FAKE Ficlet: Drowning
Title: Drowning
Fandom: FAKE
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Ryo, Dee, Leo
Rating: PG-13
Setting: Vol. 3 Act 9 and Vol. 5 Act 14.
Summary: Finding out the truth about his parents’ deaths is tearing Ryo apart.
Word Count: 596
Written For: My own prompt ‘FAKE, Ryo, The truth about his parents' deaths is too much for him to take,’ at
fic_promptly.
Disclaimer: I don’t own FAKE, or the characters. They belong to the wonderful Sanami Matoh.
The truth about his parents’ deaths is more than he can take, he feels like everything he is, everything he’s built his life on, is unravelling before his eyes. He’d known all along that they were innocent, that they hadn’t been deliberately smuggling drugs, but to learn that it had all been some horrible mistake…
His anger is primal, boiling up from somewhere deep inside, and he feels he’ll burst if he doesn’t let it out, but his scream of rage sounds more like a scream of pure anguish. He wants so badly to shoot the unarmed man in front of him, gun him down the way he and his cohorts had gunned down two equally unarmed people over a simple mix-up with packages at a busy airport. But he doesn’t, he’s frozen to the spot, fighting an invisible war within himself. Can’t pull the trigger, can’t lower the gun, until Dee arrives and puts the barrel of his own weapon to Leo’s head, fully prepared to do what Ryo’s been trying and failing to do for several moments that already feel like eternity.
Ryo’s hand wavers and he lowers his gun a little. He feels suddenly weak, numb, chilled to the bone. Leo leaves, unharmed, and Ryo’s chance of revenge goes with him, and if he thought he felt weak before, it’s nothing to the way he feels now. His legs won’t hold him up anymore and he sinks to the ground, not even feeling the wetness of the puddle he’s landed in. It doesn’t matter anyway, because the falling rain has already soaked him to the skin through his thin shirt. He can’t even remember where he left his jacket.
His chest hurts, heart like a lump of lead weighing him down, and he wonders briefly if he’s dying. There’s a pressure inside him that he doesn’t understand. It’s not anger; that seems to have drained away with his strength, but then Dee’s kneeling in front of him, one hand on his shoulder, asking if he’s alright, and his words break through the fog surrounding Ryo. Now he knows what he’s feeling; it’s complete and utter despair.
In a broken, barely audible voice, he tells Dee what he’s learned, and rails against his own weakness. Leo had told him to pull the trigger; he could have ended the bastard’s life so why couldn’t he do it? Why?
Dee tells him it’s okay, that he’s not the kind of man who could kill someone in cold blood. Ryo knows he means well, even knows deep down that Dee’s right, killing Leo would have been so very wrong no matter how right it felt. He would have destroyed his own life along with Leo’s and truly he doesn’t want to be that kind of man, but at the same time, he can’t keep from wishing he could have been, just this once.
Ryo knows Dee hates it when he cries, but he can’t help himself. There’s a ball of pain inside him and he has to let it out because he can’t breathe past it and it’s choking him. He collapses into Dee’s arms, shaking, tears streaming down his face, and Dee just holds him, the two of them slumped on the cold, wet ground in the pouring rain. All the grief he’d felt when his parents had been killed is back full force and Dee’s all that’s keeping him from drowning in it, washed away by the rain and his own tears.
Right at this moment, he’s not sure if he wants to be saved.
The End