Fic: Blood Oaths, ch. 4

[amethyst_hunter]

Title: Blood Oaths (ch. 4)
Author: Amethyst Hunter
Fandom/Pairing: Get Backers, Akabane/Himiko
Rating: R (violence, language, blood, all the happy fun things)
Warnings/Spoilers: See above. Also minor bits from the Venus de Milo arc.
Notes: This is sort of an AU that uses elements from the manga/anime canon, except I skewer it off into my own alterna-verse timeline.
Disclaimer: I don't own GB or any of its glorious characters. Much like Akabane, I fic solely for my own enjoyment. Except I don't kill anybody. Well, only in print, that is. ;)
Summary: When Akabane loses his primary weapon, Himiko tries to protect him from all the glory-seekers wanting their whack at a declawed Jackal. In his weakest hour, will Akabane learn to trust in a power greater than his own?

--


Three months.

He really shouldn't have let it drag on this long. She hadn't asked and he wasn't about to volunteer the information, but Akabane was growing increasingly anxious about his scalpel dilemma. Not that knives had been a necessity thus far, going into the fourth month of convalescence. But Himiko was no fool. He'd said himself that she paid attention to details others would gloss over, and surely, if she were to look in her kitchen drawers just a tad closer, she'd notice that one small paring knife was absent from the far corner.

And certainly, if she were curious at all, she would search around, and find too that some tape and some string were missing out of the drawer where she kept her odds and ends, all those little pieces of debris that all people had but weren't sure what to do with and couldn't bring themselves to throw out. They now resided, along with the knife, under Akabane's sleeve where he could flick and retract his makeshift defense if he chose to.

He'd practiced, since he'd become healthy enough to walk on his own - the cane was a great help in that respect - and located the items he wanted whenever Himiko had to leave the flat on business. Each time Akabane had contemplated grabbing his hat and coat and just plain leaving, now that he was capable of walking - but one glance at the forbidden fruits still hanging on the wall, and he remembered the cheeky little note informing him of what would happen if he tried, and that desire would grudgingly settle.

Akabane didn't think that she would try to dose him with any spells, not now. But still. She had just enough ruthlessness of her own to make her a formidable adversary. He'd seen her on a few occasions, rolling an empty perfume bottle between her fingers while she wore a funny little smile as she eyed it. That had been enough to lodge a modicum of doubt in his mind.

Lady Poison was as stubborn as he was and just as apt to do as she pleased when she felt like it. All he need do whenever he felt like disobeying her instructions was to conjure an image of himself under thrall, a caricature of buffoonery under the regression scent, or a frozen statue by virtue of paralysis perfume.

Such would never do. He'd lost too much already.

So he kept quiet, let her tend him, and in time they settled into a somewhat comfortable pattern of sorts that Akabane found wasn't entirely unpleasant. In fact, it was almost kind of a relief. Like a vacation. No drab business on the Other Side to have to deal with, for one thing. There were no jobs here either, but then, he didn't need them. Keeping up with Lady Poison was a job in itself, and one that he decided he didn't mind so terribly even considering his inauspicious situation.

Himiko, he discovered, was not only the perfect nurse but a charming companion as well. She liked many of the same things he did: books, movies, foods, and she was a witty strategist in her own right when trading debate with him on the merits or faults of philosophies concerning any of these things. She was a fierce fighter even when the weapons were only words, and she could be twice as merciless as he was when it came to granting quarter during particularly heated exchanges. Dare he say, he was getting rather accustomed to her spitfire essence, and maybe...enjoying it.

In this he knew he had to guard himself closely. There was always the temptation to be consumed by the illusion, to think that there was something more between them other than their occupation and flexible alliance. He liked her well enough, he could admit, but it was merely the well-earned respect for one who had proven herself worthy. He believed her when she said she had no real fear of Kyouji Kagami, and when he'd later questioned her further on the subject, she'd told him the truth.

“A prison that traps the body is bad enough, but prisons for the mind are even worse. Brain Trust's power extends to manipulating how people think, from beginning to end. I don't want to live in their cage, whatever form it takes.”

For her, he sensed that this was truly a fate worse than death. Even more surprisingly, he found it unfathomable that one such as her should suffer such cruelty. A spirit as bold and bright as hers ought always to fly free, unfettered. To force her otherwise would be a true crime, and not for the first time did he catch himself thinking that it was a very good thing Professor Makube had seen fit to include him in the assignment to thwart the Voodoo curse prophesied by the Archive.

He conveniently ignored the idea lurking in the back of his mind that his interest in that mission just might have been an indication that he was starting to see Himiko as a person separate from her identity as mere transporter.

A click by the front door drew his attention. Akabane looked up and saw Himiko coming inside. She looked tired, dirty, but most of all, ticked off. She slammed down a manila envelope on the kitchen table and headed for the sink to wash her hands, which were crusted with some dirt and dried blood.

“Good afternoon to you too,” he called out to her from where he was sitting at the table.

Her sigh carried over the rush of running water. “Sorry. Bad day at work.”

“That depends on what you consider bad. Myself, I'm jealous that I missed out on all the action. But you won't let me out of my pen, so I must be content with living vicariously through the tales of your escapades,” he needled. That was another reason Akabane hadn't lit out of her place as soon as he could walk on his own. He'd spotted the little vials placed strategically at windows and doors. The scent wafting forth from them had been innocuous enough, but he wasn't about to breach the exits and find out the hard way just what those poison perfumes could do.

Not that he'd been idle in the meantime. Himiko had let him use her computer, and he'd spent the time contacting, or trying to, various people of differing importance. He had questions. They had answers. Getting anything worthwhile, though, had been difficult at best. Akabane had made an unpleasant discovery during one session. The City had locked him out of its system without so much as a hint to why. Since that access was crucial to his plans, he'd been searching for other ways into it, through Makubex, the boy genius. But not even Makubex's skills thus far had been enough to crack the seemingly impenetrable code safeguarding the Trust's secrets. A most worrisome development indeed.

Still, there were other methods. And Akabane was persistent. What he wanted, he got. There could be no other option.

Himiko finished washing her hands and took a damp cloth to blot at the raw, oozing patches on her knees from where she'd scraped skin on pavement. “Those perfumes aren't meant to keep you in,” she told Akabane now. “They're to keep others out.”

“Oh? Is your home part of a particularly uninhabitable section of town, that you should have to resort to such means?”

“No.” She paused in cleaning her wounds and gave him a pointed look. “Some tails sprouted behind my back while I wasn't looking. It seems like on-again-off-again surveillance, but I don't trust them. They look...skeevy.”

Akabane frowned, not liking the sound of that. He quelled the impulse of worry that reared its head. It could be nothing, after all. As transporters they were used to being kept under scrutinizing watch by the occasional paranoid client or lustful competition. “Define 'skeevy,'” he said.

Himiko pulled at the torn sections of her catsuit where her knees were exposed. “Dressed like government spooks but slicker in their movements. And they don't seem to care whether I notice them or not.” She shook her head when he glanced at the door she'd come through. “They're not out there now. But I've seen them around a few times while you were resting. I thought they might be yakuza at first.”

She looked at him, clearly expecting an informative reply. Instead Akabane remained silent, thinking. It could be nothing worth getting worked up over. But a sly, sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach told otherwise, and it was this quagmire he was trying to control so that Lady Poison wouldn't grow too suspicious.

“That could be the case,” he said, keeping his voice level. “I daresay Rukio-san wasn't terribly pleased with me when I dispatched his favorite bodyguard this past spring.” Akabane closed the laptop he'd been working on and sat back in the chair, folding his hands in his lap as he neatly changed the subject. “But looking at you, somehow I don't think that yakuza were the source of your displeasure today.”

Himiko's eyes had narrowed slightly; she didn't appear to buy his initial explanation, but at the mention of her own activities her focus shifted as her anger sparked anew. “Two words, and you don't get a prize for guessing correctly,” she growled. “That damn Varlou! One of these days I'm going to stuff him so full of flame perfume that he bursts like a balloon!”

Akabane couldn't help it; he laughed. The rival transporters known as the Party Crashers weren't any more beloved to him than they were Himiko. Their leader, Varlou, had been known to ruin more than a handful of Doctor Jackal's own playtimes. For a moment he forgot his own unease as he said, “I hope you do, because I would like to see that. That, or Maguruma runs him over with his truck. I'd even foot the bill for a wash and wax job afterwards.”

“You and me both.” Himiko grinned for a second before reverting to her earlier temper. “It took all seven of my regular perfumes just to hold those ghouls off, and when the poisons ran dry, I had to slug it out barehanded. But,” she said crisply, pointing at the envelope she'd dropped on the table, “I made my delivery and got my money, so I still win.” Her chin lifted with visible pride at her success.

“May I congratulate you then on your victory.”

“Thanks.” Himiko finished washing up and dabbed at her cuts with a towel to stem the bleeding from a few of the worse wounds. She glanced at the cane that was hanging off the back of his chair. “How's the footwork coming?”

“Better, thank you.” Akabane was still trying to decide whether or not he would keep the cane once he left here. On the one hand, he didn't care to be reminded of its inherent symbolism, its purpose for the weak. On the other, it gave him something of a distinguished appearance, if one didn't look too closely at it to see that it was an actual aid instead of a stylish prop. Currently he was leaning towards keeping it, if only because she had chosen it for him with his alias in mind. He could appreciate that sort of thoughtfulness.

Himiko eyed him in between swipes of her towel. “Sure you're not just saying that to get out of here?”

Akabane met her gaze. “With all due respect, you can hardly blame me. I can't stay bedridden, cooped up here forever, Himiko-san. I do have a life to tend to when I'm not transporting assignments.” He paused, watching her as she straightened and slung the towel over one shoulder. “Aren't you going to put something on those?” He nodded to her scratches.

“Should I?”

“They might scar.”

“So?”

Akabane didn't like that, but he wasn't inclined to dwell too deeply on why. Surely it was just because it presented an incomplete picture, which was intolerable to his sense of order. As a surgeon he'd taken pride in his ability to repair fleshly damage; he supposed that, while scraped knees certainly weren't on par with transplant operations, they still deserved the proper attention as befitting such skill.

“Sit down. Where is your medicine cabinet?”

Himiko shook her head. “Don't worry about it. I'll throw some iodine on them later, if I remember. I've had worse. You should've seen some of the shiners I got when my brother and I worked jobs.”

She started to move past him into the living room, but he took up his cane and pointed the end of it at her, blocking her path. “Be that as it may. You could be risking trouble if those wounds aren't properly treated. If you get an infection, it means you'll have to take time to recover, and that in turn means my own recovery will be delayed indefinitely since you won't be up to looking after me.”

Himiko frowned as she pushed at the cane. “How so?”

Akabane shrugged. “I'll want to leave. Without your restraint, I'll push myself too hard in an attempt to speed along the process. Slip on the tile, perhaps, or pull a muscle in my back. It takes quite a bit of time to heal a back injury, you know.”

Himiko's eyebrow lifted a little.

Akabane pressed his case. “I treated a man once who'd lifted one too many heavy objects. He suffered no permanent damage, but he was down for months before he could so much as turn over in bed without assistance. One truly doesn't realize just how involved the back is with the rest of the body until one suffers that kind of excruciating pain.”

Himiko sighed and dropped into one of the chairs. “I keep some stuff in the bathroom.”

“Very good.”

Collecting the necessary supplies took little time, even accounting for his slow pace. Himiko kept a tidy cabinet. Akabane took what he needed and hobbled back to the kitchen, pulling up a chair in front of her.

“What would you like to do for supper tonight?” she asked as he started applying some peroxide with a cotton swab.

“What did you have in mind?”

“I was thinking stir-fry. I have some fresh vegetables I bought the other day.”

“That will do nicely. You wash, I'll chop.”

Himiko managed a small grin. “Anything to play with knives, huh?”

Akabane looked up from his work, a tinge of amusement dancing around the edges of his lips. “I am the more experienced at handling sharp tools.”

“Hey, I can wield a mean meat cleaver when I have to.”

“Is that so.”

He picked out a few small bandages and began divesting them of their protective wrappers. While he was peeling off the adhesive strips and applying them to Himiko's scrapes, she said, “This one time, Ban tried to steal some cookies I was making. I grabbed the nearest butcher knife and waved it at him, and it slipped right out of my fingers and landed point-down right between his legs. After that he stuck to insulting my cooking, as opposed to snitching it. He said I was dangerous enough in the kitchen without being given additional weapons.” She smiled at the memory.

“The look on his face must have been priceless,” Akabane said. “He's wrong, though. You cook very well. At least, I have no complaints.”

She looked pleased. “I'm no four-star chef but I know my way around a stove. Anyway, it's easier for him to gripe than actually do the chore himself. He'd rather eat food than make it.”

“An activity that, judging from the numerous observations made by Ginji-kun's crowd and the mountain of debt he's accrued at Wan-san's diner, he apparently excels at. When he has the money to do so, of course.” Akabane finished placing the last bandage. “There. That's better.”

“Thanks.” Himiko gave him a curious look. “This is really why I don't want to let you leave, Jackal. I like keeping you around. You're useful.”

“With my reputation?”

A hint of feral glee lit Himiko's smile. “It's not every day that I bag someone willing to do the less glamorous work for me.”

“And thus your ulterior motives are revealed. Should I be flattered or insulted by such esteem?”

“Take your pick. Either way, I never said I was a saint.”

He smiled. “Thank heavens for that. Sainthood is vastly overrated.”

“Better a rogue than a dead saint?” she said without rancor as she got up to fetch the fixings for their dinner.

Akabane shrugged. “You know what they say. 'Only the good die young.' I've never had any patience for martyrs. What fun is there when you're not even around to enjoy the celebration in your name?”

“I think you'd have gotten along eerily well with my brother,” Himiko said as she pulled the food from the refrigerator and started to wash it in the sink. “Yamato always said when we were between jobs and he was bored, 'Come on, let's go do something even if it's wrong.' I think he liked the taste of risk more than he was willing to admit in front of me. Sometimes I think that's why he chose poisons as his tools to work with. He enjoyed that mixture of surprise and calculation.”

Akabane pulled up a chair next to her and took out a knife from the drawer to cut up the cleaned vegetables. “I always thought it was in the blood, you two being from that lineage.”

“It is. But the way Yamato explained it to me, it makes sense too. Conventional wisdom argues for stacking the deck in your favor to achieve your goal, and what better way to do that than by throwing out a weapon the enemy isn't prepared to deal with?” Himiko looked thoughtful as she paused with a handful of carrots. “We just happened to have a certain talent for it. Not many people are trained to combat magics. Most aren't even aware they exist, much less how to properly manipulate them.”

“You're right, I think I would have quite liked your brother.”

“Except that he wasn't big on leaving dead weight behind. Emphasis on the dead,” Himiko reminded him. “Easier to get away with being a plunderer if you've a reputation for nonviolence.”

“Ah well,” Akabane said. “No one's perfect.”

“Present company included?”

He shot her a look. “If a body count was all I was after, I could paint this town crimson sideways and back again in a single night. There's an art to the danse macabre. Once a challenge has been issued, who am I to turn it down? Great achievements don't come from passing up opportunities.”

Himiko knew there wasn't anything she could say that would persuade him otherwise, so all she offered to that was a wordless snort. Akabane was tactful enough not to comment further.

To pass the time while their dinner cooked, she turned on the evening news. At one point during the broadcast, the anchorman switched to a story on the local mafia. A formerly high-ranked boss had made early parole, allegedly due to the machinations of an unknown benefactor. Himiko looked up from stirring the food to catch replayed footage of a bald-headed man in orange prison garb being led from a courtroom. The face was vaguely familiar, but she wasn't sure why. “Hey. I know that guy from somewhere...”

Akabane twisted around in his chair to look. The man's heavy brow was set in rigid ice as the cameras flashed repeatedly. “Ah. Ryuu Mouen, I believe his name is.”

“You know him?”

“Only by association. I didn't deal with him myself but I passed him briefly during a past assignment for a mutual client. I was transporting materials to some art auction he was hosting.”

Himiko snapped her fingers. “The job with the fake Venus de Milo! Now I remember. Ban told me about it. He said you were a real pain in the ass. But then he always says that about you,” she added.

“Well, I tried, but he wasn't amenable to the exercise,” Akabane chuckled, unaffected by his rival's critique. “It was an otherwise respectable job, even if it wasn't terribly remarkable. The company could have been better though.” He turned away from the television's broadcast, content to ignore the rest of it. “I didn't get to spend half as much time with the Get Backers as I wanted, and both the client and Mouen were a bit on the prickly side.”

“It's always something with the clients,” Himiko said. “What'd they complain about this time, the usual?”

“Well, I can't speak for Miss Hera. I think she was one of those types that isn't happy unless they have something to be miserable about, whether it's real or imagined. Mouen was just unpleasant. Very brusque fellow, accustomed to having everyone around him follow his schedules and rules regardless of inconvenience. And he had a pair of pets always trailing him everywhere he went. Bodyguards, presumably. Likewise with about as much personality as dried algae.” Akabane smirked, remembering the way the twins had flinched when he'd dared them to press his limits.

“Took them out easy, did you?”

“Sadly, no, I never got the chance to confront them. I heard from the grapevine that they were dispatched by Fuyuki-san the Beastmaster and his friend Haruki-san. But I'm told that your brother gave Mouen quite the nasty nightmare with his Evil Eye.”

“He sure did,” Himiko agreed. “Made the crook walk right into a police station and all but confess to his crimes. He thought he was about to make a drug deal instead!”

The food was ready and she dished it up, and they sat at the table to eat while discussing other subjects of interest, mostly trivial matters that they shared matching opinions on. Midway through the meal Himiko's laptop chimed, and Akabane went to check it. When he was finished with the email he sat back, looking decidedly content.

“Good news,” Himiko guessed.

“Mm.”

“And?”

Akabane paused, resting his chopsticks on the plate. His eyes revealed nothing. “You won't like it.”

“Tell me and then I'll decide if I do or don't.”

He shrugged. “I'm going out to meet with a contact next week.”

“No you're not,” Himiko said mildly.

“I told you you wouldn't like it,” Akabane said, equally as mild.

Himiko watched him with a sharper focus as he resumed eating. Several seconds of silence ensued and then she spoke. “You're not going anywhere, Jackal.”

He didn't falter in his motions or reply. “It's a matter of necessity so yes, I am.”

“Business can wait.”

“Not this business, so let's accept this one breach and move on,” Akabane said, his tone dropping into slight frost as his gaze flicked up to hers in silent warning. “Your concern for my welfare is touching but not necessary. This is merely an informational exchange, not a prospective battle.”

They finished eating in silence. Finally Himiko said, “I'll let you out on one condition.”

Akabane's expression turned distinctly chilly. “You're not in the position of issuing conditions, Lady Poison.”

Himiko knew she ought to stand down at this point, but curiosity and suspicion spurred her onward. She raised a brow at him. “Which one of us isn't at full strength, again?”

Akabane's eyes narrowed. More silence filled the room.

Himiko waited.

“What's your condition?”

“I go with you.”

“I don't need a nanny.”

“Not as sitter. Backup.” When Akabane looked ready to object she said, “I'm not going to get in your way, I'm just doing the professional thing, remember? You'd do the same for me if our places were reversed.”

A full frown claimed his lips as he pondered this. Akabane studied the table's surface, mulling it over. At last he looked up at her.

“All right. This one time, I'll allow it. But,” he said, noticing the brief satisfaction crossing her face. “I'd advise you to remember, Himiko-san. Useful or not, there will come a day soon when I leave here on my own will. Accepting that fact would be professional too.”

The unspoken tension threaded between them like an exposed dagger. Suddenly Akabane smiled. “Now. What shall we do for entertainment tonight?”

Himiko didn't smile back, but she relaxed a little. “Do you like board games? I don't play very often but I found some in the building when I first moved in.”

“Bring out what you have and let's see.”

He helped her clear the dinner table so they could set up a board. She searched through her collection and showed him the available choices. They decided on Monopoly, with a twist: instead of playing for money, they took the pieces from the Life game and bartered with “blood points” as the winning objective.

Himiko got first turn and rolled the dice. “Baltic Avenue. That one's worth a flesh wound. What time's your meeting with the source?”

Akabane separated one little stick figure peg from the rest. “Eleven. Did you have some other preference?”

“I was thinking that if we met your contact during night hours, it'd be easier to ditch my visitors if they can't see us so easily.”

“Ah, them.” He took his turn. “The railroad. Full casualty on that.” He waited for her to hand over her kill. “The next time they pop up let me know. I'd like to get a peek at them if possible.”

Himiko watched him carefully. “You have an idea who they are?”

Akabane remained noncommittal. “Maybe.”

“Are they going to be a problem?”

“Not if they don't annoy us,” he said cheerfully.

Himiko didn't immediately roll her turn. “That's not an answer, Akabane.”

“Of course it is. It's just not the one you want to hear.”

A half-smile made her mouth twitch. Back on familiar ground, it was one of those instances when his jovial independence left her strung between shared amusement and the frustrated urge to smack him into compliance. The best way to handle it was to ride the wave alongside him. “So give me the answer you know I want.”

The brief twinkle in his eye told her he was aware of her tactics and was playing along because it suited him for the moment. “If I do, and it turns out my assessment was wrong, you'll only be upset with me for having misled you.”

“Since when has my criticism ever stopped you from doing anything? You're a big boy, you can take the punches.”

They were both smiling now, neither one willing to give any ground. “You dwell too much on needless conjurings,” Akabane told her, not ungently. “It's pointless to worry unless we have to.” He nudged the die toward her. “It's still your turn.”

She picked them up, but let them roll in her palm instead of tumbling them right away. “It's not pointless worrying. I like being prepared. If trouble's going to knock, I want to know so I can kick its teeth in before it smashes down my door.”

Akabane considered this. He did, after all, owe her some sort of reasonable explanation, he supposed. The nagging anxiety in the back of his mind had not gone away since she'd told him about her mysterious watchers. The sooner he knew what that was all about the better. If it was something to be concerned with...

Surely it couldn't be. Hadn't he just said that worrying was useless? But coincidence was not something to be trusted...

He let his smile drop into seriousness. “Mind you, this is purely speculation for now. But would you feel any better if I told you that these people aren't a threat to you?”

She still wouldn't loose the dice. “But they are to you.”

“I didn't say that.”

“You don't have to.”

Akabane's eyes slipped shut and he pinched the bridge of his nose. He opened his eyes and looked up at her with a benign but thin smile. “You are far too stubborn for your own good, my dear.” He paused. “If they do pose a problem for me, and I'm not saying that they do, I will handle it.” He lifted an eyebrow at her in a way that stated this topic was now closed, and continued insistence on dissecting it would only meet with his increasing displeasure. If she took that intent to mean that he would resort to his usual methods of resolution, that was fine with him.

True to form Himiko wasn't ready to give up her inquisition before her interests were satisfied. But one look at the glacial barrier erected by his steady gaze was enough to convince her that she was safer falling back for the time being. She pursed her lips to keep from speaking the demands she held in check, and tossed her dice as they continued the game with secrets intact.

--

TBC