“I’ll give you one more chance/ Say we can change our old ways/ And you take what you need/ And you know you don’t need me.” Kougino?
The years had changed them both.
Perhaps they’d changed Ginoza the most. He stood in the middle of a war-torn country, faced with truths he couldn’t have imagined back in Japan, and he seemed calm. Ginoza, years ago, wouldn’t have been calm. Not about any of this.
But now Ginoza handled himself like he could handle the stresses of life. Kougami understood why. Those stresses had already broken him, what more did he have to lose? Ginoza was hardened. Kougami wondered if there was any of the softness, the tender care left.
Or maybe that was what Ginoza chose to show him. Kougami knew he’d made Ginoza hurt. He knew from the moment he decided to leave. He’d had to, but Ginoza probably hadn’t seen it that way.
Kougami had known, when he left, that leaving was the the worst thing he could possibly do. Being left behind cut Ginoza deepest. He’d told Kougami this one night, back when they were both inspectors and both believed in love and the system they served. He’d admitted, in barely over a whisper, that his father leaving nearly killed him.
“I want to be worth staying for,” he’d whispered, and Kougami had held him and murmured, “you are.”
Another night, after a drunken argument (mostly on Kougami’s side), Ginoza had been getting worked up over Kougami’s increasingly reckless behavior. And Kougami shouted, “That’s why I need you!”
He’d seen the way Ginoza’s eyes had widened. It wasn’t like a declaration of love, where the response would be, “I love you, too.” Kougami knew that Ginoza didn’t want to admit that he needed Kougami, too, or anyone else. He wanted to become self-sufficient. Other people hurt.
Kougami did need Ginoza. To listen to him, to keep him in line, to need him. He needed Ginoza until he stopped, until he needed other things more. Like justice for Sasayama, like the truth about Makishima, like revenge. Until he needed to leave.
They stood under the stars of the same sky on different ground, and Kougami’s face throbbed from where Ginoza hit him. He wasn’t sure what he needed, now. He thought he’d needed to leave. He thought he’d needed to fight. Maybe he didn’t need either of those things. Maybe he needed to admit he was lost.
“I’m leaving,” Ginoza told him. “I’m going back with Tsunemori.”
Ginoza stuffed his hands in his pockets and looked up at the stars. “I don’t need you anymore, Kougami.”
“You never needed me, either,” Ginoza continued. “I can live with the life I have, now.”
“Sometimes people need each other,” Kougami said. “You can’t deny that.”
“I know,” Ginoza said, softly. “That isn’t what I meant. I do need someone. I realized it’s not you.”
Kougami nodded. Perhaps that had been the problem. They could never give each other what they needed.
“I wanted you,” Ginoza continued, “but that isn’t the same thing, is it?”
Kougami wanted to kiss him, just to say goodbye. But maybe that was too dangerous. It wasn’t something either of them needed. Instead, he watched Ginoza go, walk back to the life he had built for himself, trapped though he might be in a world that saw him as a criminal. Back to a life Kougami couldn’t understand anyone wanting.
But he let Ginoza go. He needed to learn to let go.
