X~55~X
Miku's eyes snap open and with a loud gasp she jolts upwards, snapping awake violently, panting and sweating. Immediately she becomes aware of a hand pressed against her forehead and the other wrapped across her stomach, holding her in someone's lap. Staring down at her is Len's face obscured by blonde hair and smudges of dirt on his cheeks. His mouth is slightly open and he smiles the moment Miku recognizes him.
However she can't seem to get her breathing under control and as she hyperventilates, Len gently strokes the side of her face to calm her, muttering, "Shh, shh, you're good."
After a moment Miku forces herself to calm and she curls into his side, trying not to choke on her tears she struggling to hold back. "I-I-I all those people!" She whimpers quietly as a frigid night wind rocks the two. "…they died!"
Len brings his arms to her back and holds her like a child, pressing his forehead to hers and shaking his head, still smiling. "You're okay…" He mutters as Miku gasps.
"Oh no… Len you were… you were in the light… did I…? O-oh god…" Miku snaps upwards and wriggles out of Len's lap, pressing herself against the back of the boulder, facing him, her hands cupped over her mouth. Her eyes swim with absolute horror.
Len looks at her in surprise at her reaction. Leaning forward on all fours he gently grabs her by the wrists and holds her palms out over the ground, pressing his hand in them and with his other hand shaking her wrists a little bit.
"I'm fine, Miku. Hey- hey, look at me." His voice dips, saddening at Miku's facial expression and the tears forming in her eyes. "I'm fine. I came back. I always do. I always come back." Len gives her a weak smile and Miku shudders.
"I-I-I killed… you…" As if the words pain her, Miku wretches horribly.
"Hey- no." Len grips her stronger. "I'm fine. I'm here, I'm alive, so please don't cry." He looks up from her dirty palms and smiles again, each moment he sees her eyes, feeling his heart drop into his stomach. Miku looks crushed by the sadness in Len's eyes. "Please." Len's voice cracks and he grips Miku's hands a little tighter.
"H-how do I…? H-how do I-?" Len's expression yet again stops her. His eyes are deep and sad, but also relieved and happy. Miku is confused. How could she have done that to him? And how does he look at me like this? How do I make this better? She wants to sob. She just wants to sob but he's stopping her with this unreadable expression. She wants to scream too. And sob. There's another feeling too and she can't put a finger on it. It feels squeamish and uncomfortable inside her every time her eyes connect with the blonde boy's.
"You're okay, Miku." He shakes her wrists gently and smiles warmly at her face as tears well up in her eyes.
"How come I feel like this then?" She shrieks, throwing her arms around his neck and burying her face into his shoulder. Instantly Len wraps his arms around her back, rocking her gently to one side and pushing her deeper into him.
"Because you're strong enough to recognize true pain and handle it."
"I'm not like you… or Rin… or Gumi…" She sniffles. "…what I did to them… feels so bad."
Len chuckles gently. "That's because you're still un-broken. The world hasn't ruined you yet. You're still you."
"I hate this feeling." Miku mutters after a moment.
"Good. That's how you know you haven't lost it yet." Len says in a calming deadpan.
"… That doesn't make any sense to me." Miku admits after a moment of thinking.
Len laughs. "I'm starting to sound like Gumi." Miku nods on his shoulder, feeling herself become tired again suddenly.
"Where am I?" She asks softly.
"'Dunno really. Somewhere outside of the city, a little trailer park town. Yuuma found it. Rin stole us a camper, but I didn't want to move you in your sleep after… what happened. We were still really worried. I still am really worried." Len pulls her away, looking at her tear smudged face. "What happened to you?"
Miku shakes her head no and her shoulders sag. "I don't know." She admits, embarrassed. Len pulls her back into him, relaxing at the moistness on his shoulder from her tears. He can't stop her from crying, but he can stop her from crying alone. At least that's something.
~ ~ ~X~ ~ ~X~ ~ ~
"Look at those two." Gumi laughs, throwing her arm over towards the boulder where Len and Miku are. Yuuma chuckles, pulling a potato chip out of the bag and handing it over, shifting on his position on the roof of the group's luxury camper-r.v.- thing.
"Is it really okay to be spying on them like this?" Yuuma asks, slightly guilty.
Gumi laughs loudly, biting down harshly on a chip and shifting as well. "What you call 'spying' I call duty. They asked me to come on watch while they went back into the city for supplies and some new clothes, I assume this means watch."
"Revenge, huh?" Gumi elbows Yuuma sharply in the arm.
"Shut up, Bubblegum head." Yuuma blushes, pulling at a strand of his soft pink hair nervously. After a moment Gumi chuckles again, Gumo thudding heavily against the roof of the van. "Besides, they totally deserve it. You said so yourself." Gumi smirks at him.
"Uh… I believe what I said was along the lines of 'you have every right to be angry' not 'spy on a clearly private-ish moment between Len, who had nothing to do with that, and Miku, who had a freaking seizure or whatever that was and took out a whole room of Watchers in under thirty seconds'."
Gumi scoffs, throwing the chip back in his face. "Same to me." Eventually Len and Miku move back to their hidden position against the large boulder, leaving Yuuma and Gumi with nothing to watch or entertain them.
Suddenly, Gumi finds her hands tapping a light but fast and chaotic sounding rhythm on the hood of the van, her head bobbing slightly. It carries on for a few minutes, entrancing Yuuma with a type of… thing he'd never seen before. With each passing second her thumping became more chaotic, more spastic, but more intoxicating, as if this passing rhythm that sounded like something out of a death-metal/classical rock concert was screaming like a sentient being out of Gumi's dirt and blood encrusted finger tips.
Just then, as it seems her rhythm would swell and explode to him, a flock of birds racing off of trees in the not too far distance startles her immensely, jolting her out of a very deep trance. She jumps nearly three feet in the air, and, sitting as close to the edge of the van as she was, she slides off the top like butter off of a knife and Yuuma instinctually throws out his hand to her, which she grabs, sending them both falling on the ground.
"Ah…shit… that hurt." Yuuma says, pushing himself off of the ground. As he opens his eyes he realizes he's not on the ground, but on top of Gumi, her arms basically pinned under his. She also seems to notice this and her eyes have shrunk slightly in her pupils, panic from similar past situations straining her immensely. Yuuma turns as pink as his hair and begins to apologize profusely when Gumi cuts him off in a gravely unsteady and harsh, croaking like tone.
"…Yuuma..." She gulps out, "I'm going to need you to get off of me, or I will sock you so hard in the neck you won't breathe right for a month." She hisses. Immediately Yuuma tugs himself off of her and watches her stand, ignoring his outstretched hand he had offered her.
Her eyes test him with a rabid kind of unreadable and quite petrifying glare.
"S-sorry." He mutters, unable to look away from her eyes. "… Guess that must have brought up some bad… memories."
"I knew what you meant without you saying that." She cringes under his expression, not visibly, of course.
"R-right. Sorry… for that too."
"What is up with you right now?" Gumi steps closer, looking at him, toe to toe. "You look like you're going to barf on me."
"…W-when are Rin and Lapis and Oliver going to be back with IA and IO?" He quickly tries to change the subject, his voice cracking and squeaking pathetically. Gumi laughs, putting a hand on his chest.
"Later. Jesus Freaking Christ do you have cardiac problems or something?" Gumi laughs at him again, throwing a piece of hair out of her face with a flick of her head, eyes poking him restlessly. "God Yuuma, what the hell. I told you it was fine, no reason to get his flipped out over it."
"N-no I just…don't want to remind you of that or anything… like that… I just…" Yuuma stutters, feeling terrible, remembering that haunting expression of panic and pain in her eyes that was only there, just for a moment. It makes him want to puke that he brought her back there, to the stuff of her terribly graphic night terrors.
"I told you, its fine. That was reflex, you can't blame me for reacting like that. I'd do that with absolutely anyone. It's not you and has nothing to do with you, that part of me, that's all old stuff just lingering behind, like the scars. Besides, you, of all people, could possibly freak me out the least in that situation." Gumi flicks him in the chest.
"W-wait what?"
"Does that bother you? Or would you like me to flip the hell out if you touch me at all?"
"N-no!" He responds to loudly and too quickly. Gumi laughs, nervously now, to try and break the tension simply and nothing more. Gumi raises an eyebrow, shifting uncomfortably. Really uncomfortably.
"…Are you okay? Really… it's not a big deal. Are you okay?" She asks seriously, grilling him with her amber colored eyes.
"Y-yeah. I'm fine." Yuuma gulps, smiling at Gumi. He can't figure out why he's so nervous. She said it was fine, but he can't help but feel slightly terrible still.
"…O-kay… then I guess this will be no big deal."
"What-" Gumi cuts him off with her lips pressed against his. Yuuma feels like he's going to scream. Or explode. Then the reality of what's happening hits him and his hands fly upwards, tangling and griping around Gumi's waist as she leans further into him, pressing his back flat against the side of the van before drawing away for a moment. Her eyes burn into his and before he can even think he has drawn her back in, intertwining with each other like wires coiling together. Yuuma is shocked. Gumi's touch is surprisingly gentle. Everything about her is shockingly gentle and somehow this makes it all the more breathtaking as he comes to the shocking realization while still locked in a kiss with her, that, these hands tangled in his hair and under his hat, had killed so many times. This continues on for a moment, minutes. Yuuma doesn't know. All he knows is her taste and her fingers in his hair. Suddenly she pulls away. Her breath is shallow and nonexistent as she stands frozen, still pushed up against him, her hands still on the back of his head, his arms still around her waist.
"No big deal, right?" She smirks.
"A-are you kidding? Y-you're kidding right?" Yuuma's face flushes a deathly pale. Gumi breaks away from him and enters the RV, waving her hand over her head dismissively.
"I dunno'." She calls back at him. "I've never done that before. Honestly, I don't think my mind has caught up to the present yet." She twirls her finger around her hear in the classical "crazy" motion. "It's all just like a freaking hurricane in here." She says before slamming the door, leaving Yuuma staggering like a ghost outside of the RV.
After a moment he gulps and shrugs his shoulders backwards, shaking his head. "Okay… that just happened." He mutters to himself, not even bothering to fix his beanie now lopsided on his bubblegum colored hair.
~ ~ ~X~ ~ ~X~ ~ ~
"So, where to now?" Rin offers, leaning forwards on her elbows across the table in the RV. It's built into the wall and collapses upwards, almost like a long shelf. Lapis sits next to her, sorting through a tool box and emergency kit she found in the back bedroom. Len sighs, pressing his thumb to his temple as he stares out the window. He is sitting across from Rin, tapping his fingers steadily against the table-shelf.
"I think we'd be best off in a big city. Lots of people, easy to shoplift, etcetera." Rin grins, leaning over the table and punching Len in the shoulder.
"Ah… back to the old days with just you and me, huh? Feeling nostalgic, Lenny?" She coos, mocking him with a grotesque smirk on her dirt smudged face. Len frowns at her as she leans back. "Somewhere with a shower, please." She flicks a crumb off the table top dismissively.
Gumi enters the room from the back bedroom, holding her crowbar over her shoulder. She takes a quick glance around the room. IA and IO and curled up together on their couch-window seat thing under the main window. They're both bent over a deck of cards, trying to figure out how to play Go-Fish, Miku watching from behind IA. Oliver sits behind Rin at the table, with Len across from her and Lapis beside her. A pink mop bobs in the driver's seat and turns to glance at whoever came out of the bedroom.
His eyes widen at Gumi and he leaps to his feet, grabbing her by the wrist suddenly and pulling her outside, shutting the door behind him. Rin whistles once their gone and Oliver mutters, "what's their problem?" while Rin swats him on the shoulder for breathing on her neck.
Gumi staggers for a moment before regaining her balance. "Dude, what the hell?"
Yuuma looks incredibly nervous. "…Last night, were you just messing with me?" Gumi chuckles.
"What?" She drones, looking incredibly irritated with Yuuma.
"Were you just kidding when you… did that?" His face flushes pale, then bright pink. Gumi sighs, stepping forward swiftly and making him press his back into the side of the RV again. He looks confused, like a first time baby sitter that doesn't know what to do with a wailing child.
"Depends."
"...On?" Yuuma forces himself to breathe slowly.
"If you ever want me to do it again. You can write it off as a joke or-", she pauses. "I don't care either way."
Even with his short time with Gumi, Yuuma had come to understand more about her than anyone else had ever cared to. So, as she stands here with his ultimatum, Yuuma gulps slightly, mouth gapping open. She was lying.
"You're a crappy liar." He mutters, clasping his hands around her neck as he draws her in and bends down to kiss her with her oddly gentle touch and warm and frail feeling body, pressed against his as if trying to leech away his warmth.
"Guys?" As Rin flings open the door to the RV, Gumi snaps back with such force, she sends Yuuma's head slamming into the side of the car. She jumps back almost instantly, annoyed and shooting Rin a glare for just being there. Yuuma groans in pain, holding the back of his head where a huge lump is already starting to form. Rin has a blank expression on her face, having not the faintest clue what's happening. "R-ight. We're going soon."
"Yeah. Thanks." Gumi waves her off. Rin gives her one more sideways glance before nodding and closing the door to the van behind her.
Gumi sighs, turning and looking at Yuuma. She chuckles. "Sorry about that."
"It's fine, Gumi. Sorry I grabbed your wrist." Her face goes deathly pale.
"Right…" She looks away.
"Sorry… I noticed it bothered you. I should really stop grabbing you… S-sorry… really." Gumi frowns at him, quickly recovering.
"Stop apologizing, you just make it worse." Yuuma opens his mouth and Gumi cuts him off quickly. "Don't say sorry."
The sound of leaves rustling from the grove of trees behind them halts the two completely. Before Yuuma can say anything Gumi inches her foot under the bend in Gumo and kicks it upwards, catching it in air with a tiny thud as she grasps it tightly against her palm. She holds out her hand behind her in a "stop" motion, and thuds the side of the RV lightly with Gumo. The small buzz of the chatter inside instantly stops as Gumi thuds three more times. Gumi and Len had talked it over last night as a signal when she was on watch.
Yuuma gives her a look as a form emerges from the trees directly in front of them. Yuuma's mouth falls open and he holds his breath with one shuddering gasp as a bobbing head of hot pink hair comes staggering out of the leaves.
In a white uniform with a black pistol in clasped in both hands is Teto, eyes full of tears, arms shaking. Yuuma tenses instantly and Gumi raises one finger, flicking her goggles down over her eyes without a second's thought. Teto has been crying. Her uniform is splattered with dried blood and dirt, her limbs practically shaking with each step.
"…S-so… this is what I find, huh?" She croaks out, voice cracking as she emerges into the clearing. "I volunteered to follow you… trail you out as a spy after the thing at the hotel… I-I wanted to find out how you could do this… How you could just… betray me, Mom, Dad, how could you betray us like this for the spawn of Satan himself? How, Yuuma? How?!" Her voice rises, practically screaming.
"Teto-", Yuuma's voice is full of sadness. Gumi refuses to look behind herself at him.
"No!" She causes him to jump as she screams. "…SeeU, Ted, those watchers they killed, they were good people, Yuuma. They're just people! And they died!" She sobs, eyes shaking with fury. "They are demons and-", she looks straight at Gumi. ", murderers."
"Teto-"
"Stop it! I couldn't f-figure it out…" Her voice dips, becoming gaunt and slow and full of absolute agony and deep unrelenting sadness. "…I couldn't figure out why on God's Earth you would betray us all for this." Teto chuckles. Her eyes suddenly become dark and angry. "Now I know."
The sound of wind is empty against the screaming silence between the three in the clearing.
"... Because of her?" Teto's voice cracks as she casts her eyes to Gumi. Gumi can't help but blurting out in laughter.
"L-look, I'm sorry can-can we back this up a sec?" Gumi asks between chuckles.
"You betrayed your people, you betrayed humanity because of a girl? Yuuma, she's a killer a mass murderer!" Teto nearly screams, fingers tightening around the gun. "I am so mad at you, Yuuma! Mom, Dad, me! You left us!"
"Teto!" Yuuma shouts over her. "I didn't leave anybody. This 'Romeo and Juliet' crap you have in your head, I didn't even know Gumi existed until I left! Please, can you just put down the gun?" His voice pleads, milky with regret.
Teto laughs at him, tears bursting out of her eyes and dripping down her cheeks like rain.
"Yeah, I'm sure you'd like that. I'm going to end this. I'm going to end what you started. For no one else, but me."
"Teto-"
The loud snap of a gunshot booms throughout the air like a bomb as a bullet comes whizzing form her gun towards Yuuma, his eyes wide and full of panic and a deep, deep sorrow. The moments next for him pass like an eternity, the bullet getting so close, his sister hysterical with sobs. Funny, He thinks. She was always the strongest one in the family. The only thing he can manage to make himself think is how much he deserves this. He's caused everyone so much pain.
And in this moment, he is ready. He is content and he is ready. As he closes his eyes for the last time, only one thought can go through his mind. The way Gumi ran her fingers through his hair only moments ago.
A loud grunt of pain snaps him out of his trance as his front is splattered with blood. IA's voice shrieks from somewhere inside the RV. Yuuma's arms shoot outwards as Gumi falls into his arms, her side seeping with blood. Her eyes loll back for a moment.
"God damn…" She hisses out as she drops like a weight in Yuuma's arms, eyes fluttering closed through her goggles.
~ ~ ~X~ ~ ~X~ ~ ~
"Master Yowane. It's been an honor to host you as a humble guest to our lovely… facility." A tall and very, very strong looking man with thick and broad shoulders declares, a thin smile on his face. Not a grin, nor a smirk, but a smile.
Haku cringes. Internally, cringes, that is.
"Yes. I understand you have the only Demon Child in possession of Demon's Crow currently, is this correct?" She asks.
"Yes. That is correct. What about you, Haku? What about your Demon Child?"
Haku feels like she wants to throw up, like someone has reached a clawed hand down her throat and ripped out her lungs. "Escaped, Master Hiyama." She replies in a deadpan tone.
"Such a shame." He claps a hand on her shoulder as he walks past her, sending chills like no other rocketing up Haku's spine. Rage seeps through her like venom as well as an emotion similar to fear. He turns to face her, his bland yet sharp brown eyes peering at her through his square rimmed glasses with a look of playful hate. "Don't worry, Haku." His voice drips like sap. "I'm not that low."
Sorry this update took so long, I'm pretty sick (again) -_-, so I wanted to get it out to you guys at today, the latest.
I'm not going to say much about this chapter but two things:
1. I know, I'm out of my depth with this romance writing, again, but I'd been planning this for a while and thought it was time.
2. Hint towards Hiyama and Haku's conversation: Analise, everything.
That's all I'm going to say! Favorite chapter pole next time, I promise! Hopefully everyone has found this new story address okay, All The Fragile Ones, Prt I was getting a little too long and I was confusing myself big time. Hope you like the new covers too!
Until next time-!
~Tiruneko ;3