X~47~X

"So… what does it feel like?"

"Huh?"

"…to die. What does it feel like?" Oliver turns to give Rin a brief sideways glance. Rin gulps, tipping her head back and squinting her eyes closed, swiping her tangled and feathery golden hair out of her burning crimson eyes. She sighs deeply as if releasing a ball of pent up energy she didn't know she had contained inside.

Rin pulls her windbreaker tighter over her shoulders, shrinking into the fuzzy white lining of the hood. Her breath comes out as a puff of steam in the air and she violently crams her hands into her pockets, her tight jeans swishing in the sudden gust of chilly wind. It is early in the morning and the two had been walking along silently in the woods towards the nearest convenient store/gas station about three miles down the road, once you get out of the forest of course. It would have been easier to drive but they can't really afford to waste the fuel when they can easily walk.

"It hurts. I feel the pain and sometimes it's agonizing and feels like it'll tear me apart, and other times… it feels… calming to embrace the darkness after the pain. Sometimes it's brief and sometimes it's… forever." Rin tips her head downwards, suddenly wrapped up in watching her boots crunch against the filthy dried leaves.

"Should I not have asked?" Oliver zips his deep navy blue hoodie to the top and pulls the hood over his head, warming his cheeks. His thick grey cargo pants with multiple pockets swish loudly against each other. The sound was at first irritating and then suddenly calming. Rhythmic. Predictable.

"No. I just…" Rin cracks her knuckles against the side of her neck. "…don't usually talk about it." She puts her fists into her pockets again, nearly stumbling into a tree.

The silent understanding that had suddenly burst forth from their confrontation the night before had blossomed into their own empty language. With their wordless gaps in brief conversation it seemed to both of them that they said more in their silences than in their exchanges.

Rin nervously itches the back of her neck. This silence was somehow bothersome.

"Is there a heaven, Rin?"

His question, spoke in such a dry and emotionless tone, stung with a brutal impact on Rin's character. What had he been going through? Rin thinks bitterly, remembering his face after Yuki's death.

"I won't lie to you, Oliver. You aren't a child and it isn't my job to shelter you." She sighs again, closing her eyes for a brief moment as she slows to his pace. They walk side by side now, their feet crunching into the leaves. "There's nothing. I don't remember anything until the minute I breathe my last breath to the moment my heart starts beating again. It's like a huge but insignificant block in my memory."

"So, you don't want to know?" Oliver is slightly taken aback by her statement, but not enough to have it show physically or in his voice.

"No… I just…"

They walk along in their wordless silence for a long moment. A raven swoops low over the tree tops as the two emerge from the forest onto the dirt road leading into the main lobby of the
"cabin" complex. The road is surrounded on either side by winding dark brown and green mountains, the dead and wilted yellow tall grass covered in a thin sheet of frost.

Oliver pushes a strand of hair out of his eye and back over his white bandage that serves as an eye patch. The sun has slowly crept behind the light grey, low hanging, and thick storm clouds, its last rays of pure yellow light being swallowed up by the monotone curtain in the sky. The now grey sky is illuminated with a grey light that catches the frost and holds it, reflecting like icing on cake.

"Even if there is a heaven, I don't think I'd belong there. I don't think me and God would get along very well." Rin breathes her words like a burden and they escape through her chapped lips as warm steam hanging in the frigid morning air.

"What was the first time you died?" Oliver turns to face Rin fully this time. The two stand on the side of the road, staring. Expressionless, wordless.

Rin begins walking again first. "I don't remember. I've died too many deaths to mark them as separate events anymore. I think I've died more than I've lived." The silence is heavy now, and somber. "Does this bother you?" Rin glances over her shoulder at Oliver. He is barely a foot behind. His eyes are tired, but awake.

"If it did do you think I would still be asking?" Rin utters a dry chuckle, pinching the bride of her nose and snapping her knuckles against her neck again. "Rin?"

"Mm?"

"Does Len hate me?"

"W-what?" Rin chuckles, sneering. "What the hell?"

"The way he looks at me… I've seen that look before."

"Len… Len… he hates everything. He'd never admit it, but he does. I've known him since we were so young…" Rin smiles to herself for a brief second. "He's such a cynical bastard…"

Oliver chuckles now. "Really?"

"Tch, he hates more than me. He just… is so… quiet about it. He's just-"

"-quiet." Oliver finishes for her.

"Why do you think he hates you?"

"Just… the way he looks at me. He looks right at me, as if he's staring me down. He just… looks at me."

"You're full of shit, Oliver."

"As are you." With a small chuckle Rin playfully elbows Oliver in the ribs. He grunts, she did it a little harder than she expected. He doesn't seem to mind.

The wind blows past the two, through their bodies, now linked with the air and their silent speech. The two blondes chuckle at the same time, their voices seeping into the cold air. If you had asked either why they were laughing, they would have laughed.

"Rin?"

"Mm?"

"What's the worst way you've died?"

Rin visibly cringed, but only for a flicker of a moment. A brief passing millisecond in time. "I was… young. Pretty young, not little, but like nine or ten. I don't remember a lot about it, but I know I was alone. Len wasn't there. I was siting… alone and I drank this cup of water." The wind hisses through the bow on her head as the two pass onto the asphalt and onto the road now. The mountains have gone behind them now and on either side is an empty plane of grass coated with a light layer of snow. Not really snow, it is too thin, too weak for that. "It burned. It rose up like a fire inside of me and burned me from the inside out. The fire spread like a liquid, racing through my body until I just… collapsed. I didn't even cry I just… bled. It was like the tears were my blood and I was bleeding them from my eyes. It burned, singed, raged like a wild fire until it just burst."

Oliver kicks a stone across the road and it thumps into the thin sheet of frost, leaving a tiny black hole in the perfectly white field.

"Sometimes, I can feel it again. Whenever I'm at my worst… or when I just feel like my anger is just going to…" She goes quiet. "I feel like I'm burning again. I feel like I'm blazing from the inside out and that I'll just burn to a crisp. And the only difference is I don't bleed. I weep silence."

"Yeah."

Rin sighs, head swimming with faintness and her stomach lurching painfully. Oliver hears it growl as a tiny moan from beside him. Rin says nothing, and he does the same. They don't need to.

About a half hour later a red brick building comes into view. Out front of it are four gas pumps and about eight parking spaces, all but three full. The two pass a green sign reading six miles to the nearest town. As Rin and Oliver trudge up the hill and over the road, nearing the building he catches another glance at her. They're about the same height, and Rin notices him watching her the second he turns. She glares at him, lips pursed.

"So, which one of us is going in?" He asks.

Rin pauses. "I will. Stand guard." Oliver stops at the side of the building facing outwards to the road while Rin walks inside. Oliver leans against the wall and closes his eyes for a very long moment.

"D' hear it on the news?" A female slurs.

"Mm, that's right."

"What channel?" The woman asks.

"Fifteen." The man slurs back.

"Fifteen! That's shit…" Her voice trails off and Oliver cracks an eye to watch two drunk red necks stumble into a pickup truck and pull off onto the road, driving erratically. Who gets drunk at ten in the morning? Oliver groans to himself.

The bell above the store's door chimes and Rin rounds the corner, carrying three plastic grocery bags and folding a wad of cash into her pocket. She leans against the wall next to Oliver and sets two of the bags down in between them.

"Ready?" Oliver asks, picking them up, but not lifting them. Rin fishes in the bag she holds for something.

"No. I want to stay for a minute." She pulls out a small white and deep red box and tears a piece of tape with her finger nail. Rin slides open the lid and pulls out a long, white stick with an orange end. She holds it between her index and middle finger and with her other free hand opens her lighter. Oliver recoils in surprise as Rin inhales deeply, blowing a puff of smoke out above their heads.

"Rin!" He shouts, a little shocked. She sends him a glare that spits fire. She removes the cigarette from her lips with a puff of smoke.

"What? It's not like it'll kill me." She places it back in between her teeth and pinches the bridge of her nose, squinting her eyes closed for a moment.

"How long have you smoked?" He asks, relaxing a little as he watches her blow grey plumes above her head.

"About a year."

"How old are you, Rin?" Oliver asks, leaning forward.

"Fourteen." She replies dryly, inhaling deeply and exhaling longer.

"Shit."

"Shit yourself, eye-patch."

They stand in silence.

"Does Len know?"

"Hell no, moron. If he did do you think he would ever leave my side? I wouldn't be able to piss alone!" She takes another large breath.

Oliver chuckles at her language. "So, our secret?"

"My secret. You say a word to him or leek face or crowbar girl, I will end you." She hisses in between breaths. The stick has gotten shorter now.

"Can't he smell it on you?" Oliver asks.

"It's not like I sit in his lap or that he sniffs me regularly." Rin removes the last of the cigarette from her mouth and slams the butt end against the brick of the wall. She rubs it a little, digging it into the side and tearing the last shreds of the casing.

Oliver grabs the other two bags and they begin to walk. The building fades away from the horizon behind them and the mountains begin to slowly climb above the horizon, seemingly and eternity away.

"Does it help?"

Rin knew what he meant without asking. "No."

"Then why do you still do it, if you say it isn't an addiction?"

Rin sighs, cramming her hands back into her pockets. "Because it's… plain. It's numb and it's simple and it's… burning."

"Can I-"

"No." Rin snaps, glaring. "Get your own damn pack, eye-patch." Oliver chuckles a little and the two walk on. As the two turn into the dirt path and enter the forest, Oliver stops for a moment, winded. "You okay?" Rin asks, looking down at him.

"Yeah. These are heavy. Long walk."

Rin sits beside him, the bags between them. A bird caws above and Oliver puts his head between his knees, his legs to his chest. Rin tips her head back up to the sky and utters a disgruntled noise, as if something she imagined bothered her.

"Oliver?"

"Yeah?"

"If you secretly were a pirate, you would tell me, right?" Oliver chuckles.

"Just because I'm blind in one eye doesn't make me a pirate, Rin."

"Yeah it does."

"Yeah. Rin?"

"What?" She looks up at him, turning her head sideways. Her messy blonde hair dangles just in front of her burning bright eyes and her dirt smudged face speaks to him with her flickering eyes. Their silence says more than even they know. The silence communicates for them, bending and twisting. And neither understood the other's message until they had leaned in and their lips had touched.

Oliver's hands cradle Rin from the bottom of her head, his fingers gently tracing down her neck as she leans into him, falling in the crook of his arm. Her hands pull gently on his lower back, the two are cemented, their silence no longer full. She tastes of cigarettes and oranges, he tastes of earth and mint.

The two pull away, and lock eyes. Amber and a burning, fiery red, pulsing with energy. Rin cracks a smile and the two simply begin to laugh.

And their laughter fills their silence.

And their silence fills with air.

Kyaaahhhhh~! X3

Official ship number one: Oliver X Rin. Some of you saw that one coming...

Character Pole:

Miku- 8

Rin- 8

Gumi-8

Len-8

IO- 3

Oliver- 3

IA- 2

Lapis- 2

Gumo- 2

Luka- 1

Haku-1

Sorry about the lateness of this chapter, I had some stuff going on this week... Anyways hope this chapter was satisfactory, I know it was short though so gommene!

~Tiruneko ;3