A/N: I've changed the rating of this story. Hope no one minds too badly. This one is pretty long to apologize for the long wait, sorry! Enjoy!

When everything's meant to be broken, I just want you to know who I am.

"You walked here," he paused to measure your stupidity, "how many kilometers is that? 122?" Asura didn't bother to hide the panic in his voice as he chastised you, shaking his head. You started to give some lame excuse but it faded out as your cheeks warmed under his concerned gaze. His eyes slid down to the black, puckered stitching on your upper arm, attempting to hold back a thrill of furious fear that shot through his stomach. "He let those pathetic humans hurt you."

Your eyes narrowed a bit, "Humans are just like you and me, they're born and they die. Just because our lifespan is longer it doesn't mean we are better than them." You puffed your cheeks, "And, by the way, I can take perfectly fine care of myself."

"Evidently not." He gesticulated with one tattooed hand to your injury, raising a thin black brow challengingly. But he dropped the tough act quickly as another wave of panic came over him at another fearful thought came, "Let me meet you in Damascus from now on, it's dangerous out there for a lone woman."

You rolled your eyes, "I've been a peacekeeper for ages, I'm not some delicate little-"

"Flower?" he gently finished for you with a shy blush, suddenly twirling a purple iris between his fingers. Hesitantly he placed it in your hand and you felt your heart flutter as your fingers cupped the delicate little thing. You knew he just wanted to change the subject away from your job at large, but you couldn't help feeling flattered.

Your heart was always doing strange things around him.

"By the way," he began to say with a worn smile, "I wasn't born, I was created."

You worried your lip, embarrassed. "Sorry about that, you're just so normal that I forget sometimes."

There was a droop to his voice as his eyes fell from yours. "That I'm just a Fragment?"

You frowned and shook your head at his dejected tone, "You're not 'just' anything." You focused on his averted gold eyes and lowered your voice to a reassuring level, "You really need to stop seeing yourself so negatively, you're no less than anyone else just because of the way you were brought into the world. My mother died when she delivered me, but that doesn't make me a bad person or anything."

His hands found yours, skimming his fingertips along your tender wrists, still holding his eyes half-mast on the sandy ground. The feeling of his skin on yours reminded you of coming home, it felt safe and caring. Your thumbs ran mindlessly over the three tattooed eyes on the backs of his hands, lingering briefly over the tattooed black crisscrossed ring around his middle finger. The ink had a slightly different texture but it didn't hamper your fingertips. They emitted an exciting electric feel that made your heart melt against your will. Your logical mind concluded that this was a bad idea, but you couldn't make yourself stop touching him. It was far too pleasant.

Akira was away on some very foreign mission to North America for the foreseeable future, thats why you decided to take the long walk to Jericho to begin with, it gave you something to do. You knew you would be dipping your toes into dangerous territory by bringing this up, but you were just so curious.

So, with belligerent stupidity, you just said it,

"I feel strange on my last mission." You looked to your hands and the phantom electricity your skin experienced. "I've gotten so used to being near your wavelength that it makes me feel cold and apathetic when you're too far." Biting your lip you tried to stop yourself from going any further. After saying it out loud you could see why Akira thought you were leading Asura on and it was a little disturbing. "B-but it could be a number of things, so I wanted to see if you felt the same way."

You wanted to retract the words as soon as they left your tongue.

Asura was quiet for a long while just staring at your joined hands with a torn expression before finally admitting,

"Not sick. But I felt... highly strung. Like a ball of energy was squirming in my chest, compelling me to behave irrationally." One hand came to his heart; the other still enveloped by your own. "Being separated from you terrifies me. I don't trust Akira to keep you safe and the thought of you..." He paused, cutting off his own thoughts before he could say too much. "Being close to someone is hard enough, so the thought of losing you scares the hell out of me."

You swallowed thickly. Akira was completely right. Asura did have feelings for you; he was just so inept at interpersonal relationships that he had no clue how to explain it.

Against your heart's desire you tried your best to dispel that sentiment, "You fear my ability being harmed, not me. You're experiencing a craving; my ability has the same effect as a drug. I'm sorry to put you through that, it must be difficult to feel so strange. But I will have to leave sometimes to conduct similar tasks for Lord Death, just like you, and you can't keep me safe all of the time."

You didn't notice his index finger on the top of your foot until he looked at it. So innocent yet so incredibly intimate, it was almost overtly sexual in the way it made you feel. Though it was definitely not intended that way. You blushed.

"Do you feel that?" He asked quietly, afraid he was imagining things.

You nodded hesitantly. You knew where this was headed but like a freight train with worn breaks, you couldn't stop yourself, "I've never felt this way before."

You didn't have to look to know that his face was red. You could feel his soul shifting and twisting. He was afraid, but in a far more innocent way than usual. You didn't realize that he'd taken the double meaning of your words a different way than you'd intended. He was a nervous talker so he stuttered his way into a random topic to avoid acknowledging what you'd just said.

He told you about something that had been happening around the world recently and why they made him so worried about you. About some trio of sister witches.

But your thoughts were miles away, yet right in front of you.

When you arrived Asura had given you a little flower and you accepted it against your better judgment. You told him you'd never felt this way toward a patient before, knowing how he'd take your words. You let him hold your hands even when you weren't scouring his soul. Because it all felt nice, it all felt right. You knew the way you were behaving around him was wrong; it was on the very teetering edge of inappropriate.

You just watched his lips move as he spoke. His bone structure was completely gorgeous, and those gold eyes on pale skin with his dark hair falling just above. Ugh. You almost wanted to press your fingertips along his jaw, or stroke your fingers under his chin to draw him closer. You wanted to feel the wild excitement of his presence, you wanted to...

NO!

You felt your heart thump hard in your chest and your eyes grew wide as you realized what you were thinking. You suddenly shoved away from him mid-sentence, stumbling to your feet. "I-I have to go, Akira is probably expecting me home." You voice came out far more panicked and rushed than you intended.

Asura's thin black brows fell slightly, eyes a little wide. Dubious and a little worried. "He's away, isn't he?"

"W-well yeah, but he didn't want me to stay here over night, you know, just trying to keep me safe and whatnot like boyfriends do." You stuck Akira's romantic title in there to remind Asura that you were taken, or maybe you were reminding yourself. You honestly couldn't tell anymore.

His eyes fell half-mast and he looked to the sand with a sad frown pulling his lips down at the very corners, "You're afraid of me."

This time it was your turn to be shocked, "No I'm not."

"You're behaving like a cornered animal."

You took a quick mental assessment of your body language and boy-howdy was he right. You looked like you were ready to take off running and never stop.

You shakily crouched before him, "I promise I'm not afraid of you."

"Then what are you afraid of?" He asked. You had the feeling he already knew the answer, he was simply baiting the line.

You bit your lips together before explaining what you'd been trying to deny for months, "I think I'm afraid of the way you make me feel. It's exhilarating and I think that's why Akira is so uncomfortable with you and me spending so much time together alone."

"But you're not in love with me." He seemed to be reminding you, but also himself in the process. "So there's nothing to fear."

You went still. Why were you discussing the world's most irrational topic with Asura? Love, or maybe lust, or maybe a crush. The line was getting very fuzzy and it was making you nervous.

"I think that's exactly what I'm scared of." You answered quietly, "I'm afraid of falling in love with you. And to put myself in a situation like this is bad for my relationship with Akira. I'm not going to stop helping to absorb your anxiety, but maybe we should keep the touching to a bare minimum. You understand that, right?"

Gold eyes snapped to yours without a word. He didn't need to say anything because you could feel his soul through your link twisting and squirming nervously.

"We will just have to keep things very professional to make Akira and Lord Death happy. Progress is the most important thing here." You were half talking to yourself again, half explaining your convoluted feelings to the incredibly powerful shinigami before you.

You gave him a smile and he returned one half-heartedly. "Yeah, I guess it is. I'd ask if you want me to bring you home, but you might find it a bit too," A very light dusting of pink found his cheeks as his eyes fell again, "Intimate."

You told yourself that you wouldn't have accepted his offer anyway, but you knew it was a lie. It was a three day walk back to Damascus and maybe a 4 hour flight. You had a very long hike ahead to think about your stupid, virtually cheating actions. It weighed heavily on you. You were playing with two hearts and it wasn't fair to either. It wasn't even fair to you! You loved Akira; you always loved the time you spent with him, but for some reason it wasn't enough anymore. Ever since that first time you touched Asura's soul you'd been addicted to him. He was all you thought about, he was all you'd talk about. No wonder Akira hated when you spent time with Asura. It made perfect sense to hate the man who was so easily stealing the person he loved while he had to watch it all unfold like a Shakespearian tragedy.

You were ashamed of yourself for feeling this way at all. But you couldn't control your feelings. They controlled you.

You wanted to feel the excitement of Death's Fragment. You wanted to peel away his layers until all that remained was the true Asura hiding deep within. You wanted to feel his soul touch yours. You wanted to stay and let him trace his electrifying fingertips to your sensitized flesh. You wanted his lips to meet the juncture between your shoulder and neck with that same exhilarating sensation.

You looked to the silhouette of Jericho as the sun began to peak above your head, burning your shoulders. There was something deep inside drawing you back there like the ocean to the moon. So distant, so wanting.

But if the moon met the ocean, would he know what to do with it? Would the ocean's tempests blow away the moon's calm and settled dust? Or would the dust absorb all of that rushing water, leaving it empty forever?

You wanted to see first hand whether or not those violent oceanic storms were as dangerous as everyone thought. You wanted to drown in those brilliant colors and sounds. Without him, life was dull and dismal. In his presence it was as if you'd lived your whole life in black and white until he painted the world in undiscovered hues just for you. You wanted to feel alive in his presence forever.

You wanted Asura's madness, even if it meant the end of all things steady and sound.

...

"Akira?"

To your surprise, Akira really was home when you arrived. He was wearing a smile that could kill a cat as he kissed you hello, then kissed your ear, then your neck. Each kiss was a question: where were you? Why weren't you home? Were you with him? The sensation of his touch was irritating, like a new rash across your neck and collarbones. You wanted to say something and end the ache in your heart, but you became too absorbed too quickly and found yourself kissing him back. Another slow kiss pressed to the top of your bare shoulder as he pulled you toward the bedroom…

But then there was a knock at the door.

Akira growled with frustration and rebuttoned your top quickly before going to kill whoever was there answer the door. Adding to his mounting frustrations, there stood an unmasked Asura in the doorframe, knuckles still raised from knocking as he blinked once in surprise.

Akira narrowed his gaze at the demigod, "What the fuck do you want?"

Sensing the mounting frustration from the front of your house you went to see what was going on when you saw a pair of gold eyes lift over Akira's shorter shoulder to you for help. A blush dashed over your face. You just wanted to hide under a rock. You knew very well where the night was leading and you now felt like you'd somehow betrayed both of them.

You pushed under the barrier of Akira's arm and smiled up at your dark haired friend with just the slightest hint of malice, if only to make Akira happy. "What's up Asura? Did you need something?"

Asura's frightened expression was frozen in place until you reached up and touched his cheek. His taut muscles quickly melted to relief with the slightest little sheepish smile, "I didn't realize he was back."

"Hey Asshole, I'm standing right here." Akira stood tall, eyes narrowed tightly as he adjudicated the two of you, "You need to back the hell off. It's pretty easy to see she's taken, or are you blind and crazy?"

"Akira..." You warned, touching a hand to his chest to push him back into the house slightly. Tonight you planned to end things with him, but you hadn't found an opening yet. The last thing you wanted was some ugly breakup at the end of a beautiful relationship. "Asura was just worried when he saw my stitches and probably came to check on me, only to be surprised that I already have someone to keep me out of any more trouble."

A note of anger swept across Akira's face, "That's where you were all this time? Jericho? With him? When were you planning to tell me that!" Akira shoved your hand away, turning his furious attention to the taller, lankier man, "It's none of your business what happens to her!"

This time it was Asura's turn to grow murderous.

The intent of Akira's statement put Asura's teeth on edge; it was none of his business? The man who was actively sleeping with his soul mate thought that her wellbeing was none of his business? It had to be a joke, Asura found a venomous grin creeping across his face, bearing all of his teeth in the process.

You shivered at the homicidal wavelengths all around. The chill that drew down your spine was insidiously foreboding. You had to do something before this got out of hand. You never thought you'd find yourself in this situation in ten thousand years. You were an unassuming person with a small but substantial gift. Not exactly the kind of person who creates a hell storm of jealous rage.

"Relax guys," you spoke in your lowest tone to bring down the madness levels in your immediate proximity. "Akira; that was uncalled for. Asura is my friend and he doesn't want me to fall to any more harm, now stop being such a god damned pigheaded jerk." You then turned your attention to the taller, darker man who was grinning creepily at your boyfriend like he might kill him in the next second. Your voice took on an exasperated note as you sighed his name, "Asura; I told you the other day that Akira was coming home and I didn't need any help. Just like I said to him, you need to relax. I'm not a damsel in distress. I'm perfectly capable of keeping myself out of any life threatening situations in my own home." You gave a slow, chiding smile. You really did think it was sweet that he came to check on you, but it couldn't have possibly been worse timing.

The look you received in return implied all of the things you'd discussed before leaving Jericho. The uncomfortable feelings you had for him weren't fading no matter how hard you willed it to happen. Your fingertips on his face begged for you to flatten your palm to his cheek. It was just so weird that all of this was happening right in front of your boyfriend who's heart you were about to break.

Fabulous.

Though they wore looks of pure murder, both men appeared to calm down significantly. You hadn't even had the chance to tell Akira that you'd gone to Jericho. The calm, logical discussion about the reasons why you two should go separate ways romantically was wholly out the window. You wanted to just shrivel up and die, you'd been hiking for a few days and he probably thought you'd done something unsavory with your time. The rest of the night was bound to be very colorful. Or at least the language would be.

"Good night Asura, I'll see you in a couple of days, alright? Maybe next time I should be the one to come find you to avoid any problems." You gently pushed the shinigami further from the door and he took the suggestion without question and quickly lifted into the dark sky. Hopefully the next time you saw him you'd be able to act on the compulsory feeling in your hands to run them all over him. A sigh fell from your lips just thinking about it. Then you turned to your boyfriend and totally understood the forsaken glint in his furious eyes.

"So when you decide to cheat on me let me know in advance so I can move all my shit out."

You followed him through the doorway, "I would never do that," or so you told yourself, "Tell me what's on your mind." You already knew, but he needed the opportunity to let out his angry emotions before a reasonable discussion could be had.

He was silent as he prowled the apartment like a caged lion.

"Don't play stupid with me. You have feelings for that psychopath and you'll act on them if he doesn't first. I know you."

The accusation hurt but you couldn't justly rebuke it,

"I don't have feelings for him. I won't lie to you, there's something there, but it isn't feelings."

Not yet at least.

"Oh good, so you just want to fuck him then, right?" He pushed you in the middle of the chest and you fell back a step, "You want crazy?" Another push and you were stumbling, catching your balance just before Akira's grip gently encircled your throat, pushing you back against a wall. Your heart leaped up into the hollow of your throat as he muttered against your pulse, "I can give you crazy."

His lips touched that spot on your jaw that usually pulled a whimper from your lips, but right now you were too scared to think. You'd never felt scared of Akira in your entire life. But right now all you wanted was to get away from him and the strange, irritating feeling of his hand on your neck, or the sickening feeling of his lips on your face. Never once had he ever laid his hands on you until he pushed you just a few moments ago. This was not just because Asura came to the door. Something else had to be going through his mind. Gently, you pressed against his chest as one of his hands slid the fabric of your shirt over your belly.

"Stop it." You croaked. He laughed softly, maniacally even as he moved his hand from your throat to your hair, wrenching your neck to a painful angle to kiss your collarbones. You felt suffocated by the painful angle as you rasped, "Akira. You're hurting me."

Rough sex could be very fun, if that's what you wanted. But you didn't have even the slightest, most remote sense of attraction to Akira. Not now, and you doubted you ever would again.

He shoved away from you and went back to stalking in circles again, leaving you disheveled and mildly fearful of his erratic behavior. "So he can break your face without so much as a slap on the wrist, but I get a little rough and I'm suddenly Lucifer himself?" You hadn't thought of Asura's punch as intentional, it was a natural reaction to a perceived threat. Akira's aggression was emotional and, frankly, frightening. His cold blue eyes turned on you with the bridge of his nose snarled as he laughed humorlessly. "Did you have fun in Jericho? Since that wasn't important enough to tell me I assume you were planning to hide it." You shook your head desperately, he made the exact assumption you thought he might but you had no time to answer. He leaned over you, one hand gripped at the wall, the other twisted in your hair again to draw your ear to his lips. "Is he better than me? Do you scream his name until your voice dies like you do for me?" His fine face was so close to you thought he might kiss you, but when he tried, you flinched and he froze. He looked lost for a moment, like you'd stolen the breath from his lungs.

That's when he really hurt you.

This time his hand really did grip your throat, only it wasn't playful, it wasn't sexy, he wasn't even pretending. The cartilage in your throat shifted painfully as he lifted you into the air with one hand against the wall, slowly crushing your windpipe until you gagged and clawed for air.

Panic. Panic. You couldn't breathe! Darkness surrounded your vision and blurred.

He brought your struggling, flailing body close to look at you directly in the eyes before dropping you in a gasping heap on the ground.

His eyes. There was something wrong with them. His pupils were wicked spirals of black arrows. How did you fail to notice sooner? Those strange blue eyes narrowed on you, "I don't need reluctant affection from a pathetically useless weapon. When you realize the spoils of victory weren't worth it, I'll be waiting in Caral."

Caral? What a strange place to run away to. Caral was on the opposite end of the world in the lower hemisphere where virgins were sacrificed publicly to sun gods, their blood used for protection for their human rulers. Not exactly the place one goes to escape from an ex girlfriend.

Obviously something more than a lover's quarrel was affecting him.

He took a few steps closer to look down at you with those frightening eyes. They appeared to be squirming in his sockets and it made your stomach turn. Yours went wide as you coughed and caressed your neck tenderly. You wanted to ask what was wrong, but your throat didn't work. Nothing came out besides wheezing, harsh breaths as the cartilage clicked.

Without another word he turned to leave, but not without looking over his shoulder one last time like you had just ripped his heart out of his chest with your bare hands. He slammed the front door behind him as he left forever.

You two had fought before, but nothing even remotely close to this caliber. The silence around you sunk into your skin, gathering a sense of bleak depression in your chest. You curled up and rested your forehead on your forearms and shuddered as reality set in. Although you planned on leaving him, you hadn't considered the obvious side effect.

Loneliness. You hadn't lived alone in upward of a century. In fact, you'd moved in with Akira right after you left your father's place so you'd never been fully alone in your whole life.

As it turns out, silent solitude was where you found fear.

…

A week passed and Asura waited for you to leave your house. He'd seen Akira leave in a fit of rage, to which Asura couldn't help but laugh his ass off. Good riddance. But then he waited for you to come out, to chase your lover and demand an apology. Anything. But nothing happened and he was stuck waiting again.

By the end of that second week he was so filled with anxious fear that he couldn't drag himself from the house you'd forbidden him from. His head dropped pathetically, touching his scarf covered forehead to the wooden door. He couldn't even bring himself to knock. You told him that you would find him when you wanted to see him again so why was he trying to force his presence on you? You obviously didn't want him snooping around, yet there he was with his fist lifted to knock. It quickly dawned on him that you literally had not left, not even to get food or water.

His heart raced, what if you were hurt?

What if you were dead?

What if… What if…?

What if…!?

Luckily you actually did show up at your designated spot in the sparing desert forest the following morning. Relief flooded his veins as soon as you were within touching distance so he could curve a hand over the side of your face. But that relief was very quickly overtaken by an unholy rage.

Maybe you thought the bruise had faded from your throat, but Asura noticed it within moments. Your hand went to cover it but he caught your wrists and held them to your sides, his eyes spelling all over your discolored throat, "Akira did this to you." He determined quickly, the way your face reddened with embarrassment gave truth to his statement.

"I don't know what happened, he was, well, maybe 'fine' is the wrong word, but he was handling things pretty well, but then suddenly he wasn't. I wasn't even able to calm him with my ability." Your throat was still a little raspy. Maybe it was from your damaged throat. Maybe it was from all the crying. "He's never put a hand on me before, I don't know what changed."

"Where is he now?"

Asura had asked the question gently, but the intention behind it couldn't have been further from innocent. He would kill Akira if he ever saw him again, you were sure of it.

"I'm not entirely sure, he said Caral but I don't really believe that. He was disgusted by their culture when we visited for a mission a few years ago." You replied as his hands released yours only to tenderly run his fingertip over the faint yellow bruises around your throat. You enjoyed the sensation and confided what you'd seen, "I feel like something happened while he was on his last mission, someone must be manipulating him. His eyes were…" You didn't know how to describe them without sounding kooky but you gave it a shot. "They were black arrows. It was the strangest thing I'd ever seen." You shook your head with a sad little frown, "This is all so far beyond what he's capable of."

"Well apparently it is something he's capable of." Asura reminded you with a sense of finality and just the slightest hint of sarcasm. He was right. Akira had never hurt you before, but now it was obvious that the ability to intentionally and purposefully harm you rested somewhere inside. Asura's thumb ran along the edge of the pale yellow bruise with this expression like he might kill someone. "Under no circumstance do I want to see him near you again. I know you have more than enough self worth for that."

You nodded, he was right about that too.

Asura's touch made the pain in your neck ebb to nothing, and slowly it did the same for the pain in your heart. Tears formed in the corner of your eye, filling your lower lids until heavy drops fell. One dropped into the eye on Asura's hand, the other dropped somewhere on the ground.

The very moment his fingertips found your cheek to chase your tears away you knew this was bound to happen; just as Akira claimed. You were going to foolishly and helplessly fall for Asura whether you liked it or not.

You collapsed around his middle and sobbed into his chest as his hands floated above your back, unsure if he was still allowed to touch you or not. Were you crying because of him? Did he say something wrong? He didn't ask aloud, instead he silently berated himself for making you upset.

You sobbed and gripped your arms more tightly around his back as your chin rested in the space between his neck and shoulder. "We were a team for a century and now he's gone." You knew the only reason Asura came was to use you for your ability. But you were not in the right state, "I can't work with you yet, I'm too—"

"Shut up." Asura commanded lightly into your ear. "I don't care about that. Just..." His voice quickly dropped away.

Parts of his face were covered, but the wraps were coming loose, much to your pleasure. You found your temple falling against his ear, then closed your eyes to immerse yourself in the sensation.

Asura just let you hold him, but he didn't drop his arms from where they hovered for fear of doing the wrong thing. He was already seething that Akira had left you in such a sorry state; he didn't want to do the wrong thing and make you feel even worse. He'd only seen you cry out of sadness one other time, but back then you were only a child who dropped her lunch in the sand.

You found a very small opening where his scarves didn't cover his cheek and you pressed your own face to it, absorbing that intense feeling he exuded. He went very still as you pulled at it with one hand until the side of his face was fully exposed. You held your tearstained cheek to his and sunk against it.

"Thank you," was all you could manage to say as his arms finally wrapped around your shoulders.

…

It took quite some time to recover emotionally from the aggressive nature of your breakup from Akira, and Asura didn't even leave for a moment. You had mentioned that you were afraid of being alone so he stayed within touching distance at all hours of the day, only leaving your perimeter at night so you could sleep. Even that made you nervous. Normally you would have been annoyed by such a lack of personal space, but you didn't mind when it was Asura. In fact, you felt anxious when he was beyond your grasp. It was like you were afraid he might disappear if you didn't suddenly seize his arm from time to time to make sure he was still there. You'd lost one of the most important people in your life, and Asura happily filled the void.

At first you didn't know where he was staying in Damascus, then after a few weeks you realized he had set up camp in your living room. You just laughed at the sight of him conked out on your couch, mouth wide and drooling with scarves wrapped loosely over his eyes.

Then finally a few months passed and you were mentally sound enough to try and address Asura's anxiety again. He'd done more than enough for you and you felt it was time to repay the favor. It filled you with a certain pride that you could make him happy so easily. All you did was toss him a peach you bought in the market square and he beamed as if it was the best present he'd ever received. Later that same day, the two of you sat on your bed like a pair of children playing with matching grins.

You hadn't even tried to transfer his anxiety recently and you were a little ashamed of yourself. Lord Death trusted you with this and you were shirking your duty just to slack off with Asura. You two would go swimming in the Ganges to scare passing travelers or knock over massive rocks at Stone Henge, cracking up the whole time.

During the past few months you hadn't needed to enter his mind; Asura was completely content and happy just being near you. But, in this case, he was leaving for a mission to take out some witches to the east, it would be a couple of weeks and you didn't want him to come back a fractured mess.

You took his hands in yours and began to find your center as he did the same. This time he didn't fall asleep, not even when you pulsed your serene wavelength against his. You frowned.

"What's wrong?" You heard him ask very quietly through a sleepy haze. Phew. So you didn't lose your ability. Thank goodness.

You fell back into a trance and did your best to mine some insanity. It felt more effective than past sessions, even Asura came out of the trance with a wide grin that curved into a triumphant smirk around the corners.

"What're you so smiley about?"

His thumbs ran against the backs of your hands and he let out a single laugh. He shook his head, looking at you with amusement dancing in his eyes as his grin tried to hide a little, "Nothing."