"They stole my cot!" Allen gaped at the half-empty space before her. "Your friends stole my cot!"
"Oh how tragic." Tyki said with a puff of his cigarette. She got the feeling he did not quite find it as tragic as she did.
"Where'd they put it?" She muttered to herself, rushing outside and searching the bushes. They wouldn't have taken it too far, righ- she looked up. "What the hell!?"
Tyki followed her leisurely and matched her gaze to see the cot nailed into the side of the mine, with a note saying "You can have it if you can reach it! Otherwise, we expect nephews!"
It was just high enough to be out of her reach, though Tyki could have reached it easily. She gazed at him pleadingly but he just smirked. "Eeze did say he wanted a brother."
"We're not his parents!"
"Yes but I think we should take one for the team." He laughed as she threw the bag she was holding at him, which he allowed to hit him if only to appease her some.
"Seriously Tyki, get it down," she shook her head, though a small smile was beginning to creep onto her face at the antic. A light blush stained her cheeks.
"Aw, but why? You always end up in mine anyways."
"I do not!"
"Okay, not always. More like half."
"It's warmer," she huffed.
"Is that your only reasoning, menina? Are you sure you are not trying to seduce me?" He joked but began to retrieve the cot.
"Have I not done that already?"
"Hmm, maybe a little," he responded with a quick kiss before handing her the cot. She had gone after him for a while about the first kiss he stole, but over time they had warmed up to each other a bit. Okay, a lot. He had to wonder if their noah had been lovers previously- something possessed him to pursue her at least.
On their fingers both of them wore simple silver rings, though hers was embellished with three intermediately sized rubies, nice enough to make the miners he worked with whistle, and comment on the pretty penny he must have spent, but not enough to make them suspicious. Sherril had wanted to pick them out, but Allen had put her foot down- if she was to marry someone for the sake of the clan she was damn well going to choose her own rings.
"Allen?" The lovers broke their gaze as Allen felt a small hand tug at her bright red dress, a pretty but modest one done by a local farmer's wife for accuracy's sake. To be honest, she much preferred it to the English style. There was neither bustle nor crinoline in sight and in her mind, it was glorious.
"What is it, Eeze?" She crouched down next the boy.
"You're like my mama, right?"
She smiled, scooping him up rather effortlessly with the help of her left arm. "Yep! And Tyki's your father."
"But don't people look like their mama and father?"
She frowned. "Who told you that?"
"Some mean man from the circus. He spit on me and asked me where my parents were, and I said my dad was at the mines with Allen, who I thought might be my mama now and he said you don't just get a mama, and you can tell who's with their real mama 'cause they look alike."
She narrowed her brow and looked him in the eyes. "Now you listen here, Eeze, 'cause I'm only gonna say this once: your parents are not who you look like, or who gave birth to you. They're the people that care for you, and help you when you're in trouble, no matter how old you get or how far away you are, because they love you. I'd say Tyki and I do all those things pretty well, don't we?"
He nodded. "Yeah, I guess."
"Good." she swung him around and placed him on the floor. Tyki watched on with a broad grin.
"Since there are two of you now though I can have a brother, right?"
"Um, um, yes- no- we'll see," she stammered with a blush that now matched the scarlett of her dress. "Now go wash up for dinner."
"Yes ma'am." He said, wandering obediently inside. She braced herself for the mocking to come.
"'We're not his parents, Tyki!'" He imitated in a high-pitched voice.
She laughed, scratching the side of her face embarrassedly with her index finger. "Well, maybe a little."
He grabbed her shoulders and touched his forehead to hers. "You did good, menina."
If it were possible, her blush intensified. "I just told the truth."
"And a truer truth there never was." He feigned hurt. "But is it really right to deprive a boy a sibling?"
"Okay, maybe the last bit was a lie."
"Was it, menina? Was it really?" He grinned, moving his hands down to her waist.
The second cot was left in the grass.
-1-1-1-
She should have fucking known the second Eeze said circus. Of course with her it couldn't be just any random circus in all of Europe, noooo, this specific French circus just had to expand its boundaries to a Portuguese mining town. And that bastard somehow still had a job. She guessed age didn't matter too terribly much when you had a few dozen layers of white paint on your face. She hoped the knife-thrower at least was gone. Not just for her sake.
It didn't take Tyki long to notice her sudden stiffness as they passed by a performing street clown. He was decent, getting more than a few chuckles from the audience here and there, but he knew the hesitance wasn't from wanting to hang back and watch a show. It was a kind he recognized- fear.
"What's wrong, menina?" he whispered, so as not to be heard by Eeze and his two friends dallying ignorantly in front of them.
"Nothing," she said, not taking her eyes off the clown, instead moving in closer to Tyki. She was bunching the fabric on his back with her grip, her small frame fitting under his arm like a glove.
"A smell of fear strong enough to rival those of the people I have killed is not 'nothing', menina."
She flinched. "Let's just get away from here. Take a different route home..." the crowd was now dispersing, leaving the clown to wander the streets on his own time. Upon seeing Allen his eyes sparkled with a cruel recognition.
"Hey, Red!"
"No," her voice rose as she attempted unsuccessfully to jerk from her husband's grasp, but he held her firmly in place. "Tyki, let go!"
"No," He seethed. "Is this the one that used to beat you?"
"What are you doing now? Whoring around with the miners?" He mocked, still approaching. Their friends and Eeze had stopped now, and were making their way back.
"I'm not a whore, Cosmos!" she yelled with watering eyes.
"Amazing anyone would take you, what with your demon arm an everything..."
"My wife," Tyki growled, "is not a demon anything."
"Hey, this guy giving you two trouble?" One of their friends asked as they caught up.
"Don't take any crap from this clown, Tyki!"
Eeze rush over back behind Allen.
"Wife? Pah, what, did she black-mail you?"
"Allen, that's the man who said you weren't my mama," the child informed, clinging to the bottoms of her skirt.
This seemed to stir something within the redheaded woman. "He what?" She hissed, throwing Tyki's arm off her shoulder with a new found force. Rolling up her sleeves she marched up to meet him"Now you listen here, asshole," she poked him in the chest. "You may have hurt me in the past, you may have killed my friend- hell, you hurt me now. You scare the living shit out of me. But when you go and try to hurt my boy, that's when you've gone too far!" She fumed.
"Pah, like I'm worried about your scrawny-"
BAM.
Before he knew it he was flying across the street and into the walls set up around the circus. Tyki blinked down at her while the other two only gaped.
"Better?"
She blushed and nodded.
Still, it was no great surprise that the next day the clown was found dead. The estimated time of death just so happened to match up exactly with Tyki's lunch break that day, though no one ever persecuted him for it. But she just couldn't bring herself to feel sorry for this one.
-End Chapter-
AN: Hn, I'm relatively happy with this chapter. Would anyone like to see Allen performing at the circus next chapter, or would you rather I went on to meeting Krory and Lavi on the train? I'd love to write either, but if no one says anything I'll probably include the circus for my own nostalgia. I've actually been considering sending a demo to Cirque du Soleil for either the physical acting discipline or vocalist. That'd be really great to get accepted, but they're pretty damn high caliber so I won't be too heart-broken to get rejected. We'll see :)