This is a little scene taken from a much larger YinxYuck fanfic I'm currently 21k words into. Unfortunately, that story will need massive revisions before it's ready to see the light of day, but I'm happy with this as it is. Thought I may as well throw this out there since I haven't posted in awhile.

The context is that this comes a short while after a torture scene. Let's just say mind linking can be a bit of a bitch.

Content warnings for: a little swearing, some sex jokes, and mentions of alcohol and suicide.

When I come back, she's burrito'd herself in the counterpane, staring out my window.

I wonder if she would have jumped, if she didn't already know there's nets under all the windows. I know I debated it back in the day- if it was brave or cowardly, to die with my principles (because the other option was too terrifying) or to let them win.

I guess we know which happened.

Sometimes I still debate it, if swallowing a 12 gauge would really be letting them win when they already do every time I second-guess a conversation, every time I fall into bed too exhausted to move but too terrified to sleep (read: pretty much every day).

But I didn't let them win today. I definitively proved I didn't learn anything at all.

A partial conquest in a pool of blood is close enough to a full one in the snow, right?

Conquest. What an apt word.

I wonder how much she hates me.

I flick on the light, closing the door gently behind me. In my arms: two 40s, a box of chocolates, and a two-ni-corn plushie, the kind whose mane and tail erupt in a rainbow of LED lights when squeezed.

"I got you some presents," I call.

She doesn't respond. I levitate over and land beside her, setting a tied grocery bag into her lap. "Even wrapped it for you." See, the joke is I tied the bag with a small cut of glitter-blue ribbon. She doesn't laugh.

"Well," I shove her shoulder with my own. "Open it up. You're gonna love it." Sling my arm around her neck, an action at which she cringes, doubling over. I dig my fingers into the layers around her shoulder, pull her back up. "No no, I'm not letting you wallow in your own misery. Not until you at least open your present."

That's good, right? A stern but caring boyfriend, trying out some tough love, unwilling to simply stand by and enable his girlfriend's depression. Good, right?

She finally turns to look at me, glaring red-rimmed daggers. Haven't you done enough? She asks with her sneer.

Night's still young, sweetheart.

I tweak her nose and flash an even wider grin. "Go on."

She ungracefully tears a hole in the bag's side, slowly pulling out the plush, mouth agape.

Then she bursts into tears.

I hug her close, shushing her, even as she tries to thrash out of my grasp. I hold her until she gives up, and I kiss away her tears.

(To think, an hour and a half ago I could have gotten away with licking them up.)

"We could have been great," she whispers, her voice so thin I can scarcely hear her.

I think a lot about what could have happened if they'd accepted me, if I had been brought under Master Yo's wing, too. Only a few weeks after I left a crater the size of my shortcomings in town square, Yang somehow managed to out fuck-up me once again.

Me, in the Woo Foo Army, in the battles against Eradicus and his lackeys. Me, going stealth in his corporation, relying information and blocking my mind against Ella with an endless loop of scenes from Cymbeline. Me, there to take the Aura Drain in her place, taking half the truth about her life down with mine.

She can't blame me for that, though. She wouldn't have – she'd have held me and cried as she realized she couldn't transfer her aura to me.

She'd have summoned her aura and made the world burn for me. All for me.

And I'd have cucked Coop to my grave. That's the most important part.

"Yeah, we could have been," I say, hugging her closer. Outside, the sky is studded with stars, like a spilled bucket of diamonds, the moon full and bright. "And just think of how mad your brother and that fuckboy would have been. It would have been glorious."

She gives a little hum; I'll take that as an agreement.

"I got you some chocodoodles, too."

Hmm.

"And alcohol."

"'s bad for my figure."

"I think your figure can only be improved with less inhibitions. And by that I mean clothes."

She curls further inward, hiding her face in the blankets.

Idiot. I place one of the bottles in front of her, and say, "A little bit will help you sleep."

Nothing.

"I'll even let you steal all the covers."

More nothing. I scoop her up into my arms, despite her cry of protest, and set her down on the bed.

She stares up at me. Fear. Confusion. Pain. Longing (I wish). All dancing together in her big, beautiful sapphire eyes.

When I was thirteen, I was kidnapped by a group of reformed grim reapers and tortured for months on end. We don't talk about it.

I take a big swig of my own 40 and set it down on the nightstand, stuffing my hands in my jacket pockets. "I'm going for a walk."

When I glance over my shoulder, doorknob in my hand, she's turned onto her side, staring at my back. My eyes trace the way the different shades of gray and black paint the slope of her shoulders, the gentle waves of her hair, spilled over across her neck and onto the mattress. Her eyes glow as bright as prison floodlights.

I lock the door behind me.

There's a lot we don't talk about, anymore.