Patching Her Up 5: Beginning

NOIR-fanfic. The end has come and gone, and the girls have some things to talk about.
(Mireille/Kirika)


And so we return to our regularly scheduled series. XD
This is the fifth installment in my series of short stories called "Patching Her Up".

Read Patching Her Up 5: Beginning

Disclaimer: All things Noir belong to Bee Train and probably others, perhaps even to Raimi/Tapert by now, but at any rate I’m just borrowing.

My “Patching Her Up” series is just a series of short stories unrelated to one another, from different fandoms, that have a certain theme in common. Each part is a stand-alone.






Patching Her Up 5: Beginning
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by Carola “Ryûchan” Eriksson







The room was small and sparsely furnished, not that anything more than the bed, a small table with two chairs and tiny, well-worn settee for two would have fit in there, but it was safe enough and had its own tiny bathroom. A far cry from their spacious Parisian studio loft it might have been, but it was good enough for now. If an emergency arose they could even, albeit with difficulty, access the roof through the window in front, not that Mireille expected trouble.

They weren’t even in Mireille’s beloved Paris now, but rather the first city they’d reached where there presence wouldn’t stick out of the crowd. Soldats probably knew where they were anyway, and for that reason the small space was packed with hidden weapons by now, yet after the events at the Manor... Soldats had not attempted to contact them. Not yet anyway.

It was time to heal wounds and gather strength.

The old apartment was lost to them, in fact there was precious little left of it. Mireille had, in that dark place she had been after losing her partner, remained there for a while, sleeping in the ruined shards of their bed, sitting at the broken table, and staring out the gaping holes that had once been windows. She hadn’t noticed the cold or the dark, overwhelmed as she was with the despair within.

There was nothing to go back to there. They had nothing in the way of personal belongings worth collecting, even if anything had managed to survive the onslaught. They would have to start anew someplace else, and thankfully had the funds to do so.

The important part was that they had each other.

Not even the watch, Mireille’s father’s watch, had meant a thing in the end, not compared to Kirika. Whatever she might have said, Mireille had known it the very moment she shook off the despair and set out towards the Manor, that she was going there to get her partner back. To get her Kirika back.

Nothing else mattered, not even vengeance.

The first-aid kit Mireille had stocked her car with before setting out had been used up patching mainly Kirika, but also Mireille herself, up enough that they didn’t simply bleed out on the road. As it were the seats of the car were ruined, and Mireille traded it in for a proper if shady treatment of Kirika’s wounds. They had another one by now, a shabby and easily overlooked one that would still last them across the country and then some if they needed it to.

So far though things had been quiet. The proprietor of the run-down hotel where Mireille and Kirika rented their tiny room was friendly and accommodating enough, and though she had been on careful lookout Mireille had yet to spot anyone spying on them on Soldats behalf. That of course didn’t mean that Soldats didn’t know where they were, only that they would leave them be for now.

Most likely Soldats had bigger problems right now than the famed Noir. The Manor had gone down in flames, taking Althena and the other leaders of her insane pseudo-religious phalange with it, and when Mireille and Kirika had left... ironically the remaining highest leaders of Soldats had turned on one another, and only one remained standing that either of them knew of. The man which had attempted to make a deal with Mireille.

Likely there were all sorts of struggles for power going on, and whatever factions there might be, none of them would have enough manpower to waste, should they even have the ambition to, by sending them after Noir. Unless Kirika and Mireille made a move against them, they would have little reason to.

So that was why it was time to rest up and heal, finally. Perhaps also make up some plans for their future.

The past, individual and shared, had been... delicately discussed.

The pain Mireille carried over the murder of her parents would not be so easily or quickly put behind her, but she understood at last that while Kirika’s hands might have been the ones holding the gun, the one that killed them had been Althena. She accepted and forgave Kirika, just as she acknowledged Kirika’s own pain and loss.

Sometimes Mireille wondered if Althena had personally seen to the assassination of Kirika’s parents, hoping that at least Kirika herself had not been made part of that act but afraid to ask and stir up even more pain. Kirika herself seemed not to have any memory of her parents, but her memories of her early years were fragmented at best.

Eventually though their conversation turned to Kirika’s days at the Manor, and to Chloe.

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“You kissed her?” After days of calm, this sudden explosion of Mireille’s temper seemed all the more loud, Mireille’s anger all the more intense. “You kissed her!”

Kirika blinked, as if she couldn’t quite understand why Mireille was angry. A small part of Mireille was aghast at herself for reacting this way, but powerless to stop it.

“No...” Kirika tilted her head as she explained. “Chloe kissed me. I did not...” She frowned a little as she tried to find a word that would fit. “...participate.”

“So you let her kiss you.” Mireille demanded. “Is that supposed to be any better? What else did she do?”

Taking a moment to order her thoughts, Kirika proceeded to tell Mireille about most of what had transpired at the Mansion. She told her about walking around the ruins with Chloe, of sparring with the taller girl, and of how Chloe had been hiding outside Kirika’s bedroom window at night.

She told Mireille of reading the book, and how she nearly shot Althena. She told her of the times she had bathed together with Chloe, and how Althena had sent the two of them off to cleanse and prepare for the ritual, which was how Chloe had come to kiss Kirika.

Mireille’s face had taken on a strangely red hue by the time Kirika got to that part.

“Naked? You let her kiss you, and hold you, while naked?” Unexpectedly she let out a strangled and frustrated cry. “And that, that... woman! ‘To strengthen your bond’...” Mireille growled. “She wanted you to sleep together!”

Kirika shook her head. “No, Chloe had her own bedroom at the Manor. I saw it.”

Staring hard at the younger woman sitting on the edge of their bed, looking completely sweet and innocent as ever, Mireille realized that she had to calm down. She was letting herself act insane with jealousy, and while it didn’t seem to frighten her, Kirika had not really deserved to be treated like this. The situation then had been different, and Kirika had been different.

In the end, her choice had been made abundantly clear. In the end, they had all said their vows of love in actions rather than words.

She by arriving there, not for the revenge she had lived for but to take back the one she loved. Kirika by the choice she made in the end, no matter how hard or heart-rending, when she had sacrificed someone she considered the other part of herself to save Mireille. And Chloe... Mireille had always known about Chloe, she had thought the girl wore her love for Kirika on her sleeve, but that moment on the battleground... the expression in Chloe’s eyes, her scream when she realized that Kirika was saying without words that Mireille was the one she really loved... it had stunned Mireille.

There was no point in being angry at Chloe anymore. The girl had received a dark and cruel fate she did not deserve, anymore than any of them, and Mireille should pity her. Maybe someday she would even actually be able to. But for now it was enough to know that Chloe was dead.

And Kirika was hers.

Not that they had in any way acted on it or even said so, it was entirely possible that Kirika was innocent enough not to realize what had really happened, what the Noir ritual really was. Two of the deadliest women in the world, fighting to the death... for the love of the third.

Her and Chloe, for Kirika’s love.

Not that Mireille harboured any illusions that she could actually have beaten Chloe on her own. She was skilled, one of the best perhaps, but she wasn’t in Chloe and Kirika’s league. No-one was.

But be that as it may, Chloe was gone and Mireille was the one that was here, right now, with Kirika. The one that was going to build a life and a future with Kirika.

She rubbed her face with one hand, briskly, as if to chase away old ghosts and thoughts. Then she glanced at Kirika and smirked. The brunette looked back questioningly, looking as if she was about to speak. She didn’t get the chance to.

Mireille pounced, pushing the other girl down on the bed that was just wide enough to fit them both with a bit of effort and no more, and pinned her down. Kirika made a startled little sound but did not object.

And then Mireille kissed her.

Despite the somewhat aggressive approach, the kiss itself was gentle, tender. It spoke of Mireille’s longing and her desperate need for Kirika in her life, by her side. It was their first, it was sweet, and it was brief.

Before Kirika had the chance to at all react it was over, Mireille withdrew to rest their heads together so that her lips were next to Kirika’s ear, without Kirika being able to see Mireille’s face.

“You are mine.” Mireille’s voice was deeper in pitch and soft as velvet, a touch possessive and dangerous but mostly suggestive of things that made Kirika shiver involuntarily. “You... are... mine.”

“I won’t share you, with anything or anyone. Remember that.”

From the heat where the side of Mireille’s face rested against her own Kirika could tell that the blonde was blushing as she spoke. Slowly, small hands reached up to embrace the body perched carefully over her own.

“And just so you know, I am yours and only yours.”

They remained still like that, simply breathing together, for a long moment.

“You know I have said it before, that you and I were always bound together by Fate’s thread. A black thread for certain, but Fate’s thread nonetheless.” Mireille leaned her face into Kirika’s slightly, turning the touch into a kind of caress. “I don’t know if you can understand it right now, but that ceremony, the fires of the ritual of Noir...”

“It married us. We are the heart of darkness, together. The two maidens of death that are one.”

She closed her eyes and breathed Kirika in. “Not because of the words of an ancient book or the machinations of a madwoman, but because of us. Because of what we are and what we became for one another. And for all that we are willing to do for each other.”

“I don’t ask that you understand it yet, if you need time you can have all you want. But I ask that you are aware of it, of what you are to me.” There was a touch of desperation in Mireille’s voice as she leaned back to look into Kirika’s eyes. “Is that alright with you?”

Her reply was a pair of delicate hands that reached up, cupped her face, and pulled her down for a kiss.

Kirika was an inexperienced kisser, having been kissed twice but not responded to either, and somewhat hesitant at what to do at first. But the emotion was genuine, and after the first initial moment of shock and marvel, Mireille was only too happy to give it her best as well. Kirika’s hands wound up in Mireille’s hair, and the kiss grew enthusiastic and animated.

They remained like that for as long as Mireille, propped up with her weight on her arms as she was, dared to. Once she feared she would topple over and risk putting weight on Kirika she drew back, gasping for air.

All that could be heard was their laboured breathing as they looked at one another for a long moment. Then Mireille, smiling, leaned their foreheads together and gently brushed a hand over Kirika’s bandages.

“We’d better get up. I have to change these for you.”

“I feel fine.” Kirika’s protest was as softly spoken as ever, but her voice had a slightly breathy quality to it that made Mireille’s heart beat harder.

“And to keep you ‘fine’, I have to change it for you.” She grinned at the adorably recalcitrant girl as she sat up. “You know that.”

With gentle hands Mireille changed Kirika’s bandages, relieved beyond words to find that her earlier actions had not caused any bleeding. Thankfully it seemed that they both possessed remarkable healing abilities, and of course as nearly life-long assassins they were resistant, or perhaps just very intimately familiar with, pain. It would not restrict or cripple them the way it would other people, but even so Mireille had to be careful with Kirika for a while. No roughhousing until Kirika was back to full strength.

The thought heated Mireille’s cheeks as she finished re-bandaging Kirika and helped the younger girl get ready for bed. It was a bit early still, but the emotional outpouring had been tiring, and they could both need all the rest they could get.

As Mireille double-checked her safeguards and turned off the lights she heard the cute little ‘yoisho’ sound Kirika made as she got into bed and crawled over towards the wall. Mireille quickly got herself ready for bed as well, and joined her partner.

Instead of positioning themselves back to back as they usually did, Mireille lay down and carefully urged Kirika into a comfortable position half draped over her. It was something she had longed to do for nearly as long as Kirika had shared her bed, and some nights of late Mireille had awakened to find herself spooning the younger girl in her sleep. Now though she could wrap her arms around Kirika like she had always wanted to, and feel the other girl come to rest on her shoulder with a contented sigh.

Placing a loving kiss into baby soft brown hair Mireille tucked the blanket a little higher on her lover. She closed her eyes and basked in the tranquillity of the moment.

Their breathing evened out, and sleep beckoned.

Then, in a whisper...

“Kirika? What do you think about getting another apartment in Paris?”

Patching Her Up 1: Thought

NOIR-fanfic. Sometimes even the most skillful of assassins get hurt. Or worried.
(Mireille/Kirika)


This is the first installment in my series of short stories called "Patching Her Up".

Read Patching Her Up 1: Thought

Disclaimer: All things Noir belong to Bee Train and probably others, perhaps even to Raimi/Tapert by now, but at any rate I’m just borrowing.

My “Patching Her Up” series is just a series of short stories unrelated to one another, from different fandoms, that have a certain theme in common. Each part is a stand-alone and a one-shot.






Patching Her Up 1: Thought
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by Carola “Ryûchan” Eriksson







”How stupid!” She scolds as she cleans various cuts and bruises. “You’re supposed to be a professional. This is a rookie thing to do, and you know it.”

She knows she is a bit less than gentle as she patches her young partner up, but the girl remains passive, not complaining the treatment. Those dark eyes follow her movements with an intensity that for some unnerving reason makes Mireille feel ashamed.

“Look, I know that in the kind of fights that we end up in it is hard, if not impossible, to escape without injury all the time, but...” She wills herself to calm though her voice still reveals both her exasperation and irritation over the situation. She grabs the bandages. “Its all fine and well to do whatever necessary to live through the moment, but if you do it at the cost of your ability to fight, then you’re as good as dead already.”

She sighs and meet dark eyes with an unusually open expression of concern in her own.

“You yanked your right arm right out of the socket, and your left hand is sprained to the point you couldn’t get it to close around a gun, much less pull a trigger. You came damn close to breaking something, you know?” She stilled her ministrations, merely sitting on the floor in front of the girl on the bed, bandages forgotten in her hand. “What were you going to do if there had been anyone else there? Attack them with your teeth? Or maybe your feet?”

The dark head tilts and brows knit. She sighs again, from a strange surge of affection this time. She can tell that the younger girl is giving serious thought to what was mostly sarcasm on her part.

“You’re actually thinking about it, aren’t you?” She asks, a smile twitching briefly at the corner of her lips. The girl nods.

“Well...” She murmurs, reluctant to admit it but honest enough to know it to be true. “If anyone could manage to kill opponents with just the use of her teeth or toes, it would be you.” Mireille can’t even imagine how, but then again, she wouldn’t have imagined killing someone with their own sunglasses or the wheels of a toy car either.

Another thought intrudes, another memory, and her expression darkens. The words slip past her lips before she had given them leave to escape. “You, and maybe Chloe, of course.”

Another thoughtful look on the young face before her, and another small nod.

Mireille grinds her teeth together and tries to clamp down on her temper. She is angry and she doesn’t want to take any closer look at why.

“Yes, of course. Chloe, the perfect killer.” Her voice is dripping with sarcasm, and she stretches the fabric of the bandages with a touch more ferociousness than is strictly called for. Kirika merely watches, silently as ever. “Just... perfect.”

“Why did you do it, anyway?” Avoiding dark eyes now to finally begin the bandaging that should already be finished. “I know you know better.”

“You.”

The simple answer in that quiet voice is startling enough that she freezes for a moment before looking up, blinking in confusion.

“You were in danger. I had to protect you.” Unspoken was the part where Kirika would do so even at the cost of her own health or safety, and never think twice of it.

Feeling strangely flustered Mireille tries to focus on the arm in front of her. She isn’t sure of how to react, but after a moment angered offence is just easier to take than the all-encompassing confusion and almost adolescent shyness. She growls.

“Because I’m not a perfect killer like Chloe, is that it?” Her voice is brittle with resentment and anger, but most of all with the jealousy she carefully avoids acknowledging to herself. “I may not be versed in how to kill using random toys or tiny blades, but I am far from defenceless. I need no babysitter.”

“We are partners, equal partners.” Bitter words in some ways, as she in the beginning had thought herself the senior, more experienced and more skilled of the two of them. “Unless...” She hesitates, the words tasting like blood in her mouth. “You don’t feel you can trust your back to someone that doesn’t have that skill?”

It is the only way she can ask if Kirika would have preferred Chloe as her partner, and she hates the fact that she has given in to her insecurities and asked almost as much as she fears the answer.

“Chloe...” The quiet voice begins, contemplatively, as brown eyes no longer looks at Mireille but into the distance. That small but important change causes a painful pressure in the blonde’s chest even before Kirika speaks. “I... like Chloe.”

She cannot breathe. All the air has left the room in an instant.

“I would trust Chloe to have my back if we were in a fight.”

Images of just that, the two oh so very lethal girls fighting back-to-back in a crowd of assassins, dance on the inside of Mireille’s eyelids as she closes her eyes for the briefest of moments. Angrily she opens them again, forcing away the memories of that one important and painful moment where she had first realized that there was another that not only challenged her place at Kirika’s side, but perhaps was better suited for it than she could ever be. Kirika and Chloe had been flawless together. Perfect.

“I would kill for Chloe.” Kirika is rather matter of fact, and now her eyes focus back on Mireille’s with a different kind of intensity, a different kind of expression than usual. She smiles, that tiny, sweet and surprisingly innocent-looking smile of hers.

“I would, however, not die for Chloe.”

Dark eyes bore into Mireille’s, their meaning clear. She gasps.

“Oh.” She mutters quietly, feeling surprisingly shy and aware that she has started to blush rather badly. Of course. To people like them, to be willing to kill for someone wasn’t a particularly big deal, but to be willing to die for someone... that was far more significant.

Try though she does Mireille cannot keep herself from smiling slightly, a smile unusually bashful for her in fact, as she wraps up the bandaging with a far more gentle touch than before. As she finishes fastening the edges of it on Kirika’s upper arm, her gaze slides upward to find brown eyes staring unwaveringly back at her.

That is right. She ducks her head slightly to hide the smile until she can get it better under control. Kirika is always watching her.

Always, unwaveringly.

A gentle if not entirely intentional caress of the bandaged arm as she stands up, and Mireille meets Kirika’s gaze with an unusually warm and affectionate one of her own. She reaches out to briefly run her fingers through short dark hair. The younger girl does not protest the gesture, only smiles slightly and continues to meet Mireille’s eyes.

Yes, that is right. Kirika had been watching Mireille from the start and never once looked away.

With a little thrill in her heart it begins to dawn upon Mireille that somewhere along the line of their dark and blood-soaked acquaintance... she has started to look right back.

Silvana pt2 End

Noir-fanfic. And life goes on for the darkness and the untouchable one.
(Silvana/Chloe)

Read Silvana pt2 End

Disclaimers in part 1. Spoiler warning for much of the show and the ending in particular.





SILVANA pt2 End
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by Carola “Ryûchan” Eriksson






The children that, free from any restrictions of the adult world, would happily greet Silvana and show her their sweet and guileless faces as she watched them play took to Chloe with enthusiasm. All it took was a smile from the girl as she helped return a lost toy and the young children seemed to decide that she was one of their own, eagerly coming running after the both of them when they were out walking in the fields to play with Chloe.

It shocked her the first time she heard herself laugh at the children’s antics with Chloe, a sound so foreign to her life before that point that Silvana could not remember when last she had laughed. Chloe’s response, her bright smile and sun-flushed face sent something to flutter in Silvana’s chest, and she wondered if this was normal, what an ordinary woman might feel. After that day she would find many occasions to laugh, indeed it seemed as if her young companion deliberately set out to garner that response from her. Silvana soon found herself helpless to prevent the small smile that took up almost permanent residence on her lips in Chloe’s presence.

It was peaceful and sweet, and Silvana would have been perfectly content to allow those days to continue forever. Awareness of change intruded at quite an unexpected moment however.

She had watched the children at play in the fields, even laughed as Chloe chased the little ones around, tossing and twirling whatever squealing child she’d pretend to catch up to, and merely enjoyed the moment and the sunlight. With the children cheering her on Chloe had suddenly grabbed Silvana by the waist and twirled her through the air. Even though Silvana, ever before as untouchable as her name suggested, had gotten used to the casual, and perhaps even increasing, touch between them by now, this latest move had her too stunned to react any further than simply gripping onto Chloe’s arms. Something the children did jostled them, and down they tumbled into the grass, Silvana at the bottom of what quickly became a pile of squirming and laughing little bodies.

Chloe was directly above Silvana, protectively braced as if to prevent any climbing or jumping child from accidently hurting her. For some reason there was a pain in Silvana’s chest, and she felt herself tremble slightly and hold her breath as stared unblinkingly at the face so very close to her own. It crossed her mind in a strangely detached way that although she always likened the beauty she found in Chloe to that of the light and dark of the moonlit night, the girl always smelled of sunshine, grass, and for some reason apples. It was a warm, soothing scent, completely void of the acrid tang that always tainted a gun-wielder.

There was a strange expression on Chloe’s face which Silvana could not understand. Distracted by this she did not notice that her hands inched up towards Chloe’s shoulders, or how the distance between their faces shrank away. Their lips brushed just barely at first, the contact far too light to be considered a kiss, and then returned for a soft and gentle caress far more worthy of the name.

Then, as abruptly as it had been initiated, Chloe’s warm, sweet weight was gone and Silvana was left blinking into that endlessly blue sky. She found her feet and her self-control, aided by the loud but guileless laughter of children, hiding well the confusion she felt at what had just transpired. Confusion soon made place for charmed amusement when she caught sight of the persistent blush dusting pale cheeks even as Chloe used the children’s games to avoid meeting Silvana’s eyes.

The girl was adorably shy with her affection and Silvana decided not to make her any more uncomfortable than she had to be. After all, she knew Chloe’s story, she knew of the boundless devotion the girl had carried for so long, and the bitter, to say nothing of brutal, rejection that had followed. She was after all the one who had picked up Chloe’s broken form and nursed her back to health. In bits and pieces the story had all been told.

Chloe, tall and lanky and only recently filling out into a more adult form, with a beauty too subtle to see at first glance and her manners too innocent and direct, had gone up against Mireille Bouquet, the aristocratic and fashion-model beautiful Odette Bouquet’s equally striking daughter whom was world-wise and undoubtedly more experienced in matters of attraction, as rivals in love. Not that Silvana suspected that appearances or experience had mattered in the end, Chloe had never truly been in the running to begin with, despite the sincerity of her boundless love.

Rejected and robbed of not only the love she had carried since childhood but of her destiny, identity and only family as well in one fell swoop, Chloe had persisted with a dignity and resilience that Silvana doubted she could have matched in similar circumstances. Chloe accepted and moved on, slowly rebuilding herself and her life over time.

That affection had grown between them with the passage of time was not surprising, although it had indeed come as a surprise to Silvana, for they were kindred in so many things. Still, Silvana had barely begun to get accustomed to that affection and now it seemed as if their bond was already deepening, changing into something she was entirely unfamiliar with and woefully unprepared for. It was a sad truth to face that young Chloe, although rejected and now shy, had more experience in matters of the heart than she.

Time passed after their tumble in sunlit grass, and Silvana did not speak of what had transpired between them in effort of overcoming the awkwardness that initially set in once they were alone. Chloe soon relaxed again, and after a few days their interactions were for most part back to what had become usual for them. For most part.

If their eyes lingered a little longer on the other in ill-disguised secret, or if Chloe would blush and act bashfully where she previously had not, neither of them mentioned it out loud. Silvana was less successful in quieting her own mind, and in the days that followed she would find that Chloe dominated her every thought. Distracted and troubled by the direction of her thoughts, Silvana opted to remain behind when Chloe went for a particularly long run one evening in lieu of the sparring they usually engaged in.

Cool or lukewarm baths were things Silvana was long accustomed to, only upon occasion allowing herself the luxury of hot water. It was born from practicality, but for that particular evening the cool water felt like a blessing, soothing an increasingly feverish reaction in mind and body alike. She lay back in the large tub and watched clouds chase one another across the darkening sky through the window, her own thoughts keeping pace with them.

Chloe was young, so very young, and Silvana was not. It was surely both shameful and inappropriate to allow herself to harbour such thoughts and feelings for one so young, especially since life had more or less placed Chloe in Silvana’s care.

It was all well and good that Mireille Bouquet had taken a lover as young as Chloe, the daughter of Corsica was a fair bit younger than Silvana herself and besides which, the destiny of Noir had probably decided for them since birth, if not before. It did not quite apply to Silvana and Chloe.

Yes, Chloe was indeed young, but then again Silvana could not demean her by considering her a child either. The dark and blood-soaked life she had led was not that of a child, and what was more, the time spent in Sicily with Silvana meant that surely by now Chloe would be seen as an adult by whatever standard one would choose to measure. A young adult, certainly, but an adult nonetheless.

It was as she distractedly allowed herself to dwell on the many changes, inside and out, that Chloe had undergone during their time together, that it occurred to Silvana that she was giving serious consideration to taking Chloe as her lover.

The thought stilled all else, and for one long moment Silvana found herself staring up at the rise of an early moon. She could scarcely breathe.

Finally closing her eyes and shaking herself out of her absorbed stupor, Silvana sighed at her own folly. The water was beyond cold by now and so was she, having spent far too long in it even for her. She found her feet and rose slowly, feeling slightly unsteady, in the tub while casting her eyes about for the towel and robe she hoped she had managed to remember to bring even in her preoccupied state.

While she stood there with the water still running in rivulets down pale skin the door opened with a violent burst, startling her, and a worried Chloe came hurrying into the room with Silvana’s name on her lips.

Time froze for a moment, with Silvana naked and shocked that she had not heard the younger woman approach, much less call for her, and with Chloe locked in helpless staring, her narrow eyes gone alarmingly wide.

As finally she became aware of in just what manner Chloe was eyeing her naked body, a knowing smile made its way to Silvana’s lips quite unbidden. Chloe flinched at the reaction and, with an adorable blush on her face, closed her eyes to whip around and run from the room.

Instead she spun face first into the doorframe, the force of the impact bouncing her off to catch a glancing blow against the thick wooden door upon the back of her head, and finally deposit her in an ungainly and undignified heap on the stone floor just outside.

Silvana was out of the tub and at Chloe’s side, gently cradling the burgundy head to her still bare and wet chest, even before she realized what she had just witnessed. Chloe kept her eyes squeezed firmly shut in mortification as Silvana carefully probed the bleeding nose that had taken quite a bump in the spectacular turn of events. She, Silvana Greone, had just watched as one of death’s most powerful and graceful angels, the one that usually moved with the poise and surety of a large feline predator, had become as a fumbling adolescent boy... at the sight of her.

At the sight of Silvana.

Chloe had not behaved thus, never revealed even a trace of anything less than full mastery of her movements, in front of that dark-haired child. Not even when faced with the other girl’s nakedness had she stumbled, Silvana knew, her physical composure remaining perfect even though her emotional one had not been.

But for Silvana Chloe had bloodied her own nose and given herself a sizeable bump on the head, to say nothing of her loss of dignity. The smile that bloomed on Silvana’s lips at the realization was wider than any she had ever worn, and not at all mysterious.

Pleased, yes, perhaps even a little proud and smug, but overall just happy with Chloe, herself, and the world at large.

She did not stop smiling as she dotingly tended to the mortified and increasingly cranky young woman, making sure that nothing had permanently come to mar what she now considered to be the delicate beauty of Chloe’s face. The smile followed her to bed that night, still teasing the edges of her lips as she slept, and returned in force upon catching first glimpse of Chloe the next morning.

She had never really known much of happiness in her life, and certainly not like this. It was intoxicating.

It was during a mundane thing, simply the two of them preparing for a meal together, that true insight hit Silvana in full.

The decision had been made.

There was no point in debating the point further, or attempting to fight against it. All that was left was to embrace it fully, and perhaps, in their own special way, this too was destiny.

Their destiny.

And Silvana would dedicate her life to Chloe and Chloe’s happiness. It was something she would do gladly, and the one thing in this world she would do not for honour or duty, but for herself.

Chloe chose that moment to step up beside her, peering over Silvana’s shoulder to see what had caught the older woman’s attention so much that she had stopped chopping vegetables to simply stand there, staring. Silvana let the knife in her hand slip quietly down onto the chopping board.

As she turned towards Chloe Silvana was unaware of the almost fiercely tender and loving expression she wore, even as it stunned Chloe to immobility.

Then she had wrapped the slender young woman up in her arms and kissed her, giving in to her longing at long last.

She tasted the shock and hesitation along with the softness, and also, a small but amused part of Silvana added with glee, the little bits Chloe thought she had stolen in secret while they were preparing their food.

Finally Chloe responded, with fervour, and their kiss grew dizzying. Silvana embraced Chloe closer, more possessively, and the younger woman eagerly accommodated her. Neither knew how long they leaned against the cupboards, dinner preparations forgotten to wilt and desiccate behind them, before Silvana led her young lover to bed.

For the future there would of course be obstacles to face and hurdles to overcome, but some things would ever remain true; Silvana would love, honour and cherish Chloe for the rest of her days. Anything else would not have been in her nature. Chloe, finally free to love and be loved fully, would never have cause to think that anything else would ever be more important to Silvana... and so these two daughters of the moonlit night would live out their mostly peaceful, loving lives in the sunlight.

And Silvana would be untouchable no more.

Silvana pt1

NOIR-fanfic. The world's most brutal princess had been left for dead, but she survived.
(Silvana/Chloe)

Read Silvana pt1

Disclaimer: All things Noir belong to Bee Train and probably others, perhaps even to Raimi/Tapert by now, but at any rate I’m just borrowing.

Spoiler warning for much of the show, but the ending in particular.





SILVANA pt 1
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by Carola “Ryûchan” Eriksson






There were likely many things that the daughter of the Corsican Bouquet family was and was apt in, various types of combat and assassination methods utilising a gun prominent among them, but one thing she was not so skilled in… the ways of the blade.

Silvana Greone supposed she should be grateful for that, given that it was only the other woman’s unfamiliarity with a knife that had ended up sparing her life. She was however of rather mixed feelings regarding her run-in with her childhood acquaintance, it was after all the first and only time Silvana, the vaunted Intoccabile, had ever been defeated.

More than merely defeated, of course. Her own blade, the very blade upon which she had ended both her father and beloved grandfather’s lives for the honour and glory of the Cosa Nostra, had been driven deep into her own chest. It was merely the other woman’s inexperience with stabbing that had prevented the blade from reaching Silvana’s heart.

She had been left for dead while the Bouquet girl and her young companion hastened on to the next hurdle in their death-riddled journey, left to bleed out on those cold ancient stone ruins alone. How ironic that while her killer had not taken the time to check whether Silvana was still alive, she had spared a moment to retrieve the tip of the dagger from her chest. A trophy from a defeated foe or a symbol for a fear conquered? Silvana did not know.

The blade, like her pride, was now broken anyway.

Silvana had been found in time, obviously, and rushed to a hospital. She would spend a long time recuperating at various such places, during which she officially handed over control of the Cosa Nostra to a man distantly related to herself. She offered him the traditional ritual, fully expecting him to take it and in a way she had even welcomed that end. In the end he did not take it. In the end, she was still Intoccabile, the untouchable one, in more ways than she had imagined.

He and others like him ruled the organisation in her name, while Silvana herself officially returned to a self-imposed exile in her beloved Sicily. If anyone thought such a thing would be a hardship they were sorely mistaken, for Silvana, while fully prepared to do her duty to the fullest and most brutal, longed for nothing more than that quiet, peaceful life she enjoyed in her Sicily.

But there was one thing she needed to do before putting the blood-soaked events that had dethroned the world’s most brutal princess behind her. One thing Silvana needed for her own and personal closure. With reverently bowed and respectful heads, the time and means to do so was extended to her.

And so it was that Silvana Greone, the feared Intoccabile of the Cosa Nostra, found herself in a deeply hidden valley between Spain and France, a small piece of land that time and the world had forgotten. The Soldats holy land.

It did not do to be discourteous, not there, not then, not with Soldats... not anymore. Silvana had dressed in a simple cloak, much like that of the nuns that occupied this ancient place, and arrived on foot for the last lengthy passage. She neither sought audience with Soldats’ powerful religious leader nor did she in any way approach or interfere with the activities there. Silvana merely sent a brief letter to the one named Althena to inform them that she was there and that all she wished was to watch from a distance as a conclusion came to the situation of those called Noir.

She expected no answer and received none. The fact that none of the heavily armed and fully combat prepared nuns attempted to kill her or drive her away, to say nothing of the Noir girls themselves, was blessing and approval enough.

Because of this Silvana watched from afar as the ever-changing three-way battle between the daughter of Corsica, her companion and a third girl Silvana herself did not know, raged back and forth as if they were all of them possessed. She felt approval when watching Mireille Bouquet during this battle, her erstwhile friend and one-time opponent no longer trembled in fear when faced with beings of such deadly presence and skill that the blonde should have been as a child before the reaper. There was a certain twisted satisfaction to be found in the fact that the woman who had, admittedly with help from her young lover, delivered Silvana’s own defeat perform well against such monsters. Perhaps in some way it appealed to the tattered remains of her self-esteem.

What was it that compelled Silvana, once the battle was ended and the newly decided couple made their way onwards towards their destiny, to approach the stone slab beside the ruins where the defeated girl had been laid to rest? She was unsure, although perhaps it had something to do with a wisp of memory of another ruin, another stabbed woman, and of bleeding out onto ancient stones alone.

Whatever the reason, she made her way down from her observation post as the sunset bled vibrantly across the landscape and the shadows grew long. The girl lying upon the weathered stone was a surprise once Silvana came close enough to clearly see her features. Young and slender, with skin as impossibly pale as Silvana’s own and a shock of remarkably deep burgundy hair, although the features or the still face were somewhat on the plain side there was something beautiful about this girl, something... fair.

The bloody cake fork lying next to the unmoving figure was also not what was expected, but with a sting from her own healing wound Silvana’s eyes were drawn to the blood that stained the front of simple white fabric. There was far less of it than there should be, and with a slight frown Silvana leaned over the prone figure, alert for any sign. Could it be? Could these two skilled assassins, one of them perhaps the most lethal being in the world right now, could they have made the same simple mistake... twice?

Judging by the tool and the blood, the wound was in the right place to kill but too shallow to meet its mark. The girl was not breathing, still Silvana sought for a pulse. It was hard to find, but finally there it was, slow and weak but still there.

If there was one thing Silvana had not been taught how to do, it was how to save a life. Still she struggled, lending the very breath from her own lungs until the girl, with a strained little gasp, drew breath on her own. She could not understand why it had become so important to save this one life, why it mattered so much to her, only that it did.

When narrow, slanted eyes fluttered open to reveal the blackest obsidian for just a moment, Silvana knew that she had succeeded. This girl, whoever she might be, would live. Vaguely aware of nuns moving in the distance, no doubt having witnessed that the girl was still alive and on their way to report this to Althena, Silvana gathered the long-limbed but surprisingly light form into her arms.

The sound of gunshots coming from the direction of the rather derelict-appearing building towards which the nuns of Soldats had been moving earlier had Silvana opting not to take the wounded girl there. Instead she carried her to a niche between stone and vegetation where they would not be easily seen yet Silvana had a clear view of the area.

She saw several nuns give their lives to Mireille Bouquet and her partner right there in the wine orchard, and as the two of them disappeared into the dark interior of the building Silvana could hear the sound of gunfire continue for some time before all was quiet. With a small nod to herself she approved. Good for you, daughter of Corsica, was her thought before simply ignoring the events inside the house completely.

Silvana had come there on foot for quite a distance, and while her car and her driver waited on the other side of that invisible but important border, she, out of respect once again, had not brought a phone by which to summon them. She had gotten there by her own strength and would leave the same way or not at all, or so had been her assumption, because such was the Soldats way. It was with a touch of contempt she had observed that some of the Soldats men had driven all the way to their sacred grounds, ignoring old traditions and taboos.

Very well. The situation was changed, and if she was to dedicate herself to rescue this stranger, Silvana would do so all the way. Half-measures were not appropriate for the famed Intoccabile, come what may.

What she needed to do was to acquire either a phone from the Soldats lackeys, or one of their cars. As the old was being burned down behind her with such reckless abandon it mattered little whether her servants crossed the boundary to get her or if she drove past it to meet them, either way she would get this girl to medical care as fast as she was at all able.

While a master of all bladed things, Silvana was still unarmed and held little illusions regarding her ability to take on a dozen well-armed and alert men empty-handed. A careful search yielded three narrow but utterly lethal blades hidden upon the girl which she tucked into her cloak, at least she would not be completely helpless.

She hid the girl as well as she could and, after long moments of observation until she decided whom among the black-suited men were the leaders of Soldats, eventually made her slow and careful approach.

Perhaps time had passed more quickly than Silvana had realized, or perhaps the two women that from that moment on would be known to the underworld as Noir had been more efficient in whatever trials they faced than she could have imagined, because as Silvana had completed her silent path through blackness and was about to make her presence known, the two women came limping out from the smouldering building.

They were both of them wounded, the daughter of Corsica limping as she struggled onward with her partner, the smaller woman soaked through with her own blood it seemed, leaning on her so heavily the former was all but keeping them both upright. And yet these were no defenceless or weakened creatures that stepped out into the night, oh no. Even as the blonde woman issued her warning of bleak death to those that would oppose them, Silvana saw the fire that burned in those eyes. Deeply moved she performed the ancient genuflection for the Maidens of Death and bowed her head in respect.

Pride, yes, pride was what she felt most of all, that the fair-haired child she had so adored during their brief and unfortunate acquaintance long ago had grown into this, this woman not only she but all the dark and bloodstained world would have to respect. Mireille Bouquet had never looked lovelier to Silvana.

The men of Soldats parted before Noir in silence, some out of fear and others out of respect, and the two women made their passage into the darkness without halting or sparing a single look back. It was as it should be, Silvana thought.

It was the tiniest of sounds that alerted her, and as Silvana tore her attention away from the retreating figures barely visible in the dark she found several of Soldats’ men in the process of aiming their guns at those two that they were all now honour bound to revere and serve.

The blades flew from her hand without conscious thought, each of them hitting with instant and deadly precision. A gun fired twice quite close by, and five bodies slid to the earth without protest. Noir neither stopped nor turned back.

If the one remaining leader of Soldats, now perhaps the very singular leader of all of Soldats, was at all surprised to find her there he was quick to mask his reaction. He knew her of course, as she him, and she silently approved of his quick disposing of his two fellow leaders for their treachery much as he, with a glance and an inclination of his head, approved of the intervention of her blades. They wasted no time on pleasantries.

Silvana was given one of the cars and drove off as the Soldats remained, aiding the fire and throwing their dead into it, and she only made one discreet stop before driving to the point where she could discard the vehicle in favour of her own. Hopefully the Soldats would not be aware that the pale and still unconscious girl was alive, for the girl’s sake as well as Noir.

She went to certain lengths to protect the girl’s identity, but as she was given treatment and care in Silvana’s own Sicily the odds were remote that she would be found, even if Soldats had reason to search for her. Careful probing of mutual contacts revealed in time that they in fact did not, and Chloe, for that was the girl’s name, was allowed to move as she pleased in Silvana’s simple cottage on the outskirts of her small village in the rural part of Sicily.

Days, weeks and even months passed, and to Silvana’s surprise her young visitor not only showed no signs of wanting to leave, but Silvana herself had no desire to see the lanky youth leave and her solitary days return. Chloe was nothing like Silvana could have expected.

There was no doubt that she was the same graceful and utterly lethal creature that Silvana had witnessed in the Noir battle, in fact there was little doubt in her mind that were it not for the tradition dictating that the Maidens of Death be lovers, Chloe would have been Noir. None could be more skilled, more capable, more lethal... but her love had been rejected.

Chloe also had another side to her, and it was this that continued to amaze Silvana. The girl was soft-spoken and shy, unassuming and possessing a strangely childlike innocence and devotion that made her very easy to love, even for someone like Silvana whose heart had frozen so many years ago. They shared a joy in the simple things in life, a love for the land and toil, and an appreciation for the rewards it brought. Most would reject Silvana’s simple and rustic lifestyle, but Chloe embraced it with familiarity and delight.

Solitude had never bothered Silvana, rather the reverse, outside the company of the village children any human contact was merely a burden, a duty to fulfil without protest or letting on but never willingly sought out. She always returned to her silent cottage with a quiet sense of relief, going about her simple life in peace. But this was no longer true. There was such joy to be found in Chloe’s presence, even in the small and silent moments. She could not quite grasp how it could be so.

Black Thread and Red Sheets

NOIR-fanfic. Mireille watches Kirika sleep.
(Mireille/Kirika)

Read Black Thread and Red Sheets

Disclaimer: All things Noir belong to Bee Train and probably others, perhaps even to Raimi/Tapert by now, but at any rate I’m borrowing the girls for a bit.




Black Thread and Red Sheets

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by Carola “Ryûchan” Eriksson






I am watching her sleep. I don’t know why I do it and that tears me up, but still tonight like many nights before, I lay awake watching her sleep.

She looks so innocent while sleeping.

So pure, almost like a child in that regard. Like the child she was supposed to be, had things been different. So young, so untainted by darkness.

It is appealing. It is mesmerizing. It pulls me in.

It is also a lie, and I know this better than anyone.

That face, so angelically sweet, does hold purity while awake as well, a purity that defies all sanity, but not innocence. No, not that. Not in our world, not in our line of work.

But still, purity she has. I don’t know how she can or why, neither does she really, when she stands on a field of corpses all felled by her hand. The blood may stain her hands but somehow not her essence, and I can’t figure out how. She shrugs the lives taken off unconsciously, without a care other than to grieve for the guilt she does not feel – another oddity of hers – yet her eyes show me the bottomless pain and sorrow she carries.

She may look childlike in sleep, but she is anything but. I can’t afford to forget that.

All she has to tell her who she might be is a card filled with lies, and as right as the number that indicates age on it feels, it could be just another lie among many.

Some lies become truth though.

Such as her name. Although surely as false as the card upon which it is printed, she has made that name her own now. I can think of no other more fitting, not even the moniker that still chills me slightly to think of for all that I chose it to represent us both.

There is a touch of something beautiful in that name, although I no more than think it than I scoff at myself for this silly sentimentality. What am I now, a schoolgirl like she was supposed to be?

No, certainly not.

It would not do for me to become... attached. This dark and twisted path that we are both on, I know where it leads. Death will be the outcome. This is a given.

And yet... I watch her while she sleeps.

My partner. My companion. The one that will and has gone through the deepest pits of Hell for my sake. My protector, even, as well as my charge.

There is something beautiful about her face when sleeping like this, something a bit angelic. Objectively speaking, of course.

That and that strange kind of charisma she has, with her trusting eyes and tiny smiles and so quiet voice with those little grunts she makes... it is easy to see how someone could get obsessed with her.

Like that green-robed ghost of ours.

Obsessed. Completely head over heels, in the most annoying and pathetically obvious way. She really sets my teeth on edge.

Ignore me, will you? Ogle my partner with those dirty, hungry eyes will you? I’ll put a bullet in your head next time, consequences be damned.

But... I guess I can understand the appeal. The pull.

A little.

Because I’m watching her too, right now while she sleeps. And I am having all kinds of uncomfortable and nagging feelings that perhaps my eyes aren’t the purest either.

As I’ve told her before we are bound together with a thread stained deep black in colour. It is true, and it is a bond no-one can touch. It is true and I won’t deny it, but I can’t help but wonder... why did I use the symbol for lovers to describe us? I’m not sure and I’m even less sure why thinking of it makes me feel embarrassed.

She looks so young.

She looks so young but she is not, not really. And the bond between us may be black but it is true.

Yes... our thread is black in colour indeed.

But the sheets on our bed are red, and her skin looks so soft as she is bundled up in them.

My thoughts confuse me but the heat that accompanies them confuse me more. No longer knowing what I am doing I lean forward, lean in, lean over her.

Her eyes flutter and open.

She does not have that moment of disorientation, when sleep still clings to the mind, clouding it, in our profession it is a luxury we can’t afford. Her big dark brown eyes simply open to look at me, no alarm and no question. They are soft and filled with absolute trust.

Then another expression accompanies the trust. It is that expression.

That look.

That look she has sometimes when our eyes meet. That look she has only for me.

I know not what it means, and I can’t figure it out. I don’t know why it makes my breath hitch and my heart speed up for just a moment, or why sometimes there is a pressure over my chest when she looks at me like that.

All of that doesn’t matter.

What matters is that it is mine. That look is mine, and mine alone.

Possessiveness swells within me, strong and fierce. I want to sneer at that burgundy-haired interloper that can keep her flirty eyes to herself, for this is mine.

She is mine.

And I’m not sharing.

She says my name, once, in her quiet voice. Nothing else, but it is still a question. I come to myself enough to realize that I have my arms propped on either side of her head now, leaning in, leaning down, far closer than I should and for no reason I can really give.

It doesn’t matter.

She smiles at me, that tiny but sweet smile of hers, and suddenly there is acceptance. My heart nearly pounds out of my chest to see it.

I don’t know what I’m doing anymore, I don’t know anything at all, but when she shifts slightly to face me better and those small but oh so very lethal hands move to slide up my bare arms something in me snaps, and I can feel it go almost as if it was a physical thing.

Oh no, I’m leaning down that final little bit of space towards her, and I can’t be, but oh god I am, and she is letting me...

Oh.

Soft.

Her lips are so soft.

Softer than the red silk sheets on my bed, our bed, and their touch sweeter than anything I could have imagined. She moves with me and I should break away, back away, but I can’t, I want more. So much more.

She is warm, so warm, and it is as if I have been frozen forever and now try to burrow into her skin or at least as close as I possibly can. I taste her heartbeat with my lips while a tiny noise she makes tickle my ear with her breath, and my hands are everywhere.

There are reasons why I shouldn’t do this. I know there are, but I can’t think of a single one now. A last confused thought of black thread and red sheets cross my mind before being washed away by her embrace.

Her lips part for me and it feels like heaven to this tainted sinner. I lose myself in her and in reward feel more complete than I ever have. I can’t stop but she is just as eager, welcoming my touch.

The world outside melts away, leaving only us in the moonlight. Nothing else matters.

This is right. This is how it should be. And I am finally beginning to understand.

Tomorrow I will try to find the words to tell her, for tonight though... we are both occupied with other things.