fic; Lux
Title: Lux
Characters: Nishikido Ryo and Sawajiri Erika as edenistic and projectnine
Rating: G
Disclaimer: Owned by Johnny's Entertainment and El Extraterrestre. Not mine, just messing with.
Summary: Based on characters from A.R.I.A. - the game. Complete AU. Inspired by Lucy by Skillet, and the accompanying video. Part of the Wayback Machine White Day challenge; a self-imposed writing endeavour for White Day (which we missed completely), the requirements being a couple from the past that we used to write about a lot.
He was too late; four days and a lifetime too late. She didn't say hello. He didn't say goodbye.
With love and thanks to L.
April 8th, one year ago
Ghost doesn't bring her roses usually - it is yellow carnations that he favours, in varying stages of bloom and a single spray of baby's breath, wrapped in white tissue paper. These are remnants of a memory, one that haunts him on nights when he lies awake, alone with his thoughts, filling in the deafening silence of the sparse apartment he calls his.
It is her birthday, and Ghost - Nishikido Ryo - does not believe himself sentimental. This self-imposed duty, however, is something that he feels is necessary. His relationship to Agent Firefly had been one of precarious closeness, blocked mainly by his walls and her seemingly unending temper usually directed at him, for reasons he had never fully comprehended. Perhaps that is a half-truth; perhaps he knows what it was that they had between them, and perhaps he had stopped in its tracks. Ghost is the untraceable A.R.I.A. cell, a man who prefers to work alone, a man who walks the edge of danger, a man who has been scarred by the past, and ultimately, a man who serves as the protector of the agency he currently serves. Which had included Firefly.
He walks past the gravestones to reach her, kneels at the graphite that is marked her real given name. Sawajiri Erika. A Minister's daughter and socialite, as pretty and distant as a star, she had died only a few weeks before, while on vacation in Sicily for this precise occasion in a terrorist attack by the organisation that called itself Alleanza Dieci.
Ghost is one of the few people who knows the truth about what really happened. Agent Firefly had been part of the Public Security Intelligence Agency, the national intelligence force of Japan. She had been promoted to the black-ops group called A.R.I.A. for her efforts in furthering the guardianship of the secrets and interests of her country, and she had been in Sicily on her first solo mission - taking down a faction of the Alleanza Dieci, the primary goal of the group.
The dozen red roses are laid down at the base of her gravestone where she had been buried as he kneels before it. The soil around it is freshly dug still, grass has not yet grown in between the grains. Leaves have fallen onto the ground that marked her from the sycamore tree that stands guard over her, and Ghost brushes them off with a single hand, cleaning the surface around the blossoms he brought for her as ... a present? An apology? Not a promise. The carnations are his promise. The wreaths laid when she was buried are drying and dying slowly. He sets them aside, knowing now that he is the first to reach her today.
He had uttered not a single word since her death, since he had been sent to Italy himself to find her and retrieve her, since he had dug through dust and debris with his bare hands, splinters digging into his palms as he dug, and dug, the vague voices that swirled around him as he strove for a singular goal, the image burned into his mind still when he had found that forgotten body, buried under rock with a single arm outstretched, burned black beyond recognition. Ghost still remembers the desperation that had closed around him then, still feels it at sudden intervals.
The DNA recovered from the corpse had identified the remains of the Minister's daughter, causing a national scandal and possibly damaging Italian-Japanese relations beyond repair. With her death confirmed, part of him died with her in that fire he could only imagine had destroyed her.
The fire died. Her red hair, her sudden, unexpected warmth, her fits of impatience - gone in a flash of destructive heat.
He feels the emptiness constantly. Her desk at headquarters had been cleared, her records tucked back in a place only accessible by select individuals. The food she leaves for fellow agent Helios, the coffee she makes each morning she is in the facility before he and Agent Striker come around and argue about its emptiness. The volatile mechanics laboratory where she had spent her time, behind bulletproof glass, usually filled with the sound of metal against metal and gunfire into chambers is silent now, equipment organised in places she would have never put them in. Her tools had always been within her arms' reach, drawers filled with knickknacks, like the crap he left lying around to annoy her. He still remembers how she had burned his "Mean People Suck" cap in a fit of annoyance. He is not a disorganised person in truth; he just liked seeing her face crumple up as she yelled at him to pick up after himself. Ghost can admit that he misses the dumbass teddy bear she had left in the common room, the one whose paw had come apart for seemingly no fucking reason, which had led him to think that it was dumb all the more, but he had filled back the stuffing, stitched it neatly with thread the closest colour, and wrapped it in yellow ribbon for her to find on Christmas morning. He misses how she had argued her point about how she drank her coffee - in an unnatural state, cold and sickeningly sweet with syrup.
He misses how he brought her the coffee in question when she pulled all-nighters the same time he did, the look that crossed her face as he shrugged and left her to her devices.
On Valentine's day she had left a box of semi-bitter obligation chocolate on his desk and didn't say a word about the matter. He had returned the favour with Godiva and the same silence.
One month later she was dead.
The roses do not help - cannot help him make amends. He was going to go save her. He was too late.
Too damn late, four days and a fucking lifetime too late.
Ghost opens his mouth to speak to her, finds his throat dry and empty. He apparently still does not have the words; he does not have the words to explain what had happened to himself, even. In this cemetery, in the eerie - and welcome - silence of the dead and long gone, he is a different kind of ghost; his mind bruised by a single failure but nonetheless at ease. But this is only for a while, too short for his liking.
Firefly. Glowing in the dark like the name she had chosen for herself, flitting from one spot to another, free. He had decided not to hold her in his hands, a latent fear of crushing the light that made her, her.
He knows he would do it all different if he had the chance. Now that it's over, he just wants to hold her, and see her tilt her head as was her habit, and smile, even if half the time, she had not meant them for him. Ghost knows he must live with the choices he has made, and just for today, he cannot live with himself.
Ghost had never called her by her name.
He sits back on his heels in silence, staring at the letters, carved into the black stone. It doesn't take long for the tears to come. Ghost bows forward in a rare moment of weakness as if he is trying to curl up into himself as he cries, helpless in the face of his failure, one that he promises he will never repeat. It's a quiet crying, because he does not allow himself the luxury of freedom of emotion; only able to barely hold it back now, when usually he stepped on them to quell them.
Behind his eyelids, there is a picture of her that is sharp as a fresh-honed blade, every detail etched deep in his memory.
He has not forgotten.
Later, his eyes are dry and the teardrops he shed have slid away from the gravestone aimlessly. Nishikido Ryo stands up and brushes dirt off his jeans, his breath still heavy in his lungs as if it is blocked by a force unseen.
He reaches forward to touch the stone, but pauses halfway, fisting his hand slowly as he retracts it.
Agent Ghost turns around and walks away without saying goodbye.
That is because he refuses to.
Characters: Nishikido Ryo and Sawajiri Erika as edenistic and projectnine
Rating: G
Disclaimer: Owned by Johnny's Entertainment and El Extraterrestre. Not mine, just messing with.
Summary: Based on characters from A.R.I.A. - the game. Complete AU. Inspired by Lucy by Skillet, and the accompanying video. Part of the Wayback Machine White Day challenge; a self-imposed writing endeavour for White Day (which we missed completely), the requirements being a couple from the past that we used to write about a lot.
He was too late; four days and a lifetime too late. She didn't say hello. He didn't say goodbye.
With love and thanks to L.
Click to viewApril 8th, one year ago
Ghost doesn't bring her roses usually - it is yellow carnations that he favours, in varying stages of bloom and a single spray of baby's breath, wrapped in white tissue paper. These are remnants of a memory, one that haunts him on nights when he lies awake, alone with his thoughts, filling in the deafening silence of the sparse apartment he calls his.
It is her birthday, and Ghost - Nishikido Ryo - does not believe himself sentimental. This self-imposed duty, however, is something that he feels is necessary. His relationship to Agent Firefly had been one of precarious closeness, blocked mainly by his walls and her seemingly unending temper usually directed at him, for reasons he had never fully comprehended. Perhaps that is a half-truth; perhaps he knows what it was that they had between them, and perhaps he had stopped in its tracks. Ghost is the untraceable A.R.I.A. cell, a man who prefers to work alone, a man who walks the edge of danger, a man who has been scarred by the past, and ultimately, a man who serves as the protector of the agency he currently serves. Which had included Firefly.
He walks past the gravestones to reach her, kneels at the graphite that is marked her real given name. Sawajiri Erika. A Minister's daughter and socialite, as pretty and distant as a star, she had died only a few weeks before, while on vacation in Sicily for this precise occasion in a terrorist attack by the organisation that called itself Alleanza Dieci.
Ghost is one of the few people who knows the truth about what really happened. Agent Firefly had been part of the Public Security Intelligence Agency, the national intelligence force of Japan. She had been promoted to the black-ops group called A.R.I.A. for her efforts in furthering the guardianship of the secrets and interests of her country, and she had been in Sicily on her first solo mission - taking down a faction of the Alleanza Dieci, the primary goal of the group.
The dozen red roses are laid down at the base of her gravestone where she had been buried as he kneels before it. The soil around it is freshly dug still, grass has not yet grown in between the grains. Leaves have fallen onto the ground that marked her from the sycamore tree that stands guard over her, and Ghost brushes them off with a single hand, cleaning the surface around the blossoms he brought for her as ... a present? An apology? Not a promise. The carnations are his promise. The wreaths laid when she was buried are drying and dying slowly. He sets them aside, knowing now that he is the first to reach her today.
He had uttered not a single word since her death, since he had been sent to Italy himself to find her and retrieve her, since he had dug through dust and debris with his bare hands, splinters digging into his palms as he dug, and dug, the vague voices that swirled around him as he strove for a singular goal, the image burned into his mind still when he had found that forgotten body, buried under rock with a single arm outstretched, burned black beyond recognition. Ghost still remembers the desperation that had closed around him then, still feels it at sudden intervals.
The DNA recovered from the corpse had identified the remains of the Minister's daughter, causing a national scandal and possibly damaging Italian-Japanese relations beyond repair. With her death confirmed, part of him died with her in that fire he could only imagine had destroyed her.
The fire died. Her red hair, her sudden, unexpected warmth, her fits of impatience - gone in a flash of destructive heat.
He feels the emptiness constantly. Her desk at headquarters had been cleared, her records tucked back in a place only accessible by select individuals. The food she leaves for fellow agent Helios, the coffee she makes each morning she is in the facility before he and Agent Striker come around and argue about its emptiness. The volatile mechanics laboratory where she had spent her time, behind bulletproof glass, usually filled with the sound of metal against metal and gunfire into chambers is silent now, equipment organised in places she would have never put them in. Her tools had always been within her arms' reach, drawers filled with knickknacks, like the crap he left lying around to annoy her. He still remembers how she had burned his "Mean People Suck" cap in a fit of annoyance. He is not a disorganised person in truth; he just liked seeing her face crumple up as she yelled at him to pick up after himself. Ghost can admit that he misses the dumbass teddy bear she had left in the common room, the one whose paw had come apart for seemingly no fucking reason, which had led him to think that it was dumb all the more, but he had filled back the stuffing, stitched it neatly with thread the closest colour, and wrapped it in yellow ribbon for her to find on Christmas morning. He misses how she had argued her point about how she drank her coffee - in an unnatural state, cold and sickeningly sweet with syrup.
He misses how he brought her the coffee in question when she pulled all-nighters the same time he did, the look that crossed her face as he shrugged and left her to her devices.
On Valentine's day she had left a box of semi-bitter obligation chocolate on his desk and didn't say a word about the matter. He had returned the favour with Godiva and the same silence.
One month later she was dead.
The roses do not help - cannot help him make amends. He was going to go save her. He was too late.
Too damn late, four days and a fucking lifetime too late.
Ghost opens his mouth to speak to her, finds his throat dry and empty. He apparently still does not have the words; he does not have the words to explain what had happened to himself, even. In this cemetery, in the eerie - and welcome - silence of the dead and long gone, he is a different kind of ghost; his mind bruised by a single failure but nonetheless at ease. But this is only for a while, too short for his liking.
Firefly. Glowing in the dark like the name she had chosen for herself, flitting from one spot to another, free. He had decided not to hold her in his hands, a latent fear of crushing the light that made her, her.
He knows he would do it all different if he had the chance. Now that it's over, he just wants to hold her, and see her tilt her head as was her habit, and smile, even if half the time, she had not meant them for him. Ghost knows he must live with the choices he has made, and just for today, he cannot live with himself.
Ghost had never called her by her name.
He sits back on his heels in silence, staring at the letters, carved into the black stone. It doesn't take long for the tears to come. Ghost bows forward in a rare moment of weakness as if he is trying to curl up into himself as he cries, helpless in the face of his failure, one that he promises he will never repeat. It's a quiet crying, because he does not allow himself the luxury of freedom of emotion; only able to barely hold it back now, when usually he stepped on them to quell them.
Behind his eyelids, there is a picture of her that is sharp as a fresh-honed blade, every detail etched deep in his memory.
He has not forgotten.
Later, his eyes are dry and the teardrops he shed have slid away from the gravestone aimlessly. Nishikido Ryo stands up and brushes dirt off his jeans, his breath still heavy in his lungs as if it is blocked by a force unseen.
He reaches forward to touch the stone, but pauses halfway, fisting his hand slowly as he retracts it.
Agent Ghost turns around and walks away without saying goodbye.
That is because he refuses to.