I own nothing.


It was just done on a whim, a trip to the nearest tattoo parlor taken on a Saturday. Maybe it had been Krauss's mocking or her irritation at Natsuhi. Maybe it had been Kinzo's denunciations ringing in her ears, or her mother's admonitions of her "unladylike" behavior.

Eva rubs the skin on her arm, still sore and tender, just a touch swollen, and bites her lip, struck with an uncharacteristic moment of self-consciousness as she remembers the reactions.

Getting the tattoo really hadn't hurt as much as she'd thought it would; it's just the swelling afterwards that sting and bothers her. But Rosa had still poked and prodded, gasping, brown eyes wide as she asked if it hurt and murmured "So cool…" and Eva smacked her hands away and snapped at the silly girl to leave her be.

Rudolf wasn't home at the time, so he couldn't say a word about it, but Krauss snorted and remarked "How typical of you" in that patronizing tone of his, and Natsuhi, who always looks tired to start with, just shakes her head and presses fingers to her temple, as if warding of a headache. Eva liked to believe that it was envy that provoked this response, envy that Natsuhi could wear the one-winged eagle neither on her clothes nor on her skin.

The servants whispered, and Genji outright shook his head in disbelief. Her mother demanded she have the tattoo removed at once, and her father…

Her father just said that he didn't care, and that this didn't alter his opinion of her in the least.

Remembering that, more than simply feeling self-conscious, Eva's blood boils. She marked her skin with the crest of the Ushiromiya. She now wears the one-winged eagle on her very flesh. What greater act of loyalty could there be? And yet, no one cared. No one cares, even now.

To them, it was just the whim of a silly girl who doesn't know her place.

Hideyoshi remarks that he thought only sailors got tattoos so large. But then, in the next breath, he says that tattoos look better on Eva than they ever did on any sailor.

She smiles through the cracks in her fingers. Dear man. He seems to be the only one who understands.