#spirami

“I know what you did, Kami!” she shouted across the clearing. “Don’t try to deny it! Why the hell would you hurt Stein like that?!”

You really can’t take a guess? Kami thought bitterly, narrowing her eyes. “It was nothing Sawbones didn’t have coming. I didn’t hurt him half as much as he hurt Spirit.”

“He told the nurse he’d been attacked by a Kishin egg and she believed him! How can you say that he deserved that?!”

Easily, she wanted to say, but such a flippant answer would probably get her head knocked off. And a careless tone wouldn’t do a thing to convince her friend of how deadly serious this really was. “I didn’t have much of a choice, it was either do this or do nothing. And I had to warn him what’ll happen if he hurts you somehow! He doesn’t care about anyone else’s feelings, just himself - so the only way to make him understand was to beat it into him!”

Marie was clearly not willing to accept her perfectly sound reasoning. He advance did not slow in the slightest, and Kami recognized the look on her face: it was the one she always wore whenever she was about to let loose completely on some poor fool who’d pushed her too far. “You don’t know him well enough to be as sure about that as you think you are. You don’t even try to,” she snarled. “So I’m only going to ask you this once: can you leave this alone and let me handle it myself?”

Kami tensed, readying herself for the full-blown fight her answer would ignite. Better to be honest and dig herself deeper into trouble, than to lie and let Marie keep seeing her bastard boyfriend through whatever rose-tinted glasses were permanently stuck on her face. “I could. But like hell I’m going to.”

She almost didn’t see the attack coming. All of a sudden, Marie was gone and there was a gold and black blur barreling towards her, and she very nearly couldn’t sidestep in time to avoid the fist that came flying at her head. “So what, you’re saying you would do something like this again?! What if you go too far next time? What if you do something Stein can’t bounce back from?”

“What if I go too far? He already has!” Kami cried, raising her arms defensively. “He spent five years straight using Spirit like a lab rat, and I won’t let him use you too!”

“He won’t! I’m sure of it! Why can’t you ever listen to anyone? You just always have to be right, don’t you?”

“I am right about this! It’s you who won’t listen, because you care more about that freak than you do about your own friends!”

Marie froze. At the stunned and hurt look on her face, Kami’s stomach dropped. Oh, fuck. That was definitely going too far. But before she could take it back, the rage in the weapon’s eyes surged back with a vengeance, washing away all hesitation, and she lunged at Kami again.

This time Kami couldn’t dodge in time, and all she could do was block as fast as she could the barrage of punches forcing her backward, each one punctuated by an angry word. “I am sick - and tired - of hearing people - calling Stein a freak - or a psycho - or a monster - or any of those awful things!”

“They - !” It was taking all of Kami’s concentration to avoid having her skull bashed in, and she was certain that her forearms would be black and blue tomorrow from all the punishment they were taking. Goddamn Viking berserker rage. But still, she had never been one to back down on anything before, and she sure as hell wasn’t going to start now. “They only say those things because they’re true! Maybe not completely, maybe, but still - !”

“They’re not true! He tries so hard - to be good - but the more he hears all that - the more he believes it - and it’s all so wrong! If he really was that bad - he wouldn’t try this hard - but he still does!”

“Bullshit he does!” Kami shrieked, shriller than she’d intended. She’d had enough of this, absolutely enough! In the same motion as her next block, she dropped down and swept Marie’s legs out from under her, sending the younger girl crashing hard to the ground. “He does whatever horrible shit he feels like doing and and thinks nothing of it! He doesn’t care that he hurt Spirit and he won’t care when he hurts you! Why can’t you get it through your head that he’s dangerous!”

“He’s not! He would never hurt me! Just because you hate him doesn’t make him a bad person!”

“This isn’t about me! I’m worried about you!  ‘He does bad things but he’s not a bad person,’ ‘oh, you just don’t know him like I do,’ excusing every last thing he’s ever done...You probably think he needs you, don’t you, or that if you just stick by him he’ll magically change into a better person? You’re quoting right out of the battered girlfriend’s handbook and you don’t even realize it!”

“What?!” Marie scrambled to her feet, brushing the dirt off her scraped arm as Kami plowed on.

“You heard me! I don’t know why you try to protect someone like him, because he’s not worth that! But you are, so I won’t stop trying to protect you from him even if you don’t want me to!”

“I don’t need you to! I’m not in any danger! I can protect myself and my partner just fine on my own. You’re not my meister anymore, Kami, so stop acting like it!”

Okay, that stung. Kami grit her teeth and clenched her fists tighter, reminding herself that she would lose all hope of being taken seriously if she couldn’t keep a tighter hold on her temper, but that didn’t stop the heat from building up in her gut. It had been her who had insisted on the change in partners, but what else was she supposed to have done, after she’d found out how Stein had been abusing the trust of his weapon? She couldn’t not do everything she could to protect her boyfriend and help him heal, and it was because of that that she also couldn’t regret switching out Marie for Spirit. But Marie had said that she understood, had even gently urged her to do it...Was this why? So she could start cozying up to Doctor fucking Sawbones? It didn’t matter, either way.

“I’m not your meister, but I’m still your friend!” she shouted, taking on an attack stance. “And it’s my job to knock some sense into you one way or another!”

“Don’t you know how to solve anything without a fight?! Is that really how you think?” Marie shot back, drawing back her fist too. “I won’t let you - “

“I won’t let him - “

The punches flew -

“ - hurt him again!”

“ - hurt you, ever!”

It felt less like being hit and more like having a brick launched straight into her face. Kami was knocked back clear across the grass, rolling over the earth and rocks until she finally skidded to a stop about thirty feet away. For a minute, she lay there completely dazed, staring at the spinning blur of green and blue around her, unable to form a coherent thought or do anything more than twitch. Then, growing steadily louder over the ringing in her ears, she heard someone’s voice, closer and clearer every second.

“Kami? Kamiko! Are you all right?!”

Five of her friend’s faces, wide-eyed and worried, spun above her face for a moment until they returned back to one. Kami gave her a shaky smile that she hoped looked reassuring, with whatever condition her throbbing face was in. “Nice shot, Marie...Guess you win.” Why did it feel like her nose was stopped up by something?

“Who’s talking about winning or losing? This was so stupid, I’m so sorry, come here...” She reached down to Kami, who took the offered hand and let herself be helped to her feet.

“I’m sorry too.” She noticed the thick cut across the other girl’s cheek, and immediately felt like a bitch. “How bad did I get you?”

“I’ll probably be pretty sore for a while,” Marie admitted, rolling her shoulder. “But not too bad.” Kami looked behind her at the tree with a new, body-sized hole in its trunk and wasn’t too sure about that, but decided not to press the point. “Besides, I’ve got no room to complain. I...think I may have broken your nose.”

“Oh?” Kami reached up and lightly touched her nose, and immediately jerked back as if stung, her fingertips coming away bloody. Yeah, that’s more smashed than Spirit on a Friday night. “Well, we’ve both had worse, haven’t we?”

Marie was nowhere near as nonchalant about it as Kami was. “Listen...We shouldn’t be fighting like this. I’m really sorry,” she said, taking Kami’s hand and carefully pulling a splinter out of her palm as she spoke. “Do you want to go up to the infirmary, get ourselves fixed up, and try to just talk all this out on the way?”

Kami sighed. The idea didn’t excite her - diplomacy had never been her strong suit, hard and fast action was her way - but it wasn’t as if she had another choice. Plan A had, apparently, completely fallen through. “Yeah, that sounds good. We’ll just say we had training match that got a little out of hand. That’s not really a lie, is it?”

“I guess not.”

Despite the agreement to talk, the two were silent for a few minutes as they made their way back out of the woods, until Kami tentatively spoke up. “All right...Maybe I went a bit too far with Sawbones yesterday. And I...I promise I won’t do that again,” she forced out from between clenched teeth, hoping that that was enough. She meant every word of what she said, but no way was she going to lie and say she was actually sorry.

“I’d warn you that I’ll hold you to that, but I don’t think I need to. I know you’ll always keep your word. And I won’t do anything like this again, either, I know I overreacted - “

“No, you didn’t. I’d lose my shit too if someone hurt Spirit like that - well, I kind of already did. But I just can’t let anybody screw around with the people I care about and get away with it. You understand that, right, Marie? You know I’m only trying to make sure you’re safe?”

“I know.”

“And I’ll keep my promise and I’ll try to keep my temper, but if that - if he ever does anything to hurt you, then - “

“Then I’ll tell you. Right away. And then you can do whatever you want about it.”

Kami stared, her jaw hanging open. She would have been less surprised had Marie literally turned into a werewolf in front of her. “R-Really? Are you sure you’d do that?”

Marie smiled. “I can say that I will easily, because I can also say with absolute confidence that I’ll never have to,” she said brightly. “I told you, I’m not in any danger from Stein, not at all.”

“...I still don’t like it.”

“I never expected you to.”

“And don’t think that I’m not going to stay on alert. I am. Maybe not high alert, but still. You might trust Sawbones, but I still can’t. Spirit probably will, eventually, but don’t blame him if it takes a while, okay?”

“I won’t. I can understand all of that, too.”

“So we understand each other, now, is that it?”

“Yeah.” Marie reached over and gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. “Yeah, I think we do.”

~0~

It took five increasingly urgent taps on his apartment window before the sound caught Stein’s attention, and he turned his head to see Sid hanging in the window like an oversized spider, clinging to the edges so tightly his fingertips had turned white. He jutted his chin at the lock, silently asking to be let in.

Sighing, Stein turned the book he’d been absorbed in over on the cushion beside him, retrieved his crutches from where they rested on the arm of the couch, and carefully got up and went over to open the window. “You know, I haven’t tested it out myself, but I’m pretty sure that using the stairs and door would be much easier than hanging off a third floor window,” he pointed out as the other boy jumped into the room.

“Sure, but this is much better training!” Sid explained. He slipped a bulky, half-zipped backpack off his shoulder and dropped it onto Stein’s vacated spot on the couch, a small pile of worksheets and study packets spilling partway out. “Brought your homework up. I know you’ll be back in class pretty soon, but how long until you can go back on missions?”

“Well, the cracked ribs should take around six weeks to heal, and the fractured leg should take about the same. So, a while. Fucking Kamiko and her fucking hook kicks,” he muttered. “I wonder if these crutches are hard enough to break some of her bones.”

Sid smirked. “I don’t think you’ll have to worry about that. Someone else has already got it covered. Didn’t anyone tell you yet?”

“Tell me what?”

“You’ll be happy to know that your girlfriend has finally fulfilled her destiny and become an Avenger,” he announced proudly, only for his face to fall when his friend’s only response was a blank stare. “You know, Mjolnir? Thor? The Avengers?”

More blank staring.

“Right, forgot who I was talking to,” he said with a roll of his eyes. “Anyway, the point is, when Marie saw how bad Kami beat you up, she jumped her in the woods to get her back for it, and then they just yelled and punched the shit out of each other for a little while.”

Stein’s eyes went wide. “Is Marie okay?”

“Ahaha, see, this is why I told Kami that she had nothing to worry about! But of course she wouldn’t listen to me.” Sid gave him a reassuring grin. “Marie’s fine. Spirit and I happened to be there dropping something off to the nurse while they were getting patched up. She’s a little scraped up, and her back and shoulder will probably hurt for a couple days, but other than that, nothing. Kami, on the other hand...You should have seen Spirit lose it when he saw what happened to her.” He adopted a high, squawking imitation of the scythe’s voice - “‘Kami! Babe, your face! Your beautiful, beautiful face! What, did she shoot you with a cannonball or something?’ And then she Kami Chopped him right into the infirmary bed next to hers.”

He started to smile, but stopped himself when it made his black eye start aching again. “That sounds right all around. I take it Kamiko learned her lesson, though?”

“I guess so. I don’t think that even divine intervention could stop you two from bickering and fighting all the time, but I get the feeling that if either of you ever hurt the other this bad again, Marie will actually explode.”

“That’s a fairly effective deterrent.”

“Hah, yeah. Though I think Kami didn’t quite get the full message: she’s still hoping that Marie will ditch you anyway.”

The hell with his black eye; at that, Stein smiled. “Well, if that’s the case, then I think she’ll be waiting for a very, very long time.”