A/N: I do not own anyone from the Cal Leandros series.

I do not own the song lyrics used to start this piece! The Japanese pop song used here was the ending theme for the first Fullmetal Alchemist series. The lyrics are really run and interesting, as Japanese pop tends to be.

A brief note on Niko's hair: the length here can be described as "classic," while Cal's hair is at his shoulder-blades (alternatively, "bra-strap-length"). Googling for pictures of "classic length hair" reveals some fun fun pictures and really drives home just how long Niko's hair really is, and how much of it there is.

I could seriously ramble about Niko's hair all day long. I'll shut up now. (No I'm not obsessed, why on earth would you ask me such a thing?)

Thanks to halesgirl101 for the uber-prompt review! Thanks also to Comuterale, Kin-outcast1, Obi the Kid, and LeighAnnWallace for reviewing!

Chapter Seven: Bindings

Itsumo no shisen ni kimi ga ite kokyuu ga dekiru
Boku ni totte nara, sore dake de
Mou juubun na hazu na no ni

Chippoke na boku wa kurikaesu ayamachi bakari
Dorehodo tsuyosa wo te ni shitara
Nani mo kizutsukezu sumu no?

Mayowazu ni, kono ai wo shinji ikiteyuku
Fusagaranu kizuguchi mo gyu'tto dakishimete

Futari wa aruki-tsuzukeru, ato ni wa modorenai kara
Ima demo kono mune no oku, kesenai tsumi wa itamu kedo
DARLING
-"Kesenai Tsumi," Nana Kitade

With you in my usual sight,
I can breathe
Even though that's already plenty enough to me

The petty me does nothing but repeat mistakes
How strong a strength do I need to have
So that nothing will get hurt?

Without hesitation, I believe in this love and live on
I'll tightly embrace your unbandaged wound

And together we'll keep on walking, because we can't go back
Even now, the inerasable sin deep in my chest hurts, but-
Darling
-"Unerasable Sin," Nana Kitade

Niko put some fifty stitches into my arm, to match the twenty I'd given him in his scalp. Drowsy on the couch, I watched him work, head bent, silvery needle dipping into flesh and rising back out. I was nicely drugged on the good stuff; since Rafferty had given an entire bag to me and not to Niko, we'd figured he wouldn't kill me with drugs so they were probably safe to take. I was feeling drugged and floaty and vaguely like I couldn't have gotten up even if I needed to, which was actually pretty terrifying. But Niko was here, and his claymore rested across his lap.

Shirtless, I had fresh bruising on my stomach and knees, as well as down my back. But I only had the bite-marks for actual bleeding wounds. Go me. And the bite was deep, but with surprisingly little damage all things considered. Niko stitched me up, layer-by-layer, and I felt almost hypnotized by the flashing of the needle, the patient blankness of Niko's face, the glitter of his hair under the light. Niko breathed deep and even and steady. I breathed with him in long slow waves and felt the world clouded and fuzzy and distant. My arm was a mass of bruising around the bites and rested on an ice-pack. Niko wasn't even humming, focused and silent.

I dozed, sorta, dreaming of Niko and the stitches, waking to find he was still working, and drifting off again. I woke up when Niko laid my arm and the icepacks over my chest. The lights were off and his hands were ungloved. He bent in the dim light and kissed my forehead, a dry brush of chapped lips. I wanted to say something, but I couldn't remember what it was and I couldn't make it come out, too sleepy and drug-hazed. I drifted off into the blackness of jumbled dreams. I couldn't quite get up or wake up but a few times I thought I heard Niko saying my name.

I woke up to full afternoon sunshine in my face, and Niko talking quietly on his cell-phone, sitting in the lotus position in the middle of the floor. His bare feet were upturned on his knees, his spine ramrod straight, and his hair loose around his shoulders like a cowl. It went straight to the floor in a sheet of golden silk, heavy and thick. He didn't look even remotely feminine; he looked like a drawing of a young Greek god, barechested and posed still as a statue, listening to whoever was on the other end of the line. When I got up on my elbows he looked at me briefly, grey eyes calm and steady. He did not smile, only listened; watching Niko talk on the phone was an exercise in pure creepy. His face never changed to match the emotions in his voice.

"Yessir," he said, at last. He was talking to his real boss, then, at the antique car place. He was the only one Niko ever called 'sir.' "I understand, sir. I'll have the job done by tomorrow. Thank you, sir."

Niko snapped his phone shut and sighed, blank face taking on a wry curl of the mouth. "A scheduled job is a pain to keep," he declared. "How're you feeling?"

My mouth felt full of cotton. "Nnn. Ow." I wasn't exactly hungover - I didn't get hangovers. But I felt fuzzy and weird. "Nik, I don't like drugs. My head feels funny."

"Duly noted." Niko unfolded himself in a single flowing motion, his hair shining around him like an aura. I laid back and closed my eyes as he padded silently across the floor and laid a hand over my forehead. No fever, well, of course not. I never ran fevers, not really. Only once or twice, like when I'd been poisoned by that one weird snake-cat-bird thing down in Miami. Who knew ancient Aztec gods took vacations in Miami? So it probably hadn't really been Quetzalcoatl, but it had damn sure looked like it - I'd found a picture in one of Niko's books after.

"Think you could eat?" Niko asked.

"I could eat a whole cow," I answered back. My stomach felt like an empty hollow pit. But I felt tired, not rested, and bruised all over in a low ache.

"Lacking the appropriate livestock, you'll have to make due with bacon and eggs." Niko chuckled a little. He pushed his hair back behind an ear, an automatic gesture I'd seen thousands of times. "I tried to wake you up last night. Do you remember what you were dreaming about?"

Just like that, the fuzzy-vague feeling went cold and I shuddered. Niko saw it and sat on the edge of the couch, hand closing over mine. "Yeah. You...you were there and you were dead and the Auphe were having a hunt and we ran down George and Robin and ate them and Promise was the queen." I swallowed against the bitter taste in the back of my throat. "I called the hunt, and you kept calling me, but I couldn't wake up."

Niko blinked, just once. "Think it was the pills?"

"No, dream was pretty standard, not waking up was the pills," I told him. I'd never talked much about my dreams. Pretty easy to see why: Stephen King had nothing on me. My brain was a dark sub-basement of gothic horror and slasher gore, a monster's drive to hunt haunted by humanity's troubling sense of morality. People didn't eat people, but hell, I wasn't people. I was a monster. I still balked at the idea of eating anyone, though.

To his credit, Niko only mildly discomfited. "Right. So we must weigh the benefits of sleeping a full night versus your mental health."

"I'll take what's left of my sanity, thanks." At least I hadn't been tearing out Niko's throat. I'd had a few of those dreams and it's really kinda mind-rattling to wake up in the same bed with your brother that you just killed in your nightmare. What that said about my subconscious, I didn't really care to know. Aside from fucked up as hell. That I already knew.

"Very well. Back to willow tea and aspirin, then," Niko sighed. He knew they were both more placebos than anything; neither did shit with me.

"I'll take breakfast instead. I'm hungry." I looked down at my bruised and stitched arm. Niko had left it uncovered and I could hardly tell what was dried blood and what was bruising. "I think I need to wash this."

"Carefully," Niko admonished, and got to his feet. A flip of his head caused most of his hair to slide back behind his shoulders; it was a thick heavy mass with a few waving strands loose, catching the light in little glittering shards. He moved back to where he'd been sitting and knelt to retrieve his brush from the floor. His hair parted along his spine and slid over his bowed shoulders; with those quick, automatic flicks of his head he sent it back where it belonged as he straightened. He pulled it all over one shoulder and started brushing it again.

I swung my bare feet to the floor and sat there for a while, staring at my bony toes splayed on the cheap industrial carpet. I felt a little dizzy but not so bad I wasn't going to get up and shower. So I got up. Niko had just started to separate his hair into three thick sections. I crossed the distance between us and crouched. His hands stilled.

I reached out and took the sections from him. Niko let his hands fall away and I tested the dexterity of my wounded arm. Not too bad, honestly, but damn, almost three feet of a braid was long. I shook my hands out after. "Damn, that takes too long."

"Which is why my hair is longer than yours," Niko returned, patiently. I touched a long scar down his shoulderblade, and he was still as stone. "We should cut yours soon."

"Yeah." I moved away. "I'm going to wash."

Niko made breakfast, I got clean, and we discussed what we had learned last night. Which was mainly that old Boaz had either been freakishly good at guessing or our hand had been tipped big time. Niko and I were leaning towards the latter. As for who, though, that was up for so much debate we didn't even start to try. Niko just shook his head and went to work. I did some chores, did some stretching, and went to sunbathe my arm. Hell, laugh if you like, but it helped. At first it burned all along the scabbing, but then it steadied into a low tidal ache and that I could ignore. Breathe through it and relax. It was way too much damn time to think. Even with 7 Year Bitch blasting through my headphones. I hated being injured like this. Bruises I could handle, I could push through it. I was used to bruises. I always had them, even when Niko was in a good mood and hadn't hit me for a long time. Even then I still had old bruises healing up, fragile places that bruised again if I knocked up against something hard.

I reached up and rubbed the back of my neck, feeling the scattered pin-pricks of bruising along my nape, under my ponytail. Niko's little affectionate reminders to stay in line, stay aware, stay focused. Bruises always had a purpose, with Niko. Nothing he did was senseless, as Robin had said. And that...that I could take. Sophia's random violence, the way she'd hit either of us for no real reason, that I hadn't been able to stand. That had hurt, that had made me so damn angry and sick. But Niko never touched me without a reason. I understood that. I knew where I stood with it, too. Some of the reasons might be stupid, sure, and I'd call his ass on them, but they were still reasons.

Niko was steady, a constant in my life. His temper was predictable. Even the way he reacted to me...I'd not expected him to flip his shit over my dream, and he hadn't. He knew I didn't like to talk about them but this time...I hadn't thrown up or even started shaking. Just felt disgusted by the idea, a little nauseated. That was a big goddamn step, really. Maybe Niko was right. Maybe I was getting better. Like I'd told him, dreaming about the hunts wasn't anything new. Nope. I'd always dreamed about the hunts, ever since I'd come back from Tumulus. They'd taught me to be an Auphe, my monster family, and that hadn't just been gating. They'd taught me their language, the culture, and had taken me on the hunts. I hadn't just languished in the dark dark caves underground, nope, they'd dragged me out to the hunts. What did the Auphe hunt? Everything under the sun.

I realized why I'd dreamed about Promise as a queen. The Auphe didn't have queens or rulers. They lived alone and only ran in groups to hunt or when they whelped, which wasn't that often these days. Auphe spawned slowly. But the Auphe had stories, and they'd told them to me, weaning me on violence and blood and the twisting burning sounds of their own tongue. I'd learned them, forgotten them, and after a moment of wary hesitation, I started picking at the forgotten thread of the story.

It occurred to me this was a project Niko would like. He'd learned plenty of "elf" stories from the human side, trying to sort out what the Auphe were; hearing the same tales from the "elf" side of things? Some were the same. Some I'd never heard before. All tended towards the same gory endings, at least. Spoilers: the human never wins. I didn't know if I was going to end up triggering myself or not, doing this, but I guessed I'd never know until I tried.

I did.

It wasn't a very bad episode, all things considered. I curled up with one of Niko's shirts for about an hour. And then, I went for a walk. I found a bench to sit on in a busy square and watched the people be people. I felt like I needed to remember that, after spending so long soaked in monster memories. Sure, there were monsters loose in the city too, but there were mostly people, going around doing people things, talking laughing and moving, not worrying about being hunted or hunting. I didn't feel like I belonged, no. I never had. But it was nice, actually, to see people not terrified out of their wits.

I lost track of time, mind pleasantly blank.

My cell phone rang, startling me back into the real world. I fished it out of my pocket and answered. It was Nik, of course. Nobody else really ever called me. "Hey Nik."

"Cal." I heard him catch his breath, stop before he spoke. Whoops. I'd been out too late, I realized. He was home already. "How soon will you be home?"

"Twenty minutes," I guessed, getting to my feet. "Sorry. I..."

"Supper will be ready when you get here. Don't worry about it." Niko's voice was calm, easy. "Be careful."

"I will," I promised, and he hung up. I stared around the darkening square, and started for home. I hadn't meant to stay out so late. From the sounds of it I'd worried Niko, but I'd see if that had made him mad or not. I didn't think it had but I'd see.

Lilith was pleasantly not home. Niko was and he'd made spaghetti. He met me with a slice of garlic bread in hand, and offered a smile as well. "Just needed out?"

"Yeah...sorry, I didn't leave a note. I forgot." I shrugged out of my jacket and too the toasty slice of bread. Niko shrugged a little and went back to cooking. Crunching the bread, I followed. As I'd thought, he wasn't mad. I'd just worried him a little. I leaned on the counter and watched him stir the spaghetti sauce.

"I got offered another job today," Niko said, suddenly. "An extra kind of job."

"Really? If this keeps up we'll need another partner," I pointed out. "You taking it?"

"Maybe." Niko turned the stove off and turned to me. "Georgina King has been kidnapped. Her mother wants me to find her."

I couldn't have been more surprised if Niko had pulled a top-hat out of his pocket and started dancing the can-can. I stopped chewing and stared at him, and something like sickness crawled over my skin at George's name. What you've done, monster. I remembered what I'd done. And I'd seen the healing scars on her face. The memory flash of her red hair in the sunlight had me gagging on reflex.

Niko caught my upper arm and pulled me towards the sink. I leaned back against the pull, swallowed the chewed mouthful of garlic bread. It tasted like ashes, bitter and gritty. "No. I...s'okay." I felt shaken but not about to flip the fuck out just yet. "You...how?"

"Her mother has my number. After everything that happened." Niko hedged around Everything neatly, though I remembered. I had set werewolves on George's family, tortured her, tried to kill her, and Niko had come to save the day. Come to think of it, how had he even known to come there? What had led him to George's house just in time? I didn't know and I knew I probably wouldn't ever ask. I didn't think I could stand it. I set the half-eaten slice of bread down on the counter and rubbed at my face. Niko's hand on my arm tightened briefly. "Okay?" he asked.

I took a deep breath, let it out, and did it again. Niko breathed with me, quietly. "Okay," I said, after a few repetitions. "Okay. You taking the job?"

Just a job.

"I may." Niko looked at me solemnly, then grabbed my left hand and squeezed. I felt the tension in the burn scars - a subtle reminder from him. I took a deeper breath, let it out. I was shaking, a little, and I felt pretty pale. "I am often against dividing our resources, but in this case, I think it's prudent."

Relief and guilt and I sagged against the counter, oozed slowly to sit on the floor. Niko went down with me, and we sat there on the cheap industrial carpet. I breathed, and Niko waited patiently, tracing the scars beneath the bandaging on my hand. I wasn't surprised that he knew the exact path of each burn-scar: he'd helped me care for them, after all. Each touch was a reminder. Not my fault, he said with each silent press of that single finger. He told me that, but I still wasn't sure I believed it.

"Okay?" he asked, finally.

I thought about it. "Yeah." Shaken, yes. But not about to flip out.

Niko got to his feet, grimacing as his left knee popped. He held his hand out, and pulled me up too. The food was still warm, and we ate. I told Niko about my people-watching, because I didn't much like the silence right now. Niko listened obligingly, and told me about his day at work and the comedy of errors that had resulted in the wrong car being given to the wrong customer. It was pretty funny. Niko was a great story teller - all the best liars are. Robin was a great example of that, too. Me, I was passable.

I worked tonight, down at the bar. It didn't exactly help; I got hit full in the face with a beer-bottle and had to spend ten minutes in the employee bathroom trying not to hyperventilate over it, which apparently freaked my new boss out pretty bad. He hovered and kept shuttling me off to serve the quieter patrons. Now on the one hand I appreciated that. On the other, I was just plain ticked off by it. I didn't need to be coddled by some stranger. I could take of myself when Niko wasn't around to do it. He'd made sure I could. But with the way all my customers kept looking at me, I figured I was still pretty pale. I felt that way, pale and rattled. I didn't feel much at ease which was damn disappointing 'cause I'd had such a good time last time. But I just wanted to...I dunno, make it all stop and go away. I mean, hell, I was never normal, but I hated feeling triggery and inches away from a meltdown.

One of the customers looked at me with dark eyes, and raised his glass to me. "Makes me wonder," he said, so quietly I almost didn't hear him, "When the children have eyes like my brothers on the battlefield, if this country is worth defending."

I bristled a little. "I'm not a child," I snapped back.

He smiled, and something about the calm reminded me of Niko. Controlled. He smelled faintly like desert sand, heated metal, and old blood. "No. You're right. I'm sorry."

Irritation made me want to stalk off. Niko's constant drilling of manners made me nod instead, acknowledging the apology. Didn't mean I wasn't still pissed.

It surprised me that when he left, he left a hell of a tip for me. It was a good night. Most of my customers tipped. Hell, even if it was pity-money, I'd take it. Niko and I needed the income.

I didn't ride the subway for long, busy even in the wee early hours of the morning. I got off and walked for a good long way, hands in my coat pockets, cheeks burning in the chill of the spring night. I felt...calmer now, but it was the tired-dead-dull calm I hated so much. The kind that said I was mentally pretty exhausted. It was a tossup on whether or not I'd actually sleep, though. Probably not. But that was okay, really, that was normal and I was used to it.

I paused, waiting for the crossing light to change, and my gaze caught on something pale on a rooftop above.

Funny what can get you - that single glimpse made my gut clench and my heart pound, fingertips tingling to an adrenaline rush.

Auphe said every instinct, and I didn't look again.

Maybe that sounds stupid, but I didn't want to know for sure. I didn't want to see the monsters that had been hounding me all my life. Not tonight.

I put my head down and kept walking, expecting every moment to feel barbed claws on the back of my neck. Every moment, and the walk took an eternity in the chill, until I climbed up the apartment fire escape and jimmied open the window. Niko sat up briefly, saw it was me, and went back to sleep. I shut the window and stood in the warmth and the dim street-lamp light, watching the shadows and Niko sleeping. It was never wholly dark in New York, not ever, and that thought made something deep in my head wake with a wanting cry. I remembered a fearless childhood night in the country, in the utter darkness of night under a blue-velvet sky studded with fever-bright stars.

The Auphe liked the wild darkness of night best.

I went and took a shower. I wasn't sure how I felt now - the dull calm was gone, and in its place was a jumble of things, a wordless longing I didn't know how to name, brief flashes of the fear of the Auphe, and a bewildering sense of peace.

I went and I sat on Niko's feet.

He roused with a disgruntled, warning mutter. But when I didn't move again, he sat up on his elbows, staring at me in the dark. My wet hair was soaking through my shirt, dripping cold into my lap. With a questioning noise, Niko reached out a hand to me. I took it, and laced our fingers together. His smell was all around me, and the warm calloused hand in mine was a promise to never let go of me. With Niko I had my place. I belonged beside him always. He loved me.

I took a deep breath. I didn't know what to say, and what popped out of my mouth was pure impulse.

"Let me tell you the story of Tam Lin."

We both knew the ancient Scottish tale, the old poem about true love, elven enchantment, and why sex with strange men wasn't a good idea. We both knew it, but I knew a version of Niko had never heard. A version I didn't think any other human in the world had ever heard. Until me.

With another steady breath, I closed my eyes and remembered. My voice shifted, and concentrating in the dark I could really feel the different strain in my throat as I began the old story, speaking in Auphe. It was a language like acid-etched broken glass, too harsh for a human voice, with a cadence like dripping blood and tortured screams. The rhythm of the story, told exactly, exactly the same way for thousands of years was almost poetic. Words had changed and the language had begun to shift, as they always did, and it occurred in a small place in the back of my mind to draw parallels between human history and the Auphe. Even creatures that lived practically forever changed. Who had influenced who? It was hard to tell, sometimes; the hunter or the hunted.

I told the story exactly as it had been told to me, and Niko sat quietly in the dark small hours of the night and listened.

He didn't even say a word when I started to cry as I talked.

I needed that. I knew he accepted me, but somehow I'd needed that and even if it was like tearing something open, even if it hurt...

It felt good.

I fell asleep as the sun rose, still holding Niko's hand.