Unfamiliar Faces

by Clementive

[AU]. When their path crossed, there was fire in the sky and scavengers had started eating his flesh. When she tried to turn away from him, destiny had already tied them together. SasuTema

Summary: When their path crossed, there was fire in the sky and scavengers had started eating his flesh. When she tried to turn away from him, destiny had already tied them together. SasuTema

Pairing: SasuTema (main)

This was supposed to be a Western!AU, but I took a wrong turn (or a right one, I still can't decide) and it ended up... different. It's definitely darker than what was originally intended. ^_^'

-X-

When hunters brought him back to the village and their path crossed, there was fire in the sky.

She barely glanced at him.

Temari thought the sky had erupted above them, ablaze, and ashes disruptively swirling. She thought it marked the ongoing war between the Ancient and New World. Fire in the sky, the ancestors called it; when the stars died in trails of white dust. Her heart thudded in her chest, pounded in her head. All the while, villagers strolled by in hushed whispers. Her brother ignored them. They were already known to be cursed. Slowly, Temari detached her glance from the welkin and it trailed on the furious red colour of her brother's hair. In the tales of their people, only monsters could raise from the ashes. Only monsters opened their mouths and souls to the fire in the sky.

"He has no where else to go," Gaara whispered and the shadows grew quivering on the side of his face.

"Of course, Gaara," she clicked her tongue, her balled hands shaking at her sides while he remained calm, "because he's a mass murderer."

"So am I."

He looked at her not bothering to correct himself. Was. Am. Not bothering with the present and past that disappeared, blended in a thin line when it came to their family, when it came to the village and how villagers now looked at the flickering flames and blazing ashes during their meals. She would catch them leaning in and staring avidly at Gaara's sleek shadow, the wild of the fire long forgotten. They turned the monster into a hero and no amount of medicinal herbs could ease the pain and anger pulsing inside her.

"Gaara..." she bit her lip, awkwardly reaching for him, but she wanted to speak of the signs. She wanted to speak like the sorceress she was, the cursed daughter, the survivor, yelling and pointing at the sky, not like the sister she never was.

Another star left a white smoky path, disappearing quickly in the blackness above them. She shuddered.

The wind howled between them, swept them across the leagues that separated them from the hills of their childhood. There lay a beast. It still spoke of red sand and thick reeking wetness that never truly left their steps. And they carried with them the chained souls that roamed the Ancient world and grazed the New One. Lone souls like Sasuke Uchiha brought the New World upon them with iron sticks that spat violence and fire. Lone souls like Gaara didn't fear it the way she did because unlike he had tasted fire and let it run loose.

"We also had nowhere else to go, at some point," he added quietly, watching the hunters carry the stranger's limp body in his house.

'Because of people like him,' she thought still gripping his arm. He didn't speak of her, he only spoke of him.

"Sasuke Uchiha will stay with us," his voice hesitated on his name, the syllables seemed less flat when he spoke them in their tongue. "You should make your peace with that, Temari. I've already made up my mind."

'Because of people like you,' she let go of his arm, turning her pale face back towards the welkin and the destruction that only happened in the light of the night.

Even the wind couldn't erase the traces the clawing savage beasts inhabiting them. Even to one another they showed only unfamiliar faces and hid the rest.

They weren't brother and sister.

Not when it came to change.

Not when it came to hope.

Definitely not when it came to saving a life.

-X-

Unfamiliar Faces

by Clementive

This is one is for K. Pereira and her favourite crack ship: SasuTema. Next step is something even more outrageous. ;) Hope you enjoy it, my dear! :D -XXX-

-X-

The second day Sasuke Uchiha woke up in pain, he almost forgot he had been a monster. Disoriented, he called for them in a raspy voice.

Sakura.

Naruto.

"You're awake," a cold voice whipped by him.

Sasuke blinked, the scent of fur strong around him, pressing him down. Sounds of animals and human voices rolled slowly over him. Sleep receded from him. He remembered the desert, the sun that scorched his skin until he lay down laughing emptily. He almost felt like his brother; dying at the hands of the wrong person, at the wrong time and place. He searched for him in the harsh light. He yelled his name and let it bounce back to him, unmet by the arrogance and coldness that was familiar to him. Then, he remembered why he couldn't call them anymore. His friends. His family. His home. He chose revenge; he couldn't go back now.

Sasuke groaned, panting heavily, when something nudged him on the side. Something snapped inside him fuelling a harsh pain that made him gasp. Temari finally leaned over him and he bit his lips, blinking at the cold savagery of her features.

His people usually had white skin and dark hair, but she had rough blond hair that she impatiently pushed out of her pale eyes. The green of her eyes made him look for pink hair but dry reddened sand clung to his body, biting at his skin when he tried to roll on his side. He wasn't home. The first day he woke up in pain, he grabbed for the aureole of light surround her thinking it was a mirage, a reflection in deep howling waters. He was hungry. He was sore. He was thirsty. She pressed her body onto his, pain rippling and burning through him. She didn't scream. She didn't release him. She watched him squint and toss and fight her, bile rising in his mouth.

Somehow, the fourth day rose and she was still there. She always began by stating he was awake in his language and it made him wish he wasn't.

Her gaze was haunted, her lips always set in a straight line as if she were afraid of what she may say or reveal. Looking at her, he shivered from both his fever and her green eyes. There was no such thing as home, he decided then.

Green eyes. Pink hair. He wished he had truly left them behind.

Roughly, Temari set the basin of water on the ground, kneeling next to it. She expected Sasuke to taunt her with smirks and words slurred in the roughness of her language. Like Gaara. She was always impatient, her touch brutal and when she leaned in, her eyes glowed, darkening. She didn't only expect him, she searched for it, hunted it down in the coldness of his stare. Gaara. Gaara. A monster.

She almost begged for it: 'Let me be right. Let me show him he hasn't changed and he should remain hidden like the beast that he was.'

"You don't like me," he stated coldly when she undressed his wound.

He fought the weight of his lids, watching her work. There was a dagger at her belt. Sasuke hissed, dried blood still stretching across his stomach in marks of teeth and claws. The scavengers had started eating his flesh when the hunters found him.

"I'm healing you because my brother asked me to," she answered stiffly, biting back a growl when he titled his head on the side to study her. 'You shouldn't be here', she added inwardly.

Since the hunters had brought him back, the whispers of the river hissed disturbed, hesitant in its flow, and when she bathed in it, the water didn't close around her the way it used to; the wind blew too strongly. It deformed its shape and when she glanced down at her face, it skewed, misshaped and terribly angry. With him here, she couldn't hide it anymore. With him here, glancing at Gaara became accusatory and she fought with herself, between quivers and shouts.

You took our mother from us.

You took our father from us.

Now you are taking my world.

"Is he a king?"

"What?" She snapped back to reality noticing the water still dripping in the basin. It was still clear. Her hand shook, in midair. Her nails sank in her palms through the cotton cloth and she turned towards him.

"Your brother. Is he a king?"

He closed his eyes briefly, now that he could see her clearly, he was uninterested. She looked savage, the curve of her hands rough and too slim. When she moved, the pearls and desert gems around her neck and wrists clattered. When she stared, she carried the sound of a thousand birds.

"A king?" She repeated slowly and his lip curled back in a sneer at the word she spoke in his language.

He groaned.

"I killed my brother." Sasuke said instead, so she would hurry and disappear.

Cold water licked his sides, pooling around his body. His hands shook above the rosy colour but his eyes didn't leave her face. He waited for her disgust and fear, his glare intensifying. He licked his lips. Now, she would bolt and he would know for sure. Now. He didn't need her. He didn't need any of them. He didn't need a new home. Now, now! He just wanted to die with scavengers feasting on him.

Temari paused, looking back strangely at him. She could see one of his palms, a deep line splitting it in half; his life line. For the first time, she wondered if it were what she would want for herself: to kill her brother.

She straightened her back, her eyes drifting and he saw it pass like a shadow across her features. There was no 'now' in those twisted shadow and quivering lips, there was a soundless, 'never'. A curse and a blessing he didn't want. Long after she had gone, he kept screaming for now, a tempest of the present. Death. Anything that will shake his bones and banished him, again and again. He begged for the scavengers to come back and finish him.

He should be lying in pieces beneath the scorching sun, he thought.

His fists pounded onto the ground and he yelled, his chest expanding with rage and hatred. His pain unleashed at his side, trying to break free. He breathed in fire and ashes. He breathed in destruction, never releasing that intake. He yelled until there was nothing left.

And she kept denying him the right to die.

He should be with his brother, he thought.

And she kept turning away from him.

-X-

Sasuke couldn't escape his past even in his sleep.

He still dreamt of fire every night. He would welcome the burning sensation awakening in his body, death nestled in his muscles. Branches whipped at his face and forearms, snaps of moments with the thickening smoke around him. Flickers of his past were all he had left now.

He woke up with harsh cries, hands begging. Hands waving. Hands stopping him. Nails sinking in his skin. He startled, the familiar weight of his gun in his palm. He blinked, a child with widened teary eyes staring at the him. He expected the world to shift back into motion when his hand shook. He had heard Temari speak of the dreams being connected to life, but he didn't believe in that. Sasuke didn't believe in anything anymore. Wildly, he searched for the pieces of his dreams but his heart pounded, deafening, sickly hissing to his ears. The battlefield, the burning smell were gone. A bullet was lodged in the trunk of the tree behind the child who was sinking to her knees. It gleamed coldly and he felt the sweat on his forehead.

Bile rose to his mouth.

The child whimpered in a language he still didn't understand. Sasuke panted, his muscles tensed like he was still on the battlefield. With the scent of black powder filling his nostrils, he wondered if he could ever escape it. Temari peeled his fingers from the gun as if she herself was made of iron. She spoke slowly in his language, but the words didn't break his daze.

The air brushed by him and the men holding him slowly let him go, holding their hands up in an appeasing gesture. They believed in him, more than he believed in himself.

Sasuke couldn't look at them. He carried death in his soul, his mouth ablaze with the ashes of the ones he had killed.

"Your soul is sick," Temari spat because this once she could say it aloud. Because this once, she wasn't facing her brother. But Sasuke already knew, her words were useless. He tried to suppress the jerking of his fingers, the twitching of his jaw. His skin was damp and cold, his thoughts suffocating him.

Temari forced him to sit on the hard ground, her hands hovering over his wounds. His mind slowly cleared. Despite the veiled moon above their heads, he could make out her long eyelashes and her strong jaw.

"I thought," he began again in a rasp.

His pale fingers reached for his forearm; the weight of his gun had never truly left him. This time her touch was ice, broken, unapologetic. It weaved his memories in the darkness that surrounded them, her eyes reflecting his hollow expression. He could see it now, the way she saw him: like a ghost. Like a monster.

The child was still crying and the sky and the sandy streets refused to clear.

Her skin was greyer, her mouth taunted, and he stopped thinking of the fallen, the other villages, his last victims. Inwardly, he still begged for death. Her, she was different. She was both alive and extinct, breathing through clenched teeth. A gleam of light in hungry and overwhelming darkness. All at once, she was him and everyone else looking back at him. He wondered where his reflection ended and where she began; if they could co-exist. His right hand was dark from firing his gun. It hung between them and he didn't know what to expect. In his palms, white lines carved like moving snakes jolted to life whenever he clenched and unclenched his fists.

"I thought..." he tried again, still flexing his hands slowly, afraid to feel those snakes crawl under his skin.

It was a dream.

It was reality.

"I don't care what you thought," Temari hissed and the wind gushed around her, amplifying her words.

Her shape was more familiar now. Her fingers still circled his wrist and he could see the flickers of green and blue in her eyes. His gaze trailed down to her hand around his. Inhaling sharply, she let it go, standing up abruptly. Even when she didn't speak, she was loud and she carried the voices of a thousand spirits. The bandages swirled unattended around him, white streaks in the darkness that had fallen.

"You could have killed her," Temari shouted and she expected thunder and fire in the sky that would make her right.

It shouldn't matter that the bullet landed five feet above the child's head. It shouldn't matter, because the dead remained dead. His bullet had missed the child's head and Gaara was still alive and their mother was still dead.

"You followed me," he said slowly, a smirk stretching shakily across his lips.

He wiped his hands on his pants, unsteadily standing up. He watched her flinch, cocking his head on the side. Fear. Disgust. They were there now, but she still gleamed in the moonlight, brighter than any stars surrounding her head. He had never met anyone who was only reassured by darkness. Temari searched for it in everyone one, in everything. In his homeland, they would have burnt her on a pike and if he told her that, he knew she wouldn't flinch like when he told her about his brother.

He laughed emptily walking by her. She stiffened. She wore a closed expression that revealed her pride. His smirk stopped shaking.

"You were looking for me," he whispered in her ear, the burning sensation was back in his stomach. Hatred. Anger. He needed no one.

But there was also pain.

"Your soul is sick," Temari repeated in a shout, but the wind didn't carry her words to him. He was already gone.

Above her head, the sky was still silent.

-X-

Temari still waited for the fire to fall from the sky and at some point, it was as if she couldn't escape him. Him, the wind and the absence of flames beyond the hills surrounding the valley.

Sasuke stayed.

She didn't understand it. He glared at villagers, waved them off when they stepped to close to him and any talk he had with Gaara often ended in a brisk silence that made even Kankuro pause. He didn't believe in souls the way they did. He didn't believe in the gods that had carved the world out of the toughest rocks of the desert and allowed them to live. He snickered darkly at the offering they burned, so the smoke would carry them to the Eternal Kingdom above. He didn't believe in anything or anyone.

Yet, he stayed, without fumbling for redemption, without thriving to be a hero.

He wasn't the centre of the village the way Gaara was. They left him on the side, grieving and pushing them away whenever they stood too close. They were curious about the strength they felt in their leader but didn't bounce off him. They were curious about the way he held himself under the sun, as if he were nothing but walking bones.

But they didn't turn to her.

They didn't ask Temari about the legend of the Walking Dead. It seemed she was fading too. If there was fire in the sky, they would seek her out, but a sorceress who has been wronged by her sight could only be useless.

Temari thought Sasuke was one of those creatures who could take away her magic. She thought it was all a test sent by the gods. She hoped it was. She looked up at the redding sky masked by puffy thin clouds, her eyes watering from the crackling ashes of her offering.

They both had brothers.

They both had grief that branded them with ghostly parents dressed in blood.

She couldn't be wrong.

Days passed without and the forest pulled her deeper into the valley, her heart loud in her chest. The rushes chirping birds and dancing leaves didn't slow it down. Her palms burned with the need to smoother his palms and read the densely webbed lines of his palms, but there was only silence when she tried to read anyone else's. She bore the silence like a betrayal from the gods.

She avoided him.

-X-

The wounds across his body grew fainter and the warm waters of the river stopped biting at his skin. He was alive. He hated no one but himself. And he was alone. Whenever he sank in the water to bathe, he closed his eyes and he could see his brother dying, a smile perched on his lips and he remembered why he had to turn away from love.

He avoided everyone.

-X-

Sasuke decided he would stay even if their words still rolled shakily and incoherently between his clenched teeth. He didn't say it to them, even less admitted it to himself. He simply stayed. His revenge gone, his muscles tensed around him uselessly, clumsily. His brother gone, he could no longer pretend he had no needs.

That morning, he rose and decided he would build his house. Gaara and Kankuro barely glanced up when Sasuke crossed the line of the forest. Unlike him, they already knew, it would come to this.

Slowly, he rolled the ax between his palms in front of a tall tree. The hot air whizzed around him, plastering mercilessly his shirt to his moist skin. His blood pounded, his lips curling back into a snarl. The violence hummed through him.

"Stop!" Temari shouted angrily.

She narrowed her eyes, pushing a branch out of her way. He growled under his breath. He made another brisk movement her fingers circled his wrist in an iron grip. Her chest shook heavily with pants, her basket thudding at their feet. Their breaths came into short fast intakes. Their eyes met. Even if he understood their language now, they still didn't understand one another.

"What do you think you're doing? This tree isn't for cutting!"

He leaned forward coldly glaring at her. She didn't flinch.

"What's wrong with you?" Sasuke snapped, impatiently shrugging her off. "You avoid me every day for weeks and now that I'm about to cut off a stupid tree, you speak to me? To tell me trees aren't for cutting. Trees, Temari."

She held up her palms facing him with her back hitting the tree. Every time they faced one another, they both felt trapped, with their different worlds, splitting them apart. Even if he explained it to her in her tongue, she didn't understand. How could one take something that wasn't his to begin with?

Her heart clutched in her chest; he was leaving their house.

"You're leaving?" She looked down at his hands, chewing the inside of her cheek.

She should have read the signs, sense the way his spirit didn't weigh as heavily onto his shoulder. Temari shook her head, her hands running up and down the trunk of the tree. Ever since he had come to them, the forest was silent except when it said his name.

"I'll take that tree now. Move," Sasuke glared at her. "You wouldn't be the only woman I've killed. So really, I don't care. Stay there or move, I'm taking it.

Her eyes fluttered open widened and empty, reflecting his. Breathless, they stared at one another, holding on to the thought that made them both hurt and hurl and scream inside. Death was a talisman they were both used to.

"Unlike you, I have no blood on my hands," she said hollowly and he pinched his lips, avoiding her stare.

"I thought..." he stopped himself.

Briskly, he embedded the ax in the ground. His muscles rippled under his skin, the tensed silence crushing his windpipe.

An apology rested on the tip of his tongue, but he knew that wasn't what she wanted. What he needed. For a brief moment, she shone with the light of the day before she disappeared in the forest. Sasuke still thought of her as a mirage when she looked brittle. Usually, she was loud, her hands always moving around her, weaving tales of the sun and the moon and spirited rocks that made children clung to her and people like him avoid her.

"So stones? What is it? How am I supposed to leave and build something else?" Sasuke yelled, his jaw twitching.

He knew how to leave. He didn't know to stay, how to live with others near him. The rest of village didn't fear. They showed him things, fishing, hunting, carving objects out of clay using a wheel. At first, he had been disgusted and crossed his arms, but they were patient. Their patience wore him down.

Time after time, they waited for him.

Sasuke wondered how many souls Temari carried on her shoulders, how many times she had turned away from the world of the living to delve into the underworld, reassuring souls and spirits like a mother. Even with her brothers, she pushed them forward, her lips carved in a straight line that only relaxed when they came back to her. He wondered if he would have looked like that after Naruto and Sakura had he chosen to stay.

But Temari didn't choose revenge. She chose love. Timidly, boisterously, and over and over again, she chose love and she stayed.

He yelled her name, pinching the bridge of his nose. He clenched his teeth, his chest shaking with a plea he didn't want to muster. He couldn't even look at his ax.

"East of the river," she whispered behind him, her hands playing around the necklace she always wore. The shadow of the leaves and tall branches wrapped around her, veiling her to his sight. "There are two trees marked by an X. It should be enough, for now."

He nodded stiffly, but he caught the straight line of her lips, her eyes unflinching as she pointed on his left. Her other hand was still firmly clutched around her necklace, an amber gleam filtering between her fingers.

He didn't look back but he knew the curve of her lips would ease when he returned. For now, that was enough. Coming back. Staying. It was all he could give her and her, him.

-X-

Sasuke built his house as he had seen other men do.

He did it alone as he always did things, smirking arrogantly at the men who watched and glowered when he declined their help. At night, he would slip in Gaara's house, making just enough noise in front of Temari's room to let her know he was back before falling exhausted into his own bunk.

They didn't avoid each other anymore, but they grazed past one another, never meeting glances, never speaking except for curt orders.

The night he didn't slip back in the house, she rose at dawn, her hands working swiftly over his bunk as she stripped away the bedsheets and folded the bed back in a corner. She was done before her brothers awoke.

She walked to the river and he was there, waiting for her.

"You haven't come to see my house," he smirked arrogantly as she bent down to look at the herbs and their roots.

Temari kept picking herbs by the river, clenching her jaw. It would be easier if he remained unfamiliar, if he didn't dress like them, if he had learnt their tongue. If the stars and the wind and the trees didn't whisper about him.

"A woman doesn't visit a man's house unless she's his wife," she snapped.

He still had so much to learn about them. She shook her head briskly, her hands sinking in the earth to grasp at the roots of the plants she needed. Her heart pounded with the seconds he remained behind her, his dark gaze never leaving her.

He could never be one of them. Her hands shook and the wind reverberated her harsh words back to her. A branch snapped behind her. Birds flew. Whenever she looked up, he faded. He faltered, made of blurry edges and unstable ground. Sasuke was a monster without journey or purpose. They broke him when the war ended. She knew that. He broke whatever was left of him when he killed his brother. She understood that. She shouldn't stare or remember his name; he was part of another world and that world didn't want him anymore. She couldn't understand why her brothers let him live with them or why she had to suppress the urge to read his palm and dive into his future. If his own people had shunned him, why shouldn't they? Yet her palms pulsated with the need to know. That was why she shouldn't look up, but he reminded her of Gaara. He reminded her of all the times her stomach had churned with anger and sorrow. And it was grief. And it was shame.

If she redeemed Gaara in any way, she would have to redeem him too. She would have to let him near her. She would have to love them both.

"Think about it," he said briskly and she heard tossed dried leaves breaking under his heels.

She gasped, her hands moist and dark as the signs of nature overwhelmed her. She didn't follow. She didn't call back.

She didn't want to think about it.

She didn't want to be afraid.

-X-

"Temari."

"No," she growled without slowing her pace. But the wind screamed yes. Her body bent, her fingers twitched, feeling the strength of the wind inside her. For once, it was tempting to let it wreck her and scatter the pieces of herself she would rather keep hidden.

He didn't try to stop her.

"Think about it."

That was all Sasuke always said. That was how he greeted her and ignored others. He was always there, in-step behind her, not quite touching her but always straightening the heavy baskets she carried. She hated how much she ached for both more and less. She hated how she expected him, drawing her baskets out of his reach where she knew he would be. She hated how familiar, his gait, his silence were and how she feared that one day the wind would rise and take it all away.

-X-

Sasuke looked back at her, distant, a misshapen shadow with his dark glance and pointy chin, colder than Gaara had ever been. For once, it was about them. The wind brushed by them. She wanted to stop its rise and the way she could see them. Together. Across the present moment and future ones. Each time, there wasn't fire in the sky.

"Tell me about my future," he asked her leaning on a tree.

"What?" she muttered distractingly.

He wasn't supposed to talk. Even the air felt different against her skin, heavier. Desperately, she searched the darkness ahead of her. What had changed? Why did the lake shine as brightly as the sky? Where had the fire gone?

"Just tell me."

"No," she growled forcefully.

"Just read me."

She shook her head, balling her fists at the way his eyes remained on her, unflinching. Waiting.

Tonight he wouldn't go away.

"Why?"

"Because," she snarled, focusing on the herbs in her basket. "I don't need to explain myself to you. You don't care about spirits. You think you are still in your world and you can just summon things to your liking," she bit her lip, pausing to take another step towards the river. "You need to ask for things, Sasuke."

He followed her, unbothered by her coldness and the way her body closed out of his reach.

"And you need to answer questions, Temari."

She growled.

Since he had asked her to be his wife, it seemed she needed to explain herself to everyone. Her brothers coughed and asked her why she couldn't say yes. Just this once, why couldn't she smile and say yes. Even the other women called after her, winking and pointing out that Sasuke was one of them now. He was healthy and he would only look at her. They told her to say yes and be grateful. Say yes and smile. Say yes and be happy. She wondered where they fitted in acceptance, him with his dark glance and her with her dark heart.

"What are you thinking about?" he asked and he sat on his heels, his glance levelled with hers. A smug expression passed across his features.

She startled. Even when it was about them, she kept including others. Spirits and her brothers crept into her mind and she drifted onto their feelings. They should have told her at least once that she should tell them no.

"I thought..." she began but he stiffened a soft chuckled interrupting her.

Temari flushed. Sasuke titled her chin upward, forcing her to meet his stare.

"I don't want to be with you," she said finally. She jerked her head on the side and began to rise but he caught her arm.

They stood slowly, together, staring at one another. They steadied one another, their breaths turning to quiet gasps.

"I know," he whispered and she blinked watching his lips move, hanging onto him despite the way his fingers rose goosebumps on her skin. "I don't want to be with you either."

She nodded stiffly despite her heart clutching in her chest. She opened her mouth to snap something above the whirling tempest of her mind, but he grabbed her hand.

"I don't want to be with you and that's how I know I should be with you."

He spread her fingers pressing her palm against his chest. They snapped, frozen and quivering over the muscles she felt underneath his shirt.

"Read me," he repeated hazily, his lips hesitating over her cheek bone. "Tell me," his lips brushed his words against her temple.

His thumb reached up to trace her lips, gulping at the way she whispered his name and turned to look up him. He traced her cheekbone, rearranging her. The wind shifted around them. It was her. It was him. They were the ones who had changed, she realized looking at him.

Their lips crashed.

Above their heads, the sky quivered, burning with the fire inside them. It danced, full of the unfamiliar faces they showed only to one another and they finally said yes.

-X-

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