Archive of Our Own

It smelled the same, or nearly so - the clinical cleaner they used to make sure everything was sterile and fresh, the massage oils. 

It was missing the edge of dust from the old ventilation system Makoto had gotten replaced with the money from the sale of the Empty Lot. It was missing the smell of Lee's cigarettes.

Otherwise, though, the same. It made it easy to pretend to be the person she was three years ago, still getting used to life without sight, still getting used to Lee's loud, rough voice that sounded so much scarier than it was.

It made it rewarding to open her eyes again and see how far she had come since then - the massage parlor rebuilt from the damage from the bomb, her life reestablished, wholly her own.

Makoto laced her fingers together and stretched them up high above her, her gaze following them up and then arching back down to Lee's picture on the wall - when she walked down the hallway past it she grazed it thoughtfully, turning the lights off as she went.

It was closing time, and Makoto preferred to end the day by herself - to relax and get everything in order to start the next day without hassle, to calm and center herself, and -

Makoto checked her calendar with a growing grin - 

to let herself get a little bit excited when it came time for a date night and not have to hide it.

The girls who she employed were adamant - "What kind of boyfriend do you have, then? He never comes around! He never checks up on you! Don't you deserve better?" - but she just waved them off with a serene smile.

Dating Majima Goro wasn't always easy, but it was more than always worth it.

They were meeting today, in fact - Majima had been coaxed back to Sotenbori despite his loud groanings, and Makoto had worked hard to plan out a fun evening for them both, exciting like he liked but still safe enough for her, at his extreme insistence. Makoto finished getting paperwork in order and one slipped out of her hand to the floor.

While he had good reason to be so protective, she mused as she leaned down, reaching for the dropped paper, it was verging on stifling, just a bit. The door clicked open in front of her.

After all, she was safe now.

"Sorry," she called, snagging the page and sitting back up, "We're clo- "

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Majima's tenth cigarette burned down to his glove - he felt the faint heat through the leather and glanced down at it before doing a double-take and sighing.

He had his elbows propped up on the railing of the Iwao Bridge, alternatively staring down at the filthy water, up at the light-polluted sky, or around at the looming buildings.

He dropped the dogend at his feet and ground it out under his heel, let it join its brethren he stood on.

They often met up at this bridge (though not often enough to track, he made sure of that) - they both agreed to not meet at the massage parlor. Keep their lives as strictly separated as possible.

Though, of course, she'd never been this late before. Majima checked his beeper again - no message. Nothing.

Something wasn't right.

Majima lit another cigarette just to give himself something to do with his hands, stalking through the streets of Sotenbori. A few years ago barkers would be darting up to him, their lighters out to light his cig for him, but times had changed. He had changed most of all.

Majima turned onto South Shofukucho Street and used the very limit of his will to keep his pace the same, unhurried and unworried. The street was quiet, sparsely populated, with a small group of men at one end, talking and smoking. Majima's eye flicked to them, then back to the familiar green-and-white sign.

He pushed the door open, noting its slight creak, and took the stairs at a brisk clip. Just as he rounded the corner to the third floor, another creak overlapped with the soft claks of his shoes.

Passing by the specter of himself a few years ago, plastered against the wall, knife in hand, hair scraped back off of his face, Majima strode to the door of the massage parlor, gloved hand out, telling himself what he wanted to have happen next.

He'd knock once to be polite and stick his head in with a goofy, easy grin. Makoto would be at the front desk, tied up with paperwork or planning or something blissfully mundane and she'd gasp and say she let the time get away from her, and he'd cackle and tease her around apologies for dropping in but he couldn't last one single moment more without seeing her and why don't they just make out on one of the massage tables right here - 

The warm imagine spot dissolved when Majima stopped right in front of the door and found it to be hanging open. Through it, he could see a binder open on the floor, paper spilled, a disrupted cup of pens scattered on top of it. Scuff marks.

Three drops of blood, a crooked little triangle in the fluorescent light, dimming as another shadow joined his.

Majima's skin went icy, and he felt his stomach leap and twist, sickeningly familiar. He took a step back and let that momentum build as he twisted his hips to throw a punch at the goon behind him, club lifted high to bring down over Majima's head.

His knuckles caught the guy in the throat, and Majima ducked as the club glanced across the back of his shoulders instead. He rushed forward with a roar, knocking the guy back into another one behind him, a third choking back a surprised grunt as he brought up the rear at the top of the stairs.

Right. The men talking outside. He should've known. He should've seen this coming.

The violence in the hallway is short and swift. He doesn't toy with them like he's gotten in the habit of, and he doesn't relish in the give of flesh, cartilage, and bone under his gloved knuckles or under his heel - he doesn't have time to.

He leaves one conscious, lifted off his feet by two stained fists clenched in his collar. Hot blood has splashed across Majima's face, stark against his pale skin, and he lets his face contort, his eye wild, a kind of true, honest hysteria soaking through his skin in a way he never wanted to feel again - 

- as he asks the terrified, trembling man where Makoto Makimura is.

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Majima blinks blood out of his eye - it doesn't work, so he has to lift his aching arm to knuckle it away. Don't worry - the blood isn't his. He thinks.

His breath comes in rasps as he moves at a crouched run through the serpentine corridors of different warehouse boxes, huge pallets and shipping containers bigger than the cell he used to live in, back when he did this the last time.

It smells different, looks different, sounds echo differently, but it's the same feeling and, he feels, deep in his chest, at the base of his spine, behind his teeth - 

It's going to end the same way.

He rips into another person turning the corner ahead of him, giving himself only enough time to snarl as the blade of a knife - not his, just one he picked up somewhere - slides in, hooks under a rib, and is able to be used as a lever to toss whatever poor bastard this was off to the side, barely breaking his stride.

Majima's snarl has a desperate edge.

He has to get there fast enough this time.

He has to.

The leaden fear makes his knees feel weak, imagining seeing what he saw again. 

Her turning to face him, a shot, a spray of blood.

Not again. Why didn't he learn? How could he let this happen again? How - ?

One final door. He sees it down a hallway and pushes himself somehow faster, his heartbeat a roar in his ears - 

and, ahead of him, the door opens, and there she is.

Makoto Makimura takes a few hurried steps out, moving swiftly - her face bloodied and with a little bit of a limp but fine, fine - and she stops short when she sees Majima fly down the hall, his grip on the knife faltering as he skids on the cement floor to slow down.

The ping of the knife hitting cement is far and away when she launches into his arms, her own wrapping around his neck, and his hands spread across her back, searching for wounds that aren't there.

She's whole. She's here. She's...

Majima lifts his head from where he had buried it in her hair and looks into the room behind her, where a few sprawled bodies lay.

"You did that?" Majima asks absently.

"Yes," Makoto says, catching her breath, her mouth quirking into a breathless half-smile. "I-I suppose I did."

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Makoto had stopped struggling early on - once she recovered from the initial strike on the head, she had already been bundled into a car and was off along the highway, out of her neighborhood. She kept her eyelids fluttering, her head limp, and took everything in.

Yes, surprise, it happened again.

Makoto Makimura was determined to make sure this time ended very, very differently.

Through her feigned stupor, Makoto picked up valuable information - that these men were Omi Alliance, that only one was particularly experienced or high-ranking, and that her boyfriend's name got tossed around more than a few times.

Right, of course. How pedestrian. She was more than a little miffed that Majima's paranoia ended up being proven right. Makoto couldn't stop herself from flicking her eyes upward when she imagined the many, many more months she'd have to wait for him to be comfortable with meeting in public again.

Makoto kept her breathing steady and let them carry her limply to a warehouse, her head bouncing off of her chest as her shoes scraped along the ground.

They tossed her to a chair, tying her arms to its back. She flexed her muscles as much as she could as goon number one tied her up, glad for the argument he was currently in with goon number two as goon number three spoke hurriedly into a cellphone, keeping his mind from paying the kind of attention he should on his charge.

When he pulled away from her, satisfied with his work, Makoto relaxed, creating just enough slack for her to move.

The argument reached a fever pitch as the two goons stepped up to each other and - critically - the third goon stepped outside to finish his phone call.

Makoto's fingers slipped to the knot, her head still down, hair over her eyes.

By the time the goons' argument was over, her bindings had slipped off to the floor. She stood and made a beeline for one, fingers pressed together to make one hand a blade, the other hand flexed, poised.

She hit two pressure points in quick succession, in his neck and below his arm, and she grabbed his neck as he turned and she used his momentum against him, throwing him to the floor, smashing his face into the chair where she was sitting.

The other goon had enough time to begin to talk before she jabbed her bladed hand right in his solar plexus, knocking the wind from his lungs, and followed it up with a harsh knee to the stomach to bowl him over.

"Hey - !" the third goon shouted, bursting through the door, "what the hell are you - two - .. doing..."

Makoto stared him down, her eyes flashing bright.

The door drifted shut behind him. The instant after it did, it shuddered hard, a heavy weight thrown against it.

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"When I said I had taken over as the God Hand," Makoto finishes, exhaling and bouncing a bit in Majima's arms, "I really, really meant it."

"So you - ?"

"Classes. A lot of classes. Some really intense ones, too."

The astonished laugh that leaks from Majima's lips doesn't have its usual high-pitched edge - it's quiet and honest instead.

"Now that's somethin', ain't it?" he mutters, shaking his head a touch. His eye darts around, brow beginning to furrow.

Makoto knows precisely what train of thought is racing through his head and she stops it, squeezing his arms with both hands.

"It is. It is something. And it's - "

"It's not - "

"It's enough," Makoto says, voice rising, speaking over him.

Majima lifts his head and met her eye.

"I don't even want you to say it," Makoto whispers. "I know you're afraid, Goro. I know. So was I."

Majima opens his mouth to protest but Makoto lifts her hands to cup his face.

"But I've always known what the life I chose would entail. What it'd be like being your partner, in every way I can."

Majima's eye goes wide.

"So... so... thank you for coming to save me," she says, beaming at him.

Majima studies her face, then just sighs deeply, leaning into her hands.

"I didn't do nothin'," he murmurs, just a touch pouty, covering for a hearty blush on his face.

"You've done enough. Oh," she says, peeking over his shoulder at a stirring body. "Or maybe not. One's waking up."

"Oh. Is he?" Majima tilts his head back, rolling into a slow turn. "Huh. Guess I didn't hit him hard enough."

Majima looks down to Makoto and cracks a grin. He straightens to his full height and bows at a crisp angle at the waist, for one moment back at the Grand again.

"Would you like to do the honors, partner?"

Makoto looks up at him, brushing some hair from her face, starting to giggle.

"Why, Goro-kun. It'd be my pleasure."