Entitled: The Good Die Laughing
Fandom: Gurren Lagann
Pairing: KaminaYoko
Length: 2,500 words
Notes: It's weird. Crazy paradoxes run rampant, but I promise a happy ending. Bare with the angst, it's coming.
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When she is fourteen, Yoko breaks the surface.
The sun is almost shatteringly bright, and with a hiss, she falls back into the tunnel with her hands over her eyes, tears blurring from them as she weeps the light away. When the green spots fade, she crawls back towards the opening, and squints carefully outwards, then ducks hurridly back, blinking again furiously, heart hammering with excitement.
Blue. Endless, perfect blue.
The blisters on her hands are forgotten as she reaches again for her shovel, jamming it recklessly into the earth above her, widening the gap, and then simply clawing away mounds of dirt with her bare hands, spitting them from her mouth and swiping at her eyes as she forces her way through to the surface, this time careful to avoid the sun.
The ground is dry and hot beneath her bare feet. Chest heaving, hair sandy and face streaked with mud, Yoko crouches on the earth, and tips her head back, wind combing through her bangs and sun burning her fair skin.
Something inside of her sings with it.
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When he is fifteen, Kamina starts looking for the stars in the dirt. No matter how hard he searches for them, he can't find them in the ceiling of their cavern—no, and he's starting to wonder if maybe, maybe he'd just imagined the whole thing. His hands itch when they lack a sword, and he's not meant for such a small space. He knows his cave, and knows it well. Every inch. Every face. Every square centimeter of dirt that presses, presses his face to the ground.
His father's sword is sharp on his palm, and he colors his back with wild tattoos so he'll stand out—so he won't forget who he is amongst this sea, this swarm of drudgery. He is not a man meant to live like this—too proud, perhaps. Too alive.
And amongst all this discontent, all the puppets playing people, he finds Simon.
Simon is not like Kamina. He is small, and meek, and there is fear behind the wide set eyes, but a sort of stubbornness as well. There is an unshakable, silent endurance that keeps its head bowed and the small jaw grit. He is small for twelve. He is small for ten.
"He's not with me," Simon protests as the elders bear down upon them. He looks a little wild, a little caught, and keeps glancing at Kamina as though he'd very much like to shove the other boy in a hole, out of sight. "Really. I don't—he's crazy." He trails off feebly, quailing under their leader's stare, and Kamina rises to the challenge.
"Hey!" he jabs the taller man in his chest, jerking up his chin and puffing out his chest, "Do you have any idea who you're talking to? Huh? Who the hell do you think I am?!"
"Kamina," the chief snarls, and drags the slighter boy forwards by the front of his shirt, "That's the fourth tunnel you've collapsed this week!"
"So what?" Kamina roars back, "You're going the wrong way, you moron! It's up—not down. We aren't moles! We're men!"
"Seriously," Simon tries again, "I was just digging."
"We know, Simon," one of the elders snaps at him, dismissively, "That's all you ever do—dig. That's right, isn't it?"
Simon flushes in embarrassment, and looks down at his toes. His voice is very small when he mumbles, a tiny flame of rebellion, "At least I have an excuse for smelling so bad."
Kamina laughs outright in jubilation, and just attacks.
In two weeks, Simon finally admits that the crazy hothead didn't seem like he'd take no for an answer, and started digging up.
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When she is sixteen, Yoko falls very far, very quickly. There's a gunmen and she's got a hell of a big gun, and when the ground collapses beneath her, there's not much else to do but take aim and hope the locals are friendly.
The locals end up being a little too friendly.
She tries to be serious. She tries to be a business woman. She goes for gung-ho but the morons she's run into just refuse to listen—one of them is convinced he's got some toy that'll save the day and the other flat-out refuses to respect what she's saying, and blatantly ogles her cleavage.
Yoko is enraged.
Stupid pig.
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When Kamina is seventeen, he is slightly insulted that Yoko beats him to the punch, and kisses him first. He is also slightly relieved, because now he's allowed to kiss her. Kiss Yoko. Yoko's who's got killer aim and a deadlier smile, who's curvy and gorgeous and honestly, the most beautiful thing he's ever seen. Yoko who, he allows, is probably an official member of the Gurren Brigade.
Her fingers tease up and into his hair, and if she scrapes his scalp like that again, he's damn ready to make her commander. Well, maybe vice-commander.
It's very careful, this kiss, because his hands feel too big suddenly, and her skin's soft like her hair, like her eyes, like her smile. He forgets to be careful then, as she pulls him closer, like she wants this, and he wants it, but—but then, this could be a goodbye.
Kamina kisses Yoko, and swears to her that this is only the beginning.
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When Yoko is eighteen, Kamina is dead. She tells herself she's getting over it. She tells herself that she'll heal—that she'll move on. That she was a girl, and that she hadn't really known him long enough to really connect—really. She tells herself that she was—is—more in love with the idea; the fighting spirit that has lived on through the Gurren Brigade, despite his death.
Yoko lies to herself a great deal.
When they put his statue up in the square—in Kamina city, so she'll always, always remember—her throat closes, and it's very, very difficult to swallow down her tears. He's there, in the stone, everything from the arrogant slope of his shoulders to his reckless grin to his ridiculous sunglasses and cocky hair.
She suspects Simon. No one else could have captured Kamina so perfectly—so flawed and so stupidly daring and so alive.
She turns on her heel and walks away, fast, shoes clipping out a brisk, professional tempo that cannot totally hide her running away.
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When Yoko is nineteen, the world is changing, and she isn't really sure she can keep up. It's subtle now, with laws and politics and empires to the sun. There are cities under the stars, and children being born to the sky. She tries not to dwell on the sacrifice that was made for such a possibility.
Simon comes up to her chin now, a young man edging into seventeen and—and it's the same age Kamina had been. It's the same age he will always be.
She camps out near Simon's house, with her sniper rifle until deep into the dawn, every night without fail. She will not fail again. She will not let her eyes wander from the back she needs to guard. If Simon notices, then he only offers her happy greetings, and if Nia minds that another woman seems to be stalking the young man she is so enamored with, she only invites Yoko to breakfast.
And Yoko eats to fill the nagging emptiness that has never really gone away.
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When Yoko is twenty, she visits his grave.
She doesn't bring flowers. She doesn't bring much of anything. There is only a dusty cape and a broken sword, hidden by the shifting sands. There are dozens of crumpling brown bouquets here—left by other members of the Gurren Brigade, no doubt, because only they know of his final resting place. Only they have earned that right.
She sets herself down on her knees, and then, because no one is there to tell her of disrespect, stretches out on her back, feeling the muscles pop. She can't remember when she'd gotten so tense.
She doesn't quite know why she's here. She doesn't quite know what to say.
For a long, long time she lays there, drinking in the perfect blue of the sky he'd fought for, and smiles at the bitter irony. They'd returned him here, in the end. To the ground. Perhaps that was the ending for them all.
"I haven't been here," she says slowly, "For a while. I'm sorry. I never visited. But I'm…here. Now, I mean." She falls quiet again, all of her angry, despairing moments remembered suddenly. How she'd sobbed into her knees—how she'd twisted in her hammock, guilt driving from sleep for days.
"I'm—I'm doing okay. I guess. No. No, I'm not, actually—because everything's different. Everything's so hard now, and it's like…it's like none of the choices I ever make are the right ones. It's like I'm…I'm just worthless now. I can't fight. I don't want to fight." She bites the inside of her cheek as the sword glints harshly, "I'm not giving up. I just don't really know what to do next. Simon doesn't need me anymore, and Leeron's got so much to do and…and I haven't got anyone left to protect. We're different now. We aren't the same as before."
She takes a shaky breath, squinting as his cape flutters into her face, then taking hold and not letting go.
"I wish you were here," she says, softly.
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When Yoko is twenty one, she leaves.
She cannot stay in a city where at every turn, she can see his face. She cannot stay in a city where everyone else seems to have forgotten. She cannot stay in a city that demands she dances with her ghosts, not bury them.
She wraps up her guns and lets down her hair. She swaps contacts for glasses and slips into confining, conservative clothes. She moves to an island that is not so far that she cannot visit, (she won't, and she knows this, but lies to herself anyways,) but far enough to forget.
She does not forget.
She admits that maybe she does not want to.
The children she teaches are in awe of her—because here she is, the character from a fairytale. Yoko skimps on history because she cannot bear the girl in the text book; so young, and smiling so shyly a boy who has always been larger than life.
When she goes to turn the page her fingers slip, and the paper rips a long, shallow cut through her fingertip. Blood wells into perfect crimson spheres, then slips onto the page, blotting Kamina's face into something uncomfortably near a memory she'd rather have misplaced.
Yoko slams the book closed, and excuses herself to twenty four bewildered children, before hurrying to the restroom. There is no one to see her cry but the mirrors, appropriately cracked.
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When Yoko is twenty two, she stops trying to run, and simply abandons. She will not be a what-if. The younger, teenage Yoko, (who has never, ever let go,) is simply buried inside.
It's easier after that.
She's older now—older and wiser and guarded and twenty two and he is—
He is forever seventeen.
She can walk past his statue now without batting an eye, and she can't remember what she was ever afraid of. And as for Kittan, who is always, always going in the same direction as her, accidental run-ins are really becoming such a habit she's starting to suspect that the man's staked her out with a homing device.
But he is charming in his own, loudly awkward way, and he's likely to drop her bags if she lets him carry them, but she'll let him anyways because he is a good man. He is a good man, and he loves her, and she likes him enough to allow it. He is a good man.
He is a safe man, and Yoko loves him for it.
But Yoko can never give the other one up.
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When Yoko is twenty three, she is drunk off the possibilities.
The channels change—she's famous, she's perfect, she's getting married and having children and it's all so rational, it's everything Yoko wants. It's everything she could hope for. There's Kittan, and there's her wedding dress, and he's alive just for her—he's leaning in and it would be so, so easy to kiss him back.
Yoko turns off the T.V., and looks up to meet the eyes of the thing she wants most. More than any of it, more than anything else she could imagine. This is her choice.
His grin is half-sad, abandoned wishes cradled in his arms, television dark. Yoko feels something within herself ease, feels something split off. This is everything she has wanted. This is the universe she could create. He is here. He is here.
Yoko is ready to move on.
Yoko can never turn away.
"Well, I'm off," she tells him, and he smiles like he's proud of her—like he'll always, always watch her back. And she smiles back, because she is not worthless. She is a strong woman, and there are things for her to do. She cannot stay here.
Yoko runs for the falling star.
Yoko stays.
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When Kamina is seventeen, forever seventeen, he takes the Yoko who has stayed, the Yoko he remembers, the Yoko he has watched and prodded and pushed to the ends of the universe, into his arms and promises that this is only the only the beginning.
He tells her that she should grow up faster—that her older self is stacked, and ducks away from the punch she throws. Her eyes are suspiciously watery behind the scowl she sends him, and the Gurren Brigade is all lined out on the horizon beyond them.
"So…you and Kittan, hmm?" he teases, and is delighted at her flush, her flouncing pout, the way she stalks off with a snarl, but slow enough to keep him in sight.
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When Yoko is sixteen, forever sixteen, she rewrites the universe. She begins to suspect that Kamina might be influencing her—there are a suspiciously huge number of bath houses.