Sashiko: The Darkest Timeline

[specialguestvillains]

Jigen's right arm ached, and that meant the weather was about to go sour.

Granted, it always ached, but it was aching in a very specific way right now, and also it was January in Paris so the weather was going to get fucked eventually. Everyone gave charitably around Christmas, but as soon as it flipped around to January 2 all that goodwill towards men dried up and the weather was even colder than before.

Jigen took up his usual position near the cafe and watched the patrons stroll by, eying them up to see who looked like a big spender. Men with dates sometimes liked to impress their girls, as did bachelorette parties. People on the way back from soccer matches were charitable, but only if their team won, and if they hadn't they had the risk of being mean drunks. Sometimes they'd be mean drunks anyway.

Okay, guy in a blue blazer, looked like a tourist from the back.

"Hey, buddy. Spare some change?" he mumbled, the phrase coming more naturally than most of his French. He said it enough these days for it to be nearly rote. The man turned and Jigen found himself unable to look the man in the face. Something about his pose said horror, maybe even disgust. He didn't have the energy to deal with that bullshit today.

"Don't worry about it," he said before the tourist could even speak, and turned around to trod off again. The battered hat he'd been using as a money bucket went back on his head. Behind him, he heard the man slowly back away. By the time Jigen looked at him again, the man in blue had run off into the crowd.

Comments

[specialguestvillains]

"Yeah. Maybe it's...I dunno, one of those Jungian things." He didn't know a hell of a lot about psychology, but he knew a few mob goons who were hardcore into spiritualism and the occult. Criminals tended to grasp for any kind of luck that they could. "Like your teeth falling out. Lots of people dream about that. Maybe lots of people dream about guys who look like monkeys."

[artoflaw]

"Maybe. Is yours annoying? Mine is. Smirking bastard. Or maybe I'm personifying pain and that's a bad idea. I don't know." Zenigata was not about psychology, really, but he was a devout buddhist and his great-odd-grandfather had been elevated to kamihood. He believed in things beyond the explainable.

"Maybe he's someone from a past life. Red thread, and all that." He shrugged once. "Either way, if I meet him, I hope he makes a better husband than a friend."

He doesn't know why, but he feels abandoned after seeing him. Unimportant. Aggravating and unnecessary. Or maybe that's just the chronic depression and untreated PTSD talking.

[specialguestvillains]

"Husband? You think you'll be a woman in the next life?" Jigen chuckled, letting the smoke waft from his fingertips before sucking on the cigarette again.

"Nah, mine's...mine's complicated. Annoying but an annoying I need. The dreams I have with him in it...they feel more real than reality, sometimes."

More intense. More beautiful. Jigen's fingers tense on the cigarette, denting it.

[artoflaw]

There's a long drag and a pointed lack of answer to that question. He'll leave it for Jigen to interpret. Is he just ignoring it because he knows it's a stupid idea, or because he'd be fine with a husband in the here and now?

"Must be hard, living in the shit world, missing something so important." Zenigata exhaled the last of his smoke gustily, letting it plume above his head before the air pressure sucked it through the open window. He gets up, stubs it out, and then says, "Did you eat anything while you were out?"

[specialguestvillains]

Well, that was....a suspiciously specific avoidance of the question. Jigen packs the idea away for later; even if the guy is trying to fish it doesn't mean he wants Jigen specifically. He'd made that clear on day one, actually.

"I could eat," he says, equally noncommittal. He doesn't want to say he didn't spend a cent of the money. "And at least this shit world's real. If I wanted to live in dreams all day I'd go find something harder than liquor to hit."

[artoflaw]

Zenigata drags himself upright, rolling his broad shoulders before he straightens his button down. There was nothing for it, he had to eat, especially since he lost his lunch earlier. He stretches out, and then says, "Let's go pick up Thai-- ah, scratch that. Too far, too spicy. There's that takeaway place, with the sandwiches? It's out and around the corner."

He isn't cooking tonight that's for damn sure. He may not have Migraine-san on his shoulder, but he's still tired as hell.

[specialguestvillains]

"You want to order in? I'm thinking neither of us want to go out tonight." Jigen tidies up a little as Zenigata gets himself in order, trying to somehow make things better. Be less of a leech on the poor man who has enough problems with the brain damage and dead son.

[artoflaw]

There's a moment of contemplating, before Zenigata says, "Let's go out for takeaway. We'll come back, but I need some air."

And it won't be bright enough to fuck with his rush eyes now.

[specialguestvillains]

Both of them have left the house separately since their arrangement began, but they've never 'gone for a walk', and it's there that Zenigata might pick up something odd. Jigen walks with a long, loping gait that still never seems to take him too far away from the man beside him. He walks just a little behind but always ready to dart forward in case of...well, in case old habits prove useful.

Jigen walks like a bodyguard, despite the right arm hanging limp at his side and no gun to draw in Zenigata's defense.

[artoflaw]

He knows.

He's not jumping to tell him, but he's no fool. He's kind, but not stupid. Or maybe he is, taking on a dangerous man into his home. Maybe this is his most elaborate suicide attempt yet. Who can say?

Walking past the bridge, Zenigata pauses briefly to glance over, but then keeps going until there's at a bistro getting sandwiches. He watches out the window, a faraway look in his eyes.

[specialguestvillains]

A dangerous man who's walking as if Zenigata is his capocrimine, to be kept safe at all costs. The breeze ruffles the battered hat on his head, the one he's refused to give him for any longer than it takes to get it cleaned despite how threadbare the thing is.

[artoflaw]

If he leans into it a little, drifting closer into the protective bubble that Jigen creates despite his useless arm, well -- it might just be imagination. Perhaps it's nothing.

He pays in cash and accepts his change. But as they head back, he crosses the street to the bridge, near the water tower that once towered over him. He pauses, lights up, and then fishes around in his pocket among the change.

He finds a single franc, turning it over in his palm, before it flashes and flies out from his hand, hitting the water on the flat edge and skipping once like a stone before it sinks.

Zenigata explains nothing. He just turns to keep walking once the ritual is done.

[specialguestvillains]

"Making a wish, Pops?" Jigen watched the coin skip and vanish beneath the dark water. He hasn't felt this much at peace in a while, despite how frantic today has been. Zenigata makes him feel safe.

No, that's not right. Not safe from harm. Makes him feel...like he doesn't have to be watching over his shoulder, for once.

[artoflaw]

"Something like that," Zenigata says, but doesn't elaborate further. He turns away, and continues onward to the apartment.

He eats gingerly at first, before his hunger gets the better of him. Then it's messy chowing. He needs food, needs something in his gut.

[specialguestvillains]

Jigen went to bed in relatively good spirits. Unfortunately, that only meant the dreams hit even harder when they arrived.

At around 2am Zenigata would hear movement in the apartment. If he got up, eventually, he'd find Jigen sitting on the kitchen floor with Zenigata's service weapon cradled in his hands like a child with a baby doll. A bottle of wine was next to him on the floor, open and already partially drunk, with no accompanying glass to mediate it.

Jigen's eyes were reddened from tears and a bit glazed when he looked up. "S'all right," he mumbled. "Go back to sleep. Y'need it."

[artoflaw]

He needs sleep like a he needs a whole in his head. Which someone might get, if he isn't careful.

"Jigen," he said, coming closer slowly. "Give me my gun. Then we can talk about sleep."

He knelt, coming down to the floor in increments. Every movement was calculated and careful as he reached to take back his gun. Note to self: gun lock box is a must purchase item now. A strong one. A very strong one.

[specialguestvillains]

"S'not loaded," Jigen mumbled. He gestured in a general 'that way' direction, then held the gun a little closer to his chest. "Took the bullets out. I just. Lemme hold it a little bit."

His grasp of the gun was less that of a man holding a weapon and more that of a child holding a stuffed comfort animal.

[artoflaw]

Zenigata's hands change direction, away from the gun and down to the wine bottle This he sets aside, so he can sit down with Jigen on the floor in what would be companionable company if Jigen wasn't drunk and using Zenigata's Colt as a Emotional Support Gun.

He sits in quiet, waiting for Jigen to come down from whatever grief drove him to cuddle a gun while drunk, and he can be patient. But he's not going anywhere. Not until the gun is put down, loaded or not. (He fears that there might be a bullet racked, something that Jigen missed in his despair. But he waits, all the same.)

[specialguestvillains]

Jigen leans against him and for a time they just breathe next to each other, the only disturbance being the occasional swig from the wine bottle. Eventually, reluctantly, Jigen passes the gun back to him.

"Sorry," he mumbles. "I had. You got your migraines, I just get nightmares. Sort of. They're not...not nightmares. That's a bad dream. These are the opposite." Dreams so good you suffered for their lack.

[artoflaw]

It starts as a practiced gesture. One strong arm around the shoulders, his hand to the side of Jigen's head, holding him to Zenigata's shoulder. He is here. Lean on him.

"Dreams of something you want so bad, but know on waking is never going to be?" Zenigata asks. Yeah, he knows how those go.

[specialguestvillains]

"Mhm." Jigen didn't resist his touch. In fact he leaned into it, craving some connection back to the real word, to people who didn't fade like mist in the morning. "The man with the smile. We were...we were on a bridge, and laughing about something, and he lit my cigarette..."

He took a hard sniff and wiped his eyes with one sleeve, feeling them threaten to leak even though he'd swear they'd run empty by now. "I don't...there were things we said, I can't remember any of the words. But it was good. It felt so good. I felt wanted."

[artoflaw]

Felt wanted. Zenigata wondered, not for the first time, what he felt like here. Especially with the rules he'd laid out. Not wanted, apparently, not cared for. Just here, tortured by illusions of happiness that never was.

He doesn't know how to fix that.

"I'm sorry," he said. He thought of the aching dreams of Oscar, of things he missed with Toshiko. Things time and negligence made impossible to regain. "I wish there was more I could do, that this place was better than dreams."

[specialguestvillains]

Jigen seems to vaguely get he's taken a misstep, but fumbles to figure out how to address it. "It's not...it was easier, for a bit, before. Thought they'd stop. Thought it was just a guy with no hope looking for an escape. Now, I don't know."

Now he has hope. He has things he wants to cling to, that he's afraid to lose. Such a short time and he still finds himself so attached to this man and the tiny comforts he offers. It makes him feel wretched, that such things are now luxuries to him. "I've had 'em ever since I..."

He raised his right arm, fingers in the shape of a gun, and made a soft bang noise as he feigned shooting the opposite wall.

[artoflaw]

"Since legendary fast draw Jigen Daisuke was retired?" Forcibly, by the bullet, but... Still. He was alive if lost. Zenigata refuses to talk about endings when Jigen still lived.

"Traumatic shit wrecks you," he said after a minute. "And sometimes there's no fixing it. You just have to find where your jagged edges are and learn how to too walk without running up against them. Easier said than done, though."

[specialguestvillains]

"Okay, but I never met that smiling little shit." Jigen dropped his arm with a scowl, reaching again for the wine bottle. His tongue flicked out and caught the last little drops lingering around the neck. "So why am I having dreams about some fuckface I never knew? Even if I knew him he'd probably screw me over anyway."