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Title: Ash
Author: ebonbird (ebonbird@hotmail.com)
Summary: 3rd in the Between Arc. Jun remembers and grieves.
Disclaimer: The characters do not belong to me. They
are used without permission. Tatsunuko, Co. Leave me
be, this is flattery.
Thanks: To my maker, and those who remind me that the
universe is unfolding as it ought.
Notes: No it's not canon Gatch. If you mind, get over it.
The place depicted is inspired by Gatchaman, BotP and the
Gatchaman OAV's.
Tunes that played during the writing of
this: Breathe on Me - Ashton, Becker, Dente; Angels -
Ashton, Becker, Dente; Could I Be Your Girl - Jan Arden,
Stupid Girl - Garbage, Variations on a Theme - comp. Eric
Satie, Contra la Corriente - Marc Anthony, A Life Less
Ordinary - Ash, A Whiter Shade of Pale - Procul Harum,
Take My Hand - Dido.
First posted: 23 June 2000
Completed: 25 June 2000
Last Revised: 23 Aug 2000
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First Integrated Island Bank burned, like much of Utoland,
in the aftermath of the leader of Galactor, Berg Katse's,
suicide.
Jun had the presence of mind to search, running faster
than she'd thought possible, unwilling to lose anything
more of Joe's since she'd returned to the spot where he'd
fallen in the caverns beneath Cross Karocorum and found
a smoking fissure in his place. Ken and Ryu took turns
breaking open the box. Jun held it open against her
abdomen as each took out the letter addressed to him
specifically.
Jun closed the safety deposit box and tucked it under her
arm. It was still warm from the burning of the bank. It left
sooty welts on her heated skin.
His second letter to her was waiting for her on her computer
in her apartment.
She approached the terminal with its single blinking cursor
and fell to her carpeted floor, knowing, knowing what it was.
Your lying in my bunk and I want to be in it
with you. And I just lied to you. you're sad.
Don't be. You're stronger than you know,
you could make me stay but you can feel
it, too, its not meant to be, angel. You've
always been my Angel. Mama sent you to
me so I wouldn't forget what goodness is.
I can feel your life in me making me stronger
for just for a little while. You need to sleep
but you burn so bright and you've given me
so much. Don't cry, angel, I'm sorry. You
could make me stay. You're stronger than
you think, but I can't let you make me. Juni,
II you. So much, angel. Get out of this shit
business. Get in a relationship with Ken,
live the love you deserve.
He'd signed it with his birth name.
* * *
Is it because I look white? Jun wondered as a fat,
earnest-looking North American forced a hand-sized
laser-printed booklet she didn't want into her hand.
She'd broken her own rule and worn shoes that hurt,
which was appropriate considering the occasion for
which she was breaking them in. Despite the discomfort
Jun closed her hand around the pamphlet.
"This contains a very important message," said the
woman. "It could have great meaning and impact on
your life."
"Thank you," Jun replied for politeness' sake.
Touching her arm, the stranger said, "If I could talk to
you for a minute,"
Her temper snapping, Jun met the woman's uncertain
gaze and said precisely, "This lowly female has
obligations and though this lowly female is honored that
you have noticed her, this lowly female cannot in good
conscience continue to allow you to pay attention to
her."
So there, Jun thought. But the woman only looked
confused.
The simpleton.
"Good bye," Jun tossed out, and letting her hair whip
into the woman's face, shoved past her.
The laser-printed pamphlet she shoved into her purse,
thinking, dammit, don't stupid foreigners get that this is
Utoland and we don't go for this kind of thing?
What is it? How did she dare approach me? I'm dressed
up. I'm obviously busy. Maybe it's guilt. Maybe I'm
exuding it through my pores or something.
She'd watched Joe give into vengeance and said
nothing, done nothing as he fell out of love with life.
Other than, `Have another drink, it's on me,' she'd been
worse than useless. Offered him a place to crash only
some of the times that he should not have been alone.
Jun had failed him. She'd protected Joe's health and life
on the battlefield only to drop the ball when he started
falling apart in front of her.
Tomorrow was the national holiday. She and Ken and
Ryu and Jinpei sitting in VIP section while fake thems
wore fake birdstyles. Nambu had wanted them in the
real thing, but Ken insisted that if the surviving four
were going to be listening to commemorative speeches,
and standing around looking science ninja team-ish, the
damn `styles would at least fit.
Jun rode home without her helmet, taking curves faster
than was safe, empty air to her left, sheer rock face to
her right.
Ryu had already started dinner when she got back to
the Snack J. She had smelled the garlic from two doors
down. He held his thumb up appreciatively when she
entered the kitchen from the alley. Jun caught her
reflection in the side of the highly polished metal
refigerator - in gray, she looked a fashionable ghost.
Ken was standing in front of the pool table, leaning on the
cue, concentrating. He had yet to break, the multicolored
balls, blue, green, yellow, orange, broken here and there
by white still in the black triangle closure. He looked great
of course, having managed to become more beautiful in
a more graceful, less bulky way in the year since they beat
Galactor and Joe left them, his body still compact, his arms
subtly powerful. He wore gloves.
Jun sent Ryu and Ken upstairs to clean up and burned
the rest of dinner. Jinpei smelled the acridity and nipped
across the street to the store for pre-packaged bi bim
bap and fried up a carton of eggs - half for Ryu, half for
her, him and Ken.
Jun's disaster was good for a laugh, and the three guys
teased her about it through dinner and cartoons in the
cramped apartment living room, afterward.
The four of them slept in the living room, no problem.
Ryu and Ken kept toothbrushes and changes of clothing
in Jinpei's room. Not soon after Joe's funeral Jun and
Jinpei had gone out and bought color coordinating
bathrobes and towels; orange on green for Ryu, white
and blue for Ken. Jun hadn't meant to buy their uniform
colors but there it was.
The next evening found Jun inside the coffee house,
sitting at the dark green force molded table, shoving
her straw again and again into her parfait glass, while
the fat North American sung and talked about how
wonderful her religion was for everyone in the room.
The missionary eventually got off of the stage, put
down her guitar, and approached Jun.
"May I sit here?" the woman asked, and actually waited
for Jun's invite.
"Sure," Jun replied.
Sitting, the woman said, "You look familiar. I feel as if
we have a connection. Have we -?"
Jun slapped the much wrinkled pages of the tract on
the open work table.
"What is it?" Jun asked. "Do I look like one of you or
something? I've lived here all my life. What is it about
you people? What is it about you people that you always
come to me with this stuff? Don't you think it's rude to
get in a person's face and presume to tell them what
they should and should not believe?"
The woman blinked. Then asked, "What would you say if
I said I used to think the same way you did?"
"When did you forget about manners?"
"God had a plan for my life."
"Did it include rape? Being raped? Killing or being killed?
Betraying everything you ever believed in or thought
might be remotely true because the most important thing
in your life, that made life worth living, made it
necessary? Or you thought maybe it did?"
"There's no sin too great for God to forgive."
"Sin? What does that mean? All of you say, write, the
same nothings. Why should I give my life over to you
people and your God when I've already given it over to,
to - well, when I've got a damn good return for the things
I've done and can do?"
"How old are you?"
"Nineteen."
"You've had a hard life, haven't you?" the woman asked
sympathetically, tried to ask sympathetically.
"I'm a twenty-something Utolander. That's not hard a
guess."
The woman was very quiet, her attention divided
between Jun and something else, her eyes blurry, or
something.
Fluidly, Jun pushed her chair back and was up and out
of it as quickly as she'd been trained to be, as quickly as
she'd learned to be after two years fighting Galactor and
the twelve months after during which she'd trained
harder to avoid going soft - just in horrible case. Didn't
matter; the woman managed to get the upper hand.
Lightly, it rested atop Jun's. "Soldiers are beloved of
God, too. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of
God."
The missionary said the word, `God', strangely, as if by
saying it she might give offense to Jun -- whom she had
so easily given offense to just the day before. To Jun's
subdued amazement, the woman continued to talk.
"There was a mercenary who asked a holy man what he
had to do to in order to enter the kingdom of heaven, the
holy man told him to kill only who you're supposed to kill
and don't take bribes."
"How'd you get a Visa?" Jun asked.
Walking in the gray sling-back shoes that hurt, Jun
returned to Joe's grave. It was one of the better kept
ones, new dirt settling between the short blades of
grass. She sat side-legged on the ground despite her
white stockings and white micro-fiber skirt. Fingering
the flowers that had been planted for Joe earlier that
day, she talked aloud, even though his body wasn't
there and she didn't feel like he was dead. He was
dead to her, to them, and she guessed that was all
that mattered. She took the bus home.
Ken once told Ryu that he took the bus when he needed
to be reminded of what was worthy about humanity. Jun
wasn't a target in her expensive clothes because she
and the guys had cured thugs of picking on lone
pedestrians in her neighborhood.
They hated bullies.
Ken was there. Jinpei didn't need a babysitter, and the
times when Jun had to be out someplace overnight Ryu
would stay, but Ken had been coming around a lot lately.
He took one look at her and led her up to her room.
If a living person could be airbrushed, every part of them
super-saturated with passion that made what was light
about them brighter and their darks darker, then that was
what had happened to Ken - grief, maybe. His eyes
were a little bluer than anyone else's, his dark-brown hair
a little bit glossier, his emotions much more clear-cut.
His curvy torso narrowed into his hips fluidly, like
a woven leather belt. He dropped backwards, kicking
off his shoes and letting his arms open wide, his Adam's
apple suddenly prominent. He'd never been tall, but all
of a sudden Ken looked big, as in 'there's a big
muscular man in my bed'. He'd come through for her and
Jinpei - and Ryu, taking care of them in a way he'd never
made time for when they were the science ninja team.
Saying no to Nambu was good for him.
Ken was lying down on her side of the bed. He always
did. He didn't know. She'd slept on the right for so long,
hoping he'd come through the window and take the left,
that it felt strange to have him on her side. Even though
what had happened with Joe had cancered her in the
brain so badly, leaving behind regrets and fears and
memories, physical, emotional, every kind there was,
that she couldn't examine the idea of her skin-to-skin
with someone with whom she was already heart-to-heart.
Ken crooked his arm, it was thick and pretty in places a
man's arms weren't usually both. He wore the gloves,
dark red, and Jun wondered if he knew what it did to her
when he wore the gloves.
Jun hesitated only a moment, and thought, what of
it? Inside of her was tight and uncomfortable, tightness
trying to come out of her eyes and ears and throat.
She wasn't hungry. She wasn't sleepy. She wasn't
anything but tight. Even feverish would have been
preferable, and she didn't want to explain to Jinpei
that after going to Joe's memorial service with him
and Ken and Ryu and Nambu she'd abandoned him to go
fight with a missionary and spend more time at Joe's
grave.
Leaning on her hands she eased on her side next to
Ken. He made a pillow of his arm for her, the curved
mass of his shoulder authoritative and she lay her
cheek against the softness of his T-shirt over his
skin.
A cigarette, she thought, would be nice.
Ken reached over his head, his hand going for the small
night table by the bed. He pulled open the drawer, curved
his neck a little to see what he was doing, and fished out
the gum she kept there, ignoring the condoms. He always
did. One-handed he unwrapped piece after piece and
wadded it into his mouth. She could hear him chew. She
put her hand on his chest beside his hand and he said,
'Oops.' He reached into her bedside table and brought
forward another packet of gum which he handed to her.
With a minimum of movement Jun angled the pointed
end of the unopened blue and white package on the
hard rise of Ken's pectoral muscle.
Ken released air from his lungs, inhaled loudly and
slowly.
"You going to be okay?" he asked.
She thought about it. The sound of Ken's chewing was
distracting and comforting.
He swallowed, a slick but bumpy muffled sound. "I'm
not so sure, either. Some days I'm fine."
"Others," Jun said quietly speaking the word long and
rested the gum beneath her hand.
"You ever going to tell me what really happened that
day?"
"Will you be mad at me if I don't?"
"I couldn't stay angry. You're my friend."
That feeling of tightness in Jun's chest and face and
head and ears, that was a sob and Ken's body went
stiff when it escaped her.
Jinpei had gotten louder in the last year. They heard
him coming down the hall. He was already in his
pajamas, brown and purple, printed with birds of prey -
Joe's colors. They had feet. He held his blanket against
his chest, his hair stuck straight up. He was a smaller
darkness at the threshold of Jun's room.
"Onechan," Jinpei said using that street Japanese
honorific he refused to be cured of to address her.
Then, "Aniki," and shuffled forward. He got on the bed
between them in his space, turned towards Ken and
snuggled into his chest. Sometimes Ken touched Jinpei's
shoulder, sometimes he touched Jun's hair. Jinpei slept
as soundly as he ever did so Ken didn't get up to open
the window and let in some air. Jinpei snored wetly. Ken
thought his thoughts.
Jun watched them.
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End Ash
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