The past while had been spent with her world literally crashing down around her. Walls had fallen, the ground had crumbled and there was no pane of glass within their vision that was left unscathed. When she had just been trying to help the AMC in apprehending a madman, she had angered them, she had done something terribly wrong. When finally, for once, she felt like she was doing the right thing, she learned that she was completely in the wrong. Everything she knew was laid out before her and was denied by the new path she stumbled over and clung to for dear life. For the first ten years of her life, she was mutilated, told what to do every second of the day, locked down every night, fed when they decided it was time, screamed at every time she made one mistake. For the latter ten, she did as she pleased, yet still with the motive to please others. She fought for stability in her life, cried out for attention from a man who threw her away, needed to protect, needed to have that one person in her life who she could die for and meet an end that would make someone, anyone happy.
And now, branching off into the third decade, feeling emotions and experiencing things her body had never learned to cope with, she questioned everything she had ever felt. Things came to her like guilt, remorse, love, a fear she could not hide... emotions that her mind could not process. Terrified, she grasped out for people and pulled them in close, begging to make them stay with her. With Shunsui, she gave him her heart. She gave her freedom away to Jushirou. And now she was showing Alba that she was not indestructible, that she was not in control of anything, not even her own mind. Grasping onto him for dear life, she needed him to not leave her. She needed him not to hate her like she thought everyone eventually would. As he kissed her forehead, hushing her, trying his best to reassure her, the immediate reaction her mind had was to disbelieve him, to tell him that he was going to go. Yet as her mind shrieked out her insecurities, her body only showed how absolutely sure she was at that moment that Alba was the only stable thing in the surrounding area, the only stable thing she would ever know and if she let him loose, he would surely fall apart.
When she felt him move to stand, she cried out in fright as if he was going to leave her. Her arms wrapped around his shoulders even tighter, her forehead against his neck, the muscles in her legs tightening and curling her knees further into herself. Her breathing still harsh, head still pounding, body battered and bruised from the explosions, she was not unlike a feral cat, wounded and trying to be helped by strangers. The entire world was her enemy, all but the thing she clung to. The words he spoke to her were much choppier inside her mind and she only could comprehend the ones that made the most impact. Not true... without you... protected us... I love you... Though it was difficult to hear his sentences in her state of mind, what was left of Jinx could hear his voice cracking, something familiar to her from the child he once was, a child that now she played the role of.
"...can't be a weapon," she echoed him, "stay with you forever." Her echo was a dull whisper, almost automatic as if she were processing his words out loud. And when she spoke to him, this voice was barely more than a chirp, squeaking, choking in her sobs, "Don't stay with me forever... you can't... I'm dying, Alba... I'm dying... I have to leave you... I can't leave you, don't let me leave you. Don't let me... I don't want to... I need to protect you, everyone... I was only trying to help... I can't help..." Shaking, pale, her eyes red from the crying, bloody tears falling down her cheeks, she pulled away from his neck and looked up at him, needing to see him, afraid that if she did not see, he would be gone and she would be clinging to thin air. And hoarsely, looking directly into his eyes, barely able to focus on the beautiful sea of green, she whispered, "It's killing me... I'm killing me..."
Looking into her frightened, bloodied eyes... hearing her talk that way... Alba fought harder against the burning feeling behind his own eyes. He'd heard her talk about being on a ticking clock; about how she wouldn't live past thirty, if then. He always figured it was a comment about the work she did; when you're an assassin, death is a very real eventuality. But what she was saying now... killing her? "You... you can't get rid of me that easily, Jinx... You can't scare me off." He shook his head. "I won't let you go, Jinx. I won't. You're family. You're my best friend. You mean so much..." He felt it roll down his cheek. "I... I'll never leave you, no matter what you say... or do... or anything." It hung off his chin before falling, gently dropping against her own stained face. He took another deep breath, fighting with himself to keep from crying outright.
He walked slowly through the rubble, the hollow rooms, and finally edged through the front door, his grip on Jinx never faltering, even for an instant. He glanced down to her again, giving her a strong smile, a smile someone would wear if they were trying to heal the world, to stop the pain and suffering and inequality of man. He wanted to help her, wanted to see her have a chance at living a real life, a normal life... and yet nothing would allow it; even if they could get out of Reggio Calabria, away from the warring families and their violence, she was on a short clock. Alba was no surgeon, no doctor or even a first aid specialist. He had no way to know how to help her if something went wrong with her powers. But... that still wasn't enough to make him leave her. He reached the car, and gently tried to set her into the passenger's seat. But with how tightly she clung to him, and the way she'd cried when he'd barely moved...
He pulled her close again, then walked to the other side of the car. As best he could, he opened the door, slowly sliding into the driver's seat, with Jinx still in his arms. Closing the door, he reached around the frightened girl in his lap, and started the engine. "Hold on to me tightly, Jinx," he whispered into her ear. "We're going home."
As he spoke to her, she put forth all of her effort to listen, to focus, to be able to clear her mind from what it was screaming and move onto what was actually happening. The face of her brother, her best friend, the boy she had grown into an adult with, the man who looked just as scared as she felt. In his pauses, she heard him almost choking as he may have been fighting with himself not to break down to her state. Trying to listen to his words, every last one and actually understand the sentences, she bit her bottom lip and closed her eyes tightly, almost whimpering as she nodded in reply. Something fell onto her cheek and she opened her pink eyes once more, confused. There was a wet trail down Alba's cheek from the tear, enough to help her fight toward sanity. She placed her head to his neck once again, burying it there, her hands groping at his back, and in a voice barely above a whisper, she managed a clear sentence, four words, "I love you, too."
The deep scent of leather calmed her, wrapping around her like his arms so tightly, yet still gentle, an embrace. Leather always reminded her of Alba, always brought back fond memories of each time they were close, every lingering touch when they were close, when she protected him. It was not supposed to be the other way around... yet it still felt natural. He could comfort her just the same. He was the one who calmed her. He was the one who fought, who injured himself, just to save her from herself. And upon thinking this, upon having enough sanity to realize he would stay with her, she let herself be taken away from Naoe... but she did not cease her sobs. For years she had spoken to him, asked him for guidance, her twin, her Naoe, and she felt as if he was there answering her. Yet as of late, she felt nothing at all. Just the emptiness of a girl talking to herself. Alba was real, he was here, he was tangible, and he was going to take her away from this place.
As they walked through the empty hallways, the walls stained in blood and bullet holes, parts of the wallpaper wilted and ripped downward. Coming through the front doors, the hinges creaked and parts of the door cracked. A trail of bad luck followed them, killing parts of the overgrown plants around the front of the compound. Though as they came upon his car, his baby, she shut her eyes tightly, grabbed him harder, and whined at herself for control. When she opened her eyes again, they were sitting back down, this time in his car. When the engine started, she cried out and grabbed at him, shaking. When she could finally deduce what was going on, listening to his warning, she calmed as much as she could manage. Instead of holding onto him tighter, if that was even possible anymore, she found herself finally relaxing, letting her head slip down to his chest, mind swimming, still pounding.
"Home..." she repeated at first, a monotone echo, followed by a questioning, "Home? I... I don't have a..." Finishing that sentence would have been an absolute lie now that she was calm enough to think. She was welcome at Jushirou's home like her own, Yuffie would always take her in without a second thought and she had had perpetual permission to raid the Meira fridge whenever needed. "Thank you," she whispered to him. "I'm sorry... I'm so sorry... I'm not a good girl... I... I can't control... it hurts... but I... I made it stop... I made it stop, I could do it... you helped make the bad things go away..."
"You made them go away," Alba corrected. "I didn't do anything, Jinx... you're the special one here." He adjusted in his seat before shifting the car into gear, pulling away from the ruined manor. The place was no good for anyone sane, let alone someone like the psychological mess in his lap. Nothing but tortured ghosts and nightmares resided in this place, and Alba had enough of those as it was. It was time to go.
They pulled out onto the road, and part of him was grateful that the gate hadn't swung back closed since he drove through it earlier. He hadn't seen what the nose of the Jag looked like, but he didn't really want to. That was going to be a couple of weekends worth of pampering, he was sure. Still, he didn't regret what he did; from the looks of things, any longer and he might not have liked what he found. He hit a good pace, not the frantic driving of earlier, but much smoother. Lucid, almost, which made sense; his post-crisis mindset left him looking through a fog, like we was coming down off of being high on war drugs. He felt distant, and that scared him a little, because the last thing he wanted to do was lose control of the car with Jinx on his lap.
As they came into the city proper, Alba pulled to the side of the road for a moment, and extended the top of the car. His companion was supposed to be dead, and he didn't need the spectacle of driving around in a top-down Jag with a bloodied girl in his lap. Even if she wasn't identified, that would cause all kinds of trouble. Top up, he returned to the drive, one hand stroking along Jinx's back comfortingly. The burning ache in his side was still there, but he ignored it, telling himself he'd see a doctor tomorrow. Right now, there were more important things to deal with. Mostly he had to make sure Jinx's injuries, while not major, should still be taken care of.
The drive took longer for obvious reasons, even if he was still driving faster than the speed limit, but they were back at the familiar apartment before long. He didn't bother to lock the car as he gathered Jinx up again, ascending the stairs to the right floor and leaning against the door, reaching for the knob. Again, he'd been in such a rush, he didn't lock the door, but figured if anyone was dumb enough to break in, they didn't want to live long anyway. He carried Jinx into the bathroom and kissed her cheek. "I'm gonna set you down now, but I'm not going anywhere. I'm just gonna clean you up, okay? Make sure you're all right." Slowly, gently, he settled her into the bathtub, not actually letting go of her until she was ready, before turning to the medicine cabinet for gauze and antiseptic.
Hearing those words, her tears began to slow and a small, sad smile came over her bloodied face. Choking on the residual sobs, she spoke as coherently as she could manage, "I-I'm a special girl? I... I'm special... special girl..." Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, believed to be caused by psychological trauma. The sources of this trauma was physical and emotional abuse for all the nineteen years of her life. Even in the outside world, away from being an experiment, Gin treated her as his plaything, enjoying her for brief times, then throwing her against walls and screaming when he was not pleased. And each time, no matter what the situation, she blamed herself. She had been an assassin since the tender age of eleven and killed men, cut them apart slowly, without so much as flinching. The first man she ever killed was at the age of 8, her own father who was her "therapist," pulling the switches each time she was electrocuted while strapped down on a gurney, gagged and fighting for her life. For fun, her bones were shattered and put back together with synthetic materials. And every time they hurt her, each time they broke their little doll, they told her it was her own damn fault for not being completely compatible to the N.A.O.E. experiment like her brother.
Because of these events, there was significant impairment in social areas of functioning, and in dealing with her own mind, persistent reexperience, nightmares, flashbacks. Constant symptoms of increased arousal, hypervigilance, paranoia, the inability to detour her thoughts away from the issues in her life, resulting in bouts of uncontrollable anger and fear. In a normal individual, the mental breakdowns would be harsh, detrimental to ones own wellbeing. But with Jinx's abilities, with how easily they were activated by emotion, without her control, the results were much more catastrophic. And especially in a city like Reggio Calabria, she was more unstable than an attempted splice of Uranium. Yet Alba was the scientist who took the extra precautions, who knew how to nullify the explosion and was brave enough to try.
The journey home was a long one, but it passed very quickly in Jinx's mind only because she was not entirely conscious for the majority of it. In his lap, she drifted in and out, every so often awakening with a slight jerk. All logical thought processes begged her to stay away in case she had a concussion, which was high possible. It was the easy thing to just pass out and forget, to never wake up again until her body wasted away or the lesions took over her brain. But every time she caught sound of Alba's heartbeat, her head nuzzled into his chest, she knew there was reason to continue fighting in this world. There were people who still needed her.
Luckily, she was small. With a mix of Alba's strength and her dead weight being a grand total of 90 pounds soaking wet, she knew she did not hinder him too much. Talking was beyond her for the time being in her half conscious state, but as they drove, she had mumbled to him not to leave her every time she shook herself awake. As she was being moved next, she drifted and came back startled as she was suddenly in a familiar bathroom. The kiss on her cheek reassured her to listen to him, but it took much of her willpower to pull her arms away from him. With him away from her, she suddenly felt cold and brought her knees to her chest. But taking in deep breaths, trying to regain sanity as best as she could, she let her body go a bit loose. "I'll be fine... I'm just a bit scratched up. Some Ibuprofen and I'll be fine." The first sane thing she said, her voice low and hoarse as she tilted her head back against the tiled wall, closing her eyes. "Most of the blood is just from my nose..." her ears and her eyes. But that was a little too disturbing to mention. There was a nice gash on her arms, bloody scrapes on her legs, and small bruises decorating the skin seen through her torn clothing, but she was numb to external pain.
"Hm." Alba knew she didn't want to trouble him, but he ignored it. Filling a cup with water from the tap, he set it on the edge of the tub next to her, along with two bright orange tablets. "It'll help at least." Taking the rest of the makeshift first aid and laying it on the lid of the toilet, he leaned over her, grasping the bottom of her dress. "Here, arms up." Pulling it up over her head, he tightened his lips, looking over the damage. Her arm was the worst, the huge gash rather obvious, but she had some minor cuts around too. Unlacing her boots and pulling them off, he rolled off the shredded leggings, careful to avoid most of her scrapes as he went.
He shifted next to the tub, on his own knees, and turned on the water, letting it get lukewarm. Not too hot, but not ice-cold, either. Once it was the right temperature, he held a washcloth underneath the stream, then leaned up to Jinx's face, gently cleaning away the blood from her cheeks and neck, and a little into her hair where it had drained. He dabbed around her eyes, careful to not actually get in them as he cleaned her up. He then gave her another reassuring smile and rinsed out the cloth, before taking her arm in his hands and moving around the cut. It wasn't as deep as it looked, but it had cut a lot of blood vessels, which still made it look nasty. He gently washed the blood away, then dabbed at the wound, stimulating circulation enough to help get any debris out of the gash.
"Jesus, Jinx. You did a number on yourself." He tried to keep the conversation light, keeping her in the now by talking to her. "I thought you always made sure to have protection." He offered a joking smile this time, hoping to lift her spirits even a fraction. He moved to rinse the cloth out again, then moved it across her legs, washing out the grit, dirt, and blood. "At least most of this is superficial. You feel anything in pain?" He touched her chest and stomach where he saw the worst bruising, applying gentle pressure to make sure everything was intact. "Bones broken, muscles torn, anything?" He set the cloth aside, then turned to grab the bottle of antiseptic, a gauze pad in his opposite hand. Opening the lid, he pressed the pad against the top of the bottle, inverting it briefly to get some on the pad before dabbing it across the large wound on her arm. "This might sting a little." Patting it over the cut, he used a second gauze pad to apply more before moving to the scrapes.
Now that she could take in what was going on at the proper speed, now that she could understand what he was saying and comprehend the situation, she tried to shirt back to herself. She tried to be cynical about what was going on, tried to act like she was not bothered, like she could handle herself. When the water and pills was sat down next to her, she picked up the cup, splashing some around from how badly her hands were shaking. Reaching for the pills, she accidentally knocked one into the tub and it took her more than one try to be able to pick it back up. Finally, she was able to swing them back, taking a long drink of the water. Though not able to control her breathing all that well, she began to cough and sputter. The action made her head pound and she cringed, dropping the cup onto herself as she put her arms over her head, once more feeling the need to try and keep her skull together.
When she felt Alba near again, she moved her arms away to reach out to him, but he had other ideas. Trembling, she drew her knees back up as he grabbed the bottom of her dress, but slowly she relaxed enough to let him remove it from her. Her arms wrapped around her knees as she buried her face in them, her shoulders shaking with the sobs that came again all too suddenly. Although she shrank back when he tried to remove her boots, she finally gave in to whatever he did next until she was undressed and left chilled in the bottom of the tub. When he came back to her, she looked up and him, the tears flowing a steady, hot stream down her cheeks. They were no longer bloody. Instinctively, she followed the warmth of the washcloth and he ran it over her face, pressing her cheek into his hand, her eyes big, sorrowful and bloodshot.
When he took her arm, she began to feel the need to back away from him once more, but she was already shrank back to the far corner of the tub as tightly as she could. Shutting her eyes tightly, she turned her head away from him and felt more sobs choke in her throat. As he dabbed at the gash, she whined, not from the pain but from something much, much different. When he spoke to her, she tried to relax, reminding herself over and over again that it was just Alba, her Alba, her brother, her best friend, someone she was completely safe with. Yet when he offered out his joke, she felt it to be more of a jab to her. "I-I can't... I can't protect myself... f-f-from my... from myself..."
As he moved across her legs, she tried her best to uncurl herself, but her muscles wanted to stay tight, keep every body part as close to her as possible. When he asked her about the pain, she looked away again, the most prominent one being inside of her head. But as he touched her stomach, she winced, still not completely healed from her last endeavor fighting Sebastian. There had been some tissue damage along her ribs and a fracture from being beaten in the stomach with a lamppost, and most of it was healed with little to no pain until today. It was easily ignored, though. All the physical pain was easily ignorable, having built up a tolerance from surgeries with no anesthetic. She was strong enough to not be bothered by--
"Fuck..." she whimpered as he dabbed the antiseptic over the gash on her arm. Even the smaller scrapes stun and she shied away from him, the tears starting back into sobs just as they had began to calm. And now she began to cough, dehydrated from all of this, the screaming, the sobs that clotted in her throat. And finally she realized something, opened her eyes just enough to see his blurred figure through her burning tears. If she was injured... then he... "Al... Alba... are you hurt? Are you o-okay?"
Taking the water cup from her, he stood from dabbing at her legs, and turned to refill it in the same motion. Her timing was impeccable, as his side flashed with pain as she asked the question, aggravated by the twist he'd just made. Slowly, he finished turning to the sink, filling the cup only to empty it himself, popping a couple of pills of his own. "Yeah..." he muttered out of the grunt he gave beforehand. "...just got hit with something." His hand gently pressed on his ribs, and he sucked in another breath, grimacing. "...think I broke a rib." He sighed, refilling the cup again and bringing it back to Jinx. "Here, drink up. You've lost enough blood to worry about."
He knelt down next to the tub, reaching to stroke Jinx's shoulders. "Hang on..." he reached down, touching the clasps on her back. "I'm not trying anything, don't worry." He kissed her cheek again as he unhooked her bra, sliding it gently off her shoulders and down her arms. Once it was free, he set it aside, away from the trashed clothes she was previously wearing. Then, his hands touched her sides, just under her arms, and stroked down, until they hooked in the elastic of her waistband. "Lift for a second?" When he had clearance, he pulled the panties down, carefully avoiding the still open scrapes on her legs. Once they were free, they joined the separate pile with the bra, and Alba gave an assuring smile. He then turned the heat of the water up, just enough to be comfortably warm, and dropped the stopper.
"It's not much... I mean, I don't know if it will help... but I dunno, it can't hurt, right?" As the water began to fill the tub, rising around Jinx's nude, huddled form, Alba unzipped the leather top he was wearing, shedding it for a plain tanktop underneath. He dipped his hand in the water surrounding Jinx, making sure the temperature was all right, and cupped some of it, bringing it up and dripping it over her legs, letting the water ease the pain, either from the wounds or the antiseptic. He then reached over and touched Jinx's shoulders again, stroking them gently. "It's not too hot, is it?" He smiled, shifting into a more comfortable position next to the tub. "I mean, if it is, tell me now... unless it's too cold or something."
As much as she could through the burning of her tears, she watched him move, seeing the pain when he twisted. Worried, she moved a bit away from her corner of safety and brought a shaking hand to the edge of the tub. "You... you got hurt... you got hurt be-because of me." Hearing what had happened, she began to shrink back. "I did that. I hurt you... I'm sorry... I'm sorry... that's bad... I'm sorry..." But he came back to her anyway, handing her something, the cup of water again. Her hands, normally steady as a surgeon's, could barely hold the cup at a level where it would not spill. Luckily, water was nothing new to this bathtub. And despite spilling some of it down the front of her, coughing at every swallow since her breathing would still not keep on time, she managed to actually get down a good half of the cup. It was emptied now, either into her mouth or over it, and as she attempted to set it back down on the edge of the bathtub, she ended up knocking it onto the floor.
Her muscles jumped with her mistake, especially when she saw Alba's hand come toward her. But instead of trying to make sure that mistake was never made again, he simply touched her shoulder. Feeling the warm touch, loving, she moved into his hand, the tears rolling softer over her cheeks. It was comfortable when his hand moved over her spine, yet it was not the same situation when she felt his hand on the clasp of her bra. Looking away from him, she crossed her arms over her chest, tightly grabbing to her opposite shoulders and drawing her knees up as if to reinforce that. Though when he kissed her cheek, he reassured her of something she continued to let slip. It did not make her feel better that he was not trying anything with her, but every time he kissed her face, each time he spoke, he continued to remind her that he was Alba, he was her brother, and she was safe.
Without another protest, she let him removed her bra. Though she jumped just a bit when he stroked down her body, she let him, helped him remove the rest of her clothing. And there, nude in the bathtub, curling back into her tight ball, cold against the offwhite porcelain around her, she was not the deadly assassin. She was not a weapon, not someone with confidence, not a young woman who would challenge anything and fight it to the death just to prove a point. She was the nameless child, regressing to her youth to escape the decisions she had to make in her adult life, to try and hide from the pain and only finding a deeper hurt, only coming to see fear. When she felt the water begin to rise around her, an unexpected heat she put her arms back over her head and buried herself in her knees as if protecting herself from the entire room exploding around her. And there she stayed with no reaction to his touch, to his questions, to any outside influences, blocking it all out as she tightened her grip to her skull that could very well break apart at any instant.
Her concept of time was horribly askew. Every moment in the courtyard felt like an eternity, and the car ride home had taken a mere five minutes to her. So she did not know now whether she was curled into an unreceptive ball for a matter of minutes or nearly an hour. Yet when she finally began to pull away from herself, uncurl from her shell shocked state, let her skull stay together on its own and opened her eyes... Alba was still there. That was when she began to rationalize. Timidly, she reached out a hand toward him, using small whines as an easier form of communication than Italian, and begged to hold his hand. When she could finally grasp it, she pulled it to her face and cupped her cheek in his palm, the size difference very relative. "You... you're not leaving me..." she more observed than anything else.
Now as she looked at him, she was still frightened, still half crying, but her big eyes were no longer as feral as they were. She could focus on his face now, lock onto his eyes. "You're going to stay with me... and Soiree doesn't have a choice." She chocked on a mixture of a sob and slight laughter, which just ended in her coughing. And as the couch faded, she began to cry again, closing her eyes, holding his hand tightly to her chest. "But Papa... Papa's gonna hate me... I did something stupid and he's gonna hate me. And then Shunsui... then ShuShu's gonna hate me... because he'd pick Papa over me... and they're not gonna let me come home... and they're not gonna love me... they're not gonna... they're gonna leave... I love them and they'll leave me because I did a bad thing..." Harshly, she bit her bottom lip, trying her best to contain anything that may have caused problems.
She was walling herself up, trying to protect herself from being hurt, by any forces, outside or within. But it didn't dissuade Alba. He tried not to worry, tried to just keep doing what he was doing, touching her, talking to her, making sure she knew he was still there. Eventually, he saw her unclench, begin to unfurl from herself, and finally saw her eyes again, and smiled at her, responding to her gestures and sounds by giving her his hand.
"Nope, not leaving you, kid. Not now, not ever." He brushed his thumb over her cheekbone gently, pressing his hand up against her cheek warmly. He almost laughed with her next words. "No choice whatsoever. Not that he'd have a problem with it. You mean almost as much to him as you mean to me, even if he can be a dick about it." His smile pulled back almost imperceptibly as she continued, his hand moving to her chest as she began lamenting, began blaming herself for losing people that haven't been lost yet. He let her get it out, let her condemn her circumstances a little more before his other hand came up, placing a finger against her bitten lip.
"That's enough of that crap," he smiled again. "Not everyone is those fucks that hurt you, and not everyone is Gin." He all but spat the name. He had never liked Gin, not even for a moment. The man reeked of lies and sadism, and anyone who hurt his big sister deserved a painful, long death in his eyes. "You're only human, Jinx, and humans make mistakes. The best of us knows that... understand and accept it. And from what you've said, those are two of the best of us." He leaned closer to her, his forehead coming to rest against hers. "Yeah, they might be upset... but if they're even half of what you said they are, they'll get over it. They'll get over it, and worry about you, and want to help you." He kissed the end of her nose. "They love you too... and I don't think they'll leave you, any more than I'd leave you. You're special to them now."
He pulled away for only a moment to turn the water off, then came back to her, never actually leaving her grasp. "You have people now, Jinx; people who love you and care for you and only want to see you smile. It took a long time, sure, but you've got them now, and they're not going anywhere. Me, Soiree, Jushiro, Shunsui... I'm sure there's more, too. None of us will let you go." He cupped her cheek in his hand once more. "Ever."
And suddenly Jinx was hushed, a finger to her lips. Under normal circumstance, that would have been a very stupid thing to do, hushing the assassin, but this was not the average situation. Instantaneously she quieted herself to nothing above a soft whimpering that came naturally with this state of being. And there, right in his second sentence, he hit the nail right on the head. Her twin brother had left her, but not intentionally. He had died. But Gin, the man she worshiped, the man she followed around like a sick puppy, who she did anything for no matter what it was, who she convinced herself she loved... he went back to Japan without a single word to her. She nearly killed herself trying to find him in the city, trying to track him down anyway possible, and part of her did die when she finally found out his location. Because he had intentionally left her without a single care and nothing she could have done, no matter how much she told herself otherwise, would have changed that.
When he almost seemed to scold her, she could not bring herself to look at him. The thing about Alba when he did not have his sunglasses on (which was a rare phenomenon,) was that she could see his every emotion in his deep, emerald eyes. Right now, she did not want to see him angry with her. Things became much more difficult to block out when he put his forehead against hers. Opening her eyes, she found herself barely over a centimeter away from his gaze... and he was not angry. He even kissed the tip of her nose, and when something like that occurred, she knew he had to be telling the truth. Regaining her sanity bit by bit, she believed the words that he was saying. And finally, she broke at the root of the problem. "I always thought I was special to Gin, but he lied to me... he used me. I... I thought I loved him, I did love him, and he threw me away when he found something better to play with..." Nothing less than pathetic, she took to hugging his entire arm, sobbing against his tattoo.
Her voice became squeaky again in her hoarseness, but now she could formulate sentences and actually finish them. Her mind was coming back to her. "He left me! I tracked him down and he went back to fucking Japan with his goddamn fucking boyfriend and he's forgotten about me! He never loved me... he lied! He told me I was special and he was just lying so I would do his dirty work, so I would follow his every order... and I could have killed him... I could have snapped his neck but I was too afraid... I was too fucking afraid of him! I trusted his every word. I loved him without question. And every time I needed him, every time I couldn't handle what I was doing, every time I came to him for just a bit of comfort, he was disgusted with me! But every time... every time I did something good, he would smile. He would tell me I was special, he would tell me I was worth more than how others treated me and I fell for it, that sonuvabitch! He was leading me on... he didn't care what happened to me as long as it benefited him!" She was more telling this to herself than anything, for these were things Alba already knew, things he resented, things he had tried to tell Jinx over and over again and she had only yelled at him to shut up each time. She had been blinded by the need for acceptance, completely jaded, and now she felt guilty, actual real guilt, for shoving Alba aside on this matter.
Shaking, she let go of Alba and put her head in her freshly bloodied arms, letting them rest on the edge of the tub, crying until no more tears would come and she was just making noise. The water in the tub rolled around her body in small, erratic waves covered in signatures of pink. Her abilities, which decimated the courtyard of the Di Luca compound, could now barely splash her sides. That was not a bad thing. And finally, terribly dehydrated, her voice so shot that she could barely speak, she lifted up her head and asked with all the sanity Jinx had left in her, "Can you get me something... to blow my nose on, fratello?" And clenching her fists, closing her stinging eyes, she told him, "I'm so sorry."
His eyes never left hers as the realization dawned, hit her like a sack of bricks, even. He watched as the betrayal, the sadness, and the anger that he'd tried to warn her about all rose to the top at once. Part of him, a part that he never let out himself, grinned at her reaction, because if Gin ever returned to Reggio Calabria, he would be a dead man ten times over. He deserved no less, treating a tormented girl like a servant. But he'd never say so to Jinx. He'd never say so to anyone. It was one of those thoughts that some people just couldn't let out; it would color the view of them, both in other people's eyes, and in their own. Alba was the quiet one, the least likely to fight. Strong, silent, and a rock of support for his family and friends. What would happen if the rock showed some chips in it? Would they begin to wonder what it would take to bring him toppling down? No, he had to keep to himself. He was kind, compassionate, and while given to anger once in a while, was never overtaken by it.
Watching her get this way was almost enough to break his resolve, to fly out to Japan himself just to find the man and give him what he'd earned. But as she left go of his arm, burying her face in her own, he shook his head at himself. He couldn't go anywhere... and he wouldn't want to. His place was here, with those closest to him, giving them the strength behind them to face their own demons readily. He leaned forward, kissing Jinx's cheek as she asked her question. "Of course, schwester, of course." He stood, turning carefully this time so as not to aggravate his ribs, to get the tissue box on the counter. "And please don't apologize to me. I'm just doing what brothers do for their sisters." He chuckled as he returned to the tub with the box in his hand. "Well, at least what they do here. I'm sure, somewhere else, I'd probably be consoling you over a bad break-up or something superficial like that."
Resettling himself, he leaned back, his head gently resting against the same tile wall as hers, and titled towards her. His arm looped behind her back, settling over her shoulder, as his other hand touched her arm softly, reassuringly. He continued to smile that same Alba smile, slight but reassuring, and pulled her as close as the tub would allow, touching her head with his own. "Just... thank you for not being dead, Jinx. Thank you for having the strength to keep going. If anything happened to you... I don't know. I'm not ready to deal with that." His eyes moved to her. "Believe it or not, you keep me sane around here. You and Soiree. If it weren't for you guys, I'd probably be dead in a gutter, or worse, dead from work stress. You remind me of what I have to live for."
When his lips pressed tenderly against her cheek, she gave a small, sad smile, knowing the salty warmth of her tears were now on his kiss. And when he called her his sister in German, a language she knew next to nothing about, she knew that everything was going to be all right for now. Gin was gone, and he was never coming back to hurt her. Now was a time to move on, for she had people who loved her and were never going to use her. They were not going to hurt her. "Right, so all little brothers strip down their sisters and give them baths when they have mental breakdowns. I never knew." With that bit of cynical sarcasm, Jinx was now thinking straight... or as rational as she could be after what she just put herself through. Gratefully, she took several tissues from the box with her hands incredibly erratic in their shaking, and she spend the new few moments blowing her nose until she could finally breathe through it again. The hot steam from the bathtub helped clear things up.
"God, I wish I was an American," she told him, leaning into his arm as it wrapped around her back. "I have all these fucking stupid little fantasies... they're so fucking stupid... like that I was an American teenager, who only worried about stupid, trivial things. That I actually went to school. That I had parents and they were too strict. That I wasn't a skinny little punk. Maybe that I was lazy, maybe even overweight, and I wore wool sweaters and had a crush on a football player." When she laughed, she felt herself choking on a few more sobs and had to grab another tissue, making a neat pile of used ones on the floor by the tub. "But instead I'm... I'm this... I'm a scrawny piece of killing machine who's dating a retired cop and worried about whether or not I'm going to be shot down every time I walk outside."
Talking helped, it really did even though her voice was incredibly hoarse, even though it hurt her throat. Forming complete sentences, focusing on her Italian instead of the pain that was now seeping from her nerves. Now that she could feel again, she did not know what was worse, her headache or that damn gash. "Hey," she began softly, nuzzling her head to his, "it's not me you should be thanking. I could be saying the exact same words to you. I can't count how many times you and Soiree have covered my ass. I can't trust myself, so I'm glad I have to the two of you. Now, if we were all Americans, and you were the boys from down the street, I'd probably call you my best friends but not act that way around the popular kids and we'd have little feel good moments every so often, but all and I'll you'd be the token nerds." Jinx watched too much TV Land. "And we'd get into wacky situations and I might even be a blond."
With a morbid sort of chuckle, she pulled away from Alba and slipped down into the tub, the water having an interesting tint from blood and dirt. Closing her eyes, she sank down to the bottom of the tub, letting it engulf her head, wash the blood out of her ears, her nose, the tears off her face. When she emerged, taking a slow breath, her hair laid flat and slick against her head, dripping the hot water. Just for comfort this time, she drew her knees loosely to her chest and rested her cheek against them, looking toward Alba. Weakly, her wet hand reached out and took his, needing that contact. "But... I really am sorry... I never wanted you to see that. I... I never intended you to find out that way. But... you deserve to know. You deserve to be told this. This shouldn't be a secret to you... but, but I'd like Soiree not to know. Soiree wouldn't understand."
She squeezed his hand, looking at him with her big eyes, giving the most sorrowful smile that had ever cross her face. "I wasn't meant to be anything more than an experiment. They knew they were going to eventually end up terminating me since I wasn't compatible with the experiment. So they did a lot of shit to me... stuff that people... stuff that people aren't supposed to live through. Alba," she said his name softly, a comforting attempt for both him and herself, "I have lesions on my brain. I... I haven't seen them on a CAT scan in a few years, but... I've been told I may not even live to be thirty. ...I'm sorry."
A chuckle escaped him as she likened the possibility of their would-be lives to that of an old sitcom. Mostly, he was glad to hear her starting to come back to herself, her sense of humor the most reassuring thing at that moment. When she dove under the surface of the water, he watched her pink strands float apart from each other, and he found himself wondering what life could have been like somewhere else... with his parents alive, with no Monacello or Vescovo... But Alba wasn't a fan of 'could have been' situations. Reality had enough problems as it was without adding the depression that came with a 'what could have happened' line of thinking. Still, he did see what some people could find appealing about the fantasy.
When she came back up and grasped his hand, his eyes met hers again, and he listened to her slight request. He nodded in response, wondering why she thought Soiree wouldn't understand. Granted, he wasn't quite as close to Jinx as he was, but they were still close. What could be so secret? Was he supposed to not know she was prone to having explosions of power like that? Silently, he listened, waiting to hear an answer... but not the one he got.
"Lesions?" His eyes were wider now, in shock and surprise, and perhaps just a little bit of fearful sadness to boot. She couldn't... couldn't... "Are you... oh, Jinx..." It was a little too much. Dealing with her having a breakdown? Not a problem. Cleaning the blood and grime from her wounds? Piece of cake. Talking her back into a semblance of sanity? Easy. Finding out she was on a ticking mortality clock? ...not so much. Reflexively, he squeezed back, holding her hand to his cheek. Those green oceans looked strangely calm, the prelude to a storm that would probably never make it past his own mind. Jinx was his big sister. She could be hurt, she could be broken, but she could never be killed! She was invincible! Immortal! There was no way the girl who kept the nightmares away, who held him and soothed his injuries, who was always there for him... No way... None.
"They... can anything be done about them? I mean, we could get you some help, right? Some real medical help, not a hired Family medic or something, I mean specialists, a clinic, something..." He knew he was just grasping at straws, and she probably knew, too. He looked away from her eyes for the first time since he came to get her, for once honestly not wanting to face the truth. "Or... you know, outside of Italy, there's all sorts of places that are still advancing medicine. Maybe we could find someplace that could help. I don't mean cure it, that's a long shot... but maybe some place to ease it, give you some extra years..." His voice was calm, collected as always... which made it more obvious it was covering up something. Alba wasn't a creature of extreme emotion, but he was only human, prone to the same stimuli as any person. When the right buttons were pushed, even he couldn't be as impassive as he'd normally portray.
Quietly, he kissed her hand, finally looking at her again. This time, he wasn't able to mask his tears as easily as before, his eyes shining with fresh moisture. He took a deep breath, trying to calm himself down, and offered his smile again, sad as it may have been at that moment. "So... I guess the possibility of getting cut down when you step outside isn't so scary after all, is it?"
And now came almost exactly what she was expecting. Alba had always been the more emotional of the two boys, but not on the outside... not in front of other people. But Jinx knew him, and she knew him well. Every time he had cried at her embrace, every time she stayed awake until sunrise and held him through his nightmares. That was back when he was younger, before he became the man who handled delicate operations for the Monacello, who's job was to be calm and collected. A man who drove fast cars, wore his sunglasses at night and could occasionally kill a man. And now he was quickly reverting back to the young boy who had lost his parents. She knew something like this would hit Alba harder, deeper, but Soiree would not understand like his brother would. Soiree was not as close to Jinx, he was not the one who needed her comfort, and he was not one to give it, clean up her wounds, and hug her until she fell asleep.
Calmly, she let him rant, only moving to lift her head from her knees when he looked away from her. Softly, she cupped his cheek in her hand and caressed along the frame of his face with her thumb. No matter how hard she tried, they would not stop shaking. All of Alba's options, all the things he tried to think of to help his big sister... they were not going to work. The lesions were a painfully slow cancer embedded deep within her brain tissue, and not surgery, not the special AMC doctors or Jushirou's voodoo tea were going to help anything. And using her abilities only sped things upon, only destroyed her further. That was something she would keep from him, though. She wanted him to continue looking at her abilities like they were fun, like they made things more interesting, not that they killed her faster.
When he kissed her hand, she leaned more toward the edge of the bathtub and caught his eyes as he stared back. Tears... when she had been crying for hours now, she felt as if it were going to start all over again seeing that moisture in his beautiful green eyes. "No... I guess it's not. I've found that ultimatums ease you after you've gotten past the initial shock. I also find them very motivational." With a heavy sigh, she let her legs stretch out in front of her and unstopped the drain with her foot. The water was growing colder, anyway. And slowly, she stood, shaking, barely able to hold herself up. As she attempted to stop her head from spinning, pounding, she leaned against the tile wall and brushed the tips of her fingers against his face.
"I've never left Reggio Calabria and that's not going to change anytime soon. I've made my place in this city and I'm not going to let you give up your dreams to help a lost cause. Alba, someday you're going to save the world and I'm not getting in the way of that... I'm helping. I... I want to make good. I'm bad luck... but I want to help carry on the dream that Fate put in your head. I... I don't want to die... but everyone has to eventually. I just know my time is a bit more limited than anyone else... so I'm not going to waste it on stupid shit until someone comes along and kills me before the lesions do." She ignored it, blamed it on her previous state, but the tears once again poured from her stinging eyes and streaked her cheeks. "Now come on, Diavolo dell'Alba. Why don't we get me a towel before I freeze and you help me bandage up this arm, eh?"
Her knees giving up on her, she came as gracefully as she could in the half fall to sit on the edge of the tub, her feet in the draining water. "I'm not looking for extra years," she said so softly that her voice did not even echo in the small bathroom. "I'm looking to make the best of the years I have left." Today was a day of realization, a day where new things were discovered and older ones were dug up. One of the new things Jinx came to know was the exact reason why Alba always wore his sunglasses. It was because his eyes were too heartbreaking with sad, too impactful when serious, too endearing when happy... and she felt herself falling in love with another man every time she looked deeply into his emerald irises.
And now, branching off into the third decade, feeling emotions and experiencing things her body had never learned to cope with, she questioned everything she had ever felt. Things came to her like guilt, remorse, love, a fear she could not hide... emotions that her mind could not process. Terrified, she grasped out for people and pulled them in close, begging to make them stay with her. With Shunsui, she gave him her heart. She gave her freedom away to Jushirou. And now she was showing Alba that she was not indestructible, that she was not in control of anything, not even her own mind. Grasping onto him for dear life, she needed him to not leave her. She needed him not to hate her like she thought everyone eventually would. As he kissed her forehead, hushing her, trying his best to reassure her, the immediate reaction her mind had was to disbelieve him, to tell him that he was going to go. Yet as her mind shrieked out her insecurities, her body only showed how absolutely sure she was at that moment that Alba was the only stable thing in the surrounding area, the only stable thing she would ever know and if she let him loose, he would surely fall apart.
When she felt him move to stand, she cried out in fright as if he was going to leave her. Her arms wrapped around his shoulders even tighter, her forehead against his neck, the muscles in her legs tightening and curling her knees further into herself. Her breathing still harsh, head still pounding, body battered and bruised from the explosions, she was not unlike a feral cat, wounded and trying to be helped by strangers. The entire world was her enemy, all but the thing she clung to. The words he spoke to her were much choppier inside her mind and she only could comprehend the ones that made the most impact. Not true... without you... protected us... I love you... Though it was difficult to hear his sentences in her state of mind, what was left of Jinx could hear his voice cracking, something familiar to her from the child he once was, a child that now she played the role of.
"...can't be a weapon," she echoed him, "stay with you forever." Her echo was a dull whisper, almost automatic as if she were processing his words out loud. And when she spoke to him, this voice was barely more than a chirp, squeaking, choking in her sobs, "Don't stay with me forever... you can't... I'm dying, Alba... I'm dying... I have to leave you... I can't leave you, don't let me leave you. Don't let me... I don't want to... I need to protect you, everyone... I was only trying to help... I can't help..." Shaking, pale, her eyes red from the crying, bloody tears falling down her cheeks, she pulled away from his neck and looked up at him, needing to see him, afraid that if she did not see, he would be gone and she would be clinging to thin air. And hoarsely, looking directly into his eyes, barely able to focus on the beautiful sea of green, she whispered, "It's killing me... I'm killing me..."
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He walked slowly through the rubble, the hollow rooms, and finally edged through the front door, his grip on Jinx never faltering, even for an instant. He glanced down to her again, giving her a strong smile, a smile someone would wear if they were trying to heal the world, to stop the pain and suffering and inequality of man. He wanted to help her, wanted to see her have a chance at living a real life, a normal life... and yet nothing would allow it; even if they could get out of Reggio Calabria, away from the warring families and their violence, she was on a short clock. Alba was no surgeon, no doctor or even a first aid specialist. He had no way to know how to help her if something went wrong with her powers. But... that still wasn't enough to make him leave her. He reached the car, and gently tried to set her into the passenger's seat. But with how tightly she clung to him, and the way she'd cried when he'd barely moved...
He pulled her close again, then walked to the other side of the car. As best he could, he opened the door, slowly sliding into the driver's seat, with Jinx still in his arms. Closing the door, he reached around the frightened girl in his lap, and started the engine. "Hold on to me tightly, Jinx," he whispered into her ear. "We're going home."
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The deep scent of leather calmed her, wrapping around her like his arms so tightly, yet still gentle, an embrace. Leather always reminded her of Alba, always brought back fond memories of each time they were close, every lingering touch when they were close, when she protected him. It was not supposed to be the other way around... yet it still felt natural. He could comfort her just the same. He was the one who calmed her. He was the one who fought, who injured himself, just to save her from herself. And upon thinking this, upon having enough sanity to realize he would stay with her, she let herself be taken away from Naoe... but she did not cease her sobs. For years she had spoken to him, asked him for guidance, her twin, her Naoe, and she felt as if he was there answering her. Yet as of late, she felt nothing at all. Just the emptiness of a girl talking to herself. Alba was real, he was here, he was tangible, and he was going to take her away from this place.
As they walked through the empty hallways, the walls stained in blood and bullet holes, parts of the wallpaper wilted and ripped downward. Coming through the front doors, the hinges creaked and parts of the door cracked. A trail of bad luck followed them, killing parts of the overgrown plants around the front of the compound. Though as they came upon his car, his baby, she shut her eyes tightly, grabbed him harder, and whined at herself for control. When she opened her eyes again, they were sitting back down, this time in his car. When the engine started, she cried out and grabbed at him, shaking. When she could finally deduce what was going on, listening to his warning, she calmed as much as she could manage. Instead of holding onto him tighter, if that was even possible anymore, she found herself finally relaxing, letting her head slip down to his chest, mind swimming, still pounding.
"Home..." she repeated at first, a monotone echo, followed by a questioning, "Home? I... I don't have a..." Finishing that sentence would have been an absolute lie now that she was calm enough to think. She was welcome at Jushirou's home like her own, Yuffie would always take her in without a second thought and she had had perpetual permission to raid the Meira fridge whenever needed. "Thank you," she whispered to him. "I'm sorry... I'm so sorry... I'm not a good girl... I... I can't control... it hurts... but I... I made it stop... I made it stop, I could do it... you helped make the bad things go away..."
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They pulled out onto the road, and part of him was grateful that the gate hadn't swung back closed since he drove through it earlier. He hadn't seen what the nose of the Jag looked like, but he didn't really want to. That was going to be a couple of weekends worth of pampering, he was sure. Still, he didn't regret what he did; from the looks of things, any longer and he might not have liked what he found. He hit a good pace, not the frantic driving of earlier, but much smoother. Lucid, almost, which made sense; his post-crisis mindset left him looking through a fog, like we was coming down off of being high on war drugs. He felt distant, and that scared him a little, because the last thing he wanted to do was lose control of the car with Jinx on his lap.
As they came into the city proper, Alba pulled to the side of the road for a moment, and extended the top of the car. His companion was supposed to be dead, and he didn't need the spectacle of driving around in a top-down Jag with a bloodied girl in his lap. Even if she wasn't identified, that would cause all kinds of trouble. Top up, he returned to the drive, one hand stroking along Jinx's back comfortingly. The burning ache in his side was still there, but he ignored it, telling himself he'd see a doctor tomorrow. Right now, there were more important things to deal with. Mostly he had to make sure Jinx's injuries, while not major, should still be taken care of.
The drive took longer for obvious reasons, even if he was still driving faster than the speed limit, but they were back at the familiar apartment before long. He didn't bother to lock the car as he gathered Jinx up again, ascending the stairs to the right floor and leaning against the door, reaching for the knob. Again, he'd been in such a rush, he didn't lock the door, but figured if anyone was dumb enough to break in, they didn't want to live long anyway. He carried Jinx into the bathroom and kissed her cheek. "I'm gonna set you down now, but I'm not going anywhere. I'm just gonna clean you up, okay? Make sure you're all right." Slowly, gently, he settled her into the bathtub, not actually letting go of her until she was ready, before turning to the medicine cabinet for gauze and antiseptic.
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Because of these events, there was significant impairment in social areas of functioning, and in dealing with her own mind, persistent reexperience, nightmares, flashbacks. Constant symptoms of increased arousal, hypervigilance, paranoia, the inability to detour her thoughts away from the issues in her life, resulting in bouts of uncontrollable anger and fear. In a normal individual, the mental breakdowns would be harsh, detrimental to ones own wellbeing. But with Jinx's abilities, with how easily they were activated by emotion, without her control, the results were much more catastrophic. And especially in a city like Reggio Calabria, she was more unstable than an attempted splice of Uranium. Yet Alba was the scientist who took the extra precautions, who knew how to nullify the explosion and was brave enough to try.
The journey home was a long one, but it passed very quickly in Jinx's mind only because she was not entirely conscious for the majority of it. In his lap, she drifted in and out, every so often awakening with a slight jerk. All logical thought processes begged her to stay away in case she had a concussion, which was high possible. It was the easy thing to just pass out and forget, to never wake up again until her body wasted away or the lesions took over her brain. But every time she caught sound of Alba's heartbeat, her head nuzzled into his chest, she knew there was reason to continue fighting in this world. There were people who still needed her.
Luckily, she was small. With a mix of Alba's strength and her dead weight being a grand total of 90 pounds soaking wet, she knew she did not hinder him too much. Talking was beyond her for the time being in her half conscious state, but as they drove, she had mumbled to him not to leave her every time she shook herself awake. As she was being moved next, she drifted and came back startled as she was suddenly in a familiar bathroom. The kiss on her cheek reassured her to listen to him, but it took much of her willpower to pull her arms away from him. With him away from her, she suddenly felt cold and brought her knees to her chest. But taking in deep breaths, trying to regain sanity as best as she could, she let her body go a bit loose. "I'll be fine... I'm just a bit scratched up. Some Ibuprofen and I'll be fine." The first sane thing she said, her voice low and hoarse as she tilted her head back against the tiled wall, closing her eyes. "Most of the blood is just from my nose..." her ears and her eyes. But that was a little too disturbing to mention. There was a nice gash on her arms, bloody scrapes on her legs, and small bruises decorating the skin seen through her torn clothing, but she was numb to external pain.
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He shifted next to the tub, on his own knees, and turned on the water, letting it get lukewarm. Not too hot, but not ice-cold, either. Once it was the right temperature, he held a washcloth underneath the stream, then leaned up to Jinx's face, gently cleaning away the blood from her cheeks and neck, and a little into her hair where it had drained. He dabbed around her eyes, careful to not actually get in them as he cleaned her up. He then gave her another reassuring smile and rinsed out the cloth, before taking her arm in his hands and moving around the cut. It wasn't as deep as it looked, but it had cut a lot of blood vessels, which still made it look nasty. He gently washed the blood away, then dabbed at the wound, stimulating circulation enough to help get any debris out of the gash.
"Jesus, Jinx. You did a number on yourself." He tried to keep the conversation light, keeping her in the now by talking to her. "I thought you always made sure to have protection." He offered a joking smile this time, hoping to lift her spirits even a fraction. He moved to rinse the cloth out again, then moved it across her legs, washing out the grit, dirt, and blood. "At least most of this is superficial. You feel anything in pain?" He touched her chest and stomach where he saw the worst bruising, applying gentle pressure to make sure everything was intact. "Bones broken, muscles torn, anything?" He set the cloth aside, then turned to grab the bottle of antiseptic, a gauze pad in his opposite hand. Opening the lid, he pressed the pad against the top of the bottle, inverting it briefly to get some on the pad before dabbing it across the large wound on her arm. "This might sting a little." Patting it over the cut, he used a second gauze pad to apply more before moving to the scrapes.
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When she felt Alba near again, she moved her arms away to reach out to him, but he had other ideas. Trembling, she drew her knees back up as he grabbed the bottom of her dress, but slowly she relaxed enough to let him remove it from her. Her arms wrapped around her knees as she buried her face in them, her shoulders shaking with the sobs that came again all too suddenly. Although she shrank back when he tried to remove her boots, she finally gave in to whatever he did next until she was undressed and left chilled in the bottom of the tub. When he came back to her, she looked up and him, the tears flowing a steady, hot stream down her cheeks. They were no longer bloody. Instinctively, she followed the warmth of the washcloth and he ran it over her face, pressing her cheek into his hand, her eyes big, sorrowful and bloodshot.
When he took her arm, she began to feel the need to back away from him once more, but she was already shrank back to the far corner of the tub as tightly as she could. Shutting her eyes tightly, she turned her head away from him and felt more sobs choke in her throat. As he dabbed at the gash, she whined, not from the pain but from something much, much different. When he spoke to her, she tried to relax, reminding herself over and over again that it was just Alba, her Alba, her brother, her best friend, someone she was completely safe with. Yet when he offered out his joke, she felt it to be more of a jab to her. "I-I can't... I can't protect myself... f-f-from my... from myself..."
As he moved across her legs, she tried her best to uncurl herself, but her muscles wanted to stay tight, keep every body part as close to her as possible. When he asked her about the pain, she looked away again, the most prominent one being inside of her head. But as he touched her stomach, she winced, still not completely healed from her last endeavor fighting Sebastian. There had been some tissue damage along her ribs and a fracture from being beaten in the stomach with a lamppost, and most of it was healed with little to no pain until today. It was easily ignored, though. All the physical pain was easily ignorable, having built up a tolerance from surgeries with no anesthetic. She was strong enough to not be bothered by--
"Fuck..." she whimpered as he dabbed the antiseptic over the gash on her arm. Even the smaller scrapes stun and she shied away from him, the tears starting back into sobs just as they had began to calm. And now she began to cough, dehydrated from all of this, the screaming, the sobs that clotted in her throat. And finally she realized something, opened her eyes just enough to see his blurred figure through her burning tears. If she was injured... then he... "Al... Alba... are you hurt? Are you o-okay?"
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He knelt down next to the tub, reaching to stroke Jinx's shoulders. "Hang on..." he reached down, touching the clasps on her back. "I'm not trying anything, don't worry." He kissed her cheek again as he unhooked her bra, sliding it gently off her shoulders and down her arms. Once it was free, he set it aside, away from the trashed clothes she was previously wearing. Then, his hands touched her sides, just under her arms, and stroked down, until they hooked in the elastic of her waistband. "Lift for a second?" When he had clearance, he pulled the panties down, carefully avoiding the still open scrapes on her legs. Once they were free, they joined the separate pile with the bra, and Alba gave an assuring smile. He then turned the heat of the water up, just enough to be comfortably warm, and dropped the stopper.
"It's not much... I mean, I don't know if it will help... but I dunno, it can't hurt, right?" As the water began to fill the tub, rising around Jinx's nude, huddled form, Alba unzipped the leather top he was wearing, shedding it for a plain tanktop underneath. He dipped his hand in the water surrounding Jinx, making sure the temperature was all right, and cupped some of it, bringing it up and dripping it over her legs, letting the water ease the pain, either from the wounds or the antiseptic. He then reached over and touched Jinx's shoulders again, stroking them gently. "It's not too hot, is it?" He smiled, shifting into a more comfortable position next to the tub. "I mean, if it is, tell me now... unless it's too cold or something."
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Her muscles jumped with her mistake, especially when she saw Alba's hand come toward her. But instead of trying to make sure that mistake was never made again, he simply touched her shoulder. Feeling the warm touch, loving, she moved into his hand, the tears rolling softer over her cheeks. It was comfortable when his hand moved over her spine, yet it was not the same situation when she felt his hand on the clasp of her bra. Looking away from him, she crossed her arms over her chest, tightly grabbing to her opposite shoulders and drawing her knees up as if to reinforce that. Though when he kissed her cheek, he reassured her of something she continued to let slip. It did not make her feel better that he was not trying anything with her, but every time he kissed her face, each time he spoke, he continued to remind her that he was Alba, he was her brother, and she was safe.
Without another protest, she let him removed her bra. Though she jumped just a bit when he stroked down her body, she let him, helped him remove the rest of her clothing. And there, nude in the bathtub, curling back into her tight ball, cold against the offwhite porcelain around her, she was not the deadly assassin. She was not a weapon, not someone with confidence, not a young woman who would challenge anything and fight it to the death just to prove a point. She was the nameless child, regressing to her youth to escape the decisions she had to make in her adult life, to try and hide from the pain and only finding a deeper hurt, only coming to see fear. When she felt the water begin to rise around her, an unexpected heat she put her arms back over her head and buried herself in her knees as if protecting herself from the entire room exploding around her. And there she stayed with no reaction to his touch, to his questions, to any outside influences, blocking it all out as she tightened her grip to her skull that could very well break apart at any instant.
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Her concept of time was horribly askew. Every moment in the courtyard felt like an eternity, and the car ride home had taken a mere five minutes to her. So she did not know now whether she was curled into an unreceptive ball for a matter of minutes or nearly an hour. Yet when she finally began to pull away from herself, uncurl from her shell shocked state, let her skull stay together on its own and opened her eyes... Alba was still there. That was when she began to rationalize. Timidly, she reached out a hand toward him, using small whines as an easier form of communication than Italian, and begged to hold his hand. When she could finally grasp it, she pulled it to her face and cupped her cheek in his palm, the size difference very relative. "You... you're not leaving me..." she more observed than anything else.
Now as she looked at him, she was still frightened, still half crying, but her big eyes were no longer as feral as they were. She could focus on his face now, lock onto his eyes. "You're going to stay with me... and Soiree doesn't have a choice." She chocked on a mixture of a sob and slight laughter, which just ended in her coughing. And as the couch faded, she began to cry again, closing her eyes, holding his hand tightly to her chest. "But Papa... Papa's gonna hate me... I did something stupid and he's gonna hate me. And then Shunsui... then ShuShu's gonna hate me... because he'd pick Papa over me... and they're not gonna let me come home... and they're not gonna love me... they're not gonna... they're gonna leave... I love them and they'll leave me because I did a bad thing..." Harshly, she bit her bottom lip, trying her best to contain anything that may have caused problems.
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"Nope, not leaving you, kid. Not now, not ever." He brushed his thumb over her cheekbone gently, pressing his hand up against her cheek warmly. He almost laughed with her next words. "No choice whatsoever. Not that he'd have a problem with it. You mean almost as much to him as you mean to me, even if he can be a dick about it." His smile pulled back almost imperceptibly as she continued, his hand moving to her chest as she began lamenting, began blaming herself for losing people that haven't been lost yet. He let her get it out, let her condemn her circumstances a little more before his other hand came up, placing a finger against her bitten lip.
"That's enough of that crap," he smiled again. "Not everyone is those fucks that hurt you, and not everyone is Gin." He all but spat the name. He had never liked Gin, not even for a moment. The man reeked of lies and sadism, and anyone who hurt his big sister deserved a painful, long death in his eyes. "You're only human, Jinx, and humans make mistakes. The best of us knows that... understand and accept it. And from what you've said, those are two of the best of us." He leaned closer to her, his forehead coming to rest against hers. "Yeah, they might be upset... but if they're even half of what you said they are, they'll get over it. They'll get over it, and worry about you, and want to help you." He kissed the end of her nose. "They love you too... and I don't think they'll leave you, any more than I'd leave you. You're special to them now."
He pulled away for only a moment to turn the water off, then came back to her, never actually leaving her grasp. "You have people now, Jinx; people who love you and care for you and only want to see you smile. It took a long time, sure, but you've got them now, and they're not going anywhere. Me, Soiree, Jushiro, Shunsui... I'm sure there's more, too. None of us will let you go." He cupped her cheek in his hand once more. "Ever."
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When he almost seemed to scold her, she could not bring herself to look at him. The thing about Alba when he did not have his sunglasses on (which was a rare phenomenon,) was that she could see his every emotion in his deep, emerald eyes. Right now, she did not want to see him angry with her. Things became much more difficult to block out when he put his forehead against hers. Opening her eyes, she found herself barely over a centimeter away from his gaze... and he was not angry. He even kissed the tip of her nose, and when something like that occurred, she knew he had to be telling the truth. Regaining her sanity bit by bit, she believed the words that he was saying. And finally, she broke at the root of the problem. "I always thought I was special to Gin, but he lied to me... he used me. I... I thought I loved him, I did love him, and he threw me away when he found something better to play with..." Nothing less than pathetic, she took to hugging his entire arm, sobbing against his tattoo.
Her voice became squeaky again in her hoarseness, but now she could formulate sentences and actually finish them. Her mind was coming back to her. "He left me! I tracked him down and he went back to fucking Japan with his goddamn fucking boyfriend and he's forgotten about me! He never loved me... he lied! He told me I was special and he was just lying so I would do his dirty work, so I would follow his every order... and I could have killed him... I could have snapped his neck but I was too afraid... I was too fucking afraid of him! I trusted his every word. I loved him without question. And every time I needed him, every time I couldn't handle what I was doing, every time I came to him for just a bit of comfort, he was disgusted with me! But every time... every time I did something good, he would smile. He would tell me I was special, he would tell me I was worth more than how others treated me and I fell for it, that sonuvabitch! He was leading me on... he didn't care what happened to me as long as it benefited him!" She was more telling this to herself than anything, for these were things Alba already knew, things he resented, things he had tried to tell Jinx over and over again and she had only yelled at him to shut up each time. She had been blinded by the need for acceptance, completely jaded, and now she felt guilty, actual real guilt, for shoving Alba aside on this matter.
Shaking, she let go of Alba and put her head in her freshly bloodied arms, letting them rest on the edge of the tub, crying until no more tears would come and she was just making noise. The water in the tub rolled around her body in small, erratic waves covered in signatures of pink. Her abilities, which decimated the courtyard of the Di Luca compound, could now barely splash her sides. That was not a bad thing. And finally, terribly dehydrated, her voice so shot that she could barely speak, she lifted up her head and asked with all the sanity Jinx had left in her, "Can you get me something... to blow my nose on, fratello?" And clenching her fists, closing her stinging eyes, she told him, "I'm so sorry."
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Watching her get this way was almost enough to break his resolve, to fly out to Japan himself just to find the man and give him what he'd earned. But as she left go of his arm, burying her face in her own, he shook his head at himself. He couldn't go anywhere... and he wouldn't want to. His place was here, with those closest to him, giving them the strength behind them to face their own demons readily. He leaned forward, kissing Jinx's cheek as she asked her question. "Of course, schwester, of course." He stood, turning carefully this time so as not to aggravate his ribs, to get the tissue box on the counter. "And please don't apologize to me. I'm just doing what brothers do for their sisters." He chuckled as he returned to the tub with the box in his hand. "Well, at least what they do here. I'm sure, somewhere else, I'd probably be consoling you over a bad break-up or something superficial like that."
Resettling himself, he leaned back, his head gently resting against the same tile wall as hers, and titled towards her. His arm looped behind her back, settling over her shoulder, as his other hand touched her arm softly, reassuringly. He continued to smile that same Alba smile, slight but reassuring, and pulled her as close as the tub would allow, touching her head with his own. "Just... thank you for not being dead, Jinx. Thank you for having the strength to keep going. If anything happened to you... I don't know. I'm not ready to deal with that." His eyes moved to her. "Believe it or not, you keep me sane around here. You and Soiree. If it weren't for you guys, I'd probably be dead in a gutter, or worse, dead from work stress. You remind me of what I have to live for."
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"God, I wish I was an American," she told him, leaning into his arm as it wrapped around her back. "I have all these fucking stupid little fantasies... they're so fucking stupid... like that I was an American teenager, who only worried about stupid, trivial things. That I actually went to school. That I had parents and they were too strict. That I wasn't a skinny little punk. Maybe that I was lazy, maybe even overweight, and I wore wool sweaters and had a crush on a football player." When she laughed, she felt herself choking on a few more sobs and had to grab another tissue, making a neat pile of used ones on the floor by the tub. "But instead I'm... I'm this... I'm a scrawny piece of killing machine who's dating a retired cop and worried about whether or not I'm going to be shot down every time I walk outside."
Talking helped, it really did even though her voice was incredibly hoarse, even though it hurt her throat. Forming complete sentences, focusing on her Italian instead of the pain that was now seeping from her nerves. Now that she could feel again, she did not know what was worse, her headache or that damn gash. "Hey," she began softly, nuzzling her head to his, "it's not me you should be thanking. I could be saying the exact same words to you. I can't count how many times you and Soiree have covered my ass. I can't trust myself, so I'm glad I have to the two of you. Now, if we were all Americans, and you were the boys from down the street, I'd probably call you my best friends but not act that way around the popular kids and we'd have little feel good moments every so often, but all and I'll you'd be the token nerds." Jinx watched too much TV Land. "And we'd get into wacky situations and I might even be a blond."
With a morbid sort of chuckle, she pulled away from Alba and slipped down into the tub, the water having an interesting tint from blood and dirt. Closing her eyes, she sank down to the bottom of the tub, letting it engulf her head, wash the blood out of her ears, her nose, the tears off her face. When she emerged, taking a slow breath, her hair laid flat and slick against her head, dripping the hot water. Just for comfort this time, she drew her knees loosely to her chest and rested her cheek against them, looking toward Alba. Weakly, her wet hand reached out and took his, needing that contact. "But... I really am sorry... I never wanted you to see that. I... I never intended you to find out that way. But... you deserve to know. You deserve to be told this. This shouldn't be a secret to you... but, but I'd like Soiree not to know. Soiree wouldn't understand."
She squeezed his hand, looking at him with her big eyes, giving the most sorrowful smile that had ever cross her face. "I wasn't meant to be anything more than an experiment. They knew they were going to eventually end up terminating me since I wasn't compatible with the experiment. So they did a lot of shit to me... stuff that people... stuff that people aren't supposed to live through. Alba," she said his name softly, a comforting attempt for both him and herself, "I have lesions on my brain. I... I haven't seen them on a CAT scan in a few years, but... I've been told I may not even live to be thirty. ...I'm sorry."
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When she came back up and grasped his hand, his eyes met hers again, and he listened to her slight request. He nodded in response, wondering why she thought Soiree wouldn't understand. Granted, he wasn't quite as close to Jinx as he was, but they were still close. What could be so secret? Was he supposed to not know she was prone to having explosions of power like that? Silently, he listened, waiting to hear an answer... but not the one he got.
"Lesions?" His eyes were wider now, in shock and surprise, and perhaps just a little bit of fearful sadness to boot. She couldn't... couldn't... "Are you... oh, Jinx..." It was a little too much. Dealing with her having a breakdown? Not a problem. Cleaning the blood and grime from her wounds? Piece of cake. Talking her back into a semblance of sanity? Easy. Finding out she was on a ticking mortality clock? ...not so much. Reflexively, he squeezed back, holding her hand to his cheek. Those green oceans looked strangely calm, the prelude to a storm that would probably never make it past his own mind. Jinx was his big sister. She could be hurt, she could be broken, but she could never be killed! She was invincible! Immortal! There was no way the girl who kept the nightmares away, who held him and soothed his injuries, who was always there for him... No way... None.
"They... can anything be done about them? I mean, we could get you some help, right? Some real medical help, not a hired Family medic or something, I mean specialists, a clinic, something..." He knew he was just grasping at straws, and she probably knew, too. He looked away from her eyes for the first time since he came to get her, for once honestly not wanting to face the truth. "Or... you know, outside of Italy, there's all sorts of places that are still advancing medicine. Maybe we could find someplace that could help. I don't mean cure it, that's a long shot... but maybe some place to ease it, give you some extra years..." His voice was calm, collected as always... which made it more obvious it was covering up something. Alba wasn't a creature of extreme emotion, but he was only human, prone to the same stimuli as any person. When the right buttons were pushed, even he couldn't be as impassive as he'd normally portray.
Quietly, he kissed her hand, finally looking at her again. This time, he wasn't able to mask his tears as easily as before, his eyes shining with fresh moisture. He took a deep breath, trying to calm himself down, and offered his smile again, sad as it may have been at that moment. "So... I guess the possibility of getting cut down when you step outside isn't so scary after all, is it?"
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Calmly, she let him rant, only moving to lift her head from her knees when he looked away from her. Softly, she cupped his cheek in her hand and caressed along the frame of his face with her thumb. No matter how hard she tried, they would not stop shaking. All of Alba's options, all the things he tried to think of to help his big sister... they were not going to work. The lesions were a painfully slow cancer embedded deep within her brain tissue, and not surgery, not the special AMC doctors or Jushirou's voodoo tea were going to help anything. And using her abilities only sped things upon, only destroyed her further. That was something she would keep from him, though. She wanted him to continue looking at her abilities like they were fun, like they made things more interesting, not that they killed her faster.
When he kissed her hand, she leaned more toward the edge of the bathtub and caught his eyes as he stared back. Tears... when she had been crying for hours now, she felt as if it were going to start all over again seeing that moisture in his beautiful green eyes. "No... I guess it's not. I've found that ultimatums ease you after you've gotten past the initial shock. I also find them very motivational." With a heavy sigh, she let her legs stretch out in front of her and unstopped the drain with her foot. The water was growing colder, anyway. And slowly, she stood, shaking, barely able to hold herself up. As she attempted to stop her head from spinning, pounding, she leaned against the tile wall and brushed the tips of her fingers against his face.
"I've never left Reggio Calabria and that's not going to change anytime soon. I've made my place in this city and I'm not going to let you give up your dreams to help a lost cause. Alba, someday you're going to save the world and I'm not getting in the way of that... I'm helping. I... I want to make good. I'm bad luck... but I want to help carry on the dream that Fate put in your head. I... I don't want to die... but everyone has to eventually. I just know my time is a bit more limited than anyone else... so I'm not going to waste it on stupid shit until someone comes along and kills me before the lesions do." She ignored it, blamed it on her previous state, but the tears once again poured from her stinging eyes and streaked her cheeks. "Now come on, Diavolo dell'Alba. Why don't we get me a towel before I freeze and you help me bandage up this arm, eh?"
Her knees giving up on her, she came as gracefully as she could in the half fall to sit on the edge of the tub, her feet in the draining water. "I'm not looking for extra years," she said so softly that her voice did not even echo in the small bathroom. "I'm looking to make the best of the years I have left." Today was a day of realization, a day where new things were discovered and older ones were dug up. One of the new things Jinx came to know was the exact reason why Alba always wore his sunglasses. It was because his eyes were too heartbreaking with sad, too impactful when serious, too endearing when happy... and she felt herself falling in love with another man every time she looked deeply into his emerald irises.
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