Title: Rebirth

Fandom: Get Backers

Characters: Midou Ban x Kudo Himiko

Prompt: #078, Rebirth

Word Count: 314

Rating: PG, just to be safe. Perhaps because of the theme.

Author's Notes: More speculative than romantic, but there's a hint somewhere, methinks. Heehee.

Pre-Voodoo Child arc. Or during it, if you prefer, but before the last ten chapters or so. But there are definite spoilers for that far in the manga.

This was one thing Ban feared. He didn't believe in being born again—past lives, having more than one given span of time on this earth and all that. Or, more accurately, he hadn't ever seriously thought about it enough to care whether it was true or not. But this was not the kind of rebirth he feared.

Time was racing by, racing too fast and too sudden for his liking. Things, major events, earthshaking realities were coming too near, happening too soon. It would be time for her to face her curse, that black birthright that had been stamped on her from the moment of her first rebirth.

For over the years that had passed since he'd killed her brother, and over the months since he'd met her again, he'd researched, poured all he could (especially recently, especially now) into finding a way to save her. And he'd discovered the secret of her making, how she'd been killed before being born, then magicked back to life and gaining her mirror, her double.

He couldn't kill either (he didn't want to). The alternative so that they may be saved: they'd have to become one. How, he didn't know. What he could do, he didn't know. But he had a theory of what would happen after.

Rebirth. They'd become one, Himiko and the other Himiko, one person, one body and one soul.

But which one?

Would it be one of them, only? Or someone completely new?

He had his personal reasons, selfish reasons, granted. Would she still live? I can't break that promise.

(Would she still know me?

I can't lose her)

But he had a sense of justice, too.

It wouldn't be fair, to either of them.

Ban grit his teeth, but couldn't push aside the thoughts. They were too urgent, too here, too now.

The time is nearing. What the hell can I do?

-EnD-