Ink Stained

108: midori*

Shiori snatched her hand away as if she'd been physically burned, taken aback at the vehemence exuding from her.

Pai ignored it, ignored everything.

Into the ensuing silence, struggling to keep from squeezing her eyes shut tight on the tears burning the backs of her eyes and screaming herself hoarse, Pai said, "Where is she?"

Midori looked at her warily, holding her ground as a flash of puzzlement crossed her face.

Pai's lips tightened to a near invisible line. She fought to control herself, failing miserably as she felt herself spiralling. She was glad Kuniumi wasn't there. If she was, her hatred for Midori, for the betrayal, would have sent Pai flying into an irrepressible fury. She didn't know what she would do then.

It was then, mind clouded in a red haze, that she realized what Kuniumi said last night was true. She didn't protect just herself when she left; she did it for Pai as well. Kuniumi protected Pai from herself.

"Do you know where she is?" she asked tightly.

Midori hesitated. Shook her head. And she still remained mute, taking in Pai's anger and grief without giving anything back out.

Pai's lips curled in hate, in grief, and her eyes were bruised and torn open as she cried harder than she ever had before, the words breaking out of her. "Her name was Theia. You erased her from the files, but she had a name. Do you even know that?"

Midori said nothing.

The dragon coiled tighter, swimming in the pool inside her, waiting for her to acknowledge it.

"How long? How long was she with the Doctor?"

That was when Midori spoke. The same voice that used to sing her to sleep when she was afraid of the dark but refused to go to their parents because she was supposed to be a big girl. The same voice that laughed with Pai when she wished Midori good luck on her first day in high school. The same voice that taught Pai how to bake cakes and cook meals for their parents when they came home from school earlier than them. The same voice that dismissed Pai as a thing, and not her sister.

This was the same voice, but hardened to steel forged in the flames of So Fu.

"He ordered her execution. She was too young to be of use to him."

Cold. Succinct. Precise. Midori was the embodiment of So Fu in that moment.

A strangled cry came from behind the two sisters. Midori's gaze flicked to look somewhere behind Pai before retuning. Dimly, Pai knew it was Yukiji. By now she recognized what Yukiji's voice sounded like when she was in pain.

Pai didn't spare a glance her way, because that wasn't good enough. That wasn't what she asked.

"How long was she with him?"

A flicker of something rose in Midori's eyes, promptly squashed down half a second later, too fast for Pai to see it for what it was, blinded as she was by her emotions.

"Three days."

Pai paled. Three days. Three days was three centuries on the Doctor's cold steel table.

She lifted her hands, saw Midori flinch. She ignored it and shoved her sister away, using all the force she could. Her hands burned where they came in contact with her sister. Midori stumbled back, eyes still closed off as she looked at Pai, at the quiet tears that fell down her face.

"I didn't dispose of her body like usual," her voice shook with the force of the emotions tearing through her. "I had to burn her. I gave her what funeral I could when all you – when all you want is to get rid of the bodies, like they're animals, like they're less than that. She wasn't even the same girl anymore after him!"