#v!138

“Only if you think you can handle it.”

-

“Vi! Come in, Vi! Shit—” Psi battered a soldier to the ground with the side of his gun and kicked away another, distracting him enough so swing the barrel towards him and fire. Psi could hardly hear a thing over the clatters and gunfire and metal scraping metal and a shout now and again when someone went down.

“Psi, I’m here! They’re fucking hard to –” Vi’s voice came fuzzy through the headphones but at least there was comfort in knowing the other was still alive. As if the vitals on their lenses, distracting as they were, hadn’t proved that. Vi’s ammunition pack was running low; it wouldn’t be long until he had to find a place to hide and recharge. But these guards were like a freaking hydra – kill one, two more appeared out of nowhere.

“Where are you?” he managed to hear through the headset.

“Northwest corner balcony!” Virus shouted, punctuating his words with a satisfying headshot that barely scraped the underside of the soldier’s armor. When he saw an opening, he clambered up onto the balcony railing and ran stumbling along its edge. If he could just find the blond one...

“Up!” Psi’s voice crackled through.

Virus shot down two more and jumped to the roof, finding difficult traction. No wonder Psi was having such a hard time – one wrong move and you’d end it for yourself. Vi dashed up the shingles, firing a few shots blindly behind himself. Glancing at the readings in his visor, Virus realized just how few of them there were now: five below, six above.

Nine bullets left. Well, fuck.

Swinging his arm towards the ground, Virus fired five clean shots. Now there were six.

It was nearly impossible to believe that these soldiers had nearly taken them down with only knives and swords, but Vi had to give them credit for their persistence. One guard saw him coming up and threw his knife down; Virus blocked with one pistol and used the other to shoot him through the cheek.

Four bullets, five soldiers. Then four soldiers, when Psi got his barrel lined up with one’s sternum. Virus could hear the crack of it as Psi fired but had little time to completely register it before one of the last guards pulled his sword back to strike.

There was no time to warn him, he had to act.

Virus aimed and shot and missed, but at least the soldier’s surprise gave him a window in which he could place his body between him and his partner. With his eyes he could draw the invisible line between the soldier’s blade and his own jackhammer heart.

When his back hit the roof, Vi thought he was dead. But the darkness that surrounded him was not the end but rather the shadow of Psi looming over him. And then, the pins and needles sensation of something sharp poised just at his navel. It wasn’t until Psi coughed and lurched, slipping over him and down the rooftop that Vi saw the blade fresh with blood emerging from Psi’s middle with a sickening scrape. Virus could hardly bear to watch as his partner tumbled down the roof only to stop short of its edge.

The blade’s tip found its way to the back of Vi’s head. He froze, turning just a bit to stare into the eyes of the soldier.

From his headphones

there

came

silence.

and then

“Vi”

He raised his gun and shot the soldier between the eyes. Three more shots and then he could smell the blood, Psi’s blood, coating the blade that clattered against the shingles and scraped its way to the bottom. Virus followed it, heart lodged in his throat as he slid to the edge of the roof and clambered over to Psi before he fell further.

His hand fluttered over the growing scarlet stain in his stomach.

“You’re going to be okay–”

“Don’t lie... to me, please,” sweet iron red rolling off his tongue. His clothes were ripped around the wound, encasing the vision of cleanly lacerated flesh that fluttered desperately to hold on.

“Listen to me,” Virus growled, “you are going to be okay. Because I said so, you’re going to be okay, so for once in your life will you fucking listen to me and do as I say, dammit!”

“Okay,” Psi rasped, drying lips cracking a smile. Virus tried not to concentrate on how weary his eyes appeared, how the green was beginning to fade even behind those sunglasses, as he turned his headset back on.

“I need medics ready, Psi’s wounded through and I could lose him if–”

“I love you...”

“What?”

Vi whirled his gaze to meet his partner’s.

Psi wasn’t blinking.

-

Virus went through four more partners before he decided to quit the company. Nothing was ever the same and everything reminded him of the mission gone wrong.

His fault. It had been his fault. He wouldn’t put yet another person in danger of his own fuck-ups. He turned in his guns and headgear and returned home to live with his mother. His friends understood; his family didn’t.

How can you simply abandon your career?

You have a responsibility to do your job.

You were supposed to take over the company.

People die every day.

Virus built a wall around himself and ignored their words. Only his mother could push some happiness over to him. Just enough to get him through the day. For a few months this went on: he got a job as a translator which allowed him to stay at home, while his mother found him things to do outside and around the house.

Dust the shelves, would you, Vi?

Vi, could you do the laundry?

Dear, my hands are full, please get the mail from the porch.

Dressed in floor-dragging sweatpants and a loose red shirt pathetic with holes, Virus did as he was asked. The dust left the shelves and collected along his sleeves, he changed his clothes when he hung more out to dry by plucking what looked good from the line, even damp. He trudged out onto the porch to retrieve letters and bills and a small package, formal, a box wrapped in ribbon. He dropped the rest of the letters on the table and tugged at the ribbon. As he lifted the lid, a letter slipped out of the side.

Orihara Virus. This package contains the belongings entrusted to you by Heiwajima Psi following his passing. - Izahara Corp.

Vi felt sick to his stomach. He didn’t want to open the box now but he couldn’t stop his fingers from tugging further at the lid.

Bright emerald lenses and darker, forest frames.

He could smell the iron tang on his fingers, in his clothes, dripping from that dreadful blade, and the sound of Psi’s voice, his fleeting, fluttering breath winding tighter around his heart to say, I love you. And the shadows beneath his eyes then, when they had gone still and cold yet gazing up at him softly like a miracle, like a fucking savior.

Virus pulled out the sunglasses and threw them at the wall. The box quickly followed suit, thudding against the doorframe and dropping to the floor.

I love you.

“Why would you say something like that, you asshole?!” he screamed, shoving the heels of his palms into his eyes. “Telling me that when I won’t even get the fucking chance to say something back?” How dare he. How dare he. Vi should have made him shut up before he’d said those words.

There were a lot of things he should have done, but it wouldn’t have made a fucking difference.

“With your last breath you give me something I don’t even fucking deserve, why would you waste it on me?! Why would you make this harder for me? I’m trying to let you go, why can’t you leave me alone?!”

And his own breath left him suddenly, gaze returning to Psi’s glasses. They lay in a disarray, temples splayed out across the hardwood, glass broken.

“No no no no no,” he murmured, shoulders falling. Virus dropped to his knees, then, realizing what he had done when he began to gingerly pick up the clear green fragments and gather them in his palm. One lens had mostly shattered but the other had endured with a mere scratch on the edge. Tears fell; he wiped them away with sniffles as he placed the broken sunglasses back into the box. With the utmost delicacy he fixed the ribbon back around it.

Virus wiped his nose with his sleeve and dragged the back of his hand against his eyes.

“You changed everything and you’re not even here to see it...”

He sat on the floor for a while and remembered Psi’s life as it was in his own. Stroked the box’s edge and held it close to his heart. Then, chest heavy, Virus retreated into his bedroom and tucked himself into bed despite the afternoon. He laid on one half of the mattress and placed the box with Psi’s sunglasses onto the pillow at the other half.

The stench of memory was gone. He couldn’t hear the blood anymore, nor see the hole in Psi’s body etched into the backs of his eyes when he closed them. But he remembered the softness of Psi’s like the newness of spring and the warmth in his lips when he smiled.