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Sara has always found the intense propensity of touching each other among the humans around her to be strange.
Tengu doesn't do that, frankly. If someone is close enough to touch you, you have let your guard down, and if your guard is down you have allowed yourself to be vulnerable. Being vulnerable in the forest is the same thing as risking spending your final day as something's dinner.
That is not to say that Sara does not like being touched. On the contrary, whenever the soldiers that she used to train alongside would ruffle her hair, or whenever the maids assigned to care for her in the Clan's stead would gently tuck her in, the feelings that spread through her was not tenseness or worry, but rather a warmth that made her feel light enough to fly.
That was long ago, however. Takayuki had sent the soldiers away, never to return, and those that replaced them now look at her in a mix of fear and awe. The maids are long gone too, Sara having outgrown the need for such things decades ago.
"Wasting your time with sentimentality will be your downfall", Takayuki would tell her, and she would nod and take it to heart, because that's what good daughters do.
And so, she spends her days watching the people of Inazuma as they all laugh and spend time with their friends, or enjoy the presence of their family and loved ones, and she can do nothing but long to be in their place.
Sara barely has any friends, and Shinobu isn't the touchy type, and her family definitely isn't, so what else is there to do?
She can't blame them, certainly. She hasn't made a particularly good impression of herself as anything but a symbol of Tenryou Commission repression lately, and she is well aware that she's far from the easiest person to converse with even though she has taken steps to attain the ability to be.
The Traveller brings some respite, at least.
She's far from a chaperone of any kind, of course, only rarely having time to spend in Inazuma, but Lumine does tend to seek Sara out whenever she's doing something hare-brained, and surely Sara can't be faulted for ensuring that she and her floating companion does not cause too much disorder without her being present to stabilise it?
Clearly, Sara's state is far gone, however.
Where before there would be warmth and comfort, these days being touched feels like her skin is being set on fire.
She refuses to think about it.
If she thinks about it, that would mean acknowledging that she desires it, and if she acknowledges that she desires it then its absence will echo even more.
Besides, she would have to consider means to ensure that she receives what she wants, too, and that would bring with it the risk of being refused, and what is she to do then?
All her careful restraint and effort comes crashing down like a rotting tree on one such outing with the Traveller and the assortment of curious characters she always bring with her on her misadventures.
A momentary lapse of her attention, and then a rift hound has dug its maw into her thigh, and even though she strikes it down a moment later the corruption that always oozes around the foul creatures remain in her leg even as it runs a deep putrid crimson
As so many times before, Sangonomiya Kokomi is her downfall.
It is entirely reasonable to bring a healer on any journey that might prove dangerous, and Sara had no complaints about the logic behind that, nor the choice of Watatsumi's Divine Priestess to fill the role. They are to be friends now, after all, since the conflicts between them are over.
At the time she'd concluded that, however, she hadn't realised just how much touching would be involved in the process of healing her.
Since her teens, the only fingers she's grown used to roaming across her skin is her own, in the darkness of the night when she, in moments of weakness, closes her eyes and brushes her hands across her sides under the pretence that someone would be willing to do it for her. As sad as she is aware that it is, it brings her solace in the loneliness of he room.
Now, as Kokomi gently prods her wound and tests her ability to move before bringing out the vision Sara had assumed she'd simply wave once and be done with things, Sara feels as if she's about to explode.
The pain itself is nothing she's unused to. She has been a warrior and then a soldier for her entire life, and her body bears the scars and callouses to prove it. Pain is nothing.
Rather, it is the feeling of warm skin against her own, the gentle prodding of fingers against her body with a softness she has only dared to imagine, that makes her light headed.
Being herself, she does not have the good fortune to have her silent prayers to Her Excellency that none of the others notices that this is an entire ordeal for her answered.
"Sara, are you okay? You look a bit faint."
As always, she flounders. Denying the fact would serve little purpose, given how obvious it must be that something is wrong. Admitting to the reason for her current state would similarly only result in further embarrassment and a host of possible consequences all to her disliking.
In times like these, when he still held hopes for her to become as much of a snake as he himself has proven to be, Takayuki has always told Sara to not lie, but rather misdirect.
"The wound is simply unpleasant. There is no need for concern."
Both Kokomi and Lumine look dubious, and their other companions hover uncomfortably, but none of them question her further.
When she is laying in her sleeping bag as the day gives way to night, Kokomi's voice ringing in her ears with the imperative to rest, the warmth of her fingers still linger.
When she closes her eyes and lays her hand on the side of her hip, not low enough to be untoward but still far enough down to carry with it some pretence of intimacy, the hand Sara imagines is one smaller and softer than hers, carrying a soft fragrance of seawater.
~~~
It's their only meeting in several months, and even so it lingers in Sara's mind.
Days and nights spent reminiscing, dreams of soft fingers dancing across her skin like a whispered breath.
It's a bit pathetic, frankly, but it's the first time she's been touched with any kind of tenderness in so long, can she really be blamed for wanting more?
When fate next brings them together, it's during a card game tournament.
Sara doesn't really understand the enthusiasm surrounding the spectacle, frankly, it's just a card game, but Yae Miko has assured her that they contain the secrets to the development of her strategic mind, so when she is assigned to oversee the event she isn't too frustrated to be taken away from her ordinary duties.
And then Kokomi wins it.
And then she approaches Sara.
Sara isn't usually one to take flight when others come her way, but she also isn't usually imagining others touching her for months, so surely she can be excused for feeling somewhat skittish the moment Kokomi's eyes lock onto her own?
Sara usually stumbles herself through any conversation not related to her duties, and most that have interacted with her are aware of this, but this time is clearly bad enough to make both the Traveller, ever present whenever anything important is happening, and Kokomi stare at her in worry.
(Sara hates when people do that, because she isn't worth the time to worry about even if there was cause to and she isn't feeling like her face is warm enough to cook on.)
It would be so much easier to simply shrug it off if Kokomi wasn't so insistent at complimenting her own skills at the game even though she is clearly the better player.
It would be so much simpler if she didn't decide that offering to play a game with her to get out of the conversation and calm her nerves was a good idea, too, but then she does, and Lumine brings her hands to her hips and smiles triumphantly declaring that it will be "just a friendly match between friends!" and then Sara's mind actually catches up to her mouth and she realises that she's just agreed to spending more time alone with Kokomi.
The game itself is hardly competitive, and it wouldn't have been in the optimal world where Sara spent more time thinking about the game itself than she does the way Kokomi's fingers wrap around her cards either, but when it is over Kokomi smiles at her and tells her how nice it'd been to spend time together.
"It's really nice spending time with you, Sara. Imagine if I'd said that just a year ago." Kokomi says with a giggle as she strokes her thumbs across the flats of Sara's hands, and Sara feels something prick behind her eyes, because nobody has held her hands in decades, and never to do anything but to whip them because she failed to hit the centre of the targets in the Kujou Estate's archery grounds.
"I. . . Yes. It has been pleasant to spend time with you as well." is her terribly stilted response, and she wants to sink into the ground to escape how stiff she sounds, but Kokomi just smiles in response as if she was able to converse normally.
"We should do it again, then."
Those words echo in Sara's ears well after they've parted ways with a promise to do exactly that.
Kokomi wants to spend time with Sara, not just as a courtesy or because she's bleeding to death, but because she finds it enjoyable.
Sara, in her typical style, responds by wanting things she shouldn't, and desiring things she can't have.
~~~
Assassination attempts have always been an occasional part of Sara's life.
The power plays and internal politics of the Tri-Commission has never been something that Sara concerns herself with, but she has at times been forced to deal with the consequences of bearing her name and others not understanding that her desire is to serve, to waste her time amassing power for herself.
The war led to a more aggressive focus on herself, and that she at least understands. It is only a fair assumption that eliminating the enemy leadership will hamper their efforts.
It strikes Sara now, however, that it would have been far more efficient to eschew the poisons that they do not understand have little effect on Youkai and the hopelessly outmatched men they sent for her, and instead simply asked her to meet with Kokomi personally.
In what seems to have become a pattern in the debacle that is her life as of late, Sara feels like Kokomi is trying to murder her.
Not intentionally, obviously because she is quite confident that they are friends now, but rather through the simple act of not quite getting just how much her touches makes Sara feel as if her heart is stopping.
"Women are just affectionate with each other", she always hear her men say, and even though she has always thought it strange that they say so, because the women in the Kujou Clan are certainly not, and the women she sees on her patrols are certainly acting little different than the men.
Kokomi definitely is, however, and she touches Sara constantly.
Sara will not deny that it is pleasant, of course, it is quite literally her dreams come true, but she is also still so terribly unused to it, and her skin is constantly buzzing afterwards, and her face feels as if it's turned into a campfire for hours whenever they're spending time together.
The worst times are whenever Lumine is also there.
Not because Lumine is unpleasant company, because she is not. She isn't loud like other outsiders, and she does not barge into conversations unless she has things to actually add to them, but rather because she looks at Sara as if she knows, and that is terrifying.
Sara has never spoken to anyone about being like that, and if Lumine knows then she is being at least somewhat obvious, and that runs the risk of others knowing.
That too, like many things Sara finds herself thinking, makes little sense, because she does not care what others think of her, but what if women learns about it and stops wanting to be around her?
Not that many does in the first place, but that's beside the point.
More importantly, what if Kokomi starts questioning her intentions and stops this whatever it is they're doing?
Takayuki once warned her that indulgences would only poison her and make her desire things she should not. Sara had not understood at the time, but now she does, because she can barely imagine the time before she and Kokomi became friends, nor does she know how she'd be able to deal with going back now that she has known better times.
Like so many times before, she ignores her doubts and lets Kokomi's head rest on her shoulder as the campfire crackles.
("Times like these should always have a campfire", Lumine had said with a strange look in her eyes as they shifted between her and Kokomi. She does not know exactly what it was supposed to mean, but she will not deny that the warmth is pleasant.)
Perhaps, she thinks, as Lumine smiles serenely, it does not matter that she knows.
~~~
By the time they start sharing a sleeping bag (because the seasons are changing and the weather is cold and Sara's bag is large and Kokomi is small, Sara tells herself, and for no other reasons.) it is already painfully obvious that whatever sentiment she holds towards Kokomi is not strictly friendly.
The others Lumine bring on her misadventures, a blonde knight from Mondstadt and a witch that is allegedly just her librarian, seem to pay the fact little mind. The blonde blinks once, and her eyebrows rise in what appears to be an acknowledgement to herself, but then she simply turns away. The librarian titters and hums to herself in apparent amusement, but the also grow silent and shifts her eyes to the knight.
Lumine just stares knowingly, and Sara wants to shrink into herself.
When Sara next opens her eyes, it is with Kokomi bundled up in her arms, her nose just on the edge of her hair, the scent of strange Watatsumi flowers and the sea filling her senses.
It takes her several moments to understand that this is not just another hopeless dream, and then all her willpower to not spread her wings and fly away when she does.
Sara does not mention it as Lumine makes her rounds to collect the blonde from the spot she had stood guard after insisting that she should and refusing to let anyone else shoulder the duty for her, and neither does Kokomi.
The rest of the morning is painful, because Sara feels as if she's crossed some sort of line, and Kokomi stares at her meaningfully the entire time, but Sara doesn't know what she wants her to do.
The rest of the day follows a similiar pattern.
The witch gets clued in at some point, and she too starts staring, but to Sara's relief the knight seems to take her side in her confusion.
The tension breaks the following evening.
Kokomi approaches her with a decisive look, and once again Sara is forced to spend all of her willpower to simply not fly away and spend the rest of her life in a cave somewhere.
"Is. . Something the matter, Kokomi?"
Kokomi huffs, and then turns to look Sara directly in the eyes.
"Yes."
Her face shifts in a way that reminds Sara of the times when those confronting her on the battlefield steels themselves before striking, and her muscles grow tense, and she almost flinches when Kokomi steps forward.
Then suddenly small and soft hands are grabbing her cheeks, and she is being pulled down, and there are lips being pressed to her own.
A squawk rises from her chest, one of those noises of distress that Takyuki always forbade her from uttering and she might've slightly forgotten how to make but still sometimes lets out on instinct, and she freezes, but then the lips are gone.
"I'm sorry", Kokomi says with a look of consternation, "but you're being kind of obvious but still just aren't getting the hint."
Sara can feel her thoughts grind together, because what is that supposed to mean, but then her mind slowly realigns itself.
"Oh"
Kokomi's face bunches up in mild frustration, and Sara can see both Lumine and the Mondstadter witch cover their mouths in amusement from the corner of her eyes, but she is too preoccupied to care.
"You really didn't get it?"
The flush spreads across Sara's face, even the tips of her ears feeling as if they're steaming.
"I. . . No. I did not."
Kokomi sighs, but there is a smile on her lips that certainly doesn't leave Sara staring at them.
"Would it. . . " She clears her throat in a futile attempt to dispel her nerves. "That is to say, would it be acceptable if I responded in kind?"
Once more she knows that she sounds stiff like a spear shaft, and the still functioning corners of her mind reprimand her for being awkward even now, but surely that no longer matters?
It does not, if Kokomi's smile widening is any indication.
~~~
When Sara wakes the next morning, she wakes with her limbs tangled up in Kokomi's.
It still feels slightly surreal, as if she's just deluding herself that her dreams are real, but then she catches Lumine out of the corner of her eye.
"Sleep", she mouths.
As if prompted, Kokomi groans, and then draws herself closer, rubbing her face into the nook of Sara's neck.
The battle is lost, clearly and decisively.
Closing her eyes and giving in to the inevitable, Sara finds that she does not mind.