Shipping week day 3, prompt: cry

This takes place pre-show.

Cry

His weapons dealer called him lone wolf, his pay-in-cash doctor solo act. And it was true that ninjas work best alone and unencumbered. But there were other reasons besides his profession for why Snake Eyes preferred solitude, and it wasn't merely a coincidence that the guy who never spoke to anyone and never showed his face to anyone and spent the majority of his time hanging out with shadows happened to find people confusing.

This girl was no exception. Although she tended to confuse him in an entirely different way.

"My father…he was a brilliant man. Everyone wanted a piece of his brain, a piece of his time. And he could never tell anybody no – except for me. So yeah, maybe he wasn't the best father in the world. But he was the only one I had. And Cobra killed him."

Sitting awkwardly by Shana's side as hot, angry tears spilled down her cheeks was not how Snake Eyes envisioned his evening going. Not that he was unaccustomed to having people weep in front of him; it was something of a recurring theme in his career.

But never had anyone taken a part of their innermost thoughts and poured them like a faucet into his bloodstained hands. "I need to know what happened. The truth, not some nonsense the publicists at Cobra cooked up." Snake Eyes lived behind his mask and reputation as much for practical reasons as he did for personal comfort. People were hard. Relationships were harder. He'd failed at both enough times in the past that it was just easier to never be seen, never be heard, to be thought of as much as one did a shadow, the aloof ninja with a cauterized heart.

Shana looked up at the cloudless night, where a pregnant moon bathed her face in silver. Snake Eyes could not tear his eyes away. A large part of him knew he took the coward's way out, that he could never be as brave as this strange mixture of sorrow and wrath, vulnerability and determination, all bundled up in a voice that took no prisoners and a pair of ferocious eyes that spiked his heart rate in a way the heat of battle never did.

"But what can I do?" Her tears were drying, the sobs reduced to sniffles. "They're a Fortune 500, worldwide, billion dollar company. Their security rivals most small countries and their lawyers have lawyers." She looked down into her hands. Her voice was small and brittle. "And me? I'm an unemployed college student."

What could he say? They'd known each other all of two weeks. They were effectually strangers and he had never been a great counselor, as Jinx would loudly attest. For a moment he wished back his voice, to say her name in a soothing whisper. There, there, Shana. The way his mother used to do. Everything's going to be all right. Feed her honey-coated lies to heal the soul, the way his mother never will again.

But anger that burned like wildfires couldn't be put out by a garden hose. Shana didn't seem like the type to quietly smolder her life away, and maybe she shouldn't be healed. Maybe she should stay as broken as he.

Snake Eyes scribbled into his ever-present notepad. YOU HAVE TWO OPTIONS.

Her eyes perked as they read to the end. "Yeah?"

1. YOU CAN KEEP CRYING ABOUT IT.

"And the other?" Maybe instead of dousing the fire he should pour on gasoline.

2. YOU CAN LET ME HELP YOU DESTROY COBRA. Shana held the note long enough to read it three times over, hands trembling. WHICH WILL IT BE?

She lifted her head and looked him square in the eyes, her face like a lion's. "I want them in flames."

Snake Eyes could only smile behind his mask and think – these are the moments when ninja are made.

SO LET'S SET THEM ON FIRE.