#amonkira

Once upon a time, going to a place like this would be utterly foreign to her, to the person that she was, to the entity named Mado Akira. But sometime, somehow, in the abyss of the past unconscious weeks, she became different. Sometime, somehow, all the things that Mado Akira used to care about — victory, revenge, duty, justice — came to mean nothing to whoever that she is now.

Furthermore. Mado Akira would have cared if she was caught kissing in public. Mado Akira might have gone for one quick kiss, but certainly not two, or three. She wouldn’t have leaned up for a fourth. She wouldn’t have been the one to pull away with effort, to whisper, Let’s go somewhere else. That isn’t Mado Akira.

Who am I now?

Apparently, at least, someone that would check in to a love hotel. She scans the room, hears Amon shut the door, feels his arms wrap around her, feels his mouth against her brow. Her entire body shivers against him. They make it to the bed, and she feels his weight, and his hand rests on the bottom of her shirt, and something in her panics, and she gasps, “Wait, wait, wait.”

He freezes.

“The lights,” she says quickly. “Turn them off.”

His eyes search her. “All of them?” he asks.

“Yes.”

“And the curtain?” It’s slightly open.

“Yes.”

He hesitates.

“It’s not you,” she clarifies. “It’s — it’s me. I don’t...I’m not...”

I’m not Mado Akira. Not the one that he actually knew. There aren’t mirrors underground but she saw it herself: the slight protrusion of her ribs, the slack of her belly, the scarring that had once been her small badges and now only looked like skidmarks and smears in the mud of her body, the trails of people desperately trying to flee her and only managing to join the cemetery growing in what used to be Mado Akira but is now both yawning emptiness and unwieldy, baggy, heavy, clumsy, weak, ugly flesh.

This was a bad idea. She twists, uncomfortably, and the words Let’s stop are in her mouth when stands. The lights flick out. The curtain sweeps shut, and they’re dense enough that the room is well and truly black. She exhales with some, just a little, relief. She hears his body return to her, the bed creaking as he crawls. He finds her again, with his hands, and his body aligns with hers, and he kisses her, and maybe her lips are stiff or her breath cold because he then murmurs, “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know,” she whispers, which is a lie that’s easier to say than everything.

Now that it’s dark, she can’t read his expression, can’t know if he’s frustrated with her or pitying her or something else. He tries kissing her again and she tries to kiss him back. He stops, and she does too.

“It’s weird,” his voice says, quietly. “I admit that it is. That everything is. Is that how you feel too?”

“Maybe,” she allows.

Amon’s hand finds her cheek, cradles it. His palm is big, warm. His thumb traces the corner of her mouth.

“I thought all the time about how I pushed you away back then,” he continues softly. “I thought...I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. It’s meaningless, now, whatever I thought back then. Now I’m not...I’m just...”

He can’t gesture to himself in the dark, but she hears him, painting himself with missing fingers and whatever other small marks he’s referring to.

“It’s not you,” she repeats, “it’s me,” and his other hand rises to her face, framing her in the dark. He kisses her forehead, and at first she thinks that he missed, but then he kisses her left eye and then her right, with precision.

“Tell me,” he says. “Tell me everything.”

She snorts. Come on. As if she’d give breath to the even more disgusting things that reside inside of her, sticking to her throat and ribs like slime. But he kisses her again, and kisses her again, and his body shifts and presses exquisitely, as if to say I don’t mind being close to you, as if to repeat I will support you, as if to confirm I won’t dodge, and she swallows as the tiniest confession is squeezed out to the tip of her tongue, something dumb, something plain and generic, “I’m just...tired,” and then something even less worthy and unique, “I’m — lonely,” and then something even more stupid, “I’m ugly,” and then, something even more true, “I don’t know...who I am anymore.”

“You’re Akira,” Amon says, simply, and the sound of his voice cradling her bare name makes her eyes, somehow, sting. When she inhales next, her breath shudders a little, and she swallows, and he kisses her eyes again, this time following a stray tear to the curve of her ear.

His closeness to her is so warm and sweet that she feels overly tender, realizes too late that her body is still a bruise, and somehow that makes his weight even more exquisite. He repeats himself, in whispers, barely, in breaths — “Akira” — and she feels her way toward him, pulls his shirt from his pants, lays her palm on his hot skin, “Akira,” seeking shelter in him, a place to gather herself again, somewhere in the broad of his back, or the line of his jaw, or even in the spaces she finds when she seeks his hand and twines her fingers to his. He stiffens. Then he relaxes.

“Can I confess something to you too,” Amon murmurs.

She smiles. “If you have to.”

“I missed you.”

She wishes now that the lights were on after all, that she could see his expression.

“I...missed you. So now, I...that I’m here with you now, I’m...” He trails, gnawing, searching. “I wasn’t sure that I could come back. That there was any place to return to. Or that if there was, that I...that what I am now could ever...”

He’s at loss, and she’s struck by its familiarity. Maybe seeing him is unnecessary. She knows him. She traces the lines of his face and finds she doesn’t even need that to see his earnest expression, unsure but holding himself back, embarrassed maybe but absolutely serious. This time he isn’t on the floor on his thousandth push-up.

The memory lights up inside her like a small candle. A tiny flicker of the old Mado Akira: not dead, but not exactly the same either. Hungry, suddenly, for the sweetness of something she’s never eaten, a glimmer she can feel only now here, in the dark. A simple pleasure that has nothing to do with victory, or revenge, or duty, or justice.

“You missed me?”

“Yes...yes.”

Her legs part around his waist. She bucks softly against him and his groan of “Akira” crumples, a little. His forehead pushes into hers, hard, at the same time his hips sink against her, wanting.