50 Sentences: Ushiro and Machi
Fandom: Bokurano
Title: The Shadow of Death
Author: scarlet_paire
Rating: PG-13/T
Genre: Tragedy, Angst, bits of Romance.
Pairings: Jun Ushiro X Youko Machi; hints of Takashi Waku X Youko Machi.
Spoilers: Up to the last chapter of the manga.
Summary: Fifty sentences centered on the Jun Ushiro X Youko Machi pairing.
Disclaimer: I don't own Bokurano. I'm not sane enough to create something like that and stay functional.
N/A: I'm using manga canon here.
1. Motion
One motion was all that it took; they touched the panel and their lives were condemned.
2. Cool
“Oh, admit it, Machi-chan: he’s mean and selfish and all that stuff, but you think he’s cool”, Kanji said, triumphantly, only to hear her embarrassed reply: “Baka!”
3. Young
She’s at his side, and he feels his heart racing; instead of trying to suppress his agitation, he allows himself to drown on it, to feel more like the thirteen-years-old he’s supposed to be, and not like a veteran of an old, terrible war.
4. Last
Destiny’s having a laugh at him: of so many people that deserved to live as long as they could - Waku-kun, Yamura-kun, Nakama, Maki, Kanji, Tanaka-san, Kana, Machi - he’s the only one who made it to the end.
5. Wrong
They’re going to die.
6. Gentle
He smiles gently at her; she suddenly realizes he’s not the same mean, selfish boy that he was when everything started, and she feels like screaming at the destiny which will take his life before he can have a chance of truly enjoying the pleasure of living.
7. One
“The fifteen of us… we’re all but one, one soul, and one life”, she says, feeling about to cry, and she sees tears in his eyes too.
8. Thousand
They all feel shocked when they find out that Kodama killed seven thousand people in his battle; even Ushiro is a little taken aback, and, though he tries not to show it, she can tell.
9. King
They have the power of kings, for billions of lives rest in their hands; still, Ushiro would exchange all of that for one more day with her.
10. Learn
He can’t help but feel a little betrayed when he learns Machi’s not from the Earth they live.
11. Blur
A blur takes his eyes, and his father’s voice fades to nothingness; he’s suddenly on Zearth’s cockpit, taking her place as the pilot, and he will fight for her.
12. Wait
She’s waited too long for her turn, and seen too many people dying for her sake; that’s why, when she sees little brave Kana-chan dying in her brother’s arms, and the look in those same eyes, she decides she’s not going to wait anymore.
13. Change
He’s not the same stupid boy he was, when they found Zearth; he’s learned a lot of things, he’s seen a lot of things, and, as they travel through the country, her eyes shining in the sunlight, he decides he will make something good out of that change.
14. Command
Thinking of her and her sacrifice, he commands Zearth to move.
15. Hold
He regrets a lot of things in his life, but, most of all, he regrets not holding her hand when she asked him to.
16. Need
It’s something that only the two of them can do; it’s something that the two of them need to do, for the people who they loved, the people who died.
17. Vision
When he sits on his chair, he can, briefly, see all of his friends, sitting in the chairs that belonged to them, all smiling at him; he looks at his side, sees her confident smile, and knows that he can make it.
18. Attention
“Oh, Machi, Ushiro’s nothing but an attention-whore, how can you defend him?”, Anko asks with irritation, and Machi has no answer - how can she explain that warm feeling inside of her?
19. Soul
She’s sure there is some kind of reincarnation, and that they’re going to be reborn - destiny wouldn’t be so cruel of not giving them another chance.
20. Picture
In the only picture of everyone they’ve always had, Ushiro is with that comic troubled expression; Machi had managed to pull him into the picture just before it was taken, and he fell on Kako just a second after.
21. Fool
He holds Kana’s dead body tightly in his arms, and, feeling Machi’s hand on his shoulder, he suddenly realizes what a foolish, stupid person he has been.
22. Mad
“And why are you looking at him?”, Waku asks her, quite jealously, when he catches on the person she’s been observing, “I mean, he’s always mad at everything!”
23. Child
He had thought he knew everything about the world, and that his heart and mind were as old as the universe; when she fell, however, he realized that he was still a child, a small, young dot left at the mercy of the waves of tragedy.
24. Now
They will never have a future; they only have the now, and that’s why she confesses her feelings to him.
25. Shadow
For them, the shadow of Death has the shape of a giant robot.
26. Goodbye
He caresses her face, covered with bandages, one last time, and leaves the room.
27. Hide
He’s not in the contract, and she knows that; however, she doesn’t feel like telling anyone, not when at least one of the innocents can still be saved.
28. Fortune
“Waku-kun’s death was… most unfortunate”, she tells Waku’s parents, and he bites his tongue - “unfortunate” can’t even begin to describe their bad luck.
29. Safe
“You hit the pilot, it’s over now!”, Dung Beetle tells him with a mixture of bitterness and triumph on his voice, and he closes his eyes, happily realizing that the world that Kanji, Kana, Tanaka-san and Machi fought for is finally safe.
30. Ghost
They all walk to the white light, fifteen young innocent children that died for the world, and he can’t help but hesitate a little, getting used to the lightness of his body; when he raises his eyes, however, Kanji, Kana, and Machi are waiting for him, their hands extended, and he smiles with contentment before reaching them, towards the final journey.
31. Book
“One day, they’re going to write books about us”, she says playfully, but instantly regrets it when she takes in his depressed look - she wouldn’t want anyone to read their story either.
32. Eye
Her eyes are bright, fiery, and it kills him that he didn’t even have a chance to see them one last time.
33. Never
They’re never going to hold hands, they’re never going to kiss, they’re never going to go out on a date; she’ll never get to meet his family, they’re never going to have sex, they’re never going to marry, they’re never going to have a honeymoon, they’re never going to have children and get a job and grow old and, she realizes, as her vision darkens with the impact of a bullet on her head, she will never tell him just how much she loves him.
34. Sing
She tries singing a song during their brief walk; her voice is terrible, but Ushiro can’t find the heart to tell her to stop, since it’ll be probably her last opportunity of singing.
35. Sudden
One second, they were happily chatting in the park and he was feeling happier than he had felt in months; in the next, a child raised a gun and all that was left of his world caved in.
36. Stop
His body pleads for rest and the few threads of sanity he still holds beg for a stop, for him to stop killing and hearing those people’s screams; still, deep in his destroyed heart, he knows he can’t stop, that everyone’s counting on him, and that the presence of that girl who died so far from her home is at his side.
37. Time
It’s the one thing they will never have.
38. Wash
What frustrates him is that he cannot wash the sins of the world, that he cannot fix what’s wrong; however, a smile of hers tells him that, even though there are parts of the world that should be thrown to waste, there are still things worth protecting.
39. Torn
She’s torn; part of her knows that they have to be the last pilots, and that he’ll never find peace if he doesn’t fight, but part of her just wishes him to live, to survive despite everything.
40. History
As life leaves his body, he thinks that the two of them, that all of them, are just history now, and he is glad that everything is over.
41. Power
“You’ll have the power of protecting the ones you love, at the cost of your own life”, Dung Beetle tells at the new unfortunate pilots, and recalls what he is fighting for; he has the power to defend all the children in the world, and to hope that none of them will have the same sad ending his sister and Jun Ushiro had, and he is going to use it.
43. God
When he saw Zearth, he thought that Something Higher had some plan for them; but, when he left the room in which Machi was breathing her last breath, he decided that, if there was a God, then He just didn’t care.
44. Wall
Her brother built a wall around his heart, and she just wishes she could tear it away; that’s why she wants to find his mother, and that’s why she’s never told anyone Machi’s not in the contract, despite having soon realized the fact - Kana needs someone with the power of breaking walls to stay with Jun until the end.
45. Naked
In Zearth, everyone is stripped of the masks, of the polite layers they have cast upon themselves, and is exposed in their true, naked nature; after they leave Kako’s house, he remembers Chizu’s knife slashing Kako’s throat, and wonders how much of the true, detestable nature of people Machi has seen.
46. Drive
He looks pensively at a car, in the avenue; he’s never going to learn how to drive, but he wishes he could so he could take her to a last ride.
47. Harm
On Waku’s house, at night, Ushiro can hear Machi quietly sobbing into her pillow; she’s been harmed, he knows, more than anyone else, but, still, she tries to laugh and smile and to make him happy, and, for an instant, he feels like he can really love that girl.
48. Precious
“Ours”, she says with feeling, and he knows she’s referring not only to their friendship, to their love, or to their families; she’s referring to everything around them, every person, animal, tree or landscape, to every little thing in the world, and he knows, deep inside, that that moment in which they understood each other and had the planet in their hands is going to stay in his heart forever.
49. Hunger
In the second day, the day after they signed a contract of death without knowing it, Ushiro helped roasting some fish, after half an hour of listening to Kanji’s pleas; to Machi, nothing had ever tasted so good, and it hurt her that the boy that had cooked those fish would soon know hell in its worse form.
50. Believe
Most of his beliefs were stripped from him during his time as one of Zearth’s pilots; still, he believed in redemption, and hope, and he believed that he would meet her, all of them, in the other side - and that only heightened his desire of ending everything once and for all, as the last pilot.