What is she expecting?

With some lanky, tattered-jacket sporting boy milling about an abandoned used car place; not much. Jet black hair, a smudge of dirt on his face, feet kicking uselessly at junk metal that decked the streets like jagged confetti. He’s alright-looking.

Not that that really matters. The job description is simple. Those who looked as if they posed a threat were to be eliminated immediately upon sight, or whenever possible. ( Not that he is really a threat, per se, but reports could be edited; besides, it’s been a bad day. ) Good looks were good for a sane world, not a torn one.

So she begins to creep forward from her hiding place like some freak from the big screens.. The gun in her hand feels like the riptide and it pulls her forth, forwards towards a murder. How curious! The trigger seems to vibrate in the stale air today, the musk of a burned city hanging and pulsing.

The maelstrom stops, raising the gun and there’s some little dinging, like the world’s tiniest microwave goes off. Eerily, it echoes right near this boy too, and a cold panic suddenly sets off in her bones.

Oh, hell no. They told her about that, didn’t they? ( and what were her words? I’ll wait in a tower for ten million years until those numbers tick out and I’m still alone!!! )

She stands, foregoing her hiding place and tawny fingertips scrabble fearfully at the sleeve of her left arm, and lo and behold…it’s true. 00:00:00 reads in a bright, vibrant green, contrasting sickly with her own pallor. 

Head snaps up, a fluid motion, to find that he’s standing the same way, and the look on his face would be comical in any other situation (but she just KNOWS she wears the same disbelief). Lips tremble; a ‘no way’ hangs off them loosely. What does she do?

He’s got her in this blind trust stare. Tunnel vision, and all that. Bright, intelligent brown eyes stare at her from underneath the stormy mess of hair upon his brow. She could still kill him; she could raise the gun and blame it on the bullet.

She could also not do that…even though her loyalties lie elsewhere. There is such a thing as a selfish slave, even with the apparent title afterwards, and she deserves a little something once in a while.

But if he’s just a refugee, then he will know what she is, and what she does. But there’s always a way!!! But the maelstrom takes, doesn’t it? It eats and devours whole, and spares no time for human boys. 

Even if they are grinning at her in this kind of dazed, happy/loopy look that tears at her like he’s got claws. “Guess I got lucky,” he has the gall to say, and that’s the precise moment she decides that someday–definitely not that way–she’ll get him back.

You can’t fool a corpse, after all.

( But when she tries to walk away, he follows; when she hides he finds her and asks her what her gun is for and what her name is. She finally tells him and he grins again like a total nerd but it looks kind of nice. Shotarou-kun is his name or something, and she tells him to fuck off and he just laughs gleefully and she thinks

did I make someone happy??? )