Fandom: Read or Die
Notes: After I saw Read or Die, I wanted fic. I couldn't find any... so this just had to happen.
Spoilers: There be spoilers here for the original OAV, yes there do.
part one: Disjunction
It's been months since they destroyed the Ijin fortress. Yomiko still visits Nancy as often as she can. The clone remembers bits and pieces, now. Not enough to break her out of here, really, or enough that she's ever likely to face trial, but enough that Yomiko is starting find her Nancy in the woman awakening.
That sweet, warm delight is gone now. Nancy's a little bit more confused, and hurting inside in a way she wasn't for a while, but the way that's so much more familiar to Yomiko that she almost likes it. It's hard to admit it, but there's a part of her that wants Nancy to remember enough to hurt for the betrayal, but not enough to remember Ikkyu.
Nancy's waiting for her, hair shorter and loose, still in her paper hospital gown. In the back of her mind, behind the warm sweet smile she gives her, Yomiko imagines what she could do with that gown - harden it to armour Nancy against a world that might never quite welcome her again, or shred it and leave her naked to the elements. Maybe cut her a little with the torn edges of it, because there's still a lot of anger there, too.
"Good afternoon," Nancy says to her, quietly. A tilt of the head, a shift of the eyebrows, and for a moment Yomiko sees the lost woman so clearly it's like a punch in the stomach. She exhales slowly. Keeps smiling.
"I brought you a new book to read." Takes it from her case. Hands it to her nicely, sits beside her on the bench.
"Thank you." Silence. "Sometimes I think I remember things."
"What kind of things?"
"Dreams, I think. I seem to remember standing in a big place, pointing a gun at a woman who looked like me." Nancy's eyes flick to Yomiko's neck. "And... other things..."
Yomiko feels the heat rising in her cheeks, remembering the kiss at an unexpected moment, the smear of lipstick that seemed warm on her skin right until she woke in the Ijin dungeon.
When she feels fingertips lightly stroking the spot, she realises her eyes are closed. She opens them to see Nancy so much closer, secrets and broken trust floating in the breath between them. The memory of that same hand wrist-deep in a man's chest has only a moment before the touch has slid firmly to the back of her neck and Nancy's lips are on hers.
Long, achingly sweet moments before she can pull away, force herself to breathe and try to remember all the reasons why this is a bad idea. "Nancy..."
Quick pain in dark eyes, and Nancy pulls away. "I shouldn't have done that. I'm sorry."
"Don't be." Yomiko stands and steps away. "I... I'll come back next week."
"All right."
She can feel Nancy watching her as she leaves.
part two: Surfacing
Every day is the same here. The staff are kind enough, but distant. Some of them seem to fear her. She's starting to understand why.
The memories are fractured. Most seem more like dreams than anything that really could have happened, and she doesn't get to work out which is which, because when she asks about the things that came before, no-one seems to want to tell her. Last night she dreamed that she could reach through solid matter. Then she woke up, and still remembered how.
So when Yomiko gets there she's sitting cross-legged on the grass, running her fingertips over it and through it, feeling the fibres of the grass and the soil, the tiny insects that tingle as she passes through them.
"Hello," she says politely, and takes the book Yomiko always brings her with a smile. They stack up by her bed, and she even reads them, because they let her pass the time and forget that she's beginning to remember. Yomiko wears a coat that's too big for her, and pain behind her eyes. She sits on the grass with an awkward grace and tenses warily when Nancy touches her hand, but she laces their fingers in a tight and trembling grasp.
For a moment, Nancy feels the wind pushing hard at her, sees Yomiko suspended by her hand above the waters of the Earth spread out far below, sees the loss in her eyes as she falls. Dream or memory? Yomiko told her, once, how her older sister died.
"Is this your answer?" she asks, rubbing her thumb across the back of Yomiko's hand. She doesn't dare look at her - stripped of the armour of her determined sweetness, Yomiko has a rawness she's not sure she can cope with right now.
"My answer?" For a moment she thinks she's dodging the question. "Not yet. I don't know yet how much of this is you."
"All of it."
"How do you know?"
That's hard to answer. She can remember loving Yomiko, but she can remember hurting her, too, and she can't remember why. She knows she'll never be the same, and she remembers enough to know she doesn't want to. She doesn't know if there's enough of her left for Yomiko to love again.
"I know."
She can't tell if the answer is enough. Yomiko lifts their joined hands, and brushes her lips feather-lightly across Nancy's knuckles. "I'll see you next week," she says, and then she rises and is gone, her case dragging over the grass behind her.
part three: Under Water
It's raining today, hard, and the attendant points Yomiko in the direction of Nancy's room. She doesn't bother to check her ID any more, just leaves her there; wondering, perhaps, why she still keeps coming, because enough has got out about the Ijin annihilation that people are starting to ask her about that.
She doesn't feel like explaining it, yet. Not even to the Joker, who's too English to ask, or to Drake, who probably already knows.
Yomiko pauses outside Nancy's door, listening to the rain drumming on the roof and thinking about this. She hasn't been here before. Nancy has always been out in the gardens. Yomiko has the impression she doesn't like her room much.
She knocks.
"Come in."
As she enters, she can't help but remember sitting in vigil by Nancy's bed in another hospital, another time, hoping against hope to see her wake up, and being too tired not to cry when she did. Then, later, waking herself to the realisation she had fallen asleep in those heady moments of relief - and realising, too, that she'd been tucked into the bed beside her battered friend.
She remembers looking into those dark, troubled eyes from very close range. All Nancy said was, "They were going to take your glasses. I didn't let them," and her hand was warm in Yomiko's beneath the covers. Yomiko simply thanked her, not sure what to say or how to say it.
Today, however, Nancy is up, and standing by the window looking out. A solid grey curtain obscures everything out there, but it's still probably better than this room. The place is uncomfortably sterile, lacking any kind of personal touch save a small origami butterfly on a shelf, and the stack of books on the bedside table.
"Nancy."
"Hello." She turns, and smiles, and Yomiko sees Nancy as she knew her, if only for a moment. It takes her a moment to catch her breath at that, and by then Nancy's offering her the visitor's chair and sitting on the bed with her back against the wall.
Yomiko talks to her about the world outside, about the children she's working with at her current job. Nancy watches her steadily. The rain hammers impotently at the building around them, and finally begins to ease, and still Nancy just listens, curled into herself against the wall.
Eventually Yomiko is silent. She meets Nancy's eyes, with difficulty, and long moments pass as they look at each other before either of them moves. It's Nancy, unfolding with catlike grace and dropping to the floor to kneel in front of her. Yomiko's hands are shaking as she cups her cheek. She takes a moment just to hold her there, feel warm skin against her palm and absorb the look in Nancy's eyes.
It's familiar, and not. Nancy's looked at her like that before, but always seemed to be holding something back. (Ikkyu. Sense of betrayal that itches along her spine, but doesn't seem to touch her any deeper right now.) It's too much, and too sweet not to draw her barely closer and kiss her until the memories have faded against the reality of the moment.
And then they part, and Yomiko has to force herself to breathe. It's almost, not quite a sob, but it's enough that Nancy wraps her arms, her whole body around her and just holds her.
It's too much. "I need to take a break," Yomiko says, pulling back. "I - I'll see you."
"Next week?" Nancy asks.
"Soon."
part four: Identity
Yomiko can't sleep that night. At some point she realises why: there's something she has to know before she can settle the turmoil that has roiled inside her since she left Nancy's room, escaping the touch she both craved and feared. She needs to know who Nancy is.
She's more or less certain that Nancy was the Nancy she knew until they were reactivated after Genjo; somewhere between Nancy's release from hospital and the start of their journey to the Ijin fortress, her Nancy was taken away, and another put in her place because the first had loved her enough to betray the Ijin. She holds that love to her, deep inside where everything that's happened since can't touch it.
She has to know which Nancy lived. She has to be sure.
Which is why she finds herself standing outside the walls of the institution just a little after midnight. It's walled, and locked, but that doesn't make much difference; a short stack of paper becomes a stairway over the high walls, and then she's at Nancy's window before she even has time to think about how this could just wait until morning.
A few taps, and Nancy's opening the window, sleepy-eyed and tousled and visibly wondering what Yomiko is doing here in the middle of the night, but her hands are gentle and welcoming as she helps her climb in.
"There's something I have to check," Yomiko says. She drops to one knee and places her palm against Nancy's stomach, feeling the slight hitch in her breathing through the thin paper gown she wears. She has to take a moment to steady herself, because she doesn't know what she'll do if the answer she finds is wrong.
Then she slides her fingertips across Nancy's belly, feeling softness over firm muscles that quiver at her touch. The paper parts smoothly, and dizziness washes over her as she sees the fine lines of scars where the surgeons had to cut to repair the damage left by Genjo's staff.
The relief is overwhelming. She presses her lips reverently to the marks, then rises to wrap her arms around Nancy and hold her as tightly as she can.
"I had to know it was you," is all she can say. She feels her nod slowly. She's shaking, they both are, and so Nancy eases them both down onto the bed and smiles reassuringly as Yomiko tenses. "Easy," she whispers. "It's okay."
Yomiko listens to Nancy's heart beat steadily beneath her ear, and reflects that it really is. Her fingers find their way through the gaps she made in Nancy's gown and stroke across soft skin and narrow lines of scar tissue. Nothing that's left is insurmountable now.
The heartbeat picks up as her fingertips make expanding circles beneath the gown, but Nancy doesn't move, just breathes deeper and lets her take her time. Her eyes flutter closed as Yomiko kisses her neck.
"Yomiko, it's..."
"Too soon. I know." Yomiko lifts up a little and looks at her face in the moonlight that streams through the still-open window. "I love you," she says simply, and kisses away the tears that fill Nancy's eyes.
Yomiko slips away from the sleeping hospital not long before dawn. She can feel Nancy watching her from her window until she passes over the wall from view. She takes deep, even breaths to steady herself against the trembling joy that threatens to overwhelm her.
part five: Intermezzo
The sky is clear, but all the world it seems is damp and clean, washed by the rain of the day before. Nancy stands at the edge of the bluff and basks in the sunlight, savouring the moment even as she waits for Yomiko to return. But when she sees her, she sees the disquiet in her tight, tense movements.
"What's wrong?" Nancy asks, taking her hand.
Yomiko hesitates, just for a moment, before she answers. "Your trial starts next week."
Nancy's eyes widen. She doesn't feel any kind of reaction to that, somehow. "Oh."
"I am testifying," Yomiko says. "I'll tell them the truth. I'll tell them about the clone, and how you saved the world. I'll tell them you're a hero. It will work out." She looks at Nancy earnestly. Her eyes shine with belief, but not conviction.
part six: Guilt by Association
"Miss Readman. You stated in your deposition that the defendant did not, in fact, act to further the aims of the Ijin Army. Correct?"
"Yes."
"Pursuant to the uncontested film evidence in which Ikkyu recalled 'Nancy', which event was immediately followed by the defection of Nancy Makuhari, you have claimed that the traitor was a clone, and that the Nancy Makuhari who sits in this courtroom worked with you to defeat the Ijin, personally killed both her clone and Ikkyu, but then elected not to escape with you. Correct?"
"Yes."
"Does this not seem somewhat outlandish to you, Miss Readman?"
"Objection."
"Sustained."
"However, you have no documentary evidence of this."
"... No."
"Still, we have your word. The word of the heroine of the Ijin Annihilation, who would have reason to know, without doubt."
"I was there, yes."
"But I'm not sure we can trust your word on it. Miss Makuhari was your friend, wasn't she?"
"Yes."
"In fact, when the order was given to capture her, you protected her and allowed her to escape, didn't you?"
"That's not what..."
"Answer the question, Miss Readman."
"No."
"Really? But you stand between her and her would-be captor."
"I have seen Nancy shot at before. Her... special ability means it does nothing. I wanted us to have the chance to talk to her and find out what was really going on."
"I see... Examine this picture, if you please."
"..."
"Have you nothing to say? I'll describe it for the benefit of the jury. It is a photograph of Miss Readman and the defendant in a rather warm embrace at the institution at which Miss Makuhari is currently being treated."
"..."
"Thank you, Miss Readman."
part seven: Wild Card
Yomiko seems too small and frail, huddled in Nancy's arms and shaking. She's not crying, quite, but occasionally a sob drags free. "I'm sorry," she whispers. "I'm so very sorry."
"Nonsense." Nancy smoothes her hands across her hair and shoulders, gentle, calming touches. "You did all you could. We'll be fine." She makes herself smile. "What prison could hold me? I promise, I won't let them keep us apart."
It's the right thing to say, she decides, because Yomiko makes a little choked sound and holds onto her fiercely.
The Joker clears his throat at the doorway, carefully not looking quite at them until Yomiko has tremblingly pulled away and composed herself at least a little. "Drake and I just finished giving testimony," he says blandly. "The jury is out now." He turns to leave, and pauses. "Good luck, Miss Deep." He offers her a tiny smile with that. She's not sure quite how to take it. She hopes it means something good.
It's hours before the jury returns a verdict. On some level she knows that's not too bad, but it still seems like an eternity before the guard returns. Yomiko squeezes her hand before she leaves to hurry to the chamber before the verdict is delivered.
Nancy finds she is breathing hard as she enters the courtroom. The judge gives her a dispassionate look. Acknowledgement, nothing more.
She sees Yomiko slip in at the back. She gives Nancy a tight, encouraging smile.
The jury enters. Nancy closes her eyes, and pleads with an unnamed higher power.
"... not guilty."
Her eyes open. A murmur arises in the courtroom, quickly silenced by the judge. The proceedings finish in a blur.
"I'm free to go?"
"Looks that way." The guard gives her an encouraging grin as he finds the key to her handcuffs. She can't be bothered waiting, and lets the metal fall through her wrists, catching it and handing it to the guard. He's gone a little pale.
"Sorry. I didn't want to waste time."
"So I see. Guess I should be grateful you waited, really." He shakes his head as she steps through the dock to catch Yomiko in her arms as she belts towards her.
"Let's get out of here," she says.
part eight: Fragile
It's raining as they emerge from the courthouse, splashing on the London streets and on their feet as they dash together through the puddles to get past the reporters waiting damply on the steps as quickly as possible. Nancy enjoys the run, the movement, the freedom to go for the first time her fractured memory allows in detail.
Yomiko takes her home with her. Nancy almost doesn't want to ask, but has to. "Have I been here before?"
"No." A gentle smile, tolerant, warm, somehow intimate.
It shouldn't surprise her to see the books that are stacked on every available surface. Yomiko's home smells of paper, printer's ink, and old bindings, and they have to stack them away from the couch before they can sit down. Yomiko sighs.
"I'm so glad that's over."
"So am I." Without really thinking about it, Nancy takes the end of the braid Yomiko wore for the trial and begins unravelling it. Yomiko's hair is thick and soft between her fingers as she works her way up to the base of her skull. She lightly strokes the back of her neck, feeling the tension there, and the way that Yomiko is suddenly very, very still.
"Nancy..."
She moves closer, smoothing her palm across Yomiko's shoulders, feeling the rhythm of her tight, shallow breathing. Somewhere behind the shielding smile is a mass of raw pain she's not sure how to touch. Not all of it starts with the Ijin.
"Yomiko." Closer. Something intangible arcing on the breath between them. Yomiko's eyes are wide, dark with love and want and the fear of everything that's already happened. Nancy holds her gaze and smiles with care. "I love you."
Something shatters, behind those eyes. Yomiko wraps her arms around her so tightly it almost hurts, and sobs for the aching months that have passed. Nancy presses her lips to her hair and speaks softly of all the reasons she won't ever let anyone hurt this woman again.
part nine: Synthesis
Nancy's touch is somehow reverent in its gentle, knowing intimacy. Yomiko is very aware of her own breathing, each breath holding her against the emotions and sensations that threaten to break her apart.
She can feel Nancy's joy in the taste and touch of each other, and shares it, but it's as if there's simply too much coming together in this one moment, and all of it riding on breath. Her own, heaving in her chest. Nancy's, the sound almost lost in the drumming of the rain on the building, but brushing warmly across her sweat-dampened skin. It's almost too much to bear.
Only almost. When she catches her breath again she's smiling so hard it hurts. She leans over Nancy and drops tiny kisses across her cheeks. It's enough, now, for her to let go of the Ijin fortress, of Ikkyu and each stage of betrayal. She can bury the hurts in the feel of Nancy's skin against hers. It's enough for her to forget, too.
finis