xxii.

Being able to put a name to all the pains somehow made them less painful. Eri still felt sick, of course. Every muscle still felt taut and sensitive like the strings on a violin, pricked to attention. But now that she knew it wasn't all just a symptom of longing – oh no, it wasn't that at all, just her steadily growing a second body inside of herself – it all became a little more bearable.

Ironically enough. Being as it was that she would have taken anything over being pregnant. Anything at all.

Kai was in the casual lounge. The television was on, set to a Russian news channel though it seemed to offer little more than background noise. That awful green juice was in a glass and half-empty on the coffee table. Everything smelled of him – clean and warm, familiar and despicable – and everything felt like him – heavy, crushingly so. He fixed his gaze on Eri and Chrono, golden eyes making everything go cold. Cold and hateful. Eri hated him. She didn't hate him. She hated the fact that she didn't hate him, and that some part of her wanted to crawl into his arms and plead for his forgiveness.

Worse still was that it really would have been a relief. Like how much of a relief it had been after that first year in Russia, when he'd used her and then had held her after such a long time of nothing. It would have been a comfort to have been held now after Eri had woken up alone that morning. They hadn't shared a bed in case she was sick. Germs were the devil, after all. And god, was the feeling of that empty bed shattering in inexplicable ways. She'd cried. She'd curled herself into a ball on Kai's side, smelling for traces of him through her tears until Chrono had come in to wake her.

Kai held her eye, not saying anything for a while. Weighing his words, perhaps? Considering all the possibilities and suspicions he was pretending not to harbor?

"Well?"

The simplicity came as such a gut-punch, Eri almost imagined the not-yet-baby squirming inside of her.

Things were quiet. Clumsily, Chrono cleared his throat. "It seems Eri's symptoms are largely hormonal," he said eventually, too bland and false. "The doctor put it down to stress."

Kai didn't believe him. "Stress."

"That's right."

His eyes met Eri's again. "And tell me. What exactly are you stressed about?"

He suspected. He knew. "You've just been so busy lately," Eri said. "You go to so many meetings, and whenever you make the bullets you… take a lot more than usual." Gentle, careful. Exactly like Chrono had told her to say it – and indeed, Kai's eyes softened faintly. "I'm tired all the time and I don't like it when you're gone."

"Is that so?"

"Yes, Kai."

Back to Chrono. "And what exactly did the doctor say we're supposed to do about this stress?"

"Good diet. Frequent exercise. Naturally, I think we're going to have to halt production. Eri was given explicit instructions to take things easy for a while so as to not place any unnecessary strain on her body."

"You know we can't do that."

"We're going to have to. Unless you want her to completely shut down, which would be even more disastrous for the entire enterprise." Gentle, careful. As though Eri wasn't right there. Chrono's hand found its way onto her shoulder, and his voice took on a shuddering, suggestive tinge. "Besides which, like she said, we've been overworking the process anyway. You've got more than enough bullets for this month's delivery to Dimitri, and if next month's stock is a little under the count – well, the bastards will just have to accept it."

Kai stood, and came close. He spoke to Chrono but was looking at Eri. "So stress, then. Nothing else?"

"No," Chrono said.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

Kai hummed, and touched his hand to Eri's cheek. "Alright." Then he swooped past her into the passageway, speaking over his shoulder with unnatural flatness. "I will make contact with Dimitri about the situation. Tell the maids to bring tea to my study."

And he was gone; Eri and Chrono stood side-by-side, stiff and listening to the light tap of Kai's feet receding across the tile. They'd expected him to be angry, to insist and argue. The silence with which he accepted it was so much worse. So much more bitter and frightening. Eri's head spun. Absently, she stroked her fingers against her stomach until Chrono smacked them away – harsh though the motion was, it was probably the kindest thing.

"Now what?" she murmured.

Chrono spoke in a near-whisper. "Be attentive. Act like you really do want him around so that he lets his guard down. I don't know. Whatever you were doing a few weeks ago worked wonders." There was that sour tinge again. "He told me you initiated sex once or twice."

Eri felt herself blush violently, voice too full in her throat. "Why would he tell you that?"

"I'm his friend." If Chrono felt anywhere near as self-conscious as that time they'd surfed women's health websites together, he showed none of it now. No. He he looked cold as a gravestone, and empty. "Do it again tonight," he said. "When he comes to bed. And pretend to enjoy it. It'll help if you can get him to relax – everything else will run much more smoothly afterwards, if you can do that."

"I don't want to do that."

"Well, Eri. I don't exactly want to do this either," Chrono spat. "But I'm not going to let him hurt you or that baby. If everything turns out right, you won't have to bother with any of this ever again – so it's your choice. Do your part or don't." He watched Eri, and after a while sighed. "I'm sorry. Please don't look at me like that."

"I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"All of this."

"Well – you fell in love."

Eri nodded feebly.

"And sometimes these things happen."

"Would you have run away with Anya?"

The question didn't seem to take him by surprise. Perhaps nothing did, anymore. He shrugged. "Maybe."

And that was the end of that. Chrono disappeared into the depths of the house. Eri asked the maids to make tea, and sat dazedly in the kitchen while they did so.

Before, the window through which she'd always climbed had taken on a certain life of its own. Something hopeful and glowing, a gate to heaven when the morning light hit just so like it did now. However, the window had come to be neglected, a rusty escape hatch which no longer did so well in keeping secrets – being as it was that Chrono had taken to sleeplessness, and had made a night-time routine for himself drinking too-strong coffee and guarding the house's exits. Funny to think that she wouldn't need the window tonight.

One of the maids had a teapot and cup ready on a tray. She smiled awkwardly at Eri; Eri smiled awkwardly back and took the tray. It was a little sad that after however long, Eri knew close to nothing about this maid or the other. Not even close to nothing – it was nothing. She wasn't even sure she remembered their names. They were just women in the background, as there'd always been women in the background throughout Eri's life. Quiet. Obedient. Lives of their own completely hidden, like a taboo.

There was that squirming again. Could five week old 'gestational sacs' squirm? Eri thanked the maid, and left in a hurry.

Kai wasn't busy. Had he been, he wouldn't have looked up from his laptop when Eri came into his study. His focus was sharp, a new clarity in his eyes which was beautiful and severe, and which left pinpricks up Eri's arms as he watched her place down the tray. His gloved hand found its way onto hers before she could pull away, holding her there, fingers weaving, stroking her knuckles in a beckoning gesture. They were both still, both quiet for a while; then with his free hand, Kai pulled down his mask and told Eri to sit.

She did. Right into his lap. Like a little child.

In a stunning contrast to the clearness of his gaze, there was a murkiness about the rest of his expression. Suspicion and caution threaded through his lips. Curiosity at his eyes' corners. Startlingly soft, he brushed a piece of hair behind Eri's ear and allowed his fingertips to linger along her temple. "You know I want you to be happy," he said quietly, in a way that didn't make Eri very happy at all. "Don't you?"

Somehow though, she did know it. In a twisted sort of way. "I do."

"And you know that things have changed since you were little."

"Yes."

"But not enough that you can get away with lying to me." Around the back of her head, Kai's hand coiled into her hair and clutched a little too harshly. One pull and he could easily have snapped her neck. "Would you lie to me, Eri, my love?"

He only called her that when she was in trouble, as though he knew it struck Eri with a blunt force she couldn't explain. She couldn't tell him no though, because he'd know. But she couldn't tell him yes either, now could she? The only thing to be done was to keep a straight face. "What would I have to lie to you about?" she asked.

"A lot of things, I'm sure."

"Like what?"

"You tell me."

Resisting the way he held onto her hair, Eri leaned into him. She smiled. "I don't know, my love."

They were close enough for his breath to ghost against her cheeks. Slow, measured breaths which betrayed no sort of feeling in their warmth. His grip remained unyielding, though the look on his face was something close to tenderness as he took Eri in. He kissed the tip of her nose. Her lips. The first kiss on the lips in weeks, and it was surprisingly easy to let him do so even though her spine ached. Even though her ribcage felt too big for her body.

But that night, when Kai came to bed just after midnight and kissed Eri again, the ache flared into agony. It was the sort of kiss where his tongue found its way onto hers, where saliva spilled and his hand wrapped itself around her throat like he wanted to strangle her. He'd done it before. Would it hurt the baby for him to do it again? Would it hurt the baby, the way he lay himself on top of her as though to crush the air from her lungs? He touched her now knowing exactly where it would hurt most. He bit her collarbones and below, hard. Fingers wet with lubricant and still gloved. Everything was too harsh, too fast, too heavy, and he made Eri say his name. Over and over again. And to keep her eyes open. And to look in his, so that it was him-him-him with no space for Eri to pretend he was Mirio.

Even if he didn't know it. Even if he wasn't doing it on purpose. Eri was supposed to pretend to enjoy it and she did her best, but the things inside of her seemed to rip open with every back-forward movement of Kai's hips. It hurt. It hurt so much. And she couldn't banish the thought of the baby inside of her, and of Kai inside of her, and of all the confused feeling inside of her to think of Mirio instead, like she'd done for so many days, weeks, months now to make it all more bearable.

That afternoon, she'd packed two bags which were now pushed far behind the dresses and shoes in her closet.

She'd thrown the matryoshka in with her things. Kai hadn't noticed it missing from the dressing table.

And though it was supposed to be tonight – Chrono had promised it would all be over soon – it seemed an eternity before Kai finally came, and collapsed onto Eri in a heaving, sweating mess. He fell asleep like that, twisted in with her limbs and the sheets, skin-on-skin, and Eri could only lie there awake and wondering how easily sex caused miscarriages. How long it would take before Kai was no longer engraved on to every part of her like chippings in stone. Would there ever come such a time? Would Chrono actually make good on his promise?

More than that – Eri wasn't so sure she really had the strength to make good on it herself.

An eternity. An eternity of petrified paralysis. Then the door opened, too shrill and too slow, but not waking Kai as he breathed steadily into Eri's neck. She twisted her head on the pillow. There was Chrono, silhouetted like a ghost in the darkness with one finger to his lip and a package in his other hand. Moving slowly, slower, slower while Eri's heart raged. Not looking at her but at Kai. Always at Kai, who seemed to move and murmur and sigh a thousand times in the space of a few seconds.

Eri wasn't sure about it anymore.

In the garden, she'd been certain that this was what she wanted.

But as Chrono revealed a syringe, poised on Kai's side of the bed and watchfully moving to pull away the sheets from his neck, Eri hesitated. Eri lay frozen and horrified at the fact that Chrono was doing it and she was letting him. She was letting him, and she was letting herself run away from the only life she'd ever known. From Kai, who was all she'd ever known.

"Wait!"

Everything started. A flash. A fury. Chrono sprang back too fast and suddenly Kai was awake and there was a bloodcurdling shout as an open palm went flying outwards in no specific direction and Eri was thrust away. Then he – Chrono? Kai? It was Kai – collapsed back into the mattress, staring in a seething agony or rage Eri couldn't place as the arrowhead of Hari's hair slithered backwards into place. Something smelled of blood, rich and metallic. Too close. Eri couldn't figure out what had just happened.

"What–" Kai rasped, horrifically slow, like he was choking on his own voice, "– is– the–"

Through the darkness, Chrono sounded to be on the brink of tears. "I'm sorry." There appeared the syringe again. "I'm so, so sorry, Kai."

The needle piercing Kai's neck was a sound Eri would never forget. Light and silent. Gorishly plush. There was the crash of his teeth gritting, and the way his fingers went stiff and wide against the mattress in search of her. In search of Eri, like she'd abandoned him. Oh god, she'd abandoned him. His eyes rolled in his head. He tried to say words which only came out garbled and, in a way, terrified. Then he was completely still, and completely quiet, and Eri began to drown in the realisation that she'd betrayed him – she'd betrayed him – she'd betrayed him. Out of body, she caught herself saying his name. She caught her hand against his cheek, his chest, nudging as though in hopes of waking him.

Chrono was saying something she didn't hear. Everything was black and grey and piercingly white, like a nightmare in slow motion. Kai wasn't waking up. Eri was trembling so that her very insides seemed to fall out of place.

Chrono held her shoulders, and jolted her into looking at him though she could hardly make out his face through the dark, dazed hallway closing in on her.

"Breathe, Eri. Breathe – in and out – he can't hear you. The tranquilizer should have been strong enough, but we need to move now. Please, Eri, breathe. Breathe."

Telling her to breathe when he hardly seemed to be breathing himself.

Then he was throwing a jersey over Eri's head because she'd forgotten that she was completely naked. And then he was taking out a new syringe from the package he'd been carrying, and was quivering as he carefully eyed the solution he filled said syringe with. He angled the needle against Kai's neck once more.

"What's that?"

He looked at Eri. "What do you think?"

"Tranquilizer…" she murmured absently. "Why more–?"

"No. It's not tranquilizer." The solution disappeared into Kai's veins. "It's almost sad, isn't it, how the very thing one spends their life creating is also the thing that's used against them? That seems to always be how it goes."

Eri didn't really understand. Or she did but she didn't know it, and so only stared at Kai's face – his peaceful, quiet face, like he was only sleeping and would wake up to her any moment. Things would be fine. Things would go back to normal, and Eri would never see Mirio again; she'd be all Kai's and wouldn't question it, wouldn't betray what she'd taken for granted for so long. Clothes were thrown onto the bed next to her. Jeans. Pink sneakers she hadn't ever worn, and which looked small enough to be a child's. Behind her, Chrono was pulling her bags out from the closet.

"They're in the street!" Bubble Girl cried in a whisper. "Coming right this way!"

Everything was a mad frenzy. No one should have been leaving that house at this hour, on this morning of blue shadows and starlight, let alone marching straight towards them through the darkness. The night vision binoculars were passed from person to person in the upstairs room, where the lights were off and everyone was still with anticipation and hesitation, most of them in pajamas. When at last Mirio got to see, everything inside of him went cold. Eri was there. She stumbled gracelessly behind Chronostasis, her hand clutching his as he pulled her along the street. And Overhaul? What did he have to do with this?

It was the question on everyone's minds, but not the important one in Mirio's. Instead, he wanted to know about the bags slung over Chronostasis's shoulders, and why he kept looking back to Eri and the house behind them with such a desperate, rushed insistence. Mirio wanted to know what it was that kept Eri looking everywhere but into the window, to him.

"Did she out us, Togata?" Nighteye said, a tender look through the darkness to show he didn't really believe what he was suggesting.

"No. She couldn't have – she wouldn't."

But it did seem too good to be true, didn't it? How surely Chronostasis strode up to the gate, undoing the bolt with a disconcerting certainty and then heading unhesitatingly for the front door.

There was a resounding chorus of whispered swear words. Eraser Head and Nighteye, the oldest and most experienced of the group, exchanged looks. Then the room, and the entirety of space and time, froze to attention when the doorbell chimed. Once. Pause. Twice. Three times. Dingdingdingdingding. And when no one made a move to answer, a banging began against the door itself. The fisted thuds rang themselves ruthlessly down Mirio's spine, like a spent cloth being squeezed too tightly, and before he realised it he was up. Halfway down the staircase. No one trying to stop him.

Indeed, no one did stop him. Instead, pros flew down the stairs alongside him and slid themselves up against the walls like pack-hunters at the ready. Waiting. Fiercely awake for the hour.

Mirio saw his hand stretch out for the door, the banging deafening now and sending white throbs of panic before his vision. He imagined Eri. It was like he could feel her – so close, something wrong. Something was very wrong. But despite the feeling, he halted obediently when Nighteye clutched his wrist.

"Wait. Just wait."

Mirio waited, though not with any easiness. He watched Sir's face – the way those sharp features twisted, widened, relaxed in the ghostly purple glow of Sir's eyes, and when everything fell back into shadow Nighteye looked at Mirio with an expression wavering between sorrow and… something else. He stepped away. He touched a hand to the hyper-density seals he kept on his waist band (even of his pajamas) at all times and turned his attention to the door, an unspoken affirmative. The go-ahead Mirio wouldn't have needed had Sir seen something besides whatever he had, something perhaps much worse than what was to come.

Mirio breathed against the stale air in his chest, and reached for the key in the lock. The door flew open mid-knock, onto the night beyond. Onto Chronostasis. There he was! Right there! A specter. A vivid hallucination of white and contorted features. And there stood Eri – no, there came Eri tumbling into Mirio's arms like the moon falling from the sky. She seemed so fragile. Trembling, like years ago.

"Eri!"

"You."

Ripping his attention from Eri in his embrace, Mirio met Chronostasis's eye – and it was clear, it was horrendously and almost gorgeously plain, that the man recognised Mirio for the first time. Even in the haziness of the hour. Even through the mask of age. He hadn't recognised him at their first meeting at the market. Whatever Chronostasis knew now, he obviously hadn't expected this, because he stepped back with a sick ripple about his features and stared hard at Mirio as though at a nightmare image.

In the house around them, the air was thick and prickling. Nobody moved. Everybody waited.

Mirio narrowed his eyes, and held Eri tighter against him. "What's going on?"

Chronostasis said nothing, only continued away.

"I said–"

"Mirio," Eri murmured, and the sound was sweeter than anything. He hadn't heard her voice in so long. God, it was electrifying. Her hands closed into fists against his shirt, and she heaved a stuttering breath. "This isn't– I'm sorry–"

Dropping the bags before himself, Chronostasis made a hiss of an expression. Almost pained. Furious. "Take her."

The world sank away. "Excuse me?"

"Take her. Faraway." Chronostasis kicked the bags forwards. "Make sure she takes her iron supplements every morning. And that she gets a good doctor. Fuck, just take care of her. Love her. Do what you will. Just take her."

At the sound of the gasps and hushed mutters about them, Eri had lifted her head from Mirio's chest. She glanced about like a frightened doe, disbelieving and slow. Mirio, however, kept his eye firmly fixed on Chronostasis, who too continued to glare. He seemed reluctant to leave. Reluctant to stay. His gaze returned continually to Eri, and Mirio – in spite of his better judgement – was sure he saw heartbreak in the man's face. Subtle but distinct, like the rainbow-tinted cracks in a mirror.

Eri began to struggle in Mirio's grip. She pulled away. "Kurono! Wait! Please, please wait!"

It was not heroic. It was not the sort of action Mirio should have taken – that is, he did nothing. Although then again, the heroes did nothing either. Some of them shuffled. Some began to move. But Nighteye stopped them all, and Mirio was left to stare as Eri threw her arms around Chronostasis's shoulders, as Chronostasis ducked out from her hold and instead put his hands on her cheeks. He whispered something to her, too affectionate and true in his tenderness, and then kissed her. On the lips. A quick, brotherly kiss that did not make Mirio jealous nor furious so much as it perplexed and terrified him.

Then Chronostasis was off in a sprint beneath the moonlight, fleeing to the house and leaving a confusion behind him. Eri stood there on the garden path for a long time, watching Chronostasis leave her. Mirio stood there in the doorway for a long time, watching the air about Eri shimmer and crumble until she fell to her knees. Until she was crying and shaking and saying nothing sensible at all.

They were in Mirio's rental car. The radio was on – not coincidentally to Present Mic's newest late-night show – and turned down just enough to be distracting without being disruptive. Streetlights strobed through the windows in warm, calm oranges. Eraser Head drove, saying nothing as he wound through Kagoshima's empty streets, only glancing occasionally into the rearview mirror at Mirio.

Eri was okay. Eri was not okay. She was wrapped in a duvet and curled tiny into Mirio's side, her head on his shoulder and her breathing only just beginning to take on a more normal rhythm. At the house, she'd gone ghostly pale, black-out stiff at the sight of so many heroes – so many strangers – closing in on her. It had taken a half hour and a good dose of painkillers for her to calm down. It had taken a half an hour more for her to explain. But once the words had come out, no one questioned it. No one disagreed when Mirio cossetted Eri into the backseat of the car, or when Eraser Head climbed in as the driver. Now the three of them were headed to the airport. They'd use Eraser Head's hero license to book emergency tickets to Tokyo. From there, Mirio would take Eri to his apartment in Musutafu.

The raid on Overhaul's operation had been compromised. With the slivers of information Eri had been able to give them, Nighteye and the others would move onto the house as soon as Eraser Head returned. The clock was ticking.

Mirio didn't care.

He brushed his fingers up and down the delicate curvature of Eri's nape. He held his lips to the top of her head, where thhe hair was knotted in perfect white clouds. It felt like it had been forever; it felt like it had only been a day. But she'd gotten so thin, and her hand in his lap was tiny and cold. She mentioned once or twice that she was carsick, and Eraser Head would decelerate slightly in preparation to stop. They never did, and the city gave way to suburbs, and the suburbs to highway as the distance between them and the airport closed.

"Mirio?"

"I'm here."

"I need to tell you something."

"Anything."

Eraser Head turned the volume up slightly in what could only have been a poor but sensitive attempt to give them privacy.

A/N: See you in the Epilogue, everybody!