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Naoto knows what it's like to run. What it's like to hide. What pain feels like, burning all over you so that you can't move, can hardly breathe, how the earth turns flickering – did you know, it goes red, deep red, then really pale white – before everything turns black. Compared to that first wound, everything else is just scratches, grazes a kid gets his first day riding a bike. She inspects the gash on her belly, pressing her fingers against it, before pulling her shirt up over her head. She begins winding out some bandages the bishop had discreetly handed to her. (She learned to heal the same way she learned to fight – sloppily copying, watching that man rinse his injuries and bind them. Grim-faced, hardly wincing, while he pressed a washcloth on his arm and told her she was getting quicker, that was good.)
She's barely started wrapping the bandages around herself when something cold and soft touches her shoulder. It's wonder and not instinct that makes her turn, slowly, catching the wrist where it falls to its owner's side. Nill lets out a short breath, moves a step back as if to say, I didn't mean it. Naoto knows – who else would enter this room? – and smiles at her.
"You don't have to worry about me."
Naoto lives in a dead world. A shrouded place, filled with moving corpses, blades pushed into backsides. She knows what it's like that moment mistrust turns into caring, into something you don't want it to. She knows what it's like to treasure something: the smell of a jacket, the feel of a blade, a name you don't even want. She hates it. That someone like Nill, clean and gentle, still lives in this kind of world, makes her sick. That someone like Nill is still here to make her worry – to think about life even at crucial times – is a weakness, and Naoto knows this, and her blade knows it too.
Nill hesitates, pointing hopefully at the jar of antiseptic that Naoto has set out – the cotton and the gauze. The painkillers (for Haine, but not like he ever needs them). Nill doesn't know how to do these things properly, shouldn't see things like this; Naoto fights the urge to shift away, because that would be more alarming. Nill has seen already, and her wings flutter gently in alarm.
Naoto repeats: "You don't have to worry about me."
But she can't turn Nill away, she can't make Nill leave. Won't, maybe.
"Haine gets mad when you watch, doesn't he?"
Nill shakes her head, slightly, but Naoto knows better. She likes to be just that little bit kinder. Nill's seen worse things, both of them know that, but she doesn't need to see any more. Naoto doesn't say anything else as she finishes sealing the wound.
Nill reaches out a hand when she's done, pressing it lightly at the end of Naoto's collarbone, just above her scar. A memory flashes through her mind – of Magato, the smell of his breath, his hands against her. Of lying beneath her parents' corpses. Of dying. She keeps still, even as Nill, tentatively, traces just a bit downwards.
"Haine doesn't like you doing that either, does he?"
Nill blinks at her.
"Okay, all right. Sure."
She takes Nill's hand in hers, and runs it over the whole scar, a perfect cross cutting through everything that never matters to her, everything she is. There's are tears trembling in Nill's eyes, now, but she knows not to let them spill. Knows this isn't a safe thing to do, knows a thing about weakness, how it makes one suffer. How it means losing. Apparently even angels do, but for another day at least, Naoto is not dead yet.
"These are a more beautiful reminder," Naoto says, stroking Nill's wings, before pulling her into an embrace.