Post by Wishes on Jan 5, 2017 20:37:24 GMT -5
The gut feeling of where to go drove Eve deep into the Rukongai. Far from most buildings, her presence cloaked only by her mastery over the spiritual world. Maybe some Shinigami monitoring the area might have seen an odd blip on the radar for a brief moment, but they surely chalked it up to them just being tired and overworked. Maybe some supernatural force compelled them to not worry about it to ensure she was not followed to those iron gates.
It was the first time she'd gone looking for this place, but far from the first time she'd considered it. With every attempt to hold up her part of the deal, every frustrating failure to simply find the people she sought (never mind fixing the mess she'd made of their lives)--she'd thought about it. About coming here, walking slowly between the trees until the high brick walls of Wishes’ own little secret garden came into view.
But every time she'd so much as imagined finding her way back (maybe begging his forgiveness or asking for some other herculean task), the daydream fell apart: no matter how she tried, she couldn't remember how to find her way back. She was sure that simply walking into the woods wouldn't help. She had that feeling you get when you know something is wrong from the start and no matter what you do it'll all go to shit.
But today she'd woken up feeling like if she just walked in a certain direction, the garden might just pop out at her. Eve had ignored it at first but as the day went on it nagged and nagged and finally she decided to just follow her intuition.
She was good at that.
And so she was only a little surprised when, in fact, the brick walls and the iron gate did emerge unassumingly from behind a tree or two, barely an hour into her walk.
“Welcome back,” the voice in her head called to her. She tried to shut it out but as usual, couldn't quite manage to. She wanted to ask if this was all his doing, but she knew saying anything of the sort--or even appearing hesitant--would just subject her to more of his patronizing words. Having Wishes in her head, she'd found, was even worse than the brochures had made it sound.
Unlike before, she didn’t hesitate when presented with the option to push open the gate open. It swung free, creaking quietly, to reveal the garden she had once struggled to ever remember. Now, faced with all the flowers, the memories rushed back in a vivid, painful flashback. Her soul ached being so close to what it wanted.
“Wishes?” She called out into the empty area with a small voice.
The softest of winds touched her bare shoulders, as if nature itself responded in place of the god she asked for. All she could do was wait for him to appear. And appear he did, though after an appropriately dramatic pause. Out from behind a tree, he smiled and dusted his hands off.
“Welcome back,” he said. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
--
Inside the garden it was a beautiful summer day, with a warm midday sun beating down on the two of them. On the three of them. Wishes looked the same as he always did: a walking anachronism, wearing clothes familiar to his long-dead, Victorian life. He didn’t treat that gray vest or the white shirt under it with any particular care. Both were stained with dried imprints of dirt where he’d leaned, or he’d wiped a hand, or god knows what else. Even that wasn't quite as bad as the knees of his slacks.
Even his serene face, framed by long white hair, hadn’t escaped his gardening unscathed. If he had been anyone else, Eve might have told him that--but she knew better. The kind of being that Wishes was didn’t make mistakes like that: everything, including the state the garden was in, was purposefully done.
Even if it was a little hard to tell exactly why there was a smudge of dirt on his nose.
All the familiar hallmarks of the garden were just as Eve remembered: to her right, a set of tombstones; to her left, a garden table and a set of iron mesh chairs; in front of her a large cherry blossom tree with a swing hanging from it. Peeking out from behind that was a koi pond, from which she could hear quiet splashing.
In fact, there was only one thing in the garden that had changed at all. Two things, if you counted the new bushes of Gardenia flowers around the giant tree, but Eve didn’t. She only had eyes for the girl standing at Wishes’ side. She looked every bit as messy as he was, and then some. Her black hair was a tangled mess and her small face was marked here and there from where she’d wiped away her sweat, but even if she’d been completely covered with mud it would have been impossible to blot out the faint scowl on her face and in her eyes.
Still, she didn’t shy away from the white-haired man, even when he placed his hand on her shoulder.
“Here’s what you’re looking for,” he smiled at Eve. “She’s been a very hard worker.”
“Did you come to take her back?”
He had another thing to ask his visitor--the same question he always had--but that could wait another minute exactly.
“Do you even need to ask?” She scoffed.
Considering the last time she had been in the garden, Eve had been a complete disaster, she certainly had come a long way. With an outfit crafted by another god and the confidence that could only come with someone who knew exactly how things were going to go, she wasn’t much of the beggar she had been
With hands behind her back, she strolled through the garden without any sort of hesitation or resistance. Well, aside from the uneasy glance towards the better part of her soul.
“Something tells me that you wouldn’t have let me in if you didn’t want to give her back.”
She scratched at her cheek and looked away, as if feigning boredom in the face of what she could only describe as a god.
“Shall we get to it then? It’s pretty annoying having You 2.0 in my head.” Her words were accented with a few taps against her skull. Her humor made her host laugh: half a second later it was echoed from inside her own head. It made her skin crawl.
“You’re just as casual as ever,” he mused. “Is this the part where I’m supposed to put you through a few hundred years of torture to make sure you end up with some manners?”
An uneasy look stole over Eve’s face, but it was dispelled when Wishes simply shook his head and smiled.
It was the right time, now.
“Usually, when people find this garden it means they’re ready to die.”
“Is that the case for you, Evelynn?”
Samyaza frowned and punched her caretaker in his side, but he pretended not to notice.
Eve’s expression soured in the face of his joking. How could it not get old after a few months of not-him hovering around her consciousness?
“Ohhh, how frightening,” she said in a wavy voice as she waggled her fingers. “You and I both know that’s not why I’m here.”
Again, her eyes fell down to Samyaza before flicking back up to Wishes.
“I’m here to get Samyaza back and get on with my life.”
“Is that so?” Wishes frowned and looked slightly to the side, as if he was contemplating something. “I seem to recall a deal we had… some kind of deal...” he snapped his fingers.
“That’s right! Something about fixing your mistakes.”
“I seem to remember you being fairly passionate about the promise, at the time.”
“Well,” Eve’s tone dipped a bit. “I couldn’t exactly do what you asked. I tried--”
Her words were cut off by him shaking his head slowly, disappointment crossing the otherwise nonchalant features.
“Look, I did everything in my power.” She snapped at him a bit, shoulders tensing. “It’s not like I was sitting on my ass all day doing nothing. I saved Nanami’s life -- I know you saw that! It would have been so much easier to just let her get eaten by her inner hollow.”
His silence was answer enough.
Eve couldn’t help but stomp a foot into the ground in frustration and shove her hands back to her hips. A few exasperated attempts to say something fizzled out in the frustration before she finally found something meaningful to say.
“Look.” She sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. “We both know I’m a changed woman. I would never make another Vaizard. I learned my lesson and you made your point. Isn’t that good enough?”
Through a strained glare, she searched his eyes for some sort of crack in his unreadable expression. For a while, she found nothing. Complete and utter apathy in the face of all of her efforts to undo her wrongs. She would have said something else, made some other plea, but at last she noticed the small smile on his face.
“But you know that,” she finished lamely.
“Of course I do.” Wishes laughed. “Wasn’t I with you every step of the way?”
He sat back on the wooden swing but didn’t push off: he simply rested there like it was natural. Samyaza pulled away from his hand and slowly continued the weeding Eve had interrupted, but she watched the two of them more than she did the ground.
“But,” he finally said, “I'm very careful to deal in exchanges. Nothing comes in or out of this garden for free. And though I'm sympathetic, you didn't hold up your end of the deal.”
“What else do you have to offer?”
“The time of your life for one evening?” The joke rolled naturally off her tongue, even if it was a tad bitter.
Wishes didn’t humor a response.
“I don’t know.” Her good mood was stomped out. “It’s not like you have anything else to take from me. What do you want? Another part of my soul?”
“No, no,” Wishes said as he shook his head. “I took the better half already.”
“Ha ha.” She agreed, but she’d be dead before she let him know that. “My memories?”
“Samyaza showed me a few of the good ones already.” Her inner spirit looked up from the patch of flowers she was working on and rolled her eyes, but didn’t deny it.
Eve’s brow furrowed as she let out a loud huff and crossed her arms.
“Fine, I’ll give you anything you want.”
“Anything?” That seemed to get his interest.
“Anything,” she asserted, her voice gaining some determination.
“I was hoping you’d say that. I do have someone I’ve been watching.” A light began to play in his eyes, a light that made it completely clear he was no longer Human, Shinigami or Vaizard.
He was something strange and empty, in the same sense his Reiatsu felt like nothing at all. It raised the hairs on the back of Eve’s neck.
“He’s a funny kind of fellow, the kind who keeps trying for something even though he knows it’s helpless.”
Eve didn’t bother to guess. She knew Wishes well enough by now to recognize when he was just playing with her.
“He’s a one-track person with no clue how to do anything but keep running blindly forward.”
Again Eve kept her mouth shut. The world was full of people like that, and even if she had met a few--
Wishes tutted. “I’d certainly hope you remember the men you’ve slept with recently.”
She blushed. “Shinpei Minamoto?”
“That’s right.” Grinning, he gently pushed off the ground and drifted on the swing. “Would you mind meeting him again?”
Eve narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “What do you want me to do, kill him?”
“No no, that’s my job.” Samyaza froze and glanced at him, then slowly moved to another, farther patch of flowers and continued weeding.
“I want you to bring him to me, eventually. Right here where you’re standing.”
“But first I want you to do something to him.”
“Do what?” Eve wasn’t sure she liked where this was going. And then she was sure she didn’t like it.
“Exactly what you promised you’d never do again.”
An uneasy pause lingered before she inhaled sharply and rolled her eyes.
“Okay, but for real, what do you want?”
There was a silence where a joke would have fit in very nicely, if Wishes was intending to make one. His smile froze and he simply watched her.
A cloud moved across the sun and the wind began to blow, whistling keenly. Samyaza sprung up and glanced between her captor and Eve, her legs bent as if she was ready to run.
“Did you not believe me?” Wishes asked her mildly.
“Why should I?” She snapped back, but relaxed quick enough. “This isn’t some sort of trap, is it?”
She already knew the answer, so Wishes didn’t bother.
“Okay…” She sighed again. “That’s it? No fine print?”
“No fine print. No secret clauses, and no hidden contracts.” He spread his hands wide as if he was showing her he was hiding absolutely nothing.
But of course, she knew better than to think he was ever being completely honest.
“I want Samyaza back first, just so we’re clear,” she said as she narrowed her eyes at him
Wishes contemplated that, tapping his chin. “How do I know you won’t back out?”
She tapped her head a couple times, as if to remind him that he was already watching her every move.
“Don’t play stupid.”
He laughed at that, and the cloud left the sun. The birds started chirping once more.
It was certainly better than the reverse.
“I’ll trust you. Riding around in your head has been fun, but I think it’ll be a little cramped once you get Samyaza back.”
As she heard her name the spirit turned to Wishes. It was the first real, honest expression she’d worn: a pleading look, half-hopeful.
And he nodded his head.
As if she couldn’t believe it at first, Sam took one step, then another, flicking her eyes back at her captor as if he’d tug on her leash or grab her if she went too far. When he didn’t do anything of the sort, even after she made it past his reach, she ran straight to Eve.
“Don’t look so excited, you rat,” Eve spat down at the little girl with a grin.
“Anything to get away from his puns,” the spirit quipped back and shuddered. “You wouldn’t believe it, but this guy can talk for years. He was telling me about this woman who he--”
Samyaza seemed to catch herself, eyes darting to the side as she gave the ground a thoughtful stare. Eventually, she just shook her head and concluded the rant with a: “Never mind.”
Confused, but too lazy to press the matter, Eve just shrugged down at the girl and allowed herself a smile. She was brimming with happiness at the thought of finally fixing the yawning hole eating her up from inside, at finally becoming a Shinigami. She grasped for her powers, scrabbling at them like a child with a new toy.
For no more than a half of a second, the world went black to Eve. A slow blink could have been the reason why, but when she reflexively reached up to touch her face, she was greeted with the cool sensation of bone.
Empty, though. It didn’t hum with that arrogant, condescending tone she had come to love/hate from Wishes. Instead it felt… Lonely?
The voice in her head had gone, and she couldn't tell if the empty spot it left would be temporary or permanent.
But she was still a Vaizard. She turned to interrogate her host but stopped short when she saw the look on his face.
Wishes simply watched her, his eyes traced something beyond her mask, a face with different contours. She realized it was the first time she'd seen him really, truly sad. The look in his eyes clutched at her heart and squeezed it like she was a million miles deep in the ocean. The look on his face said it all: hopeless, hopeless, hopeless. Eve realized with a terrible clarity that she was looking at a man who wanted only one thing in the world and knew he would never, ever, ever get it.
But when on impulse she tried to feel what he was looking at--a lover? A friend? Someone he’d once known?
All she felt was a horrible, clawing emptiness, and she snatched her mask off her face, her breath short and painful to come by.
“Well, that wasn’t very nice.” Wishes slowed the swing and stood up, making Eve shrink back towards the gate. Sam shifted in front of her, arms spread wide.
But he simply walked to the side and plucked a yellow tulip. He held it to his nose and inhaled, eyes closing as he faced the small graves he’d made so long ago. The trees planted over them were growing well: maybe in the future they’d even poke above the walls of the garden.
At last he opened his eyes and answered Eve’s unspoken question.
“You're still a Vaizard, for the moment. You need some Hollow in you to fulfil your end of the deal, after all.”
“Once you do that, I'll set you how you're supposed to be.”
“A Shinigami?” she tested. After so long having him in her head, she'd learned not to trust anything he said if it was even a little vague.
“A Shinigami,” he confirmed absentmindedly.
For a moment the garden was silent, or at least as quiet as it could be. The birds still chirped, the fish still splashed, and the wind still blew.
“If that's all,” Wishes said at last, “you can go.”
Eve nodded slightly, trying to decipher the meaning behind that brief look into a God’s heart. She felt as if she'd seen something intensely personal and was both curious and embarrassed. She wanted to ask, but she knew better than that.
“Alright,” she agreed. He turned to face her, flower in his hand, and she almost expected him to be crying--but instead his face was as carefully measured as ever. Mercurial to a fault: his only flaw, so large it dominated the rest of him.
“Goodbye,” Wishes waved. To Eve’s surprise, Sam waved back. “You were a very good helper,” he finished, and for a moment there was a small smile on the spirit’s face.
Then it was gone.
Eve walked towards the garden’s gate. Before she reached it she turned and faced Wishes once more, pushing thoughts of Sam and her own situation from her mind for just a moment.
“You want me to bring Shinpei here, and you’ll tell me when?”
“That’s right.” The white-haired man nodded, giving her a sidelong glance, as if he was unwilling to tear his attention away from the flower he held and the garden he tended.
She hesitated. “And that means he’ll die, right?”
“That’s right.” A faint grin played over his face. “Do you not want him to?”
“I don’t want anyone to die,” she answered vaguely.
Sam raised an eyebrow, but Eve ignored it. Now that she had some steam she wasn't going to give up. “He's a stupid playboy but he's not a bad guy.”
Wishes tsked good-naturedly. “I thought you'd know better than to fall for a man like that, with only one thing on his mind.”
Eve felt her face burning. “Shut up, it's not like that.”
“I know,” he answered.
“There’s no way I can convince you to change your mind?”
“Don’t get your hopes up. You can’t save him,” he told her in a gentle voice.
Eve bit her lip, not wanting to accept defeat, and Wishes considered her briefly.
“You can’t, but someone else can.”
“Who?” Eve seized on it and demanded the answer without thinking just who she was talking to, but the solitary gardener didn’t seem to mind.
“He won’t do it, though. He can’t.”
“Who?!”
“This is all he understands,” Wishes murmured, and looked idly at the yellow tulip in his hands. “And that’s not enough.”
Eve opened her mouth to say something--demand he be less cryptic, maybe--but she ended up stepping back instead. The world outside the garden yanked at her, or maybe the garden pushed.
The last sight of the place she saw was Wishes dropping the flower and stooping, beginning to prune a rose bush.
It was the first time she'd gone looking for this place, but far from the first time she'd considered it. With every attempt to hold up her part of the deal, every frustrating failure to simply find the people she sought (never mind fixing the mess she'd made of their lives)--she'd thought about it. About coming here, walking slowly between the trees until the high brick walls of Wishes’ own little secret garden came into view.
But every time she'd so much as imagined finding her way back (maybe begging his forgiveness or asking for some other herculean task), the daydream fell apart: no matter how she tried, she couldn't remember how to find her way back. She was sure that simply walking into the woods wouldn't help. She had that feeling you get when you know something is wrong from the start and no matter what you do it'll all go to shit.
But today she'd woken up feeling like if she just walked in a certain direction, the garden might just pop out at her. Eve had ignored it at first but as the day went on it nagged and nagged and finally she decided to just follow her intuition.
She was good at that.
And so she was only a little surprised when, in fact, the brick walls and the iron gate did emerge unassumingly from behind a tree or two, barely an hour into her walk.
“Welcome back,” the voice in her head called to her. She tried to shut it out but as usual, couldn't quite manage to. She wanted to ask if this was all his doing, but she knew saying anything of the sort--or even appearing hesitant--would just subject her to more of his patronizing words. Having Wishes in her head, she'd found, was even worse than the brochures had made it sound.
Unlike before, she didn’t hesitate when presented with the option to push open the gate open. It swung free, creaking quietly, to reveal the garden she had once struggled to ever remember. Now, faced with all the flowers, the memories rushed back in a vivid, painful flashback. Her soul ached being so close to what it wanted.
“Wishes?” She called out into the empty area with a small voice.
The softest of winds touched her bare shoulders, as if nature itself responded in place of the god she asked for. All she could do was wait for him to appear. And appear he did, though after an appropriately dramatic pause. Out from behind a tree, he smiled and dusted his hands off.
“Welcome back,” he said. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
--
Inside the garden it was a beautiful summer day, with a warm midday sun beating down on the two of them. On the three of them. Wishes looked the same as he always did: a walking anachronism, wearing clothes familiar to his long-dead, Victorian life. He didn’t treat that gray vest or the white shirt under it with any particular care. Both were stained with dried imprints of dirt where he’d leaned, or he’d wiped a hand, or god knows what else. Even that wasn't quite as bad as the knees of his slacks.
Even his serene face, framed by long white hair, hadn’t escaped his gardening unscathed. If he had been anyone else, Eve might have told him that--but she knew better. The kind of being that Wishes was didn’t make mistakes like that: everything, including the state the garden was in, was purposefully done.
Even if it was a little hard to tell exactly why there was a smudge of dirt on his nose.
All the familiar hallmarks of the garden were just as Eve remembered: to her right, a set of tombstones; to her left, a garden table and a set of iron mesh chairs; in front of her a large cherry blossom tree with a swing hanging from it. Peeking out from behind that was a koi pond, from which she could hear quiet splashing.
In fact, there was only one thing in the garden that had changed at all. Two things, if you counted the new bushes of Gardenia flowers around the giant tree, but Eve didn’t. She only had eyes for the girl standing at Wishes’ side. She looked every bit as messy as he was, and then some. Her black hair was a tangled mess and her small face was marked here and there from where she’d wiped away her sweat, but even if she’d been completely covered with mud it would have been impossible to blot out the faint scowl on her face and in her eyes.
Still, she didn’t shy away from the white-haired man, even when he placed his hand on her shoulder.
“Here’s what you’re looking for,” he smiled at Eve. “She’s been a very hard worker.”
“Did you come to take her back?”
He had another thing to ask his visitor--the same question he always had--but that could wait another minute exactly.
“Do you even need to ask?” She scoffed.
Considering the last time she had been in the garden, Eve had been a complete disaster, she certainly had come a long way. With an outfit crafted by another god and the confidence that could only come with someone who knew exactly how things were going to go, she wasn’t much of the beggar she had been
With hands behind her back, she strolled through the garden without any sort of hesitation or resistance. Well, aside from the uneasy glance towards the better part of her soul.
“Something tells me that you wouldn’t have let me in if you didn’t want to give her back.”
She scratched at her cheek and looked away, as if feigning boredom in the face of what she could only describe as a god.
“Shall we get to it then? It’s pretty annoying having You 2.0 in my head.” Her words were accented with a few taps against her skull. Her humor made her host laugh: half a second later it was echoed from inside her own head. It made her skin crawl.
“You’re just as casual as ever,” he mused. “Is this the part where I’m supposed to put you through a few hundred years of torture to make sure you end up with some manners?”
An uneasy look stole over Eve’s face, but it was dispelled when Wishes simply shook his head and smiled.
It was the right time, now.
“Usually, when people find this garden it means they’re ready to die.”
“Is that the case for you, Evelynn?”
Samyaza frowned and punched her caretaker in his side, but he pretended not to notice.
Eve’s expression soured in the face of his joking. How could it not get old after a few months of not-him hovering around her consciousness?
“Ohhh, how frightening,” she said in a wavy voice as she waggled her fingers. “You and I both know that’s not why I’m here.”
Again, her eyes fell down to Samyaza before flicking back up to Wishes.
“I’m here to get Samyaza back and get on with my life.”
“Is that so?” Wishes frowned and looked slightly to the side, as if he was contemplating something. “I seem to recall a deal we had… some kind of deal...” he snapped his fingers.
“That’s right! Something about fixing your mistakes.”
“I seem to remember you being fairly passionate about the promise, at the time.”
“Well,” Eve’s tone dipped a bit. “I couldn’t exactly do what you asked. I tried--”
Her words were cut off by him shaking his head slowly, disappointment crossing the otherwise nonchalant features.
“Look, I did everything in my power.” She snapped at him a bit, shoulders tensing. “It’s not like I was sitting on my ass all day doing nothing. I saved Nanami’s life -- I know you saw that! It would have been so much easier to just let her get eaten by her inner hollow.”
His silence was answer enough.
Eve couldn’t help but stomp a foot into the ground in frustration and shove her hands back to her hips. A few exasperated attempts to say something fizzled out in the frustration before she finally found something meaningful to say.
“Look.” She sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. “We both know I’m a changed woman. I would never make another Vaizard. I learned my lesson and you made your point. Isn’t that good enough?”
Through a strained glare, she searched his eyes for some sort of crack in his unreadable expression. For a while, she found nothing. Complete and utter apathy in the face of all of her efforts to undo her wrongs. She would have said something else, made some other plea, but at last she noticed the small smile on his face.
“But you know that,” she finished lamely.
“Of course I do.” Wishes laughed. “Wasn’t I with you every step of the way?”
He sat back on the wooden swing but didn’t push off: he simply rested there like it was natural. Samyaza pulled away from his hand and slowly continued the weeding Eve had interrupted, but she watched the two of them more than she did the ground.
“But,” he finally said, “I'm very careful to deal in exchanges. Nothing comes in or out of this garden for free. And though I'm sympathetic, you didn't hold up your end of the deal.”
“What else do you have to offer?”
“The time of your life for one evening?” The joke rolled naturally off her tongue, even if it was a tad bitter.
Wishes didn’t humor a response.
“I don’t know.” Her good mood was stomped out. “It’s not like you have anything else to take from me. What do you want? Another part of my soul?”
“No, no,” Wishes said as he shook his head. “I took the better half already.”
“Ha ha.” She agreed, but she’d be dead before she let him know that. “My memories?”
“Samyaza showed me a few of the good ones already.” Her inner spirit looked up from the patch of flowers she was working on and rolled her eyes, but didn’t deny it.
Eve’s brow furrowed as she let out a loud huff and crossed her arms.
“Fine, I’ll give you anything you want.”
“Anything?” That seemed to get his interest.
“Anything,” she asserted, her voice gaining some determination.
“I was hoping you’d say that. I do have someone I’ve been watching.” A light began to play in his eyes, a light that made it completely clear he was no longer Human, Shinigami or Vaizard.
He was something strange and empty, in the same sense his Reiatsu felt like nothing at all. It raised the hairs on the back of Eve’s neck.
“He’s a funny kind of fellow, the kind who keeps trying for something even though he knows it’s helpless.”
Eve didn’t bother to guess. She knew Wishes well enough by now to recognize when he was just playing with her.
“He’s a one-track person with no clue how to do anything but keep running blindly forward.”
Again Eve kept her mouth shut. The world was full of people like that, and even if she had met a few--
Wishes tutted. “I’d certainly hope you remember the men you’ve slept with recently.”
She blushed. “Shinpei Minamoto?”
“That’s right.” Grinning, he gently pushed off the ground and drifted on the swing. “Would you mind meeting him again?”
Eve narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “What do you want me to do, kill him?”
“No no, that’s my job.” Samyaza froze and glanced at him, then slowly moved to another, farther patch of flowers and continued weeding.
“I want you to bring him to me, eventually. Right here where you’re standing.”
“But first I want you to do something to him.”
“Do what?” Eve wasn’t sure she liked where this was going. And then she was sure she didn’t like it.
“Exactly what you promised you’d never do again.”
An uneasy pause lingered before she inhaled sharply and rolled her eyes.
“Okay, but for real, what do you want?”
There was a silence where a joke would have fit in very nicely, if Wishes was intending to make one. His smile froze and he simply watched her.
A cloud moved across the sun and the wind began to blow, whistling keenly. Samyaza sprung up and glanced between her captor and Eve, her legs bent as if she was ready to run.
“Did you not believe me?” Wishes asked her mildly.
“Why should I?” She snapped back, but relaxed quick enough. “This isn’t some sort of trap, is it?”
She already knew the answer, so Wishes didn’t bother.
“Okay…” She sighed again. “That’s it? No fine print?”
“No fine print. No secret clauses, and no hidden contracts.” He spread his hands wide as if he was showing her he was hiding absolutely nothing.
But of course, she knew better than to think he was ever being completely honest.
“I want Samyaza back first, just so we’re clear,” she said as she narrowed her eyes at him
Wishes contemplated that, tapping his chin. “How do I know you won’t back out?”
She tapped her head a couple times, as if to remind him that he was already watching her every move.
“Don’t play stupid.”
He laughed at that, and the cloud left the sun. The birds started chirping once more.
It was certainly better than the reverse.
“I’ll trust you. Riding around in your head has been fun, but I think it’ll be a little cramped once you get Samyaza back.”
As she heard her name the spirit turned to Wishes. It was the first real, honest expression she’d worn: a pleading look, half-hopeful.
And he nodded his head.
As if she couldn’t believe it at first, Sam took one step, then another, flicking her eyes back at her captor as if he’d tug on her leash or grab her if she went too far. When he didn’t do anything of the sort, even after she made it past his reach, she ran straight to Eve.
“Don’t look so excited, you rat,” Eve spat down at the little girl with a grin.
“Anything to get away from his puns,” the spirit quipped back and shuddered. “You wouldn’t believe it, but this guy can talk for years. He was telling me about this woman who he--”
Samyaza seemed to catch herself, eyes darting to the side as she gave the ground a thoughtful stare. Eventually, she just shook her head and concluded the rant with a: “Never mind.”
Confused, but too lazy to press the matter, Eve just shrugged down at the girl and allowed herself a smile. She was brimming with happiness at the thought of finally fixing the yawning hole eating her up from inside, at finally becoming a Shinigami. She grasped for her powers, scrabbling at them like a child with a new toy.
For no more than a half of a second, the world went black to Eve. A slow blink could have been the reason why, but when she reflexively reached up to touch her face, she was greeted with the cool sensation of bone.
Empty, though. It didn’t hum with that arrogant, condescending tone she had come to love/hate from Wishes. Instead it felt… Lonely?
The voice in her head had gone, and she couldn't tell if the empty spot it left would be temporary or permanent.
But she was still a Vaizard. She turned to interrogate her host but stopped short when she saw the look on his face.
Wishes simply watched her, his eyes traced something beyond her mask, a face with different contours. She realized it was the first time she'd seen him really, truly sad. The look in his eyes clutched at her heart and squeezed it like she was a million miles deep in the ocean. The look on his face said it all: hopeless, hopeless, hopeless. Eve realized with a terrible clarity that she was looking at a man who wanted only one thing in the world and knew he would never, ever, ever get it.
But when on impulse she tried to feel what he was looking at--a lover? A friend? Someone he’d once known?
All she felt was a horrible, clawing emptiness, and she snatched her mask off her face, her breath short and painful to come by.
“Well, that wasn’t very nice.” Wishes slowed the swing and stood up, making Eve shrink back towards the gate. Sam shifted in front of her, arms spread wide.
But he simply walked to the side and plucked a yellow tulip. He held it to his nose and inhaled, eyes closing as he faced the small graves he’d made so long ago. The trees planted over them were growing well: maybe in the future they’d even poke above the walls of the garden.
At last he opened his eyes and answered Eve’s unspoken question.
“You're still a Vaizard, for the moment. You need some Hollow in you to fulfil your end of the deal, after all.”
“Once you do that, I'll set you how you're supposed to be.”
“A Shinigami?” she tested. After so long having him in her head, she'd learned not to trust anything he said if it was even a little vague.
“A Shinigami,” he confirmed absentmindedly.
For a moment the garden was silent, or at least as quiet as it could be. The birds still chirped, the fish still splashed, and the wind still blew.
“If that's all,” Wishes said at last, “you can go.”
Eve nodded slightly, trying to decipher the meaning behind that brief look into a God’s heart. She felt as if she'd seen something intensely personal and was both curious and embarrassed. She wanted to ask, but she knew better than that.
“Alright,” she agreed. He turned to face her, flower in his hand, and she almost expected him to be crying--but instead his face was as carefully measured as ever. Mercurial to a fault: his only flaw, so large it dominated the rest of him.
“Goodbye,” Wishes waved. To Eve’s surprise, Sam waved back. “You were a very good helper,” he finished, and for a moment there was a small smile on the spirit’s face.
Then it was gone.
Eve walked towards the garden’s gate. Before she reached it she turned and faced Wishes once more, pushing thoughts of Sam and her own situation from her mind for just a moment.
“You want me to bring Shinpei here, and you’ll tell me when?”
“That’s right.” The white-haired man nodded, giving her a sidelong glance, as if he was unwilling to tear his attention away from the flower he held and the garden he tended.
She hesitated. “And that means he’ll die, right?”
“That’s right.” A faint grin played over his face. “Do you not want him to?”
“I don’t want anyone to die,” she answered vaguely.
Sam raised an eyebrow, but Eve ignored it. Now that she had some steam she wasn't going to give up. “He's a stupid playboy but he's not a bad guy.”
Wishes tsked good-naturedly. “I thought you'd know better than to fall for a man like that, with only one thing on his mind.”
Eve felt her face burning. “Shut up, it's not like that.”
“I know,” he answered.
“There’s no way I can convince you to change your mind?”
“Don’t get your hopes up. You can’t save him,” he told her in a gentle voice.
Eve bit her lip, not wanting to accept defeat, and Wishes considered her briefly.
“You can’t, but someone else can.”
“Who?” Eve seized on it and demanded the answer without thinking just who she was talking to, but the solitary gardener didn’t seem to mind.
“He won’t do it, though. He can’t.”
“Who?!”
“This is all he understands,” Wishes murmured, and looked idly at the yellow tulip in his hands. “And that’s not enough.”
Eve opened her mouth to say something--demand he be less cryptic, maybe--but she ended up stepping back instead. The world outside the garden yanked at her, or maybe the garden pushed.
The last sight of the place she saw was Wishes dropping the flower and stooping, beginning to prune a rose bush.