Some tumblr users are organizing a Tomadashi week, and I caved. I have accepted my fate as multishipper trash, clinging on to AUs as a lifeline. I can now add Tomadashi to the list of ships for which I have written.
The first prompt was "Goodbye." Hello, angst, my old friend.
Go Go didn't even know why she'd come back. She'd returned to the Lucky Cat with the rest of the funeral party, put on sympathetic smiles and accepted cups of tea, exchanged stories about the dead man that were dry on her lips. Then afterwards they'd disbanded to their own homes and own restless sleeps, but her feet had instead lead her back to the cemetery on the edge of the city.
On foot, because she couldn't ride her bike in a dress. Now the girl clenched its hem in her fist.
When had she even last worn a dress? Oh, right. Prom. Tadashi had insisted that she didn't have to if she didn't want to, but she'd insisted too, because she knew how happy it would make him, and of course she won. After that she'd endured hours of shopping with an overly enthusiastic Honey Lemon, as well as a spa visit that had been slightly traumatizing for both her and the spa worker. Yet the awed look on Tadashi's stupid face when she had shown up in a sleek black number made it all worth it in the end.
Now Go Go curled her fists tighter, digging her nails into her skin. "Well, I wore a dress for you again," she whispered. "I hope you're happy, Hamada."
Of course he couldn't be happy. He was dead. And now she was just being ridiculous.
But he had been happy, once. He'd been happy when she'd finally agreed to a date, she remembered. So happy that he'd tried to drag her to her feet for an impromptu dance number, and when she slapped him away, rolling her eyes, he'd done a goofy dance by himself, heedless of the other students' stares while she held back her laughter.
Go Go had been wary when he'd first asked her out, cagey, defensive. She'd seen too many girls have their hearts broken by pretty boys not to be.
Of course Tadashi was far too good for that, too good for her, and too good for this world, apparently.
Still, here she was, with her heart broken after all. And this time he couldn't patch her back together the way he had when she'd run her bike into the wall and gashed her wrist, couldn't take her mind away from the pain with his smile like pure sunshine, couldn't kiss it better while she scowled in mock resentment.
"You broke your promise, Tadashi," Go Go said, neither angry nor bitter, just stating the truth. "You said you'd never leave me." She should have been screaming, sobbing, something. Anything but this silent, soul-crushing emptiness that seemed to reach inside her and pull the memories out, under the same stars that they had once marvelled at together. Memories of tossed salads and held hands and the wind whipping through their hair as they sped through the streets of San Fransokyo. Memories of sunsets and messy handmade sushi and the two of them snorting at the sappiness, the sentimentality of it all.
For a little while Go Go had allowed herself to imagine that the laughter and teasing and love (was she brave enough to call it love?) would never end.
Not like this. Never like this.
Not with her a small, sad figure in a damp field. Not with the cold droplets seeping through her clothes, catching on her lashes, washing over the words of his name. Not with a heartbroken girl and a lifeless grey headstone standing together in the rain.
Go Go held back her tears like she always did, but the sky cried for her--and for him, and for them both--instead.
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