Chapter Text
April 18, 1999
Rain pattered against a black umbrella. A slender, leather-gloved hand tightened its grip around the handle to steady it against the wind. Another clasped tighter around a rose bouquet.
A white-painted wooden cross jutted from the ground. Around it were countless more like it, driven into the earth in rows upon rows that swept across the rolling greens. Its only distinguishing feature was a name, stamped into the base of the rain-slick wood:
早川アキ
It had been 584 days since Aki Hayakawa died.
Angel didn't really feel any better about it. He knew why — no matter how much he slipped out of the malaise, a small part of him had remained forever stuck in September of 1997. Time passed and the part grew smaller, but it would never disappear. Just like that part of him he'd left on the beach, and the part of him he'd left behind on the concrete by the bay; regrets, mistakes, moments that if left unattended would cause him to wallow forever in the word 'perhaps.'
Denji stood a couple of meters behind him. He held his head low, his hands in his pockets. He'd dressed for the occasion, just like Angel - black suit, black tie, doing his best to look presentable. The clothing, fresh-unpacked from a pile of old boxes still wedged in the back of Denji's apartment, did little more than remind him of the good-old-bad-old-days. But that was why he was here. Why Angel was, too.
Angel knelt in front of the grave. His wings lifted just a touch to avoid the ground. He held the roses out, exhaled softly, and let his eyes slip shut. There ought to have been more… finality, more ritual, more something to this act. Simply laying the flowers there didn't feel like enough. But in the end, that's what he did.
Angel opened his eyes and stepped back from the grave. Denji sidled up to join him and offered to take the umbrella. Angel obliged him.
"I feel like I should say something," Denji said. "It's… the first time I've been here, since…"
"Since he died." Angel stared at the red in the grass. "I don't have anything to say, either."
Denji exhaled heavily and he swallowed. A familiar ache prickled through his shoulders and a weary heat dredged up in his face. "C'mon. If I stick around here any longer, I'm gonna-" His voice broke and he cleared his throat.
Angel nodded. Hand clasped against hand. After a little while, Aki's grave was impossible to pick out from the ones surrounding it.
"I don't know what I thought I'd get out of this," Angel said. Denji didn't say much of anything, he only passed the umbrella back to Angel so he could wipe his eyes.
"I don't think I believe in closure," said Angel. "But I thought I'd get… something."
Denji cleared his throat again and steadied out his breathing. "I know what you mean."
Angel glanced up at him. "Do you really?"
"Yeah. I think I do."
The pair walked for a while, guided by a steady procession of white-cross graves.