Loving Sweet Death
The process of growing up is never an easy one. Not for the poor, nor
for the rich and least for the most feared assassin of the underworld.
I can’t help but stretch my lips in a tiny, barely visible smile when I
watched her sleep; her short dark brown hair spilling over the pillows
while she stretched her body across the bed, tangling her legs into the
sheets as she whimpered in her peaceful rest.
She was such wondrous creature.
Wondrous because of the way she had faced how fate had taken her in
years towards maturity. A girl her age should be considering something
like the first kiss or a boyfriend as a sign of passage. She should
have been in school, dating, cramming for exams and having fun.
Her passage had been her first kill, and that happened even before she
was old enough to know how to dress properly. Even in this business,
that is kind of extreme. I undertook my first assignment at the age of
seventeen; I can still recall Uncle Claude patting me on my head for the
last time, declaring that my training was finished. The target had been
some cheapskate gambler who was trying to flee from his debts; the
client had been some low rank gang leader. I remember that I had pulled
the trigger without hesitation, collected my pay and returned barely a
week later by the orders of another client to take down the gang leader.
Life is such a fragile thing in the underworld.
I shudder when I think of how Kirika must have faced her first
assignment. Barely old enough to grip the gun barrel, not even strong
enough to hold back the recoil while using the innocence of a child as a
mask as she had carried out her missions to perfection. Signs of a true
Noir, a maiden who ruled over death.
How old had she been when she was forced to grow up and face the reality
of her actions?
I shook my head and headed for my laptop, leaving her to sleep in. Her
wounds from the manor had not healed completely yet, the bullet wound
which would have been my bane was not deep but the loss of blood she
endured was another story. She had been sleeping a lot since we got back
to Paris; sometimes I feared that she would never awake when she lay on
the bed, her breaths to shallow to even be heard.
Dread gripped my heart by the very thought.
At sometime in the past year, Mireille Bouquet, the famous solo
assassin had permanently ceased her existence. I don’t know when I had
started to consider Kirika as a part of me. She was like my other half
which I lost a long time ago, the one to complete me, back me up and to
save my back when things got a little to extreme. There was no use
denying the fact that she was the most skilled one of us, I wouldn't
even dream of trying some of the stunts I have seen her pull amidst the
heat of combat. She was truly a genius of the art; I have to give
Soldats some credit for finding her.
Her brilliance had been even more evident during our encounter when she
had been with Chloe. I'm not that shy of a person to deny that I am a
master of this profession, death is my daily bread and I meet up with
people who have had more blood on their hands than a human life should
be able to carry, including myself, on a daily basis.
No horror or crime I had witnessed however, had ever chilled me to my
bones like Kirika's eyes that day. Assassins are cruel people who live
cruel lives; we lack empathy and love for the sake of our own sanity,
but in the end, we remain human.
Kirika's eyes that day had been anything but human. Death himself
should be in envy of the crushing presence of carnage this one girl was
capable of. What had scared me most was that it fit her ridiculous well,
that side was a part of her that was equally true as my Kirika. Hers was
the right to decide on death; that was her birth given right as Noir.
She had fired at me without a second of hesitation and the shot had
meant to kill. If I had not dodged, the bullet would have fried my
brain.
Chloe's Kirika had meant to kill me. My Kirika had been the one to kill
Chloe.
I let out a sad chuckle as I glanced over the monitor, giving her
sleeping form on the bed a subconscious look of fondness. Quite the
womanizer hm? Shamelessly swooning two femme fatales of their feet, god
know what you would do to men if one set you loose.
I don't know why you did choose me over Chloe. Obviously, one of us had
to die back there; the decision of whom had been yours. Yes, fate is
indeed a cruel thing. I know you tried to save us both, one whom you
cherished and another who cherished you over the world itself. For
whatever reason you based your choice on, I'm glad.
In the end, by a luxury granted me, my Kirika had won.
I looked over my mail mindlessly as I caught up on the news, my
thoughts still lingering by the image of Kirika's cold gaze. Those had
been eyes that held nothing but the promise of death but they also
harboured the true strength of her being. She was such a strong person
despite her delicate appearance; you would be a fool to overlook that, a
very short livened fool to boot. I had gotten more than one shock during
her recovering time those recent weeks when she was still confounding
about her other half.
Both of us knew that she was there, no use in denying the other side of
her; the one which brought nothing but destruction and death. That was
the side which had been drilled into her since she was old enough to
walk. Maybe it would have been against her nature if she had grown up
under more normal circumstances but it was undeniable a part of Kirika
too, the backside of the same coin.
She had given me the scare of my life when I one morning woke up to
find her resting against me in my arms, a pair of emotionless voids
meeting me instead of the look of sweet concern she usually greeted me
with in the morning. I had been frozen in my position, too scared to
even move while desperately doing a mind search for where she could
have hidden the gun. Despite the half panicked look on my face, she had
remained still, breathing shallowly as she had scrutinized me from her
position. Nothing could have surprised me more than what she had done
after that.
She smiled.
A dangerous smile of course, there had been no trace of my gentle
Kirika in her then. Still, it had been a smile of appreciation and
satisfaction; she liked where she was and whom she had been with, which
was a tremendous relief for me. She had uttered my name, one word, given
as a command to release her. I was too shocked to do anything but obey.
Half way up from the bed she turned around, paralyzing me with those
cold, almost beastlike eyes as she leaned down again, pressing her lips
against my half-open mouth.
To call it a kiss of death would be an underestimation, plus the fact
that this kind of initiative wasn’t exactly common in my book of
Kirika-ism. Not even flinching at my shaking touch, she had risen and
headed for the shower, leaving me in the bed with a pulse that would
have made a heavy metal drummer seem slack.
It did take some time, courage and migraines to get used to it at
first. To have your beloved switch from a sweet, delicate art lover from
one second to a murderous god of death the other did strain a bit on
your nerves. What spared me from the urge to howl like a banshee at the
obvious stress was that despite the hollowness of those eyes, I knew
that it was still Kirika. The girl who was responsible for the death of
my family but also the one woman who loved me enough to get up seven a
clock to make my morning tea.
Heaven forbid the morbid comparison I just did but that is the truth.
Love could take pretty weird turns.
I closed down the laptop and massaged my left shoulder, stretching my
back to get rid of the stiffness. Yawning, I looked over at the watch,
it was barely 9 am and far too early to really be up on a Saturday.
"Mireille."
I froze for a moment when I felt the now familiar commanding presence
behind me, that lasted for about two seconds before I relaxed backwards
into a pair of waiting arms. I lifted my head and looked up at her.
Narrow, dark brown orbs that were emptied of all human emotions at a
first glance met me. To kill or kiss, I could never know. I smiled at
her, leaning back into her embrace as she placed her cheek against my
left chin. Her strong touch sending a pleasant chill down my spine as I
rested into the arms of death's angel. She tugged at my arm and nudged
me in that way which reminded me of a lost kitten, not uttering a word
while she literally pulled me back to bed.
This was another part I liked about this side of her. She could become
adorable demanding about my attention to her, like a wild animal that
was asking to be petted. A characterization ill suited for the Kirika I
had found over a year ago in Japan.
A pair of arms snuck around my waist when we reached the bed, making a
firm tug that made us both stumble. I let out a giggle as we sprawled
across the sheets, her arms still holding me against her in a gentle
embrace. She let out a small sigh and looked up at me from her position.
I saw something that reminded me off affection in her eyes. It was wild
to its colour and primal to the touch but it was undoubtedly there. It
was her silent cry of need, to be confirmed as something more human
than what they had made her.
Death's lover. That would be me.
Maybe someday we would be able to mend her broken person, making the
both side of her into a complete and happy person. The both of them can
co-exist, I believe so from what I have seen those recent weeks. All I
need to do is to be here for her. She is such a strong person and I am
sure that she will be able to heal herself completely if given time.
Until then, we would simply wait. Live and wait for the future I
believe we can have together.
I closed my eyes when I felt how she wormed herself into my arms,
letting out a content sigh and that cute little 'yioisho' sound of hers
as she went back to sleep. I pulled her closer and settled her head
under my chin, brushing my lips against her forehead as I let the world
slowly slip away.
The process of growing is truly not an easy task done, but for her
sake, I will keep trying.
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