The Story of You and Me Before Our Happy Ending

By Clorinda

Rated: PG

Category: Drama

Summary: When she is scared, he will always be there to protect her. (YujixMidori) The Get Backers may have returned his memory, but this is the one tiny part of it that they forgot to find.

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We'll run away, keep everything simple

Night will come down, our guardian angel

We rush ahead, the crossroads empty

Our spirits rise

They're not gonna get us.

Not Gonna Get Us, T.A.T.U.

---

"My hands are shaking."

I bite my lip hard, wishing I hadn't said it. Not in front of him. Not Yuji. But it escapes with some surprise and the barely stifled first strains of fear.

Yuji looks up, and in the moonlight I see the full paleness of his thin face, the haggardness and sunken cheeks, and the concern in his eyes. His hands have stilled where he was loading and reloading the cartridges into the breech. In the dark, I feel my heart beat louder.

We are here in this shack on temporary notice. We attempt to reconnoiter from here, and all we have is a cupboard, two camp beds, a table and a moth-bitten sofa. No electricity. A battered wooden door on rusting hinges for security.

He looks at me. I return the blank stare, not daring to quail, my mind swimming with how much I know I hate him. Then he says,

"We don't have to do it."

I stare at him incredulously. In the dark, he probably cannot see, for my back is to the light.

We are really here to kill. It's not like we haven't killed for the mob before. We've had to shoot, and end up killing, security, intruders, obstructers and else during missions. But changes are sweeping through the mob now. We are taking new orders from new leaders, aliens. We no longer restrict to corporate espionage; we assassinate.

Yuji and I close in on the kill tomorrow, so I do not know what he even means.

"We don't need to kill anyone. We can run away."

I laugh. It is derisive, and reflexive. " Run away to where? You're so naïve."

He bites his lip, and looks away, flushing. I recoil; I think I may have hurt his feelings.

"Yuji," I say, gentler this time, "there is no running away. They'll kill whoever we're we were supposed to kill anyway, and they'll kill us too. There's no running away."

"Alright," says Yuji. "Maybe we can't save anybody else. But what if we do get away? Think what happens then."

I did, it was my mistake, but I thought of being free with my hands washed clean of blood. The grass is always greener on the other side.

"Then we live happily ever after." I look at Yuji, and I smile for the first time. The hardness melts from my face. Yuji smiles back at me.

He shifts on the couch, and now there is room for two. I sit beside him. He puts his hand on mine, and his touch is warm. A week seems a year, when I remember the two of us at the diner, sharing a cheap dinner because we were low on cash. We had to share the same bed too at that inn, because we were stranded in Osaka with a little more than a penny.

I let him put his arm around him, bring my head to the hollow of his neck.

"We can always live happily ever after," he murmurs. "You and me, we'll lead normal lives. No fear, and no guilt."

---

When Yuji lost his memories to amnesia, I felt desperately alone, and fiercely protective. If only we hadn't tried to run, then we could have lived without always looking over our shoulder. But then, I remembered his naïveté that night, and I swore I'd protect him. Oh God, I'd give up my own life to stop him from remembering what I could never forget.

There was never any need for two of us to die in suffering, agony, and self-destructing regret.

—- End -—