#pxriculum

Now, the shop is a dark and desolate space in an even more broken wasteland that was once a city of life and light. Instead of a fully loaded pastry case, she stocks her shelves with whatever survial tools she can get her hands on. There is no bell, no smell of things baking in an oven, and God forbid anyone makes any noise getting here, lest you find yourself at the mercy of the nearest bloodthirsty gang that hears you, or she twists your ears until they’re ready to fall off for being so damnably irresponsible.

She’s cleaning out her trusted shotgun that usually nestles in a hidden place below the counter, Mochi glaring mistrustfully at the door, when they come in. The slimmed down feline (because who can afford to keep a cat as fat and happy as he once was with things the way they are?) leaps down to greet them, her first signal to look up.

She almost wishes she hadn’t.

Her gaze goes first to Matt, because in truth she’s afraid of what she’ll see in his companion. She’ll need to clean and bandage his legs as soon as possible if he wants to continue this fight against Hiro. Perhaps a few hours rest would do him good as well, a judgement obtained by noting the red around his eyes, and the way they seem to focus on nothing and everything all at once. He doesn’t meet her gaze, doesn’t say anything, though the latter is far from unusual with him.

Brown eyes slide to his left, where stands her nephew, Tadashi. He looks only slightly better off in terms of scars and scrapes, but far worse in every other way as his amber eyes meet hers. The emptiness she finds there threatens to swallow her whole, and the lack of color in his face makes some of her own drain away. But she chooses to ignore these things to ask a question.

“Where’s Takeshi?”

Silence is golden, some say, but in this moment it is the dark black of a void slowly pulling her in with its monstrous gravity. Try again.

“Where is he?” Matt doesn’t move an inch, as if he can sense the rising storm within her, battering against the boundaries of her skin, barely restrained from destroying everything in her path for the answer she wants. So once again, she turns back to Tadashi.

This time, the foreign language of his expression is as easily understood as any other. Every sag of his spine, glint of something overwhelmingly sorrowful in his eyes, tells her what she needs to know - what she doesn’t want to know, or understand, because oh God, she had never thought the nightmare they lived in could get worse.

“No.” It’s just one word, two letters, and yet the whole world seems to shatter with the power of it. Reality breaks and bends around her, turning everything into a funhouse mirror reflection of itself: ugly and distorted, and so very, very wrong.

“Aunt Cass-”

But she doesn’t let him finish before she releases the storm. It escapes her in the form of anguished shouting, broken sobbing, the hurling of the most inexpensive objects she can afford to crush his skull in with because if there’s one thing she taught him it was honesty, and how d a r e he lie to her in such a way, try and trick her into believing something so disgustingly awful. How could he?

“Cass, it isn’t his fault. Calm down.”

And suddenly, inexplicably, she does. Because if even Matt can break his silence to say this, to subtly confirm the fear echoing in her mind, then it must be true. And if it is, then what is all this for? Any of it? Her screaming, their fighting. She’s lost two nephews now, and what the hell for?

The silence stretches between them for an eternity, languid like a cat, watchful like a hawk. Mochi undoubtedly sought out shelter when her raging began, and she thinks he has the right idea. They all need sanctuary right now. A place to step away from the fighting and danger, and grieve together. A sigh far heavier than any soul should have to bear the weight of tumbles from her lips, and her shoulders droop as if they’ve accepted it for their own.

“Come on, I’ll patch you up.”