A/N: For Michael, who introduced me to this most awesome series. Hei/Yin-like if you want, but also rather close friendship if you're looking for that, too. No specific timeline, but probably earlier on before things become really really crazy. Enjoy! Reviews are awesome if you want to leave them.
stop
She can hear the rain outside, blowing with the wind against the cold, cold window. She's come to depend on her other senses to fill in the gaps her eyes can't put into place for her.
She feels the van skitter to a stop, tires squeaking against the wet pavement. One of her hands starts searching for a cane, anything to grasp onto to show her the outside world. Then she feels Hei's hand, so large it almost encompasses hers. It's oddly rough, though he hides his hands behind gloves and wires and she thinks she should feel no scars.
"We're here."
There is no smile in his voice. There is only a quiet, underlying urgency, one that tells her without telling her that they must still be on their guard. She holds onto his hand a little tighter, relieved that he doesn't protest.
The wind has died down and so has the rain, calming somewhat, though the humidity remains thick on her skin and her hair. She feels light, cool and ethereal, against her neck. The moonlight is shining down, and the babbling she hears must be a river.
"It's a lovely place," she says, to break the silence.
"You can tell?" Hei asks, vaguely interested.
"I'm not completely blind," she informs him tonelessly. "I can see phantom things." She dreams of them sometimes, sees things not in colors or shape but textures and auras, intuition turned outwards on the world with everything that she is, or was, or both.
It is hard to convey as much in words, and she hasn't the luxury of emotions. It does not seem to be an adequate explanation and she tries again. "Like ghosts of what things really are."
"Are you okay with that?" he asks, intrigued fully now.
Yin doesn't know how to respond to that. "Okay?" she repeats.
"Did you ever want to see more?" Hei asks. He sounds almost concerned.
"You don't need to waste emotion on me," she whispers quietly, fearing that she has said too much.
Dolls like her, she remembers, are nothing at all. Dolls like her should be seen and not heard, ready to be disposed at a moment's notice. This sort of attachment, however small, however understated, should not exist, even in theory, even in dreams.
"Who said it was a waste?" he asked, and suddenly she realizes just how close he is: his scent in her nose, his shadow swallowing her.
"Yin. You're my nakama," he says, fondly, more Li than Hei, though the two of them, she thinks, together make the partner she's come to know. "I can't look out for you?"
"You have other things to worry about," she says, almost dismissively, turning her head away from him.
"You're one of those things." Honest and brief, that's all the statement is.
A protest is hard as a pearl under her tongue: I don't deserve this, I don't, she wants to say. But she doesn't understand emotions, or she tells herself she can't, not after she's been living without them for so long. Therefore, the protest is useless.
All she knows is warmth when Hei holds her, surrounding them both with his oversized dark coat. Even then the cold wind still nips at her ankles, so to ignore the cold she buries her face against his neck, he brings his arms around her shoulders.
She finds herself thinking this does not happen as often as it should. It is a very dangerous thought, and she knows it. For they have only stopped to think about each other, and do not tend to do so when other things concern them.
They should be ready to dispose of each other at a moment's notice.
She thinks Hei would be able to do so.
She is not so sure about herself.
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