Chapter 20: First Love

Raiza was asleep on one the dirty mattresses in the room, but she didn't seem to mind, Lunetta was hesitant to leave her and allow anyone that slim chance of hurting her, she couldn't... She had failed Barsul and she couldn't fail Raiza, but Vaas wanted her out there. There was no more light outside aside from the moon and guard lights that surrounded the compound walls.

When Lunetta left the warehouse to go outside, the entire compound was alive, Pirates throughout the entire island had come to the compound this night. Couches were full, strippers took the stage, some standing around with men, while villagers who had just decided to show up stood around talking to one another. The music boomed loud from one of the open garages and it gave an echoed sense throughout the compound as men and women dancing against one another near the large bonfire that was at the center to the ravenous music and drink.

She let her eyes scan the crowd for Hoyt, Vaas, or Benny, but found none of them. She sighed, taking a moment to contemplate whether or not she should go into the crowd alone or go back into the warehouse, her decision was made when she was startled by a body closing in from behind her.

"Have you ever partied before?" Vaas sounded sleepy and looked exhausted, she looked over cautiously as he approached, one open beer in his left hand, a closed one in the other. She wondered if he had been waiting for her to leave the warehouse this entire time and had taken those few hours while she was with Raiza to wait. He offered it to her, the beer, but she quietly shook her head. "Come on, you got to live a little." She had never had alcohol before, but living on this island knew it would somehow find her. She took it from him to silence his persuading and they stood their for a moment, Vaas sipping at his beer as he overlooked the party from in front of his warehouse.

"Raiza is asleep." She said randomly, thinking back to the safety of the young girl sleeping on the nasty mattress in the warehouse, but Vaas didn't hear her worry.

"That's good, you need to be care free for a little bit, relax. Huh?" He was right, she needed to let go with no worries. But she also needed to focus on her mission, when she accomplished what she needed to... Only then can she be carefree.

"Agreed." She feigned a smile, he noticed the change in her personality and took note of it, he knew she was here for trouble and he decided to use that in his favor. He watched her make a flimsy attempt at opening the bottle, but couldn't unscrew the cap.

"Let me." He had her hold his beer as he made an attempt to open it, muscles tightening and straining till it gave and they made their exchange again. He patiently waited for her to take her first sip, she merely looked at it. There was a reason she didn't drink, it was a strong habit of her false father when she was younger and she knew its effect on the human body, to be honest she was about to pour it's liquid contents out into the dirt. Vaas wasn't going to allow that though, he needed to her drunk and weak, this way he could take advantage of her. This wasn't his first thought however, upon watching her leave the compound he felt the need to just let her be and stalk her through the night, but that changed when he realized he had even considered letting a pretty woman like Lunetta 'be'. "Go ahead. It's your first step at becoming a true fucking woman." He sipped from his beer and nearly choked at the look she gave him. It was a desperate look, that didn't so much amuse him, but frightened him and very few things could do that.

"I don't know Vaas, I don't want to do this." She stated with unease.

"Come on. Try it, I promise, it will be worth it." She bit her bottom lip and stared at the brown bottle of liquid, then looked skeptically up at him again.

"I'm not leaving until you have a sip."

"Alright, alright." She lifted the bottle to her lips and tilted it till the liquid met her lips and she swallowed it briskly before coughing it up and spitting it out. It was sour and spicy to her taste buds, just a bit so that her body couldn't handle it, Vaas chuckled, taking a sip of his drink.

"You're a pussy." He stated, she felt her lips quirk up and instead of yelling at him like she should have, she playfully shoved him. He stumbled back, but his smile grew wider.

"I can handle it." She retorted, her expression reverting back to stoic again.

"Then I guess you can handle drinking the rest of that and another after." She paused to look up at him with furrowed eyebrows, she knew what alcohol did to someone who wasn't used to it and she could see his game. She for some reason... Felt like playing and with an unreasonable decision making mindset at the moment, she thought her, someone who had just had their first taste of alcohol, could handle a couple more sips and maybe even another bottle. She wanted to prove him wrong and wipe that smirk off his face.

"Okay, I can do that."

"Really? You're sure you can handle that for the night?!"

"I'm positive." She replied with utter confidence and she smiled at him in an endearing way, she for a split second lost all worry and pain, but it came back very quickly and she removed her smile.

"Then if you can do that, you can also dance with me, right?" He asked smugly, taking a long sip of his beer after asking, practically chugging it down.

"I..." She remembered her mission and thought of this as the perfect way to seduce Vaas, but she wasn't as good at seducing as woman who were more experienced and she needed to try harder. She needed to be better, she saw how the woman in the crowd danced with their partners, perhaps with a little effort she could do the same. She kept reminding herself she was only doing this because she needed to get him to trust her so she could kill him. But, then there was also the question of how she was going to kill him and could she?She couldn't think about that now, she nibbled on her bottom lip in deep thought, before taking another mindless sip of the beer. "Sure." He nodded, dropping the now empty beer lazily from his lips and letting it fall to the ground with a clash.

"Was that really necessary?"

"All in the name of sex." She squawked when he wrapped his arms around her and picked her up onto his shoulder carrying her towards the crowd, she dropped the beer at some point, having struggled to get out of his grasp she eventually gave up. She didn't know what his previous statement had meant, but somehow she had to hope that it was the alcohol getting to him. The crowd made way for him as he pushed past them and then finally dropped Lunetta onto her feet. In a fit of anger she hit a fist at his chest, he grunted, but continued to smile at her.

She nervously eyed the crowd surrounding them, as before it only consisted of sweaty bodies meeting sweaty bodies, moving along to the native song.

"You don't know how to dance." He stated, her eyes met his again and his arm slowly wrapped around her waist to bring her roughly against his chest. Her hands came up to push him away, but his lips were at her ear and shivers crept down her spine at his heated breath. "Let me show you... Let go Luna... Let the world take you into the darkness of things." He began to sway with her, against her, around her.

His arm remained around her waist and suddenly she felt herself move with the music, their bodies rubbing against one another in song and she wanted to let go. She wanted to let go so bad, but it all came at her in a hurl of stress. She couldn't let go, the grim face of her brother at his final resting place had haunted her to such an extent that she couldn't let go.

She leaned into Vaas's chest, he was the only human being nearest to her that she sought comfort from. She wrapped her arms around his neck and dug her head under his chin and began to sob. Vaas stopped dancing against her and instead grabbed her shoulders to pull her away and stare her in the eyes. Shortly after recognizing her tears that glittered in the moonlight he grabbed her again and pulled her to his chest much more fiercely. One hand wove through her hair while the other wrapped around her waist and all she did was cry.

"Shhh..." She wanted to stop and ask what suddenly made him so kind, kind enough to hold her and comfort her. She could feel and hear his thundering heart in his chest, smell his scent and breathe his breath. He was human and that was what made her regret ever considering killing him, he may have been cruel and short-tempered, but he was human. He might have killed and took drugs, but he was human and she had no heart to kill another human regardless of their actions. Barsul would never kill a human and here she was thinking she could kill his murderers without a single bit of regret. She had to come to terms with herself... She was human and unlike some humans, she couldn't kill another human being. That didn't mean she didn't have it in her, it meant that this entire time she was willing to lose her humanity to kill another human being... A human being that wasn't kind and deserved to die, she was willing to sacrifice herself to take that morsel of evil from the world and that is what made her stop sobbing. She couldn't seduce him now, she couldn't kill him yet, she needed to wait for that perfect moment.

She pulled away from Vaas and wiped those few stray tears away from her cheeks, he was about to pull her into another embrace, but she stopped him.

"I can't do this. I think... I should just go to bed."

"I can't let you do that though, Hoyt is expecting to see you tonight." Vaas gruffly began, crossing his arms and feeling unfortunate that his reminder might not be enough to keep her from leaving him.

"Then he won't be seeing me." She stomped through the crowd without listening to Vaas's response. He went bounding after her and when she broke the surface of the perspired mob, she continued her hard footsteps towards the warehouse. Vaas ran after her angrily, he stopped in front of her and grabbed her shoulders.

"Why do you do this, huh?!" He yelled in her face, he barely knew her, but to both of them it seemed like they had known each other forever. "We were doing fine until you started to fucking cry and for a moment I thought I could fucking help you, but NO! Now you are fucking tired all of a sudden? I don't fucking think so." He pushed her back, releasing her from his grip. "You are worthless. You are so worthless to think that I am willing to allow you, a fucking woman, as an equal amongst MY men." He hit his chest, he always seemed to gesture his anger when he was beyond the point of incense. Her fists clenched and she felt that thriving spirit to fight back, despite not wanting anything to do with this a moment ago.

"Who cares if I cry?! I have my reasons! I can fight any one of your men and win! You and your men are pathetic compared to me!" Luckily no one was close enough to care what the argument was about, otherwise they would have had an audience and Vaas wouldn't have let her insult slide by without physical and painful punishment.

"You take that back..." He grumbled in a dangerously low tone, he took one stride to break the distance between them and she would have sworn his eyes were red with rage and his nose was exhaling the fumes of his intense emotion. His face was wrinkled in the light that shone in their direction and he was close enough for her to feel his breath gliding over her skin.

"No. You called me worthless, if we are being truthful here I don't think you even deserve your goddamned rank!" He was closer now, his chest meeting hers.

"Take it back." He whispered, she rolled her eyes.

"You don't think I'm angry to?"

"Your anger isn't as important as mine. Do you understand? I'm the leader around here!"

"Then why do you keep me around?"

"You are the FUCKING one that came back. I let you go!" He yelled into her face, voice loud enough to break her ear drums. She pushed him away, it was true that she came back, but he could never know why otherwise that feeling of betrayal would consume him and he would gladly kill her. She then said it. He was handsome, she admitted, and strong, and witty, and charming, and pretty much the man she dreamt about. But that life was not for her, she couldn't marry or be a mother, and those things required a love that she did not have or desire.

"You are such a dick. Maybe I would like you if you weren't so cruel. Not that you would care because you don't care about anything." She went to move past him again, but he grabbed her wrist and yanked her back to him.

"So you would fuck me if I wasn't such a dick all the time?" She hid how anxious she was whenever he mentioned them being in the same bed together and averted her eyes. His voice abruptly softened and this put Lunetta on high alert. "How am I a dick to you?" His face hardened, but in a puzzled manner, her eyes squinted at this. Why would he care how she felt about him? Was it because she said she might like him if he wasn't a dick? Did he really think that meant sex? Or was he just playing her? To see how far she would go, to make her think he actually had a heart.

"All you think about is what's between your legs and how it fits with what's between mine. You don't respect me like an individual and allow me my own decisions. You say that I'm weaker than your men and you don't offer me the chance to prove myself. And lastly, you put me in positions I don't want to be in." He was silent, his grip on her wrist slowly releasing itself, he finally let her wrist go. He could never understand woman, she was the one that came back after he let her go. Why did she come back? He didn't care, at this point all he needed was her utter forgiveness.

"Well... I'm... Uh..." He reached a hand up to itch the back of his head. "Sorry." He mumbled those last words in a dull whisper that could barely be heard. She never thought he being the way he is, would be able to apologize.

"You are what?" She wanted to hear him say it again, just to see if he would. He lowered his head down to her ear.

"I'm sorry." He whispered again and she couldn't believe that she was actually blushing. She felt bad for him because in that one sentence altogether she could feel his pain and his loneliness. She knew she shouldn't feel pity for a man that kills his own kind without mercy, but she did. She was gradually growing emotionally closer to the insane pirate lord without really noticing it.

"I'm sorry too." She blurted out, a hint of a smile formed on his lips. And in a genuine need to feel something she hadn't felt emotionally ever in her life. She leaned into his smile and kissed him, it was far more electrifying than ever before. She had never felt so heightened.

She pulled her lips from his and breathlessly remained at a short distance away from his lips.

"I'm sorry again." She whispered, hating herself for being so stupid. This night, nor this mission was supposed to be in her favor. She didn't know what drew her to him other than the things she had admitted to herself before.

"Don't apologize for taking what you wanted."

"Can I take it again?" And she didn't wait for his reply to press her lips against his in a much more heated manner, it left them both breathless and him wanton. He leaned his forehead into hers and pushed his lips down for more, hers slowly leaning away in almost an unintentionally teasing manner. Her back was now arched, his hands holding the curve of it and keeping her closer to him. Her hands rested on his chest flatly, gently pinching at the fabric of his tank top.

"I hope I'm not interrupting anything." Vaas groaned at the familiar voice and was unhappy to find that Lunetta had pulled away. They both looked over at Hoyt who was standing not far from them, he was holding a cigar between his fingers hovering the filter over his lips. "I was wondering if either of you were interested in playing a nice, fair game of Poker." He took another drag of his cigar, the smoke flowing from his lips when the blunt was pulled away.

"Yeah, we can play. How much?"

"The bets are starting out at fifty." Hoyt replied, glaring at Lunetta the entire time in a thoughtful wake. She felt uncomfortable and in mistake moved closer to Vaas again, it worked out however considering they still had to work under the facade of drunken lovers. Vaas reached into his front pocket and pulled out a wad of hundreds, he looked over his shoulder at Lunetta.

"I've never played Poker before." She admitted, it was to him like a first date. After the recent events, Vaas made it his goal to make Lunetta his girlfriend. He had never worked for a woman before and in this case, he felt quite proud that he had gotten far enough for her to kiss him so passionately. He wanted her to be his.

"There is a first time for everything." He held his hand out to her and for the first time... She willingly took it.

Explanation: Lunetta is feeling conflicted with herself on whether or not she can really go through with her mission for Willis, but also the taking of her revenge on Citra. She doesn't condone what Vaas does, but sees that nice side of him that shows so rarely, if that even is his nice side. She knows if she goes through with killing Vaas and getting the information that will assist her in killing Citra and destroying the Arakyat, she won't feel any better with herself than she does now. She will lose her humanity, something Vaas has nearly lost (He has small shows of benevolence, but rarely) and something her father shows nothing of (He could care less for anyone's well being and has lost all traces of companionship). She is at limbo with her emotions and her decisions right now, what she does will be further revealed in later chapters.