#amy : human verse.

[timeclipsed]

Tag dump! Mostly character tags, oops...

[galaxofmuses]

// I do need to make a design for Hero Verse Amara cuz she's still the same ol Amy, but maybe a bit unhinged from being forced into the hero role when she feels like she doesn't deserve it.

All she wants is to find Hunter. :')))

[badnikbreaker]

@dearlybeloves / riku & amy!

"Gotcha!!" Amy's never fought anybody — or anything? she's not entirely sure if the giant inky monster they'd battled together was a person of some kind or a weird badnik — like that before. It was nice to have help!

And, when the stranger's finishing blow had resulted in him flying, it's a good thing Amy was there! She's holding him the same way she's caught him, an easy princess carry, like he weighs nothing at all. "You okay? That was a close one!"

[generic-sonic-fan]

The post where I do vague cultural worldbuilding headcanons for Sonic characters??

Sonic and Knuckles are mountain man bros in the sense that they both grew up in the wild raised by animals. They dunk themselves in a river, call themselves clean, and then fistbump about it. They eat fruit right off bushes. Knuckles can find you a damn good tuber in a pinch and Sonic would be able to snatch you a worm if you really wanted it. Knuckles finds it difficult to pick up on mainstream cultural customs but Sonic's always found it easy now that he's older.

Tails and Amy, meanwhile, grew up in towns. These towns had a definite human influence, hence their possession of first and last names, but they still grew up in a Mobian in-group of sorts. They know proper fur/quill care, feel that it's gender non-conforming for a boy to wear clothes and a girl to go without them, and are adept at reading ear/tail gestures. Tails was never really one for any small-town slang but Amy still uses more rural phrasing even now that she lives in a larger city.

Rouge grew up in a large city, so she's more well-versed in cultures other than her own. She's adopted some human rituals because she thinks they're fun, like face masks and shaving some of her body fur. She loves exploring human cuisines because they're "exotic" to her while Mobian cuisine are comfort foods. She's fluent in several different kinds of slang along with the gestures/manners of the different cultures.

Shadow was raised by humans. His mannerisms are unmistakably human. From wearing human-sized shirts around the house, to having a taste for "human" comfort foods, to being completely unable to read ear/tail gestures in conversation, any Mobian is able to peg him as an outsider pretty quickly. While he's absolutely embraced proper quill care, Rouge had to first point out to him that he was doing it wrong- using human shampoo is not going to cut it, hun.

Omega is. . . weird. For the most part, he's predictably alien: what few social customs he's bothered to learn he has to have observed first. Rouge has been a helpful educator on the rare occasion he gives a shit, usually in regards to slang translation to add to his dictionary. He's almost more like Knuckles in the sense that he was isolated and now he's playing catchup. Sometimes, sometimes, though, the assumptions Omega makes will lean more towards human biases. Anyone who values their life knows not to ever point that out to him.

Metal Sonic reads like a robot imitating a human imitating a Mobian. Yes, he can imitate Sonic's gestures, but it's the movement in between that's uncanny. The physicality of his limbs. The weight of each step in his out-of-combat walk cycle. It screams "human". Most of his cultural knowledge, the little that he has, comes from observing Eggman's daily routine. But Eggman is just one human, and an isolated and eccentric one at that. Metal Sonic could recognize a refrigerator but not a washing machine, could recognize a plate and fork but not any other kitchen cookware. His knowledge is piecemeal. His imitations are incomplete. He was designed for combat, nothing more. His unconscious attempts to fill in the gaps are illogical, aren't they?

Silver is permanently locked into a culture called "survival mode". That's a joke, but only mostly. His behaviors more closely match that of someone growing up in extreme poverty. He can't stand to throw stuff away and he has a hypervigilance about danger that someone who grew up in a "bad neighborhood" would understand. Not to mention that any cultural values he has learned are a few hundred years out of date, so his guesses at any customs tend to be slightly off.

Blaze is from a different dimension, which basically reads as just a different culture than the one that's prominent where most of Sonic's friends reside! She actually gets a kick out of sharing her customs and comparing them to everyone else's. She's also from an extremely privileged walk of life, though, and it definitely shows no matter how much research she does to try and be less ignorant about how "normal" life works.

[yesimtrashforit]

Film quotes I love/that changed my life

Dead Poets Society (1989)

• John Keating: "We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, "O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless... of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?" Answer. That you are here - that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?"

• Neil Perry: "I was good. I was really good."

• John Keating: "There's a time for daring and there's a time for caution and a wise man understands which is called for."

Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022)

• CEO Waymond: "When I choose to see the good side of things, I'm not being naive. It is strategic and necessary. It's how I've learned to survive through everything."

• Alpha Waymond: "Every rejection, every disappointment has led you to this moment. Don't let anything distract you from it."

• Waymond: "The only thing I do know... is that we have to be kind. Please, be kind. Especially when we don't know what's going on."

• Jobu Tupaki: "I wasn't looking for you so I could kill you. I was just looking for someone who could see what I see, feel what I feel."

Little Women (2019)

• Jo March: "Women, they have minds, and they have souls, as well as just hearts. And they've got ambition, and they've got talent, as well as just beauty. I'm so sick of people saying that love is just all a woman is fit for. I'm so sick of it.

But I'm so lonely..."

• Amy March: "Well, I believe we have some power over who we love, it isn't something that just happens to a person."

Theodore 'Laurie' Laurence: "I think the poets might disagree."

Amy March: "Well, I'm not a poet, I'm just a woman. And as a woman I have no way to make money, not enough to earn a living and support my family. Even if I had my own money, which I don't, it would belong to my husband the minute we were married. If we had children they would belong to him, not me. They would be his property. So don't sit there and tell me that marriage isn't an economic proposition, because it is. It may not be for you but it most certainly is for me."

• Jo March: "If I were a girl in a book, this would all be so easy."

• Meg March: "Just because my dreams are different than yours doesn't mean they're unimportant."

The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)

• Charlie: "I don't know if I will have the time to write any more letters because I might be too busy trying to participate. So if this does end up being the last letter, I just want you to know that I was in a bad place before I started high school, and you helped me. Even if you didn't know what I was talking about or know someone who's gone through it, you made me not feel alone. Because I know there are people who say all these things don't happen. And there are people who forget what it's like to be 16 when they turn 17. I know these will all be stories someday. And our pictures will become old photographs. We'll all become somebody's mom or dad. But right now these moments are not stories. This is happening. I am here and I am looking at her. And she is so beautiful. I can see it. This one moment when you know you're not a sad story. You are alive, and you stand up and see the lights on the buildings and everything that makes you wonder. And you're listening to that song and that drive with the people you love most in this world. And in this moment I swear, we are infinite."

• Patrick: "You see things and you understand. You're a wallflower."

Donnie Darko (2001)

• Dr. Lilian Thurman: "Do you feel alone right now?"

Donnie: "Oh, I don't know. I mean, I'd like to believe I'm not, but I just... I've just never seen any proof, so I... I just don't debate it anymore, you know? It's like I could spend my whole life debating it over and over again, weighing the pros and cons. And in the end, I still wouldn't have any proof. So I just... I just don't debate it anymore. It's absurd."

Dr. Lilian Thurman: "The search for God is absurd?"

Donnie: "It is if everyone dies alone."

Dr. Lilian Thurman: "Does that scare you?"

Donnie: "I don't want to be alone."

• Donnie: "How's it feel to have a wacko for a son?"

Rose Darko: "It feels wonderful."

• Donnie to Cherita Chen: "One day everything will be better for you."

10 Things I Hate About You (1999)

• Kat: "You don't always have to be who they want you to be, you know?"

• Kat: "Why should I live up to other people's expectations instead of my own?"

The Holdovers (2023)

• Paul Hunham: "There's nothing new in human experience, Mr. Tully. Each generation thinks it invented debauchery or suffering or rebellion, but man's every impulse and appetite from the disgusting to the sublime is on display right here all around you. So, before you dismiss something as boring or irrelevant, remember, if you truly want to understand the present or yourself, you must begin in the past. You see, history is not simply the study of the past. It is an explanation of the present."

• Angus Tully: "He used to be fine. He was better than fine. He was great. He was my dad. Then about four years ago, he... started acting strange. Erratic, forgetful, saying all this weird shit. My mom took him to a bunch of doctors, and they put him on medication. But that just made it worse. He got more confused. Then he got angry. And then he got... physical. That was it. That was the last straw. They put him away. And she divorced him... without him even realizing it. That's why she wants a whole new life. And it's easy to just stash me away in boarding school. Like half of us are just stashed away there. And I get it. She never has to look at me. Because maybe when she looks at me, she... she sees him. Maybe she's right. I can't keep it together. I lie. I steal. I piss people off. I don't have any friends, real friends. I'll probably get kicked out of Barton too. And when I do, it'll be my own fault. Get sent to Fork Union and maybe to youknowwhere. And nobody will care. The funny thing is... I wanted to see him so bad this whole time. But I also didn't, you know? Because I'm afraid that's what's going to happen to me one day."

Paul Hunham: "You're not your father."

Angus Tully: "How do you know?"

Paul Hunham: "Because no one is his own father. I'm not my dad. No matter how hard he tried to beat that idea into me. I find the world a bitter and complicated place, and it seems to feel the same way about me. I think you and I have this in common. But don't get me wrong, you have your challenges. You're erratic and belligerant and gigantic pain in the balls, but you're not your father. You're your own man. Man, no. You're just a kid. You're just beginning. And you're smart. You've got time to turn things around. Yes, I know that Greeks had the idea that the steps you take to avoid your fate are the very steps that lead you to it, but that's just a literary conceit. In real life, your history does not have to dictate your destiny."

• Paul Hunham: "You know, Mr. Kountze, for most people, life is like a henhouse ladder: shitty and short. You were born lucky. Maybe someday, you entitled little degenerates will appreciate that. If you don't, I feel sorry for you and we will have failed to do our jobs."

Barbie (2023)

• Ruth: "Humans have only one ending. Ideas live for ever."

• Gloria: "It is literally impossible to be a woman. You are so beautiful and so smart, and it kills me that you don't think you're good enough. Like, we have to always be extraordinary, but somehow we're always doing it wrong. You have to be thin, but not too thin. And you can never say you want to be thin. You have to say you want to be healthy, but also you have to be thin. You have to have money, but you can't ask for money because that's crass. You have to be a boss, but you can't be mean. You have to lead, but you can't squash other people's ideas. You're supposed to love being a mother but don't talk about your kids all the damn time. You have to be a career woman, but also always be looking out for other people. You have to answer for men's bad behavior, which is insane, but if you point that out, you're accused of complaining. You're supposed to stay pretty for men, but not so pretty that you tempt them too much or that you threaten other women because you're supposed to be a part of the sisterhood. But always stand out and always be grateful. But never forget that the system is rigged. So find a way to acknowledge that but also always be grateful. You have to never get old, never be rude, never show off, never be selfish, never fall down, never fail, never show fear, never get out of line. It's too hard! It's too contradictory and nobody gives you a medal or says thank you! And it turns out in fact that not only are you doing everything wrong, but also everything is your fault. I'm just so tired of watching myself and every single other woman tie herself into knots so that people will like us. And if all of that is also true for a doll just representing a woman, then I don't even know."

• Ruth: "We mothers stand still so our daughters can look back and see how far they've come."

• Barbie: "I want to be a part of the people that make meaning. Not the thing that's made. I want to do the imagining. I don't wanna be the idea."

• Ken: "We were only fighting because we didn't know who we were."

• Sasha: "You have to try. Even if... Even if you can't make it perfect, you can make it better."

Her (2013)

• Theodore: "Sometimes I think I have felt everything I'm ever gonna feel. And from here on out, I'm not gonna feel anything new. Just lesser versions of what I've already felt."

• Samantha: "The past is just a story we tell ourselves."

• Amy: "We are only here briefly, and in this moment I want to allow myself joy. So fuck it."

I Saw The TV Glow (2024)

• Maddy: "Time wasn't right. It was moving too fast. And then I was 19. And then I was 20. I felt like one of those dolls asleep in the supermarket. Stuffed. And then I was 21. Like chapters skipped over on a DVD. I told myself, This isn't normal. This isn't normal. This isn't how life is supposed to feel. If you don't think about it, it can't hurt you. I found our hearts and they were still beating. There is still time."

[zuppizup]

WIP Ask Game:

Rules: make a new post with the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet or tell them something about it! and then tag as many people as you have WIPs.

Thanks for the tag, @a-very-sparkly-nerd and @lunanightriderofthecove !

Holy crap, em, I have a lot of WIPS, so I’ll just put down the ones I’m actively working on/thinking about.

Obligatory, Zoom-mates and Purgatory, on-going WIPs. Both at the tail end of completion though. I actually did open the final chapter of Zoom-mates and work on it this week an everything. (This one in particular is killing me because I commissioned Numpty to do some art for the final chapter and it is so fricking gorgeous and I want to share it soooo bad!!!)

Back in Time: Sequel to my timetravel/multiverse fic Out of Time. Rayla and Callum have been living happily in the new peaceful future, but all that become threatened when they hear of omens from Xadia.

I’ve also begun work on a follow up to this WIP, because I’m like that and they deserve happiness.

A Dark Alternative: A canon-verse AU, where the splitting of the continent did not happen. Humans and elves live along side each other, but not exactly together. Once upon a time, Callum had a little elf friend called Rayla, but they lost touch when he and his mother moved to the capital. Now, years later, he runs into a familiar face.

In absentia: Callum is possessed by Aaravos but Rayla refuses to give up hope of recovering him. Unfortunately, that’s only the beginning of her problems. (Specifically a pregnant Rayllum spite fic, because I’m like that)

End of Nowhere: Six years after the events of Road to Nowhere and the end of his working holiday in Australia, Callum is living a somewhat normal, if boring, life. That’s all thrown into chaos when he runs into his ex, Rayla.

Moustache Smut Fic (part of The High Mage’s Study): There really isn’t much detail to go into here. Spite, but of a different variety 😆

Tagging @blutopaz15 @mistenflute (I know you two want to gush!) @amys-books27 @jedidragonwarriorqueen @thatartiststudios999 @arcadianmoonshadowjedi @konmaao3 @herwrittenuniverse and whoever wants to join in!

[pauking5]

Addicting Taste Chapter 10

Pairing: Enishi Yukishiro x female reader oc

Genre: strangers to lovers, mutual pining, found love, fluff, spice, a lot of teasing, angst

Word count: 45.1k

TW: panic attack, mentions of anxiety, unhinged violence, some gore, mentions of heights, a lot of cursing

A/N: I know this one was long overdue but she's here for you in all her glory and pain. She's been a constant work in progress for the past five months and it's all going downhill from now, so buckle up. I hope it's good and not a bore to go through considering she's long as hell but I thought you deserved the little extra treat for waiting so long. Lastly, don't hate me but this one's loaded emotionally. I had a few cries but more from editing it so many times that my eyes gave out. Chapter 11 is already in the works but she's gonna take a while. Not too long though *wink*. Hope you missed these three wimps as much as I have. Their team dynamic means the world to me. Sidenote: we are heading slowly to the rurouni kenshin the final verse soooon ;) Can't wait for you to read all that's coming. So, enjoy lovelies. Please send some sign of life through after you read so I know I didn't go off the fucking rails yet. Kisses and prayers :')

Playlist: espresso - sabrina carpenter, favorite - isabel larosa, queen - loren gray, lilili yabbay - seventeen, the boy is mine - ariana grande, training season - dua lipa, been like this - doja cat, tears in the club - fka twigs, i think i'm in love - kat dahlia, wicked game - ursine vulpine ft annaca, broken - seether ft amy lee, don't deserve you - plumb, words - skylar grey, these walls - dua lipa, hearts - jessie ware, lonely together - sofia karlberg, borderline - tove lo, theory of light - eternal eclipse, 5sos - teeth, within temptation - wireless, rescue my heart - liz longley, and so it begins - klergy

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Asshole. Idiot. Rash, unpredictable, self-absorbed jerk.

You punched your pillow hard with every new word popping into your head that described the way Enishi acted moments ago at the breakfast table. There were a whole lot of insults and even more curse words running less and less wonderful with the growing upscale of your anger at the gray-haired man, but several questions popped in over them.

What the fuck happened to him?

I know he's a Gemini and two-faced behaviour is hard to hold back from, especially when you're being an unreasonable dick unable to interact with people. But this bipolar back and forth is too much, even for him. He's like a fucking riddle, so hard to decipher, figure out and understand, especially when all he does is close himself in like that, pushing people away like they're the plague.

He's jealous of something? Someone? Then just say that. Just say anything about your feelings so that I don't have to keep being the one assuming and wondering where you stand. Human beings like communication a lot, maybe he should try it sometimes. Sometimes soon before I put my foot through his face and carve some really nice indents under that jaw-

Jerk. Handsome, good-looking, impetuous little shit.

"UGH I WANT TO PUNCH HIM SO BAD!" you screamed into your pillow for the tenth time this morning. Koru just looked at you like you've grown a second head, choosing to retreat away to the safety of the other side of the bed.

"Damn, so you really are down bad for him."

Your head snapped to your door seeing the blonde leaning on the door frame, arms crossed over his chest and amusement ever-present on his face. He was enjoying your misery and these fucking pre-school games a little too much for his wellbeing. You spared him a look that you weren't in the mood for teasing then went back to digging a hole in your pillow, kinda hoping it would turn into a real one if you hit it harder from a different angle.

He walked over to your bed and sat on the edge just as you plunged your head deeper with a fresh wave of embarrassment hitting you like a truck.

"Is it that obvious?" your voice came out muffled.

At first, he chuckled lowly to himself at your conflicted appearance. Taking another look at you, he decided that he could push your buttons just a little more. "Want me to lie to you?"

Lifting your head briefly, you narrowed your eyes at him ready to smack him to the end of the planet in the hopes he would fall off into a black hole or something. But then you thought about it again and nodded your head, hoping he would come with some fresh new insight. Though you regretted it as soon as he opened his mouth.

"It's not obvious at all. Not like you're drooling over him all the time, chasing looks at him when he's not looking and sizing him up with your eyes for some fashion plans to revamp his really outdated and boring style," he counted on his fingers hitting every single point like he put his hand in your head pulling out your very own thoughts.

Not sure what you were expecting but it wasn't... this. If the hills weren't so far away, you would've happily ran up the slopes to the highest peak and walked off straight into the abyss of the valleys below by now, hopefully eating some grass on the way and dying. All because it really was that obvious to everyone else but not to him. That says a lot considering he's the one that goes around analyzing people and noticing stuff like a detector before you even know what goes on.

"Kill me now," you whined, crashing back into the pillow with a fake sob that sounded more like a mewl that even the feline next to you wouldn't be able to reproduce.

"Look, what he said back there was rash and a teeny tiny bit stupid," he started with a finger up in the air, but once you shot him a murderous look he recalculated his words and dropped it back down. "Okay, maybe extremely stupid. But give him the benefit of the doubt."

"Benefit of the doubt?" you sat up on the bed, appalled at what you were hearing. "You slept together in the same bed for one night and now you're suddenly not in a deathly competition to win my heart or something like that anymore?"

"Haha, I have no idea what you're talking about," he scratched the back of his neck, throwing his eyes around the room as if it wasn't identical to his own.

"I may be oblivious most of the time but I can read bullshit when I see it," you said sharp and clear. The authority made his eyes dart back to you instantly, his adam's apple bobbing nervously in his throat before he sighed loudly, shoulders dropping in defeat.

"Before you rip my head off," he reached out and put Koru between you as leverage so you wouldn't lash out on him, "just know he agreed to it too. He seemed pretty confident he could just kick me out of here if he won you over."

Motherfucker.

Was that all I was to him? Something to own? Just another sword to be displayed like a trophy in his office?

Having your suspicions confirmed that this shit was actually happening, with extra details too, was definitely not on your bingo card. He went too far. Actually, too far wasn't even fully describing how dumb this game he took part in was. You expected some shit like this from Cho because the cogs in his brain didn't always turn at a normal speed or to an intellectual degree higher than dolphins. No offense to dolphins, I adore them. But you did not expect this at all from him. Not after everything you've already been through. After opening up and being real with each other for him to throw it all on a fucking bet.

If this was his way of showing interest in you, he was doing it all wrong and backwards. Instead of winning you over, this would make him lose you. Completely.

Then it hit you. Your revenge plan could use a few adjustments. It was time you became this man's headache, raging when he least expected it, like an ever present reminder not to fuck with the female species.

Make that two men actually.

You turned to the blonde with a grin on your face stretching wider and much more creepier than your usual smile, telling him you were up to no good. And when you were up to no good, chaos ensued faster than a flint could light a fire.

It was time to play dirty. It was time to take over possessive misogyny with some pure, raw and unleashed female rage, plus some fun mind games because apparently these two fuckers loved them more than anything in the world. Unfortunately for him, but happily for you, the blonde sitting on your bed looking rather confused at your sudden change in behaviour will be the first to get a taste of it.

"What if you won me over?" you asked, physically batting your eyes at him, mentally rubbing your hands like a fly plotting to raise hell.

All he did was blink repeatedly, trying to process that those words actually left your mouth willingly. He must have thought someone put a hex on you or you were sick since he placed his hand on your forehead before you slapped it off, nearly shoving him off the bed.

"Say what again?" he asked cluelessly, tilting his head to the side.

I will repeat myself solely for the sake of my own sanity.

"Exactly what you heard," you clapped your hands together, meaning business. His eyes darted to your enclosed hands, narrowing in suspiciously as he listened in more attentively. "What if we make it seem as though you did win me over?"

"To make him jealous?" he pondered your words for a moment as you nodded eagerly. Seems like he wasn't that hopeless after all.

The way your eyes sparkled up at him told him two things - you really wanted to make mophead jealous for reasons he was able to see clearly on your face like the light of day, and the fact that he could use this to his advantage. Somewhere in this temporary play pretend, he could actually win you over and make you forget about him. It was a win-win situation either way. He was just surprised that you had it in you to join the game like that.

He took a while to gather his thoughts rendering you a little uneasy. Something told you that your motives weren't solid enough for him to accept the proposal. That he needed something more to cement it. So you threw in another side to the deal. One that was sure to get him going before you reeled back on your own plan.

"Help me," you took his hand in yours, stroking the back of it softly to appeal to his ego, "and I will grant you a wish."

"Can I wish for anything-"

"If it's something dirty-minded, freaky or horribly disturbing, your balls," you pointed at the crack of his pants, trailing your eyes up to meet his, "will be Koru's to play with."

Gulping and wide-eyed at your words, he looked down at the ball of black fur nuzzling his thigh lovingly then turned back to you, seeing absolutely no difference between your auras. Turns out adorable could also be lethal if touched wrong.

"Deal," he lifted a hand to you, tilting his head to the side with his usual goofy smile back on his face.

"Good," you shook hands, sealing the deal with your pinkies and a stamp. Just like old times.

His hand lingered on yours a bit more, long pinky and bigger thumb gripping your smaller ones gently, a lot more gentler than before. The rough boy he used to be, making empty promises he couldn't keep and acting like the world owed him everything was still there, but the mature man, a lot more sure of himself going after what he wanted was the one holding your hand now smiling warmly back at you. He did change.

Your smile slowly grew dim and shy as his golden eyes peered back at you, light and playful, enveloping you in his gaze, secretly swapping your fingers for your whole hand, sitting in a comforting hold in his bigger one. You realized he was right that night he pulled you on top of him, pressing your hand against his heart and yours, both beating almost in sync. He was still someone who took up space in your heart. Maybe not a whole half of it, but a part that was big enough to make you look at him too, as a man.

You were looking now and it would be one of the biggest lies you've ever told yourself to say that it didn't send your heart racing. There were unspoken feelings swarming in your chest even after all these years, not quite as strong but it was enough that they came back to life now.

Shaking yourself out of it, your hand fell from his large one back into the safety of your lap. Koru shimmied her way in between you, looking for head rubs and you obliged with a smile, focusing on her. Cho's hands joined in your peripheral vision, petting down the fur on her back. The feline started purring loudly, letting you know she was enjoying the double attention a bunch as you held back a chuckle.

Blondie wasn't off the hook yet. Your plan was to make both of them lose their heads and this was just one small part of it. In trying to pretend with Cho you would get Enishi jealous enough to hopefully talk to you about why he was acting like the douchebag of the century and maybe about his feelings towards you. He reacted more than he spoke, so this was your only shot at luring him out enough for him to act on it.

You would also take the blonde where he least expects it to make up for the constant teasing, though you were still considering if you were swerving towards gentle or wicked payback with him. Not so sure yet, but it was all in due time.

Either way, it was a win situation for you and a loss for them for behaving like animals in heat, treating you like a mere prize to be possessed.

They say you can see the worst in someone if you push them to the edge of the cliff. That's exactly what you were planning to do to them. Slow, hard and tense. Just the way they liked it.

You want to play power games, boys?

I will bring the fucking revolution to you.

Just you wait.

Twenty-four hours.

That's all you gave them to prepare for what they would never see coming.

You let them simmer, avoiding all contact with them. No cooking, no training and no sight of you around for the rest of the previous day. They went to each their own as you spent the day plotting your retaliation bit by bit, second by second, breath by breath.

They were on your land now, weaponless, rash and with a strong ballsy will to conquer it. Too bad they won't even reach the gates of your palace before you opened fire this time. Initiating phase one.

Getting out of bed, you headed for the heap of clothes stashed in your wardrobe and looked through it, smiling devilishly as you pulled out your secret weapon - a red and black corset mix of lace and satin mimicking a tank top. The red lace ran strident crimson against the layered black satin lines stitched overtop on the sides, from the hem all the way to the straps, tight as hell but hot on your upper body. A little fun project you let your hands wander over from scraps and basics you grabbed during your visit at the textile market.

Pairing it with black leather pants and a pair of flat combat boots, you went to the full-body mirror and took a good look. The outfit hugged your curves better than anything you've ever worn before, putting on display everything you wanted. Your hair hung in a luscious ponytail, high enough to whirl it once and catch someone around the throat with it. Perfect.

Time to get the wild hunt running.

Heading to the kitchen, your strides echoed in the hallway more sure of yourself than you've ever been. You grabbed a quick breakfast and sauntered outside with your humble companion, the jian sword with a red tassel. She's been sleeping in your room more than hanging back in its place on the walls in Enishi's office since you started bonding after she smacked your wrists multiple times. She left your skin painfully bruised but she gave you good lessons to learn from.

Taking to the spot in the middle of the garden, you sat in the patch warmed by the sun that still shone bright this late in the winter, just taking the light in and relaxing every knot in your shoulders. This is so nice. You held your palm out to it soaking the warmth in with closed eyes. Then you started training, waiting for the prey to come to you.

It wasn't long until the one of the felines caught your scent, coming to circle the perimeter in search of you.

The blonde hyena approached first, lurking by the kitchen window for a cup of coffee. Still in a slumber state, he paid no attention to the rest of the world or to you training outside, just a glance away, and went about his morning routine. He brewed his coffee the way he liked it, black with a lot of sugar in it and the tiniest drop of milk and stirred it well, taking in the smell of the steamed roasted beans that woke him a little. He lifted it to his lips just as he turned around to the kitchen window, coffee cup stilling mid-air before he even took a sip.

There you were - clad in red and black, hair swinging in sync with the red tassel on your sword, practicing what looked like advanced sword techniques. Leaning back on the marble island behind him, he took a sip of his coffee simply watching you, lips sobering up into a grin.

You moved about with the grace of a deadly cobra, a total contrast to the quiet small snake you used to be. A sense of pride filled him as he recalled how you used to doubt your every step, calculating them over and over again every mission you went on. Now, you stepped with confidence knowing exactly where your strengths laid, training with a weapon that was foreign to you entirely but knowing exactly where you wanted your blade to hit and how you wanted it to hurt. The lost, confused girl that tingled his senses years ago, was now a strong woman his heart longed for even harder.

His princess. It was part of the reason he called you that - the fact that you were still so committed to do good by vengeance in hopes it would help someone live in peace if you got rid of some of the scums crawling the earth like kings. And to tease you. Although, there was one more reason for it and one day, he'd tell you why but it wasn't time yet. Soon enough.

Before he knew it, he was on his way to the office, checking to see it was empty of a certain silver fox he despised with every single bone in his body, before he went in and grabbed the twin katanas he spotted a few nights ago. He rolled them around to get a feel of their weight. They weren't his twin katanas that got broken in a fight long ago, these ones much heavier and dull, but they would do for now.

You were taking a break on the ground, stretching your limbs around to release some tension when the blonde joined you. Confused at why he was carrying a pair of katanas with him and the fact that he wore preppy clothes, much more appropriate for training than waltzing around, his hair tied up in a small up-do peeking over his head like a pineapple, you threw him a look.

"Let's train together," he simply said, throwing you that cheeky smile of his.

One bites the bait.

Without a word, you got up dusting off the dirt and grass from your pants and got in position. He followed, twirling around the swords to show off at which you rolled your eyes, then put his right arm forward and his left backwards and you grinned, recognizing his point of combat hasn't changed - he used one sword for attacking and the other for defending, both probably stolen from Enishi's stash.

"Nice toys you got there," you nodded at the swords.

"Why thank you! I got them from your boyfriend."

"He's not my boyfriend," you gritted out, circling him around the sunlit path.

He lifted the sword in his right hand to eye level, tracing the blade down with the pads of his fingers as if to intimidate you or something. "You know, he does seem to act like that most of the time."

"What?" you stilled, lowering your sword.

What the fuck is he on about?

Pleased that his remark made you drop your guard, he turned his blade to catch a glint of the sun that temporarily blinded you before he charged towards you opening the sparring session with his right katana coming for a slash across. Cunty move. You defended with your jian, catching the rough blade with the edge of your own, pushing the attack back before he could send the other one towards you.

He stumbled behind to catch his footing and you couldn't help a small smile from dancing on your lips. He seemed to forget those weren't his katanas, way too unbalanced since they haven't been used probably ever for anything other than décor on Enishi's walls. Most of them were blunt, stolen or brand new, but none of them saw the actual battle beside his and your jian. They were different from his own by a lot of degrees, blades way too wide turning the weight heavier. As a result, he grappled with keeping them balanced as they constantly fell out of his grip. But being the renowned sword thief that he is, he solved that problem rather quickly and accommodated to them.

Giving them another swirl, his whole body turned in a spin that lifted the leaves off the ground. Then he came at you again more sure of himself this time to send a faster diagonal slash to your side that you barely avoided. You jumped backwards just as the other katana came down to strike you instead colliding harshly with your sword, pushing against it as he tried to shove you off your feet but you stood your ground.

"Why are you holding back, princess?" he sneered, teasing you without an ounce of strain in his voice. His constant pleasure pushed you to the brink of impatience.

"I don't want to skewer you just yet, blondie," you replied, flashing him a cocky smile before you rolled forwards in a tumble, letting his sword fall into the grass, getting stuck in a small muddy patch.

Before he was fully facing you, you threw your double-edged blade at him with precision. The speed of your attack had him throw both his katanas up in defense at every hit you delivered, diverting them left and right. Where you hit your blade high into his right, you kicked the other low with your foot, keeping the same drill going as you shoved him all the way into the open tree line at the back of the garden.

Another push from you had his back pressed against an old oak tree. He barely slid out of your range of attack just before your blade could meet his neck, getting stuck in the raunchy tree bark. While you struggled with getting it out, he disappeared and hid among the dense tree line, making himself completely invisible to you.

Plucking your sword out, you advanced through the half-barren path, dry leaves crunching under the pressure of your boots. You came to a small clearing checking for any spots he could be taking cover in then stopped. You'll find him when he wants to be found. Closing your eyes, you focused all your senses into action, listening for any noise that could pinpoint his location. You knew he was watching you from somewhere waiting for you to give up your searching and head back, so all you had to do was sit there playing dumb to lure him out.

A loud icy gust of wind blew in, rustling up the branches and a neatly stacked pile of leaves in a corner to your left. Disregarding it, you turned to the opposite side knowing that was his cue to charge at you. You moved to the left just as a sharp whoosh echoed by the tip of your ear, throwing your sword up to meet his attack blade. He brought down his other one swiftly sending you into a tree. You grunted as your back crashed with the bark, praying the rough edges didn't pull the stitch work on your top. One thread loose and I will end him in the name of fashion.

He advanced to you again looking to throw you off your feet with a swing, moves threading to get an opening somewhere that you weren't guarding well. If he thought you would go down easy, he sure was as dumb as a rock. You ducked out of the way, running towards one of the sturdier-looking trees and using the momentum from the dash, you jumped onto the bark pushing with the sole of your foot at the same time you swung your sword overhead, coming down onto him from above. A little trick stolen from Enishi. Since your aerial needed more work he caught your strike with both katanas tossing you to the side, back on the patch of open grass in the garden. You landed on the pad of your knee, sword balanced behind you to keep you from toppling over.

Aerial class with Enishi is officially suspended. He's lucky I don't pay for that. He'd have amazing reviews for sure.

"Someone's feisty today," he sung walking over to you, one katana swung over his shoulder nonchalantly like he didn't just haul you over like ten meters over.

"You haven't seen me feisty yet," you retorted, up and heading for his throat.

This time, you worked with a combination of slashes, using your smaller form and improved stamina to throw him off balance and prove a point. It worked, seen as he kept stumbling over his steps unable to keep up with you, but only for a while.

You were faster than him, much faster than he would've liked to admit without letting it affect his own pride. But he had the extra experience on the field. When your blade went to dig into his side, he pushed it away almost instantly, like he expected it, whirling around you. Your sword was half-way lifted up, ready to turn around and search for him, when a katana flew in your line of sight under your chin stopping just a few inches short of slicing your neck, the other following suit around your waist.

"Gotcha, princess," he whispered in your ear, stepping closer behind you.

He had you completely caged in his hold. The blades didn't sit too close to do any damage, but the fact that he pressed to you firmly from behind was enough to make your insides twist with flurries of all kind.

You could sense his amused smirk from the way his breaths fanned the back of your neck, which was already burning hot with effort, hair on your nape raising at the cool air and his breath. He was ready to throw you another remark when you caught him by surprise.

"Teach me," you breathed out, trying to steady your racing heart from giving anything away. "Teach me how to fight with two swords."

He chuckled under his breath, entertained by the idea. One of the blades lowered down, letting your middle free but your feet stayed locked in place, waiting for him to move the other away. Instead of that he took one more step taking him even closer to you and tilted your chin upwards with the hilt of one of the katanas. You shuddered at the sudden contact with the cold edge of the blade, squeezing your eyes shut to control the erratic beating of your heart.

"I can show you a few tricks," he spoke next to your ear low and deeper than his tone sounded on the usual, sending weird chills down your spine, then moved away from you just as a sigh of relief escaped you.

You put your sword down in the grass as he motioned for you to come closer to him. He placed the heavier katana in your right hand, knowing that was your main combat hand, and the slightly leaner one in your left. You tested them in a few swings, finding it difficult to push them forwards in a slash without dropping them. Those things are heavyweights. How the hell did he even spar with these? His twin katanas were a lot more lighter on hold than these.

Stepping behind you, he pulled your arms upwards horizontally so they sat parallel to each other, sliding his hands over your inner biceps all the way to your forearms. His warm fingers padded over your skin with electricity sparks in his dive down to lock his palms on your wrists, covering them completely. If he wanted to he could just snap them broken with one move.

Since he was taller and towered over you, you were pressed flush against his torso, the top of your head reaching just below his jaw. You could headbutt him and crack his jaw if you wanted to.

He moved you around in the basic one-sword positions to accommodate the feel of the blades in your hand. "You need to find balance and patience with them."

Lifting your leading arm for a practice slash to the side, you focused on the way he led the blade from the top all the way to the ground in all but one breath, followed by your rear with force pressing on your wrist as if you defended an incoming enemy blow, bending your arm diagonally with his own, moving as one.

His forearms stretched over yours entirely to better control the practice swings since you struggled to hold them by yourself, not used to their exertion on your muscles. You watched the ramifications of muscles on his arm move together in sync, willing yourself to focus on the blade in your hand rather than the way he enveloped your whole form.

"Treat them like they're your own hand extensions," he instructed, laying both of them over each other in a front cross for defense. The motion brought your bodies closer, your back almost fully in his chest.

Your head turned to the side to find his own already angled towards you, light brown eyes searching yours for something. He was so close, holding you in an embrace that felt dangerous but safe, awfully resembling those ivory statues of fallen angels around cemeteries that curled their wings inwards as if to protect something. You were aware that being this close to him was dancing on delicate grounds, both for yourself and for him. It wasn't good. Whatever this was it couldn't happen, thundered your mind. Or it could, argued your heart. I'm not doing that charade ever again, a thought that echoed just how torn you were. You loved that charade, yelled back a younger version of you that would pray at the moon for him to look at you like this.

Avoiding his eyes took a lot of willpower, but you managed to turn your head away from him looking for a distraction. Anything that could break you out of the trance he put you under again that spurred something way too fervent and filthy in your belly, before you said or did something stupid that you would regret.

Perusing the juniper grass around the garden, you let your eyes run free to any place that looked more interesting as if you haven't been in that garden a thousand times before. They went all the way to the outdoor table preoccupied with the sheet of material thrown over to protect it from rain when movement caught your eye in the alabaster kitchen windows. In a fraction of a second, your eyes flew there and stayed fixed inside, heart getting stuck in your throat.

He was there.

Watching. Steeling in the silence of the kitchen with his arms crossed over his broad chest, looking right at you. Not at the man behind you or the way he was holding you so dangerously close or the way he breathed the same air as you. At you.

He was yards away. Not in front of you or next to you. Yet the intensity of his stare alone made you draw in a broken breath, heart pounding unsteady in your chest with every beat that passed with him still sitting there, unmoving, gaze unwavering from you in the slightest. Goosebumps littered your whole skin, rushing from your nape down to your lower spine in ardent shudders, forgetting all about the man behind you whose arms still held yours in a firm grip.

A clenched jaw. For a good moment that was the only reaction you got from him. Then he did something completely odd - he smirked at you. A knowing, full, almost pleased corner of his lips tilting up in a promise of mischief and disaster kind of smirk. Of all possible reactions you expected, a fucking smirk like that one was not it.

You blinked once and just like that he was gone, probably aware of just what that insufferable smirk left in its wake because it made something pulse deep down inside of you, so primal and fiery like it sat dormant for an entire lifetime, waiting to set alight and rage only for him. Something that came alive every time those dark eyes were on you. A feeling that you loved and hated with your entire being.

Both of them took the bait, I guess.

But what the fuck was that?

The cold evening rolled around sooner than you expected it to, without any other contact with the male species, surprisingly. You went to the kitchen, cooking up some dinner for yourself and Koru, letting your thoughts whirl with the ingredients you stirred mindlessly in the pot.

You couldn't take your mind off the way your taunts were received today. For one, Cho reacted exactly the way you wanted him to, running to your side absolutely ecstatic to join you in training. Getting so caught up in practicing sword wielding with him however, was a small unplanned detail that made your heart flutter. It wasn't part of the plan but then again, does anything under the roof of this house ever go according to plan?

On that note, Enishi's reaction was something you were unprepared for at all. Lurking in the shadows like a ghost stalking his victims, he just threw you that smirk as if he knew what your intentions were, where your plan was going. It gave you the eebie-jeebies and not in a good way. You stared at your reflection in the kitchen window, thinking so intently about how he stood in the same place as you that his stare flashed in front of you again like it was happening right now, making shivers cross your body on all sides. You dropped the spoon in your hand with a loud clatter that brought you back from your eerie vision, mumbling curses as you scrambled to get it out of the pot before it sank completely. You got it out with another spoon throwing it in the sink before the heat singed your fingers, then leaned your hands on the counter hanging your head to breathe a sigh of relief.

Jesus Christ, this house seriously needs an exorcism. I need to ask Wu for a frankincense delivery because it's getting too freaky lately.

The door to the kitchen opened and closed behind you, signaling that you had company. Turning around you were met with the blonde, a small smile of content on his face as he approached sheepishly and sat near the stove, a few inches away from you. He loomed over the pot, taking a good whiff of what you were cooking with his eyes closed - sausage and potato stew. His favourite.

Now this was by no means phase two of the plan. You didn't mean for it to happen, but it was the only edible thing you could whisk up with what little you found around the kitchen. A shopping spree into the village was way overdue, since apparently it's only your stomach who is hungry 24/7 on rotation. Definitely not the thirty bulky men lurking around the mansion waiting for food to magically drop out of the sky.

You had a hunch he would catch onto the smell and come running anyway. His eating schedule was as bad as Enishi's - they were either skipping meals to train or eating three meals at once like it was an olympic sport. There was literally no in between. Blondie however has been asking you to cook stuff for him at random times of the day lately, catching a liking to your cooking. Plus, you bonded a lot over food when you first met so it was no surprise he was inhaling the steam from the stew like it was opium smoke or something.

"Can I have a taste?" he asked in a tone so soft you almost cooed.

"It's not done yet," you replied pushing him away from the stove before he plunged his head in, stirring the pot some more.

You caught sight of the way he licked his lips, absolutely bewitched by the simmering food and you gave in. Who were you to deny a hungry tummy? Food tasted better before it was put on a plate anyway.

Leaning behind to get a spoon from the cutlery drawer, you stirred the pot with it and gathered a good spoonful from the side with some of the stew ingredients that looked cooked and some sauce. You blew on it, carefully lifting the still steaming spoon to his mouth with a hand under it in case it spilled over. He dove in and slurped the contents way too fast. This fucking idiot.

"MY TONGUE," he screeched, flailing about like a child, fanning his tongue with his hand as if that helped anything.

I refuse to believe he is the famed Sword Hunter. He belongs in kindergarten.

Some of the leftover sauce dripped down the side of his lips and before you could help yourself, your hand lifted to them, thumb swiping over the plump pink mounds from one corner to the other, tracing their outline as you gathered all the sauce on your finger. Mindlessly, you brought it back with the intent to reach your lips when your thumb was redirected back to his own lips.

You froze in his hold yet again, watching wide-eyed as his tongue slipped out to meticulously lick your thumb clean from bottom to top on each and every side, all while holding your eyes hostage to his honey orbs. Taking an empty gulp of air, you tried to keep your face composed, devoid of any sign that the scene before you that looked like a hallucination from the depths of your mind, affected you in any way. Because it did. You pressed your knees to keep it together, willing your heart to still in your chest and the throb between your legs to chill. This was not the time to get horny. Get your ovaries together, Miyu. You're better than this.

The kitchen door opened again with a crick, prompting you to snatch your hand away from the blonde's hold, stepping away to put some space between you. The feel of his soft lips trailing up and down your finger with his tongue lingered, only making it all worse. Curse men. Then your eyes flew to the door to see the gray-haired man sitting by the frame, face drawn in calm, tranquil disparity, devoid of any emotion, just looking at you with those dark eyes of his.

Damn, he's so emo today. Genuinely concerned, did someone piss in his tea this morning? 'Cause I would've liked to be first.

You were fully aware that he caught you in the act yet again. But why did it bother you so much? Why did it bother you that he wasn't reacting at all? Did he give up on the bet and winning you over? That was hard to tell. Either way it was nothing short of an oddity, seeing him stand there just observing playing some sick and twisted game alone in his head.

Weirded out and confused, you turned back to the simmering pot announcing the stew was almost done. The two walked to the table at the other end of the kitchen, taking a seat on opposite sides. They regarded each other briefly with a scowl, before they both turned to watch you work on the food.

Humming to yourself, you swayed side to side as you stirred the pot, stew nearing its boiling point. It was late evening, but your ponytail still sat high on your head since early morning, not one lump falling loose from it. Your apron sat snug on your waist, letting the red lace on your back be visible on purpose. Let phase two commence then.

The intensity of their stares carved a trail of open caves on your behind, each one digging his own personal hole with unsaid things in a dent of muscle they liked better down your back. You could feel the tension hanging in the air, zapping chills on your nape, but you paid it no mind for your own peace of mind because only god knew the dirt you imagined right now including both of the men at your back.

Enishi watched you, fist tightening under the table more and more with every sway of your ponytail that fell in sync with the sway of your hips. For some reason, that ponytail raised all senses of possessiveness in him. He wanted to pull that hair tie off and throw it into a fucking fire with every other existing band or fabric to tie it up, his only wish to let your hair free from its grasp and watch it cascade down your shoulders, wild and messy, just the way he liked it.

Cho's thoughts echoed the same pictures, though in a gentler, more sensual parallel. The blonde wanted that hair tie off too, thinking of how smooth your hair would feel with his fingers carding through it for hours on end as he drew patterns down your bare back and watched goosebumps rake your form.

That ponytail was their undoing.

Unaware of their thoughts turning as lewd with lust as yours, you focused on the stove. You thanked whatever deity makes you double the food quantities every time you cook because you had just enough stew to split it into three filling bowls.

Fixing the table up with the food and cutlery, you placed Koru's plate with her own chicken mix down by the marble island before you went to sit down at the head of the table, a safe distance from both of them. They waited for you to dig in first before they followed, a silent thanks giving for sharing your food with them. They were far from deserving of it considering how they behaved lately, but you weren't going to turn a hungry stomach away. You knew better than that.

The three of you ate in silence, tension gliding through the air in the kitchen uncomfortably, stabbing your exposed skin like a drifting torrent. Stolen, sneaky glances made their way to you but whenever you turned to catch them they were focused on the food in their bowls. Shaking the rigidness away, you pulled up a tactic to the table - playing with your ponytail.

Sitting back in your chair, you lifted a hand carding through the hair from the top of your makeshift hair tie, where it sat tight, with a languid stroke, falling to the base of it, twirling the ends around your fingers. Both males stilled, looking right at the way you worked around the length, drinking in every swirl of the locks glowing silky and luscious in the soft golden light above you. You had them wrapped around your fingers, their full attention not even on you but entirely on your hair.

The minute you let go of it, going back to eat the rest of your food, they grunted in unison at the loss of their visual stimuli. The sounds had them locking eyes, one pair dark and blazing with murderous intent, the other amused and light in teasing, both fighting each other in a battle with no clear winner.

Another point scored for me.

The rest of dinner was uneventful. You finished up on your food, getting up to walk to the sink and wash up everything. Cho followed right up, grabbing his plate and helping you put stuff back to its place to be done with it faster. You worked quickly with your new helper, since Enishi was rather absent from that role these days. Placing the last rinsed plate back in its cupboard, the blonde turned to you confused to see you with a cleaning towel.

"Let me do it," he reached out, grabbing the cloth to pull it his way.

"I can do it," you said, pulling it out of his grasp, back into your own.

"You sure?"

"Yeah. Thank you for the help," you nodded, sending a grateful smile his way. At least someone in this house was being helpful and not a killjoy.

Left with nothing else to do, he turned to leave when his eyes locked on the silver fox in the corner, still busy finishing his own food, but watching the interaction between the two of you, tongue poking his cheek, jealousy written all over his face. The blonde took advantage of his moment of weakness, spinning back to you in a heartbeat. Wide-eyed at his sudden proximity once again, you were about to ask him if he needed anything when he leaned down to your ear. The edge of his lips grazed the tip of your ear just like the did with your thumb, heart thrumming loud in your ears with his words.

"Lose the ponytail, princess," he said, voice dripping with sin twisting your insides together.

Satisfied with the lethal stare pointed his way and your puzzled look, he pulled away and turned around, leaving on his merry way. You stood there with a gulp stuck in your throat and cloth frozen in the air until the door shut closed, shaking you out of it. You turned to the island with the cleaning cloth just to get your breath caught in your throat for the millionth time today.

He was watching you again. That simple, infuriating and extremely loaded gaze he fixed on you rapped your pulse upwards, stealing your breath away. You couldn't avoid it no matter how hard you tried.

Say something, your eyes pleaded with him.

Anything.

Pure silence followed. None of you blinked or moved. A hopeful gaze from you. Nothing from him. Nothing at all. Just silence that cut through you like a sharp knife, willing you to fill it. But you had nothing else to fill it with. All your words spiraled in your head on a roulette but you couldn't pull the trigger on any of them. They were all too loaded, harsh, strong and heavy to be said or felt.

Stop looking at me like it matters, you shook your head in disappointment.

Koru's soft fur rubbed your leg bringing you back to reality seeing her walk out the door. Busying yourself as far away from him as possible, you got to cleaning the rest of the kitchen. You hated how easily he gave you icy chills and hot flushes simultaneously with just one damn look. You hated how your body soaked it in every time, like an addiction you could never lose. You hated how badly you craved his attention. You hated everything he made you feel right now.

Frankly, you stayed behind not for the need to clean, but to keep him company. You hated eating alone and he deserved at least that, even if you sat in different corners, to each their own, without as much as a word spoken between you.

When he was done with his food, he joined you at the sink next to where you worked on scrubbing the dried splotches of food from the stove. He washed his plate, rinsing it thoroughly, before he wiped it and put it back in its place. You finished on the stove and grabbed Koru's plate from the floor, storing the rest of her food away for later.

It was so domestic - how you worked around each other in the kitchen like it was a normal everyday occurrence. Although, now, your egos took away from the usual peace that came with it, the ritual feeling almost empty and tedious and not like something that relaxed you on the regular.

Turning on your heels, you came face to face with him, a hair's breadth separating you. Both of you just stood there, gazing at each other waiting for the other to make a move. His chest expanded, rising up with calm and collected breaths. Yours went rampant, trying to focus somewhere else that wasn't him. You were close to exploding this time. You needed to get to your room not stay here and play hooky with someone who couldn't talk.

For Christ's sake.

You moved away first, heading to the sink behind him to rinse the dirt from the cloth and place it back in its place. Passing by him without another thought, you rushed to get to the door, hoping to get out of there faster because if you stayed any longer you would implode.

You never reached the knob.

In one swift move you were lifted off the floor and place up on the kitchen island. In a heartbeat, the strong arms gripping your waist moved to cage you in their space, hips pushing between your thighs, opening them wider on each side. It all happened so fast that it sent your vision swimming but once you started breathing in the sweet musky jasmine scent, your eyes betrayed you, focusing on the perpetrator invading your senses.

From his long, slender fingers, your eyes started a long drive up the sinews of his forearms and the veins spreading in tendrils on top of them leading under the blue sleeves, taking notice of the angry twitch of dominance that made them more prominent as he leaned forward. Climbing up further, you took the crossroad to his shoulder instead of his chest, following the crinkled neck of his kimono.

That damn indigo kimono, matching the color of the darkened night sky behind him, that covered the whole trunk of his neck so chastely, leaving out just enough for curious wander. Your wander.

The things you wanted to do to that neck were for your lips to kiss and never tell. For your tongue to lick and drag over that lump in his throat and never stop. For your teeth to graze and bite until you had enough of him. Until all you could taste was him.

Averting your eyes from it, they landed on yours truly, falling down from that disheveled mop of hair you wanted to pull on without stopping as you devoured him, descending to those eyebrows drawn in vexation observing your shameless perusal, and finally settling on his eyes. Those eyes, pitch black obsidian blazing in the darkest fire you've seen, burning, staring right back at you. Luring. Tempting. Waiting.

Waiting for what?

Jaw locked tense, nose standing tall above the arch of his lips. Lips that haven't felt yours in so long. Lips your whole body has been aching for. Lips that were pursed in full control looking for something.

By the looks of it, he was determined to get something out of you by keeping you there in place on the cold marble. A reaction, a flutter, a falter. Anything that would tell him you gave into him tonight, even in the slightest, without as much as an effort from him.

And you took him in. The entirety of him. Stretching larger than you remembered him to be, broader than your closeness to his body could capture from this angle. This view alone made your heart pump a little faster, too fast to be normal, pushing you to drag an involuntary breath in. When you let it out, he spoke to you, for the first time in the last two days, taking that breath away from you just as quick as you released it into the air between you.

"You know I can fuck you right here if I want to, right?" he stated, his voice low and raspy, driving deep inside of you straight to the pulsing mound between your legs as he fixed your gaze.

I know you, echoed at the same time in your head.

That reminder was a constant voice in the back of your mind. That whatever you did with anyone else wouldn't fulfill you the way only he could. That only his voice could boil and melt the blood in your veins. That only his fingers could graze you on the inside and outside, both in sweet relief and anguish, separately and at the same time.

Your body craved to have him even now, completely enraged with him and willing to forget it for a while. To have him in every possible way that a mere mortal could, struggling to keep the control you worked up for the past two days to keep in your grasp.

It was bold of you to assume that a close encounter like this didn't make you feel anything, other than the slight tip of your foot downwards grazing the side of his leg.

But he was wrong to assume that you would submit to that powerful gaze like last time, even bolder to be certain that you didn't have some kind of advantage this time - the fact that you've denied him of you just like he denied you of him. I'll give you a taste of me. In my way.

Latching a secure hold on the front of his blue kimono, you kept his focused gaze as you undid the material around his middle with one swift pull of the loose, messy knot that kept him so closed off. Parting the sides away, you laid your hands flat against his abdomen. Agonizingly slow, you lead them upwards, feeling the depths of his toned form even under that heavy tank top you imagined ripping apart in so many different ways, reaching all the way to his ribcage. There, you felt him pull in a breath of his own, chest expanding open under your palms, holding the breath inside his pursed lips.

You caught him vulnerable, choosing to keep composed though the tick in his jaw told you he was close to losing it. The very breaths underneath your hands telling you that he was affected. You could feel his very heart at the tip of your fingertips, beating in a staggering rhythm.

It was your time to strike.

"Are you saying you don't want to," you spoke in a sweet whisper, smooth and saccharine like a shot of whiskey, as you trailed your right palm to the collar of the top, getting closer, under the unwavering gaze of his eyes turning a darker shade with your every move.

Your hands almost reached his neck. Cold fingers almost touched what looked like sizzling hot skin calling for your touch under the pale, small, flickering light behind you, when you saw something. So small but so unmistakable that if you blinked you might have just missed it. You might've been crazy, caught in the heat of the moment, but you definitely saw the slight bent of his head to the side, giving you more access to his neck, making that cursed vein more visible to you, uncovering it from the confines of the cotton surface.

You got closer, breath fanning over it dangerously close when he finally let a breath out. A full breathy, guttural, low groan. His hands gripped the counter edge harder, knuckles turning white in anticipation because in that angle he couldn't see you. He couldn't tell where you were taking this at all and he hated it. You could tell he did, smirking in satisfaction that you got him right where you wanted filling you up more than anything ever could.

And you stopped, removing your hands from his body, sitting back on the marble top, denying him once more.

The way his body recoiled backwards in response was a reminder that he had his shortcomings too. That he could act as dominant as he wanted, push you to the brink of insanity with as much as a stare, lay his touch on any inch of you he desired, but he couldn't put you out of the game. Him, of all people, would never be able to put your fire out. Because as much as he knew you, you started learning his ways too. You knew what made him tick, what kept him coming for more, what made his eyes sparkle with want. You knew him now. And it would take a lot more than this stupid game of his to make you unlearn all of it.

Though on the other hand, he did deserve a little token of, not appreciation per se, but a taster of what he was missing by being an idiot and placing a bet on your feelings.

So, you motioned him with your pointer finger to come closer to you. Hesitantly, he leaned down reaching your space again as you leaned up to his ear, tricking him into thinking you would whisper something else that would relay your desires to him in some way, only to bite down roughly on his earlobe, dragging it between your hungry teeth.

Once your lips were connected to his skin you wasted no time, moving from his ear under his jaw to lay eager open-mouthed kisses to the crane of his neck, quenching a thirst inside of you that was banished to the dessert for way too long. Finally savouring the moment you placed your lips on his skin like it was the last time you ever had the chance, sucking it hard and rough with the ravaging need of a wolf. This, was more for your own pleasure rather than his own, though it seemed to turn him on too.

His fingers unfurled from the edge of the counter planting themselves on each side of you, palms open fully on the marble top, greedy neck pushing into your lips to cover more, search more for the right spot, hips pressing into your lower body as he fell forward between your legs. He tried keeping in his grunts but the slower you went down his neck the less he could keep them inside. Struggling to abstain yourself from touching him, you lost that battle before it even begun.

Both of your hands sneaked under the blue kimono, going to his broad shoulders, gripping onto the bands of his tank top to pull him closer and move them under the material, feeling the mightiness of his toned body tense up under your palms. His pulse went rapid against your lips, grinning against his skin, relishing in the fact that you now knew you had the same effect on him that he had on you.

You sucked and nibbled relentless, hands climbing to his nape, fingers tangling in the curls at the back of his neck as you circled the whole area near that vein on the side of his neck, hearing him come undone inside with every grunt rumbling in his throat. But it wasn't where he needed you, the prominent, hard bulge in his pants tapping the inside of your thigh repeatedly, the more you drew him closer with your legs tangled around his waist.

If it was up to him, he would've had your bare stomach pressed against the cold marble, one hand gripping your jaw raw and rough as he bit off your lips, the other pulling your ponytail like a savage, fucking you blind by now. Rutting deep inside you, leaving his scent on every inch of your skin available on the outside, scorching every part inside of you that ached for him. Greedy and possessive like an animal devouring his prey.

But it wasn't up to him.

The power games shifted your way a while ago. You took his power away, rendering his bearings haywire and he didn't even notice. His power was fully yours now and you were willing to fight dirty and wild to keep it in your hands for as long as you wanted to.

When you felt his hand sneak up to your backside to reclaim some semblance control, you unglued your lips away from his neck, pulling away in a heartbeat. Like nothing happened. Like you weren't attached to his sweetest spot, teasing him just like he teased your own in the artillery room a few nights ago, playing his own game way more brutally and intense than he ever could.

Sitting back to get your breath under control, you took a good look at him this time. At his messy hair from how your fingers pulled on it, the side of his kimono falling from his shoulder unceremoniously, at the pale skin on his neck turning light pink from how hard you bit on it. His eyes were blown wide, still consuming the rest of the sensations you left on his skin, his breaths still running a lonely marathon that you abandoned bare moments ago.

"You're all talk and no action," you said, steady as you straightened your back and patted his chest, jumping off the kitchen island all in a beat, leaving him there scattered and defeated, exiting the kitchen with a wicked smile on your lips.

You made sure he knew just what he was up against the next time he even thought of playing around with you. He didn't give you the upper hand this time. You just took it before he even got a chance to win it. You made him see how it felt being manhandled dirty and raw, left at the height of it to deal with it by yourself, left bare and open for anyone to see.

He thought no one could dominate him, tame him, deny him. He was damned if he still thought that after tonight when he let all those supressed feelings show on his face. There was one person who could take him head on with absolutely no shame or remorse over their actions and it was you.

Mission accomplished!

Miyu - 2 points. Enishi - 1 point.

I could play this game all day.

The morning arrived slowly, lazy like a warm embrace in the hands of the still winter. Birds chirped outside your window as you rolled in bed to face the white, warm sunlight, a smile of satisfaction sitting on your lips as you stretched your hands overhead.

Is this how kings felt conquering something after years of battle?

You felt like a winner after the events of the previous day, still streaming in your head as proof of your conquest, especially with Enishi. Replaying the way he looked in the kitchen last night, folded and open to your desire, had you feeling like you added extra years to your lifespan.

Koru climbed in your lap, purring in delight to match your good mood. Before you could bask too long in the positive and the gratification of your hard work, since bringing men to his knees was no easy feat, the weight of something unknown settled in your stomach. You couldn't really put your finger on it but something was growing in there, gnawing at you impatiently to figure what it is. Maybe it was nothing. Or you were just hungry.

Shaking it away, you got out of bed with a smile and went about your day as normal.

Training outside in the warmth of the sun by yourself for a bit, your feline friend keeping you company as she chased butterflies around the garden trying to catch them but getting distracted by other flying insects.

Cooking some food from the quick groceries Wu managed to get from the market in the morning before he left in a rush. Though it was not much, it was enough for the gang on the grounds.

Cleaning your room up, an overdue task that proved grounding and calming. You moved some things around and made space for a work desk adjacent to the vanity, right in the sunlit corner of the room, to stash all your spare materials and tools away.

Most of the day went on, doing things by yourself and for yourself, often joined by Koru, with surprisingly no man in sight to disturb you in any way - mental, physical or emotional. It was pure bliss, calm, serene. Absolute peace to yourself for once.

The afternoon rolled in slowly, finding you snuggled up with a book you found in Enishi's library. He had a bunch of romance works in there that no one would be reading anyway, definitely not him of all people, or the killing machines guarding the place. So, you helped yourself to the shelves, taking as many that piqued your interest back to your humble abode.

You let the large cream windows in your room wide open to get some fresh air inside, kitten settled in beside you, playing around with a spare ball of thread.

Reading away, you were deep into a really good part in the book when that feeling creeped up on you again. You didn't know if the words you read triggered it or not but something did because a familiar heaviness sat on top of your chest, a little tighter than earlier in the day. You massaged your chest in hopes it was just indigestion, when Koru looked up from her temporary toy, placing a paw on your thigh with eyes wide in alert. As if she sensed something was wrong too.

"I'm fine, little one. I think I just ate lunch too fast," you smiled in reassurance. The feline abandoned her toy and came to sit against you, letting the ball roll to the end of the bed finding you much more interesting than the whirly thread.

You tried to get back to reading but that sensation just persisted in your belly, stirring your guts up into stressed nodes. Every time you tried to get past that line your mind would pause and not take it in at all. You were on your third read trying to absorb it when the air chilled around you all of a sudden. Looking up from the book to the windows, you caught the beginning of sunset, setting down over the nearby hill in pale yellow colors, most of the light that pooled in your room gone with a beige hue. You got up to close them just as someone stumbled into your room, throwing your doors open with a bang that startled the living daylights out of both you and your cat.

"There you were," spoke the blonde, rushing to take his recently designated seat at the end of your bed. "I've been looking everywhere for you today."

I guess that was more than enough peace to last me for a year.

You made your way back to the bed, taking back your comfortable spot against the pillows. Koru gave him a toothy hiss for his lack of manners then plopped in your lap.

"I was literally everywhere today," you stated as a matter of fact, stroking her soft. "What's up?"

He turned around to face you better, goofy energy on his face turning mellow as he regarded you for a moment. The spicy ensemble you wore yesterday was nowhere in sight today - to his relief - replaced by a champagne-colored oversized shirt and a pair of navy pants. Your hair was braided messily, falling down your shoulder with a few strands loose, tied sloppily at the end with a piece of fabric matching the dark blue shade of your pants. You were dressed like you again.

Blue wasn't his taste at all, preferring the browns and reds much more on you since they flattered no just your features but your personality. But he had to admit this dark shade did suit you, comfortably chic and elegant. If anything, mophead's obsession with the color rubbed off on you too and in a rather good way.

"You're staring," you snapped him back to attention waving your hand in front of his face. "If I didn't know any better, I would say you're falling for me, blondie," you joked.

"Something like that," he replied, flirty smile back on his face.

You grinned in response, unaware of just what he harbored in his heart for the past few years. If only you knew. If only he could tell you.

Marking the page you were on before you closed the book and put it to the side, you gave him your undivided attention, blinking up at him with warm eyes that paired up with your small tight-lipped smile, the one that made your dimples pop and cheeks puff up slightly. If hearts could make louder sounds than simply thrumming with a beat, his would roar like a tiger on his way to challenge the king of the jungle, which he was currently doing anyway.

"Come on, be serious for once," you pushed his shoulder playfully, feeling your cheeks tint pink from the way he looked at you.

He hoped you couldn't tell what that look meant because that one look alone spoke of love - the unconditional kind, like it's always been there, twinkling in his eyes like a promise he couldn't make out loud. Thankfully, you thought it was just one of his very sarcastic ones, grinning back at him all-knowing but so far from the truth of it that he just let you believe it for his own peace of mind.

"Tell me what's so urgent that you turned the devil's lair upside down to find me."

He grinned back at you, chuckling at your choice of words. Whatever you were reading had you soften up into a romantic and it wasn't doing him or his heart any good. He peeked to the side raising an eyebrow as he read the title of the book laying on the safety of your pillow before you caught up to him, attempting to block his view.

"Wuthering Heights?" he leaned over you and grabbed the book, getting up before you could snatch it back from his hold. "Since when were you so lost in love that two people losing their minds over each other is your go-to read?"

How does he know about this book? From what I know he isn't well-versed in anything intellectual, including reading.

"Since when do you read?" you questioned, following him around the room to retrieve your book.

"Since forever," he hummed, avoiding you and your tiny hands at all costs, grateful that you were smaller in height but annoyed that it meant you were very fast on your legs.

He dove into the corner between the vanity and the work table, right by the window, completely covered away from you and opened the book. Your hands wrapped around his waist to tickle him but that sneak attack didn't stop him from looking at the small paper notes neatly stashed inside, hanging on the side of almost every page. Reading some of them, his eyebrows hit his hairline surprised by your opinions to every chapter he landed on. "You annotated this?"

"Yes, now give it back," you snarled back. Leaving your tickle tactic, you threw your hands around him to grab it but he turned away to the window ledge leaning over it in a way that he was bent over it and his back was fully blocking you. You muttered a string of curses under your breath, cussing him out for being so tall. "Fucking street lamp pillar."

"I heard that," he laughed.

He rushed to the page you were on a few moments before he broke in the room, pushing his broad shoulders around to keep you behind him. Eyes scaling the pages, he rushed to the last line you marked halfway read, reading it out loud.

"If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be. And if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger," he recited, word for word, his previous attempt at teasing turning into seriousness by the time he reached the end of the line and the words registered.

Feeling like he intruded on something too personal, he took another look at the sentence, memorizing it. Something just told him to. Then he turned around and gave it back to you, genuine sincerity present in his eyes. Taken aback, you took it and went back to the bed.

"Why are you here?" you asked, tired of games and eager to get back to the book, plopping back down beside Koru.

He replied to you with a question of his own.

"Remember the bonfire night a few days ago?"

The night flashed through your mind from beginning to end, spinning the cogs in your brain a little too fast that it gave you whiplash. You did remember. The slow dancing to the crackle of fire, the heavy drinking, the sword debates like it was your local sword club night, carrying two very drunk people to their rooms only to have them cuddle in the same bed. Even the small half-spoken promises made in the dark with a tipsy conscience. You remembered all of it.

I wish I could forget some of it.

"What about it?"

"I know I was drunk-" he started before you interjected raising a finger in the air.

"I would say more than drunk." He shot you a look that indicated he wasn't finished yet. "Okay, continue."

"Among other things, I remember you making a promise that we were gonna talk. About... you know. Everything?"

There it was. One of the rushed, painful promises you made that night. Your hand stopped petting Koru, luscious fur warming up under your frozen touch. Your heart fell somewhere in the depths of your stomach at the reminder that you indeed did make that promise and that it kinda expired the next day without you fulfilling it.

Cursing yourself, both for making it and not keeping it, you looked up at him only to see that hopeful look in his eyes again. The same look he's been giving you since you've met again. The one that wished to make your relationship better and clear up what happened in the past.

"I just want to make things right with you," he added, looking down in his lap with a friendly twitch of his lips, lost on what else to say.

Your own eyes darted down, busying with the design on the duvet, the maroon wooden floors, even the white swirling into golden motives on the walls as if you never saw any of these details before. You wanted to talk to him and clear things up too, but you weren't even sure where to start.

It wasn't stalling. No, not even close. There was just so much to go through and you knew starting somewhere, anywhere, would be good, but you were lost on what. On the unsaid feelings that were still there, deep in your heart, still keeping you awake at night because he never gave you a chance to let them out? On the fact that he left right before you confessed those very feelings to him or that you lost control that night killing a bunch of people in cold blood? Which one of these was a good, relatively positive conversation starter that said 'Let's be friends again'?

Then you felt that pang in your torso, making your chest feel heavy again. Was he the one making it heavy or was it something else looming over you, waiting to catch you off-guard?

You were about to answer him when an unwanted visitor cracked your door open just a notch. He peeked his head inside and looked at the way the two of you were perched on the bed with the cat wiggling her tail between you, having what looked like a heart to heart.

Before he started sending daggers to the blonde coddled on your bed way too comfortable for his liking, he remembered why he was barging in the room in the first place and looked at you with a gaze that spurred that tightness in your chest further.

"Sorry to interrupt your bonding session, but we have news." His eyes softened when they landed on you, sending the growing pit of worry in your belly ablaze as he continued. "It's about your parents."

Your heart dropped.

You sat up abruptly, not wasting another second before you were swiftly on his tail as you followed him to his office without another word. The knots in your stomach churned and twisted in anticipation, and not the good kind that had you over the moon, but the one that could stop your beating heart as fast as a snap of fingers, wishing you could just teleport there and save up time.

Was it good news or bad news? was the main question running rampant.

If they were bad again, you were probably better off digging a hole into the ground and hiding from everything and everyone for an undetermined period. Your hopes were low to zero that it could be anything good in terms of the way most of your recent leads and missions went. But the urgency in his step kept the hope alive within you. Maybe it was something good this time around. So you kept that hope close, cradling it like a kindle that could go out on the smallest breeze, bracing yourself for whatever waited for you on the other side.

Wu and a few members of the gang were already sat in the office, waiting for the three of you. By the incognito citizen clothes, too shabby to be something Wu would ever wear freely out in the world, they definitely went out to gather information from places far more dangerous than the corner of the street.

"Master, madame," Wu greeted both of you, sitting with four of his men by the side of the desk, dejected looks on their faces.

You gave them a court nod, stopping in front of the desk, confused as to what was happening that required having so many people present. That and the fact that it might be really private information that was being shared. Whatever it was, it made that thing in your chest sit around your lungs like rope, tightening more with each passing second that no one uttered a word. Until Wu finally broke the silence halting the rope a little.

"We've been looking for the prisoner that escaped a few days ago. His name is Kenzo Hebi."

Kenzo the Snake. In all the years you've been graced by presence, you never caught his name. Or knew anything about him besides the fact that his wife was a leech just like him. But apparently he knew everything about you and your family, slithering into it enough to slowly destroy it. That name suits him entirely.

"Though we didn't find him particularly, we did find his boss. He's been working for the Daos."

The Daos you encountered back at the casino? If anything they didn't look like big bad mafia lords that a businessman had deals with, especially considering their shitty poker skills. But alas.

"The Triads?" asked Cho taken aback at the info. "What does a Yokohama businessman have to do with the Triads?"

Hold the fuck up. The Daos are part of the Triads? If Enishi knew that, he left out that part back when he briefed you for the mission. You threw him a look and as if he sensed your question, he shook his head that he didn't know that either. This was new information to both of you.

"How do you know that?" you asked the blonde in hopes he would elaborate and dissipate the common cloud of confusion.

"I have a few hatchets to bury with them," he crossed his arms on his chest, leaning backwards on the marble pillar behind him. His exposed forearms flexed in tandem with his jaw, a clear indicator he wasn't selling you doughnuts. He did have history with them. "I did some digging on them to get some leverage and found that they paid the Triads for security from time to time and they were occasionally trading arms."

Wu confirmed the information briefly before Enishi took over the conversation reeling it back to the main point. That man. The sly lizard that took everything from you.

"You may know him as a friend of your father's," he peered at you, noticing the way you scrunched your nose in disgust at the thoughtless pun, shifting on your legs impatiently. "But we caught him for an entirely different reason that night."

Speed-walking to his desk from beside you, he pulled open some drawers laying out a few maps on top of each other. You all gathered closer around them as he started explaining, trying to keep up with all the new information revealing itself.

"Besides that, he stole from one of our gun factories down the Eastern side of the Huangpu River," he pointed to one of the maps sketched to outline the exact settlement of the city of Shanghai. You honed in on it, recognizing the spot to be a textiles factory, about a few blocks away from the last place of refuge that you had to vacate, since the commander's troops were on your tail. Well, more on the tail of that one gray-haired criminal that you broke out, harbored, fed and now lived with. But anyway.

"The factory is kept under a textiles cover so the commander wouldn't question it." That made a lot of sense, especially since he checked all establishments regularly to make sure they had all the necessary papers to function.

"Anyway," he continued shifting some more paper around looking for something in particular. "While we may steal from other mafias sometimes, we do make a majority of our weapons there. Usually, people know better than crossing into our territory, but somehow that fucker managed to steal most of our stock."

"So you brought him in for questioning," you added as the story started piecing itself together. He nodded briefly still shuffling the pile of maps around, eyes grazing the ink without a break.

You would've apologized for nearly killing their source of information but he had it coming anyway. You thought back to the way you assaulted that man down in the basement as soon as he opened his mouth to talk nonsense, thinking he just happened to fall there as you were looking for your parents. As much as you hated to admit, it was a good outlet for your temporary rage.

"Yes, but as it turns out he's just one piece of a bigger puzzle." He shuffled the map he was looking for your way. You picked it up to see several places, all circled around the river in strident red ink - other factories, shops and even restaurants labelled with the names of other mafias, some of them that you've encountered on your own missions before.

Enishi handed you another map of the neighbouring cities, red circles turning into an overwhelming spiral of scarlet stretching across the rest of the country.

"It wasn't just us. They stole from every mafia on the mainland."

Stealing from every mafia and undercover at that without anyone suspecting anything? What could they possibly be planning that they would go that far? Unless... No. That wasn't possible. But all things on the table in front of you pointed to that.

"Oh my god," you gasped as the realization hit you. "They're making the gangs blame each other in order to start a war."

Enishi nodded, confirming your suspicions. But if this was happening already, like Cho recalled earlier, much, much worse was on the way. Things that could be catastrophic for everyone, not just for the crime world.

"But the triads haven't been around for that long. What could they possibly win from that?" asked Cho, voicing out your very thoughts.

"Mafias control a big part of trade, both imports and exports. By blindly gaining their trust and working under them, they can make a mafia crumble from the inside and take over it completely," added Enishi, leaning forward on the desk, eyes lost in the whirlpool of ink and paper. "If they abolish the mafias they gain control of everything going in and out of the country."

A coup d'état. This was way too much to process. Not just this but what told you that no traitor was lurking on the mansion grounds right now, right under Enishi's unsuspecting nose, watching your every move, eating the very food you've been cooking, hiding in the shadows until it was time to rat himself out. But then again the whole thing with the Triads was too complex. They barely got funded a couple of years ago and they already branched themselves out like a silent poison looking to kill and replace the systems that have been around for way longer than you've been alive. This was shaking up the natural order of things that wasn't even natural in the first place.

With all of this coming to light... there was something else you kept hidden. Something you haven't told anyone before since you didn't want it to reach the light of day in case it could put you on the radar again.

A few years ago, after the whole thing with Cho happened, you went solo again. Work was somewhat going well, you were getting jobs left and right, becoming the main person people called on for their long, insatiable, egocentric hitlists. You did the jobs, you got paid, you lived somewhat comfortably in a dusty old barrack. But as much as it was good business for you, it put you in the vizor of someone you never wanted to get involved with - the Triads.

At the time, you've heard stories of other assassins getting hired by them and they almost contracted you too back in Japan. You refused because working for them would've cost you every ounce of the freedom you barely had anyway. The triads gave you a roof over your head, fed you and trained you to the best you could be, but they took away every other semblance of humanity you had to make you nothing more than a killing machine, executing orders devoid of any conscience. A puppet to be controlled in their revolt against the state.

You refused them. Multiple times. Some of them involved taking your pistols out and you didn't just threaten anyone. But they got so persistent, hellbent on having you join them that it got to the point where they followed you, watching you on your missions, finding your whereabouts at any hour of the day, until you had enough and left the country silently.

That was the main reason you tried to stay under the radar when you came to Shanghai. You did your work under a different name, changed safe houses every few months, didn't get acquainted with anyone, doing everything in your power to try and erase any footprints that could lead them to you. Because anything pinpointing your location meant delivering yourself to them on a golden platter.

You lived your life in the shadows more than you wanted to, wishing it could all stop one day. The running, the hiding, the constant fear that someone was on their way to get you and drag you back into the darkness where she waited for you, since they definitely wanted Barairo, the crimson rose, not you. You wanted to fight them, let her out to destroy them every chance you got. But you didn't know what you were up against until now.

Coming back to the present, you tried to make sense of all the new, concerning details and what you already knew about the Triads, failing to see anything in this tangled mess relating to your mom and dad.

"Okay, but where do my parents stand in all this?" you let out the long-awaited question looking at Wu, hoping that he could finally spill what you wanted to know.

Were they dead? Were they alive? Did he find them or anything else that could lead us to them?

Instead of answering you, he peered over to the very man that called you over tonight. He was sitting in the shadows behind the mahogany desk with his arms crossed over his chest. His eyes were cast downwards, staring gaping holes into the maps, avoiding your curious ones at any cost, despite being the one who commenced this meeting in the first place. Something was off and very weird about it. He was always so collected, holding nothing back. Why was he on the defense so suddenly? Then he sighed. A long, stacked breath of air. Enishi doesn't sigh.

"What's going on?" you pushed, stepping closer to the desk, wanting to know why he was taking so long to talk.

He hesitated telling you, trying to push this dreaded conversation aside as much as he could for the past few weeks, but he had to. He was done keeping things away from you. He knew the risk - that he could lose you either way. If he talked, you would cave in on yourself, shutting him out completely. But if he didn't, you would have your suspicions and question him until you pried it out of him.

It was now or never. He preferred for it to be never. But it was time. He could be dishonest and false with anyone else. But not with you. Not when you put your trust in him for it.

Taking a deep inhale with eyes closed, feeling nerves grip him for the first time in a good while, he pushed it out with the exhale, guilty raven eyes looking at you with the weight of steel.

"Your parents had ties to the Triads."

Time stilled as the words left his mouth one by one. Not one soul moved. Yours froze and thawed over in seconds at just that one sentence. A sentence you never thought you'd ever hear in your life.

You struggled to process the words like he spoke in a foreign language you had no recollection of ever hearing or speaking before. They rolled over and over in your head, brain working overtime in turning each one back and forth, until they started registering sharp and clear and as they did, your knees went weak with their weight. Those horrifying seven words echoed again with more impact this time, ears ringing as you scurried backwards away from the desk to get yourself seated on the couch somehow, so you wouldn't crumble in front of everyone.

Your mind ran empty of everything, nausea making her hideous presence felt so deeply in that pit in your stomach, setting fire to the incessant bellows of worry that ate at your peace little by little all day. Your eyes weren't even focusing on the worried pairs of eyes gathering around you, one more concerned than any of them kneeling down before you. He spoke, getting you to focus on his words but they weren't what you needed to hear at all.

"There's something else you should know."

What more could be worse than this?

"Our meeting wasn't a coincidence."

What?

"I know that they tried to contract you," he continued, giving you no time to think straight. "They've been looking for you."

"How do you-"

"I've been watching you for a while, way before you moved in. We've been looking for any leads on the guy and stumbled upon the Hikari name. One clue led to another and I found you."

Your eyes darted to the ground away from him, grinding your teeth with newfound anger, trying to keep your temper under control. He hasn't talked to you in days, not one single word save for the heated interaction you had last night in the kitchen. But the one time he does talk is to chirp like a fucking canary that he played Judas with you.

He lied to me.

All this time, he didn't want to take me in. He never wanted to train me. He wanted information from me. He wanted to know if I was involved in this godforsaken world in the slightest.

All this time, I was a pawn in his game. He was right. I really was just another stray he took in. I've been so stupid.

Forget the stab in the back for now. Your parents were your main priority here, no matter how much this hurt. You focused all your leftover energy on them since you might have a safe shot at finding them. Even if that meant keeping your alliance with the devil sitting right in front of you, still playing angel in disguise despite everything he just told you that he's been hiding from you for months. Wasting any more precious time, like this, was signing their death sentence.

Feeling the repercussions of his betrayal came later, you told yourself to ease the ache a notch. For now, you'd keep your own feelings at bay and fight for your parents. For now, you'd keep the anger inside just a little more.

That was until he chose to open his mouth again.

"Are you okay?"

You've got to be shitting me.

"Am I okay?! You're telling me that my parents were somehow involved in organized crime and expect me to be okay?! Do you realize how fucking insane that sounds?" you threw a hand through your hair trying to make sense of anything in this mess. It sounded ridiculous even as you said it out loud yourself. "T-they were tailors, they weren't bad people."

"I know it sounds difficult to believe, but Wu ran the information and it checks out," he added, as if your world wasn't barely standing straight already and some more truthful angst would do the trick to tilt it over fully. Fucking amazing.

You weren't going to believe it at all until you sat thinking for a good minute, going over your last interactions with your parents years ago, and certain things became way too clear in your head just like idea bulbs. Or trauma bulbs in this case.

The way that snake threatened them every time he came to the tailor shop. The fact that your parents had a lot of foreign clients coming from outside of the city, all the way to some tailor shop in the middle of practically nowhere. Or that you were living comfortably, homeschooled, safe, unlike the rest of the district that was in peak war age.

It all started to make a whole lot of fucking sense.

"Their clients, the expensive textiles they imported, even our house," your head dropped to your hands as it all became crystal clear in a messy mix of truths you couldn't swallow past that lump in your throat. "None of it was really ours was it?"

"I'm sorry," he rubbed your arm trying to comfort you, even though he knew nothing could actually bring you peace, especially coming from him after everything he just told you, after he lied. "But they weren't bad people. They were just whisked away in the midst of it all."

"Does that mean we can't find them?" you asked, hating the way your voice broke on the last word.

"On the contrary," he turned up a smirk, just like he did whenever he knew something helpful. A solution out of the hell ride you were slowly buckling into. It somehow brought you some hope that things weren't as fucked up as they seemed. Though you highly doubted that.

"If they are affiliated with the triads, even in the smallest, we have a chance at finding them sooner than we think."

A chance. That's all you needed. Even the smallest of hopes in the biggest pile of all this fantastical fuckery would do you good right now.

"There is someone who knows enough about their plans to send them to the pits of hell if he wanted. We arranged to meet with him."

Okay, that's great. A possibly wanted man wanting to meet with the leader of one of the mafias who could have him killed or put him out in the open to the Triads for them to get him killed first? Highly unlikely.

"Why do I feel like there's more to that?"

"It took some persuasion, but he agreed to meet us in the worst place possible. The Shanghai Club."

"You've got to be joking," exclaimed Cho, finally joining the conversation since his own ass could be in danger now. "That place is crawling with the commander's troops and triad members."

"That's why I said it's the worst place possible," added Enishi as a matter of fact, turning to look Cho dead in the eye.

Ignoring their bickering, you gave it a thought. You had a safe shot at finding your parents this time. Sure, it could end up in a bloodbath no one wanted to wipe clean after, but you were willing to take it.

No more waiting. No more looking around to find fairy tales from random henchmen caught red handed with information that was common knowledge in their world. It was time you decided what you wanted to do and right now that was following your incredibly twisted guts. If you had to dive into that hell again, then might as well do it on your own terms. 'Cause the first time went fantastic.

"When?" you simply asked.

"Hold on a second. You're not actually thinking of going are you?" asked Cho, though it wasn't really a question and more of a statement that he would get in your way. "That's a suicide mission."

"I have to," you played with the hem of your shirt, trying to calm a shrill of tremor climbing up your hands. "They're my parents, Cho. I can't just leave things like this. Not now when we have a certain lead."

You turned back to Enishi with hopeful eyes finding his own still on you, waiting for your answer. This was probably the last thing you would trust him with ever. "It is certain this time, right?"

He didn't hesitate to nod his head, a genuine want to help passing through his eyes at your question. Good.

"If we're going there, we're gonna need new outfits!" you chimed, trying to find a way to get out of the room before the walls would cave in on you and someone took notice of the unnatural way your hands started shaking. That knot in your chest tugged at you more insistently now with the heavy tension in the air and the multiple pairs of eyes watching you with pity, the one thing you hated the most in the world.

"I want both of you in my room later," you added, nodding at the two men that would accompany you. You only registered how suggestive your words sounded after they left your mouth, all eyes in the room staring at you widely, only adding to your discomfort. Men.

"To get you sized and ready, obviously," you clarified and with that you shuffled off the couch and left in a hurry without looking back.

The two males exchanged a look, trying to make sense of your behaviour, expecting a different reaction to all of this, not you being ready to stitch and sew outfits in the dead of night. The blonde shrugged in response, lost on what to think anymore, more preoccupied with finding an escape route of this. But something about your reaction rubbed the other one wrong, watching your back retreat out the door with growing nerves himself.

You walked this hallway so many times before. But right now for some reason it seemed to stretch longer, wider, walls tilting in on each other under the weight of gravity. Each step on the creaky wooden floors made you jump in fright, the trepidation of your heart louder than the constant ringing in your ears, heavier than the bile gradually rising in your throat.

Taking faster strides to reach the familiar tall oak arches, you pushed the doors to your room open. Going straight to your work desk, you pulled out all the materials you could find to start working and get your mind off things. Pacing around from corner to corner, unable to locate the cushion of needles you always, you ran to your vanity as your heart pumped faster. You searched around and messed up the recently organized drawers, throwing things on the ground behind you, hands shaking with anxiety only to find the damn cushion nowhere in sight, more worry gripping you.

You took a look at yourself in the mirror, staring at the dim orbs that resembled your mother's eyes. The faces of your parents flashed before you, standing next to each other in a tender embrace, expanding that painful throb in your chest.

What if I will never find them? They were gone for so long. There might be no trace of them on earth anymore. That simple thought made each breath your lungs took harder to call inside, taking you even longer to let them out. Your vision darkened, a new wave of dizziness throwing you off balance as you grappled with your breathing that was slowly going out of control, coming out in shorter pants and wheezes.

Panic filled you from that annoying pit in your belly, stretching upwards inside of you to grab onto your neck as if to strangle you for ignoring it for so long. To make you pay for every missed chance of finding your parents. For every connection you built on blind, broken trust. For every life you took that probably didn't even deserve it. For following the worst of devils on earth fooling yourself they would save you. For being a failure in every fucking way and not being able to do one thing right by your parents, by the people you cared about, by yourself. For everything you did, for all you were doing and for everything you will do. You lost the fight. You let your own personal inferno come alive.

I warned you, a voice echoed inside of you head, dark with malice and death. You leaned your hands on the vanity table, your whole body trembling, spasming under your weight that seemed unbearable to keep on your own two legs, struggling to stay upright. This wasn't happening. This couldn't happen.

Not right now. I can't lose control now. Not when I'm so close to find them.

You caught the glimpse of a silhouette in the vanity mirror, entering your room in a haste. Maybe it was death remembering you existed, finally coming to take you away as payback for avoiding its call to hell so many times that it found it amusing and let you simmer until you finally broke yourself. The devil surely loved the sinners that did it to themselves the most.

The shadow moved behind you, looking less like a demon from hell and more like a human being the closer it got to you. Maybe it was one of the angels still around you, fighting for your redemption against all odds telling it you couldn't be saved. That you didn't deserve the saving.

Whatever or whoever it was, they called your name with a voice so angelic, like a dream was playing before you in slow motion. A tone so holy that you could trust it to take you anywhere it wanted to, whether it was heaven or hell. It might have been your hallucination kicking in as you were falling apart. It tried to get your attention but they seemed so far away. So, so, so far away from the abyss you had one leg inside. Until their arms wrapped around you, secure and supportive, stable and safe. Maybe it was your mind cooking up nonsense, but you felt that hold on you like someone was actually holding you for real.

Their secure firm tightened around you just like the panic pressing down your neck sending you into sensory overload. You refused to let go of the vanity table, your only anchor to reality, digging your hands into the wood so hard your nails chipped at the edges. A hand came up to your cheek, cupping it gently to turn your face towards them. You stared at the blurry blob in the shadow morphing into a face, slowly becoming clearer in the haze. Their mouth that moved with a voice so angelic before turned into a velvety demonic sound, words finally making their way to you, drilling loud into the quiet.

"Look at me," he demanded, tone warm and steady to get you to focus on him.

Him. You needed to get away from him. You couldn't be near him right now. He hurt you. He broke your trust after you gave it to him with everything you had. All your secrets, your pain, your heart, all of it laid out on a silver platter. He took all of it and threw it into the fire, sitting on the sidelines without as much as looking back to see what was left of you as the ashes scattered away. He used you. He didn't need you. He's better off without you, that voice pushed again.

"Go away," you croaked out trying to shove him off, even as your hands shook uncontrollably and your knees locked in place.

He only held you tighter to him, musky scent you loved so much turning into a burning ash stench as you struggled to inhale any speck of air inside. You slumped against him pathetically, still holding the vanity in a death grip, refusing to let go and give up control. Give it up. Let me out. I can take care of him.

"Look at me," he commanded this time, demanding your attention. Moving anything was taxing, but when your blurry eyes brimming with tears finally caught his, willing him to let you go, he just wouldn't budge from beside you. "I need you to breathe, Miyu."

No, you don't. You need to let me out, she hissed so loud, sending your thoughts haywire.

You choked on a half-sob, trying to get air inside. You were trying. God, you were really trying.

But each haggard, piercing drag of air you ran after slipped further away, turning your chest into nothing more but a lead carcass, just as heavy and constricting as the barrel of your pistols must feel for a bullet. You shook your head, more tears spilling over your cheeks.

"I c-can't."

"Yes, you can."

He worked to loosen the grip of one of your hands on the edge of the vanity table, successfully plying one of them free. He placed it against his chest, letting you feel the beat of his heart, alive and working. He was real. So, so real. A lot more real than the voice in your head. You felt his chest expand under your palm, up and down, his own breathing calm and normal, alternating in rhythms. You tried to follow it in one brave, sharp intake of air but all that did was send needles to your own chest, pushing a pained moan through your throat.

You were drowning. Your heart was beating way too fast for it not to explode any minute. Your lungs weren't working with you. You were ready to accept it and sink into it, ready to let her do whatever she wanted and lose yourself, when his forehead pressed into your temple to keep you tethered here, keep you with him, keep you fighting. He was damned if he let you give into it right now.

"Please breathe for me," he begged, eyes blazing in a frenzy, trying to keep his own breathing stable so you could follow it.

Enishi Yukishiro didn't beg for no one.

The desperation in his voice scared you. It told you he would raise bloody murder to the entirety of the globe if you dared to let go right now. You didn't come this far for nothing. Your struggle wasn't in vain. You still had so much to fight for.

You swore to help him avenge his sister. He swore to help you find your parents. You couldn't let go now. None of those promises were fulfilled yet by either of you. She definitely wouldn't fulfill them. She would kill him before she even took her first step out of that cage. You couldn't let that happen. You couldn't let her. Oh, but you could, she taunted caressing those iron bars with sweet temptation. I will die before I let you touch him.

You tried a few more breaths but they barely went in, crunching the material of his kimono in your fist, pushing your lungs to work with you and take a fucking breath. Pathetic. Frustrated and defeated with yourself, you cried out wishing for a miracle when he spoke again, picking up the very broken pieces of your heart that he shattered with his own two hands, attempting to put them back together.

"I don't regret finding you. I don't regret taking you in. I don't regret anything we've done together. You're not alone anymore. I'm not alone anymore. I like having you around."

Letting his fast mix of jumbled words wash over you, you dug deep into the abyss clutching your heart and your lungs harder with each passing second, looking for a way out. There's no way out. There is always a way out. There had to be one even now as your world seemed like it was ending.

"I need to have you around, Miyu. I promised you I'm not leaving you. I'm here. I'm right here."

You tried again and again and again and again and again. You ran and ran and turned around in the pitch black of your mind that was shutting down, aimlessly looking for a speck of light to lead you out.

"You're strong enough. Come on baby. Breathe with me."

His voice became your saving grace in that moment. He became the surge of light you needed to follow in the darkness. With each word a brighter speck of that light lit it up, making it go back to its place away until it was unable to touch you. Until you couldn't hear her anymore. She was gone.

After what felt like forever, listening to his endless pleas, feeling his heart beating under your trembling hand and his touch holding you close, you were breathing. Somehow, the more you tried more air was finally available to you.

Leaning on the vanity, half-supported by him, you took more air inside like you were taking your first breath in the world, unaware of all that was waiting for you. That first inhale was raw, the large gulps that followed stabbing your dry throat as if knives had a parade inside its walls, fully aware of all that you've already been through. Fully aware that this was only the beginning. But you kept going.

His other hand came to sit around your waist, rubbing circles into your hip, small and large matching the rhythm of his breathing so you could focus and follow it as a guide.

Slowly, the breaths you took went down into your lungs deeper each time, filling them up with much needed air. The bile that rose in your throat went back inside. The chaos in your soul went quiet again with him by your side, holding your hand in the center of his chest the whole time. His fist closed over yours like a safe, guarding it there on top of his heart, not once letting go.

The darkness in your vision cleared a bit, leaving just a few dark spots lingering as you focused on the creature in the mirror looking back at you, resembling you. It was you - paled over, looking like a ghost, shaking like a leaf in the wind, held together by the man beside you.

Your hands stopped shaking, receding to an occasional tremor. Your heart still thundered wildly, still agitated from the thrill. Lifting up the hand you held onto the vanity table to test your balance was a bad decision. The moment you took it away, your whole balance left the safety of the wooden block and you swayed to the side, knees buckling under the sudden movement. But he caught you before you could fall into a pile on the ground.

"Fuck, stay put will you," he rumbled, gathering you in his arms to carry you straight to the bed.

He let you down on the mattress gently, placing you against the pillows and sat down next to you, taking your hand in his. His fingers settled on your pulse point, relief washing over him that it was slowly coming down from the high you were on. He did that a lot as you trained, chastising you about keeping yourself at a normal rate since he discovered you were prone to dizzy spells. Even Koru climbed in the bed, sensing something was wrong and nuzzled your thigh in comfort as you took a few more breaths in, this time to stop the leftover palpitations.

Reaching out to touch the side of your face, he swiped at the leftover tears that were still falling free. His fingers brushed away the hair sticking to your face as you focused on clearing the heavy weight in your chest, loosening apart that tight rope breath by breath until you couldn't feel it there anymore. It was gone just as fast as it came.

He cupped your cheek, drawing your eyes to him. His creased brows and the tension in his hold told you he was still worried. You didn't want to, but you leaned into his touch, almost naturally welcoming his comfort and to soothe both of you someway.

"Thank god I found you before something worse happened."

I didn't kick the bucket yet, you swine. And if I ever do, it won't be under your roof.

Feeling too self-conscious, you looked away from him, gaze falling on the mess you made in the room when you barged in, from the carpet around the vanity littered with all kinds of trinkets, darting to the heaps of fabric on top of your work desk. He followed it, a knowing look replacing the worry on his face. You still wanted to put yourself through working on those damn outfits right now.

"You need rest. Those can wait until tomorrow since the meeting is two days from now," he reassured you. "You have time."

"I'm fine," you said, frowning at your scratchy throat.

Were you saying that for him or for yourself? That didn't really matter right now. What mattered was doing something that didn't let you sit and overthink once your mind caught up to you, though it would take a while since it still felt like cotton was pushed around in it in every corner.

"If you didn't just have a panic attack," he started, handing you a glass with water from the pitcher on the nightstand, "I might have just believed you."

"I don't need your worry," you retorted, sitting up to drink the water.

"You're resting. Not up for discussion. If you as much as think of putting a foot out of the bed for anything other than going to the bathroom, I will have you tied to the bed."

"You can't do that."

"Watch me."

Too tired of this back and forth, you turned around to the other side, feeling furious. He treated you like a child in need of a time out session. Well, he might as well watch your backside for all you cared. You were too exhausted to throw a bigger tantrum right now though he did deserve to hear the end of it.

He stayed with you, absorbing the resentment seeping off of you. He deserved the cold shoulder. He wanted to come clean so many times before but there was always that doubt telling him that it would rip the bond you had at the seams and nothing would be able to fix it. He cared about the connection you had. It was the only real thing he had left. He cared so much that keeping things away from you proved harder as time went on.

When Wu walked into his office in a rush this afternoon and told him what he found out, he knew it was time to atone for it. Even if that meant hurting you in the process. Even if it meant you would be mad at him for the rest of your lives.

Dragging a hand over his face with a small groan at his own stupidity, he let his eyes fall on you, taking notice of the steady rise and fall of your back telling him you fell asleep. He got up and draped the covers over you before laying one of the softest kisses on your temple, his silent promise of protection whenever things went wrong between you. That you always had a place to run to when you needed it. Even if you didn't want it anymore, he would always welcome you. Wait for you.

"I'm sorry," he whispered against your hair, taking in the warm rosy scent of it to settle the guilt swimming in his gut a little. "I will explain everything to you soon."

With that he got up, turning for the door. He creaked it open then turned back around once more, spotting the dark ball of fur already laying by your side.

"Make sure she rests," he told the cat who just meowed at him in response, cuddling closer to you with a loud purring noise.

And now he was talking to the cat.

The dawn of a torrential downpour roused you from sleep. The sky ripped open, angry raindrops rapping against the glass violently mad as if to break inside. The wind hastened, howling nature awake. Lightning crackled bathing the room in bright white, followed by the deep rumble of thunder thunder reverberating so loud it shook you awake. It couldn't have been earlier than five in the morning, the world still dark and gray outside your window.

The beginning of a painful headache graced you, throbbing in pace with the heavy rain, splitting your skull at the crackle of lightning. You rolled around the bed on heavy limbs, hand aimlessly tapping the nightstand looking for the water pitcher. With a struggle, you pulled your body up in a sitting position only to frown at the lack of water on the cabinet. Both the pitcher and the glass on top were empty of even the smallest drop of liquid. Great.

Scrambling to the edge of the bed, you held your head, trying to get it to focus on the task at hand - getting water. If you had any chance of getting back to sleep you needed it. Something pawing at your feet grabbed your attention. Koru. She sat there, looking at you with those round balls of bright yellow glowing in the dark, meowing. You moved your leg away only to have her paw at it again and sit on it, meowing louder.

Not you too, you sighed.

You leaned down to give her a soft pet on the head for her caring nature, looking back at the empty glass with a long sigh.

If only you could bring me water, little one.

Suddenly, she got up from your feet and sauntered out through the small crack in the door. You would've followed her if it wasn't for the nauseating feeling rocking you like a boat on a furious sea. So you sat back in the middle of the bed, holding onto your head.

A few minutes passed, rain falling harder against the windows, headache turning into a full-blown migraine. No amount of massage or pressure from your fingers or rolling around the bed in different positions could cure it. Absolutely helpless, that's what I am.

The door cracked slightly ajar. You paid it no mind thinking Koru came back from her spontaneous stroll. Instead of a meow or paws paddling the floor to reach you, you heard lean steps, the rattle of glass and the sound of liquid flowing from one recipient to the other.

The bed dipped in front of you with a weight heavier than Koru's. Confused at who it could be this early, you let your hands fall from your head to look up and find a surprisingly awake Enishi holding out a glass for you, filled with water all the way to the rim.

You took it without a second thought, gulping down the whole thing in one breath. It went down your throat so rough but so soothing, getting rid of the stabbing dryness coating it. Asking for another, he went to pour it as you wiped the leftover drops hanging on the bow of your lips. He handed it back to you sitting back in his spot, joined by your dear black fur of ball that nestled by his leg. Turns out deception runs in the family, you thought, watching the two bond over keeping you in bed at any cost.

Glass back on your nightstand and throat somewhat better, a pang of pain returned, sending you to lay back down under the covers. You hoped you could find some comfort now that you had some water. Wordlessly, he got up and tucked you better under the duvet, drawing it up your back all the way to your nape. He spared one more look at you, cuddled up to sleep with the feline and left, closing the door fully this time, taking the small flicker of light he left you with away with him.

The next time you woke up, it was almost lunch time. The dark storm in the early morning left quietly, but the sky remained dull, devoid of any other color but gray. Just like my soul. The sweet smell of food wafted into your nostrils on barely the first conscious inhale of breath. Your stomach instantly grumbled at the delicious scent, only for you to turn in bed and find said food on a plate on the nightstand.

Blinking away the sleep from your eyes, you sat up examining the contents of the plate - dorayaki pancakes. As big as the palm of your hand, neatly folded at the opening and round with a bunch of filling. His apologetic pancakes. Huh. What is he playing at now?

Reluctant, but hungry, you took a bite, letting the berry jam filling melt in your mouth. He left you orange juice too on the side, tasting refreshing after the sweet brunch. If only his personality was this sweet all the time, though that was a stretch knowing him.

You felt better, either from the multiple sleep rounds you took or the pancakes. Not at one hundred percent, but still much better than you did last night. You had a long list of things to go through - talking with you know who, talking with blondie, a whole lot of talking. But for now, you had enough fuel and energy to get down to work on the outfits for the meeting at the club that was in less than forty-eight hours. Yours especially.

You changed out of yesterday's clothes and picked up some of the mess around the room. Finally sat down at your work desk, you browsed through the materials you had available - red satin, burgundy velvet, indigo satin, some green cashmere and black chiffon. A goth lover's dream. Blondie was right, that book did take a toll on you, among other things.

All things aside, red was your color. You always wore red, no matter the occasion. Even if it was just an accessory, like your mother's pendant that was on you at all times. It was you, in either shade or material. Blazing like a flame on its way to eat half of the world if as much as one gust of injustice blew your way. Crackling to a strong kindle if you were sputtering out in the cold of uncertainty. Drenching everything crimson if you needed to protect something.

You breathed red.

Unfortunately for you, you were left without scraps, only with new, untouched rolls of material, which meant you had to start from zero. You were good at stitching two or more different pieces together, reworking them into something new, but you never worked on something from beginning to end.

Working with a blank canvas was your mother's specialty. You never understood how she just visualized a client's order in one whole standing piece, full of detail and precise flair. The most you ever did from zero was a pair of pants that you had to wear backwards for them to work and not look weird. Sketching wasn't your forte either, much more your father's talent. You did know weaving, stitching, knitting, embroidery, anything that was a basic technique with textiles. But everything else was pure luck of the moment if inspiration somehow happened to hit you. Let's look for some inspiration then.

You walked to the wardrobe in the other corner, pulling it open to look through it hoping to find it there. Scanning all the heaps of clothes, your eyes landed on the dress you made for the ball a few weeks ago - the revamped wedding qipao. Enishi's shocked and appalled reaction flashed in your mind recalling the way you walked out in a new rehabilitated rendition of his expensive golden kimono and that cursed qipao. Chuckling to yourself with a pat on the back at the idea, you studied it a little, feeling like it was too on the flashy, gown side to be reused again, especially for a club. High society clubs required something classier, light, somewhat hot, but modest and combat appropriate all in one. Not a huge checklist at all.

Spreading out all the fabric and some clothes from the wardrobe on the floor, you sat in the middle, looking at all of them. Then you closed your eyes, willing the gods of creativity to give you some. You took a few deep breaths, focusing on visualizing a dress and some details, hoping something would pop into your head if you tried hard enough. Come on, brain. Work with me. After a while, you opened them back up, frowning at the mess of fabric around you with still no idea. That usually worked, especially if it was mission attire. Before you could get up and scour some more, a distant memory hit you like a truck.

A long, long time ago, back in Yokohama, your parents had this really stylish lady as a client. She came in one day, at the recommendation of a friend, looking for a dress for an overseas event. Her specs had some of your current requirements, heavy on the classic, save for the combat and hot features off the list. Your mom worked weeks on that dress, getting it as perfect as it could be. When the lady came by to pick it up and tried it on for one last fitting, she was stunned. The dress fit her like a jewel meant just for her, putting her uniqueness on display like she was part of the royal family.

You yourself fell in love with that dress, asking your mother to make it for you time and time again only for her to refuse. "I will make you one, far more beautiful than that one when you grow older, my little light," you recalled her saying softly.

Well, here I am mom, making it myself.

Grabbing the satin, your usual go-to, you measured the fabric and layered it in the shape of a skirt on a mannequin you bought from the village, measuring the exact diameter of your waist and hips. Marking the start of it, you pinned it to the dummy and worked down the hem line, drawing the drop bigger, pinching the material from top to bottom with needles.

Then you tugged the velvet open, working some of it in the shape of a bodice for the top part. You set that on the mannequin, fixing the rough shapes around and stepped back, looking at the mix to get a bigger picture. It looked okay... but the dark red on light red didn't work at all. The satin was too shiny and the velvet way too dark.

The more you tilted your head on the side, it looked even more mismatched. This is where your father would walk in to say, "I think you should change the colours, darling. It looks like a bed of roses threw up on the mannequin." He wouldn't be wrong.

Okay dad, one shade of red works then.

Whirling back to the mess in the center of your room, you noticed a roll peeking from under your bed. Since it wasn't in the pile on the desk, it must've been one of the items that ended up on the floor last night. You picked it up, rolling it open a bit - ruby velvet. Not too dark and not too light either. The dark shade matched the velvet top on the mannequin but it could work by itself for both a corset top and the longer skirt. Adding some sleeves and pulling the neckline a bit higher. Some ruffles on the bodice to give it more depth and frills on the sides to make it flare...

Okay, this can work. It would do.

The afternoon was in tow, sunlight brimming merrily through your window. You just finished working on the body of your dress and the rough shape, left with sewing the skirt and adding some small details here and there.

Shoulders, back and legs aching from standing too much, you decided to take a breather, laying down on the carpet to stretch your sore limbs. Eyes closed, resting on the warmed patch of sun on the cream carpet, you took a well-deserved break. It felt so good to have the sun on your face, even if it wasn't directly from the outside. It still felt so comforting, relaxing your body and warming you up with much needed serotonin.

Stolen away by the peace of the moment, you failed to notice the incoming company, sliding in your room as quiet as a mouse. Since you had your eyes shut, laid on the floor with arms and legs wide open like a corpse, he was quick to rush to your side to check if you were still breathing. Taken aback at the shift in the air around you, your eyes slowly opened to see him, right above you. His brawny, large palms pressed to the wooden floor on either side of your head, keeping him upright, while his eyes searched yours with concern. You just blinked up at him, confused. Thanks to the length of his arms, the space between you was big, though not big enough to still your rapidly racing heart.

Sitting in the silence of your breaths and the white noise coming from the open window, you just looked at him for a bit. His eyes were no longer dark, lighting up in a softer chocolate tone with the glow of the sun beating from the side. They weren't as intense as yesterday, way more tender and warm now. The usual blue rim on the sides, really noticeable when he was mad, was now a deep amber, complimenting the earthy brown pooling around his pupils. He really had the most beautiful and captivating eyes you've ever seen.

"I thought you dropped dead."

Way to ruin the moment.

"Get off me, mophead," you pushed against his shoulders trying to sit up but he didn't move at all from his position, letting you crash right into his chest. You frantically grabbed at the mounds of his back to not fall backwards, instead diving head first right into the crook of his neck. And he still didn't move.

You clung to him like a koala, eyes darting all over the place in a frenzy because if you looked right ahead, you would be met with that stupid neck of his. The close proximity alone invited you to take a whiff of it, noticing that the woody aroma that regularly hit you first was less present, totally overpowered by the rich, sweet and fruity jasmine. You nearly threw your head back with a moan at how good he smelled. Traitors weren't supposed to smell so good, so addicting.

"Why are you on the floor?" he asked, words rolling so husky off his lips that it had your belly tighten. Your body was no stranger to what that tone could do to you, especially so close to your ear that it shook chills awake down your back.

You didn't reply, distrusting your own voice. That only spurred him to turn his head to you. Before it could turn fully and cage you against his neck, you let go of his back forgetting that the hard wooden floor awaited you. Before hitting your back on it hard, giving yourself another pain you didn't need, one of his arms reached out to catch you, splaying flat on the middle of your back. He was holding the both of you up with just one arm fixed on the floor without a shake or a sway of the strain it took on his muscles. That's hot.

"My back was hurting and it was warm," you replied, gulping down air as you met his eyes again. Warm. So much more warmth than the heat of the sun could ever provide.

"But there's a bed," he stated, watching his brown orbs dart to your lips and back to your eyes a few times. Their rapid movement was almost hypnotic, putting you in a trance. The white and golden colours on the ceiling all swirled behind him, not one quite as powerful and bewitching as his own aura. The only thing that gave you a high so dangerous but so heavenly. A high that nothing else on earth will ever be able to give you. Will I ever be able to quit you?

"There's a bed," you repeated, more like a question than a statement, too stolen by those eyes to think straight. And he caught that. The way your pupils dilated and your lips parted told him you weren't quite here. So his gaze turned playful, preparing for a tease attack you wouldn't be able to get out of.

Lowering you down to the floor, he caged you between his arms again as he bent down, closing the distance between you. Breath caught in your throat, you pulled your arms closer to your chest in reflex and feigned protection, only to see the corner of his lips turn up with a mischievous smirk.

That goddamn smirk.

"Tell me," he started, tongue peaking out from the confines of his mouth to lick his lips, so plump and inviting, in devious teasing, "what's a bed for?"

He was completely taking advantage of your dazed mind, trying to play games with you and you just let him, unable to escape it.

"A bed is for... uhh... sleeping obviously," you replied unsure with a nervous giggle, more focused on how close he was to getting to your lips. They've been aching for him for so long it hurt that he was so close but not moving towards yours. Though his arms were almost fully bent on the elbows beside your head, nose almost touching yours, lips not headed for yours at all.

"Just sleeping?" he quirked a brow, pressing into your body at all the right angles, in all the places that yearned for it. The inner side of his biceps pressed into your shoulders on each side keeping you in place. His defined chest sat right onto your raising breasts, perking up slightly under your top from how much he turned you on. His torso jammed flush to yours, moving up and down, expanding with shallow breaths into each other. His hips dove right into yours, between your legs, feeling the mightiness in his pants bulge right onto your core. If he as much as breathed, it created friction in every single place he touched indirectly, overwhelming you in the worst way possible.

You closed your eyes to keep your breathing from spiraling and try to focus on something else, only to shudder at the feeling of his lips attaching themselves to your jaw. They didn't kiss it, hovering over the sensitive skin instead, blowing hot breaths on it, making your back arch instinctively at the near contact. Near. So near. They simply brushed all the way under it, heading upwards to your earlobe, grazing the side of your ear with temptation as he whispered, " What else?", so quiet and sensual that you whined audibly.

Heart pounding wildly, mind spinning out of control, breathing uneven and fast, your entire body so hungry and lusting for a booty call you didn't even initiate but craved like a feral wolf in heat. The Enishi Yukishiro effect.

"Why are you here?" you rasped, head rolling to the side, so dizzy and full with his presence and the sensory overload.

He loved the effect he had on you, turning you into mush with as much as a stare and his touch that implied his intentions with you were either soft and sweet or tainted by dirt and sin. Right now they were the latter.

"You called me over, remember?" he answered nonchalantly, tilting his head to the side with a grin, lacing his hands together above your head, acting so innocent. As if he didn't turn you on to the point you could jump his bones right there and regret it later.

"For the fitting," he added. The fitting, that's what you needed to focus on.

"Oh, right, the fitting." Sobering up like cold water drenched you instead of heat all over your body, you pushed him harder aside managing to get out from under him.

At last, you were up from that sinful place on the floor. Stretching your arms over your head and clicking your knees, you walked away like nothing happened. His eyes widened at your sudden change in mood, but that grin still sat on his lips when he turned around on the floor to see you better. Heading to the work table to pick up the suit he wore to the ball, you caught the grin turning into a grimace at seeing it again, recalling how uncomfortable it felt on his body that day, constricting even his air flow. You shook your head, giggling at the plain disgust on his face.

"What's so funny?"

"Nothing," you snickered, waving him off.

"Well, something is if you're laughing like a maniac."

"Your face is funny."

Pulling on a scowl that nuked his previous excitement, he got up off the floor, crossing his arms over his chest in disapproval at having to wear it again. He visibly sulked, pulling his bottom lip between his teeth. He truly is the most Gemini man I have ever come across.

"Don't worry," you assured him, pulling the outfit off the hanger. "I will make some adjustments to it and dress it down."

"What adjustments are we talking?" he raised an eyebrow, not liking where this was going.

You walked to him and patted his shoulder in encouragement.

"Get naked, hot stuff."

Handing him the pants, you turned around to give him some privacy to get out of his daily wear and into more proper clothes. You liked kimonos on him, you really did. But a suit and tie made the man look like a model. Okay, maybe you just liked how it compressed his biceps to the point you struggled to not salivate like a dog for treats. Actually, he looks good in anything-

Hearing grunts, you turned around to watch as he struggled to pull up the tailored trousers over his broad, sculpted thighs. Sweet baby Jesus. Pulling on each side he finally managed to pull them around his waist. Though that left you wondering if Wu had to help him that day too and couldn't help from barking a laugh out loud. He threw you another look carrying a fair warning and you stopped, laughing some more on the inside.

Walking over to him, your fingers tapped on the material of his tank top, telling him you wanted it off. No questions asked, it was discarded to the floor, leaving the mightiness of his topless form grace you.

Good god. Did he get more toned since the last time we... yeah, he definitely did.

You traced all the lines on his front with hungry eyes, unable to focus on just one single defined dip of muscle meat, assaulted by the cushiony pecs on his chest right under those bow-shaped collar bones, the flexing biceps on the sides, the abdomen that had more packs that you could count consciously without losing count, and the rest of the muscles he had in places you didn't even know could grow muscles. You had to physically avert your eyes before you had a stroke from how hot and hard your heart was pumping blood through your body at the sight. Including to that aching spot between your legs he grazed moments ago.

Dear lord, the men you put on this earth.

Circling around him, you stopped at his back, studying the ripples of fibrous sinews stretching over his broad shoulders and down his extremely bulky vein-filled arms, trailing down the line of his spine running down into the tailored pants, a pair of back dimples saluting you. He turned his head to the side slightly, watching you get lost in the detailed map of his back, chomping down on a finger nail in focus. He could see right through you, fully aware where your mind ran off to so he chuckled lowly to himself bringing you out of another pheromone induced daze as you shot him a "You're so full of shit" look.

You rounded back to the front, following the deep V of his abdomen falling from each side of his waist joining under the material of the pants. You cursed yourself for not paying more attention to these details before, too occupied with the way he rammed into you without notice on most occasions or in the dark. Reminded of his incredibly stupid confession the previous day that he's been lying to you for longer than he's actually known you, the thirst turned hot with anger in an instant. You weren't going to let his annoyingly handsome face and infuriatingly defined body reel you away from that.

Without a warning you dropped down to your knees before him, catching him off-guard. The rock in his neck bobbed down, looking down at your kneeling form with intentions that were less than fashionable and more into the sexual side of things. You caught that look, planning to throw it right in his face.

Getting closer to his groin, you hooked your fingers in the band of his pants, grazing the skin of his lower abs. The small muscles flexed together in response to the cool brush of your fingers. Then you pulled the pants upwards in a swift move instead of downwards like he probably expected, slightly crushing his groin, at which he let out a grunt of displeasure.

As if you cared about that right now. He sensed the change in mood and knew exactly why you did that. It was payback.

"I guess I deserved that."

You spared him a look of disdain, moving to the side to mark where the band of his pants needed to be pulled a little tighter since they were too loose on his waist. Pulling a safety pin out, you bunched up the extra material pinching it, accidentally and a little on purpose also pinching his skin. You hoped he felt that, even if he held back from showing it. Keep your masculinity intact then.

"You lied to me."

"It wasn't my plan to."

You moved your hand down the leg of his pants, making a mark where they needed to be shortened on each side. He was relatively tall, but the pants ran way longer than his height, coming down all the way to his toes, almost covering them. You rolled them over to his ankles, plying them together with another safety pin for future hemming, along with needles on some other spots on the seams that needed to be sewn again.

Then you got up, walking behind him and took the measuring tape to size up his shoulders from one end to the other. You wanted to see if you could adjust the shirt too, since he kept complaining it was too tight. You stared a big hole into the back of his head as you continued.

"Lying is a choice."

"Not entirely."

"You made that choice."

"I didn't want to make that choice."

Tired of this constant, incessant, frustrating and really idiotic back and forth you walked back to his front, arms crossed over your chest, eyes boring into him with pure, unleashed rage. You looked at him a lot more differently now - less like someone you confided into with your hopes and dreams before, seeing someone who couldn't fathom normal communication like normal people do. He wasn't normal. No, no, he was abnormal, but that wasn't the problem. The problem was that he couldn't understand you and where you were coming from. He simply refused to do the simplest act of showing a person he cared, because he clearly did, otherwise he wouldn't be standing here playing dress-up and being poked by your needles.

"What do you really want from me, Enishi?"

His gaze fell from you to the ground, staying quiet. The man who always had his words with him was suddenly rendered speechless. Just like I thought.

Sighing, you walked to the bed to continue your work since talking apparently lead you nowhere with him. You picked up the original shirt he had underneath the suit, thinking of ways to make it work without having to buy another one. Because that's what people do. They talk and find ways to make it work as complicated and tangled as things seemed. But you'd be damned if you kept being the only one who tried to make it work. Whatever this it was between you.

You sensed he made a move to you, possibly coming to cage you in his space again and act all broody, leaving you with no way to deny whatever ideas he wanted to plant in your head again. You've done this trust and honor rodeo once and it was more than enough.

"Don't move," you said firmly, without turning around to him. "I don't think you want those pins and needles inside your skin all at once." Though he did deserve them. But even if they dug deep into each inch of his skin it still wouldn't compare to the pain he caused in your own heart. You can't compare the pain of a broken heart with that.

"I want to help you find your parents."

Red. That's what you saw when you whirled around to him, anger running in your veins hot and wild as you closed the space between you and got up in his face.

"Then help me find them. Stop making empty promises and do it."

"I'm trying."

"I've tried enough," you looked away from him, keeping to your own corner.

His hand came up to lift your chin, turning your face back to him. Turning your head away was no use. He held you in place with just the pads of his fingers, searching your eyes for the real reason you were acting like this. This wasn't about your parents or him lying to you. Something else hung on your tongue that you weren't saying.

"What do you want from me, Miyu?"

Your hand latched on his wrist with the intention to pull it away from your face. Instead, it wrapped around it, simply holding it. You couldn't find it in yourself to let go of him once you got to hold him.

"Why bother telling you? You won't give it to me," you gritted out, clicking your jaw in fury.

"What if I will?"

"You can't." You won't.

The way you said it implied he couldn't. Not right now anyway with all that was happening and the fact that he took his pride more seriously than your feelings. So of course he took it the wrong way. He was a man after all. If he wasn't intimidated by something he didn't feel like one.

"But he can."

"Oh my god," you slapped his hand away, "this is exactly what I mean. You can't get your head out of your own ass enough to see me without the other alpha or beta males lingering around me. You don't want to see me because you're too full of yourself to let other people in. You refuse to see me because I don't mean anything to you." You pushed a finger in his chest with each statement, getting most of your feelings out there in the open in the hopes he would finally understand you.

"I see you."

"YOU DON'T!" you yelled.

"I DO," he growled, grabbing both sides of your face to bring it closer. His hot breath ghosted over your lips in agony, fear, rage, and every single negative feeling he instilled in you because he felt them all the same. His hold on you only got stronger with the wave of tension you were both riding without a safety net. A safety net that got shredded to pieces the minute he lied.

"Let go," you pushed on his hands, threatening to draw fresh blood if he didn't let go.

"No," he rasped back.

"No?"

"No."

"Get. The. Fuck. Out. Of. My. Room."

"Your room is part of my house."

This was turning into a screaming match quicker than you wanted it to, but it was all his fault. Pushing and pulling on you like a possession instead of a fellow human being. He turned that small, insignificant gust of wind that shook your bond into a fucking hurricane that was ready to destroy it. None of you were backing down from your egos this time. You've had enough of his selfishness and the keeping in the dark. You wanted answers. Answers he couldn't give you, refused to give you.

Why do we have to fight a stupid war as if we're not on the same side? Why does it have to always be so hot and cold with you?

With a huff, he let go of you, hands balled at his sides. You stepped away, going back to the table to grab the tools and get started on the pants before you exploded. He stood his ground. He wasn't leaving until you were done with him. It took more than an argument to make him leave in spite.

You kneeled back on the ground and worked on the material, not another word exchanged between you for the rest of the fitting. The next one he even dared to let out would have your fist right in his face. This might be his house, his room, his money. But the heart that hurt was yours. Not his.

After you checked that the vest and the blazer in the ensemble still fit him, he changed back into his normal clothes and left without a word. Blondie was next up. Hopefully it wouldn't be another yelling contest. There was no telling how much you could keep being peaceful today.

Cho walked in quietly, waiting for your instructions. He took his designated place in the middle of the room, wearing that olive suit you chose for him on your last market visit. The one that made him look like husband material. You got to work in silence, not a joke or insult thrown around like usual. He could tell something was wrong from how quiet you were and how your teeth chewed on that poor lip of yours, soon drawing blood if you didn't stop.

"Are you okay?"

You looked up, caught by the small worry in his eyes, so soft and brown that you could melt. You gave him a small smile and a nod, not at all okay but quietly telling him to let it go. You went back to working in peace, doing the hem on his pants right on the spot, since it only needed some small adjustments, rendering the waistline good to go.

"Sooooo - ouch," he started, yelping in pain as one of your needles poked his wrist accidentally. You apologized, trying to be more careful. "Can we talk now?"

The universe is having a laugh today. You gathered the material of the long sleeves of his blazer around your palms, trying to finish the last stitch at the bottom before you moved to the other.

"I want that too, making things right between us," you started with a sigh, recalling where he left off the other day before you got interrupted. "I just didn't know where to start talking about it all," you played with the material, thumbs smoothing it out over his wrist. You tried to think of what to say next but came up entirely blank.

Grabbing the bits you cut up off the floor, you threw them on the table and went to sit on the bed. He joined, sitting down beside you, shoulder to shoulder. Letting out another sigh, you shifted to lean your head on his shoulder, feeling comfortable enough to sit and think like that. You just needed a minute to collect your thoughts.

He was one of the few souls you made a connection with. Back then, it was all a mix of teenage angst, figuring out life, and fighting off crime lords of all sizes with a dash of falling in love for the first time. He was danger in all forms, kind of a lunatic and a major walking talking red flag, all in one package. You wanted one, you got all three. Now, he was oddly comfort to you, still the same soul you could tell anything to. Still the same guy that threw himself headfirst into something without thinking, a lot more mature about his feelings. He just saw you for who you are in this moment, not what you were or what you could be. He was still a lunatic in his own way. That wasn't going to go away anytime soon. But you wouldn't really change that about him.

Sitting here in his calm presence, touching knees and shoulders together, you knew that whatever this was, it was so much more than just a simple friendship. You've been through things together that would make others crap their pants. Those things tied you to each other in a bond that would never be broken. The past few years apart made it stretch to the point it nearly broke and you didn't want that. And whether that was more because of the way he acted now or the feelings you had for him before, it was a good question. But that didn't really matter. Because they were still here, still as strong and lingering as the day he left.

You accepted that he was going to be a part of you for as long as you live. But will he be a permanent one? That was the one big million gold lingo question you couldn't find an answer to.

Were you still mad at him for leaving you that night? Yes. Was it something that would keep you away from trying to mend what was broken? No. Not in the slightest. So at least you got that figured out.

Exhaustion came over you out of nowhere. Tired from working on all the outfits simultaneously and yet another heated encounter with Enishi, you passed out on his shoulder, crashing from working so long on autopilot. Your head fell to his lap like deadweight and he almost panicked if it wasn't for your snoring breaking through the silence.

This girl, he shook his head.

He came over last night, knowing something was wrong since you walked out of the office so fast. But mophead was already at your side, comforting you the way he wished he could. Being your support like he wanted to be. There was no point in him staying by the door longer than need be so he left with a heavy heart. Right now, he could tell you were pushing yourself way more than you could take it with your parents, the tailor job, even that one silver fox down the hall. So he just let you sleep, glad that he could at least be of some help to you for a little while.

Your head sat so uncomfortable on his lap with your neck bent at a weird angle over his thigh, that it made him laugh. Back when you were still a team, he used to catch you sleeping even on sturdy tree branches or flat against the walls, without a worry in the world. He snickered seeing that your habit of sleeping in the weirdest positions known to mankind hasn't changed at all. Sliding a hand under your head, he raised it up a little when you scrunched your nose in your sleep.

Cautious not to wake you, he propped a pillow under your head letting you rest a little more comfortably even as your legs dangled off the edge of the bed. He moved to let your hair loose from that tight messy bun, struggling with the hair tie until it snapped in his hands, all of your hair falling in your face. He threw the elastic band somewhere in the pile of discarded materials on the floor, hoping you would never find it. Leaning over to see you were still asleep, blowing the locks in and out of your face, he let out a breath of relief, knowing how godzilla you got if someone woke you up. He gathered all the strands of hair and laid them on your back, gently carding through it as you just slept.

It could wait, he thought. For you, I can wait even more.

Feeling watchful eyes on the back of his neck, sharp and poignant, he turned right in time to catch the gray-haired man at the door like he somehow summoned him. He watched the way you were perched on the blonde's lap in comfort, sleeping the day away. The blonde fought a snicker his way, wanting to show him how much he enjoyed his torment. But by the time he looked back from your sleeping form, he disappeared as quick as he appeared. He looked at you, eyebrows drawn in a frown even in your sleep, hand clutching at the material of his pants. That told him all he needed to know.

The sun was already down when you woke up, rather disoriented and confused at why your hair was everywhere but in the bun you put it in. Waving that off together with the man you slept on, you went to get some food since you've been cooped up in your room for too long. Of course the blonde followed in your steps like a duckling, stomach grumbling way louder than yours.

You made something quick, trying not to attract more hungry souls into the kitchen since there wasn't enough to make food for everyone. Going for some quick tomato pasta, you worked on the sauce while he made the table. The pasta boiled quick and the sauce was done before you knew it. You sat down and dug in together straight from the pot, finally catching up properly since you didn't get one moment alone that didn't include teasing or an overly exaggerated display of jealousy from Enishi.

Cho started, telling you about his missions in the time you've been apart and how he encountered the most incredulous people, lost his swords and how he fell out with the Ten Swords. Funny mishaps from his side that ruined most of his missions had you clutching your stomach from how hard you laughed. Close calls with death had you slow down on your food, heart clenching in anger that he was so careless, that you almost didn't meet again. Mentions of really idiotic stuff had you smack him repeatedly for daring to laugh them off, nagging him about his life choices that were often done with half a braincell.

When it was your turn, you told him about the relatively recent chapters of your life, jumping over your depressed pancake days. You talked about your new found love for cooking and how the gang ate your food like it was sent from heaven or something. And he could tell you loved the small attention it got even if you would never admit it. You told him about the way you tried working on clothes from time to time mostly to keep the memory of your parents alive. He knew how determined you were to carry that legacy with you, though you didn't accept it yet. Then you told him about the missions you went on and how they ended in the most odd ways, especially since you joined Enishi.

Enishi up. Enishi down. Left, right, forwards, backwards. Each mention of the gray-haired man had him look down in his plate in jealousy, wishing he was the one you had so much fun with. He wished you were still going on adventures together. Then he remembered it was because of him that wasn't happening. Because he left.

You didn't go into the obvious things that still hung in the air but at least you caught up on the other more positive things that you missed in each other's lives. Finished with your pasta, you went and brought over the leftover pancakes for some dessert. You dug in more confident than you did this morning, savouring the delicacy fully since you didn't know when you will get to eat these apologetic pancakes again, though Enishi fucked up a shit ton lately and there wasn't enough pancake batter to atone for it.

Cho extended a hand to grab one but you slapped it away, circling the plate with your arms protectively. "Give me one," he pleaded.

"No. These are mine and mine only."

"I can assure you those two will not be missed," he pointed to the small ones on the side, hand inching towards them. You shoved them both in your mouth along with the one you were eating, puffing your cheeks up to prove you weren't giving any of them away.

He knew why you were so protective over them - mophead made them for you. You barely talked to each other, avoiding each other for the past few days and doing everything in your power to keep to your corners like you would fuse and blow up if you sat in the same room for too long.

This morning, he was woken up by the smell of the very pancakes you were currently gobbling down faster than lightning. Thinking it was you whisking up the sweet breakfast, he nearly barged in the kitchen only for his hand to stop on the door, shocked to find mophead at the stove instead, struggling to fold the dough together without the jam leaking out. He would've laughed at the way he threw the pan upwards but it would've put him in trouble and he genuinely didn't want to face a sleepless demon that early.

So he walked away on an empty, upset stomach, but delighted at the "Fuck's sake" and "Jesus Christ" Enishi was throwing around. Putting his entertainment aside, he knew if this went on for longer the mansion would become the trenches.

"You need to talk to him."

"What?" you looked up from the pancakes, cheeks still full of them, some jam leaking from the side of your lips.

"You need to talk to mophead," he leaned over and wiped your lips with a tissue. "Just kiss and make up already."

"There's nothing to kiss or make up about," you shrugged, shoulders sagging on the back of the chair defeated on the whole Enishi subject.

"You're like two prepubescent teenagers throwing tantrums left and right," he started, laying a hand on your shoulder in support. "Respectfully, grow the fuck up."

"Excuse you, I am more mature than both of you together."

"Really? Cause that's not what I'm seeing."

"Then humor me," you leaned forward, "what are you seeing, all mighty and all knowing Cho Sawagejo?" He laughed heartily at the pun.

"Thank you for the compliment but that's not important. What is important is that I see a really beautiful woman, aware of what she wants, hiding behind the doubt that he created between you."

That hit the nail on the head way too quick. The small flirty remark didn't go unnoticed tinting your cheeks pink. Unable to process that you were actually doing this, you asked him for advice. "Well, what do you suggest I should do?"

"Talk it out. All of it. Or at least some of it. You can't keep doing this to yourselves as if the problem will magically fix itself if you just ignore it. So just tell him what hurts. If he's not as dense as he seems he will listen. If he doesn't," he paused to roll up his sleeves, "I'll make him."

"Make him what?" you laughed. "Do a dance or something?"

"Whatever my dear princess desires." Not the princess thing again. It made you go all mushy inside. "Oh, shut up you sweet talker."

"I know you love it," he winked. "You should get your eyes checked. They're doing a weird blinking thing," you laughed.

Okay, talking did help. Maybe he does deserve some pancakes. Not these ones though. I'll make him some later.

A stroll around the mansion helped you clear your head for a bit, getting your jumbled thoughts in a much better order. Doing the last rounds before you got back to work, you passed by the armory when a hand pulled you inside and the door shut tight behind you. Ready to throw hands at whoever dared to lay their hands on you like that, you came face to face with the very devil you were trying to steer clear of, scowl on his face noticeable even in the barely illuminated room.

"You've been avoiding me."

"I have not," you deadpanned going back to the door to turn the knob only to find that the door was locked.

"Yes, you have and you're not getting out of this room until we talk."

"Okay, maybe I have. And I have nothing to talk about with you."

"Oh, I think you do."

Placing your head against the door, you let out a deep breath of desperation. You really didn't want to talk it out now of all times. Today consisted of way too much talking. That and the fact that you were fed up with him and his constant, macho display of arrogance, coyness and everything else that was relatively manly and wrong with him.

Your head was still a mess and you were angry at him for acting like that other dimwit as if they knew how you felt and what went through your head. News flash, they had no idea because you yourself had no idea. You needed time to figure it out but they refused to give it to you. So if anyone needed timeout to sit and talk about their feelings in a room full of guns it was them two. Although, on second thought, that didn't sound like such a good idea.

You heard steps shifting closer behind you until they stopped. His hands came to sit on your forearms spinning you around to him. But you couldn't face him.

"I'm sorry," he spoke lowly, sounding honest for once. You had a hard time believing he actually was.

"You say that now but that wasn't what I felt from you for the past few days."

"I know," he said looking down at the floor, hands sliding down to hold your wrists, then his long fingers intertwined with yours. If you weren't so angry and upset with him you would've enjoyed the feeling more, letting him hold you properly, maybe even holding him back.

"Talk to me," he placed his forehead on yours and closed his eyes. Having him so close, right there with you, made some of the earlier rage drift away.

"I am," you exhaled, closing your own, breathing in his sweet scent. "What's going on with you, Enishi? You were so close and now you're so far away."

There was something about him being near you that made you forget everything, including why you were mad at him in the first place. One of the moments of bare vulnerability you had once in a blue moon. Until he opened his mouth and ruined the one moment of peace you got together in so long.

"I need him to leave. Before I tear him to shreds."

You pulled away shaking his hold off of you in an instant. So this was the issue. He was so fucking full of himself that it pissed you so much.

"This again?" you asked in disbelief that you were having the exact same conversation in your room a few hours ago, and every day for the past week.

"Yeah, this again. It's been almost four days and I would like to know why the fuck he's still here."

"We're going to the Shanghai Club tomorrow, as a trio, and then he's gone. We can really use the extra help considering he knows the situation as much as you do." You took a step towards him. "Why does it bother you so much?"

Why was he so hellbent on Cho leaving? I don't stomach him either sometimes but I like having him around. Was this still about competing with him?

"Is someone jealous?" you asked with a small grin. That only pushed his buttons further.

"This isn't about me being jealous!" he threw his hands up in annoyance. "Is that what you want to hear so badly?" he took one step towards you. "That I'm jealous?" another rushed and heavy step in your direction. You backed away from him. "What if I am?" he got so close that your next step backwards had the back of your thighs hit the table behind you. "What are you gonna do about it?" He lifted you up on the table and held you in place, hands digging into your side with possession, breathing heavy with lust, eyes ripping into yours with the hunger of a predator.

"I don't think you want to see me jealous, Miyu."

The way he growled your name with a deeper tone than you were used to hearing from him, so far from his calm and collected persona, shook you to the depths of your core. But not in a good way. He was being possessive. Treating you like you were his. Your heart pounded for him, your head reminding you again that you weren't his for him to act like this. That this was not the Enishi you knew. This would either end in hitting the bed in anger and frustration like the night of the casino mission, or in another screaming match. Pacing the scene, it seemed like the latter.

This was an uncoordinated tango of love and hate where you both stepped on each other to see who would come up on top instead of doing it together, dancing to the never-ending music in sync. You would never be in sync with him at this rate. Your rhythms were off in the worst way possible.

"You're right, I don't. But I also don't want to see you lose it like this over someone who doesn't deserve it. For a fucking bet of all things."

"You know about the bet?" he asked, rough tone falling down a notch.

You pushed him away and got off the table heading to the door. You've had enough of his shit. Why was it so hard to just admit to his feelings and tell you what he felt for you was real and not just something in your head? That he wasn't playing with you. That those unsaid things, his touches, his words weren't just foul play. But he wouldn't. He couldn't.

"Unlock the door," you asked nicely, though your hand started trembling on the knob.

"You're not going anywhere. Did he tell you about the bet?" the betrayal in his voice was poignant, stabbing deep.

The bet was about you. What did it matter who you heard it from? Why did it matter what everyone else thought? Why was it so fucking important to blame everything on someone else instead of owning up to it? Why are you being such an asshole about it?

"I don't give a flying fuck about that stupid bet of yours." There were unshed tears threatening to spill out with every passing second and you weren't going to let them out in front of him. He pissed you off beyond prevail and thought he could get away with manhandling you like that all this time. If anything, he wasn't worthy of seeing your tears.

"Enishi, unlock the fucking door," your whole body shook with rage at this point.

It had to stop now - this waging war, the pushing and pulling and throwing each other off a cliff like that was all your relationship consisted of. Maybe Cho was right and a fuck would do you both some good. But what then? After that? You'd just be left with more questions and more shards dug deep in your heart while he would just continue being his stoic, ice cold self.

He hesitated moving to the door until he saw the way you bit your lip and clutched your hand behind your back, trying to hide the tremor. He went too far. Way too far.

"This isn't over," he went to open the door, holding it open for you. He looked at you as if there was going to be more of this in the future.

"I hate you," you muttered, looking him straight in the eyes, before you took off to your room.

Those were the last words he ever wished to hear coming out of your mouth. With each stride you took, getting farther away, each word plunged deeper into his chest like a knife. The last thing he wanted to do was hurt you like that. But he did it. Heartlessly and cold.

Spending half of the night cooped up in bed trying to finish that book, you spent the other working on the outfits for the mission. Well, finishing blondie's and yours... Enishi's had a teeny tiny problem... actually, a very disastrous problem. Catastrophic sounded more like it.

Still enraged with him and wondering where he usually got the audacity from, you got to work on his suit a little too emotional, costing you his pants. You didn't mean for it to happen. You just dove into the material, turning them inside out to put an elastic band through them so they wouldn't fall off his ass but the minute you put the scissors to the lining to undo the hem stitch, it went through to the other side, putting a horizontal hole big enough for two fingers to go through.

You held the hole to eye level, eye twitching at the chaos that one simple hole made. Not giving into despair yet, you tried to sew it back together, which worked. Up until you dug the needle too hard making yet another hole. With a groan you threw them to the floor, banging your head against the work table a few times.

I can't let him go out with a hole the size of Antarctica in his pants. Bang. But I don't have pants of the same color either and even if I did they won't match the material of the vest and the blazer. Bang. I am such an idiot. Bang. Dear god send help.

Sad, shameful and more rage-filled, you looked around the mess in your room. No amount of cleaning could keep it together, just like your head for that matter. Groaning, you got up and went to pick up the scattered pieces of fabric with dread. What the fuck do I do now? Do I give him blondie's suit and make him wear something else? That would've been a great idea if there wasn't such a big difference in their heights.

As you reached the vanity table, a roll of what looked like fabric fell down, rolling open on the floor until it unfurled completely all over the carpet. Heavy indigo satin. Crouching down beside it, your fingers padded over the nearest corner, feeling the material. It was sturdy, soft, shimmering different shades of blue either way you turned it. Where have you been hiding all this time?

Gaping back at the ruined pair of black tailored pants still on the floor in a heap, you wondered if you could replicate the seam work on this one enough to make them somewhat wearable. It would be tricky considering it's light seam work on heavy material but it was doable. But that also meant copying the whole pattern of the suit, vest and blazer included. Three entirely different pieces, all worked from nothing with less than a day left till the meeting. Starting from zero...it could work or fail big time. You picked up the material and freed up another mannequin, placing the now unusable suit on another one next to it, getting your needle cushion ready for battle.

The things I do for you, mophead. Raise the paycheck, will you?

You woke up early for once, was what you would say if you did sleep. Busy fighting with fabrics and threads all night, you did fall asleep at one point but on the floor, huddled in a pile of material instead of the blankets. Waking up to the soft sound of meowing, you found Koru next to you, cuddled in a ball under the satin roll. Her head raised to meet you before it fell back on her paws.

"Hello, little friend," you cooed petting her fur.

Rubbing the sleep from your eyes, you sat up looking around, finding the room still drenched in darkness, the only source of light being the lamp near the work table. The sun wasn't up yet and sleep wouldn't catch you even if you tried anyway.

Grabbing a blanket and your boots, you huddled up and padded the halls silently, going outside in the garden, sitting in one of the frozen wooden chairs. The wind blew harshly on your face, whirling through your hair with a chill you could feel deep down in your bones. Snow was past its due time, its smell hanging in the crisp air, but there was no sign of it yet besides this cold wall of weather and gray clouds that just refused to leave. Just the kind of mood reflected in the mansion lately.

Throwing your head backwards with a sigh, you closed your eyes. Your chest felt heavy. The clothes on you felt heavy. The very water you chugged down moments ago in the kitchen seemed heavy, stuck in your throat, unable to trickle down inside. Something about the upcoming mission made you uneasy. More uneasy than you've ever felt, beaten down by what ifs.

What if this was another ghost track that would lead nowhere? What if this time someone got badly hurt? What if everything was in vain? What if -

"You're up early, madame," said a voice from your right, putting a stop to your rapidly firing train of thoughts.

You opened your eyes to see who sat down beside you - Wu, dressed in layers warmer than the ones of your blanket covers. The old man gave you a court nod and you smiled at him, happy to see a different face for a change.

"I could say the same about you."

"It is my duty to be up early."

"Oh, that's right," you chuckled, eyes falling back to the ground.

Another gust blew as the silence fell comfortingly between you. You drew in a breath letting it out in a steam cloud, watching as it dissipated in the air before another one took its place.

"Is there something on your mind, madame?"

"I wonder what isn't on my mind."

The old man smiled sympathetically at you, as if he happened to know just how chaotic your mind was right now just by looking at the way you were aimlessly drawing patterns in the ground with the heel of your boots.

"I take it master is giving you a hard time?"

"If anything he's about thirty percent of what's giving me a hard time." Wu gave you a knowing look, convinced that there was more to that confession. "Okay, maybe more than that."

"I'm not going to throw water at the parched ground and say he had it hard because something tells me you already know that," he started. You shifted in your seat, looking forward to have a second opinion from someone who's been around these parts longer than you have, nodding for him to continue.

"What I can say is that he doesn't always mean what he says. He's normally calculated in all he does, thinking it through over and over, but there are times where his sense of righteousness takes a stand without him wanting it to, hurting the very people he wants to protect."

"It still doesn't make it any less than what it is," you shook your head returning your eyes back to the ground.

"And what is that, madame?"

"That he hurt me," you whirled around to him quicker than you wanted to, thing at which the man could only grin. "Wow, that came out easier than I thought it would."

His smile grew wider and turned knowing with more wise advice to give.

"We often bottle up how we feel inside and add to it as time goes on. It's not easy to be straightforward with your honest feelings but it's often what can save you."

He was right. Though it didn't justify the consistent lack of understanding, it did explain the conflict going on inside his head. Because it was the same one going on in yours.

"Thank you, Wu."

"That's quite alright, madame."

Offering him a tight-lipped smile, you patted his arm in gratitude. He was like a paternal figure you missed having around. He often popped his head in your door to check how you were doing, you went to the market for food together, or always plotted behind Enishi's back with something. In a way, you were glad he had someone looking out for him all these years, guarding his back in the impenetrable fortress he built around himself.

"I'm heading down to the market," he announced, standing up from beside you. "Do you need anything, madame?"

"Yes, I do in fact," you nodded, trying to piece together a mental list of everything you needed, not just food wise, but material wise. "Actually, I'll just come with you."

You ran to the market with Wu, splitting up between buying food and getting the boys new shirts since you couldn't alter the ones they had no matter how hard you tried. The material was too prone to damage so you just left them alone, noting down their measurements on a piece of paper that you were currently passing to the lady in the shop at the end of the village, where you bought Cho's suit. Luckily, she still had a few models up to size.

Paying her, you took the bag with the shirts from her hold with a thank you and rushed down to the market to help Wu with the rest of the shopping. The sun was barely rising when you got back, going straight into the kitchen to make some food for everyone. Wu stayed to help you, laying out the table and foiling up some of the food for later too.

The rest of the day went by in a frenzy, running between the kitchen and the sink filled with dishes to the brim like you cooked for a wedding, feeding Koru and finishing up the last details on your dress, too busy to sit and think about another growing pit of unease in your gut.

Afternoon rolled around quick, finding you running about to call the boys over for the final touches on their suits. Knocking on Enishi's door, you found him freshly showered just as he walked out of the bathroom. Relaying the info from the doorframe without sparring him another look, you headed for the blonde's room. From the sound of it, he was still in the shower, taking his sweet time. You banged on his door hard getting sworn at.

"Be in my room in ten minutes or we're leaving without you," you yelled, hoping the urgency of your voice carried over the running water.

"Okay, mom," he yelled back, charming as always.

"Your mom would whoop your ass," you mumbled.

You got back to your room, pulling out their outfits and smoothing out the shirts, looking for any neglected lumps or thread that wasn't where it needed to be. It wasn't long before they walked in, throwing open both doors as they regarded each other coldly. Turning around at the sound, you nearly got a heart attack at seeing both of them only with a towel around their waists, hair still wet, droplets of water running freely down two different but very appetizing packs of abs. Miyu, focus. Choosing to move rather than speak for fear your voice might betray you, you motioned them to the middle of the room, handing them the suits.

Cho pulled out his, marveling at the little extra details you added. On top of adjusting the olive suit to a more fitted form, you added golden cuffs matching the buckles on his boots. Turning it over he saw a pair of stitches in the same golden color under the cuffs on each side instantly recognizing what they were - small twin katanas crossing each other, one of his signature moves.

You sat back watching his face light up with a smile of adoration, sending back a smile of your own. Turning to the other, you saw the look of confusion on his face at the suit shimmering a different shade of blue depending on the intensity of the sunrays bathing the room in warmth.

"I had a few... issues with the other one," you clarified, scratching the back of your neck nervous at what he thought of it.

He said nothing, inspecting the fabric attentively, rushing to the cuffs to be met with glinting silver. Turning it over, he let a small, barely there smile twitch the corners of his lips upwards, more to himself but you caught it. He ran his thumb over his own stitches - a small silver ball on each side, resembling his earring.

They might have been annoying, rash, infuriating even most of the time, but they were both your boys. You wouldn't have it any other way. They were the only ones you could count on to go to battle with. And that was your own silent promise of protection to them.

You waited until they dressed up, going around them for the last adjustments, one at a time. You started with the blonde, fixing the cinch on the waistline of his pants so the shirt didn't look too lumpy or too tucked in. Taking the vest, you helped him wear it, buttoning it from the bottom to the last one on top.

Too engrossed in finishing up, you came up to see him smiling down at you, flashing you a flirty wink, fully aware that you had an audience. You giggled back, thankful for the good vibes coming from at least one person in the room. Motioning him to the vanity, you worked through the tangles in his hair getting it to look more like hair than a bird's nest. You threw his old mess of a bandana and made him another one from scraps, setting it around his head. All that was missing was his full length dark brown coat and he was runway ready.

Done and dusted with the blonde, you sent him away to take Enishi's place on your bed, calling him over. He was surprisingly already dressed up, except for the vest and the jacket. If the weather wasn't as cold, you'd have him go out only in that shirt and the pants currently glowing azure like the sea. The top fit him perfectly, not too tight or too large, just spot on, hitting all the requirements in comfyness, movement and charm.

That shirt looked like an expensive piece of art on him, so flattering on his bulky form, the tousled edges and ivory shade taking it close to sculpture material. He didn't just make art, he was art. Though quite an impatient one at that.

He fought with the buttons on the sleeves of his shirt, trying to close them only to have the little fuckers fall between the pads of his fingers, getting lost in the entirety of his big hand. Coming to a stop in front of him, you smacked his hand away and pulled the sleeve in your grasp, closing the studs easily on first try. You patted down the sleeves from the shoulder down, smoothing out the shirt to its full length and beauty since you didn't have the luxury to iron it.

You helped him into the vest and the jacket, buttoning them up for him just like you did for the blonde. He watched you closely, gaze so focused on your face making it almost impossible to focus. Too intense for the slight shake of your fingers, that look made a finger slip off the jacket button you were trying to close, ripping it off the material and in two.

Hell to the no. With a gasp, you picked it up from the floor trying to figure out how it cracked. Putting the two halves next to each other, it was barely there but it was bright as day - the start of a crack right at the top of the button, slicing through the needle holes.

Why did I not notice it before? I swear I worked on his suit so much, checking everything again and again and it wasn't there before.

Sensing a meltdown he would rather not be part of, Cho stepped out of the room, taking the good vibes out with him.

"You've got to be joking," you let out, running a frustrated hand through your hair.

There wasn't time for this. You still had to squeeze in a shower and fixing yourself up and checking the last bits of your dress, since no one can do all of that for you. A faulty, on the face mishap on your first ever creation top to bottom pausing it all.

He saw you rub the outline of the broken pieces of the button with regret, teeth chewing down on your lip with a pout.

"It's okay."

"No, it's not. Just... just stay here."

Running to the work table, you pulled open all cabinets and drawers looking for a blue button matching the rest on the suit. You found one, though in a different shade of blue that stood out from the others. You couldn't run back out to the market for another one right now. It would have to do.

Taking a needle and some leftover thread, you went back to him and started sewing the button in place of the one that lay in pieces on the table. Just like your nerves, but those were on the cold floor, long in pieces.

Your hands shook, rushing to get it done so you could go and wash up and get ready. But that thread simply refused to go through the needle, dodging every attempt at taking it through the ear, adding to the stress gripping you in waves again. Just get the fuck inside the damn ear, you begged the thread that continued declining your pleas.

Stopping, you laid your head on his chest, looking down at the floor. Your heart was beating fast in your chest again, tremor in your hands threatening to reach the rest of your body. If you didn't calm down now you risked another panic session and there wasn't time for it.

He didn't move, letting you sit there, speaking up deep and collected.

"Breathe."

A simple word that calmed you down instantly like a tranquilizer. You took a deep breath in, letting it out with some of the worry you were feeling, invisible heavy weight falling off your shoulders.

"Try again."

You tried again, this time getting the thread through the needle successfully. The new button was attached in place of the broken one in no time, going to size up the rest of his outfit.

Relatively pleased with the front, you gestured him to turn around and he complied, so you could fix the twisted collar. Getting on your tip toes, you rolled it over properly, patting down the material around his nape. Your hand trailed down from it to lay in the middle of his back, sitting flat. Something told you to keep it there, feeling the beat of his heart for as long as you could. If only we weren't involved in this mess. With another sigh, you let go, stepping away from him.

Grabbing your dress, a towel and everything else you needed, you left for his room to have one of the fastest showers in history. You washed up quickly, rubbing away the stench of kitchen from your hair and your body, replacing it with the first shampoo mix you could find. Once freshened-up, you wrapped your hair in a towel, moving to fix your eyebrows and pluck any other hairs that sat cozy where they shouldn't be. You then dabbed some powder on your cheeks to give them more color, followed by some lip balm on your lips that you found at the market on a good bargain.

Walking out of the bathroom, you took the dress off the hanger and shimmied into it carefully not to rip a seam or make more damage. Fixing it on your body, you walked to the mirror in the corner taking it in.

You ended up working with the ruby velvet rolls for the entire dress. The bodice was a sweetheart corset hugging the shape of your chest and breasts, worked in with a double inner layer for better strength. You didn't go too far on the corset boning, using only a few overlaying stripes of material and steel straws you took from another corset. Falling down your torso smoothly it stopped at your hips, coming down in a V shape, letting the rest of the skirt material fall from your lower waist down to the ground. A slit ran on the side all the way to your upper thigh, allowing for movement in case things happened. They always happened. You also made sleeves, starting from the overturned neckline, hugging part of your collar bones and your shoulders, falling down to your wrists to keep you warm. You couldn't leave it alone and added some small details to yours too - small vines of roses in a deeper red went down the stitch of the sleeves, the back sides of the corset and the seam line of the train falling to the floor behind you. I can't believe it's real. I made it. I made it mom. I wish you could see it.

The only problem you had was that you needed help lacing the corset, too far on the back to reach on your own. You tried pulling the strips but it only bent your wrists painfully, getting nowhere. As if on cue, the owner of the room entered, stopping in his tracks as he took you in from head to toe. You clocked him through the mirror, fully staring with his mouth agape, eyes jumping around at all the details on the dress, blood rushing to your cheeks making them redder than the blush you applied.

Snap out of it. You're still mad at him.

He walked to you, closing the distance in a few slow strides, placing a plate of some finger foods you made with Wu on the table beside the mirror.

"Did you eat?"

"I'm not hungry."

Your stomach grumbled ratting you out. Okay, maybe you were hungry, starving sounded more like it, and you would've eaten if you didn't have so many things to do.

"Eat something. I'll lace up your thing."

"I've got it-" you started, spinning to walk off only for two arms to hold you firmly in front of the mirror.

"Just let me do it," he said softly, looking at you through the mirror.

A huff later, you grabbed onto a fried meatball and some bread popping them in your mouth. His fingers moved your hair over your shoulder, slightly brushing the exposed skin down your nape and between your shoulders. You gulped at the minor touch, raising tingles on your skin. He picked up the dangling strings of your corset, lacing it up as you held onto the front with the hand that wasn't busy holding food.

Nostalgia washed over you, taking you back to the night of the casino mission, when he came over to your room just as you were looking for help to lace up your corset. He rolled the strings around his fingers the same nimble way he did back then, pulling the bodice tighter around you. You gulped down the rest of the food with air pockets, almost chocking at how close he was. So close you could feel his breath hit the back of your right shoulder.

Since you went double the cover and durability on the top, it didn't need to be too tight. Fully laced up to the last golden eyelets at the back just above your hips, he made a bow knot drawing his bottom lip between his teeth in concentration. Pulling the two round loops to an equal width he let go off the ends, smoothing them to the velvet on the side. He caught your mother's necklace laying on the table. Picking it up he placed it around your neck, in its rightful place, placing your hair back over your shoulders.

Now that you were dolled up and laced up, the outfit looked even better on you. But something still bugged you. The dress sat a little too low, pressing the jewels on your chest together too hard. You went to pull it a little higher forgetting you had food on your hands so you turned around to him.

"Can you-," you blushed looking down at the floor in shame. You've been butt naked in front of him before but this was different. "Forget it," you mumbled.

He hated this. The fact that you couldn't talk to him and refused his help. But one look at your middle and the way your arms crossed over it and he saw why you were uncomfortable. Before you could run away again, he stepped closer and his fingers dug around the upper part of the corset at the back, pulling it higher so it sat better on your chest, giving your babies room to breathe and not get squished. The warmth radiating off his fingers was so welcomed on your cool skin. You had to stop a whine when they left your skin, snapping the velvet back in place.

"We'll be out front when you're ready," he said, letting his eyes fall over you one more time to take you in like it was the last time he would see you, then he left.

"So, the plan is go inside, talk to the guy to get the info, guard your ass and get back to the safety of my bed," said Cho, reiterating a version of the plan you went over in the carriage, that was more fit for his tastes.

"Yeah, basically," you replied.

Stationed a few buildings in front of the club, out of sight of the guards patrolling around, you scouted the place having not been in this part of the city before. It wasn't as heavily guarded as you thought it would be, but there was no telling how many people were inside. Scouting would've been easier if it wasn't so damn cold. The velvet and the coat kept you warm more or less, but your face was getting stabbed by the chilly night air. You sniffed to keep the liquid in your nose inside, eyes tearing up from the cold wind cutting mercilessly through every layer.

Too busy trying to gauge out the number of armed men around the place, you didn't notice Enishi approaching until he was standing directly in front of you. His hand lifted to your face, thumb swiping over your cheek bone tenderly. You were confused until you felt the warm droplets cloud your vision slightly before more of them fell. A few tears managed to roll out down your cheek. The stoic look that he gave you for the last few days was still there, just slightly contorted to a softer gaze.

"Why are you crying?"

At the sound of his stern voice you slapped his hand away. Soft eyes like a deer, voice sharp like a razor.

"I'm not crying, it's just too fucking cold to exist at the moment," you offered him a tight-lipped smile, telling him to fuck off kindly.

"She's right," piped up Cho, shaking beside you even though he had four layers on. "I feel icicles growing in my nostrils. Wanna see?"

"Ew, that's gross," you pushed him away from you before you saw something that would haunt you for a lifetime.

"Let's go in."

Enishi lead the way and you followed with Cho close behind, stopping in front of the guards. While Enishi made quick talk with the guards, one of the them on the side wiping the barrel of his gun with a cloth looked at you suspiciously. Like he knew you from somewhere. You smiled nervously trying to get the tremors in your spine to dissipate. He threw you a weird look before he got back to his gun. You let out a breath of relief when Enishi signalled you to follow him inside.

The long entry corridor was so dimly lit, stretching into a balcony overlooking an even darker area. Red and gold was everywhere. Burgundy satin veils dropped from the ceiling. The chandeliers glinted white gold with so many crystals layered on different levels that it would take you years to count them all on just one. Gold was all over the floor with glittery specks sparkling even in the dark. A big row of tables was scattered in the middle, all of them occupied, including the seats on the big bar at the side. Even the shelving holding the bottles was crystal-like, glowing. They didn't really need any lighting in here, the décor did it all by itself.

Cho offered you a hand before Enishi could, and you took it, descending down the rest of the steps. Walking around the tables, all eyes moved to you at once, some of the loud chatter ceasing to a halt. Some stared at your attire, disgustingly winking or sneering your way. Others quickly scanned you in dismissal to see if you're a threat or just a mere mortal walking around gods of the underworld, way more engrossed in the discussions they were having than to regard you. You assumed those were conversations one was better off not knowing about if they truly treasured life and all its beauties.

Suddenly, Enishi stopped. You halted in your steps too and before you could question it he turned to you, searching around for any potential intruders to your conversation. He leaned closer to you, looking for privacy from even the blonde behind you.

"Let me do the talking," he said, deep dark eyes focusing on you with authority. The kind of authority you didn't like. You opened your mouth to complain until he continued. "If they find out who you are, we might not get out of here alive. So, please, just let me take care of it this time."

This wasn't a warning for you to behave yourself. This was a warning that you were in the middle of a temporary ceasefire and shit could go sideways so fast if you weren't careful. There would be nothing any of you could do to stop it. Not even firing a bullet or breaking a neck. You had to keep a low profile if you wanted both the information and getting out of here the same way you walked in - unharmed.

With a scoff that you hoped didn't go unnoticed, you motioned for him to go on. He threw you another look in seer warning and to your disappointment, he turned back before you could tell him to shove it somewhere the sun doesn't shine. Frankly, you could defend yourself from anything after all the training he put you through. There was a part of you that just wanted to take matters into your own hands, get the info, put some holes through a few of these murderers that the world would be better off without anyways. But the other part, the one that was uneasy and worked overtime to tell you everything was going to go wrong all day, agreed with him. So you just followed behind, keeping your wits to yourself.

Advancing through the field of vipers, you arrived at the far back of the open crowd of tables, drenched into a darker black, the earlier gold at the entrance disappearing into thin shapes on the floor, falling almost invisible if you didn't squint. A deep velvety curtain separated you and finding out more about your parents whereabouts. The same curtain kept behind the sea of monsters that could rip all three of you apart without a sweat. You turned to Cho, catching his Adam's apple bob up and down in a quiet gulp. Even the freak in him that always looked for a fight was scared shitless.

Facing the curtain once more, you took in a shaky breath with eyes shut tight to calm the storm in your heart a little. This was it. If it wasn't... it was over. You'd stop searching. You would get on with your life and start anew somewhere else where no one knew you. You would get to finally live. With an empty, withered, aching heart for the people you grew fond of in such a short time and the ones who have been lost for even longer. Always grieving something that was never found. Always mourning what you found and couldn't keep. Never at peace. But living.

A hand circled around yours, squeezing tight in what could only be reassurance. You knew that squeeze well enough by now. There was no need to second-guess it. Because when you opened your eyes and followed it to the wide, determined pair of shoulders in front of you, you found the man that stood tall beside you all this time. The only person that has been your rock and did everything in his power to help you, even if his first step to you was deceiving. Even if most of what you built together was a lie, it was the sweetest one you've ever felt. The only one who awakened your soul to the brink of both life and death.

The man your heart will always long for.

The curtain was roughly drawn open by a burly guard, rattling to the side of the frame. The hand holding yours fell abruptly, the side of his face hardening as he forged ahead into the fire. Smoke hung in the air, the smell of opium pungent and raw, binding to every breath you took. If you could get a penny for every illegality you've laid eyes on since you entered the place, you would be filthy rich by the time you took three strides in any direction. Because these people made money in one breath, while others laid their lives on the line to die.

This room was larger than the outdoor reception, going around in a spiral on three different levels with red booths and tables lined up on each side. From the immense height of the place this was more of an inner hall, awfully resembling a theatre, definitely used for more private endeavours. Another staircase led down into the middle where a big group of guards and possible triad members played an intense game of blackjack. Supporters on both sides cheered so loud it could make your ears bleed if the volume raised up the slightest decibel. Some hands punched the air in defeat, others laid on the holsters of their guns and sword hilts ready to slice whatever they found inconvenient.

There was one thing they all had in common - sullen eyes, dull of everything but the want for blood. You haven't seen something like this since your time in the fight club and it made shivers go down your spine, spiking some adrenaline into your blood.

Thankfully, Enishi didn't descend down there, but took a right after the guard, leading you through the tables on the right to a set of stairs going up in a marble spiral. You couldn't even see the end of it. You followed the guard in eerie silence that was soon replaced by the ambient sound of violin strings. Thinking you were imagining things from the lack of sleep, you shook your head, but once you stepped on the second level of the hall, the music filtered through your ears.

The tune was almost too hypnotizing not to make you sway a little, like a cobra putting her victims in a trance before it devoured them limb by limb. Though the player was no cobra.

Walking further inside, your eyes went straight to the source of the sound, down in the middle of the pit of dire crime where even more people were dealing their demise in drugs and guns. There, a woman dressed in one of the finest yellow silks you've ever seen, held the instrument close, strumming it skillfully with her eyes closed. Her long luscious black hair, stopping shy of her lower back, moved in sync with the bow on the strings. She was deep into the melody reaching a building crescendo that kept you so focused you couldn't take your eyes off her.

The rising vibrato drove loud around the hall, straining with more tense and rough movements on the violin's body, rushing to reach the climax of the melody. The spike in rhythm made your own heart skip a beat, reaching an auditory high not even the strongest drugs could give you. She carried it all the way through to the last string where the song drew to a stable cadence, slowly drowning out with the fines of piece. And she opened her eyes.

She might've looked like the personification of life itself whilst she played, charging the air with her intense aura, but her jet black eyes told a different story. They were completely hollow, devoid of any of the feelings she instilled in you with the violin mere moments ago. She moved so gracefully even just to simply place her violin down. But she seemed so lost, somewhere inside her mind with no way to get out. Stuck inside this burning world she probably never wanted to be a part of. Just like you. Though you were on the other side of it all, where you still had a choice in your actions.

On your way to circle around the open arch, you passed by her and her eyes met yours briefly. You mustered a small smile her way, appreciative of her strength. She didn't smile, possibly aware of the repercussions if she so much as regarded you. But her eyes turned from those big, sullen orbs to the smallest, barely there crescents, squeezing in acknowledgment.

None of you wanted to be there tonight. Hopefully, you would both make it out for the better.

Cho being, well, his charming self, passed her one of his flirtatious smiles at which she didn't respond with anything other than ignorance, turning back to the bar behind her. Damn, rejected at first sight.

Following through to one table right in the middle of the arch, your eyes stayed fixed on the ring downstairs taking in the rest of your surroundings, looking for any sign you needed to pull your pistols out.

Enishi stopped and passed a court nod of greeting to the man sat down on the other side. He pulled out a chair for you, then sat down at your left. Moving your eyes to the man, you scanned him with suspiciousness. He looked like your average national secrets keeper, roughly middle aged with a small face graced by dark eye bags, high cheekbones and the beginning of an unkept moustache lining above his lips that kind of complemented the sneer he greeted you with.

The black wool jacket he wore over a neatly tucked-in shirt told you he bought his way out of life-threatening situations enough times to build a fortune. No commoner walked around like that. That and the fact that he looked way too confident for someone that was hunted by half the country for being in the know.

Shifting in your seat, you kept to your corner while Enishi made small talk with him. They talked about the state of current politics, the development of the inner and outer trade, touched on the business part, all of those really boring things to focus your attention on. The white wine you were served a while ago still swerved in your glass, captivating you much more than the conversation. Until your family name was mentioned and your attention was back on track.

"I heard you had information about the whereabouts of the Hikari's?" asked Enishi, diving straight to the point since he was clearly annoyed by the man's endless babbling.

"I do in fact," said the man with a tilted corner of his mouth. He laced his hands together and leaned forward on the table, eyes scouring his surroundings in security. "Did you bring what I asked for?"

What he asked for?, you lifted an eyebrow in confusion. I mean, there was no way he would've agreed to this if he wasn't going to get something out of it.

While you tried to figure out what that something could be, Enishi put a hand inside the pocket in his jacket pulling out a piece of paper, laying it out in the middle of the table, open wide for anyone to take a peep at it. A travel pass. Marked with official government seals for both in and out of the country, over an indefinite period, under a false name. His golden ticket out of hell.

The fucker put on a million dollar smile extending a hand to take it when Enishi's own hand laid on top of it at the speed of light, fingers stretching to cover the whole thing. His lips turned into a spine-chilling smirk directed at the man on the other side.

"Tell me where they are and you're a free man."

"One of them in exchange for the paper."

ONE?! I THINK THE FUCK NOT.

There was no way he was negotiating the lives of two people for a nicely written piece of paper with a gold insignia on it. This was fucking ridiculous.

Enishi voiced out your very thoughts, though more composed and in order than you would be able to at the moment because this rat was genuinely getting on your nerves. The more you looked at his smug smirk, the more your fingers twitched really violently under the table towards your pistols.

"The deal was for both of them."

"Yeah, well, things change."

You've got to be shitting me. Things change? The weather changes. My mood changes. It became really murderous right now, you know.

One look at Enishi and he was fuming way more than you were. His tongue pushed the inside of his cheek impatiently, hands fisting the material of the pants and his knee jerked up and down in a nervous tick. Knowing him, this was bad. Really bad.

Keeping your eyes ahead, you reached out to your left where your hand found his, enveloping it around his fist and giving it a good squeeze. You watched his eyes blink repeatedly, body relaxing instantly under your touch. He opened his fist, letting go of the fabric, and turned his own hand upwards giving you a tighter squeeze in response. All is okay, it said.

He knew the brute was trying to pour enough gasoline over you until a spark flew and lit the whole room on fire. But he wasn't going to give him the luxury of an easy way out.

Rolling his shoulder back and leaning over the table, he fixed the man with that one icy glare that meant instant death for him if he answered his question wrong in the slightest.

"It's quite a big bargain, considering two lives in exchange for one and a piece of paper, don't you think?"

Enishi let every word paint with malice, making the threat loud and clear that he wasn't going anywhere without relaying the information you came for. At least not in one whole piece of meat. He sat back in his chair, disappointment bright as day on his face, clearly rethinking his escape route. Seen as he couldn't come to an understanding with the man next to you, his gaze came to you, eyebrows drawn in bold challenge as he took you in for an easy target.

Keep your cool, Miyu. Don't lose it. Stay quiet.

His eyes walked all over your face, spending a little too much time on your red lips for his own good.

Keep calm.

Then they moved down your neck, bathing in the grace of your exposed collar bones, slowly diving down to your humble but really open cleavage.

Don't be rash.

The corner of his lips turned up into a grin, slowly growing into a toothy smile you wanted to bash in until all that shone was blood. Maybe tearing his mouth off his face and feeding it to a pack of dogs on the street would be good riddance too so no one would have to deal with him again.

"Do I know you from somewhere?"

"Not from the places you probably frequent," you shot back curtly.

Well, too late to back out now.

"And which do you think those might be?" he asked, his attention solely on you now, his new object of entertainment.

You could feel Enishi tensing again beside you, his sharp glare digging into the side of your skull willing you to not say one more word. Cho tensed behind you too. But you being you, letting your conscience hit the ignore button, leaned forward and continued, voice dripping with charm and sweetness. The very thing this bloke's kind loved to death.

"Oh, I wouldn't know," you replied with a small giggle, laying your chin on top of your entwined hands. "But if I were to take a guess, it would be somewhere illegal, with a lot of guns and enough money to shove in the panties of naked women," you counted on your fingers each thing, getting more disgusted with each excited nod of his at your words.

The man stood quiet for a moment, the suspense of the repercussions following your small but meaningful conversation really killing the vibe. By vibe, you meant the patience of your chaperones that would face palm right now if they could.

Before anything unexpected happened, the older man threw his head back making a really heinous sound that resembled a laugh. Letting a half-smile on your lips, you turned to Enishi with a Why the fuck is he laughing? look at which he was just as puzzled, then turned back to the oddity in front of you that didn't belong to the human species in any way.

"I like this one," he howled, clearly finding you amusing.

"That's too bad," Enishi let out under a breath.

"And why is that?" he asked, not taking his curious eyes off of you at all, trying to intimidate you.

You were about to deliver another piece of your mind when Enishi went on, stating your status crystal clear.

"She's not on the market," he growled, the possessiveness in his tone unmissable for anyone around the table. That made the creepy stare finally leave you, replaced by the dark one of your gray-haired man.

"That's a shame," said the man, leaning back in his chair. "She would've been a great add-on to the deal."

"No more negotiations. You either take what we already offered or we're leaving."

The smug grin on his face turned into a scowl. You had the upper hand here, not him. He could try and turn it up and down and sideways, but he either took his freedom at the cost of spilling the information or being a dead man. More dead than the world already wanted him to be.

The static silence was all of a sudden filled by enthusiastic yells from below, belonging to the group playing cards two levels down. That veered you away from the fact that the man's eyes fixed on you with a different meaning this time. He took in your necklace again then your hair and your eyes and spoke before you could even catch it.

"I do know you," he started, amusement morphing into a knowing look.

Yeah, right.

"If you're going to say something like 'you're the girl of my dreams' I'm gonna have to stop you right there-"

"You're that troublesome Hikari swine that I've been trying to hunt down for the Triads all this time," he chuckled darkly.

Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.

This wasn't supposed to happen. There's no way he was telling the truth. He must be bluffing to get the paper. There's no way anyone here knew you. Then it dawned on you. The guard at the main entrance cleaning his gun. The men at the reception. The very lizard who called you to negotiate his freedom. This was a trap. Enishi had a mole in his mafia. You were fucked.

"Say a word to anyone and your head will fly off your shoulders before you take a breath to scream for help," grunted the man beside you.

The chill running down your spine wasn't comforted at all by that threat. The nerves in your stomach weren't settled by it either. This was bad. So, so, so, so catastrophically bad.

It wasn't even your fault because the guy made it clear he knew you. He had information on you. He knew who you were. He knew you were looking for your parents.

Your gut was right again. The whole night went wrong. Your parents' safety was compromised, same with the safety of the three of you.

"I don't have to say a thing," he chuckled darkly. "This was the plan all along."

One lift of his index finger had every conversation and extra sound around you ceasing immediately. Guns cocked and swords unsheathed from every side of the level, pointing straight at you. Even the poker game downstairs stopped, followed by confused grunts at why the game stopped.

This meeting was indeed a trap. A possibility that none of you even considered in the slightest. You walked straight into the fire and you didn't even feel the very embers of hell burning under your feet. Nothing could even warn you of this. Not even your gut.

A quick glance around told you there were about twenty of them. Just on your level. You didn't know about the other ones and you had to count the pack at the poker table, the other people in the main room, the reception and the guards from outside. At most you'd get through half of them and meet your death in this stinky crime club. Or apply for a seasonal membership. Maybe that would chill the waters a little. Or money. Enishi had a lot of that. He would surely spare a few bags for charity-

"So you don't know where they are. Good. That settles it," concluded Enishi rather flatly, grabbing your full attention as you whirled in your seat to gape at him.

Settles what? My foot through your face once we get out of here? Probably as corpses but still.

"No, that doesn't settle it-" you were cut off by the whoosh of a knife flying from beside you.

It was too fast to catch who launched it, though when you traced the location of the sound, you saw Enishi's hand wide open, fingers flexing in the opposite direction. Your eyes trailed there spotting two silver knives, not bigger than three inches, lodged right between the scowling man's eyes, blood trickling down the side of his nose and onto the white sheet on the table, drenching it crimson.

Good luck getting that spot out, was your first thought. There went my only shot at finding my parents, was your second. Your third was swimming somewhere in the sea of contemplation when several voices shouted your name together with a rough hand yanking your arm to the left.

"GET DOWN!"

Before you could register anything, Enishi pulled you off the chair behind the table he threw over in a haste. Your instincts took a while to come around but once they kicked in your guns were up and taking aim, shooting over the safety of the table edge.

Enishi covered you from the side, sending smaller knives along the the lining of the middle level, launching them so hard they dug deep into anyone who even thought of aiming their gun at you.

Cho guarded your back, swords already unsheathed from the inner holds of his coat, cutting into the bullets flying at you. Thank god Enishi sharpened the blades before you left otherwise he wouldn't have been able to cut anything, not even a piece of cake.

You took out quite a few of the men rushing in from the front, taking cover behind the still upright body of the man who screwed you over. At least he proved useful for once in his probably completely miserable life. You shot one on the right, hid behind him, then shot on the left. But the safety block around you, ensuring your cover, dispersed way too quickly.

Cho dove into the crowd further behind you, trying to keep guards from the lower and upper levels from flooding inside. Enishi advanced ahead with your bullets, taking on the ones still on your level, now sporting swords since their guns ran out.

Who even expected this to turn into shooting practice? Because unfortunately you ran out too of bullets too. Placing your pistols back in their straps on your thighs, you fixed your dress and blew a breath.

Time to crack some skulls.

You stretched your arms, unaware of the incoming tackle coming from behind you. Two arms, smaller and thinner than yours, wrapped around your middle, the impact of the collision throwing you to the floor. You crashed over on your back as the person's hands dove right to your neck to strangle you, pinning your body down to the ground with theirs. Yellow silk flew in your vision immediately recognizing who it belonged to - the violinist.

She pushed down on your neck, unskilled and leaving way too much room for you to move. Since she was weaker than you, it was easy to turn the boat over by throwing her to the side in one swift kick of your leg. She flew off of you, crashing into the side of a booth. You coughed up for air since she got a pretty good hold of your neck. That horrible white wine climbed up your neck and you shoved it down deep. So not the time stomach. Come on. You handle shittier alcohol better than this.

You got back up from the floor just as she did, running at you with pieces from a broken glass. Her hand flailed about trying to graze you as you avoided her faster than she could move. One swing of the sharp glass had you bend backwards over the marble railing, nearly slipping and falling to your doom. Having had enough of her antics, you kicked the glass out of her hand and grabbed a hold of her wrist, spinning her to land face down on the side of the bar. She elbowed you hard and threw another piece of glass at you that did cut your shoulder enough for your hold on her to slip.

That's it, fuck girl code.

You grabbed a fistful of her long hair, wrapping it around your palm until you had a good hold on it and shoved her against the wooden surface multiple times and dragged her all the way to the end of it until she slid down to the ground. She still got up on wobbly legs, red dripping from her broken cheekbone staining the nice sunny yellow color of her dress. Letting out a growl like a wild cat, she launched herself at you again, grabbing onto your necklace from behind trying to choke you with it. You spotted a nearby gin bottle on a vacated table and grabbed it, smacking it down hard on her head, knocking her out unconscious. She finally let go of you, landing splat on the floor.

Why do all my attempts at making friends turn into befriending backstabbers?

Now that you were free and ready for some actual fighting, you noticed the level was empty. You ran to the stairs and got down to the first floor, spotting Enishi busy slashing people into shish-kebabs.

I should help around.

It wasn't long before you took notice of your next victims. Drawing backwards to the wall, you ran to the marble ledge of the circle at full speed, jumping over it to land right in the middle of the poker table, coins and cards rattling off the table at the impact. Lifting your gaze, you just so happened to make eye contact with the very people that made your last casino visit a tremendous pleasure.

"You," snarled the big man as he threw his hands on the table, staring you down like you killed his entire clan or something.

"Did you guys know you suck at poker?" you smiled at him and his two men, showing your teeth on purpose to piss him off. "You owe me money, sweetcheeks."

That remark was enough for him to slash his sword over the table. You jumped over it rushing forwards to kick him right under his chin. That sent him backwards in a daze struggling to keep upright. The tip of your boot scrapped his nose good, blood dripping down the side of it.

While he got his bearings around, you took on his men, fighting both of them at once. They were weaponless, trying to use the sheer force of their grip to reach for you but you were faster than them. On grabbed your arm and the other your leg and you served them exactly what you served your idiots the other day - a spin with a kick straight to the jaw and a fist right in the chest. They stumbled backwards then came at you again. One sent a fist and the other a kick your way and you jumped forwards through the small space between them, tumbling back on the ground to sweep their feet from under them. They both hit the floor with a thud, grunting in pain. Walking over to them with your fists ready in another fighting stance, their eyes widened and they scurried off the floor, falling over each other on their way to the exit.

Tsk, pussies.

Turning around, your smile faded instantly at the sight of the very angry mafia boss you beat at his own game, stole from, and now gave a nosebleed to. He was way bigger than you in size, towering over you. This was a rendition of David and Goliath you weren't excited for at all. You cracked a nervous smile and tried to run but he grabbed you like a toy, lifting you off the ground and into the air, way above his own height. You swung your legs forwards, wrapping them around his neck to straddle his face trying to strangle him.

He let go of your waist and grabbed at your dress instead, stumbling around to shove you off. You flexed the muscles of your thighs as hard as you could to cut his airflow when he ran straight into a wall. Your back collided with it roughly, loosening some of your grip on his neck but not enough to get you off. This wasn't going to work. So you changed your angle, rounding around to his back like a rodent, thrusting a strong elbow into the back of his head before he could even reach for you. The blow sent him falling face first into the floor, diving like a ship to its wreckage. He tried to get up murmuring some words you couldn't understand. You leaned closer and he grabbed your hair smacking you into the poker table.

"Little bitches like you belong in the brothel," he spat out with a bloody sneer.

That was enough to spur your rage and smack your head right into his, falling backwards on top of him. You punched him with all you had, until his face morphed into a deep garnet. His eyelids were swollen, his cheeks bruised and that sneer entirely gone from his cut lips. He was still alive but barely recognizable when you got up. "That's what you get for grabbing and talking to a lady like that. Learn some fucking manners," you spoke to the hunk laying still as a boulder.

The loud clinking of swords echoed from above. Your eyes travelled up just in time to see a lock of blonde hair tipping dangerously over the railing on the top floor. Checking on Enishi that he was okay with his own hoard of snarling men with blades, you ran to the stairs hoping to get to blondie before it was too late and he was flunked over like a chicken learning how to fly.

You heaved breaths like you ran a marathon, body working only on the rush of adrenaline you got from beating up the boss of the Daos. Stopping by the second level to take a breather, you leaned over the railing for support. Your eyes darted downwards at the spiral, looking at how far away from the ground you were already.

Now's not the time to freak out. Let's save blondie.

His voice echoed with a curse just as you reached the doorframe of the third level, finding a burly guard holding him by the collar of his shirt over the railing. His legs stopped running on air, hands gripping the guard's tight. He looked to the side at the drop below him and yanked on the guard's hand again. Looking left and right, you saw no one else on the floor and took off running towards the guard. You jumped high in the air and aimed a kick at his head just as it whirled around at you. You caught him off-guard, heeled foot colliding with the side of his face, pushing him to the side into a table without realizing that he let go of Cho in the process.

Your heart stopped watching the blonde fall, thinking that was his end. But you got too ahead of yourself. He grabbed a hold of the edge holding on tight to it as you let out a breath. Jesus Christ. You rushed to help him over to the safety of ground, sliding your hands under his arms and grabbing onto his shoulders to hoist him over. He grabbed onto you too, just not in the right area.

"That's my ass, you moron," you hissed, struggling to get him over.

"Sorry," he grunted. "Actually, not sorry."

That made you yank him so hard you ended up falling on the floor together. Staring at the ceiling, you caught a few breaths before the guard got back up and rushed at you with a sword. The blade came down on you as you both rolled to the side. Cho got up before you to pick up his swords, going back to dueling the guard while you aided with a kick here and there. Where you punched his side, the blonde cut his other one. The guard grunted in pain but continued attacking you.

One misjudged lift of your leg had him grabbing onto it with his free hand pulling on it and spinning around, tossing you into a table. The side of your head collided with the wooden edge hard, sending your vision swimming in black and white. Cho spared a quick glimpse at you before he attacked the guard violently, slashing his blade right across his chest, both of his arms and his legs, his back and everywhere he had exposed himself. He did it so many times until the guard fell to his knees in a pile of his own blood.

The world was a red haze around you, ears ringing and stinging at the same time. That awful wine climbed back up your throat nearly getting out this time. You were struggling to get your eyes to work when Cho kneeled before you dropping his swords to the floor. One of his hands settled on your shoulders trying to get you to focus while the other brushed somewhere over your right temple. He ripped a piece of table cloth and placed it over the open wound as you winced. The small prick of pain sobered you up enough to blink properly, slowly getting your vision back to normal.

"You're bleeding," he tapped the cloth gently gathering the small drops of red around the right side of your face, concern lacing his voice. You took his hand away, stopping his worried dabs at your scalp. "I'm okay."

His eyes dove down from the cut on your head to the one peeking from under your hair. He moved your hair away, brushing a thumb over the skin of your shoulder, grounding his teeth in annoyance.

"Who did this?"

"You have awful taste in women," you laughed, regretting it when it sent another pang of pain to your head. "I took care of her already."

"The violinist?! Seriously?" You nodded dabbing the cloth some more on your head. "Damn, she got you pretty good."

Honey orbs came back up to yours after he searched every other inch of you for more injuries only to find your knuckles bruised and bloody. But nothing else that looked life threatening like the gash on your head. "Are you sure you're okay?"

"I'm good. Let's go kick some more ass and get the fuck out of here."

He straightened and gave you a hand, pulling you up to your feet. "I'll go check the other levels. Stay safe, okay?"

"You too. Meet you downstairs."

Enishi stumbled downstairs in the poker area with two crossed swords above him threatening to cut his neck open. He kicked the men in the shins and threw their swords away, landing a hit in one's stomach that ricocheted into the other's, getting rid of them both with a roundhouse kick. Another one came at him and he grabbed his jacket pulling him back to smack right into an incoming blade attack. That one got impaled before he even saw it coming.

Suddenly, even more pooled in with loaded guns aiming right at him. At the noise of open fire, you rushed to the edge of the railing watching as he dodged a few bullets and managed to get cover behind the poker table but there were too many shots flying through, sending splinters of wood everywhere. They were shooting with long bulky rifles as if this was a hunting party.

You had company too, bigger and wider than the last one coming for hand to hand combat. Defending his hits as best as you could, you tried getting some in with knee kick into his abdomen. Your fists aimed for his head until he dropped down to the floor and swiped your legs from under you, landing on your back with him on top of you strangling you.

I'm getting tired of this choking kink.

"MIYU, A LITTLE HELP OVER HERE IF YOU MAY!" shouted Enishi, throwing off a guard that pinned him to the floor out of nowhere, just in time to roll out of the way of more bullets flying past his head.

You looked around finding no weapon in grabbing distance. Reaching your hand down, you lifted one of your legs up and wiggled your fingers to grab a hold of one of your pistols. Your air supply was slowly shortening seeing stars when you finally got a hold of the handle, bringing it up and bashing it into the man's head over and over and over again until he fell to the side. Once you got some usable air back inside you pulled yourself over to the railing.

"DON'T YELL AT ME!" you yelled back down, scrambling to your feet to look for a gun around the place. You found a few, plying them off the hands of the bodies attached to them, but most were empty of bullets so you threw them back on the floor.

"I'M NOT YELLING AT YOU. I'M BEING SHOT AT IN CASE YOU HAVEN'T NOTICED," he yelled back. You knew he didn't have a lot of time before a bullet reached him. He fought like a monster but he wasn't bulletproof.

As you rushed around, frantically searching for anything that could shoot long distance, you caught sight of the barrel of a gun peeking from under a table. It was a rifle. Its carcass still had a bunch of unused bullets in it. Bingo.

"HOLD ON."

Running back to the margin, you dropped down laying on your belly, positioning the barrel through the opening in the ledge, opening fire on the flank downstairs. You got most of them in the shoulder or the chest, aim slightly blurry due to the wound on your head and the huge distance to the ground.

Enishi looked at you for a second, eyes not worried but prideful. You took notice quickly as you charged the bullet carcass focusing on the task at hand. If there wasn't so much uncertainty between you right now you might've said it meant a lot. And it did but not right now.

Too focused on taking out the men at the entrance you didn't see the incoming attack. You rolled out just in time before a bottle crashed down on you in payback, finding the violinist at your demise again. Does she ever like read the room? She grabbed a chair and whirled it around trying to hit you with it. You grabbed one of your own hitting her with it and she fell to the ground. You checked she was knocked out for good this time.

Running to the staircase, you only got to the first step before you heard shouting echoed from the lower levels. Quickly backing up into the level, you looked for another way out only to find none. The staircase was your only shot. Veering around, you caught sight of the red drapes adorned on the side of a marble pillar, going all the way to the higher ceiling.

Spotting a sword under the guard Cho cut up like a chicken on a gyros stick, you ran to it trying to pull it from under him. Pushing his body over with your leg, you twisted it on all sides pulling on the handle until you finally pried it out. Without a second thought, you ran to the ledge leaning on it to grab a veil. It took several tries nearly meeting your doom since the fabric was drilled into the pillar. You kept trying. When you got a solid grip around it you tugged on it hard until you yanked it free from the side and the pillars it was stuck to under, pulling it over to you.

Supporting your weight on one of the pillars you got up on the ledge, dropping the rest of the veil down into the void. If at first this seemed like a good idea, now that you were looking at the red ends of the drapes whirling in the air about eight meters down into rapid gunfire and dirty restaurant tables, it seemed like the shittiest idea you could have come up with in your whole entire life.

Oh, for fucks sake. Just looking down made you nauseous and sick to your stomach. I hate heights.

Rough voices climbed closer behind you, followed by the echoes of gun magazines clicking open and closed only spurring the knots in your belly. One thing was for sure. If you didn't take the jump now and stayed to fight them absolutely weaponless, you were done for. You'd end up with holes in you and you worked too hard on that dress to ruin it with bullets.

Just close your eyes and jump, you breathed out, trying to calm your rapidly racing heart, beating faster than the bullets fired below.

Save your idiots and get back home to Koru, you reasoned with yourself, holding the sword close to you.

Come on, you've got this.

You let go of the pillar, balancing your boots on the ledge. On a deep shaky inhale of breath, you wrapped your hands tight around the veil giving it another thug to test its safety once more just for your peace of mind, and leaned back exhaling all your hopes and dreams into the void below as you fell forwards, going down into the fire.

Your mind emptied of everything else. The clangs of swords, the whizzing of bullets, the angry shouts of battle from above and beyond you. You made your senses entirely numb to the rest of the world. All you focused on was the wind blowing through your hair as you descended down the material at a faster rate than you imagined, holding onto that piece of fabric like it was your lifeline, your own purgatory between heaven and hell.

Peering down to spot Enishi, you caught him looking back at you in the middle of the crossfire in utter shock. You're batshit crazy, you'd hear him say once you got back to the ground - if that even happened - so until then, you focused on staying glued to the veil.

Looking out to reach above him, you plied one hand free from the veil and dropped the sword to him. He caught it, getting right into a swing at a guy who wanted to blow his head off, slicing through him before he got the chance to pull the trigger. Too focused on him, you failed to notice the rapidly approaching wall you were about to face plant into at an unreal speed. Mere seconds before you splattered into it like a bird into a window, your body reacted before your mind could think it through and your fingers loosened around the veil .You let go. With five more meters to go to the ground. And no one to catch you.

You scream pierced through the hall bouncing off the walls like a ghostly shriek, making everyone stop and look up at your falling form, including Enishi and Cho. They shared a look assessing the situation - they were both under way too much pressure as more guards and thugs pooled in from the entrance. The blonde immediately went back to his row of blades trying to keep the incoming ambush outside of the room. Though he was closer to you there was no way for him to get to you without getting torn to pieces first.

Enishi's mind switched to autopilot, butchering everyone that stood in his way with the sole goal of getting to you before it was too late. Sheer adrenaline flew through him like hot fire as he took off towards the poker table using it as a boost to propel him to the other tables, hopping from one to the other at a breakneck speed. Blades piled up in his way. He swerved blows left and right, keeping his eyes on you, rushing to get to the end. As you got closer to the ground, his mind preoccupied only with you and your safety, nothing more, nothing less. He needed to reach you no matter what. He couldn't lose you, not like this.

Not yet. Not now. Not ever, echoed in his head like the beating of a drum inside of his chest, loud and drowning everything else around him.

Before you could splat on the floor, he jumped off the last table dropping his sword and launched himself up gaining momentum from his run. He caught you mid-air, wrapping his arms around you the best he could. The force of your bodies colliding sent you sideways, landing on the lower level of the hall. Your bodies hit the ground, rolling over together like a ball. You squeezed your eyes shut, digging your head into him, hands grappling to hang on to his jacket for dear life. You slammed hard into a booth, falling on your back with him on top of you, still safely tucked in his arms but coming to a stop from the endless tumble.

You were in shock, taking quick breaths without realizing you were no longer in the air falling to your death but on the safety of the expensive burgundy carpet. Enishi called your name multiple times but you couldn't hear him at all, mind stuck in the loop above the floor. He hauled you up and propped you against a pillar trying to get you to focus on him.

"You're okay. You're okay. Hey, hey, look at me," he said softly, caressing the side of your face. Your eyes finally focused on him, terrified out of your mind but at least you were back in the present. "You're okay. You're safe now."

"Fucking-," you drew in a strangled inhale holding onto his shoulders. "Holy shit. Jesus. I-I'm never doing that again. I hate heights. I hate them so much." A bunch of incoherent curses and rambles spilled out of your lips.

"I know. I know," he stroked your arms up and down trying to calm you down. "No more jumping. I promise." You threw your head back to the pillar behind you catching your breath really good for the first time tonight when he spoke again. "Though that was pretty badass," he pointed up at the spot you jumped from and chuckled at which you punched his shoulder.

Once you were past the shock of it, you chuckled as well. "Well, hope you were watching because I'm never doing that shit again even if you pay me."

He laughed shaking his head at how amusement could hit you at the most random times ever. It was pretty welcomed considering the situation. Peering over the ledge to check on Cho, he noticed the blonde was getting outnumbered, not from the exit but from the rest of the hall.

"We have to get out of here now."

"Couldn't agree more."

"Let's get blondie and go," he pulled you up handing you a spare rifle, securing a firm hold around your hand.

You ran together to the door that was now missing the big dark red curtain, only a strip of material left above. You split up there. Enishi ran out through the door missing its curtain to check on the rest of the ground. You ran to the exit too, propping the rifle on top of the staircase leading down in the poker lounge, taking aim at the crowd surrounding Cho. You pulled the trigger relentlessly, drilling holes into every person around him, not waiting until they fell down to get to the next one. You were a Russian roulette they had no control of. Ten bullets was all it took and they all fell to the ground, writhing in pain or completely dead depending on where your bullet hit. The blonde looked at the pile of bodies lowering his swords.

"Took you a while," he teased breathing raggedly, still standing in the middle of the room.

"Was kinda falling from the sky in case you didn't notice," you deadpanned, pointing upwards.

He nodded just as Enishi came back from scouting the perimeter giving you the all clear through haggard breaths. "It's empty. For now. Let's get the fuck out of here."

It's been a few moments, between you running through the main room that was entirely deserted to the carriage and starting your ride back to safety, where everything was quiet. You slumped back in your seat, adrenaline of the fight wearing off a little. It started raining, faint droplets prodding against the small covered windows, making the atmosphere even more humid and heavy than it already was.

Pending chaos hung in the air and your stomach twisted in tight knots again. You tried to figure out what it was that ripped anxiety through you once more. Because it wasn't the mop of hair sitting before you, looking down at the floor, earlier relief on his features replaced by rage like something was going to crack. The wind blew. The carriage stumbled on the road swaying you to the side. Thunder rumbled deep into the darkened sky. And something did crack.

"You just couldn't stay away from it, could you?" boomed Enishi out of nowhere.

He was talking to you, trying to understand why in the world you couldn't just follow one simple thing he asked of you. To let him handle it. You talked to that scum like he wasn't the wolf in sheep's clothing, waiting for you to reveal yourself. You even went and nearly shook hands with death more times than he could count on his fingers - with the Daos, the violinist, jumping from the tallest level and so much more. All because you were simply and utterly the most hardheaded person he's ever come across in his life. He wasn't going to let you off this time.

"Not when it involved them," you shook your head gripping the material of your dress to keep your own wrath under control. "You know that."

"I told you I had it under control-"

"YOU DIDN'T! If anything it was you who made it worse," you spat out, sitting back with your arms folded over your chest, shooting daggers at him.

"I made it worse?" he pointed at himself, letting out a snarky laugh. "I think it was your ego trying to strike a deal with that scum that can't even be called a human being. I didn't take you for an idiot until I saw you entertaining him."

"AN IDIOT?! You were just as stupid thinking he would take the deal without leverage over us. Did it even cross your mind at one point that he never wanted to give us information and he was only trying to get us killed?"

"Don't turn this on me, Miyu."

"Oh, I will turn it however the fuck I want to. Because," you started counting on your fingers again, "number one, you had us go in there with no guarantee or at least some sort of backup plan. Number two, we left empty-handed with absolutely no clue where my parents are. And number three, which should be quite high up on the list actually, is that you're being an absolute asshole right now." At that he rolled his eyes, tongue poking his cheek in anger again as he looked away from you. "Wait, no, rewind that. You have been an absolute dick for the past few days. So, what the fuck is your problem?"

"My problem?! My problem is this blonde scoundrel you like so much getting ahead of himself to act like your fucking bodyguard tonight, nearly getting yourselves killed ten meters above ground," he said, pointing accusingly to the man beside you as if he committed heinous crimes against society. Well, he did, but not recently.

"Me?!" gasped Cho from beside you, obviously appalled at the exchange. "I only came for Miyu, not for you."

"I only came for Miyu," he imitated the blonde like a child, voice going a tad bit higher than normal.

Well that's an Enishi you don't see every day.

"You didn't even bat a fucking eye when she was falling from the sky, did you lizard?"

"I was getting cut up like a salami at the front door in case you didn't notice. Sorry I couldn't jump to catch her like you, Mister 'I'm the Prince of the Frogs and flying is my specialty'. My deepest sincere apologies that I can't repay your virtuousness with some fucking flies."

They continued bickering, each male throwing in more insults and angrily mansplaining their side, adding to the dull ache already forming behind your eyes. You averted your eyes to the small rectangle behind Enishi's head, watching the path covered by the forest you left behind.

Lightning struck, lighting up the path turning muddy in a bright white flash before letting darkness soak it up again. When you went to look away, a small flicker not bigger than a tiny dot in the distance caught your attention.

Thinking it was just your sleep deprived imagination playing tricks on you, you paid it no mind. But that flicker continued to burn, small, still there in the dark, till it grew slightly bigger, a flame now noticeable even as the carriage got further away. You waited for lightning to light up the path again so your worries could settle a little but the next strike didn't come. You sat forward, squinting your eyes at it unable to make out what the fuck it was. Then lightning struck again, this time illuminating what looked awfully like the very thing your gut has been trying to warn you about all day long.

Danger.

Shaken to your core by what you saw possibly a few yards behind about to head your way, your hands shot out to stop the two men bickering by your side, flailing in all sides as your mouth failed to work with you. They stopped, looking at you concerned. A familiar hand gripped your hand stopping your panicked wriggling sliding in your line of sight.

"What's wrong?" asked its owner, worry taking over the previous release of rage in his voice. You suddenly had the strength to speak.

"We need to get off the carriage. NOW!"

The urgency in your voice was enough to alert them. They followed the direction where your eyes were staring pointedly at, but it was too late. Whatever that flame flickering in the darkness is, it was launched right at you at lightning speed, growing bigger and wider the more it advanced towards the carriage, now resembling a giant fireball.

"GET DOWN!"

Before you knew it a loud boom echoed from under you, shaking the mahogany walls with a horrible sound. You felt the carriage leaping upwards and tilting on its side just like the contents in your stomach. It spun in the air becoming a death trap, losing gravity as it barreled off the side of the road. Timber creaked with each spin, sending you left and right into every wooden surface. You reached out to grab a hold of something only to be pushed harshly into the backrest, hitting the wooden wall with the back of your head so hard that black and white swam in your vision.

You blanked out a few times, coming to only to feel it still spinning out of control to god knows where. The only thing you could focus on was the smell of smoke that started enveloping the whole carcass with no ventilation to go out only inside your lungs. Bile rose in your throat playing an intense game with your guts that you couldn't stomach.

The force of it landing on the ground made a loud crack come from your right, followed by multiple louder ones as the body of the carriage rolled and rolled, slowly caving in on itself. You thought the spinning would never stop. That you would roll endlessly. Until it did, coming to an abrupt halt against what you assumed to be a huge tree bark. The body of the carriage hit it so hard that it split it into pieces, the force of the blow sending you far into the grass, together with a piece of broken wood you landed head first into and blacked out.

Pain was the only thing you could process. It hurt everywhere. Gravity held you down to the ground captive in a steel grip. Your sense of feeling was slowly returned to you, little by little in a haze, before it hit you like a truck.

The first thing you tasted was the blood on your lips, probably bitten in the mid-flight to hell. They felt numb, not responding to your intention to make them move open from being clamped shut. The dragging breaths you struggled to take in through your nose were just as rejected by your chest. Broken ribs, you figured. The question was how many of them were usable. A big part of your insides were messed up, pulse shuddering everywhere but in your chest. It took a while to feel anything else. You gained some feeling below your shoulders and tried moving your hand, successfully lifting your forearm. When you tried more, electricity shot up your nerves and your shoulder protested in pain. Same with your feet, although one ankle moved enough when you twisted it around. The other laid completely numb.

Opening your eyes, you tried focusing on something that didn't hurt. The putter of small droplets on your forehead turned into bigger arrows of water stabbing your face. The small rain turned into a monsoon. Tall trees lining into the clouded skyline gave you no comfort. You were in the middle of nowhere. No one lived here. No one even crossed these roads. The smell of fire hit you from your right, stomach churning at what you would find if you turned your head.

Taking an excruciating deep breath in, you willed the sore muscles in your neck to work with you and let you see what laid there. Once your eyes rolled to the side, your head followed and your heart ached at the sight. Among debris from what used to be a beautiful dark oak carriage, encrusted in golden crest motives, there were only scattered pieces of wood burning to a crisp, fire not extinguished at all by the rain but seemingly burning hotter, sputtering but deadly the more gusts of wind enraged it.

Looming further you spotted the sleeves of an olive suit you worked on for endless hours, ripped to shreds all the way to a pair of biceps, deeply scratched by twigs and splinters. Cho. His chest raised slowly but his eyes were closed, covered by his blonde hair that turned dirty from the mud he rolled through. He's okay, you sighed in relief. You weren't sure how okay since he appeared to be passed out, but at least he was breathing.

Then your breath got caught in your throat.

Enishi. Where is he?

You whirled your head around unable to pin his location, frustrated that you couldn't move the rest of your body and get up to look for him. You pulled on your limbs, stretching every wound into agonising pain as fiery tingles stabbed at your extremities to will you to stay put. But you couldn't stay put. You had to move before your body locked up completely. You had to look for him. He had to be around here. He had to be okay.

You moaned in pain rolling to your left on your dislocated shoulder. Looking into the darkened forest, you searched all pieces of burning wood and golden marble until something that looked like hair and a body appeared to the far reach of the forest opening. A gray dot that was now turning dark, lying in the grass with his head turned to the side that wasn't facing you. His suit was ripped to shreds even more, pierced by the scorched bushes behind him so hard that it reached his skin deeply. Parts of the fabric remained intact on the small twigs, floating in the wind. All the shreds had crimson blood leaking out, staining the beautiful indigo a lot of shades darker.

His chest wasn't moving. He wasn't moving. He wasn't conscious. The rain continued falling even harder making it harder to make out anything from your spot. You had to go to him. You needed to see his face.

Reaching out the hand that somewhat worked, you grabbed a flock of grass that seemed sturdier and pulled yourself in his direction. It hurt so much, ripping your wounds open wider. But you continued. Every pull scraped your knees, twisting your bad ankle even more, grunting with every rock and twig scratching against your broken ribs. Just a little more, you pleaded with your body, feeling the tingles slowly turn to numbness the more you put pressure on them. Just let me reach him, you begged to any god listening to give you some energy. Your nails dug into the mud, making use of anything you could find around you. A wooden plank, a larger stick, grass.

Three more weeds climbed in unbearable pain and you ended up next to him, gripping his arm to pull yourself up for the last time. Your forehead fell into the crack of his bruised elbow, letting out a relieved groan. I got to him.

Your eyes lifted to find him as still as a few moments ago when you found him, head turned to the other side. Stretching your right arm in pain, you grabbed a hold of his face to turn it to you. His beautiful lips were cracked, blood stagnant around his lower one, dripping with the beads of rain falling down.

His cheeks were both cut, one rougher than the other and a gash sat near his left temple. His eyes remained closed. Fear stirred inside of you and you started shaking him with what little strength you had left. The bell in his ear rattled noisily over the rain and your heart beating out of control in panic.

"Enishi," you croaked out, unstable and tired. "Open your eyes. Please," you cried, head falling onto his chest.

You listened for a sound in the blaring rain, being met with a small thud of a heartbeat. His chest was moving but way too slow for your liking.

Cradling his less damaged cheek in your hand, you rubbed it trying to get him to wake up. Come back to me, you screamed inside, leaning your head back on his chest. "You said you wouldn't leave me. Please don't break your promise," you laid a kiss on top of his chest, letting yourself cry. "I won't break mine."

A groan reverberating under you made your eyes snap to his. His eyebrows joined together in pain as he slowly came to and worked to open his eyes. Come on, open them, you encouraged, relief washing over you. You saw the small, barely there flutter of his eyelids before you were pulled away from him.

A rough hand wrapped around your broken ankle, dragging you away. You thrashed in their hold as they pulled you up, kicking back and forth, trying to reach back for Enishi only to be yanked harder. Your world turned upside down as they hoisted you up on their back, turning to walk away from the clearing back on the main road. Punching and punching until your hands cramped, you tried to get them to let you down. But they just wouldn't budge. Not even an inch.

Something hard connected with your head, turning the earlier throb from the crash drilling into every part of your head. Spots appeared even faster in your vision, threatening to take you away for good this time. The last thing you saw before you gave in were his dark eyes opening wide.

You wanted to scream. To let him know he wasn't alone. That you didn't leave. But it was too late.

Darkness took you before you managed to open your mouth.

Flashes.

Images flashed in black and white, familiar with the darkness of the night. Even in colours, too bright to be the morning sun or the brightness of daylight.

More flashes.

You blinked through the haze weighing your eyelids. A pair of dirty boots came into view, upside down walking on a concrete path. Your ears perked up catching some muffled voices. Then your eyes closed again.

The next time they opened, you were upright, propped on a cold stone wall in a pitch black corner. It allowed you to see the rest of the room. Dark light, rusty steel bars and cold floors under your feet, you figured you could only be in one place - a holding cell. Somewhere deep underground from how freezing cold and humid it was.

A set of keys jingled loudly against the bars, hurting your sensitive ears. That horrifying boom still echoed inside your head, as if it was still happening over and over again, spinning into the nothingness of the forest. Someone walked inside, steps composed and lanky, looking for trouble. Dirty dress shoes stopped in front of you. Your vision was heavily damaged from the constant hits your head took all night but you willed to work at least enough to identify the person. Your lack of a reaction made them crouch down before you, forcefully tilting your chin to them. Once your eyes came into focus, heavy but clear, you were ready to set all hell loose.

"You."

The sneering snake looked you in the eye with sheer delight just like the spawn of satan he was. The smirk on his face was enough to make your hands shoot out to his neck only to pull against the metal shackles restraining you.

"Pleasure to see you again, kiddo."

Thank you for reading :) Next

[campingwiththecharmings]

Invisible String (2)

AN: Not technically a part 2, more of an addendum to the original fic (which you can read here if you haven't read it already). This is straight up tooth-rotting fluff, I'm so sorry 😂

For @my-secret-shame who wanted to see more from this 'verse. Hope you enjoy, mon ami😊❤️ (I could be persuaded to write more of these two if y'all are interested...just putting that out there 😉).

(Un-beta’d)

“I’m really glad you came,” he says, his eyes warm and sincere as he passes the flask you’ve been sharing back over to you. You take it, smiling softly as you take another sip. “I’m really glad you invited me.”

Rated: T Words: 1,438 Pairing: Poe Dameron x GN!Reader Warnings: flufffluffflufffluff, mutual pining, a little awkwardness, a little kissing, references to the reader feeling lonely, bb-8 being snarky AO3

——————

Your thoughts race as you stand in the hangar bay, fingers twisting as you watch Poe from across the room, BB-8 by his side. Neither had spotted you yet, both appearing to be listening intently to the mechanic who’s talking and gesturing to the X-Wing beside them. Despite the fact that you’d just seen him that morning at the beginning of your shift, you can’t help the way your eyes linger, drinking him in like it’s been days and not just hours. You’d agreed to meet him here, and had been looking forward to it all day, the time dragging and making your ten-hour shift feel more like a thousand. Now that you’re here though, you’re regretting agreeing to do this. 

This. What was this, anyway? Was this a date or just a casual, friendly hangout? Should you have changed out of your uniform? Should you have eaten something first? And Maker, why were you so kriffing nervous?

You shake your head, as if to stop your thoughts from spiraling, and inhale slowly, willing your nerves to calm. Fortunately though, you don’t get a chance to continue dwelling on your anxiety. 

Poe’s gaze meets yours from across the room and he pauses, eyes brightening as a smile stretches slowly across his lips. He almost looks surprised, like he didn’t think you’d actually come, and your stomach flips a little as you smile back. The mechanic briefly grabs his attention once more and you watch as Poe nods at them, clapping them on the shoulder in thanks, before heading in your direction.

You look away before he can meet your eyes again, instead choosing to watch a group of pilots as they exit the hangar bay, laughing and talking about their runs. Before the loneliness can settle in your gut again, though, you hear Poe call your name. Your attention returns to him as he and BB make their way over, the little droid making it to you well before his human partner. You crouch down when the droid stops before you, beeping happily. 

“Hi, BB. I’m glad you’re doing okay,” you tell him, smiling when he beeps at you again and you’re reminded that you still haven’t even tried to learn any binary. Maker, you should really get on that…

“Hey, Doc,” Poe says, a little breathless when he finally makes it to you.

“Hey,” you respond, looking up from where you’re still kneeling on the floor beside BB-8. 

The droid swivels his head and beeps at Poe, who huffs a laugh, a mild flush creeping up his neck. “Don’t you have somewhere else to be, Beebs?”

The droid beeps at him again, cheekily this time, and Poe rolls his eyes, an affectionate smile on his lips. BB whirs when he returns his attention to you, and you smile as you stand, waving goodbye as he slowly rolls away.

“Glad to see nothing much has changed between you two,” you say, shoving your hands into the pockets of your trousers.

Poe chuckles, rubbing the back of his neck. “Nope, still as mouthy as ever…so to speak.”

Your laugh makes his smile widen, as if hearing it has made his entire day, and you ignore the swooping in your gut at the thought. 

“So,” you begin, momentarily averting your gaze, “What did you wanna do?”

His smile shifts into something a little more impish as he shrugs.

“I have an idea or two,” he says cryptically, offering you his arm. “Ready?”

You take it, nodding as you bite back a smile. “Ready.”

—

When he’d told you that he wanted to show you his favorite place on the verdant planet, you’d thought he meant somewhere like the Cantina on the west side of the base. Instead, he’d taken you on a hike to a cliffside clearing. It wasn’t far, less than a klick from the main hangar bay, but the foliage was thick enough to block out the floodlights. The view was breathtaking, awe-inspiring, even—an endless sea of inky green below you, a mass of twinkling stars above. 

“I’m really glad you came,” he says, his eyes warm and sincere as he passes the flask you’ve been sharing back over to you.

You take it, smiling softly as you take another sip. “I’m really glad you invited me.”

As you sit side by side, you try to ignore how close he is, how good he smells, how you can feel the warmth of him through your clothes, his shoulder pressing lightly against yours. Instead, you gaze up at the sky, eyes tracing the invisible lines between the stars.

“It’s beautiful out here,” you say, blindly handing the flask back to him.

“It is,” he says quietly, fingers brushing yours as he takes the container from you. 

You sneak a glance at him, skin heating a little when you realize he’s staring at you and not the scenery.

“Know any of the constellations?” you ask, ignoring the nerves churning in your belly.

He hums thoughtfully, shifting a little beside you as he raises his hand and points somewhere off to your left.

“There’s the Rancor.”

“Where?” you ask, turning a little away from him to scan the part of the sky he’d indicated.

“There,” he whispers, his breath fanning against your ear as he leans in closer, his finger now more in line with your vision. “See?”

You pause, heart fluttering in your chest at his sudden closeness. “Oh, yeah.”

There’s silence for a moment as he presumably looks for another before he moves his hand up a little and to the right. “And there’s the Veermok.”

His voice is softer now, almost intimate, and you can’t help the goosebumps that rise on your skin.

“Veermok?” you whisper, eyelashes fluttering as you try to focus on where he’s pointing.

“Yep,” he says, leaning in even closer, “See the teeth right there?”

You nod, willing your heart not to beat itself out of your chest. “Sort of.”

“This one, though, this one’s my favorite,” he says, smile evident in his voice as he points directly across from you, almost at the horizon. “The Woolamander.”

 You sniff a laugh, leaning away a little so you can meet his eyes. “The what?”

“The Woolamander,” he repeats matter-of-factly, his eyes shining. “Look right there, you can see the ears.”

You squint at him suspiciously, briefly glazing in the direction he’s pointing. “I’m starting to think you’re just making these up, Commander.”

His mouth falls open in shock. “What? No way, Doc, they’re 100% real.”

“Yeah?”

“Yep.”

“Even the Woolamander?”

“Especially the Woolamander,” he says emphatically, lips twitching as he holds back a smile.

You hold his gaze for a moment, raising a challenging eyebrow to show him you're unconvinced. He breaks first, his snort pulling an amused chuckle from you. Before you know it, you’ve both dissolved into breathless laughter, your bodies doubled over, leaning against each other for support. He’s still close as you both catch your breath, the heavenly scent of him making you feel a little lightheaded.

“Okay, you got me,” he concedes, his voice as soft as the smile on his lips. “The last one’s not real, but I’m pretty sure the other two are.”

You hum skeptically, unconsciously wetting your lips. His gaze flicks to your mouth, lingering there for what seems like an eternity, making your stomach flip.

“Can I kiss you?” he breathes, his eyes returning to yours.

You swallow thickly as he leans in closer, your lips parting wordlessly as his warm breath puffs against your cheek. He waits patiently for your answer, his brown eyes warm and hopeful, practically sparkling in the light from D’Qar’s moons. 

Not trusting your voice, you nod, a shy smile on your lips. He smiles back and your heart almost backflips out of your chest. His lips are hesitant at first, unsure, pressing softly against yours. When you kiss him back, he sighs, his hand coming up to gently cradle your cheek. Warmth spreads through your body as he pushes in closer, his touch a little more sure as your fingers curl into the fabric of his leather jacket.

A familiar ache of longing settles in your chest, one you’d grown quite accustomed to the last few months, but now it’s tinged with something else, something more, something hopeful. You can’t stop the smile you press against his lips as they slide over yours, a giddiness you haven’t felt in months bubbling beneath your skin. He smiles back, his kiss suddenly surer and full of promise, and in that moment, you know that this is the start of something wonderful.

If you enjoyed this, please let me know! I appreciate every single reblog and/or comment. Thank you. 💖

🌟 Masterlist 🌟

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[star-going-supernova]

I feel like Rodan (in amy 'Verse) would be pretty protective regarding Maddie. At first, it would be out of guilt due to the whole Ghidorah thing and because I personally like to interpret Rodan's role as the Kind and Queen's vanguard, so he would take the role for Maddie too, as she is basically the King and Queen's daughter now, but then it would be out of genuine affection because this human child has guts and they would be a troublemaker duo.

Just, Rodan caring about her and them being close friends and/or having a sibling/uncle and niece relationship

Heck yeah!! Rodan as a protector for the royal family and including Maddie in that is very good!

[kaydeefalls]

20 questions for writers

tagged by @lindstromm - thanks! I'm in a bleh mood so a good askmeme is right up my alley at the moment.

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

229, which include any fic I've written going back to 2002. About 30 of those works are vids instead.

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

1,518,992! I just passed the 1.5mil mark with my last fic, and am very pleased with that. Especially because I remember only passing the 1mil mark early on in TOG fandom, so I've written quite a lot of those words just in the past few years. (By my standards, at least, that's a lot!)

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Many. I am very multifannish at heart. I tend to settle into one primary fandom for a few years at a time, but even then, I'm still writing the occasional oneshot for random other fandoms. Most recent primary fandoms were The Old Guard and X-Men, most recent fic posted was for Heartstopper (and I'll likely linger in that fandom for a bit now that I'm here).

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Logical Deduction (HP, Remus/Sirius) - a very silly fic from 2006 that has, to my mild dismay, somehow risen the kudos ranks (6245 kudos?!) by virtue of the sheer enormity of HP fandom. So it goes.

it's like one of us woke up (X-Men, Charles/Erik) - XMFC canon divergence / fix-it fic. I'm still unsure why this is my most popular Cherik fic, but I'm not mad about it.

she's the one that they call old whatsername (Star Trek AOS, Kirk/Spock) - my only non-crossover Trek fic, and always-a-girl!Kirk to boot. I do love this one, still.

The Pond Continuum (Doctor Who, Amy/Rory) - in which Amy and Rory unwittingly encounter various other companions as they live out their post-Doctor life on the slow path. I am fond.

life is very long (Old Guard, Nicky/Joe) - my first TOG fic, posted like a week after the movie hit fandom like a ton of bricks, and reaping the kudos benefits of being in the right place at the right time. It was a good entry point into a new fandom for me, for sure!

I do love that my top 5 are all completely different fandoms; that feels very reflective of me as a writer. (Top 6, actually, since #6 is MCU.)

5. Do you respond to comments?

Yes, always, if only with a quick thanks. Because I really appreciate receiving them, and want the commenters to know.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

The angstiest ENDING? I have to dig deeper into the past for those, because I was more prone to writing them when I was much younger. These days, while I do enjoy a bit of angst along the way, I NEED a happy ending. Probably one of my old Remus/Sirius fics, but I'm not going trawling for a link now.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Most of them, lately. I need to believe in happiness. Fandom is my escapism from an increasingly grimdark reality.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Very rarely, fortunately. Let's keep it that way. The backbutton is right there if you don't like any of my fics, no hard feelings.

9. Do you write smut?

Not really? Sex scenes, yeah, sometimes, but I've only got 4 fics (out of 229) rated as Explicit, and honestly, glancing over them now, they probably only really warrant an M rating. I have no interest in describing bits and bodily fluids in graphic detail, I don't personally find that sexy. But sex is a significant element of human connection for many folks, so yeah, I'll include it where it feels appropriate.

10. Do you write crossovers?

Yes, though I prefer fusions (characters from one verse written into another) to more literal crossovers (character A from fandom A meets character B from fandom B). But I've certainly written a few. They're fun!

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not to my knowledge.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yes, several! I'm always excited and honored when that happens.

13. Have you ever cowritten a fic before?

Nope, never. I'd be curious to try that out someday, though honestly, writing is such a private/internal activity for me that I'm not sure I'd be any good at it.

14. What is your all time favorite ship?

I do NOT play favorites in this way. I love all my OTPs in all their unique and individual ways, and I'll always happily revisit them years and years later (as a reader, at least). Here, let's just say that Mulder/Scully was my very first ever OTP, so they will always have a special place in my heart.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

I've never abandoned a WIP once I've started posting it (though a couple took YEARS to finish, ugh), so really, now we're just looking at my personal WIP folder in gdocs. There are a few in there I'm sad about leaving unfinished. Um, let's go with an old Doctor Who/Torchwood fic, which I've got like 15k words written for but have long since moved on from. Every few years I'll dig it up and reread what I wrote and quietly mourn the fact that I never finished it, but there's no way I'll ever get back into that particular headspace (and the fandom is a very different place now).

16. What are your writing strengths?

Character voices. I'm a good mimic.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Sex scenes/action scenes. I despise writing these. Smut I avoid, but action scenes are sometimes necessary, and they drive me up a fucking wall.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language during a fic?

If it's just a few words/brief phrases sprinkled in, because that's how the character in question would speak, great. If there's extended dialogue - well, still depends on the character POV to me. If the character DOES speak the other language, I'd write it out in English (since that's the language I write fic in) and indicate through the narration that they're actually speaking Italian, or French, or what have you. If the POV character does NOT speak the language themself but is overhearing it, I don't include the dialogue at all, just narration to describe it. It's all about whose POV we're in and what's actually being understood, to me.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

X-Files. You will not find those fics on my AO3. I was very young then.

20. Favorite fic you’ve written?

NO FAVORITES. TOO MANY FICS. My most recent fic is usually my current favorite, anyway, so have one last plug for and we have all the time in the world (to get it right) if you're into Heartstopper, and let's move on. 😉

No-pressure tagging @andrea-lyn, @knoepfchen, @polarcell and anyone who's in the mood to play!

[pink-link-lemonade]

Infected Home-verse

Shortcuts ==>

IH! Art/Doodles: Human IH!Sonic , Linx meets MVA!Sonic , Sleepy , The Things Linx Deserves , Resizer , Shadow bickering at Sonic , Waiter , Hullo? , Melatonin , Doodle page , IH! Meets GH!/SATBK! , IH! Bein’ Mad , Going Insane rn , He’s Fine , Progression , Honk Shoo , Whoopsies , […]

IH! Lore/Lore Art: “Get Away!” , “Something” , Infection Info , “Amy…” , Linx Ref , Reference Sheets , “Episode” , “I’m sorry” , […]

IH! Height Chart: [Right here]

IH! Written Story: Chapter 1 , Chapter 2

[talas-first-lady]

Legends of Tomorrow: the Musical Episode

Brought to you by my obsession with tumblr polls

Note about suspension of disbelief: this is way too many songs to fit into an hour and we are pretending that all cast members are great singers and dancers (but Amy and Tala are still better than the rest of them, obviously).

Last week on Legends of Tomorrow:

The Darhks kidnapped Ray, who made some annoyingly good points about how maybe turning Nora into a vessel for a demon was not the best idea ever. He also sang the entire Singin in the Rain soundtrack. Several times.

The last lost totem of Zambesi was located on Elvis' guitar: the Music Totem. Damien Darhk seized it and realized that this was his chance to fix things with Nora and get the Legends off his back and maybe torture them just a tiny bit but, like, gently.

Episode 3x1???

Ray Palmer wakes up and begins enthusiastically singing about his morning. Seems in character so we aren't really that surprised. Until he heads out of his room and we discover that all the rest of the Legends are also singing and dancing enthusiastically. They sing about how happy they are now that Captain Darhk and Nora are running the ship. Gideon manifests herself in human form so that she can also dance. Both Sara and Zari say "Look, it's hot Gideon!" at different points.

Rip and Ava portal in from the Time Bureau (Rip is also happy to see hot Gideon) with important time business that promptly gets forgotten about because musical numbers!

Things are super awkward between Sara and Ava since they've recently broken up like 3 times about how neither of them believes she deserves to be happy. Everybody's sick of it.

The other Legends invent some nonsense task for them to do to force them to be alone together and talk about things. They sing about things instead. It is an upbeat and ridiculously cute number that involves a lot of dancing. Everyone is happy.

Well, except Amaya, who has forgotten all about Mallus and the totems but is still thinking about what she's learned about her own future. She sings through the big choice she has to make in the library.

Over in the lab, Zari is chatting with Gideon about how they haven't been able to find any loopholes to let her save her family. Gideon leaves, and Zari picks up with the second verse of the song. Both Zari and Amaya duet the last part of the song from their separate parts of the ship.

Mick dozes off in his room. A lifesize Beebo comes to him in his dreams and they perform an elaborate ballet. It's beautiful. He wakes up, grunts, and goes to get another beer.

We check in with Damien and Nora. Damien is clearly very pleased with himself about how everything is going. Nora is feeling a general state of annoyance but isn't sure why.

Rip and Gideon cross paths on the bridge. Rip starts talking to her like no time has passed, and while Gideon is briefly tempted to go along with it, she can't help thinking about how much better things have been under Captain Darhk. He's never flown her into the sun or into an atomic bomb. He's never turned her into a training simulator. She sings, basically verbatim, "Get Out and Stay Out" from 9 to 5 because Amy Pemberton deserves nothing less.

Rip slinks off to the galley, heartbroken. The guys are all hanging out there already. They manage to get the truth out of him and instantly rally around him: Wally talks about his girlfriend going back to a different earth, Nate talks about Amaya leaving on his birthday, Ray brings out his laundry list of failed engagements. Mick is just there to get a beer. Wally reminds Rip of how healing karaoke was for him just a few days ago. They all join forces for a 90s boy band-inspired number about things getting better in the future and trying again. At one point, Rip pulls a saxophone out of the food fabricator and performs the solo from "Careless Whisper."

Ray leaves, feeling pumped about the idea of finding love again, and immediately crashes into Nora.

Zari is starting to get the nagging feeling that something is wrong. She keeps seeing weird flashes of the timeline where Damien and Nora are evil but she doesn't really know what to make of them.

Ray starts singing about how he's been feeling different about Nora ever since their adventure together. Nora is also kind of feeling something but not really ready to admit it. They sing a funny duet with Nora very annoyed with Ray at first but gradually wearing down a bit.

Zari goes to Nate since he was helpful the last time she got stuck in a weird TV trope, but he just thinks she's trying to prank him because what she's saying is completely ridiculous. She goes to Sara next. Ava is also in Sara's room and they have clearly been in there ever since their song finished earlier. Zari explains and Ava is first to believe her since something has also felt off to her. Between the two of them, they manage to pull Sara out of the delusion as well. They split up to talk to everyone else with varying degrees of success.

Damien notices that there are whispered conversations going on around the ship and intervenes, calling everyone for a team meeting. Sara calls him out in front of everyone. He admits the truth in a jazzy villain song. At the end, Nora confronts him and demands that he hand over the Music Totem and stop standing in her way. He reluctantly gives it back and with that, the spell is broken.

The only thing nobody can explain is how Mick ended up with a Beebo in his room.

[aletterinthenameofsanity]

how do you click into a characters ‘voice’ as well as you do? People are so consistently in characyer and I notice that as a unique standout of your writing

Advice for Writing Characters: Design, Arcs, and the Role of Plot

Warning: hella spoilers for my Doctor/Amy/Rory 'verse because that's what I'm using as examples for this writing breakdown of sorts.

First off, thank you so much for the compliment to my writing! I have worked so hard on my characterization over the years and it means a lot to hear that you liked it.

But onto the actual writing breakdown:

So I'm going to sound like every basic English teacher you've ever had to suffer through with this opening piece of advice, but it really is about practice making perfect. I wrote disastrous dialogue/characterization when I started out writing in 2014 (when I was 14). Looking back at my old characterization it's hot garbage. Dead awful.

But I have improved a lot over the years. A lot of that has to do with about my ability to sit down and re-watch episodes over and over again and find the right music to listen to, but a lot of it also has to do with the three things I always look to/think about when writing characters.

To be honest, I still have my weaknesses as a writer. I don't always like writing settings and I'm still improving on my action scenes and my intimacy scenes but my favorite things to write have always been a good extended metaphor and diving into character POVs. I write because I like exploring characters. There's a reason why the most popular additional tags on my ao3 account look like this:

I love writing character-driven stories. Plot comes as a secondary device to link the character moments for me and not vice-versa (though I'm not gonna lie, I can occasionally come up with a decent plot twist, ala the Master, Clara-River-Ytroswinasleen, or Bill/Clara reveals). Writing characters is about exploring what threads twist themselves together to compel the character/story forward, whether that be backstory, current stressors, or what their motivations are to go forward.

For example, with the Doctors it's easy to explain because they're divided by era. To talk about Eleven, you have backstory: the ENTIRETY of Ten's character arc hope from Rose -> guilt/grief from losing her -> Martha/Donna helping him believe in himself/find joy again -> grief from losing Donna -> Time Lord Victorious leading into Adelaide Kane/him finally doing one kind thing for Wilf. Then, as shown in the only good moment in Let's Kill Hitler, his guilt over everything he did to those three. Then you have current stressors: the sheer loneliness he feels after regenerating alone/isolating himself, the guilt he feels after "abandoning" Amy as a child/leading to Rory's death, and the ever-present knowledge he has with every companion that humans do have a tendency to die/leave him.

Backstory and current stressors tend to play off of each other to lead to future actions, aka: Eleven freaking out and assuming that Amy and Rory will leave him after the baby is born and trying to cut them loose before he can or later, after we establish the Martha&Jack&the Master of it all (and the guilt that he still feels after how Ten handled All That Shit), it makes sense that he might go a little Time Lord Victorious when you find out that the Master was behind River's kidnapping because the Doctor finally has a family to get protective over.

And this is all just from one character point of view! It's also about how characters bounce off of each other- my absolute most favorite part of writing. It's what creates the most interesting parts of the story. When you have Rory's desire for a family/desire to do-no-harm/loyalty hitting up against Amy's desire to keep her family safe/the established ferocity of her love/her willingness to face danger in the face and not blink hitting up against the Doctor's fury of a time lord/guilt over doing things wrong the last time/desire to make things right not just for Martha and Jack and himself, but for Amy and Rory and River, things are bound to get not just messy but satisfying when you have Rory look the Doctor in the eye and tell him that he can't take that choice out of people's hands in the end. That the Doctor has to give River and Amy the choice that the Doctor didn't give Martha and Jack regarding the Master before.

Characterization is as much about a satisfying arc as it is digging into a character's mindset. As much as I love writing "character studies," that's only half of the battle when it comes to writing. Yes, you need to know where your character's head is at. But you also need to understand where they were and where they are going. Learning to figure out a satisfying bend to that curve is one of the greatest tools in an author's toolbox. I am constantly aiming to create as satisfying an arc as I can for every character, and this is usually the bit that fumbles most writers. You can come up with the coolest character design and then make their arcs either boring (sadly the case with a lot of Thirteen's companions in canon) or unsatisfying as hell (the case with Rory, River, and Amy's canon character arcs) because you don't plan them out well enough or just start and stop them within a single episode (everything regarding Mel/River Song in Let's Kill Hitler is a fantastic example).

The great thing about fanfiction is that since there are no limits for number of words or length of installments, I can throw words on the page regarding insights I have and figure out the order or how/where they fall later. I can rearrange episodes and give myself plots to bounce off of to develop characters. Because this is where plot comes in: it can give you an opportunity to explore a character in not just how they see themselves, or how they react to each other, but how they react to being challenged by their circumstances. That's how you get great moments in this series like exploring Eleven/Thirteen's unresolved loneliness with the Planet Sanatorium arc or Amy figuring out how to stop the mummy because of her own experience with war or Rory responding to the poisonous hallucinations or Amy getting closure by Eleven popping up as the voice interface or Thirteen seeing Rose in the Solitract or Amy's slow Doctorification thanks to how she reacts to Solomon/the TARDIS-as-Idris/the mummy/the pocket universe in Hide/the prison break situation or Bill figuring out the flesh in the database. You can only go so far with character motivations/their relationships with each other when you don't see how they react to conflict/challenge/separation. You can, however, use the challenges to directly lead into character arcs.

As a final example of all three elements coming together (motivation/character design, character interaction, and plot as challenge), I'll use Thirteen/Amy/Rory's arc. You don't get Thirteen, Amy, and Rory making up at the New Year's wedding if you don't have the arc of trust between them. The Cybermen are used entirely and only as a device to show their characterization/development off as characters. When they first appear, you get a glimpse into how the hundred-year separation has affected Thirteen and how her anger/fear/protective instinct go just as deep as Eleven, if not further, but also how she isn't sure if she can trust Amy/Rory yet, while you also get to see Amy's faith in the Doctor contrasting Rory's doubt but also the nuances of his position (loving her but not trusting her because she has revealed that Eleven didn't trust them). This leads into the Chameleon Arch plot which gives you Bill (my beloved) but also a view into Rory's changing opinion, both Amy and Rory's own development and their ability to hold their own, and the fact that the Doctor trusts them with her life. Then we get It Takes You Away and the realization that the Doctor would stay with Amy and Rory over anything, even Rose, then the wedding scene (kisses! rings! comms! Dr. Pond!). But then the Judoon come back after the Cybermen issue, prompting the TARDIS crash/the multidoctor fic where you get a stark contrast between Eleven at his worst and Thirteen at her best (fantastic place to explore characterization) where you also get to see Rory finally get closure/see that that he really does trust Thirteen. Then Thirteen giving herself up to the Judoon to protect innocent people AND because for the first time in the entire series she completely and fully trusts Amy and Rory to save her. The Cybermen as a villain don't truly matter in the end, other than some really fun imagery and exploring a bit of the mind control angle/just how far Thirteen is willing to go for Amy and Rory. It's about how Thirteen running against them provides the structure of sorts for her, Amy, and Rory's developing characters (and, hell, Bill, for that matter, regarding the Chameleon Arch/prison break plot), just as the Master provided an obstacle/structure for Eleven/Amy/Rory working through their own arcs.

...Whoops. That was a lot of writing. I'm almost sorry for all of that. But I hope that the three-step process made sense! I also recommend reading analysises of characters (and for a show like Doctor Who, I read analysises from both pro-Moffat and Moffat-critical blogs, same as with Chibnall) and just rewatching the show! You don't necessarily have to take notes or anything, just kind of take in thoughts you might not have thought of otherwise! For example, I got a lot from @tenmartha, @orpheustwelve, and @variousqueerthings, all of whom had completely interesting and different takes on Eleven, Amy, and Rory as canon characters!

Hope this gave you a good view into the process or even some advice for your own writing, and I hope you continue to enjoy my writing! (Right now I'm currently working on a much shorter, five-chapter AU to the end of Season 3 where Riley from "42" travelled with the Doctor/Martha for the last six episodes of Season 3, using these same three rules to explore the growing dynamic between Ten, Martha, and Riley, if you're interested.)

Thanks once again for the compliment- the absolute greatest gift I can receive as an author is questions/compliments like that!

[badnikbreaker]

@heartslight : ❛  promise me not to do anything stupid.  ❜     /     for amy hehe haha?     /     accepting.

Her hands find her hips and she POUTS, cute as anything, sweet and consistent that way.  “I’m never stupid!”

— Is a giant lie, though Sora doesn’t know quite how big of one.  (  it’s sort of a relief, that he hadn’t known her when she was younger...the amount of trouble she got into because her enormous, stupid heart demanded that she do the right thing, never mind the sense it made is a little embarrassing.  not that she got more levelheaded, but now she’s strong enough that she can back up her headstrong nature!  )  It’s a lie, but it’s funny, and it has his sad expression breaking into a smile — then laughter.  Good!  He doesn’t need to be sad!

And besides, Sora has hardly got room to critique her!  They’re both a lot alike; leaping before looking, stubborn and determined to save, to protect, to do the right thing.

“I’ll be okay, promise.  I’m tough!”  And he knows that.  It’s not every day you meet a petite girl that can swing around a three ton hammer like it’s nothing.  As if to remind him, their hammer manifests in their hand, and they heft it easily up to rest over their shoulder.  Comfort him, make it okay.  Remind him that it’s okay. “I’ll keep this world safe while you travel, and when you come back, I’ll be even stronger!  And then you’ll have to fight to keep up with ME!”

It’s sad, when people leave — Amy’s spent years chasing and being outrun by Sonic, who never stays very long.  But she’s used to it, too; boys she loves disappearing for a while.  Sora’s often kinder to her than Sonic is, or at least used to be, values her feelings more, cherishes those feelings and thinks they’re worth defending.  Amy trusts him.  Amy knows he’ll come back for her.

“But — don’t you do anything stupid while we’re apart, either.  I wanna see you again, soon as I can!”  After all — their hearts are connected.  “So go be a hero, and then hurry back!  And I’ll keep being my own kind of hero here.  Okay?”

[odettecarotte]

Louise Glück, NYT

Louise Glück, photo by Charles S. Hertz

b. 1943

The Nobel-winning poet was pitiless to herself, yet fiercely generous toward her students.

By Amy X. Wang The New York Times

She stood barely five feet tall — slight, unassuming, you had to stoop low to kiss her cheek — but whenever Louise Glück stepped into a classroom, she shot a current through it. Students stiffened their spines, though what they feared was not wrath but her searing rigor: Even in her late 70s, after she won the Pulitzer and the National Humanities Medal and the Nobel, she always spoke to young writers with complete seriousness, as if they were her equals. “My first poem, she ripped apart,” says Sun Paik, who took Glück’s poetry class as a Stanford undergraduate. “She’s the first person whom I ever received such a brutal critique from.” Mark Doty, a National Book Award-winning poet who studied under Glück in the 1970s at Goddard College, felt that she “represented total authenticity and complete honesty.” This, he recalls, “pretty much scared me half to death.”

Spare, merciless, laser-precise: Glück’s signature style as a writer. It was there from an early age. Born in 1943 to a New York family of tactile pragmatists (her father helped invent the X-Acto knife), Glück, a preternaturally self-competitive child, was constantly trying to whittle away at her own perceived shortcomings. When she was a teenager, she developed anorexia — that pulverizing, paradoxical battle with both helplessness and self-control — and dropped to 75 pounds at 16. The disorder prevented her from completing a college degree. Many of the poems Glück wrote in her early 20s flog her own obsessions with, and failures in, control and exactitude. Her narrators are habitués of a kind of limitless wanting; her language, a study in ruthless austerity. (A piano-wire-taut line tucked in her 1968 debut, “Firstborn”: “Today my meatman turns his trained knife/On veal, your favorite. I pay with my life.”) In her late 20s, Glück grew frustrated with writing and was prepared to renounce it entirely.

So she took, in 1971, a teaching job at Goddard College. To her astonishment, being a teacher unwrapped the world — it bloomed anew with possibility. “The minute I started teaching — the minute I had obligations in the world — I started to write again,” Glück would confess in a 2014 interview. Working with young minds quickly became a sort of nourishment. “She was profoundly interested in people,” says Anita Sokolsky, a friend and colleague from Williams College, where Glück began teaching in 1984. “She had a vivid and unstinting interest in others’ lives that teaching helped focus for her. Teaching was very generative to her writing, but it was also a kind of counter to the intensity and isolation of her writing.”

Glück’s own poems became funnier and more colloquial, marrying the control she earlier perfected with a new, unexpected levity (in her 1996 poem “Parable of the Hostages”: “What if war/is just a male version of dressing up”), and it is her later books, like the lauded “The Wild Iris” from 1992, that made her a landmark literary figure. Teaching also coaxed out a new facet in Glück herself: that of a devoutly unselfish mentor, a tutor of unbridled kindness.

A less fastidious writer and thinker may have made their teaching duties rote — proffering uniformly encouraging feedback or reheating a syllabus year after year. Glück, though, threw herself into guiding pupils with the same care and intimacy she gave to her own verses. “There was just this voraciousness, this generosity,” says Sally Ball, who met Glück while studying with her at Williams and remained close with her for the three decades until her death. “Every time I moved, she put me in touch with people in that new place. She enjoyed bringing people to know each other and sharing the things she loved.” And as a teacher, Ball says, “Louise was really clear that you have to make yourself change. You can’t just keep doing the same things over and over again.” In that spirit of boundless self-advancement, Glück also taught herself to love cooking and eating. She once hand-annotated a Marcella Hazan recipe and mailed it to Ball, with sprawling commentary on how best to prepare rosemary. “She’s very beautiful and elegant, right,” Ball says, but “we’d go to Chez Panisse and sit down and she eats with gusto. It’s messy, she’s mopping her hands around on the plate.”

Paik recalls spending hours each week decoding Glück’s dense, cursive comments on her work. “I was 19 or 20,” she says, “writing these scrappy, honestly pretty bad poems, and to have them be received with such care and detail — it pushed me to become a better writer because it set a standard of respect.”

“She was 78, and whenever she talked about poetry, it felt like the first time she’d encountered poetry,” says Shangyang Fang, who met Glück when he was at Stanford on a writing fellowship. Glück offered to edit his first poetry collection, and the pair became close friends. “She would talk about a single word in my poem for 10 minutes with me,” Fang says. Evenings would go late. They cooked for each other sometimes, spending hours talking vegetables and spices, poetry and idle gossip. “By the end, I couldn’t thank her enough, and she said: ‘Stop thanking me! I am a predator, feeding on your brain!’”

[tina-mairin-goldstein]

✏️"what are your current WIPs about?"

Thanks for playing with me, @kaylinalexanderbooks!

I have several WIPS right now, so this could be interesting.

Caraval- A Hannibal (NBC) sort of crossover/rewrite of the book Caraval by Stephanie Garber. It's also omega verse, with Will being an omega, Hannibal an alpha, and so on for the various characters who appear. Will must play a magical game that plays tricks on the mind and involves magic to find his sister (Abigail) over the course of five nights, searching for clues so he can find her before the other players and win. Hannibal, who initially brings them to the island where Master Legend hosts Caraval, teams up with him. As they play, Will realizes the game is far darker than it appears and that it is a race against the clock to find Abigail, because it is far more than a game.

Long list, so the rest are under the cut.

2. For Remembrance- A post-fall Murder Husbands story for my collection, Words Are Not The Only Way, centering on my chosen flower (rosemary) and its meaning. Won't say too much, but there is amnesia and rosemary plays a part in trying to help the amnesiac person recover their memories.

3. All Night or a Hundred Years- A Fantastic Beasts story from the POV of Percival Graves, who has been locked up in the dungeons of Nurmengard for a long time. Leta, rather than dying, is secreted away by Grindelwald in the dungeon as well, and she is helping Percival remember what it is like to be human and giving him something he hasn't had in a long time: Hope. They are getting to know each other and trying to figure out if they can escape, and how. Percival is close to giving up, but Leta won't take it. This one is on hiatus, however, because writer's block is a bitch.

4. Untangled- A Fantastic Beasts version of the Disney movie Tangled, with Newt as Rapunzel, Tina as Flynn, Grindelwald as Mother Gothel, and Theseus as Maximus, along with a bunch of the other FB crew members taking roles. Currently paused in favor of Caraval. Things are switched up in this, because Tina has the case of beasts instead of Newt. It's cheerful and fun and I sort of don't want to finish it because of that, so I'm being slow.

5. The Third Day- A Hannibal (NBC) rewrite of the HBO show The Third Day. Will is getting divorced from Molly and is grieving Abigail, who died under mysterious circumstances several years earlier. He meets Mischa in the woods, where is trying to hang herself, and takes her back to the place she lives, where he becomes trapped for three days and nights. Hannibal, Alana, Jack, Bella, Margot, Mason, and several other characters star as the residents trying to either run Will off the island or keep him there as he uncovers mysteries tied to himself and Abigail's death, as well as all the weirdness on the island.

7. Beloved- This is being scrapped and will be rewritten as a sequel to another story, His Shadow Suspended On Dust. Initially, it was a thirty-years post-fall story about Hannibal getting sick and Will taking care of him and living through his last days with him. Some of the original will remain, but it will be heavily rewritten, and there will be another story, called When the Snake Slithers By, between it and HSSOD.

8. The Lone City- A Pokemon anime rewrite of a favorite book of mine, called The Jewel by Amy Ewing. Starring Mairin, it centered on girls being sold off into surrogate slavery for the ruling class of the island, who became so inbred they can no longer safely carry their own children. Sort of a magical Handmaid's Tale, but with Pokemon twists. It was going to lead to Mairin uncovering the truth, falling in love with Alain, and escaping and so forth, but it's been on hiatus due to computer trouble, and I don't think I'm ever going to actually go back to it since it 's been more than a year.

9. Han+SPN- Temporary title, an attempted Hannibal/Supernatural crossover co-written by @ sarcasticsciencefictionwriter. Sam and Dean are driving through Maryland one night and Dean hits Will, who is a ravenstag, with Baby. Will is pregnant and fleeing hunters who are coming after him and Hannibal, who is half ravenstag, for being cannibals and want to kill their baby as well. The Winchesters learn that ravenstags only take what they need and chose harmful people as their victims (i.e, the rude), and end up teaming up with Will to save Hannibal from the hunters after Bobby, who saved Will when he was a fawn, tells them to. Currently paused because I didn't come up with much an outline and Sarc can't work with that. I'm playing with idea that Sam and Dean might have to deliver the baby.

I believe that is all my WIPS, unless you want to count the to-be-written finale to my collection, the Price of Godhood, where Will is Persephone and Hannibal is Hades, which will be about Will going to the world above on the first day of spring and saying goodbye to husband for six months.

Thanks so much for the ask! I've never done this before and I was so much fun! Feel free to hit me up again!