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“The answer is no, lad. I will not allow you to descend unescorted into the lair of that hussy. I have remained at your side for these five years, and I see no reason to change it now. Besides, I am not even sure that I am capable of doing so, even if I wished to.”
“Keep your voice down, Weiss.” said Nier in a hushed, appeasing voice. The stone passageways and low ceilings of the Palace of Façade did nothing to muffle noise, and the stentorian tones of Grimoire Weiss echoed far, far down the halls.
“It’s only for a few minutes. I just want to make sure Kainé’s all right. I won’t even be that far away. Look, there’s a table right outside the door and everything. You can wait there while I talk to her.”
He indicated a carved stone table beside Kainé’s door, bearing a decorative statuette of a masked priestess.
Weiss gave a little affronted bob in the air. He was about to make a scathing comment about how deeply insulting it was that he, The Grimoire Weiss, was being asked to wait on a table like some common knickknack, all for the sake of some lowdown hussy’s privacy….but some internal impulse checked him. The lad was looking at him in genuine entreaty, and for some irritating reason he could not bring himself to deny the request.
Perhaps it was the proximity of the King of Façade’s wedding. It was well known that such times tended to engender generosity, and perhaps that spirit of festivity and generosity had managed to infect him now. He fluttered his pages in indignation.
“Very well.” He huffed, with the air of one who has bound himself to a distasteful task. “I shall remain outside, but mind that you do not keep me waiting, lad.”
“I won’t.” Nier promised with a nod, and Weiss was both gratified and further irritated by the brightening of the look on his features.
With Weiss safely resting on a table (the guest quarters were sparsely used, so he was unlikely to be disturbed), Nier approached Kainé’s door. He realized he felt somewhat apprehensive, though he couldn’t quite say why. Kainé was brusque and liked to keep things to herself, but she was rarely outright hostile to him. Perhaps it was that he was loath to invade her privacy, given that he knew she had so little of it. He pushed past the hesitation without much difficulty, however, and knocked.
“It’s me.” He called as he rapped his knuckles three times against the wood.
“What do you want?” came the reflexive bark from behind the door.
“I just wanted to check in with you…” he said, lamely.
Truth be told, he wasn’t entirely sure what he was trying to do here. He just knew he felt bad, watching Kainé try to exclude herself from the city that celebrated her as a hero. He disliked her self-imposed isolation and the self-hatred that it rose from, but he had never known how to push back on it, nor did he really feel like he had the right to do so. There was so much that Kainé kept to herself, and he had learned quickly that disagreeing with her on pretty much anything was futile. He was glad that the King and Fyra had eventually talked her into staying in the palace, at least.
“Weiss isn’t here.” He added through the door, as an afterthought.
“…Come in.” she said, a little less acerbic than before.
He opened the door slowly, and took in the room. It was identical to the one he had been given down the passageway: a low but comfortable bed with a carved headrest and a patterned bedspread, a chest of painted metal for the occupant’s possessions, a small table with a ceramic pitcher of water and a cup, and a decorated niche for an oil lamp. Kainé sat on the bed, awkwardly posed as though unsure whether to sit or stand. Her manner reminded Nier of a stray cat he had once startled in an alley – the way the creature had frozen in place, unsure whether to run or to approach.
She was still fully dressed (or what counted as fully dressed for Kainé), but the cloth covering her arm was twisted and one or two of the buckles had been sloppily fastened, as if in a hurry.
“We got a visitor, eh, Sunshine? What do ya think he’s here for?”
Kainé tried not to wince, and inwardly willed Tyran to shut up.
“You’re no fun, Sunshine.” The shade within her grumbled. “You’re damn lucky I’m tired out, or I’d have some things to say about you lounging here in a palace chatting, when you should be out there fulfilling your half of our bargain.”
The demand for Tyran to be silent turned into an inward snarl.
“SHUT THE HELL UP!” she mentally snapped at the shade with all her might.
To her relief, the Tyran made no further comment, and she felt her awareness of him lessen, indicating that he had gone dormant for now. She looked up at Nier, suddenly all too aware that her gaze had unconsciously flicked to her arm during the exchange with Tyran, and that (to Nier) she had been utterly silent since he walked in the room. Thankfully, he didn’t seem to attribute anything to it. In fact, he looked as though he was absorbed with a thought.
“What’s up?” She said, to cover the awkward silence. She wasn’t sure whether she was supposed to offer for him to sit down or not. She and Grandma hadn’t exactly had a lot of visitors, and graduating from their shared hut to living in a shack hadn’t really helped her sense of courtesy much at all. Stupidly, she almost wished Emil was here. That kid seemed to know every damn thing about courtesy. He’d once spent twenty minutes telling her about all the different forks he knew how to use, even though her eyes had glazed over about two minutes into the discussion.
He hesitated for half a second before speaking, which surprised Kainé for some reason. He wasn’t normally one for hesitation at all, and it made her curious. Then he gave a little equivocating gesture and said “I just wanted to make sure you were doing alright. I know you didn’t really want to come here at first, but we’re all glad you did.”
The remark spun up a sudden, acidic flare of emotions in Kainé’s chest. Immediately she wanted to bite back, to say something so scathing that he’d just turn around and leave her alone. How dare he show up here to pity her? How dare he feel sorry for her, like she was his sick little sister or something? She’d gotten this far on her own, and she didn’t need this softhearted bullshit.
She had just enough self-control to claw back the words before she said them out loud. How dare she talk about him like that? she thought, as hot shame suffused through her, throwing cold water on her anger. Here was a brave, noble man (a naïve idiot at times, but noble no less) who had shown her nothing but kindness, and in return she just wanted to throw it back in his face? The least she could do was acknowledge what he said and be civil in return.
Resolutely, she shifted back on the bed towards the headboard, and indicated for him to sit on the foot of the mattress. As he took her up on the offer, seeming pleasantly surprised by the invitation, she drew up her knees and crossed her legs, then forced herself to readjust into a more casual pose.
Seeing him on the edge of the bed stoked something in her. There was something about the two of them, alone, and the unalloyed look of care on his open, honest face that caused a burning wave to pass through her from head to toe before coming to settle in the pit of her stomach. It was a maelstrom, a disconcerting torment within her mind and her body. She wanted to yell at him again. She wanted to shove him. She wanted to praise him. She wanted to grab hold of him and grip him so tightly that he could never leave. She wanted to fight, not to sate the dark passenger within her, but for him. She wanted to serve him. She wanted him, with the kind of primal, physical hunger that normally only came after a long session of killing shades.
The shame redoubled itself, but the hunger shoved it aside and settled insolently in her heart like a conquering lion.
She crossed her legs again.
She tried to think of some excuse to get him out of the room before something stupid happened, but it was too late. She realized that he had realized something was going on.
Rather than looking patronizing, pitying, or (as she feared the most), disgusted, there was an expression on his face as though he was suddenly waking to something. There was an embarrassment on his features that truly surprised her, but also more of that hesitancy from before.
To her, he seemed even more of the man he had become since they had first met, but simultaneously like the awkward teenager he had been then, too. His voice was gentle.
“Kainé, I’m really glad you’re travelling with us again. I thought about Yonah every day when you were petrified, but I thought about you too, you know. I’d missed you. I spent all that time learning how to grow Lunar Tears, in between looking for her, and every day I thought about when I would get to give one to you. Because…you deserve it, Kainé. Because I care about you, even though you don’t seem to care all that much about yourself.”
If he had planned to tell her anything else, he never got the chance to say it. Kainé couldn’t contain herself any longer - she surged forward, and reached out a hand to grasp the back of his neck and pull him into a kiss.
As she came closer, Nier instinctively put a hand out to brush against her inner thigh.
They both flinched and pulled back at the same moment, and their mutual hunger evaporated, vanishing as completely as a dream does upon waking.
Kainé was back in that wary cat’s-pose, while Nier suddenly seemed a million miles away. He looked as though he was fighting to keep his breath steady. Kainé gave a short, desolate laugh that quickly turned into genuine, if sardonic, amusement . Nier looked at her in bewilderment.
“Look at us. A couple of broken idiots. It’s a fucking wonder we ever get any shit done, huh?”
Despite himself, Nier smiled, and Kainé was relieved to see that whatever passed over him seemed to have dissipated.
“Yeah, I guess you’re right, Kainé.” he said with a small, wry grin.
A moment passed silently between them, before Nier slid off the bed.
“I have to go…Weiss is waiting for me.”
“Tell the book I said ‘fuck off’.”
He chuckled.
“Yeah…” He paused, just before he opened the door. “Before I go, I just want to say that I meant what I said earlier.”
And before she could reply, he had wished her goodnight and was gone into the corridor.