#thinking abt a mizho/paresse/rage triad or the WTI polycule with this angle in it

[west-tokyo-incidents]

Paresse watched with only a touch more than passive observation, as Mizho trained.

The rapid thump-thud of her shins against the dummies and the crack-snap of her cane, too.

He shifted his weight. She was a little off-beat. Rusty. Muscle memory that still needs to be fine tuned.

She pushes herself too hard. She nearly falls over when her adrenaline fades. He has to carry her back to her bedroom and bandage the places where sharp shinbone broke through fragile, young skin.

She regards the gentle and intimate actions with impassive boredom, but he sees the way her shoulders relax just a bit.

Paresse smiles to himself where she can't see it. He's so glad to have found her again. And he thinks she's happy to see him again, too.

She's different. Younger, a bit more filled out, more fragile. But it's her. She says she doesn't care what he calls her. And sometimes 'lieutenant' slips out without thinking. But he thinks 'she' fits her quite nicely.

It's not something he would have thought of if asked nearly a hundred years ago. He would have said survival suited Michel's face best. He wouldn't have tolerated the thought of his master carefully sliding eyeliner onto her eyes, even after remembering who she was. It wasn't a matter of keeping up a mask or trying to be someone she wasn't. Michel... Mizho... she wouldn't bother putting in that kind of effort for any reason other than her own satisfaction. She genuinely seemed pleased with herself when she got it right.

Though she has a terrible limp for a few days, and eventually has to get crutches, she keeps going. The crutches become her new rifle, and eventually her scythe. After a year, she brandishes them as lethally as a sword.

She still goes too hard training, but she always did.

After Vice's return, after their first full meeting, she sits in silence with him in her bedroom. Her on her bed, him on his usual place on the floor. She asks him if he still thinks she's the same person.

He never even considered she would be uncertain about that. Of course she is. Life's just easier now.

Even if she wears skirts and paints her nails? Even if she writes with a pink pen and dots her kanji with little skulls and hearts? Things that she never could have known she would have liked before.

He just nods. She's his master, she's still the same brutal and deadly person she was. She just gets to kick-box with a skirt that twirls pretty when she breaks a man's nose.

She gnaws on the lollipop in her mouth and sits up. She's looking at his lap. And she makes a brief comment about it being cold. It's a lie. He knows it's a lie. He leans back and moves his arms out of the way for her to come sit there, like she used to.

He marvels to himself, internally, at how small she is now. But he dares not say anything, wrapping his arms around her and setting his chin on her head. It's a little tighter of a curl than he would admit out loud. But he knew she'd also never admit to pressing into it.

They are sloth. Apathy. They do nothing that doesn't benefit them, they care for no one but themselves, they do only what they please. Perhaps it makes them weaker as an evil douji-master pair to care for one another. Perhaps it's foolish to run his fingers through her hair and whisper how much he missed her.

But he doesn't care.

That's what makes him what he is.