Work Text:
If Akane thought her job was busy and demanding before, then it's moved to a whole other level now. Left with only one Inspector and two Enforcers, Division One is stretched thin. One side-effect is that the clear-out of Kogami's quarters happens slowly, in the rare breaks between emergency calls and regular casework. She could have gotten maintenance staff to do it, cram it all into bags with no care whatsoever and throw it into storage, but he was her subordinate. Her responsibility. He was her... she doesn't even know. She thought she'd have more time to figure that out.
There's very little here by the way of personal effects. Clothes, his collection of old books, two albums with faded family photos that she doesn't dare touch, some private paperwork. Most of it is work related: folders full of research and case notes. In this day and age, where everything's digital, his mostly handwritten notes seem like the work of a madman. Maybe that's what he was, at the end of the day. A suave psychopath. His crime coefficient sure suggested as much.
She only notices the past tense in hindsight, and remembering that he's alive somewhere, out there, on the run, brings tears to her eyes, even as she realizes it should be the other way around. This feels so much like mourning, but it's not. It's betrayal. She hasn’t cried over him, not since the day it happened, and she doesn't want to think about why that thought broke the spell. She doesn’t cry as easily, anymore. It doesn’t make any difference in her hue; nothing does.
The door pings with a new visitor, and Akane startles, wipes the tears away with the back of her hand. Ginoza walks in, holding up his palm in an instinctual, calming gesture, and with the ghost of a smile on his face. That's still new – she never saw him smiling before. In so many ways, this new version of him seems saner, calmer, than one she came to know as her former Senior Inspector. He'd been trying so hard to keep himself together, and now it's all over. Now he has given in, and it makes him appear more settled, more relaxed.
“Need help?” he asks, and her first impulse is to say no, send him away, keep all of Kogami to herself.
But she thinks better of it and smiles back. “Yes, please. It'll probably take me weeks to finish this alone.”
He lowers himself to sit cross-legged on the ground next to her and goes right to work, taking folders off the shelf and sorting them into the boxes she brought. He doesn't ask what she intends to do with all of this; no more reason for him to remind her of duty and regulations now. He might even suspect that she plans to take them home, keep them ready for the day Kogami finds their way back to her. Them. Back to work, back to the law, hell, back to Japan for all she knows. Akane has never been short on hope, short on trust, however misplaced it might have seemed from the outside.
The smile on his face vanishes as he works, replaced by an expression of vague, aimless sadness. She even thinks she sees him linger sometimes, his fingers resting on a certain folder for much longer than necessary, but she tells herself to not read anything into it. There are memories there, after all, a shared history she isn't privy to, and he lost so much in the last couple of weeks. He's allowed to feel a little melancholic.
They have been sorting in silence for maybe half an hour when the alarm wails through the building, making them both spring to their feet. Kunizuka meets them in the halfway and then they're off, the remnants of a well-oiled team, trying their best to replace those that are no longer with them.
***
The victim – middle-aged, the shunned playboy son of a long-established political family – was found in a summer estate out of town. He's the only resident, the days in which he had regular visitors long since past, and his mother had decided it's time for another knock on the head, another try to make him finally see reason. That's the curse of a parent, Akane assumes: to never stop believing in your child. Believe that even after decades of fruitless arguments, maybe, just maybe, this latest attempt will do the trick. One more try. Always one more try.
What she found was not her son, not anymore. What she found had already started to decompose, the smell permeating every corner of the spacious apartment. They'll have to transport the body back to the CID, examine it there, but the cause of death is obvious at a glance: a hole in his forehead, made by an old-fashioned handgun.
Akane screws her eyes shut at the sight, which does nothing to dissolve the memory, doesn't keep her from recalling a wide field that's wafting in a breeze, the sound that ripped through her just as it ripped through the silence out there. She winces, and when she opens her eyes again she's looking into the concerned faces of both Kunizuka and Ginoza.
“How many of these are still around?” she mutters, more to herself than to her colleagues. “I thought it was illegal to have them.”
“If something being illegal kept it from existing, we would be out of a job,” Kunizuka says, with a smile that doesn't reach her eyes. She exchanges a glance with Ginoza, and then steps closer to the wall behind the victim. There's writing on it, random numbers. From a distance it looks like dried blood, deep red and smudged. Kunizuka frowns, though, leans in to sniff at it, and turns back around to them. “Lipstick. That glossy stuff.”
Another outdated item; cosmetics like that are a bit of a luxury these days, like fancy furniture or expansive closets with real clothes. Not as expensive, of course, but most people still adjust their holos rather than spending money on the real thing. Akane isn't even sure she'd have recognized the smell.
***
For all the times she was in the office pen alone after hours, or with just one or two of her team while the rest were out in the field with Ginoza, it now seems strange and alien that three people is all there is. It's so much quieter, and the unoccupied desks seem like grave markers. She both yearns for and dreads the day when they'll be assigned a new Inspector, a few new Enforcers. On the one hand, it would mean the room would be busier, staffed with people who never knew those that used to occupy the now blank spaces. On the other hand, it might feel wrong, to work with someone new. Like they're all easily replaceable. They are, she knows – it's a dangerous job, and it will still have to be done when all of them are gone – and yet the idea feels disrespectful.
The fact that they're waiting on an autopsy report doesn't lighten the mood in the room either. Ginoza went downstairs to oversee the aforementioned autopsy a while ago, and Akane knows that she should have declined his offer to take that task off her hands. But the head shot, and the state of the body, each making her queasy on their own and almost unbearable in combination, made her nod at him and smile gratefully and let him go. Let him pretend he still possesses the kind of authority that was taken from him and handed to her mere weeks ago.
Akane skims through the crime scene photos on her screen, on loop, watching carefully for anything they might have missed while they were there. The dreadful stink of the body had her distracted, for sure, and will be burned into her memory for a while to come. But for all the use of old-fashioned items as the murder weapon or to leave the message, the scene is otherwise clean. Nothing else came up – no traces of people that don't belong either, no record of strange visitors, or any registered visitors at all for that matter. The clues that were left behind were left intentionally, meant to stand out and...
She doesn't actually know what that could mean. Not yet. Not without someone prompting her in the right direction. She sighs and calls up the latest internal messages instead, decrees from the Chief and updates about the cases of the other divisions. Chief Kasei's name alone sends an uncomfortable shiver done Akane's spine at this point, but she figures she'll get used to that in due time. She had the chance to give up, request reassignment, spend the rest of her days with mundane work at another government agency. And she didn't. She chose to stay, so she'll have to deal with the consequences, figure out how to do this job around her newfound insider knowledge about the institution at the heart of their legal system.
She skims the notes from the Chief that seem important, and then skims through the case updates. Division 2 spent most of the day looking into an increased Area Stress Level near the harbor, due to news of a few escaped illegal aliens that turned out to be false. Division 3 is investigating the case of a missing society reporter who hasn't turned up to work in three weeks and seems to have vanished without a trace.
Flopping back, Akane rubs her eyes, and she hears Kunizuka swivel around on her desk chair before the other woman speaks, before she blinks her eyes open again and meets Kunizuka's gaze. “The bullet was from an old military-issue gun, nearly a hundred years old. Since they're illegal now, they're not registered officially like they used to. And the lip gloss is a common brand. Not distributed widely anymore, but also not the kind of thing that's so rare it would be traceable.”
In other words, they're both dead ends. Akane smiles regardless. “Thank you for looking into it.”
Kunizuka nods, and returns her attention to the screen in front of her. Akane does the same, and they both occupy themselves with other work until Ginoza returns to the office pen, looking not half as green around the gills as Akane might have. He's already calling up the report, swiping the information and the pictures onto all their screens.
He stands behind Akane, causing the hair at the back of her neck to stand up for no reason she could put into words, and leans over her to point at a photo. It shows the chest of the victim, and Akane squints to figure out what might be so interesting about it.
“The body lay undiscovered for three or four days,” he explains. “Same as the crime scene, there weren't many clues left on it, but we did find this. It was hidden under his clothes.”
Here he zooms in on a mark on the chest of the victim, and after some more squinting, Akane recognizes the shape, the color. A mouth – lips, to be exact, a print left in a deep red color, not dissimilar to the color of the number left on the wall. Might have even been the same, before the chemicals set free by the decomposition process spoiled that.
Lips. A kiss. For a few endlessly frustrating moments, Akane is held in a state of confusion, on the edge of a connection that doesn't quite allows itself to be drawn, but then it comes back to her. The case from Division 3. The missing reporter.
She calls the internal communication back up, skims through the case update and... there. “Satou Ichiko, also known by her professional nickname Bisou, which, if I remember that correctly, is the French word for kiss or kissing. She went missing three weeks ago. It was reported by her place of work, a TV station, because she stopped showing up unexpectedly. Everyone suspected she was the victim of a crime, but what if she planned to commit one and had to avoid the scanners?”
***
Satou's apartment is austere and meticulously clean, almost impersonal. The only hint that its owner hasn't been back here in weeks is the sheen of dust on the furniture and the wilted flowers sitting in a vase on the window sill. There's no holo, or at least it's not active, last used two days before Satou stopped turning up to work. That might be the only hint to Satou's personality or state of mind in here, and would fit with the lipgloss and the outdated murder weapon. Her last hue check was a bit clouded, but not yet at the point at which she would have gotten flagged for it. The system bears no clues as to her whereabouts, no recent searches or contacts, and it seems like they will have to leave here none the wiser as to what happened to Satou or what she's up to. Not like that's entirely surprising: Division 3 already went through the place with a fine comb when she went missing, and Akane doesn't possess enough hubris that she'd expect to find something they did not.
It would have seemed neglectful not to come here, though, see for themselves. Try and learn at least a little bit more about their suspect. On a whim, Akane turns the corner to check the bed, dresser, dressing and bedside table, assuming that's the place most people would keep their most personal possessions. Ginoza follows her, a silent shadow, and she can't decide whether to parse that as patronizing or protective.
In the before, she would not have been able to say who she considered her mentor. Ginoza, her supposed equal, the one who was supposed to teach her by example and who she was supposed to model herself after, or Kogami, technically below her, but so much more compatible, so much more open to her specifically, or maybe Masaoka, whose experience and instincts put all of them to shame. Back then it would have been obvious; the thought of Ginoza trying to protect her, in the abstract anyway, rather than from acute danger in the field, wouldn't even have come up.
But now they're in the after, and who might be right or wrong, whose approach is correct, doesn't matter anymore. He doesn't defer to her so much as that he... does this: stands one step behind her, watching. Ready to nudge if needed, but not dead set on tearing her every decision apart anymore.
She bends to pull open a drawer on Satou's dressing table, finds the usual items. Makeup might be largely superfluous these days, but there's still personal hygiene and grooming, so there are elastic hair bands and cotton swabs and all kinds of hand and face cream. She pulls open another.
The color of the lipgloss has been seared into her brain as surely as anything else about that crime scene, and she recognizes it immediately. Five small tubes, all of them still sealed. She picks one of them up and straightens up, turns, starting to form the first syllable of Kunizuka's name.
She'd forgotten how closely behind her Ginoza stood, and she falls silent with her mouth still open when she bumps into him, the tube held up like a child presenting her research project to her teacher. She swallows, licks her lips.
“Sorry,” she manages.
His good hand comes up to rest against her collarbone; not pushing, but maintaining distance. She notices, however, that he doesn't actively move away.
That is, until Kunizuka walks around the corner, asking why Akane called for her, and they practically spring apart. He mumbles an apology, walks back to the main area just a little too quickly, and Akane smiles at Kunizuka.
“Is that the same brand that was used at the crime scene?” she asks, waving the lipgloss, and Kunizuka nods, her expression not dissimilar to the one Akane imagines she's worn that one time she caught her parents kissing in the hallway.
***
Over breakfast the next morning, Akane pulls up a few recordings from Satou's show. Her persona, Bisou, is almost painfully cheery, all over the top excitement and innuendo. While her real life profile pictures show a young woman with plain black hair and little make up, as Bisou she's always perfectly done up, hair and makeup, tight and elegant clothing, never the same dress twice. The topics she talks about are relationship advice and celebrity news, plus some interviews that rarely go beyond giving the artist or actor in question a platform for a sales pitch.
Akane catches herself with the thought that a job like that would make her go insane, too, but quickly clamps down on it and checks her hue. No change, as usual. A beautiful, calm powder blue.
Something nags at her the whole drive to work, though, and she brings the show up as soon as she's in back in the office pen, describes the playful, light tone, and then tries to put her irritation into words. “It doesn't fit. Her work puts her in touch with a wide range of celebrities, and then she goes and kills the forgotten son of a political family? I searched for his name too, and the last time he was on the news, however briefly, I was still in high school.”
Ginoza squints at her with an unreadable expression but doesn't say anything – she imagines he's biting his tongue to keep from a lecture about theorizing too much – and it's Kunizuka who clicks her tongue and then waves them both over to her screen.
“Finally I looked into Satou as well, and I came up with snippets of, hmm.” She nods towards an internet article with blurred photos of what looks like a party. “Less than professional conduct.”
There are several more, all showing Satou hand in hand with sometimes famous, sometimes unnamed men. Not the kind of thing that makes for a huge scandal anymore, not these days, but it sure is enough to feed the gossip mill. Kunizuka scrolls through the articles and then pulls up the most recent, enlarging the photo.
“No one cared to identify him then,” she says. “But I ran facial recognition, and that's our victim.”
Akane cocks her head at the article. “So just an affair gone wrong? That doesn't feel right either.”
“No, it doesn't,” Ginoza agrees. He pulls the crime scene photos up at his own screen. “The message, the old-fashioned items, leaving a mark. That's too much ritual for a spontaneous kill over a fallout between lovers. She planned this, and she's trying to tell us something. There's a purpose to this.”
Kunizuka meets Akane's eyes, hiding a smile, and they both turn around to stare at him incredulously. He shrugs. “I worked with him for longer than either of you, and it's not like I have to be worried that trying to understand the criminals we're hunting will worsen my hue anymore.” His gaze flickers to Akane. “Better me than you, now.” Then his expression turns more serious. “But if I'm right, I'm afraid that we won't have just one victim. She's going to kill again.”
Her own gut instinct tells Akane that he is right, that they haven't gotten anywhere so far because they're looking at an incomplete puzzle. The rest of her, however, hopes that he's wrong, that they won't find any more victims, that Satou will be done with this one murder and all they'll have to do is find her and bring her in for her crime.
***
He's not wrong. They get called in to another crime scene later that afternoon, in a hotel room in one of the less charming parts of the city. The victim this time is a woman, no more than two days dead, but everything else fits in with the first: killed with a single bullet to the head, more numbers on the wall, and upon looking for it they find a kiss mark left on her shoulder, hidden under her clothes. She's the daughter of another high-ranking politician, working in finance and supposed to be on a business trip, declared missing when she failed to attend an important board meeting yesterday.
Their handheld screens ping with a message from Karanomori before they're even back in the CID. From the look on her face and the tilt of her voice, a cigarette that's nearly burned down held between her fingers, it's immediately clear that she must have found something interesting.
“It didn't occur me when we had just the one crime scene,” she says, and the display changes to show a set of numbers from each photo. “But this, this, and this. That's a local post code. And if I run that, and the other numbers, I come up with an address. Old office building, abandoned for more than fifty years. It's on the outskirts of a abolition zone.”
The address appears in the car's navigation system, and Akane turns the car around. She debates with herself about calling reinforcements – on the one hand, Satou has killed at least two people already and is leading them into a trap, on the other, short-staffed or not, this is the exact thing they're trained to handle on their own – that she ultimately discards. They don't even know if she's there, or what they'll find. No reason to use up more resources than necessary on what might just be an empty building.
Besides, right now, Akane prefers to keep her contact with the Chief to a minimum. They can handle this.
The building already looks decrepit from the outside: smudged and peeled-off paint, broken windows, ivy winding itself around the lower half of the facade. It's maybe ten stories tall, with a parking lot to the side, remnants of indecipherable business logos hanging off the front. The address specifies an office on the fifth floor, and it's a tense, silent walk through a staircase riddled with debris and years’ worth of fallen leaves that would have blown in through the windows.
The sign by the entrance to the fifth floor declares this to be office of an old newspaper, the kind that were printed and sold at kiosks every morning or delivered to people's doorsteps. Inside, there are cubicles as well as separated offices, and the wall above the reception desk is decorated with international clocks that have long since stopped working, still marked with the names of cities like Paris, Moscow or New York. Heavy file cabinets line the other walls, a few of them already sunken into the floor that's given under their weight. Even between them and the cubicles, the floor is lined with holes they have to step around.
And yet, between the dry odor of dust and mold, Akane can make out the smell of... food? She peers around a corner into one of the offices, Dominator held ready, Kunizuka and Ginoza flanking her, and spots the source in the form of a small pile of fast food boxes, next to a large backpack and an airbed.
Satou herself sits on the old wooden desk, her legs elegantly crossed, even though she's wearing plain, loose clothes and no makeup, not at all reminiscent of her public persona. The handgun rests on the desk next to her hand; not holding it, but within reach.
“You're too early,” she says, and she sounds disappointed. “I'm not done yet.”
Akane lowers her own weapon, gestures behind herself for the other two do to the same, in the hope that might make their presence appear like less of a threat. After all, Satou isn't aiming at them either. There's still a chance to resolve this peacefully. “Then you shouldn't have left such a clear invitation.”
“Who did you find? Ms. Kimura? With the rest of the numbers?” She shakes her head. “You weren't supposed to find her yet.”
“But you wanted us to come here, right?” Akane inquires in a low voice, and smiles. “What does this building mean to you?”
Satou shifts, leaning back on her hands. “It was one of the biggest newspapers in Japan, once upon a time. My grandfather worked here, when he was older. He used to be a solider before that.” Her expression darkens, eyebrows drawn together. “He was supposed to go into retirement, enjoy a few more years with his children and grandchildren. But instead, Sibyl happened, and they exiled him. Decided he didn't have a place in this shiny new world they were building. He loved this country. He defended it. He killed for it. He tried to better it after his military service, and how did it repay him? It cast him out. And he wasn't the only one.” She nods towards Akane, the other two. “Did you know that?”
Akane starts saying no, at the same time as Ginoza says yes from behind her. She glances back at him. He meets her eyes, then looks to Satou. “It wasn't right. But it's no reason to kill anyone over.”
Huffing a laugh, Satou's gaze zeros in on him. “No? Tell me, what price did your family pay so that Sibyl could thrive?” Her tone is mocking, and she doesn't wait for an answer. “My mother was a journalist too. A damn good one, but not the kind Sibyl wanted either. She lost her job, lost all and any chance to work in the field she loved ever again. Sibyl decided she posed a risk, her opinions, her curiosity. They tried to lock her away, and she killed herself. My father was afraid her taint would cling to me, and thereby him. And I felt that. Every day.”
She leans further back and works open a drawer, making the old wood creak. One hand held up in a placating gesture, she reaches inside and produces a stack of documents barely held together by a worn, old file.
“That's her research,” Satou continues. “On the exiled elders. She never got to publish it. But I will. I'll make sure everyone knows what those behind Sibyl did to create this so called model society.” Then she grins, and it has an edge to it that makes her look almost manic. “But first, I'll ruin their legacy, their families, just like they ruined mine. All those in charge, all those that rose on the backs of the people they deemed unfit to exist under Sibyl, they'll find out what it means to lose the people you love most in this world.”
The folder lands on the desk with a dull thumb, and Satou slides off it, standing up. She reaches for the gun. Akane raises her Dominator; all three of them do, at once, and it's Kunizuka who steps forward, shielding her. At the same time, Ginoza drags her back. This is what they're supposed to do, what they signed up for – attack dogs and executioners – and Akane hates it no less than she did on her first day.
Kunizuka aims, and for a moment Satou's hand freezes mid-air, hovering over the gun. They're at a stalemate. If Satou so much as twitches, Kunizuka will shoot. Without the gun, without shooting all of them, Satou won't get out of here, won't be able to finish her self-assigned mission. In her mind, that might be reason enough to take three more lives. And in the eyes of Sibyl, that intent might be her death sentence.
Besides, her plan is a direct threat to Sibyl's preferred version of events. The idea has been in the back of Akane's head since that day in the tower, half-formed, but now she actually wonders whether the cymatic scan gets influenced by how much of a threat an individual poses to the system. Publishing a story like that, attention to unjust actions committed while it was set up, sure could cause quite a scandal. Maybe even civil unrest, protest raised against Sibyl itself.
The thought makes her nauseous. But she's about to get her answer. She aims as well, needs to know, wishes with all her might that the judgment Sibyl casts won't call for Satou's death.
“Crime Coefficient is 257, she is target for enforcement action,” Sibyl's artificial voice whispers to her, and Akane lets out a breath of relief. Below 300. Non-lethal.
Then the stalemate breaks, for seemingly no other reason than that, in any situation, someone will have to cave in first. Satou huffs and dives for the gun. She misses, causing it to slide out of reach, but Kunizuka pulls the trigger on her own weapon anyway and the sound of the Dominator loading echoes through the room.
Eyes wide, the look of a cornered animal realizing that it’s out of options, Satou releases a high-pitched shriek and jumps to the side. The shot misses her narrowly, hitting the file cabinet behind her, but the impact is too much for the old, unstable structure. The ground beneath the cabinet caves in, leaving Satou at the edge of a large, fresh hole in the floor. She shrieks again, panicked, and pivots, loses her balance. Time slows to a crawl as Akane watches her dip towards the hole, watches her scramble for purchase and only find open air to hold onto.
She springs forward in a desperate attempt to stop the other woman from falling to her death. Satou reaches for her fingers, a pleading look in her eyes, but it's no good. Akane remains several inches short of catching her.
***
It's been a few weeks since Ginoza moved into his quarters at the CID – he never stayed at the facility, made his choice right away – but Akane has never visited him. She'd spent time with Kogami here, with Kunizuka, with Kagari when he was still alive, but Ginoza... maybe it's respect. She wouldn't have imposed on him like that while he was an Inspector, so doing it now would put too much emphasis on the shift between them. And she doesn't plan on doing it tonight, either, but her thoughts roam as she makes her way from the office pen to the elevator, and before she's aware of it, she finds herself headed towards the Enforcer quarters instead.
She stands in front of his door, unsure, and she's about to leave and go home when she hears footfalls in the hallway. Upon turning, she sees him, walking towards her with that large, cream-colored dog by his side. “They don't let me go outside with him,” he says, apologetically, a bit like he got caught doing something illicit, and pats the animal's head. “But he needs the exercise, so I take him around the building a few times a day.”
“You could have asked,” Akane says as he opens the door, the mechanism unlocking with a soft ping. “I'd go on walks with you.” She blushes, then waves her hands at the dog. “With him. Both of you.”
Ginoza releases the dog from its leash, and it pads towards a kennel by the couch, curling up on a dog bed that's almost too small, only just so it fits inside. “I might have, after a while.”
He looks at her, his expression pained, embarrassed. And she can't imagine what it must be like – not so long ago he was able go wherever he wanted, whenever he pleased. Now he'll have to ask for her approval and company to walk his dog.
He turns away, walks to the kitchenette at the other end of the room. “Do you want some tea?”
Akane shakes her head. “I don't want to cause you any trouble. I just.”
She stops there, because there's more than one answer. I just can't stop hearing Satou shriek, over and over again. I just keep hearing the sound of a gunshot. I just see the image of a large basin filled with disembodied brains whenever I close my eyes, and I can't talk to anyone about what that means. I just miss Kogami. I miss all of them.
With a heavy sigh, he turns halfway back around, nods towards the couch. “Sit down.”
While she does, toes her shoes off and makes herself comfortable with one leg folded underneath herself, he prepares two cups. A few minutes later he returns with one in each hand, and puts them down on the coffee table before he gets seated next to her. She smiles a thanks at him and picks up her cup, taking a sip.
“What Satou said, about the exiled elders,” she says. “You knew about that?”
From the dubious look he shoots her, it's obvious he doesn't buy for a second that that's what she came here to talk about. But he plays along. “It was part of a case Kogami worked on when we were both newbies.”
He doesn't volunteer more information, and she makes a mental note to pull the file from the database later. Or maybe she won't. She already knows more about Sibyl and its origins than she's been able to wrap her head around. She remembers her thoughts from earlier, wondering if Sibyl would use their Dominators as an execution tool for a threat to its status quo, her relief, immediately followed by the shock of losing Satou anyway. She catches herself thinking that still might have been for the better, any number of things could have happened to her in the detention facility –
No. She can doubt the method, and she does doubt it, but she can't start questioning the system like that. She won't be able to do her job. The individuals forming Sibyl might include psychopaths, killers, insanity, but the end results can still be just. The law can still be upheld. She'll have to put her trust in that.
“What would he have done?” Ginoza asks, interrupting her thoughts. “I have no idea what to do. I'm not good with... people.”
Akane tries to school her features into something less revealing, less easy to read. “I don't know,” she admits. “Given me a little whack to the head, probably.”
“I'm not doing that,” Ginoza says, making a face. It makes her laugh, then cover her mouth with her hand when he looks even more put off.
Suddenly it's a lot less strange, being here, being with him. In a new way, different from anyone else, but it feels good. Easy. It feels like a new beginning, like they're not the same people anymore, and at least that is surely true. She didn't even notice that she's been inching closer to him, or that they've been inching closer to each other, and the contact, leg pressed to leg, is warm, solid, and comforting. She's tired, exhausted in a way that goes far beyond the physical, and it means so much to think she might have someone else to trust. That maybe, sometimes in the future, she can talk to him. Confide in him. Get a second opinion on what feels like the weight of the world having been put on her shoulders.
For now, she leans in, meaning to rest her head on his shoulder but he leans down at the same time and – the brush of mouth against mouth isn't intentional, but neither pulls away. Neither moves for seconds that feel like minutes, hours, and she wouldn't be able to tell, later, who takes the initiative and turns it into a real kiss. A chaste one, and rather quick, and they both look away after they part.
Akane scrambles to her feet, looking for her shoes. The last thing she needs is another moral dilemma to contemplate, this time in form of a relationship with one of her Enforcers. Does she even want that? Does she even want him like that? She hadn't allowed the thought before, and it's too early, everything's too fresh, and... and it's too much. It's just too much.
He stays on the couch, watching her, until she's almost by the door. Then she hears him inhale, stand up, and she waits for him as a courtesy, because she might feel like running but not at the cost of leaving him hurt, leaving him rejected.
He touches her arm once he caught up with her, awkward, and she suppresses a shiver.
“That wasn’t really for me, was it?” he asks, and she can't tell whether he means that, or whether it's an escape route, a way out for both of them. An offer to blame it on the absent missing link between them, leave it to deal with should he ever return. “It’s okay, I think I’m chasing a memory too.”
Akane shakes her head. “Oh, no. No. We were never...” Then she pauses, catching the implications of that statement. “You were? You and him?”
“A long, long time ago,” Ginoza says. His face turns stoic, more before than after in an instant, like he regrets the words, regrets letting that much slip. He retracts his hand, uses it to swipe the door open instead, and steps back to let her pass, let her leave.
She wants to ask, but swallows her impulse to inquire as to what happened between them; she understands that it's too early for that as well. Without another word, she steps out into the hallway, the door falling shut behind her. It suddenly makes so much more sense, though – the resentment he used to hold towards Kogami, the anger, the disappointment. Not just a lost partner and a lost friend, but a lost lover.
Or maybe, like so many things, it makes even less sense now.