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Non-sexual touch meme II @sasorikigai said: "Are you using me as a human shield right now?" (Canon Kuai Liang)

Jǐngbīng's hatchings are only a couple of months old but they are nearly doubled in size since the day they hatched. Something the sun goddess hadn't expected, not so soon, and with it comes the sudden reality that these hatchlings are incapable of understanding that their size is heavier than it used to be.

Olivia can only blame herself, maybe, for spoiling the beasts. Allowing them to rest within her lap when training sessions were over. Feeding them the smallest of treats, in the form of beetles or minnows, when the grandmaster wasn't looking. In the past, the sun goddess would reach for the small reptiles, these babies who slither and waddle over to her once their mother had given permission, and it was one of the best welcomes Olivia could ask for when she was away at the Shirau Ryu.

Now? She isn't too sure she is ready for the welcome. Standing behind Kuai Liang, his arms crossed, almost as if he knows what is to come once Jǐngbīng and her offspring finish their training on this fine morning, in the way the grandmaster does not intervene, for dragons had their own rituals that come with their species.

"No." Olivia bites her bottom lip nervously, standing behind the cryomancer, peaking just over his bicep to glance at the home that he has created for the dragons. It is not a barn but something sturdier. A building, resembling almost a small version of a warrior's fortress, made of stone and ice. Perfect for young dragons who thrive in the artic and would wish to avoid unwelcomed guests who wish to spy on their privacy.

"I am.. bracing myself for when Jǐngbīng is finished with the hatchlings. They will expect a gift upon my return." In the form of meats no less. "They will not swarm you if you are in the way, darling, because they hold a certain.. courtesy with you. Proper respect for one such as yourself, grandmaster."

Olivia knows flattery will not save her, as she knows Kuai Liang is not the kind of man whose ego swells from such praise but she could at least try to avoid getting dog-piled by a small pack of baby dragons.

❄️ || Kuai Liang does not turn. He lets her words settle against his back like snow that will not stick, and something in his chest - that old, glacial amusement he shows to perhaps three people in this world - moves without ever quite reaching his face.

"A wall," he says, "does not duck."

He shifts his weight, just slightly, just enough that the movement telegraphs itself the way all his movements do when he wishes to be understood rather than obeyed. Not defense. Correction.

"You mistake what they are hungry for."

Beyond him, across the frozen yard, Jǐngbīng lifts her head from her clutch of half-grown terrors, and her glacier-eye finds Olivia over his shoulder with the unhurried precision of something that has never once needed to hurry. The hatchlings have not noticed yet. They are still tangled in each other, in snow, in the small violent joys of creatures who do not yet understand their own weight.

"You feed them beetles," he says, low, "and think this is the debt they remember. It is not." He turns his head, finally, enough that she can see the edge of him in profile - the line of his jaw, the frost of breath escaping into morning air. "A dragon does not forget who stayed when the cave was cold and gave nothing but their hands. Jǐngbīng chose me before I had earned a single gift to give her. The hatchlings are her blood. They have not un-learned what she already knows."

He is quiet a moment, watching the way the little ones stumble over their own newly-doubled bulk, and when he speaks again there is something almost rueful in it, the frost-edged self-recognition of a man describing a mirror without naming it as such.

"I am no different, if you look closely enough. My clan does not follow me because I have given them comfort - I have given them very little of that, in truth. They follow because I stayed when staying cost something. Because I did not flatter them into loyalty, and I did not buy it with gifts, and when the ice cracked beneath all of us I did not leave the room." His voice drops further, into that register reserved for things spoken only once. "Jǐngbīng and I are built from the same cold, Olivia. Suspicious of what glitters. Deaf to what only sounds sweet. We do not warm to hands that only ever offer sugar. We warm to hands that stayed still through the winter and asked for nothing in return."

Jǐngbīng rises now, slow, deliberate, the great wings unfolding like a verdict being read. It is, Kuai Liang thinks, watching her, the same unfolding he does himself before a council he does not trust - patient, total, giving away nothing until the moment demands it. The hatchlings scatter toward the sound of her movement, and past her, toward the two figures standing at the yard's edge, and there is no calculation in their sprint, none of the courtly caution their mother wears like armor. That will come later. For now they are only need, only joy, only the blunt honesty of things too young to have learned deception.

"They come to you," Kuai Liang says, "not for what is in your hands. They come because you knelt in the snow beside their mother's eggs before any of them opened an eye, and you did not flinch from the cold of them, and you did not leave. That is the gift they remember. Everything after - the beetles, the minnows, the treats slipped to them when you think I do not see - is only ceremony. Ribbon on a thing already given." He glances at her, briefly, something unreadable moving beneath the ice-blue of his eyes. "Do you understand this, Olivia? A dragon's loyalty is not purchased. Neither is mine. It is the one thing Jǐngbīng and I have never had to discuss between us, because we recognized it in each other the moment I put my bare hands against her shell. We do not trust easily. We trust completely, once earned, and never again question it."

He does not move from where he stands. He simply widens, by inches, the space beside him - not behind him.

"So stand beside the wall," he says, "if you must stand somewhere. But do not mistake me for a shield against something that loves you honestly. That is a cowardice beneath a woman the sun herself answers to - and beneath a woman these creatures have already chosen, the way their mother chose me, without asking permission from anyone, least of all from doubt."

The first hatchling reaches them at a dead, clumsy sprint, already twice the size it should be, already radiant with the kind of joy that has not yet learned restraint, wings half-spread for balance it does not yet possess.

Behind it come the others, a small avalanche of scale and delight, and Jǐngbīng watches from across the yard with the stillness of something entirely satisfied - a mother observing the same lesson passed down that she herself once learned, kneeling and cold and unbargained-for, in a cave that no longer exists except in the memory of ice.

Kuai Liang, at last, steps aside. ❄️ ||

♡     send  flowers     according  to  which  type(s)     express  how  sender  feels  about  or  wants  from  receiver  .   

these  flowers  are  meant  to     come  with  notes     (    or    spoken  words  .ᐟ     add     whatever  you  desire     when  sending    )     that  clearly  state  what  they  mean ,     so     receiver  will  know     what  sender  is  trying  to  say .  

add  context    &     mix    &     match  to  your  needs .     create  whole  bouquets  if  you  like  .     happy  writing .ᐟ

white  azalea  :     a  compliment  toward  receiver’s  physical  beauty  .

pink  azalea  :     maternal  love     (     does  not  necessarily  have  to  be  gendered     )     from  parental  figure  to  child  .

red  azalea  :     a  request  for  receiver  to  take  care  of  themself  for  sender’s  sake  .

white  calla  lily  :     a  marriage  proposal  .

pink  calla  lily  :     a  confession  of  romantic  love  .

yellow  calla  lily  :     a  request  to  be  friends  .

purple  calla  lily  :     a  request  for  a  passionate  night  together  .

black  calla  lily  :     a  request  for  a  date     (     specify  what  it  entails     )  .

white  carnation  :     sympathy ,     condolences  .

pink  carnation  :     filial  love    (     from  child  to  parental  figure     )  .

red  carnation  :     possessiveness ,     as  if  to  say    ‘  you  are  mine  ’  .

yellow  carnation  :     rejection ,     disappointment  in  receiver ,     regret  .

purple  carnation  :     appreciation  for  receiver’s  whimsy  and /  or  unpredictability  .

multicolor  carnation  :     expressing  sorrow  that  sender  and  receiver  cannot  be  together  .

white  chrysanthemum  :     agape  love  .

pink  chrysanthemum  :     storge  love     (     from  parental  figure  to  child     )  .

red  chrysanthemum  :     eros  love  .

yellow  chrysanthemum  :     philia  love  .

cleome  :     sender  wants  to  run  away    /     elope  with  receiver  .

daffodil  :     desire  for  a  new  beginning    /     to  start  over  .

white  daisy  :     desire  to  have  a  child    /     start  a  family  with  receiver  .

yellow  daisy  :     encouragement  and  empathy  .

forget  -  me  -  not  :     an  expression  of  gratitude  for  the  memories  shared  with  receiver    /     a  desire  to  make  new  memories  with  receiver  .

white  heather  :     sender  pledges  to  always  protect  receiver  .

pink  heather  :     infatuation  and  obsession  with  receiver  .

white  hibiscus  :     a  request  for  peace  between  sender  and  receiver  .

pink  hibiscus  :     sender  wishes  to    ‘  show  receiver  off  ’     by  having  them  wear  this  flower  in  their  hair  .

red  hibiscus  :     a  deep  admiration  for  receiver’s  godlike  beauty  .

orange  hibiscus  :     a  compliment  toward  receiver’s  body  .

yellow  hibiscus  :     sibling  or  sibling  -  like  affection  .

yellow  hyacinth  :     jealousy  and  envy  .

blue  hyacinth  :     sincerity  and  earnestness  ,     wholehearted  regard  .

purple  hyacinth  :     deep  sorrow  ,     begging  for  forgiveness  ,     a  request  for  another  chance  .

white  iris  :     a  spiritual  connection  ,     a  soul  bond  .

blue  iris  :     having  faith  in  receiver  ,     trusting  them  implicitly  .

purple  iris  :     veneration  and  the  highest  possible  esteem  ,     regard  for  receiver’s  wisdom  .

lavender  :     gratitude  for  forgiveness    /     a  second  chance  ,     a  promise  to  be  better  for  receiver  .

lilac  :     innocent  attraction  ,     receiver  is  sender’s  first  love  .

white  lily  :     deep  respect  and  reverence  ,     unconditional  love    (     platonic  or  romantic    )  .

pink  lily  :     gentle  appreciation  and  gratitude  ,     a  kiss  on  the  cheek  .

tiger  lily  :     sender  is  proud  of  receiver  . 

lily  -  of  -  the  -  valley  :     receiver  completes  sender    /     makes  sender  feel  whole  .

white  magnolia  :     sender  thinks  receiver  is  perfect  .

pink  magnolia  :     a  regard  for  receiver’s  youthful  spirit  . 

purple  magnolia  :     sender  wishes  receiver  healing  .

pink  orchid  :     congratulatory     (     specify  what  for    )  .

blue  orchid  :     rarity  ,     there’s  no  one  else  in  the  world  like  receiver  .

purple  orchid  :     admiration  for  receiver’s  strength  and  perseverance  .

pink  peony  :     wishing  receiver  luck  and  good  fortune  .

red  peony  :     expression  of  honor  ,     a  compliment  toward  receiver’s  moral  character  .

white  poppy  :     mourning  a  shared  loved  one  ,     expressing  comfort  during  a  difficult  time  .

red  poppy  :     regard  for  the  fallen    /     for  what  or  who  has  been  lost  .

orange  poppy  :     wishing  receiver  success  ,     a  compliment  toward  receiver’s  resilience  .

 white  primrose  :     sender  misses  receiver    /     sender  is  sad  without  receiver  .

pink  primrose  :     sender  cannot  live  without  receiver  .

yellow  primrose  :     receiver  makes  sender  happy  .

purple  primrose  :     sender  is  enchanted  by  receiver  .

white  rose  :     desire  for  marriage    /     building  a  life  with  receiver  .

pink  rose  :     a  developing  crush  ,     regard  for  receiver’s  beauty    (     physical  and  beyond     )  .

red  rose  :     deep  romantic  love  ,     passionate  attraction  ,     unending  devotion  .

yellow  rose  :     deep  platonic  love  ,     the  warmth  of  friendship  ,     returning  the  joy  receiver  brings  .

sunflower  :     deep  adoration  ,     unending  loyalty  .

white  tulip  :     apology    /     desire  for  forgiveness  and  reconciliation  .

pink  tulip  :     the  transition  from  a  crush  to  deeper  romantic  love  .

red  tulip  :     deep  trust  and  undying  devotion  .

yellow  tulip  :     a  compliment  toward  receiver’s  smile    /     a  desire  to  see  receiver  smile  more  .

purple  tulip  :     eternal  love  ,     togetherness  in  every  lifetime  .

blue  violet  :     calming  love  and  affection  ,     an  expression  of  sender  being  a  better  person  with    /     around  receiver  .

God, always the same thing.

How about having a little drink with me?

You know, it‘s a downright shame that you have never been to [name place]. You don't know what you‘ve missed.

Let‘s see, that‘s mine, isn‘t it?

Oh, no. You can't do that. You can't insult me!

You've been nothing but a ki||joy!

I wouldn't do that if l were you.

You're too intoxicated to realize your peril.

I want to show you something.

You saved my life last night!

What'd I want to do that for?

Now, wait a minute. Wait a minute!

What did you call me?

I can get the doctor in just a minute.

I don't know what's the matter with you, but whatever it is, you can count on me.

I don't suppose you'll understand this.

Don't be that way with me.

You know, it's just like yesterday to me.

Where have I been? Where was I?

That's what it is, amnesia!

A blow on the head can make you forget your entire past!

You can live on for years maybe the rest of your life, as somebody else now.

You read about these things but you never think of them happening to yourself!

Don't you even remember that?

Wait a minute. What's this?

How'd you like to go in on this with me?

Come on, come on, let's go, let's go.

When I head that you were hurt, I didn't know how seriously.

[Name], you seem strange.

You haven't seen me for a while.

Well, what is it? What's the matter?

I'd like to talk a little if you feel up to it.

You're playing with fire.

You're not going to stay?

A thing like a divorce can break up a marriage.

Look, let's forget about the divorce and try and make a go of it, just once more, starting from scratch.

I trust I've made everything clear?

You certainly were a stinker!

Can you imagine? I meet someone, and in 20 minutes they are going to divorce me.

You can't go in that room! You can't bust in like that!

Who do you think you are?

Have you ever taken a good look at yourself?

Let's not get personal. I asked, why should [he/she/they] want to divorce me?

We can settle this between the two of us!

It's blackmail, that's what it is.

There must be some mistake.

What have you done to yourself?

You're deliberately trying to make [him/her/them] lose the temper.

For heaven's sake. I'll be right back.

Where did you learn to dance like this?

If we could just slip away for a few minutes, we could…

Are we going to talk or aren't we?

I'm opposed to this unseemly haste.

Could I kiss you goodnight, just once?

Don't forget. If anything comes up you can't handle, just faint.

You've changed, [name]. What is it?

Is there anything I can do?

What do you think I've been doing?

If I'm going to have to stay in this jungle alone, you better send me up a bottle of Scotch.

That's because you're not used to it.

I know the whole story. It's ridiculous.

We're going to change all that. I've come to stay for a while.

Don't you bother. I'll get my own food, even if l faint before I get there.

I wish you'd forget about the past.

You know, I've changed a lot lately.

You be careful, or you'll turn my pretty head with your flattery.

I've often wished I could turn your head on a spit, over a slow fire.

Your blood was cold to begin with.

I'm sort of sorry I'm not in love with you anymore, because if l was still in love with you, I'd be awfully in love with you.

I think I'd better drink my coffee.

Come on over here and sit around on my side. I think we'd better have an understanding.

Why don't you get out of bed and do something?

I just had the most horrible dream.

I can't see anything to laugh about.

Well, how are things getting along?

I knew you'd come around. That's great.

Now, don't tell me, I know.

Don't wake me up. Let me dream.

I just want to buy something nice. I don't care whether it's expensive or not.

Look, just forget about me.

You mean you haven't figured that out yet?

What are you worrying about? Everything's going to be dandy-wandy.

Don't you think you've caused me enough trouble for one day?

Lovebirds don't whistle, they coo.

What's the matter? I haven't done anything wrong. What are you getting angry about?

You've done everything you could think of to make me miserable.

You were just as nice and sweet and kind as you could be, and you know it.

You're not getting anywhere, and I wish you'd stop.

I want you to be your old self.

You mean that you're upset because I've been acting as though I find you lovely?

If you'll only give me half a chance, I'd prove just how lovely I think you are.

I've got something to tell you, and I don't want you to say a word.

You're losing me, so suddenly I seem worth holding on to. It's not me.

You don't love me. You never did. Public opinion's the only thing you love.

You just can't stand being hurt in the eyes of the public.

I know it won't seem much to you. I just hope I can keep up, that's all.

What's the matter? What's happened?

Don't contradict me. I guess I know when you're lying.

Well, I suppose we might as well go home.

I needn't tell you how much you saved me.

I'm still so mad I could explode.

You're the only honest one in the whole crowd.

Is this a private walk or can anyone come?

Marriage is the soundest investment two people can make.

Why did you ever marry me?

Cities look different at night, don't they?

Don't apologize for what you thought of me.

I was afraid of falling in love with you again.

You know darn well that you love me.

You're acting noble and giving me up because something's wrong.

From now on, I'm going to do the chasing, and believe me, you're going to know you've been chased.

I'm glad you like it because that's what we're going to do.

[Name], were you ever in love?

You don't know amnesia, it just does things to a fellow.

GIFT GIVING

[ handmade ] sender gives receiver something handmade

[ flowers ] sender surprises receiver with flowers just because

[ souvenir ] sender brings receiver something special from a trip

[ wanted ] sender hands receiver something they wanted but never would've gotten for themselves

[ practical ] sender offers receiver something they mentioned needing

❛  i know it's not much, but i saw this and thought of you, so i wanted you to have it.  ❜

❛  you said you needed a new one, so i got it for you.  ❜

❛  don't make a big deal out of it, please. just take it.  ❜

❛  i wasn't sure what to get you, but this felt right.  ❜

❛  i wanted you to have something that was only yours.  ❜

QUALITY TIME

[ date ] sender takes receiver out on a date

[ visit ] sender surprises receiver with a visit just to spend some time together

[ quiet ] sender joins receiver to sit in comfortable silence

[ home ] sender spends the day with receiver at home together

[ night ] sender stays up late talking to receiver

❛  we don't have to do anything. i just like being near you.  ❜

❛  i cleared my schedule for you, so now you have my full attention.  ❜

❛  i like doing ordinary things with you. let's make a day of it.  ❜

❛  do you want some company? i have time.  ❜

❛  honestly, i just needed an excuse to spend some time with you.  ❜

WORDS OF AFFIRMATION

[ comfort ] sender verbally comforts receiver after a hard day

[ important ] sender reminds receiver how important and loved they are

[ enough ] sender assures receiver that they are enough

[ compliment ] sender gives receiver a compliment

[ proud ] sender tells receiver that they are proud of them

❛  i'm so proud of you, you did such a great job.  ❜

❛  you always make things better just by being here.  ❜

❛  you can do this, i believe in you wholeheartedly.  ❜

❛  you're more than enough, and i'm lucky to know you.  ❜

❛  you are not hard to love. in fact, you are loved by so many people.  ❜

PHYSICAL TOUCH

[ cuddle ] sender initiates cuddling with receiver

[ warmth ] sender offers receiver their body warmth

[ shoulder ] sender pulls receiver close so they can rest their head on their shoulder

[ gentle ] sender brushes hair out of receiver's face

[ kiss ] sender kisses receiver's forehead/cheek/etc.

❛  come here, you look like you could use a hug.  ❜

❛  let me hold you for a minute; i've got you.  ❜

❛  you're freezing. give me your hands, i'll warm them up.  ❜

❛  i like being close to you like this.  ❜

❛  you don't have to pull away if you don't want to.  ❜

ACTS OF SERVICE

[ repair ] sender fixes something broken that belongs to receiver

[ sickness ] sender takes care of a sick receiver

[ chores ] sender helps receiver with some chores

[ space ] sender makes receiver's space more comfortable for them

[ clean ] sender cleans something up for receiver

❛  you looked tired, so i already took care of it for you.  ❜

❛  sit down and relax. i'll handle it.  ❜

❛  you don't have to do everything alone, i can help.  ❜

❛  i did it because i wanted to make your day a little easier.  ❜

❛  let me help; i don't mind doing it.  ❜

💥|| He does not flinch. That is the first miracle - the thing his body has forgotten how to do around anyone else's hands, this small mercy of stillness instead of flight. Her fingers find his hair and something in him that has been clenched since childhood, since the first time discipline replaced comfort as currency, unclenches by a single degree, then another, like armor being unbuckled plate by plate by someone who has memorized every clasp.

He does not let people touch his hair. This is not vanity - it is architecture. It is the last unconquered territory of a body that has been mapped by scars, catalogued by medics, measured by tailors for armor and coffins both. His hair is the one border he has never surrendered, not to lovers before her, not to the barbers who ask and receive only a nod for length, never for touch.

But her hands arrive as if she has always had clearance, as if some part of him signed the treaty long before his mind caught up to the terms, and he lets her cross the line because she never announced she was crossing it at all. She simply became someone he had already surrendered to, in increments too small to name, until surrender was simply where he lived now.

Her palm at his neck rewires something old and animal in him. He is a man built from command - a lifetime of syllables barked into radios, of decisions made in the space between one heartbeat and the next, of watching Two-Six's silence stretch into a possible eulogy - and none of that architecture has ever taught him how to be handled gently.

And yet here, beneath her fingers combing slow paths through hair still damp with the day's sweat and fear, he finds himself fluent in a language he never studied: the language of being cared for without conditions, without debriefing, without the transactional weight of duty repaid.

He thinks - distantly, the way a man thinks of shorelines from far out at sea - that she is the only living witness to the man beneath the commander. Not Harumi's ghost, who knew him before command hollowed him into something efficient and terrible. Not his soldiers, who know only the mask, the voice, the certainty he manufactures because uncertainty gets people killed. Only Miharu, reaching past twenty years of fortification with the patience of someone disarming something dangerous not because she fears it, but because she has decided it is worth disarming carefully, worth keeping intact.

She does not ask him to be less than what the war made him. She simply reaches through it, unafraid of the calluses, unafraid of the silences that used to be filled with whiskey and are now filled with her heartbeat instead, and finds the boy who once existed before Hanzo Hasashi became synonymous with casualties and command structures and grief filed away in unabridged notes no one else will ever read.

Her fingers still moving through his hair, unhurried, reverent - and he exhales, long and broken and grateful, into the quiet cathedral of her chest.

"No one touches this," he murmurs, voice wrecked soft, the words arriving less as command now and entirely as confession. "No one but you. You are the only front I have ever wanted breached."

His eyes close. Somewhere far off, sleep finally begins circling like a soldier deciding, at last, that the perimeter is secure enough to rest inside. 💥||

Here, rest. She will not offer him the it will be okay because war does not allow okay and she has been a soldier under his banner, wearing the same colours as him and she knows now the weight of command, the fraction of it with her own command of pilots, young and ambitious and driven, which is what defines a pilot in the special forces.

The silence is the most honest thing she gives him, because speaking to fill it is an insult to both of them. She responds in a hum, not because she does not have the words, no. They are simply not necessary. No one touches this, he tells her. A quiet confession of a man who is still in the process of arriving, and she does not rush him to finish the confession; the confession of which she will file away in the chambers of her heart, and her thoughts will find the blank pages of her journal on another time. Her fingers continue combing slow paths through his hair - and she recognizes that scent - the scent that is him, and his hair still damp with sweat and fear and grime that still lingers on his skin.

He is thinking - she knows this. She has learned in the years of existing beside him, in the years of reaching through the fortification of himself with her patience, tenderness and stubbornness, that he is thinking. He is always thinking - his mind never turns off - with the vigilance and discipline he cannot unlearn, and this is the intersection at which the man and the general both exist, and she accepts both of them, because they are both sides to him.

He is thinking - she is trying to receive the pieces he sends her in that quiet frequency between them, and she is patient, she is waiting - the waiting is learned from him too, learned from the first day of her own flight, reshaped into something more versatile since transferring to his unit several years ago, and the waiting is now a skill honed like a blade. The same waiting that she has learned when she'd invented her own execute: Viperstrike, which is the coiling before the attack.

This is perhaps the most honest thing to her - that she does not ask him to be less than what the war made him. She has never done that, and she will not ask him now. Because to her, asking him to be less means becoming a different person he cannot be.

She thinks too - the first time he let her hold him. The first night they fell into each other's arms - nothing more than what they can offer, or afford - because she has often been the one who shies away from touch and he has always been the one grounding her mostly. The first night they fell into each other's arms, and he let her hold him without condition, cared for without debrief, without any expectation of the gesture returned. The first night, when he let himself be witnessed while he exhaled like he'd been holding his breath for hours.

She thinks of the first time she deviated from the plan, the first time she realizes he matters - and gods, he already had mattered to her before she could reconcile what should be and what is and she'd confessed to him why he matters. She'd told him then that she'd lost an anchor before, this was the first reason she gave him. The other reasons have begun to compile without her own authorization, and she had been too focused and had ignored the possibility that he may return the sentiment at some point.

She thinks of the first mission he had let her stay, in the aftermath of it, and it is the same deployment where he'd found her in the hangar, body shaking with adrenaline that has not yet left her veins, and he had found her in the empty one, dim and private and open where nosy mechanics may find them. He'd found her there in that dimmed hangar, quietly relieved and mildly annoyed at her stubbornness, which he learned later that this same stubbornness and precision is what makes her formidable in the air in hostile skies, what makes her the pilot whose execution, whose flight appears like a choreographed dance than a danger, could cast a shadow of fear or a glimmer of admiration depending on who you talked to about Miharu Yamaguchi.

She lets him sleep. The weight of him on her is comforting, grounding. The irrefutable evidence that he is here, and they have made it back, and they have survived another deployment. She does not expect the accounting to be any less costly. But she is here, and she has decided she will remain.

Her own exhaustion finally makes itself known, too. There is a warmth spreading through her chest, heat conducted from his body to hers, warmth shared between their bodies. She closes her eyes, with a quiet relief of knowing that he is safe, that he is here in her arms, that he has not been harmed.

💥|| He dreams, and for once the dream does not arrive dressed in the old uniform of grief.

There is no ash-choked corridor tonight, no litany of names he could not save recited by ghosts wearing his soldiers' faces. Instead there is sky - impossible, cordite-bright sky - and the percussive language of a battle already tilting toward victory, objectives blooming green across a heads-up display only his sleeping mind can see.

He is on the ground, dug into the architecture of command the way he has always been, voice steady even as the world detonates around him, and somewhere above him thunder has a name and the name is Viperstrike.

He watches her the way a man watches something he has already decided he cannot survive losing.

She comes in low, insultingly low, the physics of the maneuver an argument she is winning against death itself, and he knows - some buried tactician's instinct translating the angle of her wings before his conscious mind catches up - that she has read the field correctly. The fire meant for his squad, meant for the soft unarmored bodies of men he has sworn to bring home, is being invited instead toward her.

Toward the aircraft. Toward the small mortal cage of her ribs. She is laying herself across the killing line the way she lays her hands across his hair - deliberately, without announcement, as though sacrifice were simply another form of tenderness she has not yet told him she practices.

In the dream he screams her callsign into the radio and the sound tears something loose in his chest.

His hands do not know this is only memory rearranging itself into nightmare's gentler cousin. His hands only know threat, only know the old grammar of protect, and so they reach - across the dream, across the dark, across the negligible distance between sleep and the woman breathing slow and trusting beneath him - and find her.

His fingers curl into the fabric at her waist, unconscious, fierce, a soldier's grip closing around the one asset command was never willing to lose. He does not wake gently. He surfaces the way he always surfaces, fast and complete, senses inventorying the room before his mind has finished discarding the dream - the dark familiar shape of their bedroom, her weight still gathered against him, her pulse steady where his palm has landed just beneath her collarbone like he is checking, even now, even here, that this heart is still doing its work.

The battle recedes. The green telemetry dims. Viperstrike folds her wings back into the girl breathing softly in his arms.

He exhales - not broken this time, just human - and does what the dream demanded of him and reality now permits. He shifts his weight from where it has settled heavy and grateful atop her, careful, unhurried, a man renegotiating his own gravity so as not to wake what he has only just confirmed is safe.

He scoots to her side instead, folding his larger frame around the smaller architecture of her, one arm sliding beneath her neck, the other coming to rest low across her stomach, a barricade built from nothing but want and relief. He presses his mouth, briefly, to the crown of her head - the same hair her hands were in an hour ago, the same hair that has never belonged to anyone but her and now, impossibly, to him too.

Landed, he thinks, the word arriving in the same register as debrief but meaning something entirely different now. We both made it back.

Sleep finds him again quickly, but this time it does not have to circle. This time the perimeter was never breached at all - only tested, only dreamed - and he pulls her closer, and lets himself, finally, rest inside it. 💥||

⋆｡‧˚ʚ💋ɞ˚‧｡⋆ 𝘀𝗲𝗮𝗹𝗲𝗱 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗮 𝗸𝗶𝘀𝘀 II @sasorikigai sent: [ nap ] sender kisses receiver gently while they nap, not wanting to wake them + reverse (canon)

It is uncommon for a grandmaster of any clan to take a nap.

It is far more uncommon for Hanzo Hasashi, the leader of the Shirai Ryu, to be taking a nap so unguarded.

Olivia knows the warrior is slumbering. The way his head is tilt ever so slightly against what he lounges against, the steady movement of his chest that indicates he is breathing calmly, and the stillness underneath his eyelids to symbolize he is not enduring another nightmare of the past. This unique, almost rare instance, that the sun goddess is certain she has only given permission to witness in this lifetime they share together.

She kneels, the goddess that she is, kneels before the grandmaster. Kneels to the man who has not captured her heart through false promises or romantic seduction, but earned it through trust, devotion, and patience. The kind of courtship that did not prosper instantly as a fleeting romance is but through time and growth where both friendship and companionship bloom together in a partnership. This is why she kneels, leaning forward, until the sun goddess is at a level where those sapphire eyes can admire the features of her beloved properly.

This is not a planned nap. The grandmaster's hair, still bound and tied up into it's bun, aside from those small silver strands that have stuck out from the shifting of his body in this position of sleep, is still kept in place. Something she knows Hanzo does not do when he retires for the night for sleep. Sleep, although for a sun goddess it carries not too many rituals, is one that Hanzo does place routine with. To allow this one habit to go astray has Olivia wonder how this has happened, no matter how logical her thoughts come to her about it. They were within the Shirai Ryu, their home, this safe haven that has become both a refuge and stronghold for the families within it, and that deceit was nearly impossible to happen. This alone could be the reason why Hanzo is asleep, hours before the scheduled bedtime.

Then one small thought comes to her. Another reason, perhaps one less common for a warrior, is exhaustion. That Hanzo's strict routine, pushing his body, this form that holds scars and perfection as one, is finally requesting to take a breather. A rest. Years of rebuilding the Shirai Ryu, continuing traditions and training afterwards, finally reaching it's limit with the grandmaster. The hellfire within Hanzo does not fade, still vibrant and absolute, but the man who wields it, is holding on the appearance of someone who appears as if they would never take on the image of a flaming skeleton.

She will not awaken her darling Hanzo. Allowing him to sleep, to indulge in a cat nap, without distractions or discomfort. For now the sun goddess will grant the grandmaster one small gift before she parts from where he lounges. Olivia leans forward where she kneels, smiling sweetly as her lips press against Hanzo's forehead, gentle and featherlike, before she repeats the same affection lower, her lips pressing against his in a chaste but loving kiss.

The sun goddess pulls back, tilting her head at the grandmaster, pleased he does not stir awake, but instead twitches ever so silently at his brow, where that visible scar of his moves with it, before relaxing. Olivia's smiles widens, silently triumph that she has not disturbed the grandmaster's nap, his expression still content.

▬▬▬ι═══════ﺤ 🔥|| Hanzo does not remember choosing to close his eyes.

That is the detail that unsettles him most, once thought returns to him in full - the absence of decision. A shinobi's sleep is never surrender; it is a discipline unto itself, a door left open only a fraction, senses coiled and waiting even in unconsciousness. He has trained his body for decades to rest without truly relinquishing vigilance, to hear a footstep shift on tatami from three rooms away even as his mind wanders the corridors of dream.

And yet. And yet there had been no threshold crossed with intention. Only the training ground's heat still clinging to his muscles, only the High Blades' unrelenting tempo replaying behind his eyes - their strikes precise as falling rain, merciless in their correction, each error in his own form met with the quiet devastation of men who have transcended flesh into something closer to concept. He had matched them stride for stride, breath for breath, refusing the mercy of rest even as his body screamed its limits in a language older than words.

By the time he had returned to his quarters, sinking down against the futon meaning only to steady his breathing, meaning only to close his eyes a moment against the day's brutal light - sleep had already claimed him. Not overtaken him as an enemy might, in violence and struggle, but arrived the way dusk arrives: gradual, inevitable, soft-footed as a lover slipping past a door left carelessly unlatched.

His body had folded inward by degrees. First the shoulders, unclenching from the rigid set he carries even in rest, the burden of grandmaster and warrior set down, however briefly, upon the altar of exhaustion. Then his spine, curving toward the futon's edge though never fully surrendering to it - some fragment of him, even unconscious, refusing to lie prone and unguarded, some ancestral vigilance keeping him upright, tilted, caught in the liminal space between rest and readiness. His hair had loosened from its careful bind as his head found the makeshift pillow of his own folded arm, strands of silver escaping like threads pulled loose from a tapestry too tightly woven, betraying the one true casualty of his fatigue: the single ritual he does not abandon, undone without his consent.

And still he had not woken.

This is the part that would astonish him most, were he lucid enough yet to marvel at it. That his breathing had settled into something slow and unbroken, each inhale drawn without the customary catch of a man perpetually bracing for violence. That the furrow between his brows, worn so permanently into his face that it has become geography, had smoothed - not vanished, never vanished, the scars of his life etched too deep for that mercy, but softened, the tension easing like ice beneath spring's first true warmth.

That no nightmare had risen to claim him in that hour, no phantom of fire or loss dragging him screaming back to consciousness, the way it so often does even now, years removed from that particular hell. He had simply slept. Deeply. Unguarded. As though something in him - some quiet, animal certainty beneath the discipline and the scars and the hellfire banked eternal in his chest - had recognized safety long before his conscious mind could name it as such. As though his body understood, even in oblivion, that he was watched over by someone who would let no harm reach him in that vulnerable hour.

He had slept through the shifting light as afternoon aged toward evening. Slept through the settling hush of the Shirai Ryu's grounds beyond his walls, footsteps of students and warriors alike growing distant, muffled by wood and paper screens. Slept through even her nearness - her nearness, which by rights ought to have stirred him instantly, every instinct in him tuned to her presence the way flame is tuned to air. And yet he had not stirred. Had simply continued in that rare and fragile peace, breath after breath, until her lips had grazed his brow and then his mouth, and even then he had not woken fully, only surfaced enough to register warmth, to let his scarred brow twitch once in unconscious acknowledgment before sinking back beneath the surface for one final, lingering moment.

Now, at last, he surfaces fully - the way a blade rises from its sheath, slow, deliberate, no wasted motion even in this most unguarded of returns to waking. Awareness comes to him in fragments, the way dusk comes to the training grounds - not all at once, but in accumulating shadow. The dull ache in his shoulders. The grit of exhaustion behind closed eyes, that particular hollowness earned only through discipline pushed to its furthest edge.

His eyes open by degrees, lashes parting like a curtain drawn back on a scene half-remembered. The room swims first in gold, then resolves - the low slant of afternoon light cutting harsh and holy through the shoji screens, painting one side of him in fire and leaving the other in shadow, chiaroscuro made flesh, a man caught between the blaze he carries and the quiet he has only recently allowed himself to keep.

And there, close enough that her warmth still clings to him, kneeling with the patience of something eternal, is Olivia.

He does not startle. Hanzo Hasashi does not startle. But something in his chest shifts, a slow unclenching, the way a fist uncurls only in the presence of absolute safety. "You let me sleep," he murmurs, voice roughened by disuse, low as embers banked but not extinguished. It is not quite a question. His gaze studies her face first—always her face first - reading the quiet triumph she wears like sunlight itself, before he lets his eyes fall shut again, briefly, as if savoring the ghost of her kiss still etched into his skin.

"You could have woken me." He says this not as reproach, but as something gentler - an offering, an acknowledgment of trust given freely. His hand, calloused and sure even in its heaviness, finds hers where it rests near his knee, fingers closing around it with the same deliberate care he affords his blade. "I would not have minded waking to you."

The corner of his mouth - the one marked by that old, familiar scar - curves, faint but unmistakable, dusk settling gently into the hard planes of his face. "But I confess," he adds, voice dropping further, intimate as a secret shared only in failing light, "there are worse ways to surface than believing, even half-asleep, that the sun herself chose to linger over me a while longer." ▬▬▬ι═══════ﺤ 🔥||

miharu's unhinged thoughts, i mean feelings @sasorikigai

"Doctor Yamaguchi."

Fox-sharp eyes find Emily Chavez, a young nurse in her first week at the hospital, doing her internship. Miharu, senior attending in contrast, looks up from her chart, unhurried but with equal regard and importance for what the younger nurse has to say to her; the same way she regards the charge nurse with a steady attention, and the same way she values inputs of seasoned colleagues. Hierarchy never changes whether she regards patients or colleagues.

"Yes?" Not quite a question, not quite a statement. Simply acknowledging. A response.

The physician clips her pen to the clipboard, a pause necessary from the reading she had not taken a break from. A breath. A moment of stillness in a day that has been continuous in its chaotic rhythms.

Emily hesitates, then her gaze lands towards Miharu's wrist.

"That bracelet. I don't think I have seen you take it off." The statement is an observation. Innocent. Observantly accurate. Miharu isn't sure if the assessment is merely innocent or unnecessary scrutiny.

But it lands a little too close to what Emily might possibly know.

Her gaze flits quickly to the bracelet on her wrist, the charm a blackened steel that rests cool against her skin even under the crowding heat of the trauma bay.

Emily continues with an oblivious "You're not really the jewelry type, you know."

She isn't wrong, Miharu files this quietly. That part is true. She only wears one thing - a silver pendant she'd been wearing since she was eighteen, a talisman that keeps her kumiho nature quiet, and the addition of the bracelet with a blackened-steel charm with a bluish, icy glow that she is convinced is only a trick of the light.

Emily's voice softens, curious but cautious from coming off as intrusive.

"Is it from someone?"

Miharu is still, for a breath. For longer than a breath. No one would notice, she thinks. No one does.

But someone does. She doesn't know this.

From the far end of the nurses' station, Kuai Liang stands there just finishing a consult. Blue steel irises find her, and Miharu feels the weight of his gaze from afar, and she does not fold herself from his stare. Merely quietly acknowledging but not yet diverting her attention to him. Not yet. Only keeps her gaze on Emily.

"It's," she pauses, deliberate, finding the appropriate word for it. "Important. To me."

Emily raises a brow. "How?"

Miharu deflects. She always does. This is what she has always done. And yet, she smiles at Emily, polite and cordial - the kind of tone that is also a warning we are at work, this is not the appropriate time to discuss personal matters; tread carefully and a quiet reminder broadcast in a frequency too loud too obvious.

Emily catches the warning in Miharu's polite smile, interprets it as a story that Miharu isn't ready to divulge at the moment - the professional boundary which is gentle, because she has learned that Doctor Yamaguchi is cutthroat, and yet she is gentle too in her correction and the young student nurse backs off.

"Sorry. I didn't mean to pry."

Miharu inclines her head once, a gesture of acknowledgment. Her gaze remains steady. Posture composed.

But inside, something shifts. Something moves beneath the composure.

The question landed too close. The charm feels too cold. There are eyes on her - not Emily's.

His.

She does not look. There is no need to.

She feels a certain cryomancer's attention on her, like a shift in the air and temperature - a quiet, focused presence her mind already registers at the other end of the nurses' station. His posture has not changed.

Still. Attentive. Listening.

And she has not yet arrived at the fact that he heard at least part of it. She doesn't know yet how she knows.

But Emily clears her throat again. "So... important how?"

"It's personal," she says. Politely, and firmly. "And not relevant to the trauma bay. You might want to look at the patient in bed three."

Emily's eyes widen, nods quickly like a student realizing that A was the correct answer in that quiz they answered B to. "Right. Of course." She steps back fully now, retreating toward the supply cart.

Then.

The charm pulses.

A shooting cold that reminds her softly. As though it is alive. The chill blooms beneath the bracelet, spreading through her wrist like frost tracing a path only she feels its trajectory.

Her breath catches.

She is still.

The cold from the charm spreads up her arm and suddenly Miharu feels a different weight--

A weight around her throat.

Heavy. Cold. Familiar. It is not the silver pendant she wears now. It is something older. Something that is forged. Blackened steel. Tempered ice. A necklace. A gift. A grandmaster's hands fastening it behind her neck. A voice, low, calm, resolute. Saying something she cannot fully hear.

A memory that is not seen. But felt. A memory that is both hers and not hers.

A warmth at her chest. A cold at her throat. A presence behind her.

She inhales sharply.

The trauma bay snaps back into focus. The weight is gone. The bracelet is still there. The cold pulse is still there on her wrist.

For a moment her composure falters. She has no chance to stop herself, and she speaks. Softly. Barely audible. Not meant for Emily nor anyone:

"He's important."

The words are quiet. Not whispered. Just soft. Honest. Costly.

Her heart skips a beat, rhythm interrupted. Her breath shortens. A tremor through her fingers.

She freezes.

Shit.

She had not meant to say it aloud. She had not even meant to name it; she isn't ready. She didn't mean to let it slip.

Her eyes have already flicked towards the far end of the station, where Kuai Liang stands and is already looking at her.

Not at the chart, not at the board.

Her.

He saw everything: the subtle tremor of her fingers, the way her shoulders tightened, the way her breath hitched. The way her composure nearly broke as something beneath shifts.

He had heard everything.

Miharu exhales through her nose, small. Controlled. She turns back to her chart, but her hand does not move, and the pen stops. Pretending to read, pretending to be unaffected.

Her wrist is still cold, her pulse faster than it should be. Skin too warm.

And she knows he is approaching. Slow. Deliberate. Measured.

He stops beside her. Close enough that she feels his warmth against the cold of the charm.

He is patiently waiting. With a space offered for her to choose whether to acknowledge him.

And then she does.

❄️ || He does not speak right away. He lets the silence settle first, the way frost settles - not falling, but arriving, claiming the air molecule by molecule until the whole room remembers what cold is.

He is, in this room of scrubs and surgical blues and the harried camouflage of hospital uniforms, a wrong note struck deliberately - not loud, but unmistakable. Dress shirt sleeves rolled precisely to the forearm, collar open at the throat, the suit jacket abandoned hours ago on the back of some borrowed chair in the makeshift office they've given him down the hall. No white coat. No scrubs. Just the quiet formality of a man who dresses like the weight of what he does deserves a certain gravity, even when the world around him has traded ceremony for expedience.

The glasses catch the fluorescent light when he tilts his head, thin silver frames perched with a precision that suggests use, not affectation - hours spent bent over case files, over a laptop screen glowing too bright in a dim office, cross-referencing incident reports with soldiers' halting testimonies, the clinical language of trauma metrics beside the messier language of nightmares reported secondhand. He'd pushed them up the bridge of his nose an hour ago and forgotten they were there, the way a person forgets a second skin. They make him look less like a warrior born of ice and old oaths, more like exactly what his intake paperwork says he is: Dr. Liang, trauma and criminal psychology, consulting.

But Miharu would know better. She always has.

Because underneath the cotton and the careful button-work, underneath the ordinary architecture of a man who could pass for anyone's overqualified therapist, there is something that does not translate to fabric - a stillness in the way he holds himself, weight settled low and permanent, like it could survive an alarm klaxon, a code blue, an artillery strike. Scrubs move restlessly through the halls around him. He does not move restlessly. He has never had to.

He'd come to the base at Hanzo Hasashi's request - Hanzo, commander of tactical special forces now in this life as in some echo of the last, a man who had traded incendiary jutte for insignia and command structure but kept the same unrelenting instinct to protect what was his to protect. Hanzo had sought him out directly, not through some anonymous chain of memoranda but face to face, the way old allegiances still insisted on being honored even when neither of them fully remembered why the loyalty ran so deep. My men are coming back broken in ways the infirmary can't stitch, he'd said, or something close enough to it, and Kuai had not needed to be asked twice.

This was the kind of work his hands were made for now, in this life: not the war itself, but what the war left behind in the people who survived it. He carries case files instead of a blade now. A laptop instead of ice sheathed to his forearms. And yet the eyes behind the glasses are the same eyes that have always found her across any room, any crowd, any lifetime - sharp, glacial, patient in a way that makes people want to look away first.

He does not look away first. He never has.

Now, standing beside her at the nurses' station with his sleeves rolled and his glasses slightly fogged from the trauma bay's borrowed heat, he lets the incongruity of himself settle into the space between them - the suit among scrubs, the stillness among chaos, the cold among the warm-blooded clatter of the ward. He is aware of how he must look to her: too formal, too collected, a man carrying quiet architecture into a room built for emergencies. He has always stood out here, deliberately or not. He does not mind. Some things are not meant to blend.

He knows, too, what hums beneath her sleeve. He remembers the night he fastened it around her wrist - not her throat, though the memory that found her moments ago was not wrong, only early, only a different vow from a different life bleeding backward through the same two souls.

He remembers concentrating his chi like a smith folding steel, tempering it thin and exact, a sliver of himself pressed into blackened metal so that no matter how far she wandered, no matter what division or deployment or distance swallowed her whole, some part of her would always know which direction north was. His north. Evergreen and glacial, the scent of pine cracking under snow, of breath fogging in air too still to hold it. He gave her a compass disguised as jewelry, and he asked for nothing in return except that she keep it close enough to feel.

Now he watches the color drain and rush back to her face in the same breath, watches her hand forget the pen it was pretending to hold, and something in his chest tightens with a tenderness he does not let touch his expression.

"I've scheduled sessions here," he says instead, low, even, giving her the mercy of a doorway that isn't the one she nearly walked through in front of Emily. "For the soldiers. The ones coming back from the harder deployments carry more than the charts show." A practical truth, offered first, because he knows her - knows the way she will take the exit if he leaves one open, knows the quiet architecture of her deflection, built brick by brick over years of not being ready.

He does not chase the words she said without meaning to release them. He heard them anyway. He's important. Three syllables that hit him like meltwater breaking through ice he didn't know had cracked, cold and sudden and entirely without her permission.

But he does not press his advantage. He is not a man who takes ground simply because it has been offered by accident.

Instead, watching her profile, the tight composure she is rebuilding stone by stone, he lets his voice drop - not colder, but quieter, meant only for the small space between them, meant to be gentle even though the question itself is not:

"Why am I important, Miharu?"

The question is quiet. Unhurried. Offered the way he offers everything to her - without demand, without urgency, patient as glacier-melt, patient as a man who has already waited one lifetime to ask it and is willing, if he must, to wait through another.

He does not expect an answer. He knows the shape of her silences by now, the particular way she retreats into professionalism like drawing a blade back into its sheath. He is patient the way frost is patient - willing to wait for the temperature to drop on its own, willing to let her come to stillness in her own time rather than forcing the freeze.

So he simply stands there, steady, unhurried, the ice-blue of his eyes catching the sterile light in a way that makes him look, for just a moment, less like a psychologist and more like something older, something that has waited centuries before and can wait a few more minutes now - letting the question exist in the air between them like breath made visible in cold: there, undeniable, in no rush to disappear. ❄️ ||

miharu's unhinged thoughts, i mean feelings @sasorikigai

The hangar hums with its mechanical roar - engines cooling, metal groaning, hydraulics hissing and mechanics beginning their checklists. She hears none of it. Her pulse is still too fast. Her breathing, she's trying to slow down. Adrenaline flows through her veins and her breath shudders even as her aircraft has already landed, and she has yet to realize the damage of her bird, of Strikecoil and she just knows that her bird will need to be rebuilt from the ground up.

Miharu Yamaguchi had disobeyed him.

Eight months, twelve deployments. The second time she'd disobeyed him, through the comms where everyone else listening had heard.

Hanzo approaches behind her - slow, controlled. Always unhurried. Deliberate.

"Yamaguchi."

He speaks in that cadence, low, precise. Disappointed, if he let it show. Which she knows he will not. She knows he will not give her anything.

She straightens, though her body aches with the pilot's exhaustion and every single muscle in her body is in flames. She straightens anyway, spine rigid. Expression frozen and yet the shadow of tiredness lingers.

"Commander."

He stops in front of her. Obsidian eyes with tiny flickers of amber-gold like flecks of sparks under a different light at a different angle. He pauses, deliberate.

"You disobeyed a direct order."

I know, she thinks.

She says nothing. Her expression is frozen, but her eyes no longer hide the flares beneath her stubborn determination, her stubborn conviction that what she did was appropriate and that she'd do it again and again if she had to. They narrow, her feet planted on the ground.

"I told you to stand down."

Her jaw tightens. He will not miss it. She is no longer masking it either.

"You jeopardized the mission."

Silence.

"Nearly compromised us all."

She remains quiet. Bracing. Hanzo is not nagging; she knows this. He isn't the type to ever nag. He is reprimanding her with facts. She does not deny them.

"And you almost got--"

He doesn't finish. She knows where this is going: You nearly got yourself killed.

The silence between them is thick. Palpable. Uncomfortable for lesser soldiers. But neither of them is lesser, and Miharu lets the silence simmer, her mind assembling the correct sentence to say to him.

He will want an explanation, she thinks. She knows. She flew too recklessly, and the weight of command was heavier when her plane was caught in the crossfire, because she'd engaged enemy fire towards her instead of the ground team that should have been the targets.

Miharu stands there, pain spreading through every muscle fibre in her body; spine locked into a rigidity as her jaw. Her pulse still roars in her ears too fast, too loud.

Hanzo watches her - waiting, and he is extraordinarily good at waiting, unyielding and precise and expecting the truth in which a portion will make into the reports, and the rest will find the pages of her journal when she finally has a chance to breathe.

She breaks the gaze, the eyes that once find him - resolve faltering. She never falters. And yet, whatever something is, was, had been - it gave. An inward collapse. Or perhaps maybe something bent than crumbling.

Hanzo closes the distance between them. Three feet become two. She feels him, feels the burning. His fire, her foxfire cannot help but recognize. Her foxfire responds to it, flares like the ones behind her eyes when she tried to stand her ground just a breath ago.

"Explain why you did that," he says quietly. His eyes do not leave her. And he will not miss the part where there is a conflict in her eyes. He would already know this even if she looked away. He expects her to deflect. She always does this.

But he has decided, after the seventh month, after the ninth deployment, that she will keep doing it. And it is up to him to leave the door open. He has learned this from the last time she deviated. She did not disobey last time, only deviated. And still, she drew fire to her, because Miharu Yamaguchi is a pilot who engages fully.

He knows why. He knows that she knows.

But the naming helps, he has learned. In a language that he still does not possess, and she translates it into one that he can understand. Because if the reason for her insubordination is something beyond technical issues, then it only confirms what he already knows.

Something in her chest tightens.

"Look at me, Miharu."

Miharu. Her given name. Not Yamaguchi. Not the rank.

She swallows.

"I could not watch you die."

Hanzo goes still. She continues. Her voice trembles and the admission costs her. Everything.

"I knew what was going to happen. And I have--"

Her breath hitches. "I have watched you die before."

The words detonate.

Her voice cracks now. "I remember seeing you die. In another life. In another time. I don't know how. I don't know why. I just remember losing you. And I cannot--I cannot do that again."

She does not tell him: I saw the blast radius closing in, and I knew where you were.

She does not tell him: I knew the timing, the outcome and I already know this.

She does not tell him: I already lost you once.

▬▬▬ι═══════ﺤ 🔥|| Something in him answers before he understands it - not thought, but recognition, old as scar tissue, old as a wound that never quite closed.

He does not move. For a long moment he only watches her, obsidian eyes gone strange, gone distant, as though he is looking through her rather than at her, through the hangar and the oil-stained concrete and the years, back to a place bathed in the copper stink of his own blood.

Because he remembers.

Not clearly. Not as men remember mornings or names or the weight of a rifle. He remembers it the way the body remembers falling - a plummet the mind refuses to hold onto, a cold that arrives before the wound does.

He remembers lying somewhere that was not this life, gravel or stone or dust beneath a back that would not stop leaking warmth into the earth, and a voice above him he could not place and could never forget. A voice cracking the way hers cracks now. Saying his name like it was the only rope left to hold. He remembers the ember of himself - small, stubborn, clinging low in his chest like the last coal in a dying fire - guttering. Guttering and refusing, and then not refusing anymore. He remembers surrender dressed up as peace. He remembers the exact moment his life stopped fighting to stay and simply left, quiet as smoke through fingers, and how cold that leaving was, colder than any winter his current body has known, hollow in a way flesh should not be able to survive being hollow. And then - nothing. And then, impossibly, something. A flicker. A single stubborn flame cupped against a gale that should have smothered it a hundred times over. A candle in a storm that had no business surviving the night, and yet.

He is standing in front of her now, and he does not know if the ember was hers. He does not know if she was the storm or the cupped hands. He only knows that some locked and rusted door in him has, for the first time in this life, moved on its hinges.

None of this reaches his face.

"Miharu." Her name again, low, unchanged. Not gentler than before - he does not offer her gentleness, does not know yet if he is capable of it, or if she would even want it from him dressed as anything but honesty. "You disobeyed me because you were trying to keep a dead man from dying twice."

It is not a question. It is not comfort, either. He lets it sit there between them, plain and unadorned, a blade laid flat on a table rather than pressed to a throat.

"I do not know what you saw. I do not ask you to prove it." His jaw is granite, but something moves behind the obsidian, gold sparking faint and involuntary, like flint struck once in the dark. "But you wear three stripes and a call sign because you can be trusted to choose the mission over yourself. That is the order I gave. That is the order you broke."

He does not soften the words. He will not pretend the report writes itself differently because of what she has just handed him - her grief, her impossible memory, laid bare on the hangar floor between them like something still bleeding.

"You will not do it again," he says. Quiet. Absolute. Not because he doubts what she remembers. Because he remembers too, now, in the marrow, in the ash-cold place where an ember almost did not relight - and a commander who lets his pilots die chasing his ghost is no commander at all.

His eyes hold hers, unflinching, amber flickering like something old, something recognized, something neither of them yet has language for.

"Whatever you saw," he says, "you do not get to trade yourself for it. Not for me. Not for anyone." ▬▬▬ι═══════ﺤ 🔥||