Title: Haunted By The Past

Author: badly-knitted

Characters: Dee, Arnon.

Rating: PG

Setting: After the manga.

Summary: The past can't be changed, but it never goes away either.

Written Using: The tw100 prompt 'Haunt'.

Disclaimer: I don't own FAKE, or the characters. They belong to the wonderful Sanami Matoh.

A/N: Triple drabble.

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OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

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Sometimes, especially when he and Ryo are working a case like this one, Dee feels haunted. Not by an actual ghost, although with everything he's seen over the last few years that wouldn't surprise him, but more by a memory. If he closes his eyes, he can still see Arnon slumped against the blood-spattered wall in that long-ago alleyway, lifeless and still. At the same time, he can see his friend alive, looking sad, almost reproachful, as if asking, 'Why didn't you help me?'

Dee knows it's just his imagination, stirred up by the similarities between Arnon's tragic death and the murder of another teenage boy, but he still feels the need to apologise, even though he'd only been a teenager himself when Arnon was killed. There hadn't been anything he could have done back then, either to save Arnon from whatever he'd gotten himself into, or to avenge his death; Arnon had made his own choices, and they hadn't been good ones. Logic seldom wins out over guilt and grief though.

It feels wrong to lay flowers on his friend's grave, Arnon was never the flower type, so Dee sets down a bottle of cherry soda and a candy bar instead, sinking onto the grass near the headstone, tracing the words carved there with one fingertip.

"Fifteen years and I still miss ya, buddy. Everything changed after that day; guess we all grew up a bit. I'm sorry we weren't there for ya, but ya shut us out, didn't want our advice, just told us ya had everything under control. Wish you'd confided in me, or any of us. Maybe we could'a talked some sense into ya, kept ya from makin' a gigantic mistake."

There's no changing the past, however. All Dee can do is to live with it.

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The End