FAKE Ficlet: Not Dying Today

[badly_knitted]

Title: Not Dying Today

Fandom: FAKE

Author: badly_knitted

Characters: Leo Grant, Ryo, Dee

Rating: PG-15

Setting: Mainly Vol. 5 Act 14 and Vol. 3 Act 9, but with a tiny hint to Vol. 7 Act 19.

Summary: Leo knows he’s not going to die today. That’s too bad.

Word Count: 346

Written For: Challenge #92: Enemies at fan_flashworks

Disclaimer: I don’t own FAKE, or the characters. They

Comments

[awieatti]

Ah, that was an intense scene! At first I was a bit sceptical about reading it from Leo's perspective, but it turned out great. It's really interesting to see Ryo and Dee (and the whole situation) from his point of view. I must admit, Leo has pretty good people skills, recognizing right away what's going on in their heads.
Great fic! :)

[badly_knitted]

Leo's smart, he can read people's body language or he wouldn't have lived as long as he has in the business he's in.

I wasn't even intending to write FAKE at all when I opened document to do some writing - I was going to write a Torchwood drabble, but somehow I got this instead, I wrote it in about twenty minutes. Leo is kind of world weary. I got the feeling he wants to die, but doesn't think he deserves that release, not by his own hand. He has Ryo pegged pretty quickly; Dee he's initially less sure of, but the longer Dee delays in pulling the trigger, the more sure Leo is that he won't do it. It's a bit of a stand-off, but in the end it's more important to Dee to be there for Ryo than to kill Leo, so he lets him go. It really is a very powerful and emotional scene

Thank you.

[timelordshines]

Wonderful.
You painted the picture really well.

[badly_knitted]

Thank you! It's one of the big, important scenes, a stand-off between Ryo and Leo Grant, which thankfully Dee interrupts. This is part of the scene before Ryo comes on to Dee and gets slapped in my fic 'In Hot Water', this is what Ryo was trying to use Dee to forget.

Leo is high up in the Mob by now, but he has kind of a death wish except he's not going to take his own life. He's waiting for someone else to do it, preferably someone who has the right to, which means either Ryo or Leo's wife Alicia.

[cyberiad_queen]

Ryo would have hated himself if he'd pulled that trigger. He's just not that person; there's too much goodness in him. And his parents would never have wanted that. I don't think he and Dee could ever have looked each other in the face again if Dee had done it.

I love how tired Leo sounds here. If only he'd been just a bit smarter, maybe he could've got out the way his wife wanted him to. It would've meant living the rest of their lives in hiding, but they could at least have had a life together.

[badly_knitted]

True on all counts. Dee would have sacrificed everything for Ryo's sake if he'd had to, but it wasn't necessary because Ryo could not kill in cold blood.

Leo could probably have got away with Alicia, but I think the guilt of everything he'd done was weighing too heavily on him for that. He didn't believe he deserved freedom, but he wanted one of the people he'd wronged the most to deliver the ultimate punishment for his crimes. Better that it should be Alicia rather than Ryo though, she was already damaged. Perhaps in a way what she did was a mercy killing. She freed Leo and maybe she freed herself in a way too. They couldn't have gone back to the way they were.

Thank you.

[cyberiad_queen]

I wish there had been another way out for them. I almost wanted to cry when I reached that part of the manga. They must have both felt like life had them in a stranglehold. :(

Very, very welcome; this really felt like it came right out of the manga itself.

[badly_knitted]

One of the things I love doing is trying to get inside the characters' heads during my favourite scenes, so I've done it quite a lot, but I think this is the only time I've taken the POV of one of the criminals. Usually it's Ryo or Dee, occasionally Bikky. I'm not really sure where this one came from, it just popped into my head and I was really pleased with the result.

Sometimes I think FAKE has spoiled me for a lot of manga because it has such depth of emotion. It really tugs at you.