A/N Setting up. Incredibly sleep deprived at the moment, but I just want to thank you guys for being such responsive readers 3 you all really make my day

Firenight

Chapter 6

Back when names meant something more than lineage, to be a Baker was to own the bakery down the street. To be a Smith was to labour days by the anvil, hammer and sparking iron in hand. To be a Walker was to be a wanderer.

Families were profession based. Sam Smith, upon realising he didn't inherit the lusty appetite for fashioning metal as his father, would show up one day at the doorstep of the Bakers, adoption papers in hand. "As long as we don't have to feed him," the Bakers would inform the Smiths stonily, but that was all that was said.

The papers were signed, the smith became a baker, and he still returned to celebrate Christmas Eve with his biological family. But his true family, the ones with whom he spoke passionately of leavening bread and the chemistry of yeast organisms, would be the one whose name he proudly carried. Sam Baker.

Like most families, to be Walker was not a requirement to remain a Walker. The Walkers treated life as a stroll, something to be ambled in and out of. Being unremarkable, and having a tendency for the philosophical characterised the Walkers. They were a family of thinkers and dreamers.

But life caught up to the Walkers, and they did not possess the sense to break their pace and run from it.

Even now, as Takumi looked up at the night sky, spying the stars through the transparent grey veil of cloud, he could feeling a quickening in his chest. The pull was not urgent, the creature behind it had been sated recently. It was a feeling that settled in his gut. A fullness that made him nauseous.

It was not part of him. There was a time – he frowned, mind straining. How long ago? Five, ten years? The problem with the creature is that he became so used to it that a time where it wasn't there simply ceased to exist. He could not recall a time before the cycle: fullness, then a hunger that threatened to tear his stomach out, followed by nights that occurred in a blur of blood and static, then waking with the strange fullness again.

He leaned over the side of the ship – his ship. The light from the white face of the moon was swallowed by the waters. Kilometers deep, he knew. Freezing. Cold, Dark. Teeming with imagined creatures. He gave a low chuckle. Five years ago I wouldn't have imagined them at all. Some things are too horrific, or too beautiful to be pinned down by something as limited as imagination.

Four years ago his ship had existed as a small pile of cured wood. He'd gone to inspect it himself. The boat-wright hadn't known him. He'd tried to haggle. Somehow he'd haggled the price down, instead of up. Indeed, when blades were involved, all logic went out the proverbial window. Takumi didn't bother to suppress a smile. After all, there are no watchers on open waters.

Five years ago he'd have cared less about a ship. He'd not been able to tell apart a leaky lichen scabbed raft from a rowboat. It hadn't mattered. It mattered now. That was the difference.

Among other things.

"Captain!"

He pivoted on a foot and turned to face the ship. The scalding light from the lanterns nearly blinded him after the un-penetrable darkness of the still night.

"Don't be such a loner, Captain. You'll freeze to death from the lack of company."

Takumi grinned, showing teeth. "Personally, I don't find yours any warmer."

Kurosaki gave a suppressed shrug but turned back to the ring of lanterns. "Since Captain's being a grouch, doesn't mean the rest of us have to. Who's next?"

"Oh! Yes! Me!" Naoya was for all appearances an intimidating man, with eyebrows drawn so steeply in that he appeared to be permanently angry. Appearances were important. Takumi walked a little closer to the ring of light but stopped half-hidden by the warm shadows. Naoya was currently on his heels in his enthusiasm, long arms stretched in demand for Kurosaki's attention. The open eagerness of his face reminded Takumi that beneath the drawn eyebrows and apparent scowl how soft and delicately child like the man was.

"Hey, how drunk is he? No? Excellent, give him the bottle," called Kurosaki.

Misa watched as Naoya – a blond man, tall, with a stern demeanor that melted into a cheerfulness that sat surprisingly well on his rugged face – spun the bottle to himself and took a hearty swig. A scattering of applause and whistles applauded the effort as the liquor visibly worked down Naoya's throat.

He gave a rushing sigh and beamed before launching into a story.

Misa settled back to listen, gingerly propping her bandaged arm on a knee. It hurt a little. Aoi sat on her left, blue eyes intent. He wasn't wearing his wig. The short spikes of hair – closely cropped to make sure no stray strands escaped from his wig – looked incongruous with the layers of tassels and frills that made up his new costume. Horribly impractical dress for a ship, Misa thought with a small smile. Aoi strutted about the ship like a princess and treated the deck as a throne room. Secretly, she'd noticed the deck scrubbers nodding appreciatively at the thick train of Aoi's skirt brushing away the dirt and debris.

On her right, Hinata was lounging. 'Normal' didn't seem to exist in his vocabulary. He sat with limbs askew and head cocked at a ridiculous angle as he eyed the speaker. His eyes flickered down to meet hers and he offered her a grin. Misa returned it with a rueful one of her own.

"Hey," Hinata stage whispered. "Is your chest okay?"

"Y-yeah, it's fine. Really, my arm hurts more," she replied honestly.

"That's good," he informed her.

He seemed to have developed a strange protective streak. He'd tailed her through dinner, looking at her owlishly as she ate. He'd even followed her into her meeting with Aoi before she'd finally confronted him.

Then it turns out he was supposed to be there, since he was resident look-out and so had the best information about the conditions surrounding the ship. Conditions she was supposed to be informed by him in order for her to correctly perform her duty as Navigator. Aoi had given her a look, and Hinata if possible had adopted an even stronger air of affected innocence.

She just needed to be extra careful. Misa curled her knees into her chest and frowned.

The real puzzle though...

The Captain. She worried her lip and glanced up into the ring of crew.

They'd lit the lanterns to ward away the brunt of the night, but there were still shadows the flames couldn't penetrate along the edges of their circle. If she looked hard enough at the darkness she could catch the silver edge of a buckle on his cloak. A wind started and spun the flames hovering on the wick. The light shifted, and washed briefly over the Captain's face. Misa stilled as she caught green eyes staring at her. The flames settled and the shadows returned to cloak his figure before she decide whether it was simply coincidence.

He was dressed differently to her memories. But the face was the same. The mocking smirk, as if he was privy to some secret the rest of them weren't. Misa shook her head. The crew that had gathered around the specter in her memories had been puppet-like. They'd killed the villagers with the cold efficiency of a butcher on his pigs. This was different.

She thought – at some subconscious level – she must have known. Those that had killed her family weren't human. But these people – people – were distinctly so. A burst of laughter erupted from the circle, startling her out of her thoughts.

Beside her, Hinata had straightened and was clapping enthusiastically.

Naoya had finished his story, and was bowing with a faint blush on his cheeks from the attention.

"Encore!" someone yelled.

"This isn't a musical performance you dolt! You tell the same joke twice and nobody will laugh!"

"Ignore the miser, I will!"

"You'll laugh at anything, it doesn't count. Volunteers? No, don't all put your hand up. Come on, spin the bottle, Naoya."

Aoi was chuckling quietly to her left. "Did you miss the joke?" he asked, and nodded at Misa's inquiring glance. "Come on, best to laugh now. Everyone's going to be too tired to do anything the next few days. First night on a safe cast off should be the happiest – plenty of food, plenty of drink, plenty of fun. Right?" Aoi lifted an eyebrow.

Misa laughed quietly into her hand. "Aren't you too young to drink?"

Aoi shot up in indignant affront. "What? I'm as old as your mother."

"And you're as short as my little sister, is that how it is?" A small pang shot through her heart. Suzuna was gone. Her mother was gone. She suddenly wished she'd retracted her statement.

Aoi drew himself up and sniffed. "HEY!" He waved his hand towards Noaya, who had his hands on the neck of the bottle, ready to spin. "Give me that for a second!"

"No, you're breaking the rules Aoi!"

"The bottle has to choose you."

"Yeah, Aoi. Sit down, you're risking the wrath of the bottle."

"Are you idiots?" Aoi shouted over the gathering din. "It's just a beer bottle!"

He caught a mutter of 'just a beer bottle he says' and shot the man a glare.

Naoya made placating movements. "Hey, hey, relax guys. It's seriously easy to rig this thing anyway." He had to pause as the volume rose again, a scowl darkening his face in a frightening shadow. "Seriously guys, it is. Look-"

He gave the bottle a gentle tap with his index finger and it turned a tiny arc to point towards Aoi. "See?" he said, a pleased smile on his face.

Kurosaki rolled his eyes skyward. He raised his voice. "Well, Aoi, the bottle had chosen you to tell us a story. Also, drink this – you're underage." He tossed Aoi a corked bottle of ginger beer.

Misa shot Aoi a meaningful look.

"I like Erika better than all of you," Aoi grumbled. But he dutifully uncorked the ginger beer and took a drink.

"This story is about a prince-cess who liked to swim. This prince-cess didn't take well to duties of the state. They loved water, the way it flowed so effortlessly downhill and rested in the lakes of their childhood. It was an entirely different world to them. A serene world. Now it so happens that there was a war going on in the prince-cess's kingdom. It was a bloody war, lots of blood was shed, organs were lost, people had their heads put on stakes to decorate the front porch and so on. But the prince-cess, to its father's horror, found the pools of water much more interesting than the war.

Unfortunately, the war had a habit of catching up to people, and one day while the prince-cess was gazing down into the water, it noticed a thread of red unravel on the surface. It was beautiful. It fascinated. The red thread was so serene, carried by its original momentum, it split into a beautiful fractal. As the prince-cess watched, one thread became many. Soon, many red threads were feeding into the stream. The prince-cess had never seen such a beautiful sight.

It was so beautiful, in fact, that it lifted its head for the first time in weeks and was about to call out to its mother and father to inform them about this new beauty it had discovered. But when it turned behind, it saw the corpses of its father and mother. Their hands were reaching towards it. They had clawed blood stained lines across the back of its shirt, before falling across it, finally bleeding into the still pool. " He stopped, using the hush for emphasis, developing a tension and suspense in the story with the finesse of a true storyteller.

Aoi sat back. "And that's it."

Noaya blinked. "That's the end? Come on, where's the real ending?"

"Nope, that's it." Aoi shrugged. "I'd considered adding a part where the father had been clutching a note that said, 'don't mistake the moon for its reflection', but that feels too contrived."

"Please tell me you made that up."

Aoi gave a noncommittal shrug. "Whatever makes you comfortable. Misato, your turn."

"Huh? Oh, okay." Misa accepted the bottle distractedly.

Yes, out of the all the crew, the Captain puzzled her the most.

She hadn't been sure, but looking carefully, she could tell the shadows were empty. He'd slipped away halfway through Aoi's tale. The fact that she noticed at all meant he'd been clumsy in his desperation.

I hate you.

I hate you.

But who are you?