I can't protect you without holding a sword. I can't embrace you while holding a sword.

--Kubo Tite, BLEACH [Volume 05]

☯

それは赤のペイント

Pai taps the screen of the treadmill, her feet matching the slowing pace as the machine rolls to a stop. For a moment she stands still and leans over the small control screen in front of her, arms out and bracing the bars at each side. Her chest heaves as she catches her breath. She is dripping in sweat, her plain black workout clothes drenched from running for the last half-hour of her training session.

Before, she sparred with Akane, one of the few trainees who aren't scared stiff of being within a five-mile radius of her. They fought for a minute, and it ended with an easy under swipe of her leg that had Akane flat on her back with Pai's hand at her throat.

The other girl only glared at her as she begrudgingly muttered, "Good fight," before leaving without asking for another round, like Pai half-expected her to.

Pai didn't reply because it hadn't been a good fight for her. No fight ever is. She doesn't know why such a phrase exists. She hates it.

All around her are the other trainees engaged in their own training. Most are sparring, grunting as they jab at each other and tumble over the blue mats laid out over the white floor. Others are in the area cordoned off to the left from the rest of the large white training room, in the small gym. Yet others are scattered around the perimeter of the room, practising their skills and upper body strength against dummies made of steel. They are propped up on metal rods, stuck fast to the ground with alloy plates that keep them from falling over.

She avoids the steel dummies, when she can. They bruise, not enough to be of concern, but enough to be annoying. She is never sure when she will be assigned on another mission, and she doesn't want to take the risk of being unable to pull a trigger because of a surprise flare of pain in her hand from striking the metal of the dummies.

Out in the field, all it takes is one second of delay, and the whole plan can be derailed. All it takes is one unexpected pause, and she dies. The delay can be anything – a flash from the headlights of a passing car, a suddenly loud burst of noise, a cat running across the street, hesitation to do the deed.

It doesn't matter, in the end. It's all the same. Hesitate, and you die.

Pai looks up. Down. Left. Right. She stretches the tense muscles in her neck. Up, one white ceiling, ten lights. Left, then right, six white walls, one door. Down, one white floor.

"Dots...dots..." she mumbles under her breath. "People's heads are dots..."

Dots.

Target practise.

I haven't done my quota of target practise.

Kuniumi? It's white.

There is no response.

"White," she continues. "It's white."

Like your friend. Longwei. He's white. You said he likes me.

The walls and the ceiling and the floor and the stone and even the lights. They're all white.

It's like how it was when you were with him, isn't it?

"The world was white."

Do you still want to paint the white red?

There is no response.

Another coil of worry tightens in the pit of her stomach. For so long, she has wanted Kuniumi to leave her alone. To disappear. Now that Kuniumi isn't answering, she is hollow. It is like something is missing, and she can't figure out what it is, how to fill it in so she doesn't feel that emptiness anymore.

She wants to cry, to kick and scream and cry until her ears shatter, until Kuniumi answers her. Her lips tighten to a thin line as she fights to control herself. She can't let the others see her for as mad as she is, see her as weak. They are like wolves. They will use it against her. She can't let that happen. If she lets them have even a sliver of a chance to, they will torment her more than So Fu already has just to feel powerful, and strong.

She tilts her head up as she drags in a deep breath and holds it before expelling it in a slow, measured stream. "The world was white, and now it is dirty and black."

Kuniumi said that to her once. When Pai asked if she wanted to return it to how it once was, Kuniumi didn't answer.

Just like she doesn't now.

She hops off the treadmill and grabs her towel and a small plastic bottle of water from the low bench pushed up against the wall. Then she takes up a loose t-shirt that is the same shade of dreary black as her workout clothes. She pulls the t-shirt over her head, turns, and makes for the double-entrance doors, heading for her cell. She wants to take a nap before dinner. She hasn't been getting enough sleep, even without the nightmares plaguing her.

The other trainees who don't wilfully ignore her as she walks quickly shuffle away, like she is a disease they are trying to avoid catching. She ignores them as she walks. None of them matter. Nothing, really, matters anymore. Not since she found out that the person she was here to protect never needed it in the first place.

She figures that the correct term for the state she has found herself in since then is dubbed as having 'lost the will to live'. It is an apt description. Not only has she lost the will to live, she thinks that she has also forgotten what 'live' means.

It's...weird. She knows what it is, to want to live, to want to see the next day, but the knowing of it, the meaning of it, slips between her fingers like water whenever she focuses on it too hard.

As she walks towards the doors, she passes by Rikuto and his sister, Noriko. They are talking to each other. Noriko looks irritated by what he is saying, but their voices are pitched low enough that no one can hear them. Rikuto is in all black, as usual, while Noriko is in fitting grey tights and a matching-coloured slim tee. It isn't unusual to see the adopted siblings together. It is odd if they aren't.

Ever since they arrived Rikuto, the older of the two, has proven to be fiercely protective of his sister. It's a little surprising that none of the handlers or Agents have thought to separate the two. Or maybe they did try, and it didn't end well.

Everyone thinks Rikuto is so protective over her because he is the strong one, the one more likely to survive within the organization and does so to take care of Noriko. They were all proven wrong – Pai along with them – after their first live-practise training session one month after their batch was thrown together.

Rikuto is strong, and so is his sister, but it is in different ways.

Noriko hones her surprising strength and uses it to deliver brute force on those she attacks, but her weakness is her insufficient talent in using an [ability]. People are starting to wonder if she has one, or if she's not what everyone thinks she is. Rikuto is the opposite. He has an [ability], and he uses it in cunning and sly ways, to trick and confuse his enemy.

She doesn't spare them a glance, but when Rikuto calls out to her, she only slows minutely. Pai glances back to see him lift a hand in a friendly wave to her. Noriko glares up at her brother through a mop of dark brown hair that falls over her eyes. She doesn't spare Pai a glance.

Pai feels like Noriko doesn't like her. She doesn't know why. She doesn't care to find out.

"Oi, Pai, let's have a match." He says, flashing her a pirate smile. "Whoever wins gets next week's shitty rations for two days."

She stops walking and looks back at him with flat eyes. He smiles at her, as if completely oblivious to her robotic nature.

"Rikuto," Noriko mumbles warningly.

"Not interested." Pai replies bluntly. She turns and continues on her way. She wipes the sweat from her face with the white towel draped around her neck before taking a swig of the water in her hand. Her nose wrinkles at the aftertaste of chemicals in it.

She jerks to a halt when Rikuto runs up beside her and stops her from walking by cutting in front of her, his hands up. She narrows her eyes at him – at least he's smart enough not to touch her. Any time one of the trainees casually touches her, even innocently, they regret it. She snapped Renji's wrist, broke Mihashi's nose, and almost killed Yoshiwara because he got far more handsy than any of the others ever dare. Though she got a brow-beating from Kiku for her violence, she doesn't doubt that she will do the same to them and anyone else if they try it again.

After what Akira did, she is loath to allow any of them anywhere near her. She doesn't care how many times she's sent to the Doctor for her insubordination; she will kill anyone who tries to hurt her again.

"What?" she snaps.

"C'mon, Pai," he says, an easy smile lighting his face as he grins rakishly at her.

Glancing back behind them, she sees Noriko shaking her head with an annoyed look on her face as she turns to head into the gym, shooting her brother an irritated glare as she goes. Has she told her brother why she doesn't like Pai?

Why doesn't she like Pai? What has she ever done to Noriko to warrant it?

Wilfully ignoring Noriko, he adds, "We still haven't settled the score, remember?"

He refers to the tally they started to keep the first time they went on a mission together. Rikuto is a sniper, and he is the one who is supposed to neutralize the target. Their first mission together, he failed to do so because their target made them. Pai had to step in and take him down. Now they keep track of their successful targets on joint missions. The 'game' is supposed to end as soon as one of them reaches five.

As far as she knows, the tally is in her favour. Since the last mission together, she stands at four. He is at three. Pai became an unwilling participant of the game only because Rikuto is the one who keeps track of it, and also because she knows that there is a reason he keeps so diligently at it, one he doesn't speak of.

Idly, she wonders how he sleeps at night. They are all warped, but some handle the nightmares better than others. Rikuto looks like one of those who gets to sleep. He doesn't have the dead look in his eyes others do, or the blackness under them. She struggles not to see the faces of those she killed stalking her, and the only reason she is one of those who sleeps is because of Kuniumi.

When did I become so dependent on you?

Kuniumi disappeared five weeks ago. The last session with the Doctor after Yamato was done with her was so severe that it left her unconscious for days to allow her body to heal. Somehow, even Kuniumi was pushed to the limits of her mind. Pai knows that she is still there with her, she can feel the stirring of Kuniumi's presence somewhere in the furthest corners of her mind, but it is like she has gone into a slumbering state.

She doesn't know how to wake her up. That's what frightens her the most. That she doesn't know, and that she wants to know.

Deep into the night, scared of falling asleep, she shouts and screams for Kuniumi. Her voice reverberates in the sound-proof cell, but all remains silent. She manages to sleep, barely. When she doesn't have nightmares of the people she has killed, reaching for her arms and her legs and her hair and her fingers and ripping at her skin, she is relieved to realize that though Kuniumi is somehow sleeping, she is still keeping the nightmares away.

It is when she is awake that is the problem.

When she handed in her report of the last mission to Kiku, for a split second it was like Kirishima Ken's face superimposed on her new handler's. That was over two weeks ago, but the sight still haunts her every step.

When she goes to the canteen for meals, she sees the faces of the women she has killed, their hair made from noodles, and the tears they cried made from the watery lukewarm stew So Fu staff dishes out to trainees.

Once, when they were together on a kill mission, after the deed was done, she saw a look of such terrible remorse darken Rikuto's otherwise friendly and bright face. She thought then that he was finally breaking down, that the burden of what they were doing was finally driving him over the edge. She thought she was watching another trainee sink into the bottomless pit where the edge of sanity lingers out of reach. He is such an eccentric person that it is difficult to guess at his thoughts. He always chatters away about something or other that makes her dismiss him as just the same as everyone else.

But when she saw that look on his face, she realized that she was wrong. In that split second where his face bore all his sorrow and anguish, she realized that Rikuto is different from the others. He doesn't enjoy killing quite as much as he lets on. Rikuto wears a mask when with them, a mask that smiles brightly while slitting throats. Just as she wears a mask that reveals nothing while doing the exact same.

"Yes, we have." She replies bluntly. "I am at four. You are at three."

"Really, Pai?" Rikuto looks almost disappointed in her. "Killing Akira doesn't count. He wasn't a target."

Pai's muscles lock.

Memories of her own deafening screams of pain ring in her head as she remembers Yamato torturing her as punishment for pulling a gun on and emptying the clip into her handler, Yoshiro Akira. He burned her with the butts of his cigarettes; hit her so hard that veins in her eyes burst and cuts opened up on her head; broke her toes until she couldn't even twitch her legs from the sheer shock of pain any movement brought on; whipped her back until her skin hung in red slivers over exposed muscle and bone; ripped off her fingernails, one by one, until her fingers were stubs of flesh, bone, and blood dripping on the puddles pooled at her feet.

He treated her the way he did captured Hengen. No more, no less. He was ordered to. He took his sadistic pleasure in hurting her just the way he did with any other captured thing thrown to his feet for his distinctive speciality treatment.

He was following orders, and he loved every second of it. In moments of split-second lucidity, she'd seen it; she saw the glee in his eyes every time he hurt her.

Pai doesn't know how she survived. What Yamato did to her was so bad that she lost control, relinquishing hold on her body and allowing Kuniumi to step in, and enough that she developed an unexpected side-effect she overheard the Doctor telling Kiku was the Marie-Antoinette Syndrome.

(How? How did she survive?)

(She doesn't know.)

(She's not sure she did.)

She flinches when Rikuto leans in. He only slows his movements infinitesimally before taking a strand of her stark white hair in his hand and twirling it around his finger, and then lets it go.

She still isn't used to it.

The change of her hair colour is another part of her that marks her out from the rest of the group. When they see her, and her new hair, they avoid her like she's been marked out by her actions that led to the torture that destroyed her enough for this to happen.

But not Rikuto. If anything, he seems fascinated by it.

"I'm not blaming you for what you did," he says, his voice taking on a surprisingly gentle quality. "He was going to rape you. Anyone would have done what you did in the same situation."

('Was'.)

(How funny.)

She blinks and stares at him.

The other trainees, after finding out what she did to her handler, stay as far away from her as they possibly can. She usually spars with Kiku, her new handler, because most of the other trainees are afraid to fight with her, even if it is just to train. It is like they think she will snap their neck if they come to close. They sit noticeably further away from her in the canteen at mealtimes, and actively ignoring her very presence in the rooms when they are in class with an instructor.

Why isn't Rikuto afraid of her as the others are?

Her voice is low. "How do you know that? Kiku-san said no one but the handlers know." Even Kiku doesn't really know the full truth of what happened between her and Akira.

He frowns at her. "How do I know what?"

"That Akira-sa – that he was trying to do that. To me." The words leaves a sour taste in her mouth. Bile rises up in her throat at the foggy memories provoked by them.

Rikuto's frown deepens, like he doesn't understand why she is asking him that question. "You don't remember? Pai, I'm the one who found you. After you...y'know," he makes a slicing motion with his hand flattened out to mimic a knife. "Off with his head."

"I did not cut off his head." She replies, automatically correcting him. She only loaded him up with bullets.

He grins. He slips into Russian and says, "Ah, you didn't. What you did was very well rip the man apart. I'm the one who heard him yellin' like a stuck pig and came to see what the hell was going on."

Her eyebrows pull down in a scowl. She doesn't remember that.

She barely remembers anything of what happened after Akira came to talk to her about her report after the Kirishima mission had been botched by the sudden and unexpected appearance of a ninetailed Kitsune. She was ordered back to headquarters for a debrief on the foiled mission.

She barely remembers anything after Akira came in, and before she woke up in the bed of her cell, when Yamato finished with her and the Doctor restored her just enough so that she would not die. Before being taken to Yamato, she was put in an isolation unit. The time she spent there blurred to the point that she doesn't know how long she was locked up. It could have been days, weeks, months even.

"It was you?" she asks.

Rikuto nods, eyes that are like hers darkening as if he is remembering that day. The black look in his expression vanishes, and he grins disarmingly. It has no effect on her.

"What's up with your memory, Pai?" he asks. "You're always forgetting things."

She internally winces at the words. She doesn't like them, but she knows that he is right. Her memory has only recently started acting up. Sometimes she can remember things in such vivid detail that it surprises her. Other times everything is just a blur of grey she can't quite make out.

"So? How 'bout it?" he asks again. "Settle the score now, or we keep at it?"

She looks into his eyes for another moment. They are bright, and the shadows nestled under his eyes are more like bruises. He still smiles at her. She wonders how much it must hurt to keep such a bright smile on his face for so long.

She sighs heavily. "You will not stop with this unless I agree, will you?"

"Hmm." He makes a comical face as he crosses his arms over his chest and taps his chin thoughtfully. "I mean, if we don't have ourselves a little gladiator match now, I'll probably up the number to ten instead five. We can make it quick, and then you can go do whatever it is you wanted to."

She turns and walks to an empty mat at the far right centre of the room. It is fairly clean, with no marks on it. The others haven't used it yet. It's big enough that if one of them rolls out far, they won't bruise themselves on the hard ground. Rikuto follows beside her, watching as she drops her towel on the floor. She strips off her t-shirt and starts stretching her arms.

"Why?" she asks, extending her arms up over and behind her head. She can already feel the liquid stretch of her muscles pulling taut. "Why must you keep track of the people we kill?"

Rikuto is stretching too, mirroring her but bouncing on the balls of his feet as if he can't keep his energy in.

"How can I stop?" he winks, but there is sadness there, behind the humour, that she finds parallels her own. "We all need something to keep us sane." He continues. "I don't know how you do it, but keeping count of the people we've killed is how I do it."

She drops her hands and gives him a flat look. "So Fu does not want us sane. We are at our best when we are what they want us to be."

And with no warning whatsoever, she darts forward.

Rikuto, however, is ready for her. It isn't the first time they have sparred together. She is aware of the fact that he knows she always tries to end the fight as quickly as possible, with as minimal damage done to both parties as is acceptable. When she sees his left leg twitch, foot digging into the mat securely, she knows he is going to try using that against her.

He swiftly moves to the side, but leaves his leg where it is. He sweeps it up in an attempt to trip her. His every minuscule move is fast and precise, right down to the way his foot is angled so as to reduce risk of accidentally twisting it while he moves and hits.

But it fails. Rikuto isn't the only one to notice things about the way his opponents fight. Even before Kiku became her handler, he told her that one of her strengths is how she is able to accurately anticipate what her opponents are trying to guess she'll do in a fight.

She expects the move, and twists to the right, moving out of reach of his long leg. She brings her hand scissoring down on his calf. Rikuto moves fast and avoids the jab at his leg. He swings a right-hook punch at her, and she stops it from meeting her jaw with her forearm. As he brings his arm back to him, she aims two quick punches at him that he isn't quite fast enough to stop. One is at his nose, and the other at his solar plexus.

He moves away by just an inch, avoiding the punch to his nose that would hinder him from fighting for just long enough for her to easily win. He doubles over from the punch to his solar plexus, but she realizes it is a decoy too late. It would take more than that to render either of them incapable of fighting.

Rikuto lunges for her a split second later. Still, she is prepared. He aims for her middle. Just as he is an inch before her, she lifts her right leg so that when his arms wrap around her torso, her leg is over his shoulder. She twists them both around as she uses his momentum against him and forcefully rolls them backwards.

When they stop it is with her arm around his neck in a choke-hold. Her right foot presses into his stomach, hard, and keeping him on the ground half-on half-off her with his arms pinned under his back. She lies under him, staring up at the harsh white lights of the training room. The adrenaline of the fight has only just begun to build up inside her, but it is not enough.

She still feels dead as she stares blankly at the lights.

"You said we will make it quick."

"Did I now," he grunts as he tries wiggling himself.

She tightens her hold around his neck, continuing to look up at the fluorescent lights. She remembers what Kuniumi told her about how the world used to look before it became the world. A white and black hole, an endless void, stretching out into nothing.

"Unless you want me to suffocate you," she replies coolly. "I win."

A sharp grin from Rikuto, one that she can feel as she holds him in a vice-like choke-hold. His voice is hoarse when he speaks, but there is a dry humour there too. "You sure about that?"

He suddenly twists, using his arms under his back to push himself off the ground. The move is a surprise one. Pai is unprepared for it when she is lifted off the ground. She feels a hand go around her waist as she is flipped. Her head knocks back on the ground, and she is momentarily stunned. Spots dance like ballerinas in front of her eyes.

She blinks rapidly, and when the spots fade away, she finds herself looking up at Rikuto leaning over her. He has her hands pinned on either side of her head, his left leg between hers and crossed over her ankles so that she is unable to use her legs. His lips are kicked up in a hundred kilo-watt smile. It almost blinds her.

"You completely sure about that?" he asks her.

Her heart beats harder in her chest as she looks up at the rakish smile on Rikuto's face. Her neck is heated, and her abdomen clenches tight in a reflexive muscle memory of being pinned down in the same position – before. When she blinks, it isn't Rikuto's face she is looking up at.

It is Akira's.

The hungry, leering face of the man who was her handler before she tore at him with her bare hands, shot him, stabbed at him, gone unhinged when he touched her in a way that makes her want to scream. Dark brown eyes glinted brightly with hidden intent. A self-satisfied smirk on his face as he holds both her wrists firmly in one thick hand, the other clamped over her mouth so that she isn't able to scream. His body presses down on hers heavily. The tip of his gun tucked in the waistband of his trousers digs painfully into her stomach as he says something to her. The foetid odour of alcohol washes over her face as he breathes on her.

She blinks again, chest rising and falling sharply as she struggles to calm her frantically beating heart. This time it isn't Akira's face over her, but Rikuto's. The dark mop of his hair falls over his face, devoid of any ill intent as Akira's had been, as he grins down at her.

"Who said the fight's over?"

It is Rikuto, not Akira.

He isn't even lying on her, instead just leaning over her.

This isn't her cell, but the training room.

There are a dozen other trainees of her batch scattered around. None of them pay her and Rikuto any mind, but they are there, at least. They aren't in the room where it was only her and Akira in her cell.

Her skin crawls where Rikuto does touch her.

Get off me, she thinks desperately, her mind blanketing in panic. Get off, get off, get off!

Rikuto frowns, noticing the terror in her eyes. "Pai? What's wrong?" His hands loosen over hers as he sits back, moving away from her.

It is like a breath of fresh air, like she was stuck in an underground cell for far too long. She shoots up and scrambles away as soon as she is free, skidding on the smooth surface of the mat as she cradles her hands to her chest and stares unseeingly at the spot on the mat where she was lying just a few seconds ago. Her heart beats as fast as a runaway train, her breath rattling in her chest.

She doesn't know what it is that overcomes her. Fear, or panic, or maybe a horrible little mixture of both. She hates it. It makes her feel weak and small and incapable of protecting herself.

Kuniumi, she calls in a silent plea. Please come back. I don't like this. Please come back, come back come back come back come back I need you.

She never feels this helpless when Kuniumi is there.

"Pai? What's wrong?"

Her eyes snap up when she hears his voice. Rikuto crouches a foot from her, watching her warily, as if she is a wild animal he is trying to tame. But she can see, there, right there, is concern lighting his eyes.

Pai wants to cry when she sees how worried he seems about her. Nobody looks at her like that. The handlers, Agents, all the higher-ups she has ever met, everyone, all of them – they all look at her like she is just a commodity. Nobody looks at her like they genuinely care about her, not about whether or not she's able to continue fighting, training, whether she's able to heal her wounds in time for that next assignment, but her, as a person and not a thing, a weapon to be pointed at something to kill.

She flinches when a voice unexpectedly speaks in her mind, and her heart simultaneously takes a nosedive for her stomach from the surprise, and jumps up and down in elation at the familiar voice.

Why is he different from the rest? Her voice is curious, contemplative.

Pai turns to stone.

"Hey," Rikuto is still looking at her, waiting for her to say something. "Pai? What's wrong?"

Why is he like him, but he's not him? Why, she murmurs. Does he not fear us the way these other weaklings do? What makes him different?

That's the first thing you say?! She screams, infuriated as she leaps to her feet in anger, Rikuto scrambling up after her – but she barely sees him. She's too immersed in the seething rage swirling in her, too focused inside to bother with anything out.

You left me, alone! You said you wouldn't leave me, and you left! You left just like everyone else!