She is sixteen and he is fourteen and they share a bedroom. At first, it was awkward, because there was only one room and two of them and they had only very recently met. But somehow along the course of their partnership the one big bed divided into two and Tsubaki drifted from the couch to the room in the apartment reserved for rest. Many times they would fall asleep to the sound of the other's breathing, or wake panting and sweating from some nightmare and see the comforting silhouette of their partner curled atop their mattress.
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She is twenty-one and he is nineteen and they share a bed. It kind of happened unintentionally, when Black*Star, after a particularly nasty nightmare, crawled into her bed and hugged her tightly. From there it had escalated into touching and kissing and, well…all the things that couples do between the sheets. Neither was particularly bothered by the arrangement, and soon it became a regular occurrence. They never quite said I love you until they did. The transition from weapon and meister to husband and wife almost went completely unnoticed until Black*Star thought to buy a ring.
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She is thirty-two and he is thirty and they don't share the benefits that come with being a bushin. He's still as energetic and sprightly as ever, but Tsubaki can't help but notice the way her knees ache when she gets out of bed in the morning, that she can't see quite so well, that her body is slowing down in subtle increments with every passing day. She doesn't mention anything to Black*Star, but over the years he's grown more perceptive and she thinks that she can see something bright and desperate burning behind his eyes when he looks at her.
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She is fifty-six and he is fifty-four and they don't share the degenerative effects of age. There are wrinkles around Tsubaki's mouth, crinkling from the corners of her eyes. Her skin is starting to sag and she has gray streaks in her long dark hair. But Black*Star still looks young, incredibly so, and Tsubaki realizes that he is probably going to outlive her by a long, long time.
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She is sixty-four and he is sixty-two when she tells him he should get a new weapon. As she expected, he protests violently, and so she waits patiently for him to talk himself out. Once he has she tells him, gently but firmly, that she simply can't anymore. She's neither fast enough nor strong enough and her blades have gone dull. Black*Star takes her wrinkled hands in his smooth ones and tells her I'll stay with you no matter what, and Tsubaki smiles despite the tears in her eyes because she's only human and there's a limit to the number of years she can keep up with him, her fierce and ageless god.
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She is eighty-nine and he is eighty-seven when he holds her for the last time (although he doesn't know it yet). They're sitting on a park bench beneath the stars and they're not talking, just relaxing in each other's company like all old couples do, despite the fact that only one of them looks their age. He doesn't catch her last words because they're whispered on the faintest breath. When he leans closer and she doesn't reply the fact of her mortality hits him like a train, like a punch, like a fall to the ground. He shakes her and shouts her name (even though he knows there's only one reason that she wouldn't respond when he's such a mess) but of course he gets no answer. He howls his grief to the night, then, because the beautiful sparkling stars in his sky have just gone out for good.
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He watches them all grow old and die, eventually, as all humans are wont to do, until it's only him and Lord Death. Sometimes they'll sit together in the park in companionable quiet, and Kid will take off his mask because it's honestly more comfortable that way. As the years slip by he grows more and more powerful, takes many weapons under his wing, fights many great battles both by himself and alongside the Shinigami, but sometimes when it's late and he's sitting bored in front of a terminal sipping vodka he'll take her picture from wherever he happens to have hidden it and look at it for a few seconds before snapping the locket shut and going back to whatever he was doing, sadness and fondness mingling in a bittersweet funk that somehow leads to him either falling asleep where he sits or finishing off the bottle.
