Work Text:
“How’s the family?” Makima asked Kishibe as they stepped into the elevator. She asked not because she cared but because it was one of the more common topics she noticed humans picked for each other when making small talk.
Kishibe stared at the doors as they slid close. “My wife and I are thinking of getting a divorce.”
Makima blinked. Most humans lied or gave a vague, noncommittal answer. She detected a hint of sadness from his tone and injected sorrow into her own. “Oh, that’s terrible,” she said with the right amount of softness.
“It really is.”
“What’s a divorce?”
It was rare that Kishibe was ever surprised. This was one of those times. “You don’t know what a divorce is?” He asked.
“I know what it is,” Makima said. “I just don’t know what it means.”
She knew the steps involved. She knew that it was the opposite of a marriage. Both partners saw a lawyer and signed a paper annulling the vow made at an altar. No longer unto death do us part. They become separate entities, legally, financially and sentimentally.
But she didn’t understand it, much appreciate the concept. Contracts are powerful because they are binding. If it’s so easy to escape what was promised, of what use was the promise?
“It means,” Kishibe said slowly, “That we’ve agreed that we may be happier if we weren’t together.”
The doors opened at ground floor. “But it’s an ongoing discussion, right?” Makima asked as she followed him out. “You’re talking it over?”
“We’re not on speaking terms.”
“But what if it benefited one of you to be together, even if the other didn’t want it?”
“You wouldn't get it.” Kishibe changed the subject, bringing up rosters for the squad for the week, and Makima allowed it, if only because she could understand things such as timetables, schedules and pre-assigned patrol routes. Such things were structured and organized.
She liked it when things were organized. It left no room for error.
On another day in the office, Makima looked up from her fashion magazine as Kishibe stood up and grimaced at the straining of lifting old bones with old injuries. She watched as he proceeded to dig through his desk drawers for his wallet, badge, keys and pistol. “Heading out?” she asked.
He grunted in assent. “Taking off early. Got an errand.”
“What kind?”
“Shopping.”
“Mind if I come along?” She set the magazine aside and swung her feet off her desk. “I need some air.”
It’s more than that and they knew it. The bureau gave her a wide mandate. She could pick her assignments, choose her assistants, and decided when she came into the office and sometimes even which office she wanted to work in. With such freedom, Makima essentially had the run of her life day to day, and when she had exhausted anything and everything that she was curious about, she generally spent her time wishing for something different to happen.
Ergo, since Kishibe never shopped beyond a short jaunt to buy cigarettes and alcohol from convenience stores and bottle shops, and he never left work early, her interest was piqued.
Kishibe shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
They walked out together. Some of the staff nodded and muttered quiet goodbyes but overall everyone kept their distance because one of the pair is the most frightening person in the whole building, and the other one’s the Mad Dog.
Makima remembered reveling in it at the beginning. To know that she had that effect because she commanded such authority and respect was something she took quiet satisfaction in. Now it just irritated her. She wanted dominion, but not the kind wielded by far-away despots in their ivory towers. It was too cold and too miserable. Machiavelli wrote it was better to be feared rather than loved, but she’s always asked if it was too much to be both. To have one hand open and proffering sweets while the other wielded a baton.
“What are you buying?” She asked.
“Curtains and furniture. I’m moving out.”
Makima nodded. “I see.” So the divorce was happening after all, and she saw how that made sense. He was a lifer in the bureau, married to the work and no doubt that found its way home too.
“It was bound to happen,” Kishibe said. “We weren’t very much in love to begin with, but we thought we were to each other the kind of person we could make a life with, so we tried to make it survive. It didn’t, and I'll just have to live with that."
“Who suggested the separation?”
“She did.”
“So you agree with her?”
“I don’t disagree with her.”
Makima tilted her head in thought. “Sounds like you’re just following her whim. Are you afraid?”
“Of what?”
“What comes after? You are a husband, a father, the head of your own household with status and progeny and all its inherent worth, but you will soon be known as none of those things. You’re buying all this stuff because you have to start over and you're running out of time.” Makima spread her hands. “Your whole life is at risk of falling to pieces, and you don’t seem the slightest bit terrified.”
“Because I am past the point where I am able to change things. Why fret when it’s out of my hands?”
“Don’t you want to stay with her?”
Kishibe spoke his next words with all the bluntness of a mallet hammering a point in without room for argument. “Letting someone into your life is to give them a key. That also means allowing them to let themselves out when it’s no longer place they feel welcome in.”
“Suppose I just keep the key then," Makima suggested.
“Then you’d be no different from a prison.”
Makima stared at the back of Kishibe’s head and imagined pointing a finger and cocking back a thumb. Bang. Skull shards and brains splattered on the wall, the cleaners tutting to themselves as they thought of all the work ahead to get the blood out of the carpet, and bits of an eye and a nose swept into a dustpan and unceremoniously dumped into black plastic bags by hands in white gloves.
Smile, girl, smile. He’s just mad his woman doesn’t want him anymore, whereas who could resist you? You who have your pick of anyone you wanted, and who’d object?
She schooled her expression to the same one she practiced in the mirror all the time. Eyes wide with a little smirk toying on her lips, tender, sweet and polite. Not too lascivious but not too coy either. Perfect balance. Complete calm.
“Nothing smart to say?” Kishibe asked.
“Not at all,” Makima purred. “You make a good point. Seems I still have much to learn from you.”
The saleswoman tittered and smiled and assumed they were a couple. Before Kishibe could correct her, Makima slid one arm through his, tangling her fingers through his. “We’ve just got engaged,” she said cheerfully even as Kishibe pulled his hand out of hers.
The curtains picked were red, while the sofa and chairs were black. Kishibe gave an address at the counter for the delivery, and Makima spotted it out of the corner of her eye and committed it to memory. Not because she planned to visit, but because she liked knowing everything. Secrets kept from her were secrets to be extracted, like wisdom teeth pried out at the dentist’s office, or confessions forced out on the torture rack.
“Are you going to find someone else?” Makima asked Kishibe as they left the department store. “Is that what people do after a divorce? They try again and hope for the best? Third time’s the charm?”
“No.”
“No?”
“I have no intention of starting another family.”
“What about companionship?”
“Why?" Kishibe snapped, annoyed with the constant questions. "You volunteering?”
It wasn’t funny, but Makima decided to laugh anyway. She’s good at laughing and she noticed men liked it when she laughed. She’d got it down pat, finding the differences between chuckle and snicker, learning how to sound throaty, husky or girlish. “There's an age difference,” she teased.
For a moment, Kishibe looked unsure, thinking she was making a quip at how old he was, or if she was actually that old. “That’s true," he agreed.
“You give up so quickly. Aren't you sure going to ask how old I really am?”
“I’m sure it’s up there,” Kishibe said, calling her out on it as he lit one up, cupping hand over the lighter’s flame. “But you know something?”
“What?”
“As ancient as you probably are, I’m sure you’re not an only child, and you were the youngest sibling wherever you came from.”
“Because I’m so sweet?” Makima asked as she reached for his lighter.
Kishibe pulled it out of her reach. “Because you give the impression that you are every bit a brat who’s used to getting things her way, and while you hide it very well, you have an ego.”
This time Makima laughed on reflex, because somewhere deep inside she knew he was right. She was a very old brat, and she just loved getting things her way. For a moment, she almost wished she could talk about her sisters and how she herself was actually the nice one out of the entire brood. But that would be showing her hand a little too early.
The remark still irritated her though. So as Kishibe puffed away, Makima watched his dead eyes and imagined what they would look like as she put her hand through his chest. She wondered if more life would show up in them as he choked and gasped his last breath.
“What’s going on in that head of yours right now?” Kishibe asked. "Or are you done with the verbal jousting?"
Makima smiled as she looked into his forehead and replayed the image of his brains blown out with her finger gun. She widened her smile as she mentally blasted the rest of his corpse into tiny pieces, dousing herself in his blood as it dripped from the ceiling and maybe doing a pirouette on the spot, arms wide. She's noticed there's so much packed into a human's frame that when they're broken, it just goes everywhere: dreams and regrets, tissue and marrow. "Tell me about your wife," she ordered. "What's she like?"
One of the things she liked and respected about Kishibe was that they always spoke as equals, so she didn't mean for that to be a command.
Strangely, unlike the many other times where he'd flat out refused her orders, he obeyed this one.