Notes: Spoilers for Episode 0: Inga-ron
x
"Do you ever think you might want her back?" Inga asks him one day, a question from a child's body and a child's voice.
It doesn't take more than one guess to figure out whom Inga is referring to. "I barely knew her." Still, he concedes, just a little, hates that he concedes, even if just a little. "Besides, it's not as if that would be possible."
"It's just a question Shin-juu-rou~" Inga singsongs, airy, playful. "Y'know, I never thought about it before. Maybe there's a part of her, still in there somewhere. Maybe, just for you, I could-"
"No," he says, knows this is just a game, a hypothetical headfuck that he had gotten accustomed to with Inga's older form but isn't prepared to-hadn't expected to-have it bleed into this one as well. He knows he sounds bitter when he says, "I suppose even if it were possible, it would be far too generous for you to bring her back for her own self."
"Maybe," says Inga, looking thoughtful, something that has historically been a cause for worry in Shinjuurou's life. "Maybe before I leave this place, I could check, could see if anything was left behind..." Shinjuurou turns sharply at this, and in a flash, it's the woman's body, hair like a halo, smile like a knife, voice all silk and steel like a loaded gun-
"...but you don't want me to leave, do you?"
-and he says nothing to that.
"Or, is it me that you want?" And this is whispered, like a secret.
"You," he says, at last, "I already have. Like a headache, no less."
Inga smiles.
x
The thing about the dead is that they remain in memory, perfect, painted, preserved.
He remembers when he was younger and had very little to hold on to. He thinks he must have been extraordinarily young when he had met Yuuko, a bit of a dreamer even. He thinks that part of him might have been a little infatuated with her after all.
And then, there had come a time when she had become something of a prayer, a memory half-lost but never forgotten. He would sing her songs to himself in the dark. Sometimes Inga would listen, would even surprise him by her silence.
Shinjuurou does not delude himself into calling it a sign of respect (there was a saying that goes: a demon is a demon is a demon after all).
They are, however, both indebted to her in their own ways.
x
"You're not leaving," he says, a statement, a fact.
(This is the punchline, of course. The rest of the joke: she could snap his neck in the blink of an eye, could swallow his soul whole in one delicate gulp and lick her lips clean thereafter).
"Oh?" Her interest is piqued. "And what if I tire of you?"
"You have nowhere to go," and it's a losing argument before it's left his mouth and he knows it, cheap, hollow, laughable.
"Your world is teeming with lies, untold truths. So many souls." She takes his face into his hands, looks into his eye as if eviscerating a lie the way she does when she's on the job. "Maybe, one day, I will grow tired of haunting you and this silly town. One day, I will have sucked them all dry, depleted the supply. What then, Shinjuurou? How will you keep me then?"
"We will find some place else."
"Will we now?"
"Yes, we will."
x
"Rie's a lovely girl," she says. "I'm sure you've noticed."
"I noticed," he says mildly, and at least this is a mind game he's used to, more or less; it's easier to shrug off, far easier than dancing a pirouette of life and death.
"She also likes you."
"She is also Rinroku's child," Shinjuurou counters.
"Not that much of a child."
"But enough of one," he says, tries to intone it as the end of this discussion.
And clearly, the end of this discussion is not up to him because she grins, says, "You like them older then, do you?"
He feels the heat creep around his neck. "I don't have time for that."
"If it's any comfort," her grin widens, "I don't think it's possible for your reputation to be any more tarnished than it already is."
"Thanks," he mutters. "Great comfort, that."
x
He never did try again to discover the truth about himself.
Sometimes, Inga's whisper still rings in his ears:
Now you'll never know, will you, what it is that you truly want?
"I'll make it up as I go," he'd said. "It's what we do. Evolve."
(But that was then and this is now, and now, he knows, he knows, he knows.)
"Silly boy," Inga would say, leaning on her side of the bed, propped up by an elbow. Her hair went on for miles, framed the bed, glittered under the filtered sunlight like seaglass.
Looking at her, in this body and at this proximity, used to unsettle him once, set his adrenaline running high, fight or flight response in full gear.
Time is a strange thing; the human body is a strange thing.
For all that has changed, his heart still races, and he is reminded that some parts of the human response to fear and desire are very much the same.
x
"What would you do," he asks, once, experimental, "if I failed to meet my end of our deal?"
"Eat you alive."her smile spreads, easy and feline. She hums a tune, ancient, could be one of Yuuko's, could be from that one case of theirs, some hybrid of memory and melancholy, and yet, the familiarity makes it warm.
"And then?" It should faze him but does not that this is what their pillow talk amounts to.
"Make all your worst nightmares come true," she singsongs, leans in to catch the side of his jaw between her teeth, nip at it. "It's what demons do, or are you forgetting?"
His breath catches as he says, "Better a demon than a hollow deity."
Her hand grazes his neck, and he leans into the touch,
"So you always say."
Her fingers hover over his carotid, and it's like free fall.