Title: Black, White, and Green with Envy
Author: Omnicat
Spoilers & Desirable Foreknowledge: Studio Bones's Darker Than Black.
Warnings: None.
Characters & Relationships: Pai & Hei with background Amber & Havoc
Summary: Affection is easy, acceptance is not. / Hei & Pai siblingry in South America with a tiny bit of Amber x Hei
Author's Note: To stay in the tradition of colour-themed Syndicate code names, 'zĭ' means 'purple' in Chinese. Enjoy!
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Black, White, and Green with Envy
"Red reminds me of a starved cat."
Pai couldn't help but be surprised. It spoke? During mealtime? There was so much food in Hei's mouth that his puffed out cheeks looked ready to burst, but he managed to remain reasonably coherent and spray only a minimal amount of bread crumbs around as he spoke.
"And Green is like a mermaid."
Swallowing a mouthful of stew, Pai raised her eyebrows. This was a rarity. It had been quite some time since he'd last said anything like that, especially of his own accord. The peace and quiet of the past few days must have finally started to bore him.
"The new guy is a sheep – so much hair – and Purple –" Hei tried to go on, but Pai interrupted him.
"You've never met Zi."
Hei shrugged. "His voice, then. Just like a growling dog."
He looked down into their small cooking fire and said nothing for a while as he finished the bread. Pai assumed those cryptic words were just another one of those random things he sometimes shared with her, without seeming to notice he was doing it half the time, and sought nothing behind them. Lingering nostalgia. Nothing more.
Pai finished her stew.
When Hei spoke again, it came as a surprise. His voice was lowered to a whisper, as if he didn't want to be heard even though they were already speaking Chinese, so Amber and Carmine new guy Teal wouldn't understand a word they said either way.
"He bothers me. Not just his voice, but... as a person."
As soon as the words had left him his eyes narrowed, his mouth snapped closed, his lips tightened, and a minuscule wrinkle appeared between his eyebrows.
Not just so the others couldn't hear him, Pai thought, and felt herself frown too. He didn't mean to say that out loud at all.
Smoothing out her expression, she managed not to shoot a glance across the fire at Amber, Carmine, and Teal. Strangely, it seemed that the better she became at reading her brother's new expressions (did he leave the old ones behind when they left China?), the less she felt she could trust her teammates with them.
An utterly irrational thought. It were words like those, not his expressions, that were dangerous. She supposed that somewhere deep down there was a good explanation for her feelings, even if they only made sense through a lens of paranoia; paranoia was a healthy thing around here. The words barely amounted to anything on their own, but they betrayed a dangerous underlying sentiment, and the Syndicate had been spooked by less in the past – especially coming from him, the only actually unpredictable element on the squad. But knowing that did not take away from Pai's discomfort.
What really bothered and disconcerted her were not the feelings themselves, but how they defied her self-control and seemed to take on a life of their own. Emotions just didn't do that. They barely felt real most of the time. They floated around above her head somewhere just out of arm's reach, as hazy and inconsequential as smoke. They were shrivelled, superfluous reminders of a world that was dead and a life that no longer held any meaning.
But even now it was proving impossible to ignore the uncomfortable tug in her chest when she heard Hei say such dangerous things. It was driving her crazy.
Not that a little craziness every once in a while was necessarily a bad thing, she supposed. After all, Hei seemed to thrive on it, and he was doing fine.
Pai frowned. Maybe 'fine' was too big a word.
"So Green is like a mermaid, huh?" she said, steering the conversation back into safer waters.
This time, she did look over at Amber – and found Amber staring right back at her. Amber smiled, as had become usual, and Pai smiled back, as was becoming just as usual. Carmine, being Carmine, stared vacantly into the middle distance, and Teal was engrossed in the book of crossword puzzles he'd brought to pay his remuneration, absently scratching his pale, curly mass of hair with his pencil.
Good thing they don't speak Chinese.
There was no danger in it, Pai knew. So why not play along? He was her brother, after all.
Pai blinked when she realised she automatically added the 'after all'; naturally. Slowly, one of those unprompted smiles that her conscious mind had no control over, spread across her face. That's right. My brother. In more ways than one.
"Why do you think so?"
She looked at Hei, eyebrows raised in question, and offered him her empty bowl. He took it and eagerly refilled it with another helping of stew from the large pot hanging over the fire. No surprise there. He'd never let the rule 'if you use it, you clean it' stop him from eating.
Carmine could take a leaf from his book; she'll need more flesh on her bones if she wants to survive injuries or tropic fevers.
"Doesn't she to you?"
"Hm... I never thought about it."
"We watched the cartoon when we were kids, remember?" Hei said. "With the prince in the shipwreck and the octopus-witch."
"But that mermaid had red hair," Pai said after a moment's thought.
Hei shrugged and looked away, his cheeks darkening ever so slightly. "But it was long and bright and flowed like a cloud, like Green's. I've never met another real person with hair like hers. That's all."
Pai cocked her head to the side. "We should tell her, see what she thinks."
Bits of vegetable landed in Pai's lap.
"N – no!" Hei spluttered, only to dissolve in a fit of coughing. Pai knocked him on the back with one hand and brushed the soggy food from her pants with the other.
"Why not? I'm sure she won't mind."
Chest still heaving, Hei shot her a murky look. "Just humour me, would you."
"Fine, fine. But I don't see the point in playing games with only two players when there are four people available."
He was the expert at doing useless things, not Pai.
Hei shot her one last look, too intense and too short for Pai to decipher, before reverting back to his by now usual monotone and focussing on the remainders of his food.
"Jokes at the expense of others should be kept private," he said in flat, clipped tones, and started almost mechanically shovelling the stew into his mouth.
There was that tug in her chest again. Stupid and dangerous though it was to encourage him, Pai liked the quirky, silly, unpredictable big brother better than the reserved, calculating, ruthless Black Reaper.
Now look who's acting the fool, Pai's rational mind told her apprehension scathingly. He's stuck by you all this time and managed just fine. He knows what he's doing. You don't have to babysit him.
If anything, he was the one who was right in trying to babysit her.
"Then I suppose I shouldn't be telling you that Green thought you looked like a sloth when you were hanging upside down in that tree the other day."
Hei looked up sharply. The response typical for a Contractor would have been not to respond at all, which, when his eyes softened and he almost-smiled, made Pai all the more aware of how different her brother was from her, and from Amber and all the others. Too bad they didn't speak Chinese.
"No, technically speaking, you shouldn't have."
Pai liked it.
She stretched lazily, bringing her arms upwards until her shoulders popped. "Ah, well. We've already broken the rules now, might as well let Green in on the game, right? Just her, not the others."
"Pai, no," he said with what he would never admit was a whine.
"Why not? She likes you. You make her act crazy. It would be fun."
He looked away. "I just don't want to... play with her. Just with you."
"What's the difference?"
The expression that greeted her was too much of a whirlwind for Pai to understand. But when he rose and spoke, he'd reverted back to monotony again. Perhaps the lack of emotion in his voice was the most painful part.
"I wouldn't expect you to understand."
A Contractor would have realized she'd been joking; Amber didn't speak Chinese, and the only other languages they shared with her were English and Portugese, which both Carmine and Teal knew as well. It was impossible to let only Amber in on the joke.
Hei left for the tents, abandoning his half-finished bowl of stew.
Pai could have stopped him by saying "I do," but did not. She wasn't sure she really did. Nor was she sure why the tugging in her chest had become so painful. But it felt soothing when Amber scooted over and wrapped her arm around Pai's shoulders.
Despite the ache, Pai found herself smiling. Her brother's craziness was contagious.
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PSAN: Comments on older fics will always remain welcome. :)