A/N: I know I said I wouldn't update for a bit until things blew over with my family and stuff, but I found this little gem the other day and decided to test my luck and see if anyone thought it was good. I won't update this until I have more written, just like my other two previews. Hope you all enjoy!

'til next time!

~shine

Where Wisdom Slumbers

A CN x RF fanfiction

By: shinedown

Summary: Eve loves to read. So much so that she often forgets to go home after closing time. And then she meets the new guard…

Note: This is a preview only. I wanted to see if anyone liked this. Also, no. Raven does not have his nasod arm yet. It's the beginning, after all. All things come in time.

Disclaimer: Don't own Elsword, just this plot.

1: Where Wisdom Slumbers

She had no idea it had gotten so late. Stretching and yawning as she closed the book in her lap, Eve brushed the dust from her nightgown and climbed the small stepladder to place the book back where she had gotten it. There were times when she hated being so small, but other times it had its advantages. She could hide in niches where no one could find her and be comfortable for hours, and then she could read as much as she wanted in the large library. She had read almost all of the books now, including everything in the children's section.

Evading the guard was rather easy for Eve, who would simply climb on top of the nearest bookshelf and flatten herself so that she was well hidden. Sometimes she did so with a book, other times she fell asleep when he lingered much too long. Her nose often tingled from the dust that had never been cleaned properly, but she always managed to hold in her sneeze.

She stared at her watch, which read 3:45. She didn't feel a thing as she climbed back down the ladder. She hated her job anyway. Her boss, Richian, was a rather good lawyer. He was not, however, very good with paperwork and piled everything on Eve on top of her already sizable workload. She wasn't even his assistant! Sure she worked at his firm, but she didn't work directly under him. She wasn't even sure what her position was, but he was the one who signed her paychecks.

She struggled enough as it is to sort through files and type up reports and on top of that, she had to help her sister Apple with programming yet another creation of hers, although it was likely to fail anyway. Eve heaved a heavy sigh and turned to go find her shoes, but bumped into someone who had apparently been watching her for some time.

He held a flashlight in one hand and her shoes in the other. Looking up in the faint light of the flashlight, she saw that he had a scar on his cheek and an odd white patch in his messy black hair. He wore a security uniform, and eve felt her heart drop into her stomach. Fuck. She held her hands out in front of her in submission, hanging her head, waiting to feel the cold metal of handcuffs encircling her wrists. The man standing there, however, snorted. "What, are you expecting to be arrested?" He spoke, amusement playing into his voice as he watched the shorter woman. She nodded her head slightly, feeling her cheeks burn. She knew she was acting dumb, but still. "Well, unless you do it yourself, that's not gonna happen. My hands are full. Cute shoes, by the way."

Eve's face lit up even more as she snatched them from him. She had no idea why he had called them cute, anyway. They were just white loafers she wore only when she went out at night. They didn't match the nightgown she wore in the slightest, but that didn't matter to her. She wasn't trying to look cute; she wore them because she had paid the price for walking barefoot not long ago. Blisters, while not initially painful, were annoying to drain and painful if done so improperly. Eve remembered stabbing her foot with the needle before Apple took over for her. Once her shoes were on, she stared expectantly at the man before her. "Well?"

"What?" He asked, picking his ear lazily with his now free hand. Eve stared confusedly at him.

"You have a free hand now. Cuff me." Eve said, placing her hands together and stretching them out toward the man. He simply stood there. Eve was growing exasperated. "Look, you obviously are a security guard, yes? And I, who am not supposed to be here after hours, have obviously been caught. So, take me in."

"Nah." He said, turning away from her and walking away. "Just don't stay out so late. It's dangerous for little girls to go out alone." Eve, astonished, watched him go. Well…that was interesting. But if he said it was okay, then she might as well take advantage of his lenience. She climbed back up, took out the book she had been reading, and grabbed the one beside it. Then she climbed the rest of the way up the bookshelf to the top, kicked off her shoes and began reading in the dim light of her cell phone's back light.

Hours passed before she stopped reading again. Having finished her first book, she turned her attention to the second one, which was somewhat skinnier than the first. It seemed to be a reference book about runes. She had read something similar to it once before in the bookshelf to her left. She supposed this was to be used in conjunction with it, because neither of the two books made much sense on their own. But the diagrams were pretty enough, so it wasn't a completely fruitless read.

She looked at her watch. 7:47 it read and eve cursed. In 13 minutes, her firm would be opening and her boss liked his employees to be on time and ready to work from the moment they stepped inside those doors. Incidentally, opening in 13 minutes as well, was the library. While she was great friends with the librarian, Ariel, she knew the taller woman'd chew her out if she got caught. Carefully climbing down from her perch on top of the bookshelf, Eve grabbed her shoes and silently tiptoed out the door.

It was a ten minute walk to her house from the library, which Eve was happy for once to be living in an apartment complex. Of course, the rent was steep and the accommodations less than sub-standard because the landlord was a cheap bastard who cared more about lining his greedy pockets with money and filling his over large belly—

Eve breathed in a deep breath as she stood in front of the door. She fished in her sock for the key, hastily jammed into the keyhole and dashed inside once it was unlocked. She fussed with Apple to give her a ride to work as she hastily dressed, hopping up and down as she wrestled her shoe on and called into work with a piece of toast in her mouth. "Hello? How may I help you?"

Eve chewed hastily, ignoring the crumbs that fell down her shirt as she said, "Sorry I'm running a bit late, Sir I—"

"Ah, Eve darling! Don't worry about it! You take a few days off and take some time to relax, okay? I tried to call you last night, but your sister said you were out, so I asked her to relay the message to you." Richian spoke warmly. Eve almost dropped her cell phone. She stared at Apple, who was smirking behind her own piece of toast. "I'll have someone else come in and take care of your work for you, okay?"

"O-oh…thank you!" Eve hung up, feeling dazed. Her first day off. She had no idea what she was going to do, besides read until she passed out in her bed. Apple had managed to saunter away before Eve turned her temper on her, but the older woman didn't seem to care about her at the moment. Eve slowly undressed as she made her way back to her room, undoing the tie around her neck (Richian preferred it if she wore one; said it'd make her look rather dashing), and unbuttoning her shirt. She flopped face first on her bed, however, and was asleep within moments.

… … … …

When Eve woke next, she found herself in an overlarge-shirt with the blankets pulled over her. She imagined Apple must've changed her. She was the only one who had tucked her in. Her previous boyfriend never bothered to move her; he just let her lie where she was and tricked her into thinking she had overslept for work. It was a prank of his she had never liked, but she loved him regardless. Or course, that was before she had found him with his hand up another woman's blouse and his tongue down her throat in the apartment they had been going to rent together.

Eve grimaced, frowning somewhat as she recognized the very slight but still noticeable smell of his cologne on the shirt and instantly stripped it off and threw it across the room. Eve regretted it immediately, because Apple had entered the room the next instant with a tray of food. She smirked at her sister's blushing face as she covered herself, but didn't pass up the chance to say, "Wow…the last time I ever saw you naked was when we were children taking a bath. You've hardly grown at all."

Eve's blush darkened several shades and enveloped her entire face. "Like you're one to talk! You're no bigger than I am, and we're twins!" Eve shouted. Apple shrugged.

"Yes, but mine are cute. Yours are just sad. You're supposed to be the older one. The older one always has the bigger ones." Apple commented, artfully dodging a pillow thrown at her face by Eve. She continued to dodge until she was out of the room and slammed the door shut behind her. Eve no longer felt hungry. Apple was normally a quiet girl who kept to herself and didn't bother anyone. At least, that had been the case up until 10 years ago.

Even to this day, Eve still harbored a grudge toward their father who kept saying that they were just making up stories. Apple, who had only been 10 years old at the time, hand been pushed out of their father's office window, three stories up by one of his employees. She had screamed for help when he began touching her in odd places, and this scared and angered the man. Before either of them knew what was going on, he pushed her a little too hard against the window.

Where was Eve in all this? She had only just arrived when she noticed Apple was gone a little too long. Just as she opened the door to the office, she heard the scream.

The fall hadn't killed her, thankfully, but it caused a lot of damage to her brain, and the only way to keep her mind intact was the use of cybernetics. This caused a huge change in her personality, though, and since then, Apple had been afraid of heights and men. She shied away from their father when he came to see them, offering them everything they wanted if only they'd come back home. Eve refused, and Apple stayed with her sister no matter what.

To keep her mind occupied, Apple took to inventing. Her first ever project, Q-PROTO_00, had been a colossal failure, but she didn't let it get to her. Even if the machine had gone berserk multiple times, she had never hurt Eve or Apple. At least, not intentionally. She still had her moments when she would try to break away from Apple, but with Eve's help, these things were usually prevented. Apple had since been trying to work on that and prevent such outbreaks in the future.

Eve herself had gotten multiple jobs. They had more than enough money to move away to someplace better, but their landlord, Lenphad, had ways of persuading people not to leave. He was also much stronger than both Eve and Apple. Eve had suggested releasing Q-Proto_00 on him, but Apple downright refused. So, in a way, they were stuck.

None of the jobs Eve liked very much, but it put food on the table, afforded Apple's medication and paid the rent. She hadn't been quite as close to her sister before her fall, but since then, she never left her side. Partially because she felt it was her fault and she needed to protect her, but partially because Apple had never felt very comfortable on her own since then. She had a hard enough time just sleeping in her own bed.

As she dressed, Eve noticed from the corner of her eye, Proto. She didn't look as though she was active, but then again, she often booted up on her own without permission. Slipping the shirt over her head and inspecting the robot, she placed a hand against its cheek. She smiled faintly. She was active all right. "What are you doing here? I thought you slept in Apple's room?" Eve asked. In an instant, Proto's eyes, which had been trained elsewhere, turned towards Eve and blinked.

No sound escaped the mechanical woman, but eve didn't mind. She was mute, like a lot of Apple's inventions, but she was the only one built in Eve's likeness. Her clothes mainly consisted of black and white articles, and her hair, long like Eve's, was shaggy and unkempt. Although Eve had no idea why, she also had access to a variety of weapons, several martial arts programs including Judo, Tae Kwon Do, Tai chi and Bagua, and had the strength to rip whole limbs from a human body with little effort. She was programmed to be extremely hostile towards men as well, which manifested itself whenever the landlord came to collect rent.

Eve smiled at Proto, bent down to kiss her cheek, and then went to collect her shoes.