Let's Go Out [Private/Merrick/TBTP]

When Merrick didn’t ask for anything, Machie turned back to Riku. “An order of tamagoyaki please.

The waitress nodded and left them, furisode swishing around her feet.

Merricks’ onslaught of questions earned him a blank stare. Machie’s half-lidded gaze seemed to search the medic’s face for something.

Riku returned briefly to set a pot of tea on the table between them accompanied with two small, porcelain cups.

The dark skinned woman poured the steaming tea into the cups, filling them halfway, looking almost entranced by the hot mist rising from the liquid. She took one of the cups, letting it sit cradled in the palm of her hand.

“There is a distinct chance that I will find nothing,” Machie said softly, focusing on her drink intently. The feline woman watched her palm turn slightly red from the burning warmth of the cup distantly.

“I haven’t seen them since my last life. This is the last place I saw them, that I can remember at least. They might have moved or died since then.”

She felt short of breath all of a sudden, shoulders tensing slightly. Her hand tightened around the tea cup.

Silence followed. Machie took a tiny sip of her tea and tried to concentrate on the bitter aftertaste. Despite her best efforts, her eyes grew suspiciously shiny and wet. Another, larger drink from the cup nearly burned her tongue.

“This shouldn’t take too much time. After this short break, I’ll be able to use shunpo again. We can split up once we’re close and reconvene a few hours after to return home.”

Riku reappeared with a plate of tamagokayi and two pairs of chopsticks.

Machie nodded in thanks and resumed staring at her tea.

“Is everything alright?” the waitress asked, dark eyes sweeping between the two shinigami. One appeared almost melancholy while the other looked bored.

The dark skinned woman forced herself to stay still, resisting the urge to grip the cup until it shattered, porcelain shards cutting into her fingers. Instead, the feline shinigami took a steadying breath and flashed the waitress a smile to reassure her.

“We are well, thank you.”

Riku blinked, seeming a bit confused, cheeks turning pink. “Alright. Enjoy your meal.” She left the shinigami in peace once more.

As soon as she retreated, the smile faded. Machie took another sip of her tea, and let her shoulders relax a fraction.

---

Total: 4546

“You need not worry about our deal,” the feline woman replied almost sharply. “You already said my word was enough, or is that no longer satisfactory?”

The onslaught of questions made the dark skinned woman stiffen.

“I do not remember being human, if that is what you are asking. I was…” a grown crossed her face. “I woke up in Rukongai with fragmented memories. My only guess is that I must have died or been reincarnated somehow. I am uncertain of what occured in the time between my old memories and the present. I fear my family may not recognize me, especially if I have died since I last saw them.”

Rather than look at the critical, invasive gaze of the medic, Machie took a rolled omelette from the plate and bit off the end. It tasted good, but something was off. She couldn't quite place what. Face blank as usual, the woman tried not to think too hard about the unusual amount of irritability and stress she felt. Something about Merrick wasn't quite right, now that she thought about it. He seemed to have less empathy than the average person. Should she have turned to someone else for help? There was no one else at present; Merrick was the closest person she had to an ally or a friend. Somehow, that wasn't a comforting thought. Despite knowing to expect little from him, it still stung to be reminded that he was only here so that he could collect a favor later. When had she begun to care what the medic thought? It was a troubling realization.

Machie took another bite, but the feeling didn't subside. It persisted like an itch.

The faint, purple cat ears atop her head flattened in response to her agitation as her spiritual presence responded to her inner state.

Stifling the urge to abandon Merrick where he sat, the dark skinned woman took another tamagoyaki.

She tried to accept that the restless feeling likely would not go away until she found out once and for all.

With a sigh, she finished off her tea. Her stomach twisted uncomfortably and mild nausea made her regret eating in the first place, she tried not to regret trying to be kind to Merrick.

Fishing around in her pocket Machie drew out some money and set it on the table.

“I'm going to get going. You're free to do what you like. I'll stop by here again before sundown.”

Trying to sit still when she needed to run, to burn off some of her nervous energy was useless in the end. Machie slipped away, exiting the teahouse and merging with the crowd. Once she reached the south edge of District 24, the dark skinned woman tensed and launched herself into another series of shunpo. Machie ran hard and fast, ignoring the the ache in her lungs as she bounded towards her destination. Whatever awaited her, she needed to know.

[5046]

Merrick’s words only earned him a tight lipped look from the dark skinned woman. Despite her usually placid demeanor, she was capable of showing displeasure on occasion. She barely heard him agree to meet her at sundown. There was little time to waste. Her speed wasn’t what it could be and neither was her stamina.

Nonetheless, her anxiety helped spur her onwards. By the time her physical limitations caught up to her, Machie had reached District Thirty Five. She kept walking, as fast as she could with aching legs and ran intermittently. District Forty took a few more hours, but the feline shinigami managed it. Though not the most determined individual, desperation motivated her.

Each breath was heavier than the last as her chest struggled to rise. A strange pressure made it difficult to take in air, though Machie supposed she didn’t really need it as a dead person. Arriving in the slightly run down district was like walking right into the dreams she had been having. The shinigami stopped and closed her eyes to calm herself. When she opened them, the woman wandered forward as if in a daze. Her hazel eyes swept back and forth, searching for something, anything familiar.

Half impressions and vague recollections guided Machie through the district. Her method was to walk towards anything that looked familiar and turn towards anything that made her chest ache for no discernable reason. Before long, the dark skinned woman encountered a residential area. She froze, eyes wide.

Images flashed before her vision in rapid succession, half preserved memories. Faces, names, snatches of conversation.

“Ay, Dios mio,” Machie murmured. The world seemed to sway back and forth, making the thin woman stumble a bit.

Within sight was a house, one she knew far too well to only have just now seen it for the first time. Her vision blurred and she could feel wetness on her cheeks. She couldn’t breathe.

Someone walked past her, Machie only noticed because she caught sight of their profile.

Her heart might as well have stopped.

“Tia?” Her voice was brittle, like glass blown too thin, hairline fractures dancing across the surface.

The civilian woman heard her and turned. Her already white skin paled even further.

“Adele?”

That name.

The roaring in her ears intensified. Her head felt like it might explode. Machie took one step backwards and then another. Then, she did the only thing she knew how to do in response to the emotions threatening to overwhelm her; she ran.

“Adele!” the pale woman, Tia, screamed after her.

Machie sped up, launching a hasty shunpo to aid her escape.

The time between turning her back on the woman in District Forty, South Rukongai and the moment she arrived at the edge of District Twenty Four remained a blur. Machie hardly remembered it, didn’t want to recall. Her eyes were wide and terribly dry, lower lip ragged from her teeth’s abuse. She ran a shaky hand through her hair.

The sky was nearly dark, she noted absently as she wandered into the tea shop she’d stopped at earlier in the day. Merrick was there as promised, although part of Machie wished he had gotten impatient and gone home. He was, unfortunately, a man of his word, however.

Machie approached the man and stilled a few feet away. She faced him, eyes not avoiding his face, but the woman seemed to stare straight through the medic. She didn’t speak. Her demeanor was oddly subdued, even for the normally dull woman.

[5632]

Machie approached Merrick and smoothed her robes before sitting. She watched Merrick speak casually as if nothing was wrong, as if he hadn't just been so callous and irritable with her earlier. Her eyes narrowed briefly, but the expression melted away quickly enough that it could have been mistaken for a trick of the light. Perhaps it was unfair to expect Merrick to have a bad day just because her own quest had not gone well, still it stung a little that he seemed unoblivious, or worse, unconcerned with her state. It was a bit confusing even to Machie why she felt so frustrated. She had told herself a hundred times that Merrick wasn't her friend, just someone she could trade favors with, someone tolerable. Right now, though, that didn't make a difference. Machie was distraught and the only person she could turn to was the brunette man sitting across from her.

She nodded at his announcement that they were staying for dinner, but didn't comment. She wasn't in a rush to return home anyhow. What did she have to go back to except more nightmares? Guilt and shame, because what the feline woman had desperately yearned for, even before she truly understood it, had been right in front of her and she couldn't even accept it. She had failed to take what she wanted.

Machie shrugged at Merrick's question. She was tempted to point out that it was a surprise he cared enough to ask. Feeling bitter hadn't fully eaten away at her usual reserve yet.

"I found my sister." She didn't, couldn 't, say much else after that. Her throat tightened. Machie's lips pressed together firmly as she tried not to let on how shaken she was.

The answer was hardly satisfactory, to the point of almost being rude, but that didn't encourage the dark skinned woman any. She stared off into space, eyes shining with tears, until the waitress approached. Machie managed to request tea without her voice wavering. The feline shinigai sat still while she waited for her drink, without so much as a twitch. She hardly blinked except to rapidly flutter her eyelids whenever tears threatened to spill.

"She... I didn't expect..." the words died on her lips just like her resolve had a few hours earlier. What had she expected? Comfort? An ease to the ache in her chest? Rediscovering what she had lost?

"I left," Machie clarified in an uncharacteristically soft voice. "I left before we could really talk."

[6048]

When Merrick suggested her trip had been successful and then asked why she left, Machie gave him a disbelieving look. He managed to make matters worse by asking if she was crying. That was a terrible question to ask. The woman turned her face away from him and tried to stifle her tears, but to no avail. Drops of liquid managed to overwhelm her tear ducts and roll across her face.

"You really are clueless, aren't you?" she asked a bit snappishly. "That, or you're truly an insensitive...." the feline shinigami stopped short of using a blatant insult to describe the medic. "Do you have to be such a..." a frustrated sigh punctuated her phrase, "must you be so callous? It's really unhelpful."

Machie used the edge of her sleeve to wipe her face dry and sniffled softly. "It would have stung far less if you'd simply declined to comment. I didn't expect you to care much, but I didn't expect you to rub it in, either."

Then, she faced Merrick with a baleful glare. "If you must know, I wasn't out of time. I left because it was unexpectedly difficult to face someone who thought I was dead." She huffed and fell silent.

The dark skinned woman hardly understood her own actions let alone how to explain them to someone else, let alone someone as emotionally inept as the man sitting adjacent to her. Frustration simmered beneath the surface of her somewhat hurt demeanor. Working with Merrick had seemed simple enough, trading one favor for another. Tit for tat. Quid pro quo. And yet, she found herself the mistake of wanting more, of wanting an actual friend. Now that Merrick had failed at something she'd never asked for, they were here. Or rather, now that Merrick had managed to be more openly insensitive, she was hurt.

"Though I suppose it's useless to try and explain anything like this to you. I thought you were intelligent," Machie sniped.

The waitress arrived before the feline woman could attempt to rip into the medic. The woman asked the feline shinigami if she'd like anything.

"Just water, please. I won't be staying long."

She could feel Nasima's disapproval. Still, the urge to flee hadn't quite left and Machie had run out of motivation to face her feelings about anyone.

[6434]

Merrick's response drew an exasperated sigh from the woman sitting adjacent to him. His inability to understand what he had missed was almost laughable. She stared at him blankly, trying to process. It was difficult to stay angry with someone who didn't even realize he was being a jerk. Disappointment and irritation began to set in.

The feline woman indulged in a few deep breaths to calm herself somewhat and hold in any lingering tears.

“I didn't expect much from you, honestly. I just didn't imagine you would manage to be so unpleasant just now. You're usually more tolerable.” She shrugged. “No need to lie to me, I just know not to expect basic decency from you now. I overestimated you is all.”

The waitress arrived with the water. Machie thanked her with a polite smile before returning her faze to the medic and glaring.

“Don't presume you're a necessity. Anyone could have taken your place for this venture, Merrick. You are far from the only shinigami stronger than me.” Her expression cooled and the dark skinned woman focused on her water. With the unimpressed look Machie gave him, she didn't need to outright call him interchangeable.

It wasn't until a few sips in that the feline shinigami realized she was dehydrated. Resisting the urge to drain the glass in one go, she savored the coldness of her drink. Content to ignore the medic sitting with her Machie finished her water a bit faster than she'd intended, but without rushing entirely.

“In any case, enjoy your evening. Despite what you might think I can find my way home without you guarding me. I don't expect to see you again outside of fulfilling that favor.” The dark skinned woman stood, setting a bit of money on the table for her drink, and headed for the exit without a backwards glance. She had tired of Merrick for the time being and it would take considerable effort to get home.

It was growing dark, but Machie paid the sky little mind as she launched herself forward into a shunpo. She let the burning sensation in her legs and the tightness of her chest push all other thoughts from her mind. There was no shame this time, Machie would contemplate her life choices when she wasn't too busy running, her feet barely brushing against the ground. Home --or at least her bed--called for her and the woman had little intention of resisting.

[6842]
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