A/N: Can I… just say that this took me a week to write? The prompt was "sleeping". This is based on a fan art I once saw of Hana watching Vice sleep while thinking "His eyelashes are long" (lol).
Vice, Hana, and the rest of them belong to WcDonald's, not me. Please read and review D:?
A rule that Hana quickly learned was that, when Vice was sleeping, not to bother him.
In the beginning, she would wobble into the Sparrow Manor around the early afternoon, unattended by Eater or even that creepy teacher Sumako. Now that she no longer belonged anywhere- school, her "home"– she thought that she could make some visits here. As she walked inside the rather small apartment, she was disgusted by how shabby the place was. Not even her orphanage had been this bad. The Sparrow Manor, despite its rather pretentious, elegant name, was the opposite. The floorboards were smashed and opened, letting Hana see into the apartment below, the ceiling was stained from leaking pipes, and she was sure there were mice living in the holes in the wall. It took all she could not to scream "Ewwww" at the various insects roaming around.
Hana would first peek into K's room; giggling at his weird Metallica posters and his snores (she often wondered why Vice would choose this ugly man when he could have easily picked her as his master). Despite being "The Vice Master", he was always curled up under his blankets, cowering as if he was afraid of something. Hana knew what he was afraid of, but didn't see why he should be. When she was in a bad mood, she would throw her pink purse at his head and silently cackle as he had a mini-seizure in his sleep. In some ways, she could see how Vice could put up with him – he was hilarious to watch and to sadistically laugh at.
Next she walked, one foot in front of the other, into the kitchen. The apartment wasn't large; it took her only two seconds to reach the kitchen from K's room. Her nose would wrinkle at the smell at the smell of the scattered beer and Calpis bottles (It reminded her of her father, though she couldn't be sure; those early memories could just as well be disconnected dreams). She would go over to the counter and lean up on her toes to reach an almond cookie from the crinkling plastic bag.
Finally, Hana would enter Vice's room. The door was cracked from his outbursts; almost so off its hinges that she didn't even need to push it open. The bed in the corner of the room that K provided had already caved in from the robot's weight. Why woulda robot need a bed anyway? Hana thought.
Vice lay on the floor, sleeping.
Hana would sit next to him, legs tucked under her, and eat her almond cookie as she watched his limbs and wild midnight, almost purple and blue, hair sprawling all over in different directions. It reminded her of the colorful octopuses and extinct underwater creatures she used to learn about in school, before she found her dôji in a park behind a WcDonald's.
Gazing at the powerful dôji – at his eyelids, untamed hair, and those gauntlets with those swarming designs embedded into them – she couldn't help but be entranced by how peaceful he looked. When Vice was awake, he was wrathful and loud, with a drunken wildness to his glowing orange eyes and carelessness to his actions. He never scared Hana though, like he scared all of the other dôji and their masters. Maybe there's somethin' wrong with me, she thought. But being fearless of Vice – the epitome of all evil, much more ultimate than Ultimo himself – was what brought her to sit at his side, every day for the past month.
Hana bit into her now half-eaten cookie, and a few crumbs fell onto his arm. Vice stirred. Her eyes widened.
All of a sudden, everything was in motion. The sound of the revving of his voice and body rumbled in her ears as she quickly dropped her cookie and pressed her chubby hands into the floor, pushing her up. Hana then ran as fast as she could – half stunned by the adrenaline in her blood and half excited – to the doorway. She tripped once, her palms digging into the doorframe, and that was what fully opened Vice's eyes and consciousness.
"YOU FUCKING BRAT!" Vice stood up and raised his gauntlet – Hana thought it was almost like lightning, the way he moved so fast – and took an aim at her. She was already out of the room, yet the blast from his mechanical arm grazed her foot and sliced what was left of the door in half. Wincing with pain but not stupid enough to stop and hold her foot, Hana ran out of the building into an alleyway across the street. When she stopped, she heard the crashing of tables and probably walls, and K waking up and asking Vice, in fear, what the matter was.
Catching her breath, Hana noticed that she left a tiny, slithering river of blood behind her. Her foot ached, and the pain made her squeeze her eyes shut.
Still, even after that incident that taught her that lesson, Hana couldn't stop coming back, though these times she was careful. These times, she didn't just barge into the Sparrow Manor. She made absolutely sure that everybody was sleeping in the whole apartment building. When she came into Vice's room – now on tiptoes – she noticed he slept closer to the door. Maybe to have an easier shot on me, she suspected. She wouldn't mind if he did kill her. She once asked that teacher, the master of the Lust dôji, if it was all right to wish to die. Sumako blushed faintly (her cheeks always seemed to color whenever somebody talked to her – maybe the reason why she wanted to be an elementary school teacher was because she acted like a child) and said in a faltering stern voice, "No, it's not. Life is too precious to wish for that."
Hypocrite. Hana thought that was the word for it. She had only heard it a handful of times in her life from Jealous and Vice himself– and they had all been about Ultimo. But she was sure the elementary teacher was one. She was the master of a seductive, terrible robot that has no doubt killed many people, yet she talks about the meaning of life.
One day, perhaps a month after she started coming, she walked into the apartment around 4 in the afternoon and noticed that there was a difference. The air was different – it was now dominated by the smell of raw gasoline. And there was a dark spilling all over the walls and the floor – that was probably gasoline too. For a second Hana wondered if the doji had any liquid inside of them that resembled human blood, but quickly dismissed it. No, the doji were just machines, like toasters or a television set. They might look like real people, but they weren't living like humans.
"Kkkay?" she whisper-screamed K's name. He didn't answer. She quietly kicked off her sandals while looking around at the state of the tiny apartment in a sort of horrified awe. It looks better this way, tha's for sure, she thought sarcastically.
There were a bunch of mechanical tools all over the floor, along with cords and wires intersecting with each other into Vice's room. She followed it reluctantly. What did Vice do this time? Cut off all the electricity in the apartment building? K was obviously fixing something with his almost above-amateur mechanic skills.
When she walked into Vice's room, she found something far different than what she expected.
Vice lay against the wall, his eyes shut with a sort of fierce, troubled emotion behind them. For the first time, Hana thought he looked horrible. His body was connected to the wires – the top half, anyway. His legs were slowly connecting to his waist, and tiny multi-colored sparks could be seen in between the two parts. His clothes were frayed – the bottom linings of his jacket were burnt into a crispy black. The cracks lining his chest reached all the way up to his ears.
At once Hana thought he must be dead. What happened? How did this happen? She had never seen Vice in this state, and it frightened her. She almost collapsed beside him and stared, her eyes running over his whole body. Maybe he wasn't dead after all. Robots weren't really alive anyway – didn't she just think that a few seconds ago? If he was dead, K wouldn't have gone through all of this mess and trouble. If he was dead, then the other doji would've known by now, and Ultimo would've been ruling over them. If he was dead, Hana wouldn't be here. If he was dead, she would have been punished for being the master of an evil dôji, or worse – sent back to her normal life. She frankly couldn't stand nor visualize the idea of the greatest Evil doji actually being dead. If he was dead-
"You." Vice interrupted Hana's doubts and fears. His eyes were lazily cracked open. Her head snapped up, and her legs tensed, getting ready to run if they had to.
"You." He repeated. "You're the one that keeps on fucking showing up here every day. You're the brat that woke me up last week." Hana noticed his voice, while still husky and in a forever dominant, sarcastic tone, had an unreal, mechanical quality to it, as if his voice box couldn't decide whether to make his voice high or low.
Hana just stared, unblinking. All she thought about was that if he did kill her, he would do it now… now. No, Vice just kept on glaring back directly at her eyes – through her eyes. She waited two seconds to make sure he wasn't thinking of killing her.
"What happen' to you?" She whispered.
His eyes hardened.
"I finally ran into that son of a bitch Ultimo and the idiot bandit leader Yamato today. After all of these years, Ultimo still hasn't learned that fighting is the only way to get rid of me." He said, almost ruefully.
He was defeated then. That was how. Though he quickly glanced away, as if the topic didn't matter to him, Hana knew it did. Vice wasn't good at losing. He would brag and kill shamelessly without reason, but when he lost (Hana searched through her past memories for any instances where he was actually defeated, and found very few), he would pretend it never happened.
Hana didn't say anything to respond. And likewise Vice didn't make any attempt to continue the conversation.
Instead he slowly stood up, refusing to wobble, even though Hana could tell his feet weren't prepared for this. His waist was still only half-connected back, and with his dark green pants he looked like a floating demon as he tramped – defiantly not limping – out of the room into the shadows of the hallway.
It was only when he dissolved from Hana's line of sight that she realized he had left. She questioned in her mind, hurriedly where he had gone. Afterwards she would smack herself, wondering why she didn't just run after him. But at the moment, abruptly, that shaky uneasiness took over her. It was a problem Hana had before she could even remember. Some child psychologist suggested to her orphanage director that it was related to parental abandonment. Whenever somebody left – the room, the house, her life – that "fear" that she was left alone would come. Hana didn't know what hard, emotional words like "abandonment" meant, but it must be describing what she was feeling now and whenever she left Sparrow Manor.
It was funny, how she didn't fear Vice but feared being alone.
Her thoughts meddled and stirred in a trap at the back of her mind, until she forgot how to think. Where did he go/Where am I going to sleep tonight/Vice was defeated by Ultimo were some of those thoughts. It was as if there was a cord wrapped around her. Nobody did love her, she realized that a long time ago, but that didn't mean her mind had to remind her every day.
"Hey. Brat." Vice stood above her, the cloth of his sash and the red, dangling wires almost touching her forehead. She was the one laying against the wall now – curled up, her fingernails digging into her hair, her eyes shut tightly from the feeling that overwhelmed her. She barely heard him, with all of the buzzing flying around in her head.
Hana looked up. He looked back down at her, scowling, his head cocked to the side. In one gauntlet he held a bottle of that nasty smelling beer, in the other a small plate. It looked so out of place – the archetype of villainy holding food – that she almost smiled.
Her eyes crinkled and welled up instead. "Y-you didn't leave?" She blubbered as the first tears brimmed over. It was said as a question – but it was a ringing statement to her. Her chest hurt so much at the moment that she started coughing too.
She didn't notice Vice shift from one foot to the other, wavering on what to do. He was questioning whether he should slap her through the walls or not. He slowly put down both items in his hands down and inclined onto his knees.
"'Fucking… stop it." He slowly took her small, round shoulders and shook them, his gauntlets wrapped around her back and digging into her ribs. He sounded unsure, as if he was inexperienced at seeing little girls cry, but Hana tried to do as he ordered, quieting her crying into a small sniff while looking at Vice. She felt embarrassed that he saw her bawling. She usually only did that night, when she went to sleep wherever she could.
He stared back at her for a few seconds before picking up his beer bottle, opening it with a flick, and taking a long swig from it. "Don't be fucking weak like that." He finally spoke after swallowing.
"Weak?" Another word Hana did not recognize as she wiped her eyes.
"Yeah. As in, fucktard, failure, dumbass. The number one reason I fucking hate humans – they're too weak." He sipped the bottle again before looking back at Hana.
"You all die too fucking easily. Too fucking soon." He murmured, almost talking to himself.
"I - I won't die soon." Hana coughed again.
"Yeah, you will. Years to you are long. To me, they pass like fucking seconds. A century is nothing. Take K – one day I looked at him and I swore his teeth grew a fucking meter longer. That's when I realized that I was stuck here with him for six months already." He was just starting to ramble, and he noticed it. "Just don't start fucking crying again."
Vice put down his drink again, annoyed that he spoke more than two sentences to a subordinate – hell, an infant. Hana was silent. She knew what he was thinking, and she started to feel annoyed too. She could have run after him to see where he was going, instead of breaking down and being a crybaby, causing Vice to call her "weak". But Hana didn't cower or blush thinking about this particular regret.
"I thought you wouldn't come back." She said out loud, even though her feelings and thoughts ran far deeper and was more complicated than that. Vice whipped his head to glare at Hana with his citrine eyes, not believing that he heard what she just said. Hana looked up at him again, wondering if death by staring was possible.
"…What do you fucking mean? Of course I would come back." With this, Vice tugged at the wires connecting him to a cheap electrical outlet in the wall, and tiny sparks flared out from his stomach. "See? I can't go anywhere. K said it'll be like this until tonight."
Hana blinked, feeling stupider by the minute.
"Ahh, forget it." her tone turned serious, and Vice thought, creepily mature. She looked out the window, where a sun was slowly setting outside, before rubbing her eyes to keep them open. The time was getting late; she'll have to leave soon to go somewhere to sleep.
"No, I can't fucking forget it." Vice pushed his Calpis bottle away in disgust. "You come here every day – I know this. Sometimes I'm actually awake, you know. You must come here for a reason, right?"
Hana didn't answer.
"So you just come here to watch me fucking sleep? Why? Isn't there anything else better for you to do?"
"No. Not really." Her eyelids were burning. "There's no'ere for me to go."
Of course you have somewhere to go, Vice was about to respond angrily, arrogantly, like he normally did. But then he wondered. Did she? Vice gave her as little attention as he did the others – perhaps more because of her daily visits. But he always assumed that, despite her abrasive personality, loud voice, and being overall an ankle biter she was obviously happy, and knew where to go if anybody attempted to wipe that toothy smile off her face. When he thought about it, he didn't really know where she went after those informal, loud meetings all the evil dôji and sometimes their masters attended. Eater was kind of an idiot after all; he probably didn't stay with Hana and just flew off to go gorge himself somewhere. And that teacher was probably too busy fucking Desir to look after the baby-blond girl.
No, Vice realized, she didn't really have anywhere to go. It shouldn't have bothered him, but suddenly Vice looked at the cut he gave her on her foot. A scab had long formed over it, but he thought about how she had to limp somewhere – not her orphanage, not anywhere where she'll be thrown out for her extraverted personality- and sleep bleeding for a night on a street or on somebody's porch. He wondered where she was going after this afternoon turned into night.
"Is that why you come here, then?" Vice slowly asked her. Hana noticed his tone wasn't so loud and overpowering. Whatever it was, she equally swallowed and nodded her head in the same manner.
"…I see." Vice stood up again, this time with more determination and left the room with less of a drawl in his steps. Hana didn't cry this time – she was still embarrassed – but she briefly wondered if Vice was playing a joke on her by leaving again. But no, he came back surprisingly quickly, with a blanket and a small pillow used normally for decorations on couches.
"Wha-?" Hana had to quickly jump out of the way to escape being scrapped by the tiny zipper in the pillowcase as Vice set it down. He held up the blanket, glowering at her.
"You're going to go to fucking sleep right now, all right?" He roughly stated – no, commanded – to her. As she processed the words, she cautiously crawled under the blanket before Vice finally set it down on top of her.
"Your eyes have dark circles under them." He swiped his spiky fingers under her hair, brushing her eyelashes. "I can't have the master of one of my minions fainting on me in battle."
She was tired. She was tired of life (to hell with what the grade-school teacher said), even though she barely lived it. She was confused at this sudden act of kindness, if she dared to call it that. Vice did brush it off with that explanation, after all. She softly touched the dark underlines on her eyes where he touched her, and tried not to smile.
Hana wasn't a bold person – though she had an undeniably blaring voice and could destroy people with her dôji if she got the least angry. She was afraid of many things, tiny things, such as married people fighting in public (another possible nightmare from her early days), and being laughed at in class for yelling out an inappropriate answer. But she wasn't afraid of Vice, and that was why she was able to survive this long. With her dôji, she probably had the lifespan of a goldfish. To Vice, with or without her dôji, she had the lifespan of a heartbeat. The future to Hana was uncertain – she could choose to let go of Eater and live the life of a normal five-year-old, yet she knew that she couldn't. The current life she had sure wasn't bittersweet, but it was what she had grown accustomed to.
In a couple of hours, there would be a change in routine as another blond woke her up, telling her in his soft, yet menacing, voice his plans for tomorrow. Vice would look on, ignorant – pretending? – Of Hana's existence, like always. This afternoon was insignificant, unlike the day planned ahead for them both. Tomorrow they would both be defeated by Ultimo and his cheating tricks, and the whole world will reset back to today, and they will never have this memory because of it.
Hana didn't care about any of that at the moment, because in minutes she closed her eyes, and was faintly heard snoring. And Vice, gazing calmly at her sleeping bundle until the night started to grow old, freely didn't care either.