Desperation and loneliness can lead to rapid connections or constant isolation. I speak from unfortunate experience and reluctant observation. I also have a weakness for giving happiness to those who have none, plus I kinda cosmically screwed him.
Nero was in a rather sour mood, despite his best attempts to ignore the constant glares and sneers from Weiss. Usually when he was angry or upset, usually due to Trish or Dante, he could wander down a dark alley to pick off the stray demons that would congregate there looking for an easy meal or he would find Lady and talk to her. When he was in a state that not even Lady or bloodshed could bring him out of, he would take a job that could even give Dante pause. He was on the verge of reaching such a state at the end of history class. Rather than walk to wherever it was he was supposed to with his new teammates and risk popping Weiss's head like an over-ripe grape, he made a beeline for his closet of a room and plopped himself onto his bed, eyes focused on the ceiling and his mind clouded by a storm of emotions.
Nero had never been a people person, which he chalked up to a simple disdain for bullshit, something he picked up from the nuns who raised him for the first eight years of his life. They had a no nonsense approach to life and strong moral values, appropriate for nuns, even if they viewed Sparda as the messiah, which they instilled into Nero. He tried not think about them much, as they had all died during the Fortuna incident. That disdain turned into a full blown hate after he lost Kyrie, her presence tempered his more aggressive tendencies. When he wound up with Lady though, that hate became apathy. He didn't care about people outside his circle, which was probably unhealthy, and was able to ignore the world around him. He had lost that ability now, so avoiding people was probably his best bet. Even if the anchors that were holding his soul together dissolved. Nero continued to stare at the ceiling for a few more minutes, mind blank and wishing he still had his mp3 player, before a knocking came from his door.
Dragging himself off his bed and to the door, Nero did his best to erase the exhausted and tormented look from his face, failed to do so, and open his door to reveal Blake holding a tray with food. She looked at him with concern due to his seemingly instant transformation from a seemingly well-adjusted young man to a bedraggled character reminiscent of a soldier returning home from a long and brutal war. Blake tried to hide any surprise or shock and steeled herself.
"You disappeared and I figured you'd want some lunch free from people. You seemed very upset." She tried to keep her normal inflection and hide any concern. She knew this was something to be handled carefully.
"I appreciate that Blake. I wasn't expecting any of you to come check on me." He motioned for her to follow him inside as he took the tray from her. He set the food down on the desk next to his bed and pulled the chair out to sit. Blake took a seat on his bed, suddenly feeling apprehensive.
"Why is that?" Blake knew the answer already, and felt terrible for not standing up for him when Weiss was being a total bitch.
"Just didn't expect it. Especially due to the fact that Weiss seems like she wants to murder me, or do something worse."
Blake looked down with an expression Nero couldn't completely read but for some reason her bow seemed to droop a little.
"I'm sorry for not saying anything. She was being really terrible to you for no reason. You've established you have no intent to hurt anyone and you saved the four of us from a great deal of trouble, so she has no reason to continue being so hostile to you."
"I know. That's why I left her company. I'm sure she has her reasons for having a stick so far shoved up her ass but I don't appreciate being treated like I'm a thing worthy of disdain instead of a person. If I wanted to be treated like that I would have stayed back home and walked around with my arm in the open, of course that would be the least of it. There would be a manhunt within an hour, followed by a public execution by incineration. They'll save on having to cremate me that way."
Blake continued to look down at the ground, looking thoughtful now. She looked up and met eyes with Nero, determination apparent in her visage. "Can I trust you Nero?"
"As much as you can trust a guy you've only known for a day. I'd like to say I'm trustworthy, but seeing as I'm from another dimension I don't exactly have a character witness."
Blake didn't seem amused at his attempt at dry humor as she was looking at him seriously, making clear she was not joking.
Nero let out a sigh and rested his face in his non-demonic hand. "The only way I think I could prove that I'll keep the fact that you're a faunus under wraps is if I tell you some of my secrets, you know, so we can use blackmail to keep each other in check." Blake simply gave him a blank look at the fact that he already knew what she was going to tell him. Nero gave her a smirk he usually reserved for pissing off demons as he shifted forward in his chair, bringing himself closer to Blake. "I noticed your bow moving and twitching subtly, in response to your emotions and actions. I was a demon hunter, which required a lot of quick observation, otherwise you'd wind up mauled or impaled, sometimes burned alive. I figured you had cat ears or the like because of the bow."
Blake nodded in response, the line of reasoning made sense, even though she felt a little wary of how quickly he figured her status as a faunus. He was incredibly observant and obviously highly intelligent, but his cocky attitude and smart ass remarks distracted from that. She could tell it was a ploy to get others to underestimate him, indicating his constant focus on possible conflict. She removed her bow from her ears and looked at Nero, in a completely vulnerable state, something that he found unbearably… attractive? Adorable? He wasn't sure, but his only response was to mouth 'wow' which Blake fortunately didn't pick up on.
Blake crossed her arms and assumed her normal aloof and confident posture, her exposed feline ears adding an element that Nero couldn't pinpoint, but was something that made her seem even more in control of herself. Blake gave Nero an expectant look,"Well since you know my secret, tell me one of yours in return like you said you would."
"I don't exactly have a simple secret I can show you or explain to you, but I do have a story I can tell you." Nero gave a weak chuckle, his eyes sinking into despair as they had when Blake first walked knocked on his door. "I came to this dimension because my heart was broken, my trust was betrayed, and I had nothing left to live for." Nero ran his human hand over his demonic arm as he leaned back in his seat, taking a long breath. He didn't want to talk about any of this but Blake had been honest with him, so he could at least do the same. "I was an orphan, for the first ten or so years of my life I was raised by nuns belonging to a religion called the order of the sword, they worshiped a demon who had saved all of humanity from the rest of hell's denizens, in an orphanage on an isolated city called Fortuna. The order was militant in nature and had a large number of soldiers who primarily fought demons, which had a large presence in the areas around the city and would often attack its citizens. Even though I thought they were full of shit, I wound up joining them and became a demon hunter, due to certain connections I had."
Blake could tell she wasn't getting all the details, she could probably trust him, but he didn't seem to trust her as much. Due to just now getting his bare bones history, Blake wouldn't be able to tell that Nero telling her anything at all was a monumental sign of trust and goodwill.
"I was really good at my job, which was pretty much my superiors telling me where a demon or group of demons were and me tearing them limb from limb. Then an incident occurred when a friend and a group of orphans were attacked in the forest outside the city. I had killed all but a few when they got a lucky shot in. My arm was really tore up, then there was a voice while I was on the ground bleeding and the few remaining demons were approaching my friend and the kids."
Blake tilted her head and gave him an inquisitive look, something that Nero found unbearably adorable with the addition of her ears being out in the open. " A voice?"
"A voice. Loud and booming, but not screaming. The voice said, 'Power, I need more power' and next thing I knew I was back on my feet, my arm looked the way it does now, and I had more demon corpses at my feet."
"So your arm is native to you?" Blake had been curious about his arm since he fell out of the portal in the sky. The red, scaly, and glowing appendage was in a way analogous to her ears, except her ears didn't enable her to break the back of giant Grimm.
"As far as I can tell. I had been hurt by demons before so that wasn't the reason. I'm pretty sure that the situation was the trigger, I wanted the power to protect Kyrie and the orphans." Dante looked off to the side, knowing that his slip up in saying Kyrie's name was going to lead to questions.
"So the friend's name was Kyrie? She must be important to you then." Blake was a little surprised Nero that he had slipped up and said his friend's name. The way he was avoiding eye contact now and facing away from her meant that this Kyrie was a source of great pain for the young man sitting across from her.
Nero leaned further and closed the distance between him and the catgirl, leaving only a foot of space. The action wasn't meant to intimidate or lead to awkwardness, but rather to allow Nero to be even more vulnerable, to take a chance that his brain was screaming at him for even thinking about, but his heart, even if he thought the whole situation was incredibly cheesy, was letting out a firm and gentle 'yes, go ahead, trust her'. This girl had bared a secret that she struggled with to him even though they barely knew each other. He didn't know if it was the soul anchor or some kind of chemistry, or possibly a connection that he had only felt with the person that she had asked about, but that honestly didn't matter to him.
Blake didn't feel the need to lean away or turn her head, to even break eye contact. Nero made her feel safe, made her feel like could nothing touch her lest they be instantly mulched by the young man in question. She wasn't sure why, but she would figure that out and the only obvious way was to get closer to Nero, something she would have done regardless. "Nero, you don't have to tell me, like you said, we met yesterday." She took the palm of Nero's devil bringer into hers, receiving no resistance.
"I'm going to tell you Blake, everything. If I don't tell someone I'm just going to lose myself even more. Just give me some time." Nero gave her hand a light squeeze, as his arm lit up gold brighter than it ever had before. Blake gave Nero a look, a silent question as to why the arm had changed.
"It does that when I'm with someone I feel close to, usually. Sometimes it just does that around people who want to help me. I'm pretty sure that it's the former though as it's never been this bright." Blake failed to fight down a blush as did Nero, but neither made an effort to let go or move away, if anything they both seemed more relaxed, now that both of them were able to understand each other, even without knowing a substantial amount about one another. Blake could see the pain in Nero's eyes, the betrayals and losses he had gone through, and a heart that was held together by sutures on the verge of falling apart and leaving him a hemorrhaging mess. Nero could see someone who had been ostracized and despised for things she had no control over, a girl who had never truly belonged anywhere. They wanted to help each other, to understand each other.
"It's funny, I really hate people Blake, I barely can stomach any interactions outside of confrontation or violence, except when someone needs my help, but with you…. Jeez I sound ridiculous." Nero was looking away, he was so out of his element. It took a hell of a lot longer for him to open up to lady, but the pain of Kyrie dying right in front of him as he was unable to stop Sanctus' final action was triple the pain of Lady crushing his heart. There was no unbearable loss, just the ultimate breaking of trust, trust that a broken man had given only to have it used to strangle more of his humanity away.
Blake moved her head to meet Nero's, giving him a smile and a nod. "I'll wait Nero. I may not have much information on the subject in regards to reality, but I assume that you went through some very serious events to leave everything you knew." Blake let go of Nero's hand, the bright golden light fading back to blue, and stood from her sitting position on his bed. "Lunch is over by now, and I have to get to my next class before anyone comes looking for me." She turned to leave when she felt a hand on her shoulder.
"I just want to let you know, that I'm only able to exist here because of these connections I have. They're a form of alchemy from my world that's been altered by the laws of this dimension. That's why I have those tattoos. They're whats allowing me to stay here and not have my soul essentially explode, and as they stand now I'm still not safe. I have to get closer to the people holding me here. I don't know what that exactly entails but if I want to continue to exist….."
Blake's eyes opened in minor shock, before settling down into confusion, still facing away from Nero. The nature of his tattoos and his not knowing he even had them made sense now. She was kind of peeved that she wasn't the only though. She was also confused as to why she was thinking that. "So Ruby, Yang, and myself are the only thing tying you to existence? Why would you tell me this?"
"I didn't want you to find out later and think I was only spending time with you or talking to you because I had to. I like you Blake, more than I probably should considering I met you only yesterday, and from what I can tell the anchor has nothing to do with that." Nero had turned Blake around to face him again, his hands on her shoulders, his devil bringer once again lighting up gold. "I'm not… I'm not sure what to do anymore Blake. So much complete and utter bullshit led to me coming here, and my original intention was just to die fighting someone or something. I kept telling myself I was here to start over, but in reality I was just looking for a more elegant and complex way to commit suicide."
Blake took his hands into hers and looked him in the eyes, an expression somewhere between anger and pain on her face as she spoke very sternly, "You have every reason to keep living Nero. I don't care how long I've known you, I don't care where you're from, and I don't care what you want. From this point on you have to live alright? Live with everything you have because I want you to be here, I want to fight by your side, and I want to be close to you."
Nero gripped Blake's hand tighter, his left shoulder had been burning slightly as he and Blake had stood up and gotten into such an emotionally raw discussion and that sensation was reaching the point of having a white hot heat consume his shoulder without any pain. "I will Blake. I can't do it for myself, but I can do it for you."
Blake instantly dropped his hands and turned around, her face lighting up with an intense blush. She had not been expecting such a statement from Nero, but hearing those words come from his mouth was something… well something she really wanted, even though she didn't know she wanted it.
"Sorry, I probably shouldn't have said that. I just said what I felt." Nero was looking away from the girl now, he had no idea where that sentence came from, but all he knew was that he meant it.
Blake turned back around, even though a very uncharacteristic blush remained on her face, and took ahold of Nero's chin. She pressed her lips against his cheek, getting a look of shock and a mild blush out of the former demon hunter, whose shoulder now was radiating heat and light neither of them noticed, before stepping back with her hands resting on her hips and the ghost of a smile on her lips.
"You said what you felt was right to say, which was something I very much liked to hear. I really do have to go Nero, Ruby and Yang are probably organizing a search party now."
"You didn't tell them you were coming to see me?" Nero figured that the members of team RWBY were very close, based on the interactions he had seen.
Blake had an embarrassed look as she averted his eyes, "I wanted to speak to you alone. I wanted to be the first to get close to you." Nero once again was shocked, this girl was going to be the death of him with the way she was treating him. He wasn't to warmth or friendliness. Lady was always aloof except when total emotional involvement was required, she wasn't cruel to him or ignored him, but she reserved herself in a way that most would find off putting. Nero was not able to see that. Just like how he wasn't able to see her philandering ways, she always seemed to never have a job at the same time as him, to the point that it was obviously not a coincidence.
Nero's eyes took on a look of realization, followed by seething anger. Blake was confused as to how he went from content and actually happy, instead of the fake attitude he had when she first met him that made him seem like he was a perfectly normal person, demon arm aside.
"What's wrong?"
Nero had turned around and was clenching his fists to the point of pain, just in the left on account of his devil bringer being nigh indestructible. "I just realized something that had my blood boiling. I really need to hit something." Nero's voice was becoming layered with something that sounded unnatural to Blake
Blake slipped her bow back over her cat ears and took a hold of Nero's hand, pulling him out of his room as he made no attempts to protest and simply followed her. Nero was able to get his anger under control, just barely, and spoke in his normal voice, "Where are you taking me?"
"Our next class, seeing as you're on team RWBY now that more than likely means Ozpin gave you the same schedule as us, and we just so happen to have combat training with Professor Goodwitch, which entails spars between students."
Nero smirked, he could make a lasting impression on the other first years and punch someone really hard, preferably in the face. He continued to let Blake tow him along, actually enjoying the physical contact.