The moments between frames

Rating: G
Pairing: Otcho/Kanna
Disclaimer: 20th Century Boys, its characters and the like are property of Naoki Urasawa.
Notes: Something I wanted to write since I read #13.

Some scenes get lost in the way and no one's there to catch them up and put them back in their place. They're lost, excepting for those who lived them, and if those forget no one will know. There's a lost scene after the moment she broke down, from her last crying breath to the first step Otcho takes to run away. In this scene they get closer between frames but it's not meant to be seen. She still has the trace of the few tears running down her cheeks but no one should see that, and there are many more that she'll hold back from now on. Two of them still dangle on her eyes as she steps closer and closer but he doesn't move. Closer and closer until they collide in an empty alley full of trashcans, smelling of smoke and tasting of ashes, a slow crash that brings them together in an embrace that becomes a clumsy set of movements, hers blinded by the tears that won't fall, his strained by having forgotten how it feels. The heat, the clothes, the awkward seconds when none of them move, just stand up waiting for a single moment when they can behave like people used to do. Kanna moves first to dry the tears on his raincoat, brushing her forehead against the rough fabric when some strands of hair tickle her nose, and then the seconds start flowing again and there's no awkwardness when Otcho takes her hair back and pulls her nearer.

Maybe she lets herself cry for an hour in this alley that smells of smoke and old raincoats before the time to save the world comes back again. Maybe he leans over and kisses her forehead before breaking their embrace and leaving, or the kiss gets to touch her lips for an instant so brief she thinks she has imagined it, because he's already leaving. There are a million seconds in the scenes between frames, but once they're lost you can never know what happened in there.