A/N: First of all, this is, I think, my longest one-shot.
Which is shameful. DX
Anyway, I do way too many TrainxEve oneshots, but this one's long and not full of nothing but pointless fluff and actually has a plotline.
I apologize for any OOC-ness, but…y'know. Whatcha gonna do?
I should note that this is a hodge-podge of the anime and manga plotlines. If you've only read/watched one or the other, prepare to be confused. xD
He wonders how long it'll take until he starts to feel again. It's not just emotional – he felt nothing when he pounded his fists into the drywall earlier that day, exclaiming that, no, no, it wasn't happening, it quite simply couldn't be happening. He feels nothing physically, either. It's almost cliché, he realizes, as he meets her eyes, not because he was looking for her, but because there's nothing else to look for in the endless expansion of white and nothingness, broken only by the many flowerpots that litter the windowsill of her – not hers, she's just staying in it – room, and by her. The white, and the silence that comes with it, is broken by gold and porcelain and rubies.
It is almost cliché how their eyes meet, how she smiles at him, as though he's the one needing comforting instead of her, as though he's the one who's dying, dammit, and not her. And he can't even bring himself to smile back.
The police found her before they did, called them and told them. They'd been out anyway, looking for her, searching for her, and when they arrive at the place that isn't a hospital and see her again they're both covered in sweat and dirt and rain and they look as though they've been running. They push past doctors, nurses, stopping only to demand to know where she is, and when they find her they both demand to know how, why, what happened to her that did this, who did this? They don't tell him, say that they can't tell him, because they don't know. All they know is that she's littered with bullets, some of which have been removed, some of which haven't, that she's got so many burns, and that her heart seems to be struggling to beat.
The air smells like disinfectant when they find her. That's all he can think of, how the air smells like disinfectant, like Windex and Pledge. He doesn't even wonder why he can't smell the blood, why he can't smell the gunpowder, scorching every inch of her clothes, her body, her soft and porcelain skin, her hair that's gone from bullion to gray with nothing but a bunch of bullets. The scene is so frighteningly familiar that he can't think of anything else than that the air smells like disinfectant and cleaner, because if he thinks of anything else, he'll stand up, run to the forest, and try to murder a man in a mask who isn't there.
He hates that today has to be the day of the fireworks show, that she wants to go so badly, but he can't tell her 'no', and neither can Sven. So she smiles and claps and is happy, because she gets to see fireworks again, just like when they first met, her and Sven. And Train doesn't really mind, that much, because Saya has forgiven, still loves him, and is grateful to him. She would want him to go with the Little Princess and with Sven. She would tell him to have fun and enjoy the fireworks.
He should have known better. Nothing good ever came of fireworks.
Sven explains, with clipped words when Train wakes up in the hospital chair in the room that isn't hers but that's she's using anyway that Eve's nanomachines reacted so violently to heal her many injuries that they began to destroy her internal organs and and – there is so much explanation, and Train lets him speak, to rationalize and explain away, as though he can make it go away the more he clarifies, the more detail he imparts into his passionate story, but Train doesn't listen to it. Train doesn't care. All he cares about is that the girl lying, unconscious, in the hospital bed across the white, white and sterile room from him, is dying because of the very machines meant to make her powerful.
Sven tells Rinslet and Jenos and everyone finds out, eventually. Sweepers they'd barely known come – Rinslet and Jenos come, because they know that they're needed. Charden and Kyoko come – Train had been afraid when he'd heard about Kyoko, afraid that she'd be happy which, for some reason, seemed a grave sin, but she hadn't. She had been somber and quiet and almost unfeeling. Train hadn't known she'd been capable of it, and she wasn't. He awoke one night to her sitting on the floor next to Eve's bed, clutching Eve's hand and sobbing.
Train had held her tight and sobbed with her.
Leon came, came steeled but that didn't change anything – when he saw Eve, lying, cold and almost dead on the white mattress, he broke too, and he cries.
Tim comes, because he cares about her and about Train and Sven and about all of them, because they taught him something. He doesn't cry at her thin, waifish figure, doesn't stare, either. Just glances and briskly asks, demands to know all the details, because he is a reporter and it's what reporters do.
Even Sephiria visits. She does not cry, but Train does not expect her to. Just that she came is kind. She offers any amount of money, if it keeps Eve alive – they transfer her to the best hospital, and they are the ones that make Eve, finally, wake up.
When she does wake up, Train's the only one in the room with her. He's barely conscious, dark circles under his eyes that match her perfectly – they both look as though they've been sucker-punched in the face. When she does wake up, she stares at him for a long time, although he doesn't notice.
When she does wake up, she whispers, "Train?"
And suddenly he isn't tired anymore. He's awake and he's alive in a violent flurry of movement, moving next to her, wanting to hug her but not hugging her, because he doesn't know if he'll hurt her. He asks her, with his eyes and not with words, because he can't force himself to speak, can't get words out of his sore and scratchy throat and past his lips, if she's okay.
She says, "No."
And then she is crying and he realizes that she is in pain. She says her stomach hurt – she sounds so much like a small child when she says that, like a child trying to get out of going to school with a faked sickness, although Eve had never done that. She says her stomach hurts too badly, and he screams for the nurses until they come and make his little princess stop hurting anymore.
They'd lost her. They'd lost her at the fireworks show. Neither Sven nor Train could find her. Sven was mildly worried, as any father would be, but he wasn't panicked.
Train was. To say that he was panicked was to say that a massive hurricane was mildly annoying to a person living on a beach near the ocean in which the hurricane emerged. He pushed through the crowds, trying to find her, find her, find her anywhere, because nothing good ever came of women he loved disappearing at fireworks festivals, nothing good ever came –
And then his cell phone rang.
When Eve was conscious and not in pain – no, that wasn't right. She was always in pain. When Eve was conscious and not in unbearable pain, she spoke, mostly to Train. She told of how she'd wandered off, about how she'd met a kind man who'd flirted with her, and about how she had refused him. She told him about how the man shot her with something that made her fall, made a crater in her back, and shot her again and again with it, until the man left, laughing drunkenly.
Train listened with clenched fist, anger seeping from every pore in his body, but Eve didn't stop. She was selfish and she needed pity, and so she told of the man with the crater-gun who hurt her.
She is hideous.
She is covered with burns that will leave scars forever. It's more than just burns. The gun the man used was so powerful that it literally blew off layers upon layers of skin, and even destroying some of the skin's ability to grow back. Eventually, she will heal enough to not be hideous anymore. But she will never be beautiful. He doesn't care. He doesn't care that she is hideous now, because he still like a sister like a friend like a cousin like an everything and anything she needs loves her. He sees the scars that mar her porcelain skin but at the same time does not see them. He is in shock, still, and it isn't likely to go away any time soon because Train cannot handle helplessness, cannot handle being unable to fight of the thing that hurts his Little Princess because the thing that harms her is His Little Princess.
When the nurses do her checkups, make her undress, she doesn't let them close the curtains or hide her from him. She lets him watch, begs him with her eyes to watch. And so he, every time, lets his eyes roam down and up her naked body, and when he is done, she looks at him, and he can tell that she is grateful for him for not being disgusted, because he knows that she is.
Tearju comes, barely enters Eve's room, but he can see that she is broken from this. Can see that she is dying with Eve. Tearju is panicked – Eve's wounds are not healing fast enough and the longer it takes for them to heal, the longer her nanomachines will eat away at her vital organs.
Tearju is desperately searching for a way to fix it, and she keeps on breaking the mirrors in the bathrooms.
Tearju is killing herself and Train can't bring himself to tell her to stop, because if she stops, then Eve will die, and he'd trade Tearju for Eve any day of the week.
He tells Eve of this, and she calls it selfish, but he can tell that she is pleased.
One night, as Train watches the moon from the hospital room, she says, "We had the stars."
He turns, looks at her, and says, "Hm?" She doesn't answer for a very long time, and then considers, thoughtful, before she speaks.
"We had our whole lives ahead of us. Now I might not. I had all of the stars and didn't even take the time to look at them, and now I can't even get out of this hospital bed to see them through the window." She puts her face in her hands, and he can't decide is she's hiding from him or looking for comfort inside her pale pink palms. "I want to see the stars." The words come out as a gasp, as a sob, and he breaks a little more.
They found them on the ground, outside, underneath the tree. She looked like an angel – white gown splayed around her, blonde hair making an attractive halo around her head, her fingers laced with his. They had fallen asleep. When the nurses bring her back in and start to scold Train, she says, "He let me see the stars again." And she nurse stops scolding, not because of the words but because of the conviction behind them, the gratitude and the fear.
Tearju has made a breakthrough. She has created a new nanomachines that will encourage her nanomachines to shut down and incur a natural healing. It will take a very long time to heal now, but it will not kill her. There are no guarantees, though, because they haven't been tested because there's no time to test them. They might prove just as dangerous as the originals, but dammit not trying is not an option.
Tearju performs the injection personally, putting one tiny machine in her veins near her heart, in a vein in both of her legs, in a vein in both of her arms, and in a vein in a neck. The tiny machines become many tiny machine very quickly and suddenly, she is healed.
When she emerges from surgery, in wheel chair and with a bandage around her neck, she smiles at Train and at Sven and says, "I have the stars again.
Eve remains at the hospital a little longer while they hope that she will heal, and it takes her a very long time – what seems like years, is really just a month or so. She is offered cosmetic surgery to make the scars go away, but she refuses. Not for some lofty ideals or faith in her own beauty – at this point, she has neither. She refuses because she is sick of hospitals and surgeries and wants nothing more than to be free of the wretched place, although it's not so wretched now that she's been here so long, now that she's made friends with the nurses and the doctors.
When it is time to leave, Train picks her up, although she can stand and she protests, but she realizes how much he needs this, and she lets him carry her. He sets her in a wheel chair, and again she protests, but Sven needs this as much as Train did, so she lets him wheel her to the car. The nurses smile, pat her on the back, say their happy she's leaving in the best possible way. Train wonders if they'll miss them, and decides that it would be impossible not to miss someone like the little Princess.
Eve knows that now, as a Sweeper, she is next to useless. She is well aware that her nanomachines are shut down, and that she has no skills without said nanomachines. She hates it, and so, when she gets home, she calls Tearju and quietly begs her for a way to fix it.
Tearju says there is none.
She could inject another type of nanomachines, but with so many robots in her body, it would pollute her blood and could put her in more danger. There is no way to effectively remove all of the new nanomachines, the ones shutting the old ones down. So, Eve has no choice. She is left to be rendered utterly useless.
Although Train would prefer if she never fought again, he buys a gun, a good one, and trains her in its usage. He can see she'd rather be dead than useless, and so, to avoid the latter, he trains her. She will never reach his skill, but she is strong and being trained by the most feared assassin in the world has its perks. In their little battles, while they spar, she still found herself occasionally willing her hair to turn into a fist, or a shield to form around her arms, but it doesn't, and eventually she stops hoping, stops trying.
They get a short, clipped message from Sephiria, telling them that Jenos has, on assignment, killed the man who so harmed Eve. He was deemed a threat to the Numbers and was thus disposed of. Although she doesn't say so, Sven, Train, and Eve all know that she had a hand in it, that Jenos had a larger hand in it, and that they probably more or less begged the Elders to give him this assignment. Jenos had been heavily injured in the battle, although that's probably more because he didn't just kill the man quick, he wanted to make him suffer, and Jenos got careless. Nonetheless, the man is dead and Jenos is expected to be completely healed in no less than two weeks.
Eve shows no signs of displeasure or pleasure of this, and Train is the only one who hears her mutter to herself when the video ends, "Serves the rotten bastard right."
They split ways two years ago, Eve went to a special school in some place in England, and they haven't heard much from her since. They know that she's back, but they don't know where.
Sven and Train have come to a new town in search of a bounty, and a high-priced one at that. Train and Sven walked into a bar that day, asking if anyone had seen him. The bartender said that no, he hadn't, and then casually mentioned that someone else had been there, too, asking the same thing. Train is suddenly more motivated – he'll be damned if anyone takes away his meal ticket! Sven laughs at his foolishness, and they go out to search for the man.
Soon enough they find him. And for once, they actually meet a criminal who can outrun the Black Cat. He disappears in the crowd, and Train curses loudly, clearly angry at this new revelation. They both run faster when they hear the sound of bullets, a grunt, and a high, sharp yell.
They find them in an alley, their mark and a woman. The woman is lying on the ground, bleeding from the leg, and the criminal is laughing, full of himself. The sight reminds Train so much of past encounters that he could kill that man with his bare hands until –
The woman demands, "Duck, you idiots!" and because of the voice she has, the voice they know, they both do.
She shoots and the bullet ricochets of a pipe, a wall, and buries itself in the criminal's leg. The woman hops up, clearly unharmed, and steps on the criminal as he falls to the ground, saying, with a smirk, "Did you really think you could beat the White Cat?" When he tries to get up again, she is all too happy to shoot his other leg. She then glances at Train and Sven as says, "Oops, I guess I stole your bounty, huh?"
The woman is Eve.
It takes longer for Train to realize it that it takes Sven, because Sven cannot see anything other than his little girl, but Train can. Train can see the way her body curves, the way her hips sway when she walks, the so smooth look of her legs, and suddenly he realizes that now, she's a lady. Which is an entirely dangerous realization.
They discuss over coffee what she calls herself, the White Cat. She tells them that, after getting the bounty herself a few times, there were whispers and rumors that she was the Black Cat's apprentice, and she chose to take advantage of that almost true tale and call herself the White Cat. She even has a collar of her own, a white ribbon with a gold bell. When Train compares her to Woody, she solemnly swears to murder him should he make the comparison again. Train is happy that she has found such success, even without her nanomachines, and Eve points out that, with the skills she has now and her old abilities, she'd easily pass even him as the most feared assassin in the world. He says, with a good-natured laugh, "Good thing you don't then, Little Princess." And she would have hit him, except that she missed hearing him call her that so much that instead she wraps her arms around him and sobs.
They all live together again, and it makes Train restless. It makes him restless not out of fear, but because it makes him giddy and excitable. He is so happy.
One night, he is surprised to find Eve on the roof, with a bottle of milk, looking at the stars. He sits next to her and when she glances at him questioningly, he simply says, "I came to keep the crows from pecking at your head." A way to start a conversation, a way to break the ice that he'd learned from an old friend. They both glance at one such crow accusingly, and it flies away.
They don't speak for a long time, but they take turns drinking from Eve's milk bottle until the milk is gone and then they are forced to converse. Train considers making a witty imitation of Jack Sparrow while saying 'Why is the milk always gone?' to make her laugh, but instead, Eve starts by saying, "I look at the stars every night now."
"Really?" He isn't entirely surprised, but he can think of nothing else to say. He had never been an incredibly smooth speaker, but that's ridiculous.
"…Yeah. I promised myself when I got out of the hospital that I'd never take the stars for granted again."
He smiles and says, wrapping a strand of her hair around his fingertip, that, "You're a little like a star yourself, you know." When she doesn't answer he says, "You're all gold and glowing and bright and…" he trails off, unsure of if he should say it, if he could say it, but he does anyway. "…beautiful." Well, it might not have been an award-winning speech, but at least he managed to force more than one syllable out.
Eve does not reply for a long moment, and he worries that he's alienated her. But then she leans against him, and he can see that she is smiling. "I love you, Train," is what she says, and for a second she worries that she's alienated him. But he laughs, kisses her forehead and says, "Yeah, Princess, I love you too." It's a careful reply, though, careful because he knows that it's not sisterly or friendly love she's talking about. He doesn't know how he knows, but he does. And it scares him because his love is poisonous and he cannot let it touch this woman. But she seems to want to be infected, because she stretches up and kisses him, and it takes him a moment to kiss her back. But he does, and even though at first it's slow and cautious, it's something. And as she pulls away to smile and lace her fingers with his, she knows that eventually, he'll be willing to kiss her with everything.
E/N: Hm. I rather like this, I think, if only cos it's long (for me, totally fail for others, but, hey – I'm improving! ) haha.)
Anyway, I might go back and edit once I see all the errors in it, but for now, enjoy