Notes: Debated on whether to upload this or not; it kind of lacks a real plot. It's sort of this attempted insight/focus on a slightly more intimate Shogo/Akane relationship. Might be a bit OOC because of that though...idk, I just wanted to write more Shogo/Akane and this is what happened. Maybe I should try an AU or something to get some new angle on this pairing, it feels like I'm revolving around the same theme too much. :/

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Winter in Our Bones

(there still remains the question of how long we will last)

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He is twenty-four when he takes her hand in his. Her hand is small and pale with bitten nails and everything is wrong about this situation, but she doesn't break eye contact when he closes his fingers around hers and he smiles as her decision becomes permanent.

He doesn't ask her if she is sure, doesn't ask her if she wants to say goodbye to her friends. He doesn't give her time to regret before he whisks her away like a magician, only the magic in his fingertips is realism and cruelty.

When he kisses her hand like a prince to his princess in a wordless declaration of something like love, she cracks a smile.

"You're a liar," she says, and his laugh echoes on the wind because she knows exactly who and what he is and lets him pull her into the darkness anyway.

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She holds a gun like a survivor but hesitates to pull the trigger because she isn't hardened enough to do so without remorse, but really, that's why he finds her interesting. She can break a man's ribs and look at a body without flinching, but she refuses to take a life. Guns make her nervous because they make that job so easy, and even when she's standing right in front of someone who has the potential to kill her she still is more concerned about the criminal rather than herself.

So instead, he plucks the weapon from her insecure grip and shoots her opponent for her, placing the gun back in her trembling hands when the job is done. The barrel is still smoking. There is crimson splattered against the wall like a macabre painting and Shogo's pristine white clothes seem wrong against the abstract art of death. He smiles at her expression and wipes a spot of blood on her cheek, leaving a small smear that she will later wipe away herself.

"You still need practice, Akane," he says, putting his hands in his pockets as he walks away.

"Taking lives is not a skill I want to perfect, Shogo," she responds obstinately as she trails after him.

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She's a bit of a slow reader, but only because she reads and rereads the passage until she's sure she fully understands it before continuing.

This is something he appreciates, because there is no point in having read something if meaning is not derived from it and that type of empty reading is more common than people think. What also pleases him is that she asks for his physical copies of novels, albeit hesitantly, because she knows they are impossibly rare antiques that he will not lend to just anyone.

He allows her to borrow them though. He is fond of the focus she pours into the words, of the way she turns the pages, of the discussions that follow when she is done.

When she slits her finger with the edge of the paper and winces, he smiles as he watches the blood well up from the cut.

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He does not remember his family, and perhaps once he thought of them but they are not necessary to him. He has long since needed another human being to depend on. His comrades or friends or partners, if they may even be called that, are simply tools that he has gathered in an attempt to break the world, and nothing more.

Yet on those sleepless nights, as he sits by the window and stares out at the night that is illuminated by artificial lights, Akane will bring him a cup of tea and sit down next to him. She doesn't speak unless he does, and sometimes they will simply pass the night in silence. More often than not during these nights, she will fall asleep leaning on his side.

Sometimes though, when things simply become too disappointing, he will lay his head on her shoulder and press his lips against her neck. His skin is cold against hers, cold like frost that clings to the petals of autumn flowers. She shivers, but doesn't protest. He never falls asleep like this, but he becomes aware of how delicate she despite the strength that courses through those thin veins of hers.

He wonders when the day will come that this slender neck of hers will break, because flowers never last long, particularly when they are being handled by winter's fingers.

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She was seventeen when he took her away, or stole/carried/snatched/kidnapped her or whatever the others wanted to believe. It didn't matter because in the end he took her away, and she let him take her hand and kiss her fingers even knowing that anything like that was done with the grace of a liar.

She turned her back on what society deemed heaven for a reason, because as she rose rose rose people fell fell fell until it felt like carnage in her wake and she couldn't bear watching the people (corpses?) being carted away without the chances that they deserved. Twice she witnessed murder and twice the crowd passed by like nothing happened and twice she ran, vomiting when she found solitude because she couldn't stomach the way the world worked. Twice she was the girl who called the police, and even though it was half an hour later when she was (barely) recovered, she'd been the only one to do so.

But then Shogo proposed change and despite the death in his reaper's fingertips, she let him poison her because in things were already heading towards a downward spiral, and the bone had to be rebroken before it could set and heal properly.

It had been a day of thunder and rain, and though his hands were like ice, she doesn't remember because hers were no different.

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On the third day when she is stricken with a high fever, Shogo visits her while she is sleeping. She looks haggard and unwell, and when he puts a cool hand on her head, she opens her eyes and her gaze is bleary. Something about the expression in her eyes makes him pause. He sits down next to her and puts his ear to her chest, listening to the steady rhythm of her heartbeat. She puts a hand to his head in a semblance of a hug, but a semblance only.

Collectively, he rarely touches her, and the opposite happens even less. Their actions now are like Eve's reach for the forbidden fruit, a deadly sin. But for now, behind closed doors that shut out the eyes of the world, it is permissible.

"Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once. Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, it seems to me most strange that men should fear; seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come." She quotes at him quietly, running tired fingers briefly through his hair. He has to smile at her memory even now, when she is ill and disoriented from medicine.

"It is not time yet," he replies, as he closes his eyes. Her chest rises and falls evenly, the heart within her ribcage beating steadily. Shogo is not worried for her; she is not in any danger and will get better in due time. Regardless, he feels that he will likely not want to be present when her heart stops.

When she recovers, that moment between them is not spoken of.

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She cannot focus on a single body part that conveys the most meaning; he speaks with more than words—his eyes, his hands. Makishima Shogo is a work of art, a living, breathing piece of beauty whose intent and meaning is hard to decipher. One could spend hours upon hours analyzing what he says and does, and though a satisfactory conclusion may be reached in the end the truth behind it is only known to the artist—himself.

He likes to watch her move, because her stride conveys strength and confidence—conveys the fact that life has given her legs and arms and a heart so that she can live, and she will use them to do so. She has purpose, one that is a bit different from his and just as strong even though she allowed him to take her with him. She is the true beauty in this false plastic world, one whose soul bears the splendor of life.

They are beautiful people.

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It's a horrible picture—him dying in her arms with blood all over their clothes.

Kogami Shinya had been too startled to move when she walked out of the shadows and kneeled down by the white-haired man. He'd pointed the gun at her but did not intend to shoot because he didn't know who she was and there seemed to be no malicious intentions.

"You're a fool," Akane says to Shogo, and the gold-eyed man chuckles. She grips his fingers before looking up at the Enforcer. "You're Kogami Shinya," she states.

The dark-haired man raises an eyebrow, silently questioning her identity. She understands, but doesn't answer, so he tries a different question. "Who are you to Makishima Shogo?"

Makishima laughs and Akane's lips twitch into the slightest of smiles, but again she does not respond.

"That man treasures no one," he continues as he narrows his eyes, because there seems to be some sort of intimacy involved by the way she holds him and his hands. "If you were looking for some kind of pretty relationship, you didn't get lucky."

At this she gives him an honest, genuine smile as she stares straight into his eyes, and Kogami is startled by the purity of her gaze.

"We were never beautiful together," she says, and before he can say anything else she whips out a gun and pulls the trigger. The bullet pierces his thigh and he falls to his knee—she is already in front of him and once she rams the gun against his head, he falls to his back and struggles to keep himself conscious.

"You've improved," he hears Makishima say.

"It was necessary," he hears the girl reply, and then his consciousness fades to black.

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When he wakes up, the air is cold, the sun has set, and the body is missing.

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A thousand miles away, a young woman supporting a taller man stands on the roof of a tall building. There are fresh bandages around his head and torso; she reaches out a hand and opens her fingers, letting the stained ones catch the wind like injured birds. They struggle to stay afloat before falling down into the dark heart of the city, reminiscent of flags riddled with bullet holes that are memoirs of ruined soldiers.

He kisses her fingers, but she doesn't look at him because she has long since known that everything he does is with the grace of a liar. When he presses his cold lips to her neck, she tries to control the involuntary shiver and fails, feeling him smile against her skin.

"You feared my death," he says, "Does death, a necessary end, not come when it will come?"

"It was not time," she says obstinately, and he laughs, the sound echoing in the wind.

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She takes his hand in hers and breathes on them, tries to breathe warmth into those icicle fingers of his. When she presses her lips to his fingers this time, it reminds her of the fading, cool heat of autumn before winter's reign.

He has the reaper's fingertips, poisoned and unhealable and he uses it with a knowing charm that brings other under his blanket before he suffocates them. She wonders if she is the only one left who stands outside his permafrost cage, the only one he dares to keep by his side even knowing that flowers don't last when they are handled by winter's fingers.

She takes his hand and presses it to her heart.

He doesn't say a word and lets his fingers grow warm against her body.