Title: Antipositional Attraction
Rating: PG
Characters are not mine. I am just borrowing.
Poetry is mine.
A/N: I haven't decided if I'll write more to this. For now it remains a short one-shot idea.
Beautiful days were always problematic for auspicious meetings, and the day was truly beautiful. The sky was marked by a few unthreatening clouds, the sun was out, but it was not terribly hot, and there was a breeze that brought with it the sweet scent of spring flowers. A lovely day to sit outside a small cafe and enjoy a delicate cup of tea and a pastry. Touko Aozaki was purposefully drinking black coffee, and chain smoking rather fiercely to keep the optimism of the day from ruining her perspective. She wasn't there to enjoy the day. She was there on a matter of business, and since she was strapped for cash even a mundane request for a consultation was worth a moment of her time.
Touko pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose, blew a stray strand of red hair out of her face, and took a sip from her coffee without getting ash from the cigarette she refused to put down all over her shirt. She surveyed the passersby, and contemplated the woman she was supposed to meet. She knew something about the controversial and dangerous figure, though there was hardly any threat the woman could pose to her. The woman's past, or present means of employment was not, in any way, going to be a deal breaker. But, Touko noted, as she stubbed her cigarette out and watched as a woman in a long trench coat approached her table, the woman's intent might be the key to whether or not the job was carried out.
The woman in the trench coat sat down and waved the approaching waiter away with a withering glance and a dismissive hand. Her only hand, the woman had only one arm. Her dark hair fell into her eyes, and those eyes were the eyes of the dead. She removed an envelope from her coat pocket and pushed it forward along the table.
Touko sat back in her chair and removed her glasses. She set them on the table next to her empty coffee cup and pulled a packet of cigarettes out of her pocket. She hesitantly offered one up which the woman refused, and then lit up, taking a long drag before blowing the smoke out of her mouth.
"That," Touko began,"is a very fat envelope." She put a finger on the envelope and tried to guess to the amount, deciding it was more than she would probably ever ask for. The woman wanted some assurance that the job would be taken, but money was never Touko's goal. It was just a means to acquire the things she needed to achieve her personal ends, which was why it flew so freely out of her hands. "Why should I help you?"
"You probably shouldn't," the woman stated in a near monotone. Yes, here was a walking corpse. Someone who moved about, but couldn't live. Broken, and like so many broken things Touko had come across, in need of fixing.
Touko set her cigarette down and looked into the woman's eyes. Death, destruction, and oblivion in dark pools, nothing there was worth resurrecting, and yet- Touko grinned. There was still something left in those eyes. There was a spark of life not yet smothered, and that spark meant fixing this broken doll would not be wasted.
"I know your reputation Ms. Alshua. There are far worse things on this earth than you, and I've helped a couple of them."
The woman grinned, predatory, vicious, but at that moment harmless. "I suppose you are right."
"I'd like to take a look," Touko said, "but not here."
"Fine. Follow me."
It's just as I said
You dive in deep until you're covered in filth
And it clings to you so tightly you mistake it for your own skin
I wanted you there with me
In the dark
In the hollow empty space of no return
But you were never there
You never lost your light
And it burns me
Until I'm all but ash
But it only takes a spark my dear
It only takes a cinder to restart a deadly blaze
The two women walked a short way to an opulent hotel. They rode the elevator up to an expansive suite in silence. Touko stood near the door until the one-armed woman invited her to sit. The room, though expensive and rich, did not convey a sense of entitlement. It could have been a seedy motel room and Alphard Alshua, the one-armed woman, would have treated the space the same. It was just a place she slept in, and might have a meeting in. There was no other purpose. Touko minded the woman's utilitarian nature, and set it aside as part of her consideration for taking the job.
Alphard removed her long coat and pulled up a chair opposite Touko.
"May I smoke?" Touko asked.
"Is it magic?" Alphard asked in reply, deadpan.
The redhead grinned and said, "I'm just a heavy smoker." She lit up when Alphard nodded approval, and a spiral of bluish smoke rose from the tip of the cigarette. She exhaled and set it in a nearby ashtray, sitting back in her chair to consider the vacant space where Alphard's arm once existed. She grinned, still existed. the ghost limb showed it's scars, and Touko nodded. she reached out, "May I?"
Alphard nodded and gave the barest of flinches at the physical contact. Something long missing since the doctors had patched her up. But even then, the doctors she employed were fiercely clinical, and this touch, this mage's touch, was unapologetically intimate as bare and brief as it was. An ember of life sparked briefly in her eyes, before fading away again.
"I think," Touko said softly, "that I can help you."
"You'll give me a new arm."
"I can give you more than just an arm, but-" She stopped and picked up her cigarette. "I'm not sure you're going to appreciate what it will entail."
Alphard shut her eyes and let out a breath. "What price?"
"That is entirely up to you, because it will be more than you want to pay." Touko took a drag from her cigarette and asked, "Tell me, Ms. Alshua... How do you feel about snakes?"
Alphard gritted her teeth and then laughed, mirthless, devilish, and, almost, alive.