Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters, and even if I did, I doubt I'd do a good job with them. That's up to geniuses like Yuya Aoki & Ayamine-sensei! Yessss… Get Backers DOES not belong to me, and may we all be thankful for it.

Author's Notes: This story is about "what if"s. The idea just sorta popped into my head as my brain slowly deteriorated in Trig & Pre-Calc one day, of a world where there is no Get Backers, and it's all Ginji's fault.

What If… (Somewhere)

By Rin

Somewhere in a dark alley, a man huddled under an overhang to escape the cold rain. A soft curse as a stray drip hit him square in the eye, and he drew his coat up higher to cover his head. He wondered how he'd gotten to this stage, but he knew the answer. The man wondered how he'd come to deserve this, but he knew that answer as well.

Ban Midou closed his eyes and remembered.

Remembered a father he'd looked up to and idolized, only to leave, and he'd become man of the house at the tender age of 7.

A mother he'd adored, who'd loved him with a mother's powerful love, gentleness and amusement shining in dark eyes. There was no love I her eyes when she discovered what he was, only fear and damnation. "This is my child, not my child, only a cursed, cursed demon's child!" screamed as he felled the men who wanted her dead, blood on his ten-year old hands.

Remembered a brother, small, pesky and persistent. "Baaaan! I wanna play too/ you're so cool, big brother/ Don't go…" Kyo would be 18 in three months. Did he even remember his long-absent older brother?

A man, forced into his life, a step-father who had wooed his mother with promises of undying love and vows of loving her children as his own. There is no such thing as undying love, nor perfect love, Ban knows. And though it was impossible not to love Kyo, Ban had been less than cooperative. That man was not his father, and had done nothing to earn the right to act as such.

He remembered his two unborn half-sisters, fasination with the swell of his mother's belly. Ban wonders whether the pregnancy went well, what their names are, what they look like. If his sisters are alive, they'll be twelve, born after he left.

He remembers (painfully) a man he considered a brother, taken in to heal from violation and misplaced trust. A family once again, and it had been too good to last. Betrayal in asking to betray, his hands are stained with blood, and they still remember the hot, slick pulse of Yamato's heart, haunts his dreams and plagues his waking hours like a crimson mist. "Ban, take care… of Himiko…" Ban tries to remember more than the blood, good memories that don't freeze, long-ago moments of contentment, of family. Sometimes he even succeeds.

A girl he'd thought of as a sister, screamed as he raised his hand and lost another part of his soul. Vows of vengeance, but he can't protect her if she kills him. He recalls her laughing, ocean blue-green eyes bright and happy. It's a safe memory, lets him forget the bitter woman she's become, who never smiles anymore, not when he is still alive and her brother's blood remains unavenged. Ban once thought he could have come to love her as more than a sister with the passage of time, if only Yamato was still here, but that thought died when he saw her again, and she shrieked, "I'll kill you!"

Ban Midou remembers wide brown eyes, a man trapped in the body of a thunder god. An equal. Opened the Jagan to dive into the man's mind, and instead of forging a nightmare out of a stranger's memories and his own ingenuity, he took that incongruous split in the mind, and made the borders clear. Just one minute (did you have a good dream?) to separate god from mortal, sealed away that other self, leaving Ginji Amano, the man. A boy really, Ginji was older than him by a few months, but seemed much younger. That hazy moment when confused eyes met his, color there instead of clear irises. He remembers talking, the invitation "This place is tearing you apart. You outta get out, 'fore there's nothing left of you."/"Why are you asking, Midou-san?"/"I don't know."

It'd been nice, having a friend. He'd been… happy… with Ginji.

Two good months, business had been good, and they worked well together, one ability complementing the other's. He'd thought about starting up their own retrieval agency, suggested it to Ginji, even come up with a name. But the Get Backers were never born, as his past caught up with him and everything fell apart.

Himiko revealed blood he hadn't wanted to spill, then the letter from his father that said far too much, and those wide, wounded brown eyes. "Why, Midou-san? Did you bring me out of Mugenjou so the Beltline could prey on Lower Town again? I thought the others were wrong about you, but I guess not." No beginning for their agency, no more Ginji Amano.

Later, he'd learned from HEVN that the bastard had teamed up with two of his former lackeys and they had formed their own recovery service. Two years later, the trio was flourishing, and he was out on the streets, starving. Partners indeed.

What stung was to see those huge brown look at him in fear, to be shunned while everyone else was allowed to bask in the smile.

Ban didn't understand why the hell it even mattered to him. After all, that little ass had used his money, eaten his food, and left him, alone. Alone and cold again. What had Ginji's friends really done for him anyways? He'd done all the hard work: sealed Ginji's monster away, taken him out of that demon's nest, tolerated the idiot as Ban taught him to survive in the outside world.

The saying was true, that a good deed was always requited with ill. Fuck them all. Sometimes it seems that he's only staying alive out of sheer willpower, so he may as well keep going. If only to spite the bastards.

His grandmother once taught him that for every choice one makes, no matter how insignificant it may seem at the time, that choice will change the world around you. And for each choice you make, in a mirror world, you will make a different decision that will thus cause that life to differ from this one.

Ban knows that in some other life, there is a Ban Midou who still lives in Germany with his mother and father, without the Jagan nor cursed serpent's strength. That somewhere he accepted his stepfather, and his mother accepts her sons, despite curses and changed blue eyes.

And elsewhere he is laughing with Yamato and Himiko Kudou after a successful robbery, in a world where Voodoo Children aren't cursed. Somewhere he saw his brother and sisters grow up, helped them with their homework and taught them the violin.

In some life, he went to high school, to college. Where he did not learn from stolen textbooks, read in the light of streetlamps.

Somewhere, the Get Backers exist, and that boy with the wide, brown eyes he can't meet anymore is his partner. He can't decide if that would be a good thing.

In another life, Ban Midou is happy. In that life, he might look at his loved ones and wonder where he would be without them (he'd be here), believe he couldn't live without them (he can). Somewhere he can dance in the rain, because he has a warm home to return to.

But he does not live in one of those lives, and he is not that Ban Midou. This is his life, and it's not much right now, besides the cold rain and his own bitterness. He's cold but it's nothing new, and the sky cries tears he will not.

After all, snakes are incapable of tears, and everyone knows that's all Ban Midou is; a cold unfeeling snake with no remorse and no soul.

The rain changes its angle, diagonal now, and he's soaked within minutes. He lets loose a loud string of curses, chokes on them as he doubles over, coughing embers. Flame scent, shit. And he's too cold now to save himself, cold blood slowing his movements, limbs sluggish and heavy.

By the time he can breathe again, he's not alone in the alley anymore. Blue-green eyes glare down at him, a knife gleams in Himiko's hand. "Die, Ban Midou!" she hisses, and Ban laughs.

Laughs through her screams, betrayal, how could you.

And as she brings the knife the knife down, he laughs, because in some other life he is forgiven.

All is quiet in the alley once more. The cold rain washes the blood away.

Somewhere, on the fringe of Shinjuku, Ginji Amano wakes violently from a nightmare. He lets out a few shaky breaths, scrubs at his face with sweaty hands. Already the details of his dream are fading, and he can only remember a beige Subaru and a shadowy figure inside, that strange sense of significance when he looked at it. And blue. Bright and brilliant blue had been very important in his dream.

There is an inexplicable pang of loss, and he shakes it off. He has to get back to sleep, there's a job tomorrow, and he can't let Shido and Kazu down. Yes, sleep is good. He curls into a protective ball under the covers and falls asleep almost instantly.

Owari

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