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Nanno can see him from the crook of her eye. Dirt colored walls and a silhouette she can make out almost perfectly.
The rain’s just started to pour in, and amidst the glass, he looks like a watercolor painting. He’s a flush of dark colors in a messily tinted canvas, half smudged from the way he moves. The image is melancholy, yet intangibly beautiful.
From here, she can catch him clenching his fists, unclenching them, then shoving them into the pockets of his hoodie. He’s lonely, she can tell. He’s thinking of her, too.
Humans are so predictable, it’s almost funny. To Nanno, they’re a game of making or breaking, a crackpot of desperation and desire with only the right catalyst to relieve them of it. TK was no different - in fact, he was the most pitiful of them all. In each of his stolen goods was a cry for help, pleading for his dear old father’s attention. It was as pitiful as it was endearing, she thought, the moment she first set her eyes on him.
So why was she here, watching him, when her job was already done?
There’s this emotion that bubbles inside of her. She’s not quite sure what it is - it’s something sticky and whole, and it pulls her closer to him. Perhaps she could call this pure interest, a toy that she’ll soon get bored with, but there’s nothing about this that could ever possibly keep her attention. It’s just a human boy staring at a stupid, worthless painting.
A human boy with the most tender eyes, with soft hands that held hers and never asked for more, and a smile that curls through even the darkest of nights.
And she knows, as well as anything else, this emotion is something she’s not allowed to feel. She was sent to roam the mortal world on a mission. A mission that has it’s fun bits, surely, and some simply boring yet still laughable. Nanno still had much more to pursue and play with - generations more of people she could reap under her fingertips.
You’ve been here too long, truly, she sighs to herself. Now you’re starting to act like a human.
“You know what our problem is?”
Her voice is low and careful, a way to ease into his attention. His head turns slowly to catch her gaze, that face of his contorted with silent hesitance and surprise. Nanno used to find such a face cute, in a sense that she knew her victims had nowhere else to turn to. Like scared little rats struggling to leave their trap.
But this time, it’s different. She just doesn’t want to admit it.
“We don’t really appreciate what we have,” she drawls, approaching him with that small smile on her lips. “Until it’s all gone.”
She knows he’s staring daggers at her, but she doesn’t care. She’s felt that expression piercing into her countless times, after all...yet, why does it sting, just a little?
Her eyes remain steady, examining the painting before them instead. The plastered flower they’d stolen together - a memento of all their memories spent together. Humans liked keeping these things to remind themselves of the sentimental moments, but she found no worth in them. They didn’t have the same thrill as any other object she’s stolen, nor the importance. Wasn’t the memory, or the knowledge that it happened, enough for them?
They really were greedy. Maybe a little like she is right now.
“When I said I could bring your dad back, I saw I had to take him away first.” Her words leave her lips and simmer onto their feet, settling in. Finally, she looks at him, the half dark emphasising the sharpness of his jaw. He's barely taller than her, but she still has to lift her chin to fully take him in.
A moment of silence shifts between them, until he finally nods. Her presence has sunk in, she notes, but his eyes never tear away from hers.
“I know why you did what you did,” he says gently, his tone a little reassuring. She opens her mouth to reply, because at least he's smart enough to understand, but he continues.
“But...what if there’s something I don’t want to lose?”
The question, admittedly, made her shoulders stiffen. This could be what she feared the most upon confronting him - that resilience of his, yet that weakness he always had when it came to showing how he truly felt.
The very weakness that seemed to pry out her own, a small crack into the invincible shell that this girl was composed of.
Nanno knows what he’s going to say next, but she doesn’t want to hear it. The folks down below were probably mocking her now - look at her, acting like an actual teenage girl, what a sight! - and the thought made her bite her tongue.
Instead, she begs him, from the gleam in her eyes, to be a good liar, at least for once. At least enough for her to not strengthen this disturbing feeling that only seems to grow the longer they stay like this.
“Nanno,” TK breathes. “I don’t want to lose you.”
For fuck’s sake. Why did he have to say it like that?
Humans aren’t always so predictable, after all. There’s one right now, who so proudly proclaims his love for her, even though she's the reason he's been locked up in a cell these past few months.
Oh, if only you knew who I really was.
The rain only gets louder, more indispensable. Nanno searches for a hiccup on his face, anything that hinders his statement, but she finds nothing. He knows what he just said, what it implied, and now all the stars are going to fall off the sky because he is so resistant to how obvious she sets out the truth for the both of them to see.
Neither of them remember the minutes that passed as they stood there, a silent understanding settling into each other’s skin.
“I…” Nanno starts, wondering why she’s still hesitant when it comes to him. Sever it now. End it, and leave, so he’ll be happy and forget about you.
“I’m sorry, TK. You can’t keep me.” No one can, really. Not even you.
Another lapse of silence flows between the two of them. Then, he breaks his gaze, looking back up at the painting. She can sense what he feels; it’s nothing short of heartbreak.
“I know.” He sounds light, as if he’s forcing the burden to leave his chest. He knew as well as she did that the moment they uttered those promises to each other, it would break as easily as it was made. “It’s okay.”
You’re lying, she wants to chuckle, but chooses not to.
Maybe because she’s lying to herself, too.
“It’s raining so hard,” Nanno says, instead, looking out the window. “No choice, I guess.”
She pulls the hood over her hair, backing away. There’s a weight on her chest - which is strange, because it’s always been so empty until now.
Perhaps in another life, they’d meet again. She knows it. There, they’ll have fun again, and she’d kiss him, just because she wants to.
But for now, and for a long time, this was the end of it.
“Goodbye,” she smiles, waving gingerly at him. “Get some nice friends, okay? Make sure they’re better than me, though, that might be impossible…”
She hears him laugh, under his breath. The sound soothes her, makes her laugh too.
“Bye, Nanno.”
She’s walking in the rain again. Against the glass, he’s still a painting smudged into a plethora of countless colors and designs. Her footsteps are heavy with this realization, the ache burning more fiercely than it ever has before.
Nanno turns to look at him one more time, burning his image into her memory. Each of her targets always had a name she remembered them by. The lovesick writer. The social-hungry boyfriend. So, she gives him one, too.
He’s the foolish thief, the bane of her existence. The interesting thief, who in his most desperate of moments still promised to protect her with all he had.
The brilliant thief, who despite his idiocy, still managed to steal the most heavily guarded possession in all the universe.
Her heart.