Title: Learn To Forget
Author: phobiaplague
Chapters: 1/1
Genre: Angst
Pairings: Heine/Badou

Warnings: Language, violence, mild gore, implied Heine/Badou.
Rating: PG-16

Disclaimer:  I do not own anything in the following work of fiction. No profit is earned by the posting of this fiction.

Summary:  Badou, as a teenager, is just beginning to learn the ropes of his new profession. But it is not as easy as Heine makes it look, and the ensuing guilt is harder on him than either of them could have imagined.

Comments:  This is another one of those pieces where I stew over the plot all day, get it into my head that the concept is amazing, and then by the time I finish it, I'm nowhere near as satisfied with the direction it took as I want to be. There are some parts in here that I'm proud of, and parts I absolutely loathe. Either way, I promise this is the last of the angst between these two for a while--and I'll probably be spamming you with more of these two in the coming days. Comments/criticism  always welcomed.










Badou Nails knew how to kill a man fifty different ways.  Just as he knew there were such things as complete death (as in dead is fuckin' dead, you lucky bastard,) and half-deaths. The latter being when you stripped away some poor bastard to his last defenses layer by layer, and the infinite little moments between the shaking breaths of the ruined--offering all but the world on a string the instance they realized they kneeled between the paws of the sneering Jackal. Gunsmoke repentance.  The little whimpering moans and sobs that would make a better man blanch and perhaps move them to pity. That was a kind of death, too. He knew the points on a body that would drop a man to the ground like the ragged sack of bones and blood they were. Knew just where to touch so they'd break and not get up again. He had the sounds of the crackling, moist noise that vertebrae made when the tip of a knife sunk into the nape of a neck--the hissing, syllabant scrape of steel like static across the bone--he had that  memory rollerdexed in his mind.


Badou Nails knew how to make a man piss himself in equal parts fear and humiliation. But he didn't always.



The first time Badou killed a man, he was sixteen. A wraith of a youth--gaunt and already awkward with the gangly limbs of puberty. His clothes--handmedowns from Dave--hung off his thin frame at sharp scarecrow angles--about two sizes too big. Eventually he would grow into them, but for the moment they made his already thin frame seem almost emaciated. In those days, he was more prone to tripping over his own feet--cursing loudly as he did. Although that was as much because of the fact that his shoes were never tied, as it was due to clumsiness.   It had been a hard dash through the labyrinth of the Underground. More than once,  he had lost the blue flash of the man's coat in the milling of the crowd. But that was the Underground for you--the monster from under your bed, swallowing people and their flashbulb brilliance of all their hopes and dreams and 'somedays' instead of socks.

After Badou's third forced reroute through an alleyway, the youth stood bent over double, his hands braced on his knees. His heart raced, and each inhale was a ragged, painful gasp as he struggled to draw in enough air. The ground at his feet ran dark with damp, dark slate asphalt littered with a patchwork of discarded cigarette butts, their filters stomped flat and spilling out the last remnants of tobacco like dried blood, and the dull gleam of false treasure--shards of broken bottles, flashing green and brown. There was a sickly bittersweet smell--a mixture of decomposing garbage and piss--human and animal alike. The stench filtered in through Badou's mouth, coating his tongue. He swore utter his breath, nose wrinkling as he threw an arm over his nose in a vain attempt toblock out the smell.

There was a skittering, clinking noise then--the rolling discordant noise of a bottle or piece of glass kicked loose. Badou froze for a moment, his pulse quickening in anticipation as a sly, cocky smile spread across his lips. He took off, reaching the end of the alley just in time to see the man in blue round the corner with the springing steps of a flushed hare. Badou was having none of it. He was tired, he smelled like the inside of somebody's dumpster, and above all, he was pissed. He was ready for this game of cat and mouse to come to an end. As he ran after the man once more, he reached into the pocket of his own tattered and patched green jacket, his hand curling with ease around the butt of the handgun nestled there.  He allowed the man just enough reprieve to move down the street a good meter from him before he quickly withdrew the gun mid-run, wrapping his finger around the trigger and pulling. The shaking movement of his gait, coupled with his poor aim, made the shot go wide.

The bullet whizzed past it's target and lodged itself into the brick of a nearby building.

"Crap!"

Badou was unable to hold back his frustration any longer. But the shot had worked in his favor--the man shied away from the bullet, turning on his heels and ducking down yet another alleyway.

How many damn alleys are you gonna...

Badou growled to himself mentally as he swerved to follow suit. The man had backed himself into a corner. Badou grinned broadly at the man, who stood with his back pressed against the wild, looping scrawl of a graffiti plastered wall--chest heaving and eyes wild. His arms held a plain black folder tightly to his chest.

"Yanno, I like the chase as much as the next guy, but I'm startin' to think yer leading me on," he said conversationally. "So I'll be taking what I came for now, suckaaa," he crowed.

"Fuck no!" the man spat, with surprisingly more vehemence than either of them expected. "You think I'm stupid or something? If I hand over this file to some snot-nosed little shit,I'm dead, got it?"

"Well," Badou began slowly after a beat, "maybe it won't be that bad," he wheedled.

"You are stupid. Look, kid. Why don't you put down the gun and go run home to your mommy and daddy or somethin', okay?  Get your sister to braid your girlyass hair or whatever."

Badou's smile went a little too wide, and his single green eye hardened to flint. His grip around the handgun that he leveled at the man steadied, and he gave his head a curt shake.

"Sorry, man. But I really need that file. S'my meal ticket. Nothing personal or anything," he added with a lazy shrug. "Just business."

The man's upper lip curled into a sneer then, and he did nothing to hide his scoff of contempt.

"What's a kid like you know about business? Just fuck off, okay? I told you. You're getting this file over my dead body."


It was perhaps not the wisest choice of words to utter to a man who was holding a gun on you, but to the man's credit, he believed Badou to only be full of false bravado.

"Well, if you had just given me the file instead of running away like a little cunt," Badou countered, "then we wouldn't be having this conversation about dead bodies."

The words left him with a machinegun like speed--startling out of him with a delicious sort of shock. It wasn't often that Badou swore--Dave had often scowled at him in disapproval with a curt 'cut it out, Badou' the few times he had slipped around him. He had even threatened to clean his mouth out with soap more than once. The fact that he swore so freely now was a tiny act of rebellion--a deep satisfaction in the knowledge that, were he still alive, Dave wouldn't approve.


The man grimaced. "Cute."

 He reached into his pocket then, and Badou spooked. Without thinking, his finger tightened around the trigger and pulled. But the aim was too low--a fact he didn't realize until a split second before impact, just as the bullet bore into the soft flesh of the man's stomach. Time seemed to slow, then, the both of them wearing a mask of identical shock.

~




The first time Badou Nails killed a man, he was violently sick.


The death was neither a clean nor slow one. The man had stumbled back against the wall with all the limp, jerky motion of a puppet's strings severed mid-motion. His eyes were wide and staring, and yet somehow impossibly, unnaturally blank. The white shirt underneath his jacket was wet with a crimson blossom that had spread rapidly at first, but had slowed, allowing the outermost edges of the stain to fade into a discoloration of brown. He was making pitiful noises caught between sobs and quiet moans. Now and then a morbidly fascinating noise, not unlike the suction of a backed up drain, would emit from his abdominal region.

Badou could only stare at the man with a look of equal parts shock and mounting horror. The man’s mouth worked, but no sound came out--leaving him to look like a gaping fish. After several agonizing minutes, the man finally went still. Badou felt marginally guilty for the sigh of relief that passed his lips. Swallowing his unease, he began to start forward, slowly and steadily making his way over to the man, as if half-afraid that he would spontaneously begin to move again. When he reached him at last, he drew in a deep breath before reaching down with one hand, fingers stretching out to claim the prize of the folder. The man’s eyes snapped open, and his head lolled on his shoulders lazily as he slowly turned his head to stare fixatedly at Badou. His mouth opened--and a stream of blood spilled out of it.

“Oh, shit! Fuck! Fuckfuckfuck!” Badou yelped, dancing backwards a few steps amidst the man’s garbled chokes and moist wheezing for breath. Without thinking, his hand holding the gun snapped up, and he aimed the barrel dead center of the man’s forehead before pulling the trigger once again. The man jerked once, let out a rattling breath, and was still. Grimacing, Badou stepped forward again, reaching once more for the folder. But his eyes lingered on the gaping red hole in the center of the man’s forehead that gaped like a yawning mouth, and as his fingers caught the edge of the folder, his eyes fell to the steaming hole in the man’s stomach.

He had just enough time to swing to the right before the contents of his stomach clawed their way up his throat. The stinging, bitter bile burned his throat, and his eye watered as his sides heaved, convulsing with both dry heaves and his gasps for breath. When  his stomach had successfully turned itself inside out, emptied of it’s contents, he stood up shakily, wiping his both with the back of his sleeve roughly. It was only then that his hand slipped into his pocket once more, this time to withdraw a cellphone. His hand shook as his fingers numbly slipped against the keys he dialed, until at last the dim shrill of a phone on the other line reached his ears. Mechanically, he brought the phone up to his ear.

“I got the file,” he croaked.





Heine shot another impatient glance to the station’s mounted clock--the agreed upon  transfer meeting place. Badou was late. The albino shifted restlessly, his eyes scanning the crowd without really seeing anyone in particular at all. The tardiness annoyed him. He had agreed to let Badou go alone only after countless assurances from the younger man that he could handle it on his own. And he had put his faith into him. It was a simple mention after all--not terribly complicated and difficult to botch. Yet the minutes had lagged on, and there was no sign of the bumbling teenager in sight. He was almost prepared to throw his hands up and leave for home in disgust--let the rookie handle things, then--when there was a faint, persistent buzz in his pants that made him jump slightly before he caught himself with a scowl.  Cellphones. He had no use for the bothersome devices, and liked them even less. But it was through Badou’s incessant whining that they would ‘need’ them to communicate with each other that he had grudgingly relented,. That didn’t mean, however, that he made any effort to display his disdain for the cellular devices.  He reached into his pocket then, removing the phone with a sharp grunt. His eyes scanned the Caller ID impassively for a heartbeat before he flipped it open.

“Yeah?” came the curt greeting, followed by “You’re late.”

He paused, listening to the reply on the other end and frowning.

“You--why the hell?” Silence. Heine sighed heavily.

“Fine. Stay put and don’t fucking touch anything. I’ll be there.”

Without waiting for reply, he hung up. As he moved forward, he approached a trash can, neatly throwing away the cellphone before shoving his hands deeply into his pockets.



When Heine found him, Badou was slumped against the far corner of the east wall--his legs spread apart and his knees up, almost as if making a frame of the corpse he seemed to be engaged in a staring contest with. His hands were dangling downward slightly, wrists resting on his knees--and they were stained a cracked and dried red. The heavy tread of Heine’s boots barely caused him to turn his head to look at him askance.

“The hell is wrong with you?”

“I just killed a man.”

His words were hollow and quiet, and as strained as the string of an instrument about to snap. Heine glanced over towards the opposite wall and took in the sight with an impassive shrug.

“I can see that.”

“I didn’t mean---I---he---I thought…”

Badou’s hands suddenly went to his hair, his fingers, still sticky with the crust of blood, running through his hair briefly before gripping it harshly, his knuckles standing out starkly white. And just as suddenly he let go, his face dropping into his hands, fingers curling over his eyes, his cheeks, heedless of the streaks they left in their wake as they cradled his face in their shivering comfort. His shoulders shook lightly as he inhaled---and then Heine heard them. The sobs.


For a moment, he only stared blankly at the boy, his head tilted in canine-like curiosity. His partner was crying, but he couldn’t understand why. Fundamentally, he understood the emotion behind the tears. As a child, the other children had wept much like Badou was doing now--because they were hungry, or in pain. Or terrified. Heine himself had teared up once or twice out of sheer frustration and rage. Those things he could understand. But this--he could smell the insecurities on this starved frame. The panic, and the sour scent of fear, and some quiet sort of rage directed inward.  He moved forward then, until he was in front of Badou.


“Hey,” he said lowly.

Badou glanced up, his eye red and watery.

“I just killed someone,” he repeated hoarsely in little more than a whisper.

Heine shrugged.

“And?”

For a moment Badou only stared at him in incredulity. His jaw dropped slightly, and his chin trembled.

“And so I killed an innocent man! I fuckin’--p-pulled the trigger, just like that.”

“He wasn’t innocent,” Heine interrupted curtly.

“What?”

“He willingly worked for these people. He knew what was on the line.”

“S-so that makes it okay?” Badou demanded, staring at Heine with a look torn between confusion and fury.

“Someone out there is missing a son. Or a brother. And it’s my fault. A-all my…”


“And if you hadn’t killed him, he would’ve killed you,” Heine cut in smoothly, his eyes flashing. “You reacted the fastest. It’s how we survive. Yes, you killed a man. It’s what we do.”

“Fuck you!” Badou suddenly yelled, his eye wild. His thin arms shoved hard at Heine’s chest, as blunt and angry in their movements as his words.

“It’s what you do.”

“Yes,” Heine agreed quietly, hesitantly moving to place a comforting hand on the boy’s arm. But Badou jerked violently away, teeth bared.

“Get the fuck away from me! I’m not like you!”


 As he twisted away from Heine, he spun in a wild arc, his fists balling tightly before uncoiling and striking hard and furiously at the wall behind himself. He punched the wall with such fury that the skin on his knuckles bruised and split. The truth of those words stuck Heine like a bucket of ice water tossed into his face. For several long minutes, he only studied Badou in silence, listening to the uneven hiccups and hitch of his breathing, the flushed face almost as a red a shade as his hair, and streaked with city grime and tear tracks alike. His eyes softened almost imperceptibly.

“You’re right,” he said stiffly. “We’re nothing alike at all.”


His hands flashed out suddenly, catching Badou’s and gripping them hard as he lifted them to his face. His lips parted then, and he slowly inserted a bloodsoaked finger into his mouth. His lips closed around the finger as his tongue trailed along the digit, mouth working in a quiet suck as he cleansed each finger--tongue sliding over and back and under. Badou jumped, yanking his hand free.

“W-what are you doing, you sick fuck? You sick…fuck…”

The tears were back now, in silence. Heine settled back on his heels, observing him quietly for a moment before just as quickly rocking forward, gripping the boy’s face in his hands and crushing their mouths together. For a moment, Badou struggled furiously against him, before he gradually relaxed. Only then did Heine let go, staring at him in silence.

“Does it get easier?”

Heine’s impassive look, and the manner in which he looked away, was answer enough.

“What am I supposed to do?” he croaked, suddenly pushing himself into Heine’s arms. Heine was startled for a moment as Badou’s head nestled against his chest, his thin arms circling around his back and waist. But after a moment, slowly, hesitantly, his own arms came up to circle the boy gingerly. He rocked him slowly, lips resting on his hair.

“You find a way to forget.”


There are days when Heine still looks for that little boy within the pale green haze of Badou’s eye. But the boy is a ghost. Badou has learned to forget.