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Once, in the inner garden, is one thing. A coincidence. Extenuating circumstances. Whatever nonsense Ichi gets himself up to is only a concern of Desscaras' so far as avoiding getting either of them killed, or her yelled at by Moneygold. If the puppy went wandering around the Association all day in search of her, what did it matter to Desscaras? It had been strange, but Ichi was always strange; particularly so in those recent days after returning from the Pendulum Seas.
But it happens again.
The lingering taste of vomit stung in the back of Desscaras' throat. Behind her eyes, phantom memories clung to her eyelids. The bile had been true, Fujimine's infiltration of her childhood had not. Yet, she had gleefully yanked those memories up from the dark depths of sea Desscaras had just watched them sink into. Though it had never been real, tearing Fujimine out from the nostalgia left a gaping hole. A raw wound, torn edges serving only to highlight just how lonely those memories were.
It's annoying. Just annoying. Desscaras had been through worse, would be again, willingly so! So it doesn't bother her, not really anyway. Yet still...
That night, Desscaras's head lolls idly into her palm, elbows resting on the table of their team room. Her gaze drifts off towards Hoshigami's portrait on the wall.
And with no warning, no fanfare, Ichi had wandered into the room. He picked up a chair and brought it up next to her, settling himself down and promptly leaning against her side. Without any explanation, just… sitting there. He doesn't even try to justify it. Wordlessly, as if there was nothing to remark on, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to use Desscaras as a pillow.
She'd protested, naturally, but it had fallen on deaf ears. Just as quickly as beneath the tree, he'd settled to sleep.
(For once, Desscaras is grateful Ichi is such an early riser, because if the rest of the team had seen the both of them asleep in such stupid positions against the table, she'd never live it down.)
But it doesn't end there! He does it again. And again. And again— these quiet moments of melancholy Desscaras had grown used to hiding, intruded upon by Ichi’s silent companionship. Once or twice she does disappear entirely; slips through a mirror not to return until she's certain any hint of wayward bitter feelings had been thoroughly crushed. Even then, she always returns to find Ichi waiting, sitting by the mirror. He's so casual about it too, a shrug and a simple "I was waiting", like he really was some kind of dog. Once Togeice confided to her that she'd caught him waiting for hours, Desscaras gave up on trying to flee.
Still, the behaviour itself is an enigma. She questions it, sure, but she doesn't find it in her to really dig into it, let alone get an answer until about half a year later.
It was the night before the anniversary. November brought with it cooler air, the promise of winter's gentle chill to come. A patchwork of clouds made up the sky the rainy season an inevitability as much as a promise. As always, Desscaras had made herself scarce.
Honestly, the anniversary itself wasn’t so bad. There was a grave to visit and vengeance to loudly declare, and Togeice, for her part, always came around with something halfway decent to drink. There was enough to chew on to keep the memories at bay, or at least confined to picture frames.
The night before is harder. The anticipation; the static in the air before lightning strikes. Tomorrow will not be so bad, Desscaras knows this. But the lingering feeling of soon settled into her skin like tar.
Ichi finds her on the roof of one of the Association's taller spires, leaning back against where the shingles grow too steep to stand on. It's a bit of a climb to reach; there's certainly no path leading witches up there, but that's never bothered either of them.
Ichi doesn’t ask anything. Doesn’t explain anything. Just sort of slides down, head laying in her lap, face tilted out towards the city.
Desscaras sighs. By now, she knows protesting will garner her no worthwhile reward.
For all her complaints, she’s never once managed to bring herself to actually pushing him off her. Not at times like these, anyway.
In the place of her typical half-hearted arguments, all Desscaras asks is:
“Why do you keep doing this?”
Ichi shifts from where he’s laying. Head turned out towards the distant lights of Natali, soft and amber as the night wears on. When Desscaras squints she watches each little lamp, all blurring into streaks like stars.
He doesn’t look at her.
“You want me to stop?” he asks.
“I didn’t say that.”
Carefully, Desscaras raises a hand to Ichi’s head. She hadn’t bothered with the gloves this evening, so she meets Ichi’s brittle hair with her bare palm.
She’d say she pet him no differently than one would a dog. That's what it felt like, anyway. Nothing more than that. But her motions betray a distinctly human fondness she can’t help but give him. When had this become a habit of theirs?
“Why?” Desscaras repeats, continuing with gentle strokes. It calms the buzzing beneath her fingertips, turns them from weightless to solid.
Ichi sighs, and she can feel the weight of his body pushing against her legs.
“I don’t know how else to do it,” he mumbles.
Desscaras pauses for a moment, fingers absentmindedly working through a stubborn knot.
“Do what?”
With his body so close, Desscaras can feel the push of inhale, the pull of exhale, before Ichi speaks again.
“That. This. All of it.”
Desscaras resumes working her way through Ichi’s hair, not bothering to reply to Ichi’s non-answer. She waits, holding the moment of silence between her teeth just hoping that—
“I— I don’t know how to help.”
His uncharacteristic stutter fades off into the late-night breeze.
"Help?" Her fingers freeze, tangled in his hair.
Ichi nods, pulling Desscaras' hands away from his head.
"When you get all… hiding. Like an injured bird or something."
"B- Hiding!? I'm not hiding!"
Ichi shrugs.
"Well, you disappear."
"No, I don't!"
It's unsettling, Desscaras realizes as she retorts on instinct. She's used to being observed, it's the territory that comes with being the world's greatest witch. She's not used to those observations inciting concern.
"What, you've been searching me out just because I spend some time alone now and then? I get that you must be sooo lonely without me, but before you came along, I was just fine without a team. You were a solo hunter before too, right? You get it."
"I was," Ichi replies, "so I know what it's like to be alone."
He leaves it at that, a taut threat pulled between them.
"You haven't told me to leave," Ichi adds, though his voice has grown quieter, "So I kept doing it."
Something feels itchy on the inside of Desscaras' skin, hearing Ichi's voice like that.
"But why?" she repeats. Why me? Why bother? What are you trying to do? The rest remains on loop inside her mind, lips sealed waiting for Ichi's reply.
"Dunno. I just wanna."
He brings his hands together, then stretches them outwards. Straining towards the sky, grasping at nothing that can be seen.
"Maybe it's like the stake thing."
"Stake?" Desscaras asks.
"No," Ichi says bluntly, "it's just like a stake? Gokuraku said—"
"Pff, okay," Desscaras interjects, slicing through Ichi's sentence. "Listen, I don't know what Gokuraku told you, but you don't need to come tracking me down, alright?"
The next words come out easily; she has said this hundreds of times, always the same way. Of anyone out there, she should rely on Ichi least of all. She has a responsibility to him, not the other way around. Cut and dry, mentor and pupil. The one who receives support and the one who gives it. "I don't need help."
She has to stick to those lines, the rigid walls that protect them both, even if they are thin and flimsy, and she has already bent them out of shape.
This is a truth understood by Desscaras, the Association, and perhaps even the earth itself. Peerless, perfect Desscaras needs no backup. It is a known thing. Yet— is a known thing always a true thing? She had still fallen, in the fresh morning after the storm, and plummeted towards the sea. Did she still need no one then? Desscaras tries not to think about it.
"But…" The even tone wavers, unsteady on his lips. "Gokuraku said—"
"Who cares what Gokuraku said?"
"I do!" Ichi bites back, and Desscaras recoils slightly at the smoke curling off his words. "I asked him what family was like, and he said it was like a stake or something. I— I…"
Fingers trembling slightly, Desscaras places a hand on Ichi's shoulder. He flinches for only a fraction of a second, then relaxes under the touch. All the vigilance born of a decade of solitude, an instinct that runs so deep within him it would defy all reason and all magic, and Desscaras can ease it with the mere weight of a couple months. It terrifies her.
"It just feels right. I know… I can't do it the way I'm supposed to. I don't know how."
Looking down into her lap, Ichi stays awfully still. Desscaras holds her expression as her blood begins to run cold.
It’s so quiet, the words he tucks into the collar of his shirt, Desscaras almost misses them.
“Sorry.”
For one split second, with that tiny apology, Desscaras is overwhelmed by the knowledge that Ichi truly was just some kid. A very strange kid, and a skilled kid, and a scary kid. But a kid.
"You know… it's not supposed to be like us at all."
A Mentor-Pupil Blood Contract is not an adoption, or any other kind of familial contract. Family, the words she'd approached him with, the word he values so much, was an invention of hers. Of theirs, now. If she repeats it enough times, then maybe they'll both start to believe it. Maybe that'll be enough to protect him, maybe that will be enough to save them, and maybe it won't, but at least he won't die alone, and she won't have to bear losing another.
They're nothing that can be sorted. Desscaras knows she is not Ichi's sister, nor mother, nor aunt nor cousin nor child. Ichi, in turn, is not her brother, nor son, nor nephew nor cousin nor father. But they are family. The one thing they can always agree on, the one thing they can share. It's funny, a term so broad. A label, yet vague. But the one he'd wanted to take. The one she'd wanted to offer. That's what makes it so.
"That's fine," Ichi says, "I wouldn't want someone else anyway."
Smug satisfaction wells up in Desscaras, striking through her center and lingering at the edges of the contract burn.
"It's just, this is the only way I know how to be," Ichi finishes.
"Then what do you care about what you're supposed to do, huh?" Desscaras replies. "Since when have you worried about a stupid thing like that?"
"I dunno. I just… wanted it to be even. It should be fair, right?"
Desscaras’ gaze flickers up above them. The marbled cloud layer above them shifts slowly across the sky, the dim reflection of Natali's light glowing softly back down to them. She stares out to a speck. To the bright shining light of Polaris, there in the distance, guiding the way, even as she cannot see it. She'd know it was there, always.
“I think 'even' is impossible for us.”
Ichi brings his hands together, running his left thumb over the back of his right.
"Then you want me to stop?"
Desscaras looks down at the kid in her lap. His shoulders are still bony, digging into her thighs. Around the traces of his jawline, reserves of fat newly developed are beginning to frame his face. He'd looked older when they first met, but since arriving at the Association and taking in a more varied diet, he'd begun to soften out. With each passing day, Desscaras finds he looks more and more his age.The man who had wandered out of the bushes, knife in hand, is long since a stranger.
She cannot be what he had needed, then and long before. Though the harsh bone dissipates into skin that improves in pallor by the day, the scars winding around every inch of him cannot be undone so easily. Nothing will tear death for death from Ichi's nerves, nothing will tear the knife from his grasp.
Whether she can ever be what he needs now is doubtful. A contract as much as a curse, a suicide note as much as a promise. But Desscaras can't imagine herself doing anything else. She hasn't come this far by doubt. Sheer, blinding arrogance has lit the way for her time and time again. If she believes it, and he does too, then surely the way ahead will materialize beneath their feet. Otherwise, Desscaras will rip up the earth beneath her feet, and create something new from that.
It's the only way she knows how to be.
"Eh. Do whatever you like."
Desscaras looks down at Ichi, ever her opposite, ever her annoyance and ever her burden. They do not suit each other; they are not fit for one another, and by all counts they make a miserable little family. Eternally stuck in habits carved into them from long ago. But by Hoshigami, he needs someone, and if that someone is Desscaras? Well. There are probably worse options.
"I will," Ichi replies, and he does not move a centimetre.
He curls up tighter, bringing his knees up to his chest, pushing harder against her legs. Desscaras drapes an arm over his side, and though she knows her back will complain about the position tomorrow, it's comfortable tonight.
Tonight, the stars over Natali twinkle brightly, through the gaps in the clouds where they can be seen.