A/N: I was six and a half thousand words away from finishing NaNoWriMo, and procrastinating by rewatching Darker than BLACK. So I thought, hey! I like this show! I like this pairing! I should write more post-finale fic for them! So I did, and here it is.
Warnings: incest (Hei/Bai), spoilers, sad neglect of Yin which I promise to make up at a later date.
Enjoy!
xxxxx
midori
xxxxx
The more she learns about Contractors, the less she believes.
xxxxx
It seems so terribly anticlimactic, coming back to her apartment and making dinner after her world was nearly destroyed.
China-style fried rice and dumplings. She doesn't even notice what she's cooking until she's almost finished, and then her mind makes one of those funny quantum associative leaps. She drops the spatula and tries desperately to suck in a breath. Just one. That's all she needs. Her lungs feel like iron in her chest.
The man named Li is dead.
Not dead dead, of course. Just dead in the way that means she'll never see him again, and nor will anybody else who knew him by that name. It's not the kind of dead most people think of when they think of death but in a way it's almost worse than that kind. Really dead people don't care about being forgotten, after all. They don't care about anything at all.
Li Shengshun isn't quite dead enough not to care.
At least, so she thinks. It isn't like she really knew him at all. Contractors are liars. They can put on faces that can fool any professional actor. They are so close to human that even humans can't tell the difference. Or so they say.
The person she knew as Li Shengshun may not have existed at all. Perhaps he was just a puppet mask, dancing around at the calculating will of the Contractor behind him.
Everything she's learned about them since the Saturn Incident tells her that this is how it is. He was never real, she was an idiot for being fooled, time to move on and devote the time she spends trying to figure him out to something productive.
Like eating dinner.
With a sigh, Misaki picks the spatula off the floor and cleans it off in the sink, the water cool and clear over her fingers.
She imagines a flash of violet in its tumbling flow for a split second, but when she blinks it vanishes.
xxxxx
He dreams of Xing.
Contractors do not dream, but he is not a Contractor, and no amount of pretending will change the truth of that.
He dreams.
In the dream, it is the first time they've met, though his rational mind insists that it didn't really go this way.
She is very small, her eyes shifting mistrustfully over their surroundings, automatically searching for escape routes and possible weapons. He wonders what sort of life could give such eyes to a mere child, forgetting that he is still a child himself.
She is nine. He is twelve. Their mother, if she is to be believed, tells them they are siblings, and must care for each other from now on.
Then she walks away, her white-coated back disappearing swiftly into the drifting mists.
It begins to rain.
He looks down at her.
The dream ends.
xxxxx
In the mail thirteen days later, there is an anonymous letter.
Anonymous, meaning that the name and return address on the envelope are obviously false (a character and location from one of Disney's silly movies, if her childhood memories serve her right). There is nothing anonymous about the letter itself-- the fact that it's written entirely in sloppy hiragana, the poor grammar, the beer stain in the upper left corner, and the flippant tone of it scream April more than loudly enough.
Hi Misaki,
The vultures are after your friend Raven. He needs a safe place to chill for a while, his wings are getting pretty tired, freakin' weakling.
Drop me a note in the usual place!
Cheers,
Starling
For a few minutes she can only reread it over and over again, her chest tightening painfully with every word until she can't take anymore.
Then she throws it down on her coffee table, sits down on the couch, and thinks.
Raven is obviously Li-kun. She knows logically that Li is not his name any more than Raven is, but that's what label her mind has attached to him and that won't be easily changed.
The vultures can be nothing but the Syndicate. She knew that much already from logical deduction-- he foiled their plan to eradicate the Contractors from the earth, destroyed their extraordinarily expensive Saturn System, and took a lot of extremely sensitive information with him when he went rogue. It makes sense that they would want him dead.
What doesn't make sense is that this missive came to her. She works for the Syndicate, though indirectly. She is, in every logical sense of the word, enemy territory. He has to know this. He's a Contractor. Logic is their prerogative.
Perhaps he prescribes to the idea that the safest place to hide is right under the enemy's nose, where they'll never think to look? Personally, she thinks that's a stupid idea, but maybe it makes sense to him. Perhaps he has some alternate agenda. Perhaps he thinks she knows something that will be useful for him, or he needs to use her connections for some sort of plan.
Perhaps, she thinks then, and is stunned by the thought, he simply has nowhere else to go.
Evening Primrose is decimated, and want him dead in any case for thwarting their plan as well. MI-6 and the CIA are both under the Syndicate's thumb.
Essentially, he has screwed over every major power in the entire world, and those people who might have offered him sanctuary in spite of their affiliations are all dead... except for her.
She keeps a pad of paper and a pen near her landline phone to write messages down on. It's the only paper in her apartment other than books. Moving with illogical haste since it's far too late to go out, she snatches them up and sits down at the dinner table to pen a return note.
Starling:
If you see a raven, tell him where he is welcome to roost. The vultures have no eyes in these walls.
-Sparrow
Misaki realizes she has no envelopes and resolves to buy some on the way tomorrow morning. For now, she needs to sleep. She is very tired.
Despite this, she stares at the ceiling for three hours thinking of him until finally dropping off.
She finds him again in her dreams.
xxxxx
He dreams of Xing.
It is the first time they meet. (No, it isn't.)
He is at school. High school. Sixteen years old.
She is a transfer student, young and flawless in an ironed shirt and pleated skirt. With a smile, she takes the seat beside him and asks to borrow his eraser.
He sees death in her eyes.
The dream ends.
xxxxx
There is more human traffic than she'd expected.
The flowers in her arms are cloyingly sweet. She told the florist what they were for, and he put them together without asking for permission-- dark red roses for mourning, tiger lilies for pride, baby's breath for everlasting love. When he told her what they meant she'd protested, but he'd met her eyes fearlessly and then she'd wondered if maybe psychics were real after all. This close to the Gate, anything was possible.
Tucked in among their stems is her note, now properly contained in an unmarked white envelope.
She wishes there were less people. This is such a private thing for her. It feels terribly vulnerable to do it in front of so many impersonal, cold faces, but she has work to do and not much time.
"Rest in peace, November," she whispers, and lays the bouquet down, against the wall and out of the way.
Misaki steadfastly ignores the aching of her heart and walks away.
xxxxx
He dreams of Xing.
It is the first time they meet. (No, it isn't.)
A party, once again in high school, lights dim and air reeking of alcohol. They sit in a circle with an empty brown bottle in the middle, spinning and reflecting the lights into their blinded eyes.
She smiles when its neck stops facing him, and leans across the space between them, her arms pressing her small breasts together visibly under her thin white shirt.
Helpless to do anything else-- it is a dream, only a dream-- he leans in to meet her, his stomach alight with butterflies.
She tastes of death.
The dream ends.
xxxxx
Two days later, another letter.
Hi Misaki!
Have passed your message on to Raven, he is very relieved, thinks you're the coolest person ever (make him buy you stuff!). I think you're pretty cool too. Vultures are very nasty birds. Sharp beaks. I wouldn't want to mess with them.
~Starling
Despite herself, Misaki grins. She sincerely doubts Li-kun thinks she's 'cool,' but there is a warmth spreading in her chest at the thought of his relief at knowing he is welcome in her home.
Running away gets tiring after a while, she's sure.
Out of the blue, she remembers sitting with him in a baseball park, waiting for impossible stars on a rainy night, wishing she had the courage to tell him she liked him. Like a silly schoolgirl. Oh, he was such a good actor, but she wonders if sometimes he doesn't inadvertently tell the truth when he lies.
When you're lost, I think you trust your instincts and act.
Putting her hands over her face, she lets herself cry for what she's lost and what she might still be able to save.
xxxxx
He dreams of Xing.
It is the first time they meet (no, it isn't, but it is one of the times they meet and it is true, all true, even the dream isn't lying this time).
It is dark. The jungle is all around them, pungent and damp and full of enemies with unknown weapons.
With her voice she calls him brother, but with her hands she calls him lover, and he has never been able to tell her no.
This is how he knows that Contractors can feel.
She says his name on a hitched breath and he hears death and love and everything in between.
The dream ends.
xxxxx
For seventeen more days, nothing happens.
The suspense is awful but she's a tough cookie, raised on unsolved mysteries and fruitless pursuit. She knows how to calm her nerves and accept that she does not live in a story, a climax and denouement are not mandatory for real life, and that she may never know the outcome.
That doesn't mean she hates it any less.
She wakes, showers, brushes her teeth, eats a spartan breakfast of fruit and toast, goes to work, works on cases about Contractors who are not BK-201, has lunch with her subordinates, works some more, heads to the gym to sweat out her frustration, goes home, cooks herself dinner, reads a little, and goes back to sleep. It's a comforting routine that distracts her from the fact that she hasn't heard from him or April or anyone at all outside of her own workplace.
On the evening of the seventeenth day, she comes home, cooks dinner, and sits down to read a little. This week she's reading The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge. Her penchant for silly childish fantasy books is something nobody but Kanami knows about. Kanami and Alice, but Alice is dead.
The book is lovely, full of geraniums and gentle ghosts and delight.
She almost doesn't hear the polite knock at the door. Then she thinks she's imagined it, strung so tightly by wishing.
But no, when she sits up and pays attention, there it is again, soft and self-effacing.
"Li-kun," she whispers, and almost kills herself stumbling over her own coffee table in her rush to get to the door.
And when she opens it, there he is, wearing an embarrassed smile and an unfamiliar dark blue jacket. His hair is wet from the rain.
"Sorry to intrude," he says, like he's some ordinary guest come to stay the night on his way to somewhere else.
The urge to hug him is overwhelming. She swallows it and steps out of the way to give him room to enter. "It's good to see you again," she says instead.
He takes his shoes off and lines them up meticulously in the corner of her entry, out of the way.
It's strange to her that he still acts like this, even though she knows what he is. Contractors act out of self-interest, and that alone. Perhaps it is in his interests to be terribly polite to her-- she is letting him stay with her, after all, a wanted fugitive-- but all the same it bothers her. Is he doing it habitually because the false persona he has created for himself would do this? Or is he doing it because he genuinely wants to? She's overthinking things, she knows, but she can't help it. It's impossible to tell with him what it real and what is false. She's a detective. It's natural.
"I'm sorry, I've already finished dinner," she tells him with an apologetic grin. "I'll make you some more."
He blushes and shakes his head. "Don't concern yourself. If it's all right, I'd be happy to cook my own food and repay you for what I use."
"Are you a good cook?" she asks, truly curious.
He scratches his head. "Well, I suppose," he admits self-consciously.
Of course he wouldn't say he was a wonderful cook. She wasn't sure what she was looking for, asking that question. A hint of the cold confidence of BK-201, perhaps? She should know better than to expect him to slip up like that. He's a professional.
"In any case, you're welcome to anything I have," she tells him directly, gesturing broadly towards her kitchen. "Don't hold back."
"Thank you very much," he replies politely, and is echoed by the loud rumbling of his stomach.
Unable to hold back, she laughs until she cries.
As it turns out, he's a fantastic cook.
xxxxx
He sleeps on her couch, and dreams of Xing.
It's the first time they meet (no, it isn't, but once again it is true).
A jungle, at night, a sea of blood around her thighs. Floating bodies with staring eyes, illuminated by false stars.
She turns to face him and he can see despair in her face and the taut lines of her neck.
The water is sickeningly warm as he wades through it, splashing red stains all over his uniform. He gets there just in time to catch her as her contract comes to claim its due.
She is sticky with blood. His hands slip in the death coating her like a second skin.
In sleep, she looks almost innocent.
The dream ends.
xxxxx
When Misaki wakes in the morning, he is gone.
Though she hadn't really expected anything else, it still hurts. She had hoped he would stay, have breakfast with her, make her laugh before her day starts. It's selfish, so very selfish, but she spends her life being selfless so she thinks maybe it's permitted to wish for something this small.
She goes to work. Another Contractor is dead after burning a city park down around him. She wonders what he felt as the conflagration spread out from him, leaves and branches charring to ash as the darkness came for him, death his last rebellion against the illogical world he lived in. Was he sad that there was no place for him in his own life? Was he glad to at last be free? Did he care at all, or was it just a calculated attempt to send a message to the public?
It bothers her that she will never know, but she has had a lifetime to learn how to deal with this exact frustration.
The case, if it can be called that, is short and simple: find out what the Contractor was working on, just for the records. Since he's dead and the police are in the Syndicate's pocket, she doesn't have to find out much more than that. It makes her chafe at the bit to only go that far, but she knows that before she ever managed to find anything significant about the Syndicate she would be out of a job and starving on the streets.
If she wants to help people, she has to bear with unfair things like this.
Privately, she still allows them to make her sick. The thought of losing her soul to her job is what terrifies her most. Even if she can't say anything about it to anyone else, she takes comfort in the fact that her heart still aches for the victims caught in the middle.
She is still human, after all.
xxxxx
He breaks into her apartment in the middle of the day, exhausted, and falls asleep on her bed.
It smells of her, almonds and shea butter.
He dreams of Xing.
It's not the first time they meet. It's somewhere in the middle, but it's true and it hurts.
The grass in the clearing is slick with blood, stinking in the heat even though it's the middle of the night. She's puking into the bushes, weeping and heaving and shaking all at once, not because she's guilty but because death sickens her. It's logical, a motion that must follow life in order to maintain balance and order, but she has never understood why it must be so messy, or smell so awful.
He kneels beside her, holds her hair out of the way. It is greasy with sweat. There are no baths out here, no sweet clean sprays of water to wash their sins away. They must marinate in the filth of their cruel existence until those with power tell them they may rise out of it and pretend they are more than animals.
When she is finished, she turns around and meets his gaze with dead eyes.
Then she kisses him, her mouth sour with vomit, and again he tastes the death in her.
He loves her more than words.
The dream ends.
xxxxx
He is there when she comes home.
Curled on her couch with his hands protecting his chest instinctively, he looks as though he is asleep. She knows better. He may have been asleep before her arrival, but he is not asleep now. His hand is half a moment away from the knives at his hip.
"It's only me," she announces to dispel any fears he might have. If Contractors feel fear, that is. She still isn't quite clear on what they feel and what they don't. "I bought groceries. You're a much better cook than I am, so if you feel so inclined--"
He laughs softly and turns over to sit up. "There's no fooling you, is there, Misaki-san," he says.
It's the first time he's called her by her first name. Her heart clenches-- a schoolgirl with a crush-- and she turns away from him to hide her blush. "Just don't make it too spicy," she continues, "spicy foods don't agree with my stomach."
"Understood," he says. "Sit down and relax. I'll take care of everything. It's the least I can do, considering the generosity of your hospitality."
She sits down. The couch is still warm. She doesn't know why, but she realizes that she'd expected him to be cold, cold as a Contractor's logic. It's stupid. His body is human, even if the way his mind works is alien. Blood runs hotly through his veins just as it does through hers. His skin is warm just like hers.
He is too occupied with locating her skillet to notice her blush, but she turns away to hide it anyway.
xxxxx
He dreams of Xing, though he calls her Bai.
A city. All the signs are in an unfamiliar language, but they manage to find a restaurant and order food. When it comes, it's far too spicy, but they are ravenous enough not to care.
She laughs. It's a real laugh, from her heart. They tell him Contractors have no souls, but he sees one in her smile, in the brittleness of it.
They are only a day away from carnage and darkness and blood on their faces, a tiny constellation of moments shielding them from the truth of what they are.
She sticks her tongue out, making a face, telling him the food burns her tongue, how can they eat this?
With a finger he could shatter her, but it's not her he wants to break. It's the world. And the world, unfortunately, is much tougher. It seems an impossible task, to protect her from everything that wants to tear her apart. Her own self is the most dangerous foe. She never speaks of it, but he knows how much she loves death even as she loathes it, all at once-- the quiet that comes after they fall, the brilliant streaks of light in the false sky when it's one of them under her blade, the harsh, clean edges of her power scything through the water to kill without touch, without sound.
They tell her to kill. She kills. It's the rational thing to do-- if she doesn't, they will kill her, and the last thing she wants is to smell her own death, to contribute to the revolting stench she so hates with the red sticky flood of her own blood. She tells no one how much she enjoys it but he knows. He knows everything there is to know about her.
She wasn't always like this, he remembers, but then remembers on top of that memory that yes, she was.
On the red-checkered tablecloth, their fingers are intertwined, sharing warmth in a world devoid of it.
The dream ends.
xxxxx
In the middle of the night, she wakes up, unsure of why. She doesn't need the bathroom. She isn't thirsty. She can't hear anyone breaking in.
Then she hears the harsh rasp of breath in the living room, on the other side of the wall past her feet, and knows what woke her. What to do about it, however, is still unfortunately a mystery.
Standing, she pulls her green silk housecoat off the hook on the door and draws it about herself protectively. Near the bottom, her white lacy nightie still peeps out provocatively, but she pretends not to notice it.
The window in her living room spills harsh orange city light over his stiff, trembling body. The brown blanket she lent him has fallen halfway off him and is spilling onto the hardwood floor. Barely a corner of it remains to cover him and keep him warm. Judging by the sweat on his brow, though, he's plenty warm enough without it.
A soft keening noise escapes his throat through his clenched teeth.
Misaki doesn't know what to do. She knows what he's capable of, and thus knows that touching him is probably not a good idea. His knives are still strapped to his hip even in sleep, so trying to wake him by calling out is also not wise. She could throw something at him, a pillow, perhaps, but then he might destroy the entire apartment before waking up.
There is so much pain on his face, his expression twisted so far that she could slot a coin through the furrow on his brow, which is a terrible thought but she can't help it since it's four in the morning. As she watches, indecisive, a tear escapes the tight prison of his eyelids and streaks silver down his cheek to drip onto her couch.
Before she even knows it, her mind is made up. Clenching the housecoat a bit tighter around herself as though it were as bulletproof as his green trenchcoat, she hesitantly walks over to the couch and kneels on the hard floor beside his head.
"Li-kun," she whispers, understanding on some level that she is risking death but not really comprehending ithe concept in the surreal darkness of pre-dawn. "Li-kun, you're having a nightmare. Wake up."
There is no change in his face or the tension of his muscles-- he is ready to snap, and she is rightfully afraid.
Even so, she can't stand seeing this expression on his face. Though she's still too close to sleep to properly examine why that is, the fact remains. "Li-kun. Li-kun. Please wake up."
Tentatively, she reaches out to touch his shoulder.
His reaction is immediate and shocking even though she'd been expecting it. The keenly sharp edge of his blade is a hair's-breadth from her throat. She can feel the chill from it. His breath is harsh and defensive.
"It's only me," she whispers, wondering why she isn't more terrified. "It's all right. It was only a nightmare."
"...Misaki-san?" he says at last, after a pause which seemed to last an eternity.
The dagger moves away from her throat, and she realizes that she's been holding her breath as she sucks in a deep, desperate lungful. He's looking away from her, out the window at the orange glow of the city lights and the dull lying stars.
"I'm sorry," she says awkwardly, "you were... I mean, you seemed to be in distress. It woke me and I wasn't sure what to do."
His gaze returns to her, and it is cool and startlingly honest. "I am sorry for waking you," he says.
"It's all right," she replies formally before thinking about it. Suddenly, she feel terribly vulnerable, clad only in her insignificant layers of silk and lace. "I'm... going back to bed, then. Let me know if you need anything."
Though she knows it's impossible, it seems to her that for a moment his eyes literally darken in colour, swim in shadow.
"I will," he promises softly.
Suddenly she knows that she will not get any more sleep than night, no matter how many breathing exercises she does. Even so, she makes a tiny habitual bow to be polite and shuts her bedroom door behind her.
All night she stares at her wall, painted a neutral shade of warm brown, and wonders if Contractors can dream after all, despite everything she's heard to the contrary.
xxxxx
When she leaves, he falls asleep again, and dreams of Xing.
The tree at his back is cold, her slumbering body in his arms is small and warm, and the stars overhead are fake. The purple sky stares at him insultingly, as though challenging him to name the difference between it and its predecessor.
If it could hear him, he would tell it-- the old sky was inconceivably larger, completely unconcerned with the tiny sparks of life on this backwater planet's surface. It was vastly aloof, comforting in its incomprehensible depth, reminding humanity whenever they dared to look of how amusingly miniscule and insignificant it is. This new sky is small and can only pretend towards such divinity.
He feels nothing but disdain for it.
She moans in her sleep, and he tightens his arms around her. This sky may record her destiny, but it does not dictate it. He will fight until the very end to keep her breathing, even if she doesn't smile for anymore.
This is what love means to him.
xxxxx
When she comes home, he has dinner ready for her, Chinese-style beef and vegetables and an entire pot of rice.
It's delicious.
She notices halfway through that the slight edge of discomfort she feels sitting at a table in her own home having dinner with him is very similar to the feeling she had back in high school during her one and only date with the president of the student council. Her stomach is in turmoil. Her neck is wrapped up in knots.
It's idiotic. She's half a decade away from all that silliness, and now is a bad time for it all to be revived, but it is what it is.
Kirihara Misaki, Division Chief of Foreign Affairs for the Japanese National Police Agency, has a ridiculous teenaged crush on a man she knows she knows almost nothing about.
"What was it like?" she blurts out suddenly, overcome by her desire to know more.
He stares at her, chopsticks halfway to his mouth. A clump of rice falls off, landing with an understated thud back on his plate in the middle of a miniature broccoli forest. "What was what like?"
"Becoming a Contractor," she continues, since there would be litte point to turning back now. "What was it like?"
The shadows fall over his eyes again, turning them an impossibly cold shade of navy, and he looks down and away from her as though trying to hide something she can't see anyway. "I..."
Before logic can intervene, she slams her palms flat against the table, startling him. She stares at him earnestly. "You can trust me," she says, wishing immediately that she didn't sound so desperate. "I mean..."
Abruptly, he snaps his gaze up from the wood grain of the table to meet hers. The intensity of it is shocking. She has to remind herself to breathe.
"I'm not a Contractor," he states flatly. "I inherited my powers from my sister."
Misaki stares. "Li-kun," she whispers, hating the sound of it even as it leaves her lips. He isn't Li-kun. However, neither is he BK-201. He has a code name, she knows, but she wouldn't feel any more comfortable calling by it than she is calling him by his alias. She is not willingly part of the Syndicate. She is not his coworker, his friend... anything, really. She has no right to call him by that name.
"Call me Hei," he says, and blows all the internal strife of a moment ago away.
"That's not your real name, though," she says, frowning because it's what her upbringing tells her she should do in this situation.
"No. I don't remember my real name."
She doesn't know what to say to that, so instead she heaps his plate with another helping of dinner. He thanks her automatically, like a robot, and she can tell that after his enormous revelation a moment ago he has protectively shuttered himself again. She doesn't blame him.
Not a Contractor?
Her mind races along that concept, fleshing it out as fast as it possibly can. If he isn't a true Contractor, then he does dream, as she was wondering the night before. If he isn't a Contractor, then he is capable of being swayed by his emotions, unlike a true Contractor who has them but does not factor them into their decisions. If he isn't a Contractor, then he has been acting like one-- killing like one-- all this time, without the benefit of a rational, guiltless mindset to accompany it.
It's the most tragic thought she's ever had. The tears start of their own accord, but even when she notices them burning her eyes she can't make them stop.
"What's wrong?" he asks with genuine concern.
"I'm sorry, " she says, and means a hundred different things by it.
By the look on his face, he understands.
xxxxx
He sleeps, and dreams of Xing.
When the dream begins, she is mere steps from him, in range of his arms.
However, when he tries to walk forwards and reach her, hold her, the mist intrudes from the borders of sight and obscures her from him. No matter how hard he runs forward, how much effort he puts into penetrating the white shield, it only thickens and pushes him back.
The last thing he sees before the mist hides her entirely is the wistful smile on her face, and the silver glint of tears on her cheeks.
The dream ends.
xxxxx
This time, it is her turn to dream.
The high-pitched whine of the Saturn System powering up is invasive, saturating her until it is all she can hear. She cannot see who the hands holding her back belong to, but they are strong as iron and even less merciful.
She opens her mouth to speak, to tell the truth, make them hear her, but only silence comes out.
They are going to destroy everything, destroy him, and there is nothing she can do.
Misaki screams and there is only silence.
xxxxx
"Misaki-san! Misaki-san!"
The slap across her face is a sharp intrusion into her dreamworld, as is the frantic voice accompanying it.
"Li-kun?" she whispers, reality slowly dawning on her with every breath.
His face wavers into focus, inches from hers, concern etched across his unremarkable features. Her arms ache with the unintentional strength behind his fingers' grip on them.
"Are you all right?" he asks, honestly concerned.
She nods, slowly, putting a hand to her head. "I'm fine. I'm sorry. It was just a bad dream."
The mattress tilts her towards him. She realizes that this is because he is sitting on it, bare inches from her in all her lace-clad, bleary-eyed glory, and blushes ferociously.
Seeing her blush, he apparently comprehends the situation and blushes as well. He looks left, she looks right, and together they wait for the humiliation to fade.
His goes first. Though she isn't facing him, she can see him looking at her in his peripheral vision, quiet and considering. She doesn't know what that means but if she's honest with herself, she knows she wants to find out.
"Your apartment is very cold," he notes.
It sounds innocent but she knows better, knows it for the plea it is. Reaching out, she pulls him down into the warmth her presence has created between the sheets and invites him to rest.
There's more than enough blanket for the two of them.
xxxxx
He sleeps, and dreams of all of them.
Xing was the first to love him, both childlike and jaded in her twisted adoration, but there were others and he does not forget.
Amber, who had also forgotten her original name, ever younger and more desperate to find love before she runs out of time. Her lips are cool on his, but the passion behind them runs insanely hot, far hotter than any rational Contractor should be able to produce. She makes decisions based on it, as well, which mystifies him even as he understands it. He makes decisions based on his love for Xing, but he is human, unlike her.
Yin, who loves him in defiance of the limitations placed upon her kind. She is a Doll, just a thoughtless machine in the form of human according to all the information granted him, but she loves, she loves deeply enough to refuse the entire world in his favour. She chose her false name over her real one for his sake. He does not forget.
There are others, as well, people who did not love him, perhaps, but cared enough to be remembered.
November 11, whose pride was a thing of beauty, who could face down death with a cocky smile on his lips, who knew his end was coming in advance and had the brightness of spirit to choose how it would go.
Nick, who shared his dream and his talent and the personality he might have had if his past had gone differently, who showed him the real stars in a place where they should not have been able to appear, who understood him better perhaps than anyone else still alive. In the dream, he is alive, though in the cold world of reality he knows Nick is dead.
Misaki herself, who is so beautifully earnest he can hardly stand it.
In the end, however, it is still Xing. Always Xing. She smiles and extends her hand for him and he has no choice but to take it and fall into the void where her heart ought to be. He knows it has only moved, but damned if he can find where she has hidden it this time.
She is so much smaller than him but holding her, he is lost.
The dream ends.
xxxxx
She dreams of nothing, content with what is.
xxxxx
In the morning, they wake together, faces inches apart.
There is no artifice in either of them. Misaki is not inclined to falsehood in any case, and he is simply too weary of lying to bother.
For a while, they simply meet each others' eyes.
Then she curls forward and tucks her head under his chin, her dark hair smelling sweetly of vanilla and hazelnuts. Her breath is warm and damp on his collarbones.
He could kill her in half a second if he wanted to.
He doesn't.
xxxxx
Before she can fully wake up, he leaves. It's a terrible habit of his, she thinks disapprovingly, but then she wonders what would he be without the mystery surrounding him and realizes that it's probably a good thing he never gives her enough time to get used to his presence.
She knows she's attracted to more than just that, but it's a big part of the initial pull, and she shouldn't be so eager to dispel that magnetism.
All the same, she's terribly curious to know just how much more of him she could love beyond the walls of lies and deceit he's built to protect himself. If there's anything at all true about the Li Shengshun persona, she suspects it's rather a lot.
There are countless layers of him she knows she has yet to uncover between the extremities of him she has witnessed.
And yet, lying there with no words clouding the air between them, for a moment she'd thought she understood-- they are both true, the assassin and the hapless student, as well as everything between them. Most people are never pushed hard enough to expand the borders of their selves, but he has been pushed, and is wider and deeper as a result.
In comparison, she feels hopeless shallow and two-dimensional.
The only comfort she has is that night after night, he comes back. Even if she is flat as paper, he finds some kind of safety or comfort in her.
She is not quite so pathetic for that to be enough for her. It does goes a long way towards easing her fears, though.
xxxxx
When he comes home, she is there already, asleep though it isn't even eight o'clock yet.
It must have been a hard day.
He hesitates for a moment, then decides. The covers are already warm from her skin, and she is warmer yet. She doesn't wake as he curls protectively around her, one arm carefully positioned around her waist.
When he sleeps, he dreams of Xing, but when he wakes he understands why, and the realization takes his breath away.
His dreams are the only place she still has power over him. Everywhere else she is already dead.
The love he feels will not die, but there is room in the human heart for more than one love at a time.
Misaki is not nearly as remarkable as Xing. She cannot change the world by merely wishing it different. She cannot destroy him with a word. She cannot ruin him with a smile-- at least, not yet-- but he loves her all the more for it.
It is the curse of humanity, to love so easily... and break so easily.
xxxxx
Her dreams are full of warm darkness and gentle quiet, and there is no pain in them at all.
xxxxx
This time, when he goes to leave, she wakes up and reaches out to catch him with sleepy fingers.
"Don't," she murmurs, her eyes not even open yet. "I'll make breakfast."
"No," he replies gently, then takes her face between his hands and kisses her firmly. Maybe she will remember this. Maybe she won't. Either way, it is done, a decision made. "I'll do it. You're a terrible cook."
She smiles, and unlike Xing's, it doesn't break his heart. "All right. Wake me up when you're... done."
A quick observation tells him that she's already fallen back asleep.
That she can sleep so easily while harbouring someone the most powerful coalition in the world wants to kill is a mark of her strength of heart. He knows she truly believes she could die to protect him, which is stupid, so stupid, so illogical, so stunningly human he can't help but love her for it.
He makes her eggs for breakfast. Scrambled. Just the way she likes them.
Stumbling into the kitchen in a pretty green silk housecoat, he knows she remembers when she walks right into him and wraps her arms around him, resting her cheek on his chest and breathing deeply.
It's nonsensical that he should be happy. The entire world is hunting him, he's endangering the one person left who is willing to shelter him, almost everyone else he's ever cared for is dead except for Yin, and he's sent her to Poland to be safe with her old piano tutor and will probably never see her again.
He should be destroyed by grief, but he isn't. Perhaps he's pretended to be a Contractor for too long.
Happiness is not the worst punishment for that presumption he can think of.
xxxxx
She wonders how long it will take for the Syndicate to stop chasing him. A month? Six months? A year? Six years?
Then she wonders if he will stay until they do, and finds herself hoping they never give up.
XxxxxxX
A/N: Seven thousand words later and this pairing still isn't out of my system. Be right back, sighing like a drama princess.