Ink Stained

94: please say something*

When he did speak, it wasn't what she was expecting.

"If you hadn't done it," he said quietly, his apple-scented breath in her hair, at once soothing her and fraying the nerve-endings in her scalp. "I would have killed him."

"A – Akira?" saying the name left bile coating the back of her throat.

"I would have hunted him to the ends of the earth to make him pay for what..." he paused heavily. "For what he did to you."

She shut her eyes on the images repeatedly playing in her head. Now that everything was out in the open, it was hard for her to force the bloody, painful pictures away. Kuniumi wasn't there to make them go away, and Pai couldn't stop them from beating her to a pulp.

"Did you really think I'd suddenly stop caring about you because of what he did?" he asked, voice strained. He lifted a hand he'd settled on her forearm and twined a few strands of her loose hair around his finger. "Do you really see yourself that way? As 'not good for me'?"

She swallowed thickly, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes. "Aren't I? I'm not – I'm dirty."

"No." Anger palpable in his voice, he ran his hand over her hair, consoling her with his touch. "You're not."

"What about everything I did?" she asked in a broken whisper, her hands falling limply in her lap as she gazed emptily at the forest ahead. "Everyone I killed, those I remember and those I don't. What about them? What about So Fu, and what they're forcing others like me to do?"

Shin fell back into silence at that as he continued to play absently with her hair. She stared woodenly outwards; afraid of what he would say when he did speak again. Her heart weighed heavy in her chest. Her mind was sluggish, sleepy. She wondered if Kuniumi could tell how grim she had gotten.

'Remember the release'?

What release? All she was now was drained. There was no relief to be had. There was only a future to fear, the potential of Shin changing his mind, choosing to wash his hands clean of the massive baggage she lugged around with her.

"The Nue Shinigami killed, before. They were talking about total negative." She stiffened as he went on. "A way to say that is So Fu, isn't it?"

She nodded slowly. She didn't know why they called themselves that, but she knew it had something to do with their core mission, the reason they existed and did what they did. If her memory of Kagetora was right, Kuniumi was more intrinsically involved in that than she'd thought.

That was the another thing she was still keeping from Shin. She hadn't told him about Kuniumi – but she knew she'd have to. Kuniumi was too big a part of her for her to simply avoid mentioning her presence. It would be like literally trying to walk right across a room when there was a gigantic elephant sitting in the middle, when there shouldn't have been anything in the room in the first place.

"It is. What about the Nue?"

"They told us they weren't here to pick a fight with us. They wanted to see Kouta, to warn him about something." He shifted a little, getting more comfortable behind her as he leaned back against the tree. "Guess we know who they were talking about now, huh."

She frowned, confused. "Why did they come unannounced?" They paid for that mistake with their lives.

"They claimed it was because their King, Sasauchi, didn't want other Clans to know about So Fu. He thinks the others will be wiped out by So Fu, and the Nue will sweep in to claim the spoils and free lands. They came here without his knowledge because he would've had them killed for directly disobeying his orders."