soon. I just need to finish writing Chapter Five. Kinda got a lot of things piling up right now...most of the one-shots I put up were typed long ago, anyway.
According to my friend Zev, this is sad, but Wait is sadder.
And I know Himiko wouldn't have learned the trick of breathing fire yet...but let's just pretend she did at this time, shall we?
Don't own GB.
...---...
They stayed as a team only long enough to bury him.
Himiko sat by her brother's body, smoothing the hair off his face, biting her lip as sobs wracked her small frame. She diverted her eyes from the gaping hole in his chest, the dried blood on his shirt, more blood clotting slowly. His eyes were closed, face twisted.
People lie, she thought bitterly. He doesn't look peaceful in death.
He looks like he's in agony.
I wonder why, she thought venomously, sarcastically, hate coursing through her in a sudden, potent wave. Her mind remembered a convulsing hand and a young man, his brown hair hanging into his face.
Slowly, she lifted her head to stare, with as poisonous a look she could muster, at the youth standing over them. His tall frame was slumped and his vivid blue eyes were staring dazedly at his twitching right hand.
He sensed her gaze, and he raised his head to meet her eyes, not flinching at the naked hate in hers.
"Ban," she hissed, fists clenching and unclenching, her brother's head cradled in her lap.
"Let's bury him," he cut in dully, lowering his hand and shoving it into his pocket.
Something snapped inside Himiko. Screaming, she flung herself at Ban, punching, kicking, tearing, slapping, cursing him to the depths of hell.
"You bastard! Damn you! Why, why, why did you kill him?"
At first he didn't react, either dodging the blows or simply ignoring them when they hit. Then, to his surprise, she managed to push him against the wall, and she aimed a violent swing at his face.
She screamed with fury and some fear as his unnaturally strong grip stopped her fist, the other pulling her hand off his throat. She pushed herself away, breathing heavily, eyes puffy and red and teeth clenched.
He pushed himself off the wall and pushed up his purple glasses, hiding his eyes. "Come on, let's get it over with." His voice was flat and emotionless, for the first time in a long time. He was back to how he was when they'd first met: cold and unreachable.
Her eyes narrowed. How could he be so heartless? She'd known him for so long, and now... "Bastard."
He said nothing, only bent and began to pick up Yamato's body.
She lunged forward and shoved him away. "Don't touch him!" she spat.
"Can you carry him?" he shot back.
She glared. No, she couldn't, she was too small, too young. Taking her silence as her answer, he strode over again, picked her brother's body up, and staggered out the living room door, bending under the weight. "Get the shovels," he flung over his shoulder.
She glared after him for a moment. When his footsteps faded away, she jerked into action and followed.
...---...
They dug Yamato's grave in silence, a barrier between the two former friends. Now and then, Himiko glanced at Ban out of the corners of her eyes, wanting more than anything to slam the edge of the shovel into his skull and shove him into the grave along with her brother, and then pile dirt on them both.
But he didn't deserve the honor of being buried with her brother.
Her hands trembled with the effort to control herself.
It was morbid...they had to bury him in the bare backyard of the abandoned warehouse they lived in. When you were a Snatcher, and when you were lowlife, you did not have the privilege of graveyards. So all that would be left in memory of her brother would be a mound of earth, and a wooden marker, if lucky.
They did the standard six feet deep, then together laid Yamato's bedsheet-wrapped body into the hole. It took forever to put the earth back, and to smoothen it down. When they were done, Himiko flung her shovel down and stormed back into the house, not once looking back.
Ban's eyes followed the small, angry girl, an indefinable look on his face. He felt a painful twist somewhere inside him, around the area of his heart. His eyes slid down to the grave, and he remembered, remembered too vividly what had happened only hours before.
The pleading stare, half-crazed with the curse's effects, the harsh command, the last request—take care of Himiko
The fountain of blood, the speed of his own strike, so fast that there was no blood on his arm but plenty on his white shirt. The agony of Ban's blow and the agony of the curse twisting Yamato's face. Himiko's scream and angry, betrayed stare...
A tear slipped down Ban's face, furtive and small. He felt cold and sad and angry, but over all numb--and his heart began to ice over, slowly.
But not before he knelt and began to do the one lesson his grandmother taught him and he'd never practiced.
Quietly, Ban prayed.
...---...
Himiko flung herself onto her small cot, and stared angrily up at the ceiling. How could he do it? she thought bitterly. How could he do it? How...? Why...? Tears welled up in her eyes.
How could he kill his friend...
My brother.
It overwhelmed her then, the truth, the undeniable fact. She turned over, and a tear slid down her cheek.
Aniki's dead.
She forgot the anger, forgot the betrayal, the hatred. Only the pain and the sadness stayed, and she burst out in a storm of tears--not loud, but violent.
She cried herself to sleep.
...---...
When she awoke, the sky was dark; she did not know what time it was. Stiffly, she got up, head beginning to throb painfully. She brushed her green hair out of her eyes, and headed to the bathroom and washed her face.
She went back to her room, and glanced out the window. It overlooked the backyard, and beside the grave of her brother, sitting on the ground, was the slouched figure of Midou Ban.
As she watched, she saw a soft glow, and a thin trail of smoke. Ban shoved the lighter back into his pocket.
A cold, twisted darkness welled up inside her, and abruptly she turned and strode out of her room.
...---...
Ban smoked as he looked at the wooden marker he'd just made for Yamato, not really seeing the inscription. He hadn't been able to think of a suitable epitaph, so it simply read, Kudo Yamato. Brother and Friend.
Light streamed in a rectangle across the yard, and he looked up to see Himiko's slight figure, silhouetted in the doorway. He removed the cigarette from his mouth, and nodded at her. "Himiko," he said quietly.
Then he saw the vials and knives she held in her hands.
He barely managed to jump up, then go down again in a roll, as a gout of flame shot from her mouth and scorched the spot he'd been sitting on. He dodged a knife, and avoided the visible green scent of the Degeneration perfume.
"Himiko!" he cried angrily. "What are you doing?"
A knife missed his ear by centimeters. "I hate you," she hissed.
She didn't see the sudden sadness and...remorse?...in his eyes, softening the icy blue, or the way his movements suddenly slowed.
Another knife forced him to do an ungainly leap sideways, and he felt the heat as another blast of flame just missed him, singeing his shirt and hair. Piqued, he glared at her once more...and his eyes widened as he saw her lift the Acceleration perfume to her lips.
With inhuman speed, Ban was at her side and knocking the bottle out of her hand. She screamed and aimed a punch at him, but he blocked it and shoved one of her own vials under her nose.
Shocked, she accidentally inhaled, and the cloying, sweet smell of the Unconsciousness perfume filled her senses. Her hand flailed, and with a smile of bitter satisfaction she heard Ban's exclamation of pain as the knife cut into his side...
Then everything faded to black as the perfume worked its power on her, and she faintly heard Ban's angry voice, "Idiot girl, that thing can kill you! Yamato told you that the seventh perfume should be your last resort!"
...---...
She awoke on her cot again, and it was midday, and there was a blanket over her. She stared, then memory flooded back, and so did anger, and she jerked out of her cot, and stood...
She stumbled forward and groaned, a headache splitting her skull. The aftereffects of the perfume. She grabbed her bedside table for support, and felt something other than wood under her hand.
She glanced at a set of keys, and a folded sheet of paper.
The keys...!
She burst into Yamato and Ban's room, and saw that the beds were undisturbed. She opened the closets and the drawers, but all Ban's clothes and what little things he had were gone.
And the keys to their safe...
Digging into the loose closet floorboards, she found the strongbox that held all the money the three of them had--she, Yamato, and Ban. Ban or Yamato had always kept the key, she never had before. But all three knew how much money they had.
Had Ban taken all of it?
But no, when she opened it, everything was in place. From the last time they'd counted, everything was there.
He'd taken nothing, and left her with the keys.
Alone.
She remembered the paper and opened it, and saw, in Ban's strong, firm scrawl, Gomen Nasai.
A feeling swelled up in Himiko. She didn't know if it was sadness, remorse, more hurt, anger, the willingness to forgive...it was just a nameless feeling. Yet from the half-open door of the room she could still see the living room.
There was still blood on the floor.
The hatred came back, ten times stronger, and she clenched her fists, crushing the paper in one hand, the other not feeling the digging of the keys into her skin.
Then and there, the young girl swore she'd find Midou Ban again.
And then she'd have her revenge.
...---END---...
oh yeah... Riyuji may throttle me for this, (Advertising, again?) but anyhow...please read (and review) Riyuji's Ghosts at School fic, "Snapshots". You can find it (duh) in his account. Ja!