fic; the sinking moon is hidden in the clouds
i.
The rain outside is cold, and makes the world dark--or so he vaguely remembers, but he won't look out the window to make sure he's right. It doesn't matter, he doesn't need to know, it's fine, really--
In the darkness the power outage has caused, her eyes seem to glow (they used to talk about it when they were all younger--those burning gold eyes of the youngest Izumi child--and he wonders if he should have predicted her being a fire user just from that), and because Yuki is good at reading people, has always been reading people, he knows she's not really thinking about it as she drapes the towel over his head.
She never has. These thoughtless kindnesses that fall so easily from her fingertips--Yue's always been like this.
He starts to laugh, to say she didn't have to, to brush her away, and she simply keeps walking.
"I'm not expecting you to trust me, but please stop lying to me."
And it's the way she phrases it, the way she doesn't stop or even look back, that reminds him that that words of forgiveness are just that, and the scars run deep and don't heal so easily.
ii.
There's a tang of blood and the smell of ozone in the air, and Yuki can't see. He can't see because Yue'd yanked him down about two minutes earlier, arm around his neck and scarf over his eyes, and then she asked him not to look it came out as more of an order.
It's useless, and he knows already what happened, to this--was it his aunt or just another cousin, he really had fallen down on keeping up--woman who'd broken in. It wasn't really anyone's fault logically--except perhaps Rikyu, because the gust of wind that blew the downed power line into her at come at a strangely dead period of weather, but Yuki couldn't prove a thing--and the smell of burning flesh is suffocating. He hears Yue mutter something in Spanish, and a hand comes down on his shoulder and he's gone, the blindfold comes off in the base where nowhere is dead and burnt from electrocution…
And Yue, fool that she was, had stayed behind to deal with mess.
Always so thoughtless, he thinks, and she's never going to change, and Yuki stands up…only to be pushed back down. Roa's already gone back for her, and she called Toshio to ask a favor of his older brother.
Yue doesn't speak for a few hours after she's brought back, and Yuki worries, silent and smiling, that she stepped a little too deep and the darkness burnt her. And it worries him more when he realizes the smile she gives as she waves off a couple of worried friends, she'll be alright she just needs a little time to herself, please worry about more pressing things, is one she learned from him.
What has he done?
iii.
His blood is tainted, and he knows it. He was told it over and over, along with the reminders from the other children his age that Izumi was doing him a favor, playing with him.
Seeing her now reminds him a little of the difference--light and shadow. And he doesn't really think she's changed that much, only become a little scared of helping people, which wasn't at all what he wanted that day at all. When was it that she'd started being afraid of things? Was it when she realized how much she just couldn't see?
But Yuki has always been good at reading people, and he watches a bit longer, trying to figure out what he's seeing…and he sees her bite her temper, stay her hand, put on a calm face and smile at the things that infuriate her. And he knows she's furious with Fukui, because he can see in the set of her shoulders, and the way her nails have dug so far into her fists that she's started to bleed.
He can't hear what she's saying, but for the kind of girl who'd give Miller a second chance, she doesn't seem so forgiving right now. Then again, Miller wouldn't have admitted to cutting someone's tongue out, so maybe she had a point.
It's when it's over, when Fukui's gone and Yue's smile vanishes into an expression that isn't so much angry as it is weary that he even debates approaching, to make sure she's fine and okay and not going to set anyone on fire please.
With the words half-formed on his tongue she interrupts him, asking how he is as if she isn't exhausted, and Yuki realizes in that moment that she never does give anyone a chance to look after her, does she? Any other time he would have dismissed it as her thoughtless kindness, but right now he thinks that it must have been intentional.
That thought doesn't really sit any better with him, for some reason. And they trade the same conversation as they have for the last few weeks, talking without saying anything, he wants to ask her what happened. She used to shine so much brighter than this, unconfettered and unworried by trivial things like how the world really worked and what people were really like--
(And what if she had always been right, or perhaps that reality was a little different around people like her? What am I supposed to do with that?)
--But he never got a chance. He saw Roa coming from his angle, but Yue didn't, and her start of surprise as she gets hugged is followed by the lack of her breaking Alejandro's nose, by her thorns crumbling and disappearing---though she makes a valiant effort to pretend she's annoyed.
All of a sudden, he knows what happened to that will she used to have--and he can't help the guilt, because he was the one who dragged her down. And until this very moment, he'd never realized that she'd always been hiding--not nearly as much as he had, because she was still always herself, and nothing ever seemed to change that--and Yuki had never notice.
The thoughtless kindnesses that she gave away so easily, the trust that she put in anyone who asked was the same as the thorns that kept just anyone from getting close enough to hurt her. He'd never noticed that she'd had no defenses against him until she built some.
He doesn't say anything, just smiles and says he doesn't mind as Roa spirits her away, and it's not until hours later, when he's certain there's no one around, that he buries his face in his hands and wonders why Yue only succumbed to his tainted luck when he wasn't letting her close anymore.