Fanfic: Mea Culpa
Title: Mea Culpa
Fandom: Gunslinger Girl
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Triela/Hilshire, Claes, Mario
Timeline: Post vol 10
Notes: I don't own Gunslinger Girl, and strangely enough, not the characters either. The Latin prayer is a confession of sins. The book Claes lends Hilshire is Sartre's 'Being and Nothingness'.
Her shotgun jumped in Triela's arms. As the gunman collapsed beneath the window, rays shone above his lolling head. Triela quickly looked back down the hall.
"Last one down, Hilshire-checking for the hostage."
"She's here; they ditched her on the second floor," Triela tensed at Hilshire's voice in her earpiece, "Someone already called an ambulance. You did good."
The old woman was slumped facing an open doorway, pawing at her chest as her leg bled out. Triela's glove gripped her shoulder.
"Stay with us! You're going to be alright."
"Confiteor Deo omnipotenti..." the smallest whisper, "Qui peccavi...ohhh....mea culpa, mea cupla, mea maxima culpa...orare pro me." Her murky eyes fixed on Triela's big shaking blues.
"You're really going to be okay..." The woman was shifted away from Triela, who stared after her smeared face, as they carried her out.
"I'm sorry, Signorina," A young Section 2 man, awkward with his SMG, "I thought you girls didn't feel..."
"I don't know if I do." Triela didn't turn her head, "I don't feel fear, or pity, at death-I don't know if I want to."
"You know right from wrong." Hilshire glared at the Section 2 man, "That's all that a pure soul needs."
"Pure soul-ugh, you've been reading trash again; I'll see you at the station." Triela strode off, flicking her collar over her burning cheeks.
-0-
Soldiers can't afford to believe in coincidence. There was a reason the SWA, established to prove God could be bettered, kept a chapel on its grounds, and a reason why Triela and her roommate were there.
"Do you want to go to heaven?" Claes looked up from her book, but didn't reply. "We should give it some thought, right?
"Angelica should be there; she tried so hard at her job." Triela's finger moved to the bottom of the roll of the deceased, "Suicide's a mortal sin, right? So Ange, who had as happy an end as a girl could get in this job, lives forever as a happy angel. Elsa suffered so much it broke her; then she gets tortured forever in some bottomless pit. Doesn't seem fair."
"Heaven and hell are probably part of this world. The idea makes people like Signor Jean quite easy to understand."
"Even Jean's a victim, but not like Hilshire is. He was pulled into this place, although every choice he made was right! I'm no judge, but he's the only pure soul there is. I'd kill, I'd torment children until they died, just so he'd never have to do such things again."
"If Hilshire allowed you to go to hell for his sake, where would he be?"
"Oh, Schmuck you. You realise if that's a dirty book, you're definitely going to hell?"
"Reading erotica forever, without hope of something more, sounds much like hell to me."
"Eeeh, was that a proposition? What a sinful woman." Triela looked narrowly at the altar, "That old lady was obviously kind, probably confessed every day. I can't imagine she'd done anything very wrong-but she died in a crossfire, begging God for forgiveness"
Claes sniffed, "'We make an idol of our fear, and call it God.'"
"Not us, obviously..."
"It's the script of The Seventh Seal. The knight isn't afraid of death, he's afraid of God not existing. Of being completely alone forever." A sudden shiver touched Triela's back.
"I understand. But if me and Hilshire are together anywhere...ugh, it's so corny, but that really would be-"
"I hear you yelled at Hilshire six times last week, once for getting blood on your best shirt."
"One more word and I'm punching you."
"In church?"
"Yeah. It comes naturally anywhere."
Triela pushed the church doors out into a star-filled evening,
"We're both idiots, then, with heaps of problems. But what's the use if we pray, and kowtow to God as well as the Agency? We're never going to change."
"See you in hell then." Claes dodged the thrown hymnbook, and crouched behind a pew to read it, until she was sure Triela had stopped waiting.
-0-
"Do you believe in God, Mario?" Triela sat on a bench, tapped her phone like an idle cat, "Yes, serious question."
"Right. Thought at first you were asking before you shot me.
"Basically, I'm a Roman Catholic ex-human trafficker. After all I've seen and done, I can't believe that God has anything to do with us."
"Why did you help to rescue me? I know you still don't believe you're forgiven."
"For the Family, I deafened myself to human life. I didn't know what a family was...but I never really changed, just carried on until I couldn't do it anymore. Whatever God has to say, I can't let myself stop hearing the girls that died."
"You said 'can't' again, Mario. Don't you want to believe there's a God who forgives?" The phone was silent, "And forgiveness wouldn't be worth a bean if he couldn't change you as well."
"What about you, girl? Do you want to change, and could you? Merda, I shouldn't have said-"
"Don't worry about anything, Mario. Thanks."
Triela had seen a light go on in a certain office. He would be alone in the circle of lamplight, back to the distant stars in the window. Writing and reading about her.
There were things she didn't want to talk about; but she would. She said goodnight to Mario, and marched through the agency.
-0-
"Triela? What are you about so late for-?"
"Do you hate God, Hilshire? Since you were put into this life."
"I chose this life, not God. I told you, I've never regretted it."
"So self-centred. What about the scum He lets live in the world? The terrorists...and child traffickers? Didn't...you save me from that cellar, and give me a new life and clean mind because you wanted to show God how to do his job?"
"The life we gave you..."
"I know, it's not perfect. But I'm thankful to you, (how could you imagine I wasn't?) and to Rachelle...and I'm sorry.
"I know, it's stupid to say it when you've forgiven me, I know it's stupider to be sorry for being me, and not a doctor or student or lawyer. But-but from the moment death came into the life you gave me, I've been hurting you, and if I could be someone that didn't hurt you, I would, and I'm sorry! And I don't want you to lose hope in the world and say crap like 'my social skills suck, this is the only life I could have', or else I'll have to save you right now-wha...?"
Triela's brain suddenly reengaged. She was leaning over Hilshire's desk, as its owner leaned back (perhaps not as far as he might), looking rather scared. Triela's lips were very close to Hilshire's; she suddenly felt rather scared herself.
"I think you don't believe you saved me." She suddenly whispered, "I'm going to prove to you that I'm truly saved."
"Then...it must've taken more than me." Hilshire breathed. Triela felt his dark eyes over her brow, and stepped back, straightening her skirt. "I'll see you for the stakeout assignment tomorrow. Nobody else." He added, glancing down to sort the papers Triela had displaced.
"It's a date. Shit, that was out of character, wasn't it...?"
"Not at all. You can do anything, believe anything-" Triela's hand paused on the doorknob, "-do any job. None of it would change who you are. Your soul, I guess...sorry, I got all that from a book your roommate lent me."
"I guessed; thanks anyway."
"She lent me a few actually. I can't imagine why."
Triela regarded the small pile of romance novels, smiled bravely, and set off to have another chat with Claes. She glanced from a window at the little chapel, with the man nailed up above the roof as if on an operating table. Her smile was grateful, embarrassed, and maybe a little expectant.