a/n: for Nila, who wondered during the livestream if Mio/Satoshi existed. I don't think this is quite there, but it's close. Many thanks to the kind anon on sherlockcrit that helped me hammer out some of the truly awkward sentences.
When she stumbles upon him in the Central Library, she's surprised enough that she forgets to muffle a small cry.
"Satoshi!" Mio says, covering her shock with feigned cheer. "Oh, you're so studious! I can see why your father adores you. What are you looking at?"
Satoshi carefully closes his book, and Mio makes a show of trying to peek at the page that he was reading. She doesn't quite manage it before the book closes in her face, and the golden letters on the cover are too complicated and too faded for her to make out. "How did you get in here?" he asks, because this is the restricted section of the library dedicated to the Cultural Reform. His eyebrows slant down, dipping below the line of his glasses. "What are you doing here?"
Mio brings a finger to her mouth in mock-thought. "Hmmm, I wonder," she says. There's something a little depressing about the fact that the sensors that line the arched entrances don't acknowledge her when she passes. She ignores the first question, and gives him a half-truth. "Maybe I just wanted to kill time?"
"Maybe you should leave," Satoshi replies.
Something catches at the edge of her consciousness, and tells her to stay. When she blinks, she sees red hair, shining bright and vivid. The crystal sits heavily in her pocket. "I think...I think I have something to tell you," Mio says.
Satoshi looks at her, face blank. "I'm not interested in what you have to say."
Mio tugs at her skirt and breathes. "It's about Daisuke Niwa," she says. The corners of Satoshi's mouth tighten.
"Alright," he says. He slides the book into the bookcase where it sits, indistinguishable from its neighbors. "But not here."
He leads her to his apartment through winding back alleys paved with roughly hewn rock. The apartment itself is almost painfully sparse, and plain enough that when she says it's nice he ignores her so pointedly that she can't help but laugh. His brusqueness is oddly charming.
He waves her into the apartment, past a room walled by a high window. The window backlights something large and dark, stripes of black shadow stretching reaching across the floor. Then they move into a small, shadowy kitchenette furnished only by a small table and two chairs. One of the chairs doesn't match the other or the table, as though it were added as an afterthought. There's a single window, a tiny slip inserted between two wall cabinets. He shows her a seat, and says, "I'm going to need coffee."
She sits, and ends up with her back against the window. She stares at the shadow that the moonlight makes as it curves around her body to hit the wall. She is real enough to cast a shadow, if nothing else.
"Whatever it is, you may as well say it now," Satoshi says behind her. There's the sound of a tap running, and then the click of an electric kettle.
Mio listens to the gradually increasing rumble of the kettle. "Something bad might happen to Daisuke in a bit," Mio admits in a low voice.
Satoshi is quiet, but the sound of his rummaging through the kitchen cupboards slows until it's punctuated by the sound of a single cupboard door closing. When he finally speaks, his voice is a harsh whisper. "This is why I didn't want anyone to get involved."
"I didn't mean to," Mio says, and flushes. "Well, okay, no, I did mean to, but..." Her shoulders jerk in surprise when a mug is set down beside her.
"It's only tea," Satoshi says as he sits down opposite her. He cups a mug of his own between his hands. "I don't seem to have any coffee at the moment."
"Thank you," Mio says carefully.
Satoshi curls his hands around his mug. She knows the movement has something to do with warmth, and she knows from the steam rising from the mugs that it's cold in the kitchen, but. It's weird. When she tries resting the back of her hand against her mug, she doesn't notice any difference. Satoshi asks her, "do you have anything else to tell me?"
"I can't," she says. "I can't tell you."
"Of course not," Satoshi says, and his voice is unreadable again. "Then why did you want to speak to me?"
"I don't want Daisuke to be hurt," she says quietly to the table. "Please. Look after him."
"It's a little hard if you won't tell me what you're scheming," Satoshi says.
"But you'll try, right?" Mio needles. "After all, he's your - " Satoshi straightens, and Mio finishes her sentence there and then.
"I'll do what has to be done," Satoshi says.
Mio shouldn't be allying herself with him. He's her enemy. Her rival. He's the only significant obstacle standing between her and the life that she wants. That she thinks she wants. And - he's tired, Mio realises. There are shadows under his eyes, a dull bruised blue to match his hair, and his skin is pale with fatigue.
On a whim, Mio leans across the table to kiss him on the cheek. When she pulls back, Satoshi looks back at her, motionless apart from the rise and fall of his chest. "Was that an American custom?" he asks. Mio wonders if that's what passes for his sense of humour; from what she's been told, there's no way a Hikari wouldn't be able to sense the magic running beneath the surface of her facade as clearly as they could see blue of the sky.
"We could have been friends, in another life," Mio says. She sends him a wink, and forces her voice to be bright. This room needs the cheer. "Or maybe even more."
Satoshi leans back in his chair. "That implies you have a life," he says.
Mio doesn't let her smile crack. "Yeah." She listens to a clock tick in the remaining silence, and somewhere from within the town a bell begins to sound. She counts the peals as they ring from one, two, and through to eleven.
Satoshi sighs when the last of the bells have faded away and they've been quiet for far too long, a noiseless parting of the lips and slumping of the shoulders that seems more gesture than action. "I'll walk you home," he offers.
"I don't have a home," she says. Satoshi doesn't react. She almost wishes he had. "And...there might be something I need to do tonight."
Satoshi tilts his head, and the moonlight glances off his glasses. "Related to Daisuke?"
"Yes."
He taps the table once with a finger. "Wait at the door," he says. She follows him out of the kitchen to watch him walk up the stairs, but stops at the door as he'd told her. She takes the moment to glance across at the window, and the strange shape in front of it. It's a winged chair, one wing beautifully carved, the other a sad, shattered thing. The wires that provided the base of its shape are visible, poking out from under the edges of crumbled plaster. She edges away from it towards the door, because something about it feels off, and oddly familiar. Like she'd seen it before in a book. She frowns a little at the thought, because she certainly doesn't remember doing so.
When Satoshi comes down the stairs, he has a cape over one arm, and a pair of gloves in his hand. He offers them wordlessly. When Mio slips them on, they settle with an odd weight on her shoulders and hands. Not unpleasant, just – odd. Warmth, maybe. An idea comes to mind.
"Give me a second," she says. She runs past him back into the kitchenette and rummages through the drawers, slamming back empty drawer after empty drawer.
"What are you doing," Satoshi snaps, and grabs her arm. She shakes him off.
"Help me find some scissor - here," she says as she finds a pair hidden at the back of a drawer, its only friend a single spoon. "Cut off some of my hair."
"Excuse me?" The vaguest hints of emotion shape the edges of Satoshi's words. Confusion, maybe. She won't fool herself to think it's concern. He takes the scissors from her fingers.
"Just do it," she says, pulling at the ribbon in her hair until it comes out smoothly. He shrugs, but does. When she reties the ribbon with her reflection in the kitchen window as a mirror, she sees that he had cut the lock off from the base, deep enough into her hair that it's not noticeably missing when the ribbon is back in place.
"What am I to do with this?" Satoshi asks. He's tied the lock into a knot so that each strand of hair stays together.
"If it disappears, then you'll know I'll have as well," Mio says.
"And that something may have happened to Daisuke?"
"Yeah. Um." Satoshi is staring at the knot of hair in his hand. "I'll be leaving now," Mio says. When Satoshi is silent, she bows and says, "sorry for intruding," and hastily leaves as quietly as she can.
When she reaches the pavement outside, she stares up at the window that looks into Satoshi's apartment. She shrugs, because she's oddly uninterested in what Satoshi's thinking, and spends a little time roaming the streets. The magic that fills out her limbs is buzzing, making her restless. She rolls the crystal between her fingers, and when the tears come she lets them fall.
Then something pulls at her chest, and she knows that she needs to move now.