Affection in the Aftermath

A/N: Um, okay, I've been wanting to do this ever since some of you have expressed enthusiasm for this pairing, and I confess I'm also growing quite appreciative of : Annoying use of purple prose in some bits. I was rolling my eyes while typing some of these lines and I felt like bashing my head on the keyboard afterwards, but Lili just always struck me as purple. Ok, she's blonde, I know, but it's her POV. So you can thank me or hang me by the end of this( most likely the latter). Lemme just go get the rope.

If I owned Tekken, I wouldn't be wondering who won the 6th, and what the fuck's happened to the now absolutely- drop-dead-gorgeous Jin, would I? Feel free to spoil me.

Jin...

Lili noticed, with mild alarm, how easily he could invade the secure banks of her thoughts nowadays; how, when she looked at the world with her mind's eye, his voice would pop into her head like an afterthought, providing a running commentary on the things she would be seeing; how her mind presented him as a perplexing mixture of contrasts, imprinted them on her senses, and left her with the monumental task of piecing together the relevant bits.

The permanent play of shadows on his face, with the light of Nirvana forever trapped in his eyes...

The strong aristocratic features, their coldness and hardness mitigated by the warmth of his open-hearted smile....

And the heady scents... Yesterday, his hair reeked of the smell of apple cider; today, he'd worn the aroma of cinnamon like an angel's halo, and tomorrow, the combined scents of lavender and cammomile would be clinging to his pores like invisible garments...

Her head swam.....

XXXXXXX

But what about him, she could not help but wonder. What went on in his innermost thoughts, the ones he skilfully cloaked with silence, like any other sensible human being? Why had he taken it upon himself to rescue her from her captors and then attempt to push her away from the brink of insecurity and depression? Why did he care so much? What was she to him? A passing fancy, like all boys his age are wont to have? Or just some sad, mentally unhinged girl he was tempted to hate but was forced to protect simply because he had lost to his conscience in one grapple or another? Whatever the case, she found herself-with some measure of shame- warming to the idea that the word 'care' came with no strings attached, not of the negative or reluctant sort, at least. She liked to think that he truly did care; that he would readily give her the food off his plate, the clothes off his back. She thought she could see his dedication to her spelled out in each one of his gestures, his affection dictated to her by every one of his warm words, and she would smile to herself and carefully tuck him into the confines of her young heart, her own little secret, a secret she imagined was reflected back at her through his increasingly knowing smiles.

XXXXXXX

When Lili was six, and Maman had still been with them, she had woken up one night to find that the house was a hub of frenzied activity. Her parents had been hosting a pool party, and the servants and caterers had been dashing in and out of the kitchen, salon and garden, delivering her parents' fine selection of cocktails and finger foods to the guests milling about outside. She had been drawn to all the noise, the way a moth is drawn to the light, and had pursued it with all a child's demanding. Skirting the dark corners of the mansion where all the bogeymen had been said to lie, she had tip-toed down the stairs. Somebody had left a tray of cocktail drinks on the dining room table, and mesmerized by the array of different colours before her, she had reached up to sample each. By the time she wandered outside, through the wide-open entrance doors, she had been very tipsy. All she could see were the blurred, circular lights that swam in and out of her vision-the pool lights, she would later realise- and all that had occupied her was how to get closer to those pretty lights. She had stopped suddenly, a minute into her progress, and swayed for a moment, before her body, of its own accord it seemed, had hurled itself into the cold depths of the pool- and into instant and terrifying sobriety....

"Come, Lili!" Jin was in the pool, treading water lightly, smiling up at her, his arms held out.

She averted her gaze, choosing to look down at the subdued one-piece that accurately reflected her bleak mood. " I can't do zis," she moaned, and mentally beat herself up for ever telling him about the origin of her hydrophobia, but it was not like she could withhold anything from him nowadays, could she?

"Of course you can!" he called back, all optimism. She looked down at him then, and envied him the easy elegance with which he held himself in the midst of what she deemed to be extemely hostile surroundings. As though he'd read her mind, he suddenly quipped, " Swimming is just like dancing, Lili. Only, you let yourself float on water, instead of air."

That analogy galvanized her into action. She willed her trembling legs to move, and with great care and agonizing slowness, she lowered herself into the icy depths. She gasped, keeping the firmest of holds on the pool's ledge, then moved into the position he'd advised, with her back against the ledge. She gritted her teeth, then let her powerful dancer's legs do their work, kicking back at the tiled wall, and propelling her forward, towards him. She closed her eyes, and with an exaggerated whimper, flapped her arms about like a fledgling bird eager to take flight for the first time.

Her eyes flew open. Had he moved to catch her, or had she made it all the way to him? Either way, he was now cradling her awkwardly in his arms, all smiles and words of praise. She whimpered some more, and leaned against him, all too aware of his boyish chest rattling off one breath after another. What was it that she found intoxicating at that moment? The progress he had assured her she had made? Or the thought that one day soon he would be broad and strong enough to fully accommodate her into his warm embrace?

"Can we do zis again?"

XXXXXXX

When Lili was eight, she found a way to keep Maman's existence alive in her mind. Papa had bought her a pretty pink telephone, and had installed a separate phone line in her bedroom, so that she could make all the calls she wanted from there. What Papa hadn't known was that she had intended to use his gift to create a fantasy for herself, one through which she could thrive. She would pretend that Maman was in Europe, touring all the great capitals the two of them had visited when Lili had been far too young to remember, and not lying underneath six feet of dirt in some forlorn, wooded little cemetary. She would reach for the phone the moment she got up in the morning, she would rush to it as soon as she came home from school, and she would use it just before she went to bed. She would leave all those lengthy voice messeges for Maman, gushing about every little aspect of her daily life, and in turn, she would hear Maman's recorded voice in her mind, sharing her own experiences. Lili would sit with Papa through dinner, and walk him through everything Maman had told her- the lovely Opera she had attended in Vienna, the exquisite works of art she had marvelled at in Paris, and the latest fashions she had seen in London. Papa would seem upset at these revelations-or maybe he was just jealous that Maman spoke only to her and not to him? Was that why Papa chose to force her to attend therapy? And why, when she'd come back from her first session, the phone had been gone, for good?

"What are you thinking of?" Jin was saying, his voice gently prodding her out of the confusion of her past.

"Time..." she muttered vaguely. She was sitting up in bed, dragging a brush through her silky blonde tresses, her movements slow and languid, the brand new pink phone arranged next to her, Jin's speaker-phone voice floating over to her. She smiled sadly to herself, reverently tucking the thought of her mother to the back of her mind. She heard the soft rustle of paper on the other end of the line. " What are you doing?" she countered.

"Reading," he answered smoothly. " I've got to get Father's assignment out of the way, else I'll spend the whole weekend under house arrest."

She managed a pathetic "Oh!" He'd spoken with such nonchalance; if it were her, she'd have been buckling under the pressure. " Tell me about it."

" It's a historical novel; Chinese. It's called The Romance of the Three Kingdoms. It's kind of sad."

She arched her brows at that. It sounded so tempting, coming from him. "Read to me, zen." To soften the blow of her commanding tone, she quickly added, "please."

"But the text's in Japanese," he supplied uncertainly.

" Even so," she insisted. " I'd like you to." She bit her lip and hoped she didn't sound too imperious.

She heard him flip to the relevant page and clear his throat, declaring that he was about to start.

She wished he hadn't.

Lili knew as well as any bilingual, that when you switched back to your native tongue, there would be a marked difference in your voice. In Jin's case it was drastic, almost haunting. His voice took on an unfamilair richness, a firmer resonance, and an affectation of such deep sadness, she knew he just had to be communicating with her in the the universal language of human despair, and not through some harsh-sounding, guttural , earthly language. It courted her soul, his voice, speaking to her of her own past failures, her own frustrated passions, her own unfulfilled dreams, flushing them all out of hiding so that they began to simmer at the surface of the cauldron that was now her heart. She closed her eyes, shutting out the tears that were begging to be let out.

As though sensing the effect he was having on her, he stopped. " I'm not boring you to tears, am I?" His tone was apologetic.

" No..." she was barely able to articulate the one syllable. Not boring... Never boring... Cathartic.

She suddenly smiled. He was right about the tears, though, wasn't he?

XXXXXXX

When Lili was ten, she once again hid herself in the stronghold of fantasy. There was no pretty, pink phone, this time. This time, her medium was the combined power of the music and the dance. She had only need to put on her little pointe shoes, turn up the music as loud as it would go, and fall victim to the rythm of the dance for all her secret sorrows to dissolve into insignificance. The music would take firm hold of her, escalating all her movements, until she could see herself executing a frenzied set of pirouettes and fouettes, every perfect little spin giving rise to a perfect little fiction, a fiction fabricated from half-truths and outright lies, so that in the end she would find herself climaxing to a full-blown fantasy, a fantasy that often included a mysterious young stranger, his face swathed in shadow, dancing just out of her reach....

"May I have this dance, Mademoiselle?" Jin asked with a mock attempt at poshness. Lili had invited him over, and he had made his appearance just in time for her dance practice.

She now tipped her head towards him, seeming to ponder his proposition. " Very well, Monsieur," she favoured him with her special smile and offered him her hand. They moved to the centre of her spacious bedroom, heralded by the opening of Princess Swan Lake. His first few steps were awkward,ungainly, but she guided him all the same, waiting patiently until the music finally claimed him, just as it had claimed her on her first time. Then they were off, spinning, weaving, entangled in a joint web of dreams and desires. Accomplices, they were now, in the process of concocting all the little fictions and fantasies she had once had to fabricate on her own, and building an invisible wall for themselves to keep out all the masses; until, finally, cresting on a wave of euphoria, they fell back on her bed, laughing.

They lay there, panting, their faces flushed with exertion. She knew she had to break the silence, to say what was no doubt on both their minds, but all the same, it was no easy task.

" How strange!" she began tentatively, " how we just went from hating each ozzer to becoming...dance partners." She looked past him. "Strange," she repeated feebly, at a loss for what else to say.

He propped himself up on one elbow and simply gazed at her for a moment. Then he frowned. " I never hated you, Lili. Honest."

Did that mean that he had always liked her? Lili closed her eyes. She certainly would have liked nothing better than to believe that. Honest.

XXXXXXX

"Here you are."

Lili took the proferred slice of orange with gratitude and watched Jin as he continued to peel the fruit. That was their daily late afternoon ritual nowadays. Lili would drop in to visit after school and the two of them would sit outside on the porch swing, eating fruit and watching as the shadows chased each other out of hiding, and the encroaching darkness bled the rest of the light out of the sky. They would say little to each other then, content in the silence wrapped around their own thoughts. Today, Lili's thoughts were focussed on Jin's parents. Earlier, she had caught the arrival of Kazuya Mishima, Jin's imposing father, and wondered, not for the first time, whether Jin would have the same striking intensity about him one day. Wouldn't that be a grand thing! Then her mind turned to Jin's affectionate mother, Jun, and the way she had greeted her husband. Lili had in no way meant to spy, but she found herself surreptitiously peering at them all the same. She had seen them locked in a tight embrace, her fingers twining his hair, his free hand travelling up and down the small of her back. Would she and Jin hold one another just like that one day? She blushed beetroot-red at the thought, and was glad of the fiery backdrop that the sky provided as cover.

"What are you grinning about?" Jin was looking at her, amused.

"Oh, nothing!" she answered, a little too quickly. Her heart sank. She had been a solid waxwork up until that moment at the hospital when they'd had that 'talk', and then she'd proceeded to let him slip into her heart, bit by bit. By now, she was practically a molten puddle at his feet.

A honk sounded right outside, putting an end to the awkward moment.

"Zat will be Sebastian, " she began hurriedly. " I will see you at ze school, zen!"

A girl could dream, afterall, and that would be a thousand times easier than having to deal with the very real and painful possibility of rejection that a confession could bring.

XXXXXXX