Epilogue

"Was he a bad-guy then? Mommy?" Wide innocent eyes inquired up at her from where her small child's head rested on the pillow. They were a blue that promised carefree sailing and often found wool textured clouds drifting across their expanse pulling at wandering thoughts of fantasy. Shiho doubted her own eyes had ever been such a color.

She opened her mouth to answer but stopped herself. She had already told her child that her first love was a man who had not made very good choices.

She brushed a hand over the small child's forehead, sweeping her long bangs to the side, and smiled a weak almost sad smile. Whether or not Gin had been a bad man was not the conversation her child had really been after. She had asked if her mother had liked anyone before meeting her father, and doubtless wanted a tale about a crush she had when she was small and not unlike herself.

She smiled lovingly down at those eyes still full of days spent among the rustle of wind in the long grass and the belief that it was magic that shimmered on the ocean and not merely the sun. "He certainly wasn't the man your father is. Now go to sleep."

The bedsprings creaked as the mattress readjusted to not having her weight on the edge of the bed. She stood and walked to the door to turn out the lights. She looked to check the windows of her child's room were locked and the blinds closed; a sudden compulsory anxiety struck her with a remembered fear. She reassured herself, glancing over the room one last time before wishing her precious child pleasant dreams and flipping out the light.

The question stuck in her mind as she walked down the hall. Was that the sum total of the man she knew? Could that question ever be as black and white as a child saw it. As she'd clung to seeing it for so many years after the Organization fell. The memory of months spent in terror struck her, an old chill returning. It was the Organization that had terrified her then, the one out to kill her, the one that had taken everything from her. The Organization that they were both born to, and he was loyal to, that stopped him from ever truly loving her, or anyone, or anything.

And yet.

A memory contradicted this, her last memory of him. They were on a roof together for the second time since she'd fled the Organization. It wasn't snowing this time. The season had turned to when the dregs of winter faded to spring and the last of the flowering trees drop their blossoms. This time, it was his blood that colored the memory a crimson red. It had stained a bed of fallen flower blossoms. There was more blood than she had spilled in their previous exchange. Much more blood. A great number of the pastel petals were dark with it, stained a drunken shade disturbingly close to the deep romantic red of rose petals.

She had found him in that state, nearly dead, staring passively at the sky. This was during one of the last exchanges in the takedown of the Organization. She ended up at the building where they had cornered a dozen or so Organization members. Taking down the Organization was turning out to be the mess she had always feared. Numerous law enforcement agencies from several countries all scraped and clawed for jurisdiction at the same time as they cornered the provoked pack of wolves that was the Organization in Black.

She ran up onto the rooftop in order to get away from the carnage inside, only to come across Gin. His gun was off several paces from where he lay among the scarlet petals, and after their eyes met, they both scrambled for it. She ended up pinning his weak body beneath her, leveraging her weight onto his upper torso, the gun to his head.

"You've overcome your hesitation. Finally worked through that block, have you?" He grinned up at her. There was an emotion on his face that seemed so out of place at the time she wasn't sure how to interpret it. She almost might have said he looked proud, or even relieved. Slowly, he reached a hand up to the barrel of the gun, and she dug her knee further into his wounded shoulder in response. This did not stop him gaining a grasp on the gun however. He didn't divert the gun from aiming at him. "Do it if you're going to Sherry. No sense in letting the taste of the decision sit in your mouth."

Her indecision must have been clear in her hesitation. As much as she hated him, she couldn't kill him in the cold way he had killed so many.

"Haven't you already made your decision? Surely you killed me in your thoughts long ago, when you ran from the Organization's ruling before it was even made, when you left - I was dead to you then."

"I'm surprised Akai didn't kill you." It was the only thing she could actually bring herself to say.

"Is that what's stopping you? You won't kill me because you don't know why Akai hasn't. Or are you only looking for the same revenge he wanted?" Gin asked.

"I suppose I might be." The thought of Akemi dead by Gin's hands tightened her grip on the gun, nearly enough to pull the trigger. "But, I'll admit for Akai to bring you so close to death only to leave does raise an interesting question. He's not dead?"

"No, he walked away mostly unscathed." There was something Gin found amusing in this statement of his. He held a smirk that on anyone else might have betrayed an exaggeration or lie. On him is was only bitter amusement at the truth.

"Walked away?" It was too hard to believe that there was anything so important to leave Gin mid fight to go after. She scowled at him, confusion or perhaps suspicion in her eyes. "Why would he do that?"

His smirk didn't waver, though he must have seen something she could not out of the corner of his eye in that moment. She was on her back on the gravel roof before she could register that he'd flipped their positions with a strength she hadn't realized he still possessed. She felt the impact of rounds hitting his back where their chests pressed together. The loud shot of a gun blew out her ear as Gin fired the Beretta over his shoulder. She became suddenly aware of a stinging in her fingers from where he'd managed to rip the gun from her hands when he rolled above her. She saw a figure in black go down on her left.

Another impact struck Gin's back, and she could feel him clench the muscles in his right forearm beneath the nape of her neck. Another pained gasp escaped his chest. The shot had been fired from somewhere behind where Gin's body blocked her view. He still held her tightly, though his body strained to hold himself. His breathing was rapidly becoming more ragged and wet.

She could hear the scrape of gravel beneath someone's slow steps toward them. That person's shadow fell over her and terror sunk painfully through her. The culmination of months of hiding and a lifetime of fear lite the burn of ice through every part of her. Her last hope died in the click of an empty gun firing. Gin was out of bullets.

"You die the very thing you hate the most Gin, a traitor." A chilling voice asserted, the title a swear.

The long barrel of a rifle centered on Gin's head. He was silent, his eyes hateful. Still, he held firmly against her, vainly shielding her. She was too terrorized in that moment to be confused at Gin's actions and his interaction with the boss.

"Saving her was a mistake."

"No." Gin was adamant, though his voice was groggy and strained. "It was a lot of things, but not that."

The boss's eyes narrowed before that person pressed the barrel against Gin's forehead. "Then you really are a traitor, and you'll die like one."

There was a distant sound, and that person staggered back. An unseen assailant had clipped a shoulder.

"Akai," that person hissed before returning fire at a nearby rooftop. The Organization's boss left them to take cover, and she could hear the fire fight continue to grow farther away from them.

She felt Gin's grasp on her fall slack shortly after the shots became more distant. His breath was even more strained and shallow now than before. With some effort, he rolled to the side onto his back once more, blocking her view of the fresh wounds that must be there.

Moving on instinct, she shrugged off her jacket and tried to push against his side to get him to roll over so she could treat him. He wouldn't budge. Her palms came back red from where his sleeve was soaked through.

As much as they both had spent their lives tempting death, she had always been the one to give up on the struggle, never him. Never for a moment had he lowered his defence in that fight, he simply wasn't the type to leave himself at anyone's mercy, least of all death's. He simply couldn't-

He simply-

She ignored the part of her mind that knew it was entirely too late; ignored his gaze looking up at her, but at the same time not at her at all; Ignored the placid glaze those eyes had taken on; ignored how she could no longer find the fight that belonged to them within them; ignored everything her mind told her, and pushed harder.

Her eyes were wet with tears, her hands with his blood. "I need to-"

"Stop." He cut her off. "You're blocking the view of the sky."

"What?" She sat back on her feet, her hands fisted in his coat. "Why did you-?" She left the question half asked, boring into his eyes.

Their eyes met for a single, honest moment. He broke her gaze.

"Heh, we finally have that matching set of coats with holes in them."

She choked on a sob, in an almost laugh. That was horribly dark of him but also terribly nostalgic for its brand of humor.

"I suppose this is the bit where I'm expected to thank you for saving me." She said, her voice shaking.

He smirked, staring up at the falling petals. "Ever the naive one. Life doesn't play out in scenes so beautiful, so arranged."

"Then don't play the aloof hero: don't leave the girl now that she's safe from harm. Don't-"

"Clever." Gin scoffed, but choked on his next words, coughing up blood. "Always the clever one. But still- still those are remarkably foolish romantic notions."

There was something underlying painful behind his grin, perhaps there always had been. Still he kept it, continuing to stare up at the spring sky. She couldn't seem to find the strength to release her grasp on the fistfuls of his jacket, even after he fell unconscious.

She was somehow removed from that moment even while she was in it. Vaguely she noticed the metallic smell of blood so thick in the air that she could taste it like a copper penny in her mouth. The warm red liquid had soaked through the knees of her pants and was starting to leak out from underneath him once more. She saw all this and at the same time didn't.

Her mind had come to repeat what must have been his last moments endlessly, pointlessly, and until she was numb of feeling. Saving her was a mistake. Was a mistake? Shouldn't it have been 'is a mistake'? It didn't make sense. So many things didn't make sense, but she doubted they ever had, or ever would.

The next thing she knew Kudo was grabbing her arm, pulling her to her feet. The time in between contained no memory of the bleeding man before her. She couldn't recall if Gin had died then below her hands, or if he must have died at a hospital later. Kudo never answered her questions about that, but she certainly never saw Gin again. It was only one among the many other things he'd come to keep secrets about. The great detective so obsessed with finding the one and only truth.

All she could remember from that time was their surroundings. Her mind had grabbed for anything else and found only the falling pastel petals blown gracefully onto the roof. Like so many snow flurries drifting down from the sky. She stared wide eyed at the flowers as they fell the last length of their very short journey to the ground. Each drifted uncertainty on the breeze, in a dance perhaps. Their soft color contrasted harshly against the deep and bright blue of the sky. Theirs was a peculiar beauty, she decided; a peculiar and terrible beauty.

...

Gin woke in a hospital bed, finding with no small degree of frustration, that his wounds had not proved fatal. He hadn't died as a loyal member, he couldn't even manage to die as a traitor should. The line on the heart monitor rose in steady mocking waves. He wondered, in the brief moment before realizing the extent of his restraints, how many of the seemingly endless number of tubes running into him he would need to rip out before they stopped keeping him alive.

Later, when he sought a full report of his injuries, he found out doing so would likely have only caused him considerable discomfort without managing to kill him before doctors would be rushing in to adjust the equipment back into place.

One of those tubes ran out and down from his chest, draining the blood and air that had pooled around a lung and collapsed it. Another administered pain medication which stopped him from finding out just how much of his body was marbled with bruises and cuts until later. Removing those two would likely have caused him the most immediate pain, but even removing the tubes more important than those wouldn't have killed him.

The doctors had pulled him too far back from the edge of death for him to fall to it so easily now. They shouldn't have, he should have died then, died the traitor's death he had come to deserve. A traitor to both subjects of his loyalty. Both he had betrayed by trying to maintain the other.

He figured whichever law enforcement agency that had ended up with him must not have understood his stance on loyalty at all when they told him they wanted to offer a deal. Gin was still resolved to die before acting as a traitor, even if he had failed to do so before.

Still, Gin waited in one of those small brightly lit rooms with a steel table and a pair of chairs on either side to hear what they had to say. Out of curiosity perhaps.

The door opened, and a faint smell of cigarette smoke drifted in. Something that his body immediately respond to with need. He set aside the pangs, like hunger he had been pushing off too long as he watched the man enter.

That it was FBI agent Akai Shuichi who entered intrigued him more than he thought this meeting was going to. Akai had briefly been his subordinate Rye within the Organization and doubtless knew Gin's stance on loyalty. He wasn't stupid enough to think he'd take a deal like this one.

"You're not a prosecutor." Gin said as Akai sat down.

"Of course not, you don't have an attorney with you." Akai had a stack of papers with him and he set them on the table, not close enough for Gin to look at them just yet. Gin had refused an attorney during questioning once already, but figured if they were going to try to get him to settle outside of court it would inevitably involve lawyers.

"Can I expect to see one of those, or am I just going to be taken to a cement building in a remote location?" Gin said dryly.

"You're thinking of the CIA, they want you too." Akai pushed the stack of documents across the table to him." But, if negotiations go well here we should be able to work out something without turning you over to another jurisdiction."

Gin examined the top page quickly. They wanted to make an arrangement for him to rat everyone else out and provide information on the Organization's inner workings. It was what he had first expected of this meeting, before Akai had walked in.

"A traitor's deal," He wanted to toss the document away in disgust, but his original motive stopped him. He wanted to know the deal they would offer to whichever rat ended up taking it, knowing it would likely aid in tracking down the traitor if the opportunity arose. He was also slightly disappointed this meeting wasn't something more interesting. "You're bringing it to the wrong person. I didn't work in intelligence anyways. Try Vermouth, she'd gladly flip if it was enough to her advantage."

"She's disappeared completely. Not a trace since the Organization officially dissolved."

"Unsurprising."

Gin started to read through the stack of documents again in the silence, it was one hell of a deal for whoever would end up taking it. They didn't even want to publicly call them to the witness stand during trials - all they were after was information; who knew what, and how everything was arranged. They needed someone to hand them a roadmap to the coming trials. Gin turned a page, the legal language reminding him of the last time he had scoured a set of documents like this. They had been about Sherry then, back when he was looking to ensure she couldn't be taken from him. He looked up at Akai, the smell of cigarette smoke that must stain his clothes gnawing at him once more.

"Cigarettes, you have a pack with you." This wasn't so much a question as a statement.

Akai pulled a pack from his inner coat pocket, and Gin gestured for him to hand one over. He didn't.

"You want me to read this?" Gin asked, a threat.

Akai handed him one with reluctance and Gin wasted no time lighting it.

"Are your lungs strong enough for that?" Akai, who smoked himself, regarded him with more concern than anyone should have for someone who very nearly killed his now fiance.

"Are anyone's?" Gin sounded distracted even to himself.

Eventually, he looked back down to the documents in front of him and finished reading, the words were again merely the arrangement of some future traitor. "This deal boasts quite the incentive. Feeling generous since you found out your lady love is alive then?"

"This wasn't my decision to make."

"But you're not fighting it either. Or even arguing for someone else to have it. At the very least it didn't have to be you here, you could have refused."

"I wanted to be the one to present the deal, yes. But not because Akemi is alive."

"Oh?"

"I didn't fight this plea deal going to you not because Akemi didn't end up dying when you shot her, but because at the time you told me she'd lived you knew she wasn't dead and had done nothing to change that."

"Funny, the same reason that person named me a traitor."

If Akai found that piece of information surprising he didn't outwardly show it. He didn't imagine Akai had known before this though. He doubted Sherry would have shared what she knew of the boss's suspicions and declarations of his betrayal to the Organization. Even less he doubted Akai knew of the Boss's discovery that Akemi was still alive that had prompted it.

"Saving her may have just saved you, in the end" Akai offered.

"Hardly," His actions had only robbed him of an honorable death. He should have died fighting for the Organization on the day it collapsed. Instead, he'd betrayed them by failing to execute Akemi when he should have, who was pivotal in their takedown.

"But even that's not the reason why I had to be the one here," Akai explained. "The woman I love once entrusted me to protect her sister. A promise I intend to keep."

"Sherry," The name escaped his lips, weak like someone had punched it from him.

Reckless yet resilient Sherry, that walking contradiction of a woman he despised yet could not stop himself from loving. Despite all the odds, despite every action she had made that tempted a poor outcome, Sherry had survived. She'd pulled through, just like she always managed to do. Perhaps he should stop being surprised at the way she jumped haphazardly to danger and came out breathing, often even victorious. He had been relieved to see some habits of precaution had finally manifested in her when they met that last time. At the same time, there was a feeling of loss at the change. The same way a child who has pressed their hand flat to a stove top will always be wiser for it, but hardly better off.

What did any of this have to do with protecting Sherry?

"This deal: keeping your involvement secret, your plea to avoid trial, the exchange of the entirety of your knowledge of the Organization now to avoid being called to the witness stand later, this whole arrangement, all of it is conditional."

Hearing it spelled out loud just brought up how much he hated this deal. He would gladly accept execution over being that sort of pathetic traitor as they asked. He didn't care how great this deal was, how unheard of and entirely too ideal it seemed. He would never, could never, accept that role: the traitor who brought the Organization to its knees. Not again.

Still, curiosity made him ask. "The condition?"

"Shiho Miyano thinks you are dead. The condition would be for you to agree to keep it that way. Sign the deal, agree to this and the other terms or face trial. It's predictable enough where a trial for your crimes will end up; so you can agree to let her believe you're dead or let that become a reality."

"She thinks I died in her arms then?" Gin mused over this, the thought amusing and not entirely unpleasant. "Ever the romantic."

"Do you need time to look over the deal before deciding?" Akai's voice cut into his wafting thoughts of Sherry, his words clipped.

Gin breathed in smoke and immediately coughed as the lung that had collapsed before became agitated with it. Akai had been right, he wasn't supposed to be smoking while his lungs were still recovering. He wasn't supposed to strain them with high-impact exercise either which kept even the familiar habit of training from him. He gave up on the cigarette, holding it above the ashtray on the table.

"Just answer one question and I can tell you whether I'll take it."

"Fine."

"Why that condition? This deal is too generous. I doubt it's even legal. It's too much like sweet wine used to mask the taste of poison. Why is it so important to you that Sherry doesn't ever find out I'm alive?"

Akai paused a moment, he didn't seem keen on answering this particular question.

"Not just me. It was Kudo who first said it had to be that way I believe. But it is clear enough to see. For her to ever move on, find peace of mind, she can't always be left fearing when you will find her, when you will kill her loved ones to get to her." Akai's voice turned somewhere distant. "You didn't see her when she was in hiding, the way fear consumed her. The way she couldn't allow herself the affections of others because they would all be killed to hurt her if only she was ever found. How she's begun to change now that the Organization has fallen." He turned resolute. "The truth, to her, must be that you're gone."

Gin considered the outcomes of this choice for Sherry. If he was tried in court, she would find out that he hadn't died that day. Even if he was executed for his crimes eventually, he would die loyal to the Organization, the loyalty she knew made him constrained to kill her. If left to believe he had died when she did, he would have died for his loyalty to her instead. In the end, believing he had protected her, leaving her reason to fear him more a question and less a statement. It wasn't much.

Once again he was faced with the choice of those conflicting loyalties, now both only fragments of a lost cause. Fragments he had created by not choosing one over the other before.

Gin put out the cigarette and examined the legal document once more.

"Your choice?"

Gin smirked. "Death, so it seems."

"So it seems."

Afterword

The Shared Past as a story was made to show Gin and Sherry as mirrors of one another. It means not only literally the past they both lived through together, but the similarities in their backstories. The circumstances that shaped them into who they are were written to be the same with the difference between them being in how they reacted to them.

They were both born to the Organization, and by the circumstances of their birth were locked into place there. Gin's parents were spies for the Organization, and Sherry's were scientists.

Both emulated the skills of their parents which secured their place of value to the Organization, immediately sealing their fate to it at a ridiculously young age. Gin by discovering the identity of the boss at nine, and Sherry by taking after the genius level abilities in the field of science she got from her parents at a similarly young age.

Both spent their young adolescence being primed to take on the role the Organization planned for them. Gin was taught to be an assassin, Sherry learned the craft of her parents.

Both suffered the loss of the person they were closest to and their deaths immediately propelled them into assuming those roles they had been primed for.

The main difference immerges at that point. Gin was aware of the situation he was in when he took a codename, sherry was frankly not. Gin was also aware of the circumstances of the death of the person he had been closest to, and like everything else, Sherry was kept from the truth of what had really happened to her parents.

I think it was FS who said that Gin struck her/him as the more perceptive of the two in Canon, and I agree. Gin isn't wrong when he calls Sherry naive. She is incredibly naive when it comes to her relationship to and place within the Organization.

Sherry survived to the point where the story takes place only because she didn't know anything.

Gin survived to that point because he had made himself not feel anything. both were just as trapped.

So why make them mirrors? well, it opens up a ground for comparison of a protagonist and antagonist coming from the same circumstances. It lets the story propose an answer to the question what makes a protagonist? or antagonist? Where does the difference lie?

On another note, Because Sherry had been brought up relatively in the dark to the workings of the Organization she had the opportunity to develop a sense of morality more closely aligning to what society deems acceptable. Gin had been afforded no such privileges and his morality remains rooted in justification of the actions of the Organization. This difference in opinion on morality is at the core of why this story proposes they cannot end up in a functioning relationship.

Final Author's notes: Just a friendly reminder that this author loves any and all thoughts and comments you have on the story, and would really appreciate if you would share them. This is actually the end of the story, so if this story made you consider, or reconsider anything about the characters, if you have anything to say about the plot or overall story I would love it if you could write that up before you leave this story forever.

Can't think of what to comment? I would love to know:

Was the ending a satisfying conclusion to this story, or did it answer the questions you wanted/it set out to? Does anyone have thoughts on the jellyfish theory? Does my explanation for why the Apotoxin regressed Shiho and Kudo when it killed the others make sense? Which choice do you think Gin makes in the ambiguous ending of the epilogue - sherry or the Organization? What is your favorite arc or chapter and what about it do you like? If you could change one thing in the way I wrote this story would you add something or take something I added away? Who would win in a debate, Akemi, Bourbon, or Vermouth? Did I ever manage to surprise you? When or with what? If you had to order the four story arcs from most thrilling/enjoyable to least where would each fall? What is your favorite moment in the entire story? best line? Does my portrayal of a character conflict with how you saw/see them, and in what way? Now that you've read the whole thing, if you had to rename this story what would you propose as an alternative title, or what would be the most fitting subtitle? Is there anything you're still wondering about?

Thank you so much for reading this whole thing! It's surreal to me that I've come to the end of a project I've been working on for so long, and I want to thank everyone who has come through the experience with me. This is Lured by the Song of Sirens, bowing out.