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Post by Linyü on Jul 31, 2020 20:41:08 GMT -6
“-Rei,-” he said, and took a step toward her. She flinched back, as though... as though he had struck her, he thought. As if she were afraid he would. Again the nausea threatened to rear his head, and this time he smothered it more forcefully. For just a moment the scene itself unfurled again in his mind: himself sinking the knife into the boy, once, twice; setting the body on the ground; cleaning the blade on the robes of the still-warm corpse. And Rei, looking on, pale faced and shaken. And when he had turned -
For a moment he was eleven again. For a moment he was standing in his parents’ room, staring down at their prone forms tumbled across the floor. But this time he was the one with the knife in his hands, and when he turned, he saw the boy that he had been; saw his sister, staring back at him with the same expression Rei had worn, knees trembling, opening her mouth to scream.
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Post by Linyü on Jul 31, 2020 20:41:19 GMT -6
San looked away.
Why did you come? he had wanted to ask. Why hadn’t you stayed? But in his heart he knew. It was her first job; he hadn’t explained; and all she’d had to go on had been his voice, low and tense over the comm, cut off abruptly when he had been found. He had done the same, years ago, when it had been his sister on the other side; and he had known better than Rei did that Shi could handle herself.
And now Shi was gone. Reassigned to elsewhere. And Rei had flinched away from him as if he were a monster.
She would have found out eventually, he knew. It had been foolish of him to keep it from her for as long as he had. He had thought, with the way she had been… He had thought there would be more time, time enough for them to ease her into it. First missions were not supposed to be like this. If he had just had a chance to explain…
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Post by Linyü on Jul 31, 2020 20:42:14 GMT -6
But he knew even as he thought these things that they were all excuses. And now it was too late. Wordlessly, he walked past her; and if she ducked away from him as he passed, he told himself he had no right to object. After the way their night had gone, they were lucky enough that she had come back at all. ----- They had more missions after that. Small ones, simple ones, the ones they should have had to test a new member. Rei adapted to them, and the unit adapted to the addition of a second scout. Roku joked occasionally about retiring, and Hachi seemed satisfied with her once he had seen her work. Nana had nothing good to say, but she had nothing bad to say either, after a while. From her, it was praise enough, especially considering how little she had wanted anything to do with Rei at all.
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Post by Linyü on Jul 31, 2020 20:42:27 GMT -6
And Rei spoke - through the comm, to everyone, when she had to. Sometimes San translated - or Hachi did. She worked cleanly, without freezing or hysterics, though San had been afraid that she might balk at even simple jobs after the incident in the Bell House. But she did no more than that; and when she did not have to look at San, then she did not. San, in turn, let go of the facade that he had adopted during her training. He gave her no more kind words, and no more smiles. There was no need for any further pretense; she had discovered what he was that night, and it would be an insult to try it again after that. It was for the best, he thought. And yet a mocking echo came to him unbidden: the best for whom? But when he could produce no answer that satisfied himself, San pushed the thought from his mind. He closed his eyes, quelled the suffocating sensation building in his chest... and thought no more of such unnecessary things. -----
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