𝕤𝕚𝕝𝕧𝕖𝕣 𝕓𝕦𝕝𝕝𝕖𝕥

Freshly dismissed from a mission briefing, Hidemi stalks through the submarine's corridors like a ghost, jaw tightly set to avoid grunting in pain as her injury is jostled with every step she takes; the painkillers she was granted are already wearing off again.

Dull yellow lights pave the way to the sick bay. Every corridor looks the same, cramped and lined with a web of pipes whose bulging inward renders the experience even more claustrophobic despite the lack of grunts puttering about. After taking one last turn, Hidemi doesn't even wait for the door to the sick bay to open all the way before slinking inside in search of a change of bandages. What she finds instead is Vermouth, who looks right back at her and raises an eyebrow as if challenging Hidemi to question her presence.

(There would be no point. Vermouth always has an excuse ready to go; if Hidemi didn't know any better, she'd think the actress goads people into arguments just to hear her own voice as she silences them.)

Rather than addressing Vermouth at all, Hidemi busies herself with digging what she needs out of a cabinet: an unmarked box, frigid under her fingers in contrast with the otherwise tolerable temperature inside the room. She opens it, relieved to find that nothing ran out between her last visit and now, and makes to close it again in order to take it back to her bunk when Vermouth chooses to speak. "Sit down, Kir. I'll do it for you."

Hidemi stills. A myriad of possibilities flash in the back of her mind, there and gone and leaving behind nothing but tempered steel: they have nothing on her. If there's anything good about being so isolated her own Agency remains unaware of her status until she next contacts them, it's exactly this.

Her reluctance to physically carry out assassinations is nothing new to the operatives she works with: Gin heavily disapproves of it, makes it clear in every way he can (pushed way too far this time, but he's still her superior and so Hidemi grit her teeth, bowed her head and accepted her punishment), but Hidemi is far from the first member of the Syndicate to consistently display hesitation when it's time to kill someone. Make her into bait, tell her to guide a target to the ideal spot and she won't bat an eye even if she's covered in blood by the end of it; pulling the trigger herself... It's not exactly her thing, unless her life is at stake.

Therefore, as this fault of hers doesn't come as a surprise, the chances of her failure in Berlin being grounds for renewed suspicion in regards to her loyalties are essentially null.

(And even if someone did find something on her, Hidemi's bet would be on Gin carrying out the execution, not Vermouth. Vermouth rarely, if ever, deigns to dirty her hands like that: unlike most operatives, she gets the privilege of having a choice in the matter.

Hidemi wonders what difference it makes to Vermouth whether the blood she spills belongs to a helpless target or a filthy traitor.)

"Do you have nothing better to do?" she ends up asking, even as she picks a random chair to sit on.

Vermouth's lips twitch, and Hidemi knows she's not getting a satisfactory answer. "We're on a tight schedule and could be called to action anytime. How long would it take you to do this by your lonesome?"

With nothing to say to that, Hidemi looks away and gets to work divesting her torso of the full-body suit. As much as she wishes she could prove Vermouth wrong, the pain and fear of tearing her stitches has Hidemi keeping her movements slow and calculated, and in the end it takes her over a minute just to free her shoulders.

The box of supplies, now open again, is dropped on her lap without further ado, and then Vermouth's hands are on her, tugging the suit farther down where needed and idly running over the outermost layers of bandages in search of the safety pins fixing it all in place.

One by one, the pins are removed by deft fingers. Manicured nails tap and scrape lightly against Hidemi's skin from time to time, neither warm nor cold; she feels goosebumps erupt all over her back anyway. Soft rustling announces the bandages coming undone between one breath and the next, and here Hidemi begins to feel chilly.

"That's going to leave a nasty scar," Vermouth comments almost idly once the painstaking process of unsticking the gauze from the stitched up entry and exit wounds is over and done with. Hidemi clenched her jaw so hard during that, it's a wonder she didn't chip a tooth. "It's almost a shame."

Through the haze of pain clouding her senses, Hidemi briefly latches onto Vermouth's strange wording. Almost'?

Chris Vineyard is a renowned actress, and knowing what Hidemi does, anything one can see of her on film gets effortlessly trumped by the feats she proves herself capable of when on a job for the Organization. There is not a single muscle in Chris Vineyard's body that does not wholly bend to its owner's will, not a single word leaving her lips that hasn't been meticulously selected beforehand.

So why? Why almost?

"Lift your arm," Vermouth's voice floats by, soft as cotton, and Hidemi obligingly keeps the limb up when a nudge does the work for her.

The pain is still sharp— foolish of her not to down more pain relievers before this—, but Vermouth turns out to be surprisingly efficient: in a handful of minutes fresh wrappings wind around her chest and shoulder, and Hidemi even gets to slide one of the safety pins back in place while Vermouth takes care of the spots she can't reach on her own.

"Done." Despite that declaration, neither of them moves for a while. Hidemi drums the pads of her fingers on the supply box, although she stops when she registers that one of Vermouth's hands is resting on her right shoulder; unsurprising that she didn't notice immediately, as the area alternates between concerning sensitivity and nigh total numbness.

For a single, gut-wrenching moment, Hidemi entertains the notion that Vermouth might be about to dig impeccably sharpened nails into her flesh, destroying any and all semblance of progress Hidemi has made in her healing. Just as quickly, she dismisses it: she's more useful— to Vermouth, to Gin, to the Syndicate— in optimal shape than down an arm and most of her mobility with it.

Still, she can't help but be a little glad when Vermouth lets go of her and takes a step back, unreadable as ever. That's certainly much more familiar than the tremble Hidemi felt in those fingers until mere moments ago.

"— And next time he dares to pull a stunt like that, I'll... I'll..."

Yukiko trails off, blinking dazedly at the tacky dresser that occupies the better part of one of the walls of Sharon's hotel suite. Truly, that thing must have been picked by a blind man.

"You'll...?" Sharon prompts when the silence stretches on a little too long. Yukiko, already lacking filters dictated by politeness when she's sober, has become even more unhinged after an evening spent drinking; she's no lightweight, but she seemed strangely determined to outdo herself tonight, for reasons that became clear almost immediately— another fight with Yusaku over... frankly, Sharon didn't pay much attention to the finer details. It's Yukiko's expressiveness that she was most captivated by, after all: her overall performance as she told her side of the story, incensed and so vibrantly furious because of the tiniest slight.

How could anyone see that and not find themself fascinated by the sheer amount of energy put into it? Yukiko has the uncanny habit of giving it her all in everything she does, no matter how big or small the feat. Sharon would very much like to know how she can just... do that; how she can care so much all the time, as fleeting as her passions may be. Isn't it exhausting?

"I'll..." Yukiko repeats under her breath. Her words have been slurring for a while now. She lights up all of a sudden then, looking immensely proud of whatever punishment she just came up with. "I'll show him! Yeah, I'll show him!"

Well.

"I see," Sharon nods as if that made perfect sense, indulgent. Always so indulgent... Were Yukiko anybody else, Sharon would have done away with her a long time ago. Some days she wonders which wires got crossed inside her head for her to allow Yukiko to get away with so much.

"And then... then..." Yukiko's head lolls to the side, eyes slowly falling shut for the nth time in the past half an hour. Unlike in previous instances, they don't snap open again. Dead to the world on a plush armchair, just like that. She's due for a nasty crick in the neck once she wakes up, that's for sure.

... She doesn't even look like she's breathing.

(Worn out, blazing eyes. Feverish. She used to be more squeamish. "That's the fourth one this month. I still haven't been able to successfully replicate the effects it had on you with any other test subject so far. It seems to me that you may truly be a freak accident— which is why it's so important that I keep studying your body. What is it about you that made the formula work this way?")

Sharon is out of her seat before she can even register that her body is moving. She doesn't sway on her feet, hasn't consumed nearly enough alcohol for that, but she still feels... unsteady. How ludicrous.

She crosses the space between her and Yukiko with decisive strides— to prove a point to herself, if nothing else— and doesn't hesitate at all to place her fingers over Yukiko's carotid artery. Her free hand goes to Yukiko's parted lips: immediately, her skin warms with miniscule but regular breaths, and eventually she finds a strong, steady pulse under her fingertips as well.

How silly of her, to think that Yukiko could be anything but perfectly fine.

Sharon snatches her hands back as if burned (as if the only other person in the room wasn't fast asleep and unlikely to regain consciousness anytime soon), cradling them close to her chest and rubbing away invisible flecks of dirt (proof of her weakness, proof that Miyano Elena can still make her feel something other than pure hatred, even from beyond the grave) before collapsing back on her armchair. Unsteady. Disgraceful.