Disclaimer: "Fan" fiction.
She had prepared for this day.
"He's just using you until he gets his body back!" they had all told her, every single one of them. But all she could respond with was a sad smile, because she had already known that.
She had always known.
But she loved him too much, cared for him too much, and had given him her body, heart, and soul. Ever since he had first whispered "I need you, Nagi," she had been utterly at his disposal.
Simply because he was the first person to ever even pretend to care for her.
This man was all illusions, lies entangled in truths and truths suffocating in lies, yet beyond her suspicions, he still gave her a purpose in life. A dream in the form of a man, a nightmare encased in heaven-blue and hell-red eyes who offered a spot by his side for her and her alone. A man like him was a smiling demon with blood on his hands, and good girls could never hope to be more than a tool to someone like that.
But that didn't stop her from pretending that things could change.
Some days, though, it wasn't worth the effort of pretending.
She was his puppet, knowing the inevitability – and dreading it– of the day when he would cut the strings.
That day had finally come.
Yet she hadn't simply stood by and watched the time tick by. No, she had trained and gotten stronger. Preparations of strength that she had taken so that when he inevitably tossed her aside when she was no longer needed, she could still survive without him. Over the years, she had gotten strong enough to create her own organs for this day that he would undoubtedly let her go.
And when he did, she could still be there for him—and still fight for him. Even if he didn't need her to. Didn't want her to.
Because she wasn't sure that she was a good enough girl to let him go.
Chrome Dokuro wondered if this was what insanity felt like.
Mukuro, alive and breathing and real, stepped towards her, lips smiling but eyes hard and calculating. She took a deep breath, readying her heart like she always had, and waited.
She waited a long time in the expanse of a minute, both of them staring back at each other, both of them seeing each other for the first time and for the last.
She waited.
His hand came to her face, his smile vanishing but his eyes – of heaven and hell – began to shimmer with something dark yet beautiful. Something that danced in shadows and impiety while burning as bright and lovely as a candle's flame.
Something like hope.
And Chrome realized that she may have been made mad by the long years alone with her unrequited love, but he had been made insane by the long ages with his hope. Slowly, her thoughts tangled around the thought that maybe smiling demons hoped to mean more to good girls too.
He made no move to cut the strings, neither hers nor his, and she made no move to let the strings go.
So together they stood, dreading and wishing, and waited together in the wake of the day they had both prepared for.
Until finally, he moved away from her, accepting her silence, and whispered once again, "I need you, Chrome."
Her smile, soft and blooming as the lotus of nirvana, was weightless against her sudden realization that maybe her puppet strings ran both ways.