Naoto's shoulders tensed in the instant before the water coursed over her; they remained stiff until she relaxed her knees and allowed herself a slow, deep breath. Her sight was normally sharp, but the haze of steam was sympathetic. Beneath the mist her scar became an exotic tattoo and her bruises melted into shadows of yellow and violet.
The water was warm, though she never expected it to be. Instead she would brace herself for the choking, as though she was only delaying the inevitable. The sky would pelt hail all over her world any day now, she knew it. Something about the bulkiness of ice made her anxious, the way it seemed more tangible than anything else she could touch.
She was attuned to the iciness of her blade, but it was a different type of cold altogether. It was a blessing against the searing trial of flesh being split, of blood welling and pooling over the skin. She never married the sword to punishment because it would never hurt her - so long as she had the resolve to wield it when it was necessary.
Naoto tried at all costs to keep her mind from a state of emptiness – to be vacuous was to be vulnerable, to allow ghosts to bloom and infest her heart like knotweed. Before the humidity brought her senses to a standstill, she chose to indulge in her more morbid curiosities.
She wondered if she was capable of being desired. Desired physically, yes, but only as an extension of what she had to offer as a human being. She couldn't put a name to those qualities, but surely they existed? Could she have survived all this time if not for them?
Frequent exposure to Magato's leers in her youth had afforded her a cool disinterest in sex, but that didn't make her immune to basic chemistry. There were a handful of characters in her head, each of them coupled with artificial scenarios and meaningless dialogue. These men were placeholders for the partner she could never imagine, and the encounters were composed of more calculation than fantasy. Most often they would lead to no veritable conclusion, and for a long time now, she couldn't recall the last image she had used. Then Naoto remembered why she hadn't had the inclination lately.
She wasn't sure if she was capable of desiring any one. She didn't desire relationships; she didn't desire comfort or conversation. She didn't desire Heine, yet somehow he had forced his way into her consciousness. The brick and mortar of her existence were her aims and the dull drone of repetition, and Heine could be reconciled with neither of these things. While they allowed her to slip into sleep and wake the next morning without the hum of panic deep in her lungs, he would keep her awake.
She ran one hand over her stomach and brought the other to her lips. In her minds eye, the blur of evaporation and condensation made his skin look transparent. She was only aware of the pressure he exerted against her chest and her hips, and how her jaw immediately tightened. Her neck shivered beneath the inky plaster of wet hair, and she thought of his breath as it swam around her ear. Naoto felt his fingers grip her wrist with an alien urgency, though she imagined they would tremble. She didn't know if his hands would be rough or if they would leave her as scratched and bruised as her battles did, or if the very idea of being near her would leave him repulsed, burning with disgust. Doubt began to lodge itself in her throat. She suddenly decided that if she had ever been capable of appraising herself with any kind of vanity or pride, it would have been a useful talent.
But this was her head, whatever she wanted was a simple matter of imagination. She allowed herself to be touched but did not try to reciprocate because she could never anticipate any of his reactions. Would he even enjoy being touched? Would he enjoy anything at all?
She knew that it wasn't fair to quantify Heine as merely the sum of his parts - her experience with Fuyumine had shown her the pitfalls of such a misjudgment. Still, however she observed him – his exhilaration amidst bullet showers and the soothing monotony of gunpowder, his inevitable withdrawal from the living world when he fell into some dark, dusty recollection – she still had the same troublesome difficulty reading him and his patterns. Just when she thought she'd met the rhythm of his stability, he razed the playing field and took her precious consistency with it.
And when his open mouth coasted over her cheek, when it skimmed her neck and stopped at her collarbone, when his tongue made indolent, infuriatingly measured contact with her damp skin and the warmth in her core began to crawl, that was when she lost him. She grit her teeth and clenched her hands, aiming to steady herself as she came back down from the whirling in her stomach and the heat snaking up her legs.
Distractedly, she ransacked her brain for more detail, anything to bridge the gap between reality and the whim she was trying to entertain. His canines when he bared them, the disarray of his pale hair, his belts and their clamor of hardware, the smell of his sweat mixed with some sterile detergent, the red of his eyes that matched the red of his world - but she knew that it was worthless. The illusion never held fast beyond that point.
She was always struggling to find something strong enough, something to grind away that final veneer of anonymity between them. She didn't like that the Heine in her mind didn't really have his face. He spoke about as often as the real one did, which was to say, almost never, but the voice he used when he did wasn't the right one. Heine, but not correctly and not completely. Naoto scoffed inwardly at the idea of differentiating the two. Heine was a reticent misanthrope no matter what dimension you put him in.
After the last remnants of the image had dissolved, her eyes opened. Naoto didn't feel guilty for any of her thoughts when the whole process was so impersonal, so clinical. Though she didn't view him as an object, there wasn't anything sincere about it. She was just familiar enough to capture his superficialities, but not so familiar that she was ashamed of using him like she did, as though she was violating some intimate friendship. She could hardly say they were allies, let alone friends. It was nothing but the management of time, clinging to the crucial fragments and cutting up the excess and weighing it all and throwing it away.
The hour had escaped her, but the sudden onset of weariness in her bones did not. When the water was turned off and the silence began thudding against her ears, she wiped away enough of the condensation in the mirror to give herself a single pointed look. Stepping out of the shower, she stepped back into that brick and mortar business of the living.
With the door clicking closed behind her and her towel securely knotted, she turned purposefully east, intent on making short work of the walk to her room. But halfway into the dimly lit hall, she caught sight of his sleeping figure and froze. The three seconds she stood still, carefully holding her breath, were ample time to tip the scales in favor of curiosity.
Ignoring the drops of water that left a telltale trail in her wake, Naoto began her procession into the parsonage, stopping just a few feet behind the bench where he lay. His chest hardly rose as he inhaled, and he didn't look very comfortable. His arms propped his head up above the armrest and his hair framed his face in a half dozen different directions. She couldn't see the openness of his expression or the way his lips were barely parted or the metallic glint on his left ear. Was it indecisiveness that rooted her to the ground….no, she was sure enough. Something about the palpability of his form, and that anxious feeling she knew so well. She also knew better than to keep moving forward.
Nothing was changed. Yet, everything was changing.
The unblemished stillness that Heine had sunk into broke neatly in two. His eyes flew open and darted about the rectory methodically until he recognized Naoto's gait. Before he could acknowledge her, her footsteps grew fainter and fainter until they vanished into oblivion. He didn't move an inch. For a moment he tried to close his eyes and duck back into unconsciousness, but the air around him seemed to suffocate. There was an unsettling current of electricity hovering above his head, threatening to jolt him awake if he dared to fall asleep again.
Though he had been left alone, he wondered why she even bothered to approach him. Maybe she regretted it once she had been close enough to see his face. He could empathize with at least that much. Because somehow, he felt as though he would have regretted turning around.