a/n: AU, OOC characters (especially N)

{diane young}

you torched a Saab like a pile of leaves
i'd gone to find some better wheels
four, five meters running 'round the bend
when the government agents surround you again

0.

They've been partners since the beginning of forever. At the end of the day, when all's been said and done, they will still have each other, battered or burned or bleeding.

Once, she was a little girl with a gun and too-wide pupils. Once, he was a little boy with a knife and a crooked grin.

Oh, how things have changed, but they still remain the same, weathering the weary progression of the universe with a stubborness that could almost be commended if it weren't so heartbreakingly beautiful and so breathtakingly sad.

i.

Sometimes, they like to get drunk and get high off of each other.

Her fingers will be twisted through his hair, his hands will be caressing and stroking every inch of her skin, and it will just be the two of them against the world.

(She plants kisses on his lips that taste like vodka and cigarette smoke.)

ii.

They've both been alone for so long until they found each other, and in that moment, it was like something clicked in their heads and a new chemical sensation of pretty love and dark desire was born, unfathomable to others except for them, like their own burning language.

When they connect, it's a feeling more electric than methamphetamines burning through their bodies, more wild than looking out at the world and preparing to jump without a parachute to guarantee a safe landing, more dangerous than an interrogation where one of them is tied to a chair with fifty angry, armed mobsters about to pull their fifty equally angry triggers on their very large, very deadly guns.

Because the third one has happened before, and they have the scars to show it, but still, they laugh like schoolchildren.

They never really did grow up.

iii.

They're on a yacht. Stolen, of course, because like kids, they can't resist grabbing what isn't theirs. It's a lazy August evening, and the seas roll pleasantly underneath them. She's in a bikini, he in a pair of black swimming trunks, his tea-green hair splayed on the floor. Beside them are pina coladas, made with the ship's tequila, ice, and other assorted ingredients. There's even two mini paper umbrellas and a wedge of lime for each glass.

She rolls over, one suntanned, dusky arm sliding over his chest as she leans against him, her sunglasses perched on her head, ensnared by her wild tangles of earth-brown hair. Her blue eyes glitter like the ocean.

"Do you ever... do you ever wonder about running away?" she asks.

He smiles and tucks one of her flyaway brown strands behind her ear. "I think we've already done that."

She shakes her head. "No. I mean permanently. Forever." Her lips graze his skin. "Like, to Kanto or something. Somewhere tropical where we won't ever be found."

"You mean abandon everything and live in the forest?"

"Not like that." She wrinkles her face. "Become invisible, basically. We could adopt entirely new identities, ditch this life, maybe lay on the beach every afternoon and listen to shitty pop music."

He strokes her back. "Maybe."

But, in their hearts, they know that it won't happen. They love the thrill of adventure, the excitement of the kill, the feverish thrall of breaking into bank vaults and finding hills of crisp currency and piles of priceless art to ever settle down. Despite the imminent threats looming over their horizon, there's something quite magical about destruction.

They could, but they don't want to.

iv.

She's mastered at least ten forms of martial arts, and has honed her skills in hand-to-hand combat as well as a complete knowledge of the human anatomy that she could take down an entire room of burly men using only her fists and her feet.

He can assemble a Beretta in less than eight seconds, load it, and then kill six people in a row with a single strategically aimed bullet. Besides that, with enough cleaning supplies and a box of matches, he can construct a lethal bomb within minutes and use it to take out a squad of government security personnel while practicing black ops evasive maneuvers to avoid detection.

They're both trained killers. Death is their watercolor work, their dance, and when they move into action, it is like watching a pair of wolves chasing down prey. Silent, deadly, and utterly ruthless.

She still has scars on her body from when they placed her in a simulation where she had to dodge dozens of knives coming at her from every direction. He feels phantom sensations, blazing fires and arctic ice shooting through his veins as his mind recalls the slew of poisons they injected into his body in carefully controlled doses to help his immune system build up resistance.

Both of them still have nightmares. They've learned to turn their pain into their passion, though, and now, any other profession besides assassination and execution would be unthinkable.

(Killing is their new drug, and it's an unshakable addiction)

v.

She wonders if they've changed. Become more inhuman.

Her fingers skim over her flesh and instead of skin, she touches cold, hard stone and jagged glass, and her hair is barbed wire and her eyes are laser beams, analyzing instead of observing, looking for openings in everyone she meets, setting her world on fire.

She's afraid.

But he comes in and kisses away her nightmares, lulling her into more pleasant fantasies. Afterwards, he cuddles up beside her and they fall asleep together, their bodies entwined and cocooned in bedroom sheets.

vi.

In the burning ruins of a toppled tower, he hugs her close, his skin stained with soot, his hands calloused and wrapped around a handgun and her waist, and into her ears he whispers,

"I love you."

Simple words, but they are devastating, and as the sky falls around them, she closes her eyes and leans into him.

vii.

Guns flash. Triggers click. Footsteps pound on the tiled floors, and a door breaks and a woman screams.

She's breathing hard, her rifle pointed in front of her, her fingers clutching it like a lifeline. Her arms are slicked with sweat, her muscles taut. She's in full predator mode.

A man appears, dressed in black, his mouth opening and closing as she fires once, twice into his chest. He goes down with a thud.

"Freeze!"

Above her, throngs of military soldiers have their guns aimed at her head. She sighs, feels tears rolling down her cheeks.

Her fingers let go of the handle and the gun falls, with a clatter, to the ground.

vii.

"Don't let them win, Touko," he gasps. His face is bloody and bruised, his lip cut, his eye swollen. It hurts her just to look at him, and reaching out, she cradles his cheeks, stroking back his bloodstained hair with the tenderness of a mother. He winces.

"I won't let you die," she promises fiercely. "I won't let them kill you."

He laughs, cold and harsh. "They let us live only to kill us at when we got out of control. Don't you see?" He grins, his teeth red. "We're the wild ones. They can't tame us, so they'll kill us instead."

"N..."

"No." He shakes his head. "Call me by my real name. Don't let them decide who we are, Touko." His eyes are frantic, his fingers grasping her tightly by the wrists. "Don't let them make you forget."

"Natural," she breathes, kissing his fingers one by one, wanting more than anything to hold him, to kiss him full on the lips, to be dreaming on some remote island somewhere, their feet in the salty water.

But that's a reality that they could never afford.

"Don't let them paint this world grey."

"I love you, Natural," she sobs. "Oh fuck, I love you so much-"

His arms wrap around her, clamoring, reaching. He still smells of mint, muddled as his fragrance is by the dust and dirt that choke the air. He smells like remembrance.

"I love you, too."

ix.

They tear through the dimly-lit hallways, shooting their way through. Gunshots go ratatatat and machine-gun flares provide star-like spots of illumination for scant seconds before the darkness and the flickering fluorescents resume their due course.

The others are fast approaching. Heavy footfalls. Bullets being loaded.

The two of them, at the end of a cliff, looking down from the precipice to the fall.

"Are you ready?" he asks.

"Ready," she answers, looking him resolutely in the eyes. His irises flash green and yellow; hers are still the same shade of blue, but brighter somehow.

(There are no clouds in the sky today, no rocks and barriers to bar their way)

They kiss, and then, holding hands, they jump into the unknown.

x.

Before their eyes saw death in the streets and decay in the gutters, before the slow progression of evil dulled the colors of the world from bright reds and blues and greens and oranges to monochromatic grey, a boy took a girl to the amusement park. The boy had a black-and-white cap and a cube. The girl had ripped jeans and a vest and a ponytail done messily on her head.

They climbed onto a Ferris wheel, the car they were in smelling of cotton candy and soda and sugar. As the wheel started turning and rising up into the night sky, they held hands. The boy smiled. Tentatively, the girl smiled back, her teeth flashing pearls in the moonlight.

They saw the world from where they sat. Cities, glittering gold and yellow, filled with diamonds and dewdrops and millions of people. Forests with all manner of creatures, playful and small, wicked and large. Dragons and serpents that slithered through the grass, automatons that clanked through ancient cities, birds with Cyclops eyes who lived in the past.

He told her that he was Evil, that he was a king of the damned. She told him she didn't care, that she would love him and follow him where his fate took him.

"Promise?" he asked.

"Promise," she said.

They kissed, and the promise was forever sealed.

And with that, they took their first step into the dark, laughing all the way.

a/n: very AU-ish. urm, review? please?