A Curse Upon Thee 29

This took me too long. Dialogue is hard people.

“Summer 2018, I think.” Eyes half-closed, heavy lids were already fighting a losing war against the Percocet he popped and bone-deep exhaustion. “I was seventeen, maybe?” The words came out slow, Finn picking his way through consonants as carefully as he could. “When they picked me up off the street for Kyoto Metropolitan Curse Technical College.” 

“Wow.” Ruby made a noise. “Talk about a mouthful.”

Finn made his own noise back, half-muffled through a closed mouth. “They called it Jujutsu High for short. Kyoto Jujutsu High, ‘cause there was another one in Tokyo.” He let out a breath, the sound more of a wheeze than anything else. “I… I was homeless, I think?”

“You think?”

“Look, everything before that specific summer is still just… static, Bee. Loud, white noise blocking out the channel, before some weird lady with a scar saved my ass. But Kyoto…” He swallowed dryly, the raw scrape in his throat a reminder of the breathing tube they’d pulled out of him barely a half-hour back. “Kyoto I actually remember.”

The memory surfaced in his drug-hazy brain like something, breaching the surface of his thoughts. Jagged fragments rapidly started assembling themselves, going from disconnected into something almost real enough to grab onto.

The Kyoto summer heat was thick enough to physically drown in, air always so humid and aggressively heavy that it felt like trying to breathe in hot water. Sweat had managed to soak straight through his red summer uniform within a half-hour of stepping outside the dorms.

The less said about training in that heat, the better. “There was this one guy, like… the most annoying guy you’ve ever met. He was a third-year. Aoi Todo.” A smile flickered across Finn’s face even past the pain and everything else bringing him down, even with his ribs creaking like shitty wood flooring.

“The guy was a tank, you think I’m jokin’ but man was…” Finn hissed out a laugh just thinking of what little he could remember. “Six-foot-something of raw muscle and confidence he could back up with a punch.” He closed his eyes for a second. “A punch that could probably bring down a house, no lie. Completely fuckin’ insane, though. Match made in hell, like goddamn.” Another breathy chuckle left his lips, quickly turning into a groan as the sound hitched in his chest. “Man kept trying to force me to figure out a Cursed Technique by beating the absolute, literal shit out of me every single day on the dirt and asking me what my type of woman was.”

“Wow.” Ruby snorted from the chair beside him. “That sounds incredibly healthy and totally normal.”

“Oh, yeah, absolutely edifying and downright fuckin’ fantastic for my personal development.” He couldn’t stop laughing, no matter how much the rattles leaving him hurt. “Real solid character building, all jokes aside.”

He didn’t need to look to know the eyebrow on Ruby’s face went up. “All?”

“…most.”

“Figured.”

“But yeah, nothing like getting punted across a dirt field by a psycho who thinks tits and ass are the best way to see into the heart of someone.” Not that Finn entirely disagreed, but at least he knew better than to say it out loud. “Man would ask me these questions about jujutsu while actively beating the dirty dogshit outta me. And then, get this, when I couldn’t answer him fast enough because I was busy coughing up blood, the fucking oni would just hit me harder while screaming the answers in my ear. Better than flashcards.”

“Did it actually work?”

“Honestly…” Finn clicked his tongue. “Yeah, but mostly, I just got really, really good at taking a hit.” He shook his head, another sigh slipping free as he sunk deeper into the chair. “But no technique popped out my ass, so not worth it. Just a Grade 3 Sorcerer with absolutely no juice to my name. No trick to pull out to save the day. Just basic reinforcement and some sorcerer skills to go with my bastard energy.”

He paused, his bright blue eyes going distant and unfocused as he stared out the hospital window at the afternoon Storybrooke sky. A thumb traced the rough skin of his palm, pulling him back to the hospital room and the rhythmic beeping around him.

“Were they your friends?” Her voice touched his ears. “The people there?”

“Yeah.” He still barely remembered them, but he remembered enough. Enough to fill at least a few days put together, scattered all across a few months. “Yeah, Bee. They actually were.”

Finn took another breath, pushing down the pain as he kept on going. “Kasumi Miwa. We all just called her Miwa. Real sweetheart with dyed blue hair and… honestly, way too nice. Like she tried to act tough but she was just waaaaayyy too nice. Like always apologizing to everyone just for existing, constantly second-guessing herself, totally convinced she wasn’t ever going to be good enough. I don’t really think the life fit her, but it wasn’t my life to live, you know.” His head tilted to the side, eyes dragging as he blinked. “But man, she was fast. Sparred with her all of once and she had a sword to my throat before I could blink.”

The heart monitor beeped steadily. “There was this guy… forget his name, honestly, but he was like a wooden robot.”

“…what?”

“Yeah. Wooden robot, but yeah, don’t really remember much about the dude but he had lasers and shit.”

“In a wooden robot?”

“I don’t know how to explain this better, Bee.”

Ruby hummed, fingers tightening around his. “I feel you could try.”

True. He nodded to himself. “For some reason, I think he ran on AA batteries. I remember something about him having or needing batteries.”

“…are you fucking with me?”

“Not yet.”

“Then that’s crazy.”

“Yeah.” Finn’s jaw tightened, a muscle ticking near his ear. “It was. It really was. But I got to see the lasers once, so I’m pretty sure he had a lot goin’ on in that body.”

Who… who else was there? He blinked slow. Oh yeah… “Momo… Momo something. I know it started with an N, I think. She had a broom and she was blonde and I think she took the whole witch thing too far, ‘cause she flew everywhere on that thing. Like, everywhere. If she didn’t have to eat or use the bathroom, she might never have touched the floor. She was smart, though. Usually kept the rest of us from doing completely suicidally stupid shit during active missions.”

“So you could have used her.” Ruby’s sarcasm slid smoothly into the gap.

“I might have.” He shrugged back at her. “Could have come in handy.”

His mouth opened, the next words sliding in his brain. “…” It took too long for them to come out but by the time they did, his throat was as dry as it had ever been. 

“M-Mai… Mai Zenin.” The name felt like a loaded gun, just sitting on a table.

Ruby’s hand tightened just slightly on his, something in his voice making her sit up a bit, but she didn’t say a word.

“That girl was mean… Mean as hell. Like, she had words for everyone. Sharp edges, just jagged anywhere she let you see. She came from this super fucked-up super-strong sorcerer family and they pretty much treated women like property but… yeah.” He kept staring off at nothing, memories trickling back with that same scowling face looking back at him like he was a waste of space. “She… Mai was… complicated. She was so angry at the world, angry at her messed-up family, and mostly angry at herself for not being angry enough to just leave the clan entirely. But she was… she was… something.“

“Was she…” Ruby spoke up finally, sounding more unsteady than actually quiet. “Were you two—”

“I… I… Honestly, I really can’t tell you, Bee. Like, I just straight up don’t know.” Finn cut her off as gently as he could, not willing to answer a question that he was pretty sure leaned stronger one way than the other. Even still, he was smart enough to know exactly how answering that would work out for him. “Still picking up all the pieces missing up here. I remember training together, sure. I remember her waving a gun around more often than not. I know she was Important. Capital I. But I don’t know… like, for real, none of the context…”

He looked up, meeting Ruby’s green eyes. “There’s no, nothing like… I don’t remember any sorta…” He waved his free hand vaguely in the air, trying to find the words that wouldn’t make him sound like a total liar “Feelings. Not like that. Not like—”

Finn decided to quit while he was already behind, the words catching in his throat. “You understand?”

“Yeah.” Ruby nodded slowly but Finn was pretty sure she was being as honest as she was right now. “Yeah. I think so.”

“But when I look at you—” Finn’s voice dropped low as he turned to face his girl. “When I look at you, Bee, I actually feel that.”

Ruby leaned in close, the scent of cherry on her lip gloss strong as she pressed her forehead gently against his temple. “We’ll figure it out, Red.”

“And how are you so sure about that?”

“Because we’re both stubborn and stupid.” Soft, warm lips brushed against his cheek, the distraction enough for Finn to forgive the non-answer. “Anyway, I already know exactly what your specific type of woman is.”

 “Yeah?” Finn let out another laugh, eyes blinking slower. “What’s that?”

“Dangerous brunettes with massive authority issues and really, really good legs.”

“You…” His mouth opened wide in a yawn. “You definitely got me there.”

“I know.”

Finn was asleep before he could say anything else. 

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

Ruby quickly caught his head as it dropped forward, her boyfriend’s chin slumping heavily against her shoulder. “Finn?”

The only answer she got back was the sound of snoring.

She smiled despite herself, despite the terrifying reality of the magically poisoned kid dying three feet away, despite absolutely everything currently going wrong in this cursed town. She adjusted him incredibly carefully so he wasn’t going to wake up in three hours with a horribly kinked neck, keeping one firm hand on his uninjured shoulder to physically steady his dead weight in the cheap plastic chair.

“Absolute idiot.”

She desperately needed to use the bathroom again. Hours of sitting tense vigil in a hard chair and way too much terrible, acidic coffee from the basement vending machine were aggressively catching up with her biology. She stood up carefully, her muscles stiff, making absolutely sure Finn was stable and balanced in the chair, her hand still gripping the plastic armrest so his unconscious body wouldn’t just topple sideways onto the linoleum.

“I’ll be right back, Red.”

She slipped silently out into the sterile hallway, her boots quiet on the polished floor.

Ruby was only gone a half-minute when the silence was suddenly broken by the slightest, most deliberate sound. The unmistakable, rhythmic tap of a heavy wooden cane against the linoleum floor.

“Mr. McHale…”