Let's get this trainwreck moving.

I'm playing with Miki's hair as we sit on the roof, eating lunch with Emi and Rin. It's relaxing, and she's told me before that she enjoys it, so I have no inclination to stop...even if it does look sort of weird to do it in public.

Not that I've ever given a damn about social protocol, particularly when it comes to violence.

"You didn't sign up!" Emi huffs, looking at me.

"Team sports aren't really my thing, Emi." I say the words in a tone that allows for no argument, but Emi has never been one to follow rules like that. She'll keep asking until I say, "Yes," or she's blue in the face.

Knowing me, as only I can, I guarantee that she'll stop trying to wheedle it out of me long before I consider joining any sort of sports team.

Miki smiles, knowing where this is heading. She tried to convince me over the break, tried to sell me on the idea, but I just couldn't get into it. Maybe I should give Emi a reason to stop trying to get me to join? I like that idea, as I think about it, so I guess if she really presses me then I can open up about my past.

"You'd be great, though! You're built like a tank, I've heard about your endurance!"

"Take that out of context for me."

Emi blushes, and Miki laughs, but the twin-tailed girl continues. "Even if it wasn't track, there's still soccer and basketball and all kinds of sports!"

"I'm a fighter."

"But-"

"Before I came here, Emi, do you know what I did?"

She shakes her head in the negative. Here we go.

"I used to beat people up for fun. For a living. I'd skip school to help friends out in their gang wars because they needed help and I liked to fight. Most of them eventually wound up dead, one way or another, but there's always another fight waiting. Over break, I got in a fight with fifty people at once. I won. People...other people drag me down. When I'm alone, when I'm fighting, I don't have to worry about controlling myself. When it's just me, just the enemy, I can cut loose and set the beast free. It's not a pretty sight to anyone who's watching, but it's a beautiful thing to behold from behind these eyes."

She's stunned, silent, as I continue.

"Everything I've ever accomplished, I've done it on my own, with my own power, nobody helping me. I didn't, don't, need the help. People on teams walk the trail of armies, their leaders take the road of kings. I'm different. I travel down the path of the conqueror."

I'm talking mostly of my past self, but it's impossible to keep the present tense from bleeding through into my speech.

"I've lived and breathed by the blood that's coated my hands, Emi. Where there's other people, there's not really friendship for me. There's just more potential targets, more possible fights for me to win and prove my strength. So when you talk about teams...I just see mobs of people, waiting for conflict, getting ready for me to put them down like the animals we all are."

I close my eyes.

"I've said too much...sorry. You did start the conversation, though. Come to think of it, did you invite us up here specifically to ask that question?"

I push myself off the ground with the hand that's not twisting in Miki's hair, though that hand's taken out, and give a shallow grin. I'm not waiting for an answer, and she knows that, so I start to walk away.

"I didn't join because I chose not to join. It should have been that simple. I try to make things that way."

"Emi's not showing it now, but she was pretty shaken up after you left." Miki's eyes bore into mine.

"If she wasn't, I can't really say I did a good job of intimidating her, right?" I stare back with equal placidity.

"Were you trying to?" An accusing tone, a little dangerous to take with me, but I disregard it. She's just worried that I might have hurt her friend.

"Half-assed it, but sort of." I shrug. Why should I care what Emi thinks of me? We've barely interacted, only six or seven times in all the months we've known each other. In all honesty, I can't bring myself to give a damn about the girl without any legs.

"Well, you did a good job of it, then."

"Thank you." My smirk is met with cold eyes, so I retract it.

"That wasn't a compliment." She nearly growls at me, but she's smart enough to avoid that after seeing what happened the last time we argued. Her anger only feeds into mine, and then it's just a contest to see who explodes first.

"I know." I close my eyes for a few seconds and then re-open them. "I won't apologize, if that's what you were going to ask. I don't think that what I said deserves an apology."

"I wasn't going to ask you to. She's my friend, though, so I wanted to make sure you knew you crossed a line."

"She's the one who opened the door. I just stepped through...and there was no line."

"There was definitely a line. Maybe you didn't break it outright, but you certainly pushed a toe past it."

For my part, I can't actually believe that we're talking about this. It feels ridiculous, like something out of a weird dream. Not that, as an insomniac, I'd know a whole lot about dreaming. Hallucinations, yes, but not really dreams.

Either way, something about this conversation feels off to me.

"...this isn't about Emi, is it?" My tone makes certain that she knows my words aren't a question. "I mean, it is, but it's like you're trying to dance around whatever you think is the real issue."

The thought hits me like the kick that shattered my ribs last June. "It's about what I said when I was talking to her. It's about how I feel about other people."

About how other people just bring me down.

She's assuming I meant her, that she serves no purpose in my life except as a draining and lessening influence.

She's guessing that I only keep her around on a whim.

She thinks I was talking generically, not specific to fights or sports or other things like that.

She probably thinks I don't actually like her, or that I see her as someone "weak" enough to not be a threat.

"I wasn't talking about life. I was just talking about sports."

"Is that why you didn't tell me where you were going, when you went out that day? Is that why you took your bike instead of coming with me? You didn't just want to be alone, since I just weigh you down?" There's the anger in her. I knew it'd show itself eventually. It's not really anger, though, just...bitterness. Like she thinks, and has accepted, that she comes second to violence in my life.

"...that's not why."

She breaks eye contact, looking down, almost ashamed by my denial.

"You were asleep when I left to go do that, and the bike...this way, if there's an emergency, we have a way to get out quicker...we have a way to get out, period. We don't need to wait on the bus, we don't need to walk, I can just take us down the hill or into the city or whatever. Besides, would you rather I leave it at your mom's house? My parents' house, knowing how I feel about them?"

I wrap my hands around her.

"I know who I am, Miki. I like to fight. I'm good at fighting. There's a lot of anger and hate in me, especially toward people...but there's a lot of love in me too, and it's yours if you're gonna take it. When we started dating, I wasn't sure about it, but I decided to at least try to be a better person...just for you, if nobody else. You made it different, though, especially after I slipped and went back to who I was before."

She smells like an apple's flesh, like someone cut the fruit open and rubbed it all over her skin. Her hair is more like...cherries.

Her arm goes around my back, gripping the space between my metal collarbone and bony neck vertebrae. She wants to cry, but keeps trying to force the tears back.

"After that, I made my choice. I decided that you had to be the most important person in my life, the most important thing out of anything in my life, if you were going to be in my life at all."

With that having been said, she can't stop the drops from falling anymore. She cries into my shoulder as the night comes on, and passes out in my arms after a while.

Curfew is in effect, so instead of carrying her back to her room, (which would be easy enough to do,) I put my back against the wall and pull the blanket over both of us. Even without taking one or two of those sleeping pills, I'm feeling more physically drained than I have in a long time. It takes no time at all for my eyelids to get heavy, for my thoughts to disappear, and the only thing I sense as I drift off to sleep is the warm girl who's pressing into me as her sleep continues. Before I finally go, I pull her to me and tighten my grip; even if the gesture is lost on her, since she's sleeping, I will always be there for her.

Neither of us is a particularly early riser. Especially, it seems, when we're in the same bed.

She's still asleep in my arms, though at this point her pained and crying expression has turned into the cute, peaceful look I occasionally saw over the break. It's almost four in the afternoon; I'm glad there weren't any classes today, regardless of whether or not I'd have skipped them, because it would've been hard to explain why we weren't in any of them.

"Oh, uh, we overslept. Together." I imagine it'd go like that, or maybe it'd be something even more ridiculous. "I don't know about her/him, but I enjoyed last night a lot." Oh, the terror we could pull with a sentence like that. Part of me thinks it's hilarious.

Part of me realizes how ridiculous it is.

"Good morning, you asshole."

I guess she wasn't as asleep as I'd thought. It's not morning, though I am an ass, and I don't bother to correct her on that.

"Damn. Just when I was starting to appreciate the sleeping beauty, too."

"I'm gonna punch you for that...later..."

For now, though, it seems like she's content to snuggle into my chest and use my shoulder for a pillow. I certainly won't complain, but she's got a strange way of going about her anger.

I still can't believe that she has the balls to punch someone who used to fight for fun. Someone that she was...afraid of.

That last thought stings more than it should. I enjoyed people being afraid of me. To some extent, like Emi a couple days ago, I still enjoy making people afraid of me. Old habits die hard.

I die harder, if my "bones" are any indication.

Miki doesn't wake up again, after a couple hours, so I eventually join her in sleeping the day away.

It wasn't a very productive day, we've done nothing but talk and sleep, but it feels like today was necessary. Today wasn't wasted, I tell myself. It just had a different use.

My dreams of death and glory are replaced by a purple-haired girl missing her left hand.