Disclaimer: Ronin Warriors is not mine, but they have my love.

Warning: Yaoi. Het. Complicated interpersonal relationships.

Note: The story you're about to read has been extensively revised, and very little of it will be recognizable from the first draft besides setting and the general plot. I hope you enjoy it because I finally know how the damn thing ends. Kind of.

----

Persuasion - prologue

----

Mia tripped against his back while he was trying to find the light switch. The apartment was dark in the middle, between the hallway and the moon. Behind him, light from hallway stretched his shadow and that of the lean woman behind him into stringy caricatures. Mia giggled, hiccupping into his coat while her fingers crawled around his waist, tangling in his shirt to shore up her unsteady, drunken balance.

"Hurry, hurry," she mumbled, and her scrambling fingers managed to find that special place on his ribs, so he was suddenly twitching away from her hands and laughing with her, almost against his will. He found the switch. The light overhead flickered to life.

"There," he said, pushing the door closed behind him.

"Messy, Rowen. Very messy." Mia stepped away from him, fisting one hand in his coat as she tried to kick off the tall, delicately heeled shoes she'd worn to the reunion. She faltered, and her ankle bent gruesomely sideways, though Mia didn't seem to be bothered. Rowen looked at the apartment instead, its near emptiness and the clean dishes stacked neatly beside the sink.

"It doesn't look messy," he said, trying to sound hurt. He wasn't a very good actor, finding that he didn't care about much of anything as a drunken fool. Mia tossed her second shoe next to the first in the middle of the entrance. Rowen foresaw himself tripping over those in the morning. He felt Mia's hands on his wrist as she clawed her way up his arm until she stood upright, no longer matching his height without her shoes.

"Nostalgia," Mia said breathlessly, smiling at him. Her hair was tangled, coming out from the bun she'd wrapped it into at the back of her head. Sweat matted the hair to her neck and some of it was in her mouth. "All grown up and cleaning your kitchen..."

She tripped again, and he caught her body above her hips, noticing for the first time that she was wearing Ryo's old coat from high school. The ratty corduroy interrupted the dangerous sex appeal of the sleek black dress against her skin, and Rowen told her so, half grinning as he said it. Then he asked where she'd found it because it seemed more polite than asking why.

Mia rested her cheek against his shoulder with a sigh and answered the question he didn't ask, for the first time sounding less than completely happy. "I needed to bring a friend with me."

"Maybe you should have brought Ryo, then, and not just his coat." He took her to the low table in the small main room, one corner sectioned off into the kitchen. He dropped her by the table, her hands on his arm pulling him down with her. She leaned forward, and he was startled by the purposeful sensuality of her chest pressed against his side as she slid under his arm, resting her arm across his lap. The dress was cut low in front, clinging to the curve of her breasts.

She said, "I didn't want to bring anyone. It would have been silly. I could certainly handle it myself."

"... as long as you had the safety coat."

"Mm," she said. "Thank you for being awake."

He grinned at her. "It had nothing to do with you at all. I never sleep."

She laughed. "You're lying. I asked you to wait up."

It was a beautiful night with a full moon outside his window and dark trees rising over a park across the street, but the harsh brightness of the overhead lights overpowered the moonlight. Rowen brushed Mia's hair from her face and thought about getting up to turn them off.

Mia decided it for him, suddenly pulling away and staggering to her feet. "Shouldn't've let you..." she muttered.

He put a hand on her thigh above her knee, steadying her at the hem of her dress. He felt the run in her stockings under his fingers and her soft skin underneath. "What?" he asked.

"...buy me a drink... drinks." She leaned forward and he had to catch her shoulders, smelling cheap beer on her breath and the smoke of the bar in her hair along with her sweat. "I was already drunk," she confessed somberly.

"I noticed that. Just a little bit," he whispered back with affected solemnity. She broke into a smile, white teeth against the red color on her lips. She put her hands on his forearms and pushed herself straight.

"Where's your bathroom?"

"There are only three doors: a broom closet, a bed, and a bathroom. I think you should guess." He stood up himself, arms out a little, ready to catch her when she tumbled. She chose the wrong door, almost falling into his bedroom and laughing when he pretended he wasn't going to let her back out again. He felt an absurd little thrill, like it meant something for her to have picked the door she did.

Then he said it aloud because if he didn't make it a joke, he might mean it. "You've told your fortune now," he teased.

She reached up and threw her arms around his neck, the worn corduroy of Ryo's coat against his skin. It was disorienting, smelling Ryo and seeing Mia as they stood there before his bed. He suddenly felt he was being seduced and stepped from the doorway, setting her free though he'd been the one to feel trapped. She vanished into the bathroom, and he was desperately glad he wasn't nearly as drunk as she.

When she left the bathroom, he was sitting at the table staring at his hands. "You can turn off the lights if you want to," he said.

She came over to put her hands on his shoulders from behind. He lifted his chin, looking up at her, his head against her stomach. "Oh, Rowen," she said, "suddenly you look so sad."

"Mia, do you really look at us like... kids? The kids we were?"

She didn't answer immediately. Her purse was sitting by the table on the floor, a plum bag of middle size. Bending down, she pulled it onto the table, her arm reaching past his head, gracelessly tipping the contents onto the wood. She bent her knees and sat beside him, an arm around his waist and her body against his. With her other hand she lifted the small wooden picture frame from the pile of lipstick and spare change and a tampon Rowen carefully ignored.

"My party favor," she said. "Here."

"What do you mean 'here'?" He took it carefully. It was simple and rectangular, all of one color wood.

He felt her breath against his ear as she kissed him lightly on the jaw. "I can't think of you as kids. I didn't do it even then. I'm not that old."

"You might have," Rowen suggested, "if Ryo hadn't been there."

"Was he so mature? I don't remember." She was teasing.

"No." Rowen flipped the picture frame over, prying at the back with his fingernails. "But I don't think you wanted to sleep with any of the rest of us."

He looked up when Mia put her face against his shoulder, snickering into his coat. Her voice was muffled when she spoke. "I knew you were going to do that. You pull everything apart."

Rowen's fingers froze with the back of the frame half-open. "I can fix it."

She patted the back of his hand. "No, no. It's okay. Now we have to find a picture to put in it."

He cast his eyes around the apartment, settling finally on the little chest of drawers beside the bathroom door. "I think..." He stood, going to the wardrobe and opening the last drawer. Mia put her elbows on the table, watching him.

When he returned, he was carrying a sheaf of photographs coated in a shallow layer of dust. He laid them in front of her and sat across from her at the table, waiting. She opened the folder, startled at the young faces she saw. "I remember these."

"I don't," Rowen admitted. "I found them a little while ago."

"Have you looked at them?" She was shuffling through the pile quickly, as though she knew exactly what she was looking for.

"No... not much. I'm not really big on pictures."

"I gave these to you years ago. I – " Abruptly, she burst into giggles and pulled a picture from the stack. She held it against her chest, shaking with laughter that was indecently loud. Rowen was reminded that neither of them was sober.

"Can I see the picture?" he asked. Mia shook her head. She smiled at him, her cheeks flushed. He'd left the picture frame when he'd gone to the wardrobe, and she picked it up now, pulling at the back. She was too excited or too drunk to manage the cardboard and plywood backs, much less the latches that held them there, so she thrust them at Rowen, the photograph on top, trusting in his lesser inebriation to solve the problem.

Rowen took them both and stared.

"Can't you figure it out?" Mia asked urgently. There were tears at the edges of her eyes from the laughter. She sniffed, rubbing absently at her nose with the back of her hand.

He looked up at her, his eyes gone very round, holding the photograph like cracked glass.

"Oh," Mia said. "Oh, dear. I'd forgotten you hadn't noticed when I'd taken that."

Rowen gaped at her. "It looks like I'm kissing him!"

"Well, you were about to."

"No, I wasn't!"

Mia lurched forward to bat at his wrist reassuringly. "But it's such a cute picture."

"I... well," Rowen looked at the photograph in his hand, at the dark boy leaning against Mia's house in the springtime and the back of the skinny boy who leaned over him, sunlight highlighting his blue hair. He remembered talking to Ryo there, admitted to himself that maybe he'd gotten close enough to give me Mia a reason to take the picture. But he looked at home there, with his face next to Ryo's, and Ryo's eyes were bright. "I guess it is."

"And look," Mia gushed. "He's wearing my coat!" She tapped the glossy finish over Ryo's face.

"It's his coat," Rowen reminded her. Mia put her hand over the corduroy on her arm and looked very drunk. "Your coat now, I guess."

"Open the picture frame, Rowen. Please?" Mia leaned across the table, baring the soft rise of her breasts. Rowen dropped his eyes to the picture frame in his hand.

"Alright," he said. He put the separate pieces on the carpet carefully, slipping the photo into place as Mia sank heavily to the floor beside him. He closed the latches and flipped the frame over. "Here you go," he said, handing it to her.

"Oh, no," she said earnestly. "It's for you."

He stared at her, horrified. "I'm not putting this in my apartment!"

"Of course you are," she said reasonably. Seeing the expression on his face, she made an angry, disappointed sound. "Oh, fine. We'll put it someplace people can't see it."

"Like the closet?"

"Your sarcasm does not amuse me," she declared, and through great effort, stood without his help. "The closet it is!"

She snatched the frame from his hand before he quite understood that he should have kept it from her. Warily, he followed her to the bedroom, watched her throw open his closet doors.

"Here. Behind the shirts." She pushed apart the dress shirts and slacks on their hangers, pressing the frame against the uncovered wall. With her head cocked in careful consideration, she glanced back at him, waiting for a response.

"I... I guess, that looks lovely," he fumbled as if she'd asked him to evaluate a work of art or perhaps a clothing ensemble.

She sighed, lowering her hands. The room was a small one, barely bigger than the futon he slept on, which he'd left on the floor. He sat on it now, watching her as she came towards him. She said softly, without hope, "If you're really going to do it, we'll need a hammer and a nail."

Her energy seemed to have dissipated. She sat beside him, her knees bent boyishly and her arms resting between her legs, still holding the picture frame.

"I could just leave it in the drawer," he said. "Nobody would see it there either." Mia turned her face to him, smiling wryly.

"But then you'd forget about it. I don't want you to forget it again."

"Maybe. I don't have any nails."

"No, of course not. Why would you?" She looked desolate, her disheveled hair and sweat no longer looking glamorous but undone. Rowen put his arm around her and she leaned into him, rested her cheek on his collarbone. He let himself fall back onto the futon and Mia went with, lying next to him on her side, the photograph between them in her hand.

"I... I'll borrow one tomorrow," he promised. "And a hammer."

She peered up at him, blinking away the lingering tears. "Really?" she asked. Her empty hand was resting on his chest.

He breathed deeply, for a moment uncertain, staring at the framed photograph between her fingers where it pressed against his hip. "Really."

Mia smiled, turning her face into his shirt. "...s'why I love you..." she mumbled.

Rowen had nothing to say, and after sometime, he realized she'd fallen asleep. He looked through the open door into the main room, regretting that he hadn't turned off the lights like he'd meant too. Mia would wake if he stood to open the door, so he turned his head, closing his eyes and reveling in the feel of her hair against his chin. Tomorrow he'd make Mia her little shrine inside his closet, and maybe she'd come join him in their silly, secret worship of a warrior of fire.