Chapter Text
Chapter 32
“Sherry, shoot him, and get clear now!”
Gin’s shout reverberated up her spine, making every one of her muscles tense.
“Gin?” Her head shook in a strained ‘no’ of its own volition; just the thought of following his directions made her blood run cold. “I’ve never-”
Stinging pain raked across her ear at the same time as a shoulder bowled into her, slamming her back into the door. The brutal force of it cracked through the ice encasing her, and she snapped back into herself.
Gun in her hand, intruder pinning her to the cabin door, her arms pressed together and forced straight out from her. She struggled and tried kneeing up at him, but didn’t have the angle.
“Enough,” he growled, pushing further until her unnaturally compressed shoulders ached and she cried out. “Enough of your nonsense. I won’t be fooled a second time and left with nothing. I know you’re here with Gin, same as your parents.”
“You won’t keep me hostage,” Sherry said, surprising herself with how steady her words came out. She let her weight drop, sliding down the door, but still, her hands remained locked between his iron grip and the gun.
“A hostage? No, of course not. There’d be no point. Not with the Crows.” His voice held an acid humor. At the same time, he dug his knee into the soft interior of her arm, just below the joint of her shoulder, pinning her viciously against the door once more, and bringing him one step closer to pulling the gun fully from her grasp. “I was introduced to your ways some time ago after all. You see, Gin announced the futility of keeping any of your members alive to negotiate over, back when he made it clear that the Crows don’t deal in hostages.”
In her growing panic, Sherry wriggled one of her hands free, and immediately began tugging and pushing against the knee making her other arm go numb.
“Which is why I’m your best option right now. You see, you can get me something they do value.” Sherry paused her fruitless struggle, letting her eyes go wide and vulnerable, like the helpless doe he’d compared her to before. “How about it then? Hand over the research and we can keep the casualties to just the one who has it coming, eh?”
She gave it a moment as if thinking it over, before giving a little nod. She used the time to measure one finger length above his knee. There was a nerve there on his thigh that should induce numbness if she jabbed it just right.
Then, just as he eased slowly back from her, she struck.
The struggle that followed blurred by in a series of desperate shoving and scrambling. Most of it on the floor. It ended almost as soon as it began. He took hold of her wrist and slammed it against the floorboards again and again, like a squirrel breaking a nut. The gun went off, firing harmlessly into the far wall. But, whether due to the kick, or the battering, or the prospect of losing it anyway, the gun was thrown clear of her hand.
Although, it must have been fairly close. The intruder leaned forward to grasp it, and she had just enough leverage to buck and slide out from under him, finding her feet and the door in no time at all.
Even then, it still might have been all over for her, except he staggered as he rose to his feet in chasing her, a lingering weakness making his leg wobble just enough for her to clear the doorway before he steadied his aim.
With little else before her outside the cabin, and only moments before she was once again in his sights, Sherry cut a quick path to the gorge, sliding over the cliff’s edge just as the intruder burst from the cabin door.
...
Gin huffed up the mountain trails toward the cabin.
The memory of that piercing gunshot battered against his nerves once more, resurfacing now that he’d shaken his pursuers. He shoved it down with some effort. Gin had thought she was dead once before, and she had proved him wrong. Sherry was surprisingly resilient. He found himself smiling at the notion despite the pressing alarm he felt for her safety. He would need to confirm it with his own eyes before he believed anything. Especially now that she was his charge.
Not willing to handle the question of Sherry’s wellbeing any more than that until he had more information, a tally of his injuries vied for his attention in its place. His skin was damp with sweat and the moisture of the falls, but now it was sticky in several places as well where dirt and moss clung to his own blood. It had been years since Gin had found himself in such a sorry state after a fight. This was mostly because he made a point to avoid foolish exchanges of poor timing and insufficient information. Careful calculation and patience in those matters were however attributes he’d had to acquire with time and experience. Or rather, a series of painful lessons his initial lack brought about.
The first of these forced its way into his thoughts, as the echo of remembered pain mirrored the shock he’d taken to his leg from landing on it poorly. It was an uphill hike to the cabin, and he had to let his leg take his weight, but… at least there weren't stairs this time. He recalled limping up an extended flight of metal stairs most vividly. He'd forced on through the pain then just the same, although his reasons had been notably less noble.
He was still training under his mentor at the time, and the fight had been among boys who were similarly learning their craft within the organization, chafing against their place within it. They were older, but this wasn’t immediately apparent, as Gin had always been tall for his age. Still, he hadn’t intended to get into a fight at all. Only warn them off. This would have worked better if his gun had been in the shoulder holster where he always kept it.
It had not.
What went down was a much more physical exchange than he had been anticipating. There were two of them, and Gin didn’t know them well. He hadn’t bothered to, rather. They’d infrequently shared the same training spaces, and it hadn’t taken Gin long into observing them to decide they were beneath his notice and he had been content to ignore them. The indifference had seemed mutual enough, although in hindsight, he was rarely without his tutor in those days, and only fools and deadmen trifled with codenamed members, especially of such significant rank.
To make matters worse, Gin had just started taking a non-lethal dose of a common poison to build up his resistance to it. The first day of taking a new poison was always the worst and it made him particularly short-tempered. He had been in desperate need to shoot something and despite his tutor warning him against too much physical exertion the first day of taking a poison he had gone to the firing range. It was really a bad habit he had never outgrown. He should have let his body focus on fighting against the poison, but he always ended up wanting a distraction and the familiarity of training.
Gin had not reached the firing range before he was cut off by the two older boys. “Well, if it isn’t the esteemed young lord himself.” One of them shut the door just in front of him when Gin had only ignored them and moved to step around the two. “Don’t you think you spend enough time in the firing range? If you haven’t gotten any better by now there’s no point in wasting the bullets.”
The other boy had stepped up behind him and offered a laugh. “Do ya think he’s ever once thought ‘bout the cost of anything? If ya told me his hair was spun of white gold I’d have half a mind to believe ya.” This one spoke in a bastardized Kansai dialect, obviously trying for the thuggish overly casual sound of yakuza slang, and not quite managing. “Must be nice. Do ya think I coulda got special training too? If my folks were high up enough to manage?"
“What good would a personal tutor do you?” The first boy cut in. “You don’t listen as it is.” He turned his attention back to Gin, but still addressed the other boy. “You do have a point though, don’t you? It is a hypocritical system we have here. Oh, the Organization can criticize society for hoarding the wealth and power among those who already possess it, passing it from one generation to the next with no change. And yet. How are they any different? Giving every advantage to those privileged enough to be born to it.”
“Those are traitorous words.” Gin looked up, murder in his eyes.
“Easy for you to defend a system that favors yourself, you coddled, arrogant, half-breed aristocrat.” The older boy, and de facto leader of the pair, had perhaps two inches on Gin, and used whatever height difference there was to leer down at him.
“Your vendetta isn't against me,” Gin said unimpressed. “You’re speaking against the Organization.”
“Tch, so self-righteous. You think you’re so superior.”
“Do I need to prove my aim?” Gin threatened, reaching for his gun. It wasn’t there. That moment of sheer panic struck him. One of them caught him by surprise, slamming him back against the steel door. Gin had the instinct to let his shoulders take the bulk of the blow.
The fight broke out immediately following. The leader boy was still close from throwing him back into the door and Gin flipped their positions swinging him so his head bluntly smacked into the hard metal of the door. By the time he had done this, the second had a gun out and pressed into his shoulder. He knocked it from his grasp and found a more favorable position in a maneuver his tutor had taught him.
Although the other boys were stronger their fighting was unrefined and less coordinated than Gin. The brute strength of their blows made the match more even however, and it would be no sooner than Gin had gained an edge over the one before the other was back to having a decent opening at him. It dragged on for what seemed like ages, and he could feel his stamina running short. The leader of the pair had managed a solid strike against his shin early in the fight which made it hard for him to stand on it. He pushed on through the pain, but the longer the fight stretched on the more difficult each maneuver became. He could feel the icy trickle of the poison eating at him now as well.
Finally, he’d gained a grip on one of them and knocked him off balance, slamming him to the floor. They wrestled, both beating down on the other whenever they gained sufficient leverage. He’d ended up pinned by the last exchange. His brain rattled in his skull as the thuggish boy landed several solid strikes to his head.
He noticed in their tussling they were always most off-balance just after landing a blow. It took quite a bit of effort to put any force to bear when you were wailing on someone without the power of your legs it turned out. It was only natural, inexperienced as they were, they struggled to keep center. Gin was just glad he’d managed to put his muddled thoughts together in time to pull his head just out of the way and block off the thuggish boy’s predictable next punch to the side. The follow-through left the boy’s knuckles to scrape across the concrete. He used the boy’s own momentum to leverage their positions, flipping on top. In desperation to end the fight before he ran out of energy, Gin grabbed the older boy by the collar and slammed his head back into the concrete.
The other was on him fast, taking the easy kick to his chest that sent him reeling off of the now unconscious boy.
He took another cheap shot at Gin’s jaw while he was still crouched over trying to catch his breath. His head throbbed something terrible, but he gained his feet. Knowing the jaw was one of the most reliable triggers to knock out an opponent and taking a hit just shy of that brought to sharp reality that there were two very different ways to know a thing, and they had little to do with one another.
He dodged several of the leader boy’s next strikes thankfully. The practice of drilling evasion to exhaustion allowing muscle memory to carry him on. But, it was clear the other boy still had much more stamina. If he didn’t end this fight soon, he would lose. A vague lecture on how adrenaline actually worked against you in a fight spun in an unhelpful jumble of his tutor's platitudes.
The other boy broke his pattern to land another blow to Gin’s gut. Gin staggered back, his endurance closing in and leaving him so shaky that a simple misplaced step back onto a loose object nearly threw him to the floor. Several painful jolts of protest shot up his wounded leg as he stumbled to avoid the obstacle. A gun. It was the gun he’d knocked from the want-to-be-thug boy at the beginning of the fight.
It would allow too much of an opening were he to pick it up. Instead, Gin blinked the sting of sweat from his eyes before kicking the Glock at the other boy’s ankles. It skid across the concrete just ahead of his lunge. The heavy gun struck, weakening the older boy's stance just in time for Gin to bring him down and then quickly twist him into a pressure lock.
“The Organization does not take kindly to those who speak against it.”
“Go die.” The older boy spat. Gin pulled him further into the pressure lock, hearing a small snap in the boy’s shoulder almost like a tap on fine porcelain just before the boy hissed through his teeth. “You don’t have any authority to call me a traitor.”
“I guess not, but it would seem I do have the authority to break your arm. I would suggest you rethink your stance on loyalty in future.”
When a response wasn’t immediately forthcoming Gin leaned in marginally, and the older boy gave in at once nodding and tapping frantically for release. Gin pushed him away in disgust letting him stagger a few feet.
“Tch.” The boy shot him a hateful look but did not aggravate the argument further. He went to check on his friend. Gin kept up a strong posture as he left, not showing the leg it was almost too painful to stand on. He made it past the stairwell door and collapsed against the wall.
His mind was swimming and his whole body pulsed with pain, like a violent heartbeat. He clenched his jaw hard and limped up the stairs. He was vaguely aware of where he was headed. Shame should have kept him away, at least until he could stand properly on his own. Even still, he came there, injuries untended, and exhaustion weighing down his every move. He had sought out his mentor in that state of delirium.
He needed - He couldn’t think straight. He opened the door to a study, and snapped it shut behind him with his body weight.
"Pick a fight?" His tutor eyed his slight limp and the way he clutched his stomach, but continued to sift through papers. "Lose a fight?"
Gin just glared at him. By this time he had calculated at what point he had lost his gun. He knew he had it just before talking with his tutor as he headed to the firing range. Just before he got in the fight. The man had to have slipped it out of his jacket at that time without his noticing.
"I will need it back." He kept his voice more even than he felt.
“Will you? You seem to have survived. Though I’m guessing you won’t be quite so overconfident for a week or two.”
"I didn't lose, even unarmed."
"Or perhaps not, though I didn't really expect this exercise to manage that." He set his papers down.
"What was the point of leaving me unarmed like that then?"
"Why didn't you notice when you no longer had your gun?" He asked in that way he only did when he thought Gin wasn't asking the 'right' question.
"Because you picked my pocket. Presumably, because you knew I wouldn’t listen about resting today. Maybe even to teach me a lesson about assuming the relative strength of my opponents. Which didn't take."
“No. Whatever lesson of patience and precaution you take from this is your own doing. My intention was to prove to you that I could.” Gin's tutor pulled out the stolen Beretta from inside his jacket. “And it is the reason why I could disarm you that is important in this case."
He stood and walked around the desk toward Gin. "I could pick your pocket because you were expecting my presence. It's why crowds are such ideal places; people expect to bump into each other. And why women's flirtations are equally dangerous. If you’re comfortable with anyone touching you, you’re at risk of them disarming you.”
He was just in front of Gin now, and without even trying he had the intimidating presence that boy had tried for before their fight. He felt in that moment that his mentor could see every bruise and pain Gin was trying desperately to hide from him.
“Your gun," he shoved the Beretta into Gin's chest, the hard metal hitting his tender bruises. "Is your life. If you're not responsible enough to carry it, you're not responsible enough to use it."
Gin hastily tucked his gun into its holster, still trying not to show how every movement felt like being jabbed with needles.
“Now get off that leg, kid. Your pride isn't worth making the injury worse.” He sat back behind the desk, picking up the papers again. “Bloody idiot.” This was exactly what Gin had been trying not to let his mentor see, and yet. Oddly, he was glad that he had.