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Lights flash, an amalgam of red, blue, and purple that spirals haywire when voices collide, contrast, fight.
As an attorney, it became easy to think of life as treading on needles. Each person convicted amounts to more chances to get assassinated by ill will, petty passion, and the like. Itto thought that he’d gotten used to it, especially as someone who used reckless tactics in both courtroom and investigational matters. As it turns out, he wasn’t. Accompanied by a surge in new, aspiring feelings, anxiety heightened and eventually peaked.
In the dark, unseeing silence, a seething sound, a scream, then static.
“Itto,” He barely hears, a sound drowned in the violent rhythm of his heart rate. “Itto?”
Falter, a crack, and subsequent ones.
“Itto!”
It is then that he wakes up, head tangled in a fit of anxiety that gather in pools, only dried by the living room's yellow lights and the sight of one familiar attorney. Soft pink, a blueish green. It's her, Itto registers, Yanfei.
"What the hell is wrong with you? I could hear you from all the way upstairs." She mentions, and through the vapor clouding his eyes, Itto couldn't make out which it was; hard, cold annoyance or the idyllic worry he's always loved to elicit. Nevertheless, the ringing in his ears die down and without knowing it, his arms reach out to wrap against her smaller figure... which shrinks even more when she is pressed against his shoulder like this.
"Yanfei, Yanfei," Itto chants her name like a mantra, a way to reassure himself of her safety. "You're not hurt anywhere, right? You're safe, right?"
"Did I," She hears herself partly say, throat burning uncomfortably. "Did I die in your nightmare or something?"
"No but someone was hurt," He breaths, low and cloudy. Something breaks, a deep string cut with thrash and hurt. "And it could've been you."
"I won't—"
"I know," Itto says, donning an unusually callused tone. Even in a heady haze, some semantics stuck to his mind. "You won't go down without a fight. You won't, you won't... but I worry sometimes... maybe all the time..."
Silence settles, opaque and weary. He stiffens when the anesthesia preventing realization wears off, how he promised to respect her personal space, how it was sealed with something of a parting gift, and to say contracts were important to people of Liyue would be an understatement at best. Sin it is to go against decree — a god’s ideal, most importantly. Signing a contract meant committing to it, nowhere is a difference in responsibility present… only that this circumstance heightens the possible repercussions.
Quickly, he regains himself and pulls away.
“… ‘m sorry, I—“ He blurts out, almost out of instinct because these days, apologizing to her became more frequent that he realizes. It was difficult each time, to eschew the swell of pride and swallow to say a two-syllable word so oft it was soul-crushing, it was all hard work. Then again, Itto doesn’t remember stopping at anything when it came to the legal advisor.
“… If nothing else, I’ll be going now.”
What expression did she wear when she said that?
—but he doesn’t like thinking about that. A frown threatened to spill through her words, the way that the indentation in her rigid tone not once curled for a gateway of softness, it was all so telltale. He didn’t even need to think, something to finally attest to her everyday complaints about him lacking precedent thought before spurring on the fire of hearsay.
“Stay,” came jagged and weak, accompanied by the expectation that she was already outside of his vicinity but then a screech of the floor reaches his ears and he breathes silent relief and regret. “… safe. Stay safe.”
“Mhm, yeah. Thanks, I will.” Itto hears her say, and the lingering warmth burns against his skin. Perhaps it’ll be enough to get through the night.