The ending of the second season really kills me. :sigh: There is a tentative plan for a second drabble to be attached to this one.
Her feet hit the pavement hard, the cement cracking and flaking around her feet as people whipped around to face the sound. She ignored their shouts and attempts to stop her, dashing to the police van where he was supposedly being held in protective custody.
Three men advanced to stop her, she stopped just short of the van doors, breathing a little hard.
"Your name and station mamm, we can't let you see him!"
She snarled, "I'm with Public security Section Nine – has anyone else seen him!"
The men paused, glancing at each other. "One of the American ambassadors demanded an interrogation… he left five minutes ago…"
Involuntarily, she gasped, and knowing she was too late, she lowered her gun. "Let me see him," she said lowly.
"Do you have-," one of the men began to ask, but his partner held up a hand, shaking his head to silence the man. He went to the van, unlocking it and nodding for her to go in. She stepped in, and found nothing more and nothing less than she had expected.
Kuze lay motionless on the floor of the truck, eyes peacefully closed. Calm, she knelt by his side, checking for a pulse more from habit than hope. Her hand paused on his face, the face that inspired and led a revolution in Dejima, shook her to the core.
No… that hadn't been his face. Her eyes settled on the crane just short of his outstretched hand. Delicately, she reached over and took it between two fingers. He had never stopped folding cranes for her, even when she had left him so abruptly in their youth. In a way, she had never stopped trying to fold for him, always single mindedly reaching for better control of her body, her emotions, information… for better control. But for once, control had escaped her grasp, and the irony that it had concerned him again did not escape her.
For a moment, she considered tucking the crane in with him before she let them know that he was dead, a symbol of his life to follow him into death. But she knew they would perform an autopsy and they would never think to keep it with him.
He hadn't meant to keep it anyway. Holding the perfectly folded paper to her heart, she bowed her head. "I'm sorry… Kuze," she whispered.