Living Arrangements

A two bedroom apartment was apparently what passed for a normal life. This was the reward Haru had chosen for surviving fifteen years of Hell. Tokaku moved in while Haru was still at the hospital, because it was a given they'd be living together after this. The apartment was close enough to Myojo Academy that Haru would easily be able to walk there once she was better. Tokaku would have objected to her going back to that school at all, but she knew it was what Haru had sworn to do and she'd come to know better than to think she could stop her.

One bedroom in the apartment was significantly bigger than the other. Tokaku took the bigger room not really thinking it through and only realised her mistake too late, on the day Haru finally came home, when she walked into what had previously been her room only and saw Haru's luggage piled in a corner and Haru herself sitting on the edge of that very large bed, looking at her with a soft smile that made Tokaku's heart ache.

"You're going to sleep in here?" she demanded, as if it was an entirely unreasonable thing for Haru to do.

Haru's eyes widened slightly. "Don't you want me to?"

Tokaku fisted her hands and gritted her teeth to stop a yes from slipping out. "Do what you like," she said gruffly, and went to find solace with her knives.

Sharpening her knives had always been something that steadied her; the reassuring shickt, shickt of the blade along her favourite diamond whetstone telling her that with every stroke her knife was getting more lethal, more ready to rend her enemies' flesh.

When Haru joined her on the sofa though, Tokaku's hands began to shake and the knives laid out before her became foreign objects of horror, not the comforting friends she'd thought. The one she was sharpening dropped from her hands, landing with a dull thud on the floor. Tokaku recognised it as the one that had nearly killed Haru, but she didn't think Haru did.

"You should hate me," Tokaku whispered, not raising her eyes to look at the girl beside her.

Haru had always possessed an astonishing ability to tear through the Tokaku's reserve, blithely invading her personal space in a way that even other assassins didn't dare. She did it again now, taking Tokaku's knife hand and twining their fingers together like she never wanted to let go. "I love Tokaku-san."

"You shouldn't." Tokaku frowned, staring at their interlaced hands. "I'm…tainted."

"You're not tainted. You placed yourself between me and the blades of eleven assassins."

"Only to nearly kill you with my own. Or have you forgotten that? Forgotten about the advanced notice and the sword? Forgotten that I'd already sworn to kill you for betraying me?"

"No," said Haru quietly. "That was why I attacked you at the end. I intended to stay alive. Even if it meant harming you. I wasn't planning to go easy on you, Tokaku."

Tokaku laughed mirthlessly. "You were never any kind of physical threat. I knew you wouldn't be able to kill me. I just…I had to be sure." She looked up finally, meeting Haru's too forgiving eyes.

"And you found out what you wanted to know, right?" Haru said. "That you protected me of your own will. That your feelings for me weren't a lie."

Holding her jaw tight, Tokaku allowed herself a short, sharp nod.

Haru smiled and a bright shaft of sunlight pierced the darkness of Tokaku's heart. "Then I'm glad, because it means we can be together like this."

Tokaku had already been over this apartment a million times, checking for hidden cameras, bugs and any other surprises the denizens of Myojo Academy might have seen fit to leave behind. Had she not done that, she never would have had the courage to do what she did next; leaning over to capture Haru's smiling lips with her own in a kiss that was more possessive than she meant.

She felt Haru's free hand winding into the fabric of her shirt, felt the brush of breasts against her own and the strange sensation of another's body warming her. A faint moan came from somewhere but she couldn't say which of them it was.

"You," Tokaku allowed, drawing back to look at Haru with blue half-lidded eyes. "You can sleep in my room. Our room." She dropped her head to Haru's shoulder, a sigh escaping her that was part longing and part defeat as her arms encircled the other girl's waist. "I want you to."

Haru's reply was not much more than a murmur breathed into her ear. "I want to be with you too, Tokaku. I want us to be like family."

"Family never meant very nice things for me." Tokaku admitted this only grudgingly, seeing it as another mark against her, another reason for Haru to turn away.

The sun was beginning to set, and as she glanced up again Tokaku found her gaze caught in the burnished strands of Haru's hair. Hair that glowed like fire, blinding her, just as it had on the day when she and Haru met.

"Then let me show you what family should mean," Haru said, and kissed Tokaku again in the red glare of the sun's setting rays.