House of Cards - 5/5 (JE, Akame)
Jin was in Shinjuku when the Kinokuniya store front caught his eye. He crossed over to it and headed inside, passing over the shelves of manga and magazines to areas where he rarely ventured. Browsing through titles, he skimmed the pages of anything containing the keyword, "identity." The first few books he shelved again immediately, not interested in the postwar national identity crisis of Japan. The only crisis he cared about was his own.
He thought he lucked out with an English text by guy named Erik Erikson. Jin's English was pretty good after living in the U.S. for a while, and he managed to get through two pages of the preface before skipping that part entirely, and then grew increasingly frustrated with the rest of the book. Who and what was it talking about? Psychosocial moratorium? And something about Freud, wasn't he the guy all about sex? And then there was the arbitrary German vocabulary.
No wonder therapy was bullshit if this was what it was based on. Jin shoved the book back on the shelf with the rest of its ostentatious brethren, and wandered back out onto the street.
Identity crisis. Geez. Kame should be the one with the identity crisis, seeing how many different people he'd been all his life, sometimes a stranger even to Jin. And sometimes Jin thought it'd be easier that way. As for his own self...
Starting from the beginning, he'd been a scrawny brat swiping snacks from the small shop on the outskirts of Tokyo where he lived with his mom and brother, then soon became the petty thief picking a salary man's pockets during the evening rush at the train station. A punk kid considered a lost cause by his teachers, a poor role model for Reio, and a burden on his mom. He'd been aware of it, had considered leaving, and on occasion had threatened to do just that only for his mom to hold onto him tight, too proud to beg and too loving to let him go.
Jin paused in front of an arcade, taking in the flashing lights and noises crashing around inside. School must have just let out because the place was beginning to draw in a trickle of kids in uniforms. He'd proven his teachers right at least, dropping out of high school after the funeral that had orphaned him and his brother. Worked for a while, got into several screaming fights with Reio about him staying in school, and wasn't as good as his mom when it came to holding on to people. Luckily or unluckily, the two brothers had no one else and were stuck together anyway.
As Jin left the arcade behind a new scene unfolded in yellow and black construction tape. A section of the road was blocked off and clouds of dust billowed up from the rapid fire of a jackhammer biting into pavement. Honest work: Jin had turned out to be pretty shit at it. Thievery, now, that was something he could do. Had always done, it seemed like, and went on doing until he was getting away with grand theft in diamonds and the only thing that had kept the cops from busting down his door was CARD getting there first.
After clearing up a misunderstanding about what kind of "services" he was being solicited for, Jin joined up without even listening to the rest of the recruitment speech. If there'd been fine print he wouldn't have read it. All he saw was what seemed at the time to be a dream within reach; getting to do what he did best and avoiding the problems that came with it. CARD found out they had relatives in Italy and were able to send Reio there. Jin could have simply gone with him, but at that point he'd already put himself on one side of a line and his little brother on the other. They still kept in contact through irregular emails.
Jin patted his pockets; gun, lock picks, knife, phone, some cash and loose change, cheap lighter-but he was out of smokes. It didn't take long to come across a vending machine, though. He dug out some coins to buy a pack of Marlboro Lights, coming up with ¥320 and that damnable white chip again. The pad of his thumb rubbed and caught against the plastic ridges of its surface.
CARD had given him a new name but not really a new identity. When the King of Hearts had been uncovering evidence of counterfeit production in a top business exec's home he was still breaking and entering and getting his dirty hands where they didn't belong, and loving every thrilling second. Every sneaky success. For the greater good, of course.
And when the Suicide King had gone off fucking everything up in every which way, well, he'd still had his uses. Still in the game, raising the stakes. Then he'd been putting a 9mm bullet into the head of someone he knew, for the good of the organization, for his own good, for someone's good, and CARD's first and foremost rule leaked out all over the warehouse floor in bright red and wet gray matter.
It still had taken several hours, a lot of hard drinking, and mind-blowingly intense PTS for the self-realization and proper horror to register. Once it finally had he was basically the most useless he'd ever been throughout his entire, undistinguished, wretched life. The fact was reinforced when Jin said he was leaving and nobody had stopped him.
A spring breeze whisked away the lungful of smoke Jin expelled, cigarette tucked between his lips where he stood on an overpass. Traffic moved sluggishly underneath, taxis and trucks bumper to bumper. Comparatively, a lone plane jetted overhead against a backdrop of clear blue sky, destination unknown.
LA had been his fresh start. And honest start, even. Well, mostly-he wasn't sure how he became the go-to person whenever a friend lost their keys, and so what if a few of his acquaintances hailed from the ghetto, Jin still kept his hands out of strangers' pockets and stores' display cases. He didn't think composing songs and singing occasionally in the neighborhood coffeehouse made him any more of a useful person, but it didn't make him less of one either. Average and normal wasn't what most people typically aimed for, but dreams were relative.
Rosa had been part of his dream for a while. Maybe even a large part until she exited stage left, and the show couldn't go on without its star. Without something to revolve around, without gravity to keep him in orbit, Jin drifted towards whatever would pull him in.
He supposed that meant he was slowly being sucked back into CARD's black hole and this time he might resign himself being crushed there. It wasn't the bravest of choices, but he was hardly the bravest of men.
"You look like you're down on your luck."
Jin laughed a little, curls of smoke framing his face. Ash crumbled off the tip of his cigarette and was lost to the crush of traffic below. "Yeah. Yeah, I am."
Coming to stand nearby was familiar face-or not so much the face, but the wrinkled suit Jin definitely remembered. "Sorry to hear it. Guess this didn't help you much." A white chip appeared between his fingers, identical to the one he'd given Jin before. With a flick it went sailing over the rail.
Jin's eyes followed it as it bounced off the hood of a cab and disappeared under rolling tires. That was all the motivation he needed to reach for the chip still in his pocket and fling it into the distance, like throwing money into a fountain. Make a wish.
"Want to know a secret?" He didn't even wait for Jin's response before saying, "I know something that can turn your luck around."
"I seriously doubt that."
"Here."
Jin spared the guy a dubious glance, ready to turn down the hostess card or sketchy flyer, but the object resting in the open hand was neither. Nonplussed, Jin picked up the cell phone. It didn't look like a new model so he supposed the guy wasn't trying to make a sale. There was already a number entered on the display.
He gave a mental shrug-why the hell not?-and pressed the call button. One ring, two, three...
Click.
At first he only heard the distorted sound of a voice speaking from far away. It got close enough near the end to him to catch, "-say hello."
Female, he identified. Maybe it was just some hostess or soapland girl after all.
"Hello?"
Jin stopped breathing. His heart suddenly lodged somewhere up in his throat and he willed it to stop too so he could hear past the noise and confirm he wasn't imagining things.
"...Hello?" Raimu asked tentatively over the line again.
♥ || ♠
Kame's phone rang and rang, noisily filling the space of his private room on the compound. Kame grabbed the device from his desk and stared wearily at the name on the display. For a second his finger had hovered over the keypad, a button away from turning his phone off completely and then nothing short of the Dealer himself armed with access codes could have bothered him. He'd barricaded himself in here enough times as a kid, only it had never been the head of the organization that made him open up. Jin was their breaking and entering specialist in more than one sense. If pounding incessantly on the door didn't work he'd resort to all sorts of outrageous threats. From anyone else Kame wouldn't have given them a second thought, but invariably, he always fell helpless to the nagging possibility of, It's Jin, he might actually do it.
But Jin wasn't going to come knocking anytime soon anymore. He had his pride, though it apparently wasn't enough to get him out of here for good. It was only enough-and Kame's own stubbornness was enough-to mire them both in this mess of their own making. Kame curled on his side, reminded himself he wasn't an immature brat anymore, and put the phone to his ear.
"Hello?" he managed to answer right before the call went to voicemail.
"Is this a bad time?" Nakamaru asked nervously. Maybe it was Kame's tone, or the length of time it had taken for him to pick up, or the fact that Nakamaru had overheard the entire exchange with Jin an hour ago.
Kame snorted into the receiver. "If you're waiting for a good time that might be a while. What is it?"
"Well... I found something on Akanishi."
There was no one around to see Kame curl in on himself further, stomach knotting up as he said, "I thought you dropped that investigation."
"I did. Didn't find anything that time. I guess it would be better to say something came up in connection to him. After talking with Kiet-kun I dug up as much as I could on the people he described. One's minor, an informant who frequents the gambling hall, he couldn't possibly know enough to be our inside leak. But the other's a woman you might have heard of, and the lab confirmed..."
Kame listened and felt all the knots inside him loosen to clear a path for his heart to fall. He slowly sat up. "Have you reported this to anyone else?"
"No," Nakamaru said. Then he amended apologetically, "Not yet."
Kame may demand difficult things, but he didn't ask for the impossible. "Okay."
"How long?"
He hesitated before answering. It wasn't his call to make. "We'll play it by ear."
Nakamaru's assent was surprised, but he didn't question. He must have had more faith in Kame than Kame did himself, but in the end that was all someone really needed.
It had been a long time since Kame had retreated into this room for the purpose to avoid others. He wasn't sure when exactly the reason changed, became a different kind of habit, but even now he could admit that despite everything, he was waiting for that familiar, insistent knock that was impossible to ignore or refuse.
If Jin could admit to being an adult now, so could he. Kame rolled up into a sitting position, feet smacking against the floor. He scrolled through the contacts on his phone. Selected the number he needed.
"Iriguchi, deguchi, Taguchi desu!"
"You're in the comm room?"
"I am. Need to be hooked up?"
"Assemble the Court, ASAP."
"Including...?"
"Just the basics."
"Gotcha."
Kame was already up and out the door, heading towards the Suite. No further prompting was needed. He'd been a coward, and living with piles of regrets wasn't actually living at all, it was surviving on scraps. Wretchedness was only making him more wretched. Enough. There was nothing Kame could do for anyone like this. He figured it was high time he went knocking on Jin's door instead, hoping to find it still open.
♥ || ♠
"You first," Jin ordered softly, the tip of the Beretta nudging against Suit's spine. They'd emerged from the man's Prius in front of an achingly picture perfect suburb house in Katsushika. The steps leading up to the door were lined with blooming flowerpots, freshly watered.
"For crying out loud, just don't disturb the neighbors! This is a nice area." Suit fidgeted under gunpoint but he didn't act truly afraid. Either he didn't think Jin could possibly pull the trigger in broad daylight, or he had balls of steel under the poorly-fitted pinstripes.
He didn't withdraw a key at the door, pushing the button for the bell instead. Jin heard it chime within, and the approach of footsteps. Suit made for a human shield in front of him. The deadbolt lock turned with a click and the door swung cheerily open. Both men adjusted their gazes down a few feet to where Raimu hung off the doorknob.
Jin shoved the man out of the way and dropped to his knees as Raimu threw herself forward, her negligible weight colliding into him. He rocked back anyway, more because he could barely hold himself up, and all but crushed her to him, her small arms around his neck squeezing back. She smelled clean and faintly floral, wearing a daffodil-print sundress and matching clips in her hair that was brushed to a shine. There was a stickiness to her fingers and a dab of chocolate on her cheek that Jin wiped off with his thumb, then continued to stroke her soft skin in amazement.
"Hey," he said, swallowing the lump in his throat. "Hey. How have you been, kiddo?"
Raimu mirrored his gesture and patted the side of his face. "Okay, I guess," she said. "Is it time to go home now?"
"Come inside for a bit," said a new figure that stepped around the scowling man in the suit. Fear crashed down on Jin and he held Raimu tight as if he could pull her out of the dream with him, because it was Rosa who emerged, smiling in her thoughtful, sly way, and wiping her hands on an apron. "Have some cookies first."
♥ || ♠
The soft, gooey chocolate chip cookie melted in Jin's mouth and settled rich on his taste buds. In his lap Raimu licked her fingers clean, legs kicking and absently knocking against his shin in little thumps of dull pain that seemed determined to prove his dream theory wrong. But he was sitting on a comfortable sofa in a sunlit living room with Raimu in his arms and his ex-girlfriend pouring a cup of coffee for him. The domesticity was unreal.
"Here," she said, placing the cup on a coaster. There were coasters. And decorative throw pillows. And tasteful curtains.
Honestly, Jin was a little creeped out. "Where did you learn how to bake?" he demanded, perhaps rudely, but Rosa had never been the coffee-serving, cookie-baking type. She'd been the type that danced by herself in clubs, got high and painted her walls with murals of places no one had ever been, and she always took her coffee with a shot of Baileys. Jin had seen her pour her own cup and when he tasted his (made just the way he liked) there was none of that Irish Cream kick.
At least Rosa's smile was the same, an inviting curve that promised to share secrets and keep others. "Self-taught. Willpower goes a long way. You should try my cooking next."
Jin couldn't handle this anymore. "What the fff-" He covered Raimu's ears and hissed sotto voce, "What the hell? Why are you here? And what's with him?" He jerked his head at Suit, who was skulking in the kitchen and shooting poisonous looks at them every so often. It was all just bizarre.
"Business before pleasure, Jin? You?"
"Rosa," Jin snapped, his business mode having already been stretched over a period of days. "Are you baked? What's going on?"
Her patiently reproachful look was unsettlingly familiar. He'd never noticed before. "I'm perfectly clean, Jin. I thought it was only fair." She looked around the house, lips pursed in thought. "What do you think? You were never that specific when you talked about it but I figured this was standard family living."
"What?"
"We can always change things, even move. I'm still partial to the States myself."
Jin stared, and wished for incomprehension to strike him dumb because the understanding that was starting to form was too horrible. "This-did you-but you were the one who left!"
"I regretted it." She didn't put on a sad face, trying to prove her feelings with a show of tears like some girls might have. Instead she contemplated and sounded out the facts. "I was too unyielding. I didn't want normal, and you never tried to make me normal so I thought it was fine for a while. I thought you'd come around, but you never did. Not until I left, apparently, but I'd started changing my mind before that."
Jin was suddenly filled with apology towards Kame. He'd thought Kame was a stranger sometimes, but that didn't compare to who he was sitting across from now. Didn't even come close. "Who are you?"
That question took her aback. "Jin, I'm willing to compromise here. What you want and what you need, I can give you both."
"I don't think so," he said, sugar and caffeine turning into nauseating bile in his gut. "No. You can't. I can't."
Irritation creased her forehead. "You're still-"
"Ah, hell, it's not going to work." Suit came forward, brushing cookie crumbs from his hands onto the spotless white carpet. "Look, if you insist on playing house can you give me Liu's number first? We lost all the goods to this charade and I don't fancy explaining to Tanuma why we don't even have the natural."
Rosa glared at the interruption. "Fine."
Jin saw her turn the slightest bit to where he'd (foolishly) left his gun lying on the table, and instinctual certainty kicked him in the ribs. "MOVE!" he screamed, pulling Raimu's face towards his chest, but the hammering of his heart wasn't loud enough to cover the burst of gunfire exploding from the Beretta.
Suit didn't have a chance. One .40 S&W bullet was all it took, point-blank, right between the eyes. The man dropped to the floor and red speckled the carpet with a spreading stain from around his head.
Gun smoke burned Jin's nostrils and Raimu began to cry.
"I did tell him I was done playing." Rosa turned back to Jin, hardly sparing a glance for the body once it had fallen. "Don't look at me like that. You put plenty of lead in Ichimonji the other day. Come to think of it, I know you're still armed, let's have it all out while we're being honest here."
Jin reached around Raimu, refusing to dislodge her where she clung to him, and removed the Recon Tanto from his waist to set it on the coffee table. "That's all," he said gruffly.
"Your lock picks?"
"What about them?"
She laughed at that. "Oh, all right. It's not like I'm going to lock you up anyway."
"Really considerate of you. Really." Jin rocked the little girl in his lap and stroked her hair. She was beginning to calm down, cries subsiding into little hiccups and leaving a mess of tears and snot on his shoulder. Rosa offered him a box of tissues and he only hesitated a moment before accepting it.
"Believe it or not, Jin, I'm not forcing you into anything. I know you hate that."
Jin made a disparaging noise as he wiped gently at Raimu's face, then scrubbed his vest as an afterthought. "Don't lie, I've been following your pace from the start." The proof was on his wrist.
Rosa set the gun down in the center of the table and leaned back comfortably. "You made your own choices. You could have stayed out of it, let the police handle things."
"Like a coward?"
"Like a normal person."
That word again, bam, one more nail in the coffin. "What's normal anyway?" Jin muttered after struggling to find something to say. He looked around the house. It wasn't a mansion, nor especially luxuriant by Western standards, but in Tokyo it was damn nice. A thing of dreams, impossible and out of or each, but that never stopped anybody. He tried for sarcastic but all he came up with was wistful: "This?"
When Rosa softened she could be like a little girl herself. She'd had dreams too back then, wilder than his, always shared with a laugh. "If you want. A home, a ring on your finger, a kid... It's nicer than I thought it would be. I could live like this with you."
Jin's gaze slid towards the body of the man, her business partner of some sort, that she'd so casually shot. He made sure Raimu was facing away from it. No matter how he wished otherwise his tough outer shell was a joke; he was all soft underbelly in this moment. "And that?"
"The meeting with Tanuma is at three o'clock tomorrow. He's with the Hikura family. He has the children from the lab, but I have the contacts for the opium."
Who are you? he wanted to ask again. He was just enough of a coward to not look too hard at her, lest he find the answer. "There's no way I'm-"
"I didn't say you were." Rosa crossed her legs, her smile conspiring. "I'll help you take him down and save everyone."
"...What?" Jin held onto Raimu like she was his lifeline, the last thing he was certain of anymore. "So you're not-who are you working for?"
"Oh, Jin," Rosa sighed, shoulders slumping while she shook her head ruefully. She tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. "You must have realized by now. I'm no one's trained hunting dog, and neither are you."
"So you're just a criminal."
"And you?"
He lived with CARD's number one rule around his neck, a collar that chafed and would probably hang him eventually. Someone like Rosa had no such restraints, a true predator in the wild. Primordial. She'd found him and sunk her teeth in the collar and could easily pull it over his head, free him of the doubts that in a way kept him grounded, even if the place he was grounded was hell on earth. The thought of having nothing to suffer from and depend on made him sick with want and dread.
"Let me-let me think about it."
♥ || ♠
Kame knew at the very least he had to inform the rest of the Court. Just so they wouldn't be surprised. Just in case they needed to be convinced, although he probably wasn't the best person to argue the case. And the others weren't as tractable as Nakamaru, who'd only known Jin for a few days.
When they were all gathered in the Black Suite he told them the news.
"No shit?" Koki kicked his feet up on the table and leaned back in his chair. "He sure knows how to pick 'em."
Rosa Kato, twenty-eight, born in Italy but raised in Japan until she was fourteen when she went missing after killing her Math teacher. The brutality of the murder suggested a vengeful motive, and accounts from other students indicated that Rosa had likely been victim to sexual harassment or worse at the teacher's hands. There was no substantial information on her for the next few years, mostly speculation about drug abuse and prostitution, until she killed again. The second murder was more coldly premeditated, as were the others that followed, and the ease with which she avoided law enforcement grew. It had been her hair they'd identified on the brush.
"I've heard of her," Ueda offered, skimming the files Nakamaru printed out. "Subterfuge is a necessary skill for an assassin but she's said to be exceptionally good at it."
"I still should have noticed sooner." Nakamaru held his head in his hands. "She's been quiet for so long, no red flags came up when I investigated under her pseudonym. I should've dug deeper into the people around Akanishi, but they all seemed relatively harmless, not too clean but not too dangerous."
"So what are our orders?" Taguchi asked. There was a recent addition to the graffiti on his cast; a doodle of a face with features that were eclipsed by an enormous nose and an arrow pointing that read, "Nakamura."
Kame dragged his gaze away from Jin's recognizable handwriting to look each one of the Court members in the eye. He took in a deep breath. "As of now? Sit back and wait."
Koki's feet thumped when they hit the floor. "You haven't officially reported this, have you?" He was grinning, though.
Some of the tightness in Kame's chest loosened. "Well, that's..."
"I don't think Akanishi is a traitor either," Taguchi put out there with a blunt sense of timing. He smiled his invincible smile.
Koki barked a laugh, agreeing, "He's not calculating enough for that kind of deception. Looks kind of bad from the outside, though."
"They were dating for a while," Nakamaru added with caution. "He could have let something slip accidentally, though I can't imagine it would be anything major."
"And as far as I know he doesn't talk in his sleep...?" Koki waggled his eyebrows meaningfully at Kame, who was hard-pressed not to smirk.
"Let's not go there," Ueda said dryly.
Kame's smirk turned into a full-fledged grin before it dampened somewhat remorsefully. He'd worried over nothing and seriously underestimated his team. "Thanks."
"For what?" Ueda interjected before the conversation veered into awkward, sentimental places. "Not caring about your bedroom life? Don't mention it."
"Man," Koki said, crossing his arms behind his head. "This is the third time we've gone against regulations for that guy. We're all going to be branded traitors at this rate." Yet he didn't sound too upset by the idea.
"Third time's the charm?" Taguchi suggested.
"Yeah, so in other words we're screwed."
"Don't lie," Kame admonished lightly. "If we stopped making the higher ups nervous they'd think we weren't doing our jobs."
They all shared a laugh, and it went without saying what their respective jobs would be for time being. Investigating from all fronts, doing some preliminary damage control, keeping an eye out for key developments. If Jin was still part of the team the way they thought of him as, he'd know what his job was too.
♥ || ♠
"Are you sure you want to go through with this?" Rosa licked the last traces of strawberry ice cream from her plastic spoon and threw the empty cup away as they passed a trash can. She wore a wide-brimmed white hat with a fluttery spring camisole and pastel skirt, drawing admiring gazes as they made their way through the park.
"She's not mine and her parents are worried," Jin said, tapping out a brief, no frills message on his phone in one hand and linking fingers with Raimu with the other. She was wearing a cherry-patterned dress today and there were still pale pink petals caught in her black hair. "How's this?" He tilted the screen for Rosa to see.
shinjuku-gyoen, sendagaya gate. tell pi sry it took this long."
"Fine." She sighed a little, and brushed the petals from Raimu's hair with an affectionate hand. "I'm going to miss her though."
Jin scrolled through his contacts. He never had gotten around to asking for Kame's new number, but he'd gotten Nakamaru's. Better to let the Court handle it than mail Yamapi directly. "You took good care of her. Thanks." He sent the message and then turned off his phone.
Rosa took his hand once it was free. "Of course. I knew she was important to you, and you've always been fond of children."
Jin's hand tightened around hers enough to hurt, but she didn't complain. "And you say this isn't blackmail."
"You wish it was. That would make it easier for you, wouldn't it? But I'm only offering: with my help you can go right for the throat of the whole operation. Tanuma is only the start. I notice you haven't asked me why I don't go to CARD."
Because that would be like bringing a tiger out of the wild and into the home. Even housecats weren't fully domesticated. "I'd like to know how you know about that."
Rosa smiled and leaned her head on his shoulder. She also had stray cherry blossom petals in her hair. "Maybe I'll tell you later."
They reached Sendagaya Gate and Jin knew it wouldn't be long before the Court arrived. He still took the time to gather Raimu up in a hug and hold her for a while. "Be a good girl and wait here, okay? Don't talk to any strangers-unless it's a guy with a huge nose. Call him Nakamura. Or a guy named Kamenashi-"
"I know Kazu-nii."
Of course. Something warmed in Jin's chest. "Then I guess I don't have anything to worry about." He kissed the top of her head. "Tell your dad not to think too badly of me."
Raimu held fast to Jin's sleeve, eyes filling with tears. She was too young; all she knew was that she was being left alone.
Rosa intercepted with a tissue from her purse, dabbing at the corners of Raimu's eyes. "Don't cry, sweetie. If you wait for just a little bit you'll see your mom and dad. Here." Taking Jin's wrist, she deftly removed his watch and slipped it into the front pocket of Raimu's dress. "Hold onto this and you'll definitely be found."
Jin narrowed his eyes but Rosa only smiled back at him. So she'd found the GPS embedded in his watch when she'd tampered with it, and who knew how long ago that had been. He could have removed the tracking device anytime after leaving CARD, but had never gotten around to severing that last link, meant to allow the Court to find him in an emergency. It was useless from his end, though. For all Jin knew it didn't even work anymore, being over three years old.
Rosa consented to waiting in the taxi until someone arrived to get Raimu, just in case. One or two strangers approached the little girl, probably asking where her parents were. Jin tensed, watching, as someone brought over a cop from the nearby station.
"She'll be fine," Rosa assured, also observing, and told the driver they could go now.
Jin still turned to look out the rear window, and as they joined the flow of traffic he saw Kame rushing onto the scene. Yamapi was right behind him, suit jacket flapping open and tie askew, his hair a tousled mess, scooping up his daughter while Kame hastily and apologetically offered an explanation to the officer. Jin was too far too see but he knew Kame was glancing around, looking for him. He'd find the watch on Raimu and understand what it meant.
"So that's the Ace of Spades," Rosa mused beside him. The taxi took them further and further away and soon the others were out of sight.
"You never heard about any of this from me." It was like the moment when he laid eyes on Kame's card back in the apartment, and Jin was seized with an intense, terrible fear that had been long-cultivated throughout years of partnership. If Kame's cover was blown, if Kame was being targeted, Jin would throw himself in front of a hail of bullets for him-and not to physically protect him because Kame didn't typically need physically protecting from anyone, least of all Jin. But the reason Jin was Kame's best partner was because he fiercely, insanely, possessively protected Kame's identity. The rest of the world could have the rest of the disposable names Kame used, the Court could have its Ace, but Kamenashi Kazuya belonged to Jin.
"No," Rosa agreed easily, unperturbed. "You were impressively tight-lipped about them."
Oh, Jesus, and the others, too? Well, small comfort it wasn't him who gave them away. He probably just made it worse. "Coming back here was the worst thing I could've done."
"Guilt doesn't make you a martyr, Jin. It just makes you guilty."
If that was the case he wondered why someone hadn't hung him already.
♥ || ♠
There was still a red stain on the carpet, although the body had been moved during the night while Jin tried to sleep with Raimu tucked under his chin. He was reluctant to explore the house any more than was necessary. Who knew what monsters lurked in the closets.
The kitchen was adequately stocked, and he helped himself to a bottle of Clearheart Vodka in the kitchen, mixing it in a glass with tonic and two slices of lime. Rosa had never really liked gin. She was more familiar to him when she changed out of her nice park clothes, scrubbing makeup off her face and coming out of the bathroom in just a pair of low rise jeans and black bra. Her skin was as white as he remembered, with a scar low on her back that she said she'd gotten from falling off her bike. He traced it with his fingertips as she stole a sip from his drink.
"Where did this really come from?"
Her lips curved in a smile, face tilted up at him in an innocent way. "Thinking of backstabbing me?"
"You're not worried that I will?"
In answer she retrieved and placed his gun on the countertop and slid it over. "Here."
Jin accepted it cautiously. True, she hadn't exactly been keeping it from him, but still. He ejected the clip and examined it but everything was left as it had been after being fired yesterday. "Where are we meeting this guy?"
"You'll see."
Fair enough; she wasn't worried about him threatening or hurting her, but she didn't trust him with information. Jin finished off his vodka tonic while Rosa threw on a dark shirt, holstered a Khar PM9 under a denim jacket, and snapped an elastic around her hair in a ponytail. She exchanged the sandals from the park for a pair of lace-up boots.
Something about her was indelibly recognizable now even though the ensemble was a bit different than what she'd preferred in LA. Something hidden being brought to surface, occasionally suggested but never before confirmed, the process of unveiling-Jin couldn't afford to keep looking. He'd rather go in blind.
"Lead the way," he said, and followed her out the door.
♥ || ♠
Rosa's gloved fist pounded a rhythmic signal on the door of warehouse 5-A. Her posture was relaxed with a pair of sunglasses resting on her nose, hair swaying in the breeze coming off the bay. The week's fair weather continued, nothing but sunshine and a few fluffy clouds passing by overhead, with showers scheduled for the weekend. Rosa had commented about watering the plants later today when they got back home.
"Shimura?" a young male voice asked from inside.
"It's Kato."
"You're early," said the guy who let them in, sliding the door shut behind them. Then he was kicking back in a chair with a handheld game under his nose in a flash.
Jin didn't give him a second glance, trailing Rosa's slim figure as she made her way towards the back. Immense crates were stacked in piles taller than his head on either side, pyramidal to allow for easy climbing, and several individuals perched or lounged on top of them. He and Rosa were good and surrounded. Jin's pulse quickened but he maintained his casual stroll until Rosa stopped below a catwalk.
Above, a lanky man ceased pacing along the platform and gripped the thin railing to snarl, "It's about time."
Without blinking, Rosa reached into her jacket and turned her back on Tanuma, pressing the PM9 up under Jin's chin. His hands went up obligingly and he glared over her head at the nervous, sweating man that tried to hurry away, only to be blocked by two members of CARD on either side. The rest of them climbed down from the crates.
"I see," Rosa said, and flicked the safety off. Everyone kept their distance.
Except for Kame, whose measured steps took the stairs to join Tanuma on the catwalk, and he had the man ushered away with a wave of his hand. He then loosely clasped his hands together and leaned on the railing. "So."
"The credit's all yours," Rosa admitted with ease, turning so she could see Kame over Jin's shoulder and migrating the tip of the gun to a more comfortable level at the middle of Jin's spine. There was no anger or frustration tightening her tone, only a breezy admiration and smiling thoughtfulness, and Jin knew exactly what look she was giving Kame right now behind her sunglasses. A rush of pride was clawed over by alternating rakes of possessiveness and resentment.
"Show-off," Jin accused, and Kame narrowed his eyes, catching onto Jin's train of thought and standing there like a glorious bastard for all to see.
"I considered the possibility of you arranging something in advance," Rosa mused aloud. "I didn't think you'd get the place and time, though."
Kame slipped a hand into his pocket and pulled out something that flashed and sparkled under the bright warehouse lights. Jin's watch dangled from his fingers. "One of the timezones was off. Stopped at 3:00." Rosa might be habitually early, but Kame could be even earlier.
"I figured you might know about the GPS," Jin hurried to explain. He was a hair trigger away from being crippled in one sense or another no matter how he saw it, and rather than take his time he was going to rush into it and see where he ended up. "I was going to leave the watch with Raimu-chan myself, but you beat me to it. I didn't even need to come up with an excuse." The tiny device was now taped to the inside of his boot, functional after all. Taguchi had his uses besides telling bad jokes.
"I see," Rosa said again. He heard her sigh. "Well, Jin, your goal at least was accomplished. Maybe your luck will hold out since I'm not much of a team player, I'm afraid. For now, I'm walking."
Luck, hell. Gambling was the name of the game but they weren't stupid. They were all criminals anyways. Jin was pretty sure Rosa would pull the trigger if circumstances made her. He'd probably do the same. Right now he'd bet Ueda was in position on some rooftop with a bolt-action sniper. He could guess what Kame would do.
"All right," Kame said, and people dispersed back behind the crates to clear the way.
Rosa took Jin with her to the exit, and the same guy guarding the door opened it for her. Before stepping out she said, "You'll tell the cutie outside to hold his fire, won't you?"
Shit. But all Kame did was coolly tug his collar towards his mouth where a mic was taped. "Black Queen, we're letting the target walk."
We are? Jin wondered, almost dared to hope. We really are? Then Rosa spun him around, smiling with gun in hand as she lifted her shades, and girlishly rose up on her toes to kiss his cheek.
"I wasn't wrong though, was I? I'll see you around if you change your mind. Say hi to Raimu-chan for me." And with that she lowered the sunglasses and holstered the PM9 to simply... walk away.
Jin watched her figure retreat, his own frame tensed and winding to spring. It couldn't be that easy. It couldn't be. He knew how CARD worked, how this scenario was supposed to work, and what he was expected to do. Just before he burst out after her Kame caught up to him and seized his wrist in a tight grip. "It's fine, Jin. This time, it's fine."
"How can you-but she-"
"What would you do," Kame asked, dared, "if there was no choice but to take her down?"
"I'd do it." Personally. Ueda wouldn't have gotten the chance.
"That's why we're letting her go." Jin almost didn't believe him until Kame added, "Don't do anything stupid. For once. That's all I ask."
Gratitude-if that was what Jin was feeling, and he wasn't sure, sunk into his system and overrode the shocks jolting along his nerves. "...I thought I told you to stop deciding things for me."
"Why can't you just shut up and be thankful?" Kame was snapping at him, not quite looking him in the eye, but Jin had gotten distracted staring at the familiar angles of his face that he didn't notice when Rosa had made it safely out of sight. "What's wrong with you now?" Kame finally asked after a minute had passed.
"I just remembered something. Some of Koyama's bullshit."
"You have another appointment with him, by the way."
Jin groaned, stopping short when a thought occurred to him and a grin spread across his face. Yeah, that would show that quack.
"What is it?" Kame prodded with a suspicious look. "What are you so happy about?
"Koyama's bullshit."
"Maybe his point didn't penetrate your thick skull."
"Maybe," Jin conceded, no longer caring. Identity crisis, whatever. "But I was thinking, you know me best, right? Better than I know myself." Perhaps there had been a few bumps along the way reconnecting, but their partnership was as solid as ever, guessing each other's moves without any planning ahead. The grip on Jin's wrist hadn't loosened in the slightest.
"Unfortunately," Kame said with a roll of his eyes.
Jin was smug enough to let the insult pass. "Then it's okay if I keep looking at you."
Kame called him a psychopath. Then he asked what Jin wanted to have for dinner.
♥ || ♠
"I'm back," Kame announced, probably looking as drowned as he felt. As quickly as the cherry blossoms scattered the rains had come, chilling the weather down for a while and leaving only the memory of warm sunshine. It was supposed to clear up in a couple more days.
"Welcome back," chorus multiple voices inside the apartment. This was becoming routine, and he'd already started looking for bigger place.
"Wait," Jin said before Kame could shrug out of his coat. "We're going out for dinner."
"In this weather?"
"Yeah, duh, sukiyaki." Jin pulled Raimu into his lap and poked her cheeks. "You can't say no to this face."
"Sukiyaki!" Raimu grinned up at him.
"And," Jin added, prodding at the boy next to him-gently, minding the arm that was still encased in a cast and would be for a while yet, but it allowed him to move around. "Kiet is a growing boy. He needs to eat well."
CARD had been unsuccessful in locating any family for him. He said he hadn't seen his parents in years and they'd sold him anyway, the youngest in a big, poor family. Jin had gone all mama bear and jumped to take him in, penniless though he was, taking out a loan from the organization in exchange for services when needed. Kame wasn't sure if Jin would ever manage to get away from them again, but he seemed content with the deal for now. Unfortunately, he also seemed to be operating under the assumption Kiet wouldn't have anything to do with CARD ever, but that was the boy's choice to make. Jin didn't know he was being seen as a role model. Kame sighed; at least he was forewarned. He'd cross the bridge when he came to it.
"Now you're just being stingy," Jin said, misinterpreting Kame's reaction. "I already got Pi to agree to pay for it, okay?" He held up his phone to display a message along with a photo of Kiet with a scarf tied around the lower part of his face brandishing a wooden kitchen spoon to Raimu's neck.
"if u want 2 c her again meet us @ usual place 6pm"
Kame imagined Yamapi's sputtering reaction and glanced at the clock on the wall. "We're going to be late if we don't leave now."
He couldn't tell who was more excited, Jin or the kids, as Raimu hurried into a lime green raincoat and matching boots, and Jin found a second umbrella. Kame hadn't even put his down yet. "Let's go, let's go," Jin said, herding them all out.
"You owe me," Kame said, allowing himself to be bossed back out into the downpour. They were probably going to be a little late anyway. It was Saturday night. He hoped Jin had made a reservation. On second thought, Kame reached for his phone to do it himself.
"Don't I always?" Jin took Raimu by the hand, and Raimu took Kiet's hand, and Kame pulled Kiet's hood up to cover his head. He wasn't sure if Kiet was copying Jin's fashion or if it was being imposed, but both thieves recoiled as Raimu stomped her boots into a puddle, grinning hugely. "What?" Jin asked, laughing, when he noticed he was under scrutiny.
Kame shook his head, only saying, "You," as they walked to the station, and then he had to fend off Jin's peppering of "What about me, huh?" the rest of the way. Because it was Jin, Kame would break down and tell him eventually. How his world was bigger and better with Jin in it than it was without, and how he'd fight for that with all he had, because even cowards could survive. But he wanted to live like this.
♥ | WINNER TAKES ALL | ♠
The life you had known
The pain that you show
I count all of the times you choke
The last miracle
The emptiness of hope
When all you want is to be a stranger
The lives you recall
The things that you stole
The push backwards that makes you fall
The scars that you show
The lover that you hold
Is no more than a ghost
And I've seen the cold and the rain
And I pushed you back
Always
Don't you need it in the worst way?
Control, I need it in the worst way, babe
And if you ever come back, if you ever come back
I will let you
Always
- Always, Neverending White Lights