(N)ever
at no time | at any time
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ORDER
Hayato Gokudera had never particularly wanted to be someone else. Why covet a destination you could be walking towards on your own feet? He was, in that aspect, a pragmatist, though he'd never say it aloud. He didn't feel the need to proclaim what he was. He was his own audience, and that was enough. Why pander to others? That said, he had never loved being himself, either. But he didn't have time to think on it, so it didn't matter much.
He made an irritated sound as the edges of the map curled inwards, infernally uncooperative. The paper was starkly white in an absolute declaration of itself. Fresh maps were consulted for two reasons: as an updated blueprint of a targeted area, or to sketch out the game plan on a grim, clean slate, without age or softness to the medium.
While he was admittedly impatient, what with his sharp tongue and edgy temperament, he made an unexpectedly thorough strategist.
His reputation for playing devil's advocate had a function, at least.
He blinked, and the lone light-bulb dangling from the ceiling rasped with static, flickering twice, then dimming from a glaring yellow to a restful amber.
He squinted, then rose to fetch a desk lamp.
There was a knock on the door, and he momentarily forgot himself. What was he doing by his desk? The map was on the coffee table. And why was the room so dim? He had just changed the dirt-cheap bulb two months ago (but he supposed those things weren't built to last in the first place).
"Who is it?"
The door hissed open, and the woman entered, expressionless.
He started from his frozen stare, remembering. I'm up at three in the morning because the fucking idiot was forced to reveal his new technique in the last confrontation.
Wordlessly, she strode over to the table and tamed the map with a tack on each corner. She stood back to survey the blueprint. "So what's the problem?"
These were the rare moments devoid of prickling insults. They were tired, and the mission took priority. It was a peace accord, inviolable and sacred in its scarcity. It wasn't that they accepted each other—they could hardly tolerate themselves—but they were quiet because they needed an armistice in the midst of it all. She still stiffened in his presence after ten years of accommodating it. His jaw ticked an average of two times every ten minutes she was around.
He reached the table in three strides. "Tactical retreat today. Takeshi fucked it up." Pointing to a room labeled [START] in bold, he continued, "Find the shortest route from here to the target, all obstacles considered."
"You want me to solve a maze," she stated, sizing up the possible paths while rubbing her chin thoughtfully.
"A shifting maze," he clarified, an urgent glint in his eyes. The Millefiore base was a hellhole, and she knew it.
The brunette seated herself in the burgundy armchair. He followed suit, selecting a seat several feet away, far enough to maintain his space, but close enough to avert a rude impression. After running rounds of simulations with a program, she described the results. The Vongola had invaded the Millefiore base so many times that most members knew the layout by heart. It was laughable in a way that really wasn't funny, Reborn would comment, as in: "Why so many invasions—can't they get it right the first time?"
But it's a simple concept, really. For every action, an equal and opposite reaction. It just keeps going.
He asked to analyze the possible routes, and she handed the laptop to him, careful to avoid physical contact.
"Tomorrow," he said suddenly as she rose to leave.
She turned, acutely aware of the weight of her foot. "Yes?"
"I need you and Giannini to monitor our progress in case anything unexpected happens."
"Of course." The analyst makes it to the entrance before another pause halts her mid-step. "How do you get any sleep like this?" How do any of us? How do we rest, when lying still in a cold bed isn't enough?
He looks at her as if he's never seen her before. "I don't."
She leaves and the room seems larger somehow; a shell of what it was.
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Innocents made shit Mafiosi.
Too trusting, too hopeful, too damn content with being spoon-fed answers.
But what differentiates the guilty from the guiltless? Circumstance and chance?
Being insecure had done Haru Miura wonders. Being infuriatingly persistent had secured her a place she could never leave, only fight for. Being ridiculous had kept her alive. She couldn't be shielded from the world; it was too late for that, and she would've hated herself all the more for it.
What's in a place? The base could have been built anywhere and she could have grown accustomed to it. Sometimes she wondered if people were the same. Her father had remarried twice—proving to her, at least, that love was not as selective as it claimed to be. Children are steadfast in their true affections, but urged to shed that loyalty, to move on as if by letting go you'll be less lost. But Haru had always thought that letting go meant you were still looking, still waiting—for something else (but what?).
She envied the guardians for their ability to manifest will into tangible flames, to think and see the thought spring up, as if their soul had commanded a response.
Haru does not envy their duty, however, because she has her own burden to bear.
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He slams the slate grey mug down on the table. Coffee sloshes onto the map.
"I'm fucking tired of this—if you're not going to help, get out."
Her eyes widen as the moment sinks in, a mark she can't erase. You've done it now, she thinks. You've broken our pact. She recoils from the thought, disgusted with herself. There never was a pact. I just sought one. She hates the shame of being betrayed by her own assumptions, hates the layered malice in his voice that finds fault with a world out of her control.
She hates feeling like a victim.
"Look, I know your family issues have been getting worse lately, but that's no reason to take it out on me."
He leans across the table, gripping the edge with a tight-knuckled clench. "What the fuck do you know about my family? You don't know jack-shit about it, so don't ever bring it up again." He jolts the table, and the mug's contents slap the map with an inky abruptness. His keen features contain his heaving frustration, but only barely. The rest boils off in waves, thickening the air around them. Her breaths push against the atmosphere, a physical strain in her lungs.
This is their normality.
She jolts the table back, and the mug rolls off the edge. It shatters. "For God's sake, you're not the only one who has lost someone. You'll never survive if every little thing they do upsets you this much—"
He scoffs, and her gut twists the way it usually does before matters take a turn for the worse. He scoffs in a way that says "everything you know is wrong," and it stings like the searing rip of a carpet burn. "The hell do you know about survival? You—a spoiled, judgmental—"
"—Says the man judging me! Would I be able to get away with pouting my way through life?" She raises her voice because it feels right in a twisted way, and she needs the release. "I don't think so!"
He lowers his voice to counter her volume, an inverse noise. "I endure months of sleepless nights so we can all get out of this alive, and you tell me I'm pouting my way through life?"
She quiets. "There's a massive chip on your shoulder. I'd say that's synonymous with pouting."
He bends down to pick up the fragments of the shattered mug. "Just get out."
"You always like to think you have it under control," she says, watching him. The brunette leans against the table and listens to each light "chink" of a ceramic fragment falling against another in his palm. "And how's that working out for you?"
One shard draws blood. If he notices, he doesn't react. "Fan-fucking-tastic, thanks."
The next night, he finds that the coffee-stained map has been replaced with a fresh one. A folder of stats and plans lie neatly next to it. No sign of last night remains.
And then it strikes him in the way it strikes him every time: she's a bona-fide madwoman—to the extent that she's sanely insane.
What does that make him?
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Hesitation wastes too much time on too little action, but impulse wastes too much risk on too little certainty. There has to be a balance, an in-between, but the harmony of things doesn't especially concern him. The boss trusts and depends on him. They all do, to varied extents—it's what they hold on to, trust. They all know the boss is stressed, isn't sleeping well, isn't eating much. But the boss will always have Kyoko.
On some days, the storm guardian wonders if this fact fatigues the boss even more.
Death used to trouble him.
Now he only wonders what it's like.
Gokudera laughs at the thought. It's too soon for him to die. Death must not have him yet.
He thinks this as he's wheeled into the infirmary for the umpteenth time. He's receiving a blood transfusion, uninformed of the donor's identity. It's a bizarre detail in the scheme of things, but it nags at him. The wheels of the stretcher make creaky, old sounds and he feels the numb vibrations buzz into his back.
Bianchi catches him staring at the tube, and says, "Haru offered. She's type B."
He wishes he hadn't asked, then realizes that he didn't.
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She asks him why he seldom sends for anyone else.
"Because I don't have time to explain everything twice," he retorts.
She thinks it might be the first compliment he has ever paid her.
His next words make her blood run cold.
"You know, you might have to join us on a mission someday." He studies a revolver in his hands with keen interest. "Are you any good with guns?"
She stares at him for a moment. "What do you think?"
He glances at her, then back to the weapon. "With our high profile, it's unlikely that we'd be able to replace you with a reliable analyst if you died. At the very least, it would be a pain in the ass."
"It's all a matter of cost versus benefit, then," Haru says flatly. She tries to level him with her stare, as if to sculpt the truth out of a misshapen landscape.
But they're on even ground, and he just stares back at her.
"Is it ever not a matter of cost versus benefit?"
The ensuing silence becomes a proxy glare as she stares resolutely into her lap, refusing to meet his gaze.
Sighing, he cuts to the chase: "Yes, it would take a massive load off of our shoulders if you were combatively competent. But you're not." Her fists clench and she looks like she wants to tear the weapon out of his hands and aim it at him. Or herself. A smirk tugs at the edge of his mouth. "You're scared, aren't you?"
Her chest tightens. "Of what?"
"Of being forced to confront reality at an overwhelming disadvantage."
"We all have disadvantages," she enunciates crisply, as if her words are polygons with well-defined edges.
Uninspired, he snorts, "Some more than others."
She swallows thickly, and the self-contempt gets caught in her throat.
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She winces as pressure is applied to her left arm, right against the clean fracture. I-pin had offered to help her around, but she had staunchly refused with a smile.
She walks normally and takes half an hour to get dressed.
Haru stares at her ceiling, then at the glowing green digits of the alarm clock. She had not contacted her father in years—it was unwise to do so when their devices could be tapped. She wondered what she would say to him if she saw him tomorrow. He had been gaining weight around his middle, and though she had explicitly told his new wife that he was to be prohibited from cake and sweets, the wife had written her off as "too stoic to enjoy life"—ironic, given her idolatrous relationship with pastries.
She thought back to the last time she peered into the window display of a cake shop, face pressed up against the glass. She might as well banish the thought. The delicate intricacy of each cake was painful to look at. Their exquisite designs made her feel too aged and tainted to possibly deserve a bite. Or worse—she feared she would digest a forkful and taste nothing in it.
It was strange, the shift in perspective.
The window pane had been alluring before: inviting, honest and warm. Somewhere along the lines, its solid resistance against her fingertips began to seem more like a mocking taunt, a cold barrier behind which she no longer recognized the sanctuary on the other side.
These things are minutiae, she's aware.
But this is how we measure change personally: by the trifling details that accost us in the moment.
Bloodshed and conflict become constants, too vast to count, too vast to grieve in scale.
It's disturbing.
She ponders the possibility that she is afraid, and sits up suddenly, somnolence dispelled. The air swoops in around her neck and she's goosebumps all over.
"I'm not afraid" had been easy to say when it was true.
It didn't work if she realized she was actually scared shitless.
So she pretended not to realize it.
Haru drifts into the kitchen in discolored pajamas (soft from many washes, but also thin and threadbare), modesty be damned. She's not going to spend an hour dressing and undressing herself again for an insomniac walk. If the Millefiore strike at this very instant, she's going to laugh, and probably swear a bit after that.
But only mildly.
She doesn't like the way the words sound, crude and unshakeable, like grease. But they do pack a punch, she has to admit. And liberating too, on specific occasions. He had a tendency to use them whenever provoked, as if they were foot soldiers raising shields in his stead. As if the pain would abate if he cursed it to hell and back.
He must have quite the load of pain to be cursing so profusely, she thinks.
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Two years.
For two years they had been defending against a rising famiglia previously unknown to the Mafia realm. The Capello famiglia comprised a troupe of manipulative tricksters, each with a fulsome appetite for psychological warfare. The Vongola was challenged every so often (though most simply observed the change in Xanxus' attitude towards the boss and respected the Tenth begrudgingly), but seldom harassed (excepting Byakuran, whose games knew no bounds).
The samurai way was not the Capello way. Honor was but a word, and words but whims subject to the mouth's utterance.
He clambers up onto the ledge, and she follows, panting with exertion.
In just a moment, he'd say, "Scan the complex."
Four seconds later, she'd respond, "All clear, except for—"
But it happens before the entire exchange.
She has just enough time to blink before the ground beneath them is blasted into the one below, and nothing is stable or solid but everything falls. Down, up, out: shifted within the frame of an unaffected Earth. The analyst feels a bit like a die being cast on a casino table. She wouldn't bet on her luck.
A hand clutches her wrist. "Hold on," he bites out, gritting his teeth.
Haru flinches from the recoil of a one-handed flame missile launch. "You need two hands to fight, don't you?"
"Not now," he snaps/screams, and for once she doesn't argue.
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She lies very still, considering the way the sunlight beams through the broken glass, and how everything is beautiful for just a moment. Spots of color flicker through the beam, through the glass. Fleeting. She stiffens as the puddle of blood beneath her seeps through the back of her jacket, a dark, clammy presence that is far more tangible.
Stop.
Stop.
Stop—
A perpetual lust for power, an unyielding definition of "right", a condemnation of the "unforgiveable," and the ensuing skirmish. Rinse and repeat. Deceit and espionage, temptation and madness. If a genie could save her now, she would wish it all away. Wish the term "Mafia" didn't exist. Wish there was plot progression, and not plot recycling. If her life was a plot, it might as well be towards some goal, some ultimate end. She had no damn clue what it was for.
The civilian life wasn't far off. Days became headlines which became paychecks which became lifelines.
She turns, and the harsh reality of broken concrete greets her scraped cheek, all edges, grit and loneliness.
If not world peace, she'd wish for a cup of hot cocoa and a warm bed.
Amnesia isn't an option; she could forget the story, but not its characters. She couldn't leave them to fight alone, even in a doomed battle. Not after she saw the look on Gokudera's face when he was told Shamal had been brutally murdered. Not after she saw Takeshi of all people stuffing his sobs into a limp pillow. Not after she saw Ryohei eyeing the almonds in his palm and wondering aloud how a poison so terrible (cyanide) could smell so lovely, and if good and bad were really just rats in the race alongside their human counterparts.
One wish.
Yet a cynical voice in her mind snickers. She would be bored without intrigue, listless without urgency. But throw in an egregious heaping of intrigue and urgency, and you're still nowhere near excitement and vivacity. Instead you've got this skeleton of a human being trying to make it through life one day at a time.
To be sure, she's got enough ammo in her to last a lifetime.
She's just... lost.
Haru pushes herself up, and scans the debris for the storm guardian. Ninety degrees to her right, she comes face to face with the gracious smile of a Capello guardian.
"Why hello," he breathes, altogether satisfied with himself. "Look at you, a worthless stain on the ground."
"Do it," the storm guardian grunts from somewhere in her peripheral vision, eerily calm. "Haru."
The vertigo stays with her as she tightens her grip, but she clings to it, resisting each second as it passes.
But.
"I'm sorry," she sighs, and pulls the trigger.
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They reside in a high-tech facility, but gather around an elaborate display of candles for dinner. The dim warmth is gentler than the bright fluorescent lights, and no one comments on the apparent disparity.
Kyoko exudes good cheer, but can't look any of them in the eye. "So, to commemorate our thirteenth year as a family, why don't we take it easy tonight?"
He snorts. Haru's gut twists.
Not to her, you dolt, she hisses inwardly. Keep your issues away from her smiles. His eyes glaze over sardonically and she grows restless with the urge to tell him off, to leave Kyoko's dignity unsullied, as it should be (as it deserves to be). He nods at the deck of cards in Kyoko's hands. "What, by playing poker?"
His voice is a bed of nails, and the woman deflates. "Not if you don't want to, of course."
Tsuna throws a grim glance at his right-hand man, and Gokudera glances away. "He's probably just hungry, Kyoko. We haven't eaten yet, and it doesn't seem like anything has been prepared. Why don't we eat out? Wasn't there a new restaurant you were telling me about the other day?"
Her smile returns at his gesture, and Haru is struck by the sudden aspiration for Kyoko to have a happy life with Tsuna—for happiness to survive, just once, is that too much to ask for? "Right! We can still make it before it closes, too, since it's only eight." She breaks off, glancing at the table. "That is, if you guys are interested."
Ryohei is all pumped up, and Takeshi grins easily. Hibari is nowhere in sight, and normality reasserts itself.
"I'll stay here to monitor the base. You guys go ahead," the storm guardian suggests, keeping his tone light.
No one protests, and Haru is again restless—but for what reason she can't explain. "Bring Giannini—he had some cleanup work to do, but I'll take that off of his hands. He hardly ever gets a break."
Takeshi glances between them, confused. "Sure. Would you like us to bring something back for you?"
Gokudera stands, and she bristles instinctively. "No."
In the end, Bianchi, Gokudera and Haru remain at the base while the others frequent a family-owned Thai restaurant. Haru estimates they'll be out for a good two hours, now that there isn't anyone to kill the mood.
Something moves, and she jumps.
She stares into space for a full minute, then abruptly stands, resolute. Upon digging through the fridge, she procures several carrots, potatoes, and celery sticks. She figures it's too late for gourmet, and dumps it all into a pot of chicken broth, leaving it to simmer on the stove. The brunette sets a half-hour timer, and wanders into Giannini's office. She plops down in his swivel chair and completes the final adjustments in fifteen minutes.
The blanket of code on the screen is strangely inviting, and she leaves the room with reluctance in her steps.
To be honest, she's not quite sure what to do with herself for the remaining fifteen minutes.
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Don't spill. Don't spill. Don't—
Haru gasps as Gokudera rams into her shoulder as he passes in the narrow hallway, nixing her mental mantra. She gapes at her reddening arms and the overturned bowl and growls, "What the hell is wrong with you?"
He folds his glasses into his breast pocket and turns, closing a book. "Mind asking yourself that first?"
She rolls her eyes. "I'm know I'm messed up—therefore I know you're severely messed up." The brunette removes her cardigan and begins to mop up the soup on the ground; most of her old clothes become functional washcloths or quilt squares. Haru has stitched four quilts over the years, and always with Kyoko at her side, gently unknotting her mistakes.
Bianchi would surprise her with the occasional dress, gifting upscale, modest numbers to an inelegantly modest woman, claiming that a woman ought to be loved by her man and her wardrobe in equal measure. You could tell the brunette was gracious by the way she always donned the dresses at galas, as a nod to Bianchi. You could tell by what she normally wore (blouses and jeans, a practical femininity) that she was unused to Bianchi's fanciful creed.
The storm guardian pauses, like he's not sure whether he should muster an apology or just walk away.
"Well, it's your loss, not mine," she huffs, glaring at the mess. "Your dinner's on the ground."
Gokudera stares at his book on obscure weaponry, wanting to be away, away from her. "I'm not hungry."
"We're all hungry, one way or another," she murmurs.
He grunts. "What's your deal? No one usually gives a shit about Giannini." He would know; he had asked Giannini why he hadn't quit already, and Giannini had just chuckled and said it was his purpose to stay, however much it taxed him unnecessarily. It was a binding contract, and he could hardly complain with a roof over his head.
She folds the soiled part of cardigan up and continues to soak up the spill, silent.
Two seconds later she's standing, head bowed. Then she shoves him back roughly, into the wall, anywhere, as long as it's out of her sight. "I give a shit, okay? What's wrong with giving a shit, Gokudera? What's wrong with people who give a shit?"
She yells "what's wrong with people", but it sounds more like "what's wrong with me."
Because he's been educated the hard way that tit for tat is the philosophy of life, he shoves her back. She trips over her cardigan, and his hand darts out reflexively, but he yanks it back.
Because she needs to feel the impact.
"Can you wrap your fucking mind around what it's like to give a shit about something so much that your life goes to shit when it turns out that shit wasn't worth it?"
She cradles her left arm and curses the tears that flee the rims of her burning eyes. Get up, she thinks. Get up, get up, get up—Haru gets up sucks in a ragged breath. "And what then—misery? What then? What next?"
He laughs, a defeated sound she never wants to hear again. "What next? You live. Life goes on and people expect it to fucking heal you, because you're supposed to forget and forgive to sleep a little easier."
"It doesn't work," she comments, her voice hushed in the vacuum of the night. "Life heals superficial wounds. You heal yourself, do the best you can to do your best."
"And you're the expert on self-healing, aren't you?" he quips snidely.
"You have to stop," she says impassively.
"I don't have to do anything," he replies testily.
"No, listen." She closes in, and he backpedals and hits the wall again. "You have to stop this." She jabs him in the chest and he twitches. "It's hurting you, it's hurting all of us, and it's—"
He forces her hand away from him, uncomfortable with her very existence. "None of your business."
"Maybe not." She takes a step back and he can breathe again. "But it's your business, so you'd be better off taking care of it."
Gokudera snatches the bowl from her hand and heads off in the direction she came.
"Then you'd better scrub the floor with some soap. Reborn will give you hell if he slips and gets a concussion."
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DISORDER
She spots a lone lamp in the faint glow of the library, and without thinking, draws nearer. He's studying, as he typically is. She had expected to see his hair tied up, but it was instead cropped several inches shorter.
It made him appear... more insolent.
"What do you want, woman?" comes his low drawl.
Haru decides to alter her gait the next time she approaches him just to throw him off. "Half the time, I wish I never met you," she says simply.
His pen stills for a heartbeat. "Only half the time?"
She closes her eyes, feeling around with her hands until she locates the chair and seats herself next to him, still virtually blind. "You're peculiar, aren't you?"
"Says the pot to the kettle," he grumbles, turning another page.
"So you're saying we're alike?"
A pause. "No."
She opens her eyes and everything is blurred in the shadows. "You have a roundabout way of doing things."
He curses as his left hand smudges the ink. "What makes you say that?"
"You don't say what you're feeling. You say what you're thinking."
A sigh. "I'm a two-faced bastard, is that it?"
"Or—how should I put it—you say what you think you should feel."
He halts his activity altogether and turns to face her. "I'm intrigued by your psychoanalysis. Please, do enlighten me. You might want to cite Freud while you're at it."
She laughs. "You're always defensive when I'm right, and sarcastic when I'm debatably right."
The storm guardian squints at the her, struggling to comprehend the spectacle that is the woman before him. "You're a nutcase. I don't know what Takeshi ever saw in you."
The laugh dries up in her throat. "Do me a favor and shut up."
He resumes taking notes. "Likewise."
She huffs and turns around, catching a glimpse of the corner of his mouth as it pulls upwards.
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"You were in charge of disabling the cameras." Ryohei leans forward on the edge of his seat, sliding down a fraction of an inch. Lambo impishly wonders when the man's going to miss the edge and fall into am embarrassed heap on the floor with a sore bum to boot. There was a twinge of accusation in his tone, accentuated by the tensing bandaged fists on his knees. The stakes are high, and no one blames him for casting blame.
The storm guardian has no words worth spending.
The boss wracks his brain for a way to settle the antagonism, to get around the problematic truth.
"The cameras had back-up surveillance mechanisms. He disabled the first layer. I checked afterwards."
All heads swivel to the brunette. Shock registers in three, four, five faces. Their surprise lay not in the fact that they had underestimated the security, but in that Haru had explicitly spoke in Gokudera's defense.
It was... abnormal.
"It'd be, well, convenient if you could better inform us next time," Gokudera mutters, all bark and no bite.
That ingrate. "I informed you of what I knew. I wish I could inform you of what I didn't know."
Tsuna cuts in. "Enough. With that information, we can proceed with more caution. We'll reconvene after lunch to discuss where to go from here."
Things appear to have been set straight, but everyone leaves the room a little dazed.
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It's dangerous, but she expects them to return. She always does.
She expects herself to return, too, so it's entirely unexpected when it turns out she might not. She had become so adept at pretending she wasn't scared shitless that she had forgotten she actually was.
There's no one around, and she hasn't trained with I-pin for months. She doesn't remember how to fight.
But faced with a minefield, there's little anyone can do to fight. It's more of a maneuvering wager. She picks out a few rocks and throws them in front of her, hoping to ring a few false alarms. Haru wonders what they would do if the minefield was indoors, covered by a smooth surface. Would the first person become a shield, an unlucky indicator to the rest?
One misstep.
There's a blast and she screams and red drips from her lower half and every step pierces her to the bone.
They had agreed to meet up at their starting point, but she had lost connection with the map in her navigator, even after tapping into alternate energy reserves. Someone must have hacked into her network, which rankled her pride and grated on her nerves.
This isn't the Millefiore base. She has no idea where she is. Worse yet, she doesn't know where the minefield ends. She empties her pockets and uses her gadgets as rocks when she can't risk digging up any more up lest she unearth a mine instead. It's chance, and she hates that the deciding factor leaves her powerless.
If it's all chance, maybe power is just a grand illusion, an ego-stroking relativity.
Well, none of that matters now.
There's paranoia in each step, and the next, and the next.
She tosses a compact, round disk in front of her and nothing explodes. She seizes up, realizing that she had just tossed the emergency communication device to the minefield. "I'm taking that back," she mutters under her breath, trudging towards it. Haru leans down and cringes, reaching for the device.
A loud, irritated shout blares from the speaker. "Where the fuck are you?"
Haru fumbles and falls on her side. She pants "oh my god" without meaning it (she had also lost faith in Santa Claus around the same time), and waits for the explosion.
"Takeshi's tracker is off the map. So's yours. Everyone else is here. Hurry the hell up."
Gritting her teeth, she lets out a short, blunt laugh. "Hurry the hell up? I might be in hell if I hurry." Then her mind revisits the first half of the message, and she stills, drained of morbid mirth. Takeshi hadn't arrived? Had he sustained serious injury? Did he exhaust himself too soon again? Could he be similarly delayed?
She hoped not.
The brunette pockets the device and crawls up, grimacing at the smear of blood left in her wake. She imagines that there is no wound beneath the decimated flesh, and for an instant the pain dulls into nonexistence.
It dawns on her that she may be ensnared in an illusion.
"Took you long enough to figure out." A woman sniffs, unimpressed. Her violet curls reach her midriff, unruly and unfixed, without a clear contour. "I know you're tired of games and farces," she continues in a languorous tone, advancing. "Everyone lies and no one is true." Her lips pull into an arch grin. "Let's end this sad, sad monotony."
Haru suddenly prefers the minefield.
"W-Wait," the brunette stutters. "What's going on?"
She wears an easy, practiced smile. "It'll be quick; you won't feel a thing."
Haru's vision zeroes in on the blade tip, then the woman's full smile, then the fact that the distance between them is rapidly closing. The observations occur to her in a deluge of blurred snapshots, unintelligible and too swift to sort out. She sprints out of the projected path of attack, setting off three mines and ignoring the pretense. "What do you want? Why are you doing this?" Read: since when have I been important enough to kill? Or are you just... killing for the sake of it?
The analyst had read up on the inhabitants of the fortress, and knew the woman to be the holder of the mist ring, Ita Ricci.
But what use did that knowledge have?
The answer presents itself as it pierces her stomach and comes out on the other side.
None. Zilch. Nada.
Liar.
Excruciating pain radiates from a single point in her abdomen, drilling into her, spitting on the fact of her mortality.
Death is a promise always kept. And yet—
Haru coughs up blood and thinks, this is it, isn't it?
.
.
.
Someone slaps her.
Hard.
She sits up, cradling her right cheek and blinking at her surroundings, working her jaw to ease up the sting.
"Oh hey, she's alive."
"What—how—"
The storm guardian pushes her back down. "Rest."
She blinks more as if she can parse the situation better that way. "Did you just slap me?"
He shrugs. "It worked, didn't it?"
She wants to laugh, to cry.
"Am I dreaming?"
"Do the dead dream?"
And she is neither of those things.
.
.
.
Haru would be the first to disclose that Gokudera speaks Japanese like a blender dissevering fruit, all consonants and serrated fury. But his Italian is something else, and she would be the last to admit it.
His Italian more resembles an icy brook trickling over smooth pebbles, and the sound fascinates her.
She stumbles upon his conversation with Bianchi, and listens at the door, feeing pathetic.
It slams open (as it's wont to do where he's concerned) and he looks as her oddly.
She runs and runs, and tries to detach his Italian from his persona, because the two don't match and one of them makes her nervous.
.
.
.
"Have you ever noticed that you address everyone else by their first name?" Kyoko asks curiously.
"I haven't," Haru replies curtly. "But it's... that's natural."
"It probably is," Kyoko concedes, amused by the alternative.
The brunette hears "probably" and silently shakes her first at the probability of things.
Forget the chances—what happens and what doesn't?
.
.
.
Haru is never certain whether Uri likes her, or her free backrubs. She's willing to give in to this uncertainty, however, as it harms no one and brings Uri no small amount of pleasure.
The storm guardian is less convinced. "Get back here," he mutters to Uri, tossing Haru a glare over his shoulder. "No fraternizing with the enemy."
She arches a brow. "I'm the enemy?"
"If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck... you know the rest."
"You think I'd kill you, given the chance?"
At this, he stops. "Would you?"
"It depends," she replies.
"I rest my case." He retracts Uri into the box and turns to face her.
"If you were afflicted with a terminal illness that caused incurable pain, I would."
His expression darkens. "What gives you the right to make that decision for me?"
She's indignant. "The concept is mercy. I don't expect you to grasp it."
"Mercy? What makes you think I deserve mercy? Are you a fucking god?"
She learns to recognize that he swears when unnerved. "Do I have to be an idea to deliver a concept?"
He crosses his arms and leans against the wall.
It's the first they've spoken in weeks, and he takes his sweet time thinking up a response.
"We're all ideas, in a sense."
"I don't know that I'd liken an inconstant species to their products of thought," she posits.
"But what are 'we' without conscious thought? You're separating the thinker from the thought."
"Who can live their entire life embodying an idea without ever contradicting it? They would be labeled 'extremists' and disdained."
He sighs. "More's the pity. Moderation gets to be revoltingly extreme."
She laughs a little, and in their casual proximity, notices the starkness of red wounds on pale skin. "You're human."
"You say that like it's a code for 'tough luck'."
"Maybe it is."
He looks stricken—not by her comment, but with the prompt uncertainty of why he's still standing here, humoring her and not loathing every second of it.
"I thought you'd declared war on chance."
She's not sure that she's willing to give in to the uncertainty of standing here, either. It's not as innocuous as indulging Uri, and certainly not as harmless. "I don't know," she says, until he's a foot away, then six inches, then two. "Does that mean I've lost?"
He has no words and he watches her, watches her almost critically, hyperaware of every blink, breath, and micro expression. Her hand—
—shakes as it meets his face, as if the simple act of touching him is beyond her. She traces the scar across his left cheekbone with flighty fingers, willing warmth to his ashen skin and all that is beneath it.
"I don't know," he croaks. He doesn't know what the hell is happening.
"I just need to know that something indestructible exists," she breathes, brows scrunched and eyes bewildered.
There.
He finds his footing again, and debunks her supposed need. "'Tough luck'," he grins. "The big bang theory relies on it. Our creation from the death of stars depends on it."
"What a dilemma," she remarks at last, reinstalling their distance.
"You're who you are because you left some other part of you behind," he comments.
She mulls this over, then fixes her ochre gaze on him seriously. "Have you?"
"Possibly," he says, and averts his gaze. "I guess that's how it works."
She laughs again and takes a leap of faith.
"I guess it is."
.
.