AN: I had initially intended to have more action-y stuff happen during this chapter, but it got kinda long, so it just ended up as a kind of emotional bit of character study/relationship building, whoops! More of that on the next episode of: toxic fucking older brothers and the poor souls who like them.

002: salt in the wound.

August; 16 years.

Touya doesn't have a name for whatever it is that he's feeling, holding this small, broken girl in his newly-healed arms.

It's just so strange to see his skin without all their burns, purged clean of all those hills and valleys of twisted, bubbled flesh. As a child, when he'd still lived at home, he'd hidden those wounds under colorful bandages and long sleeves, pretending they weren't there, pretending they were some typical childhood injury. Just some skinned knees.

Just bloodied knuckles, after a fight.

(If only.)

It was a lot easier than stomaching what they were: festering, monstrous things that made his mother's eyes burn with tears when she looked at them. "Please, just stop," she'd whispered once, pulling down a box of children's plasters from the cupboard. Touya remembers feeling like the smiling faces peppering the bandage she'd chosen for the new weeping blister on his arm were mocking him.

So he'd tried his best to fix his mother with the same sort of cruel smile. Somehow, it made something awful in him feel better to see her shoulders sag, to see her deflate, to see her jerk back from him like he'd struck her hard, like he'd rubbed salt in a wound they both knew would never heal.

Touya was nothing if not stubborn; they both knew he'd never stop.

And Touya tries to be stubborn now as he holds this girl in his arms, feeling some type of way. He tries to tell himself a lot of things:

This changes nothing, and nothing will be different, and I will never see her again.

Touya doesn't have room in his life for complications, and he can tell by the way this girl has her hands tied up in his shirt that she is going to be a real-fucking-Complication, capital-C and all.

"Well," he says, softer than he means to, "Guess this means we're even, kid."

The girl – Suzume, he remembers – finally pulls her face away from his chest and blinks up at him with liquid eyes. He can still see tears gleaming in her pale, peachy lashes. "Even?"

"Yeah. I saved you. So you saved me, right? That means we're even," he tells her. "Clean. No debt."

Suzume's brow crinkles a little, as if she's thinking about this, mulling it over. "But I didn't do it 'cause you saved me," she says, eventually, and Touya can't help the fact that he finds the little defensive frown that crosses her face fucking adorable.

It's a particularly foreign observation, for him. One he finds he doesn't especially like.

So, by way of self-comfort, he needles a little more than he thinks she wants.

"Oh yeah? If that ain't it – then why?"

Suzume takes her time answering, choosing instead to peel herself away from him – something he notices she does with a slow reluctance. Her hands slip from his shirt to his arms as she tentatively finds her balance on still shaky legs, snuffling a bit in what he guesses is residual discomfort.

When she finally does answer, the defensiveness has crept into her voice. "I don't – I don't know." It's an awkward, artless lie. She stumbles over the words and dodges his gaze, peering down at her feet.

"Yeah, I don't believe that for a second." There's no judgment in his observation, no anger, and she looks back up at him with slightly widened eyes. "You know why, you're just scared I'm gonna think it's stupid. Tell me anyway."

"How do you know?" Suzume tries very hard to sound indignant, but the awe creeps unbidden into her face, and god, that's cute, too, and Touya almost laughs.

(Almost. He very stubbornly swallows it back.)

"'Cause I'm bigger than you, and older than you. I'm smarter than you, too, and you're real shit at lying." He takes a hold of her slender jaw with one hand and shakes her head back and forth gently, eliciting a short huff from her that sounds a little too much like a giggle to be genuine frustration. "But don't worry – I'll forgive you for lying to me if you stop being an evasive little twerp and just tell me."

Suzume sighs very dramatically, her breath a cool tickle against the ever-present heat knit into his skin. But when he releases her chin, the bravado fades from her quickly, and she's back to staring at the ground. "Sorry," she mumbles the word, and takes a long, deep breath. When she opens her mouth again, her confession tumbles out in a rush: "It's just – I've never met anyone who's quirk hurts them before! And – and… I'm not supposed to talk about mine, and it feels… it feels…"

She trails off for a couple of long seconds. Her voice warbles around the fading words as she lets the thought hang – before surging off into an entirely different direction. "And everyone who doesn't know thinks I'm quirkless and it makes me feel dumb, and the people who do know about it think it's really bad that it hurts, and I'm not supposed to do it, or I'm only supposed to do it at the right times – and that makes me feel just…"

It's like she can't bear to finish that thought, either. Instead, she looks back up at him, and her eyes are wet again. "But yours is kinda the same, and it hurts you, and – and you're not dumb at all! You're so… you're so cool!"

And she's just so earnest when she says it, so absolutely, positively effusive – Touya really can't help himself. His laughter cracks through him, sharp and unbidden, and fuck –

He aches with it.

"Don't laugh at me!" It's a whisper-cry through the renewed threat of tears, and her tiny hands lift from his arms, snarling up into tinier fists.

Cute, cute, cute. It's something he could have seen himself doing when he was younger, vicious in the face of such exposed vulnerability. His laughter gives way to a toothy grin and he catches her hands in his much bigger ones, leaning forward to blow sharply in her ear.

That's not something that would have worked on him. With blazing hands and gnashing teeth, Touya would have been feral with outrage, but Suzume is infinitely sweeter than he ever was, and it has his intended effect. Her offensive play crumbles immediately, the anger in her expression shattering into a much more workable bewildered surprise.

And of course Touya is quick to strike in the opening he's made for himself. "C'mon… don't be like that. You know I didn't mean it that way."

Suzume eyes him suspiciously. "But – how do I know that?"

Touya thinks a moment, simply observing her. Complicated. She's much too complicated. There's no room in his life for this; he knows he shouldn't.

And, yet…

"Well," he says, voice affecting a careful air of nonchalance. "I guess you don't know. And I can tell you I don't mean it that way, and maybe it's true. Maybe it's not. But…"

"But?"

"You know how earlier I knew you were lying?"

She looks less distrustful suddenly, and significantly more guilty. "Yeah…"

"I can teach you how to do that."

Suzume's eyebrows loft upwards, all but disappearing beneath her tousled bangs. "Really? You can teach me how to know people're lying?"

Touya just cannot imagine being so unguarded around a stranger, not when he was her age and certainly not now. Her excitement is so palpable he can feel it himself, a current that gets into him, prickling white hot in his blood.

Unlike her, though, he's excellent at self-control. "Really."

Her eyes seem so bright, as if lit from within. "Promise?"

"Well, I promise I'll try, anyway," he says, and even though it's a complication he thinks he'll regret, he means it. "The rest kinda depends on how well you do."

The smile that blooms across her face is as warm and bright as any flower he's ever seen – so warm and bright he wonders if it might just catch fire and burn.

Oh, well, he thinks.

He's used to that, after all.

October; 16 years.

Touya doesn't really remember how many months it's been since he'd woken up from his apparent three-year coma in that nameless hospital surrounded by even more nameless faces. The days have fallen away, and then the weeks, too – so what meaning could a month have? He'd tracked it loosely by the weather, by the proliferation of salary men and school children that spilled into the streets, thronging thick and congested in the subways. Weekday, and weekend. They were the only things that mattered, and even then only just.

But as for the specifics of it? As for whether it was a Monday or a Thursday, whether it was the second week of the month, or the last – all those things had quickly become unimportant, like so much background noise he couldn't be assed to discern when the riotous cacophony of survival and anger was so fucking loud.

Suzume is different, though. And Suzume changes everything.

Of course he tries to tell himself she won't change anything. Tells himself there's nothing special about her besides the obvious benefits her quirk affords him, because Touya is nothing if not stubborn. Her convenience outweighs the potential complications of her very obvious fast-growing attachment to him; anyone in his position with even a shred of cunning and an inclination towards self-preservation would come to the same conclusion and make the same choices. They'd take the same risks.

Abuse the same opportunities.

Had Touya's father not done the same thing when he'd sought out Rei, desperate to compensate for his own short-comings in whatever terrible way he could manage? For all his chaotic fire and bluster, Endeavor had always been dangerously – and, since Shoto, successfully – pragmatic.

And while Touya hates the man, he knows he is also still very much Endeavor's son.

Touya imagines his father viewed his family – his wife and his children both – as a means to a very specific end. He imagines his father had told himself that his family wouldn't change anything in his life, too – told himself that they were all meant to be neat little cogs in the machinations of his neat little plans. Unobtrusive. Inoffensive.

And even though Touya knows very well how all that fucking turned out, he tells himself the same lies when it comes to Suzume. She is just compensation for his weakness. She is the means to a very specific end. She is a neat little cog in his neat little machinations.

But of course, that's not completely true. And as much as Touya wants to be surprised, he isn't.

(He knows how all that fucking turned out, doesn't he?)

So, despite Touya's best efforts to the contrary: things change.

Time becomes real again. No longer does he float through the days, aimlessly trying to survive. The months mean something again, and the weeks, and the days, too – those tangible things come back into his life because her life has a set schedule. And it's all so damnably inane, so normal, and that's so different from the transient life he's been living.

There's school, of course, and then she has music club on Monday and Wednesday and Friday. After school, Suzume bounces between two of her hard-working mother's acquaintances, a pair of young housewives who both have boys in Suzume's homeroom. They take turns minding her for a few hours, keeping her in their homes or at the park with their sons, feeding her dinner, looking after her.

And though they seem genuinely invested in her well-being, they don't look after her well enough.

It makes sense, Touya reasons; it's a safe enough neighborhood. So when Suzume tells them she wants to go home early – alone – or that she wants to linger at the park when they're preparing to leave for the evening – pleads with them again that she really wants some more time alone – they always smile. They're always indulgent. They always let her. And through the cracks in their vigilance, it's an easy enough thing for Touya to slip in.

"Poor thing," Touya had heard the blonde woman whisper to her dark haired friend once. They'd been passing by him on the path leading out of the park while he made his way in, the pair of them trailing a considerable distance behind their bickering sons. "I imagine the separation is just so hard on her and her mother both. It's no wonder she wants time to herself."

If they'd noticed him, they gave no indication. Since meeting Suzume, he'd found it was infinitely easier to skirt people's attentions. What was a little facial scarring on a boy in their society, after all?

It is certainly less obvious than the burns had been.

Convenient, he'd thought at the time. So convenient.

It's the same thing he thinks every time he finds her alone at the swings, or down by the canal, or lurking alone in the dark shadows of the darker trees, always waiting for him. The same thing he tells himself when he finds her smiling so needy and so eager and so happy, when she flings herself into him and tangles her arms around his waist.

Convenient, he tells himself as he cups the back of her head and holds her against his chest in some half-attempt at a returned hug. Convenient, he tells himself again when she looks up at him, stars in her wide, gleaming eyes, as if he is the one and only thing in the whole world worth looking at. Convenient, he tells himself once more, letting his hand ghost her hair as he smiles down at her – and one time more, convenient, convenient, convenient, he swears –

As he tries very hard to remind himself that this is entirely about her usefulness, and nothing else.

November; 8 years.

Suzume's new friend – her new big brother – is so, so cool.

Suzume has never met anyone as cool as him, and besides that, she's absolutely, positively sure that no one else has ever met anyone as cool as him, either. These things are as factual to her as a blue sky on a cloudless day, as certain to her as the idea that every cat she will ever meet will always be the cutest she's ever seen, and oh, oh, oh she wants so, so bad to tell everyone about him.

She wants to brag about him so much.

Neither Katsuki or Izuku have older brothers; they're both only children, same as her, and she feels special knowing she has something like that now, that she has something they don't have. Being an only child is boring, she thinks – boring! She's always wanted an older brother – tall and lean and tough. Fearless. Cool. She knows this is how older brothers are supposed to be; she's seen them on television, in movies, in games. She'd even told her mother she wanted one, once!

"Well," her mother had said, smoothing Suzume's hair back from her face, a little sad and a lot apologetic, "I'm really very sorry, but it's a little late for that. You're my first, after all – so you'd have had to bear the burden of being the big sister if I had more. But you're my first, Suzu-chan, and you will always be my last."

Suzume hadn't understood why her mother was sad or apologetic, and though Suzume had been a little sad herself, she'd resigned herself to an older-brotherless-life. That was just how things worked, after all. Who was she to argue with cold, hard facts?

("It's not so bad," her mother had told her, pressing a kiss to her forehead. "It means you'll always be sure you're my favorite.")

But her mother had probably been wrong, because Suzume is mostly sure she has an older brother, now. And he is tall, and lean, and tough just like the older brothers on TV are, and he is so, so cool, and Suzume feels cooler just for knowing him. It's like she is somehow, by proxy, taller, and leaner, and tougher, all for knowing him.

Like some of his coolness has rubbed off on her, and left her better for it all.

And now when Katsuki picks on her mercilessly for being quirkless – when his hands light with those horrible snap-crackle threats he aims at her and Izuku as he chases them across the playground, his laugh wild and high and stupid – she wants so badly to tell Katsuki that her cool-mysterious-older-brother is going to beat the absolute tar out of him. That he's going to kick his ass. That her big brother is most definitely going to make him cry the way Katsuki makes her cry.

(But of course she can't – )

And it's such a double-layered indignation! Even before her cool-new-older-brother, Suzume has always wanted to push Katsuki back. She has always wanted to yell: she isn't quirkless! She's never been! And it's not like it's bad to be quirkless, because Izuku is so nice, so kind and so good to her, so good even to Katsuki – who, she's come to determine, absolutely does not deserve it!

But it's not even like she's actually quirkless, it's just some stupid lie she has to tell, some dumb secret she has to keep – and she's always wanted to scream when Katsuki tells her that she's weak, because she knows she's not.

She's always wanted to scream when he tells her that she's helpless, because she's sure she's not!

But now Suzume has two secrets to keep, and for once in her life, Suzume is thankful she's had practice guarding them.

(She's really not sure her new older brother is a secret she could keep, otherwise.)

He'd made her promise not to tell anyone that first night they'd met, but even if he hadn't, she's not stupid like Katsuki tries to claim she is. Her mom has told her about strangers. Her aunties, too! She's learned about that at school, and her father hadn't even wanted her to attend that for fear of who she might meet. Degenerates, he'd said. Something-something-no-child-of-mine, he'd said. But where once she might have viewed strangers as most definitely dangerous with all the same conviction that she regards the color of a cloudless sky and a cat's promised appeal, she's long since filed that judgment away under 'debatable, but probably really wrong' in her mind.

Because how could it possibly be true now that she's met him?

But she knows enough not to say anything about him. What if they made her stop seeing him?

(The thought makes her tummy hurt so much.)

Because Suzume's new older brother is the best-most-awesome person she has ever met, and she tells him so at every opportunity – at least when she feels brave enough to, anyway. It always makes her feel sort of bashful to say out loud, so she doesn't say it as often as she wants, as often as she feels she should. But she still does. She still manages!

And when she does manage to overcome that heavy don't-make-a-fool-out-of-yourself-feeling in her chest, it's always worth it. When she manages, he always cracks a rare smile at her, lazy in a way that reminds her of a cat's slit-eyed contentment. It feels special. It feels just-for-her. He doesn't smile that way very often, in the way where she can feel it warm in his bright and sometimes scary eyes. He's always warm – it's because of his quirk, he tells her one brisk November evening, wrapping his summer-hot fingers around her frigid hands in the cold, nippy air – but it's not a heat that finds his eyes almost ever.

So Suzume is always really proud when she can help it along.

(Because she wants so much to make him as happy as he makes her.)

December; 16 years.

"I just don't think it's possible," Suzume mumbles dejectedly as she watches the death sequence play out on the screen, her breath a thick, white plume in the periphery of Touya's field of vision.

Touya meets her in the park every night after she's cut loose from her minders, and tonight is no different. Under the now winter-stripped branches of the tree he'd first found her in, he sits cross-legged in a mess of leaves, leaning over a handheld game system she'd pushed into his hands as soon as he'd turned up. Her weight as she drapes herself across his back has become particularly familiar as the weather has gotten colder, her arms wrapped around his neck like a comfortably snug scarf.

He knows she does it entirely for her own benefit, of course – knows, and finds he doesn't mind. She wants to be warm. The cold weather means nothing to him; he's always so hot to the touch. It's a fact she seems to delight in when she presses her cold cheek to his much warmer one.

More than that, though, it's obvious that Suzume wants to be close to him – that she wants very much to touch him in some needy, childish way. That's something Touya finds he especially doesn't mind.

And god, even when she's whining, with her cheek pressed to his, he can feel the smile tugging sweet across her face. He knows that's something born of more than just warmth.

"I've died once, kid," Touya reminds her, pointedly neglecting to tell her that the loss is a calculated one. His fingers work the buttons of her pink handheld, maneuvering the titular character of a game she's been struggling with through the hazards of the level a second time. "Wanna tell me again how many times you said you died?"

When she doesn't answer with anything more than a little snort, Touya reminds her of that, too. "'Can you please help me do it,'" he pitches his voice high and silly, imitating the way she'd said 'please' by drawing it out, desperate in its pleading intonation. "'I died at least a thousand billion times!'"

"I don't actually sound like that!"

It's his turn to snort. "You absolutely fucking do."

"And I didn't actually die that many times!"

"Then why'd you say you did?"

Suzume is quiet while she considers this. "'Cause… Hmmm. 'Cause I really wanted you to know I needed your help real bad?"

Touya smirks, a flash of teeth in the reflection of the screen as it goes dark during a scene transition. "Sounds like something someone who'd died a thousand billion times would say."

The groan Suzume makes is one of over-exaggerated agony. "It was only actually like – ten or maybe twenty times or something!"

"Ten or twenty times a thousand billion? You're worse than I thought."

"Stop," she bleats, drawing out the word in childish agitation, a habit he somehow finds both endearing and obnoxious in equal measure. "You know that's not what I mean!"

"I'll stop when you quit giving me easy openings to get you like that, then," he tells her, fondness quirking in the corners of his lips as he launches the game character through a series of difficult jumps with ease. "Gotta be better than that around me. You're like fresh blood in the water, kid, all the damn time."

If Suzume has anything smart to say in retaliation, she keeps it to herself as her attention shifts back to the screen, watching him get closer and closer to the boss that had ruined him only a few minutes before. "Oh, oh," she breathes, clearly excited. "You're getting closer!"

"I am," he agrees, and then, without missing a beat: "So, wanna make a bet?"

He can feel her perk up with interest. "A bet?"

"A bet."

"What kinda bet?"

"If I can get you past this boss, I get to ask you any question I want and you gotta answer it."

Suzume mulls over this briefly, and when she speaks again, her voice is guarded. "Any question?"

Touya manages to be both emphatic and indifferent. "Any question."

Against his back, Suzume stiffens, clearly uncomfortable.

It's been almost four months since they've met, and Touya has spent at least an hour with Suzume almost every night since. In that time, he's learned a lot about her, most of which he's had to pick apart on his own. While most of it has not been particularly difficult given how easy a read she is, it's still been more work than he'd expected of a child. Suzume, for all her obvious adoration of him, has remained surprisingly resistant to answering certain direct lines of questioning, anxiously rebuffing him with a profusion of guilty apologies every time.

He can't really hold it against her. Touya's got more than enough secrets of his own, and he's snubbed plenty of her questions with far less grace. But Suzume is only wilful, not cunning like he is, and Touya knows exactly how to sweeten the deal when he senses her obvious reluctance.

"I'll play fair, of course; if the boss kicks my teeth in again, I'll answer any question you want."

It's a lie. Touya doesn't really play fair.

But Suzume is just so trusting. The tension seems to bleed from her, her little limbs softening. "Really?"

She sounds so hopeful that Touya almost feels bad.

(Almost.)

"Promise," he offers her, because she likes those so much. Because he knows they work. "Any question you want."

And it's not like he's entirely unfair, really. He gives Suzume a chance to think about it, to gather the facts. Openly letting her observe how swiftly he moves through the level, he remains completely untouched by any of the enemies, neatly dispatching them without taking even a single point of damage.

Despite his skill at them, video games had never really been Touya's thing. When he was young enough to really get into them, the only thing he'd cared about had been living up to his father's plans for him – and, after his father had cut him loose of those expectations, Touya hadn't had much of a drive to do anything of his own accord but seethe.

No, video games had been Natsuo's thing. And even though Touya had often expressed disdain for the hobby in that holier-than-thou way of older siblings, Natsuo hadn't been deterred in the slightest.

So, after Natsuo had begged and pleaded for nearly two whole months, Touya had eventually relented – had opted, finally, to play the part of the dutiful older brother – and done what any older brother would have: he'd gotten good enough at them for the explicit, dual purpose of helping his younger brother out when Natsuo needed the help –

And so Touya could absolutely, completely, and thoroughly trounce him.

It's thanks to all that practice that Touya is able to crush the level now, fingers a blur over the buttons. With her chin propped up on his shoulder, head tucked against his neck, Touya knows Suzume sees how good he is. It's especially evident in the way she makes excitable little noises when he pulls off something difficult, when she whispers, "So cool," after he manages a risky play without a shred of hesitation or doubt.

But despite his generosity, she's not quite clever enough to put it all together.

Touya knows the only thing she's really thinking about is how quickly the boss had mopped the floor with him earlier.

Knows how desperately Suzume wants to know more about him.

(Knows how much people are willing to wager when they really want something.)

"Okay," she says, finally, sounding endearingly self-assured of her decision even as he takes out four enemies with a single move. "Deal."

So short-sighted, he thinks, affectionately, more than a little pleased with himself.

He's at the boss fight again in half a minute, and done with it in only a minute more. LIke the rest of the level, Touya takes no damage. The fight isn't remotely any kind of a struggle.

Suzume – poor thing – seems absolutely gobsmacked. It takes her through the end of level fanfare and halfway through the point tallying screen before she finally manages a strangled and indignant, "What?"

Touya knows he could have played it up, pretended that the fight was much harder than it was. He knows it's what he should have done, even – that luring her into the lie more completely has a better chance of pay-off than this cheap sucker-punch.

But even so, he finds he can't help himself; there's something terrible in him that really loves seeing her get so riled up – so absolutely incensed.

Touya is careful enough to save his progress before he switches off the system and sets it beside him – but not careful enough to not push his luck. Sometimes, even he wants for self-control when he wants something bad enough. "So, tell me again how many times you died?"

"You lied," she hisses, and when he meets her fury with laughter, she moves to push herself off of him.

But Touya is faster than she is, and he catches her wrists before she has a chance to untangle her arms from his shoulders. "Ah-ah," he says, tsking his tongue against his teeth. "We had a deal."

"But you lied – " Suzume is clearly livid, pulling stubbornly against his grip, and he can't blame her – but he can't take her seriously, either.

God, he thinks; she's just too cute.

Gathering up both her wrists in one hand, Touya reaches over his back with the other and grabs a fistful of her jacket. Before she even has a chance to realize what he's doing, he's pulling her up and over his head and then over his bent form until she's caught right-side up in his lap, a mess of thrashing, squealing limbs.

"I sure did," he tells her smugly, wrapping her up in his free arm to keep her from struggling free.

Suzume is prideful, and Touya is surprised to find he likes that. She fights against him for longer than he expects, pushing frantic and stubborn at the ground with her heels. The leaves crunch beneath the wild kick of her feet, tossed in a flurry into the air. Her desperation to claim some kind of leverage is admirable, he thinks, but it's impossible without the use of her arms. Touya, of course, has those pinned by his own hand in her lap.

There's really nothing she can do. As angry as she is, Touya is confident that she's not angry enough to use her head against his own.

"That's not fair," she cries out finally when she's all but exhausted herself in her ineffectual attempts at freedom. "That's not fair, not fair, not fair – "

"It's not," Touya agrees with her, and somehow, that takes all the fight out of her. He feels her heave a flustered sigh, feels her slump back against his chest like a marionette cut free of its strings. "It ain't fair, but I still gave you all the shit you needed to figure that out on your own. It's not my fault you still went straight for the bait."

"You did not – " Suzume already sounds more sullen than petulant.

"I did," he insists. "You watched me play through that whole damn level twice. Did you see me fuck up anything besides the boss even once? You see anything hit me?"

Suzume doesn't answer, and Touya knows it's because she realizes he's right and can't bear to admit it.

Prideful. Stubborn. So cute.

And he loves that about her so much because he wants to break it, he realizes. The temptation in him is an ugly, hungry thing.

"Gotta stop giving me all these openings, Suzu," he says instead, mock-soft. It's so hard for him not to pick at her, but even so, he's not stupid. He knows how to be sweet when he needs to be.

Knows how to be just sweet enough to off-set the edge.

"You've never used my name before," she says, so quiet it's nearly a whisper.

Touya hums. "Guess it's cause we're getting pretty close."

Leaning back against the tree, he pulls her back with him, letting his arms fall loosely around her. She doesn't fight it, easy-limbed too now, less limp and more relaxed. When she lets her head roll back under his chin, Touya wonders who the concession is for: herself, or for him.

He's surprised to find he can't really be sure which it is.

For a while, they simply sit together in silence. The park is entirely empty save for the two of them, and has been for hours. No one else ever seems to want to brave either the long nights or the cold. It's always a relief. Touya is selfish. He wants his time with her, and more than that, he wants her to himself.

Her fingers light on the backs of his hands then, ghosting feather-light across his knuckles. Tracing them slowly, up and down, up and down, they come to linger in the dips between his sharp bones, her skin a cool press against his own. Touya decides to pretend to be kinder than he is and save his ill-won prize for some other night. There will be more than enough time for questions later.

"Why do you pick on me?" Suzume asks suddenly, and she sounds so small, a small voice for a small girl. Sometimes – rarely – Touya forgets she's so young. "I really believed you."

It's Touya's turn to think before he answers. Out between the thin branches of the trees, the lights of the city stretch on in every direction, drowning out the gleam of all but the most stubborn of stars.

Before he'd met her, his future had felt as far away as one of those stars. A distant goal, cold and gleaming in the dark of his mind, burning much-too-bright some million miles away. It stubbornly refused to be smothered by anything. It didn't matter what he had to do. It didn't matter how long it would take him. He'd claw his way there, no matter the cost –

And Touya had never been more certain of anything in his life, even if he didn't have the first clue how to achieve it. He'd been unable to think of anything else, unable to do anything but survive. He had to keep living. He had to get older. He had to get better, be stronger. Anything to reach that far-away-star.

(Anything to finish it and finally snuff it out.)

He remembers telling himself Suzume wouldn't change anything. And she hasn't, really, he knows, not in any real overarching way. The stars are still there in the sky, twinkling and bright and proud, and he knows nothing about that has really changed.

Nothing about that will ever change.

But it's such a long road, such a winding, endless, tiring road that lays before him, knitting days and weeks and months and years together into one big, banal blur –

And at least those days have some other meaning, now.

Some days, he helps her with homework. Some days, he gives patient counsel over some absurd drama between her classmates that only children could actually give a shit about. Some days, he watches while she plays games, and some days, she watches him do the same. Some days, they lie together in the grass, a single pair of headphones between them, one bud for each of their ears, and he plays her songs he used to kind of like when he was younger.

Some days, when he's ugly to look at, skin red and cracked and oozing, she touches him and takes his pain away from him and makes it her own.

And he doesn't even ever have to ask for that. Suzume always wants to – wants to so badly. She begs for it. She wants so very much to make him happy, doesn't she?

I really believed you.

Touya knows he's hurt her. He knows he will continue to hurt her. He also knows the only reason he's been able to hurt her is because of how much she likes him.

Because that's what love is, he thinks, frowning until the lights of the city and the stars both become blurry and indistinct.

An open wound you let someone salt.

"'Cause I like you," he says, simply.

He doesn't say, because I'm selfish, or because I'm cruel. Doesn't say, I'm used to hurting people who love me. Doesn't say, I'm especially good at hurting the people I love.

But all those things, he realizes, are true, even if he wishes the first one – the only one he's spoken aloud – was a lie.

Suzume lapses back into silence, completely still in his arms, little fingers settled between his knuckles. The seconds tick by, slow and empty, and then, finally, she says: "It was really cool that you didn't get hit at all."

The reverence in her voice hits him like an unexpected blow to the jaw and a sweet kiss to his cheek, all at the same time.

(Salt in the wound, he thinks, and grits his teeth.)

"Oh yeah?"

When she goes to worm her cool fingers between his own, he lets her, looking down at the way their hands knit together. "Yeah," she whispers. There's another pause, and then, almost shyly, she asks, "Are you smiling?"

Touya is terrible. He is awful. He is rotten from the inside out, and it is nothing she can ever touch or will away, not for all the sweetness in the world. Something like guilt claws at him, but its claws are as small and ineffectual as her little fingers, unable to do anything unless he allows it.

And he will never allow it.

Instead, he closes his eyes against the landscape of the city that stretches out behind the walls of the park. Closes his eyes against the glare of the stars.

The stars will always be there.

But sometimes, he thinks, it's nice to pretend.

"Yeah," he lies, too easy. Always too easy. It's always been easy. "Yeah, I am."