And I know,
there's something beautiful within my grasp,
And I know,
I think I'm satisfied but it won't last
And I know,
to lace my boots up and pick my path,
I'll find another rainstorm to fill my glass

-- mac lethal




She sat across from him with the letter resting in her open palms. He was watching the letter more than he was watching her, tense with anxiety. He imagined that the paper was a butterfly in her hands: the simplest movement could crush it without a second thought and brush it to one side, forgotten in a moment's breath. When she looked up at him with those doe brown eyes, he was sure he could feel his heart simply crushed by the weight of them.

He felt his confidence melting. "It's -- it's all there," he began, almost desperately. "He's alive, Julia. I don't know where he ended up -- but he's alive. I can find him, I can bring him back ag--"

"How can you bring him back?" Her eyes were as challenging as her words. "Can you bring back Tohias?"

Her blow wasn't physical, but it hurt just as harshly. "No." His voice was subdued; he was beaten. "No, I can't."

"No, you can't," she confirmed, with a determined disappointment. "You can't bring back me. You can't bring back Ana -- and you can't bring back Donato either. I am happy he is alive. But I have seen you.. and I am afraid to see what kind of man he has become."

He clenched his fist, caught somewhere between disgust and depression. "He's still our brother, Julia. I came, and I found you."

Those eyes, her eyes which he feared and loved, churned with an emotion that he couldn't place -- something too close to pity. "Yes. You found me, and I wish you hadn't, because I don't know what is better any more. I don't know what's good for me, or my family -- a brother who is dead, who I can tell her how kind he was as a child, and how he loved and protected me.. or a man who is dark, who kills to live, and calls himself Sin. Just a shell of someone else pretending to be a boy I loved."

Tohias had no words. And as he quietly rose to exit his sister's home, he felt his heart break when he heard the crumple of paper beneath her fingers.




Sin opened his eyes; the dream was fast fading, but the wounds felt fresh again. It wasn't the first time that memory had plagued him -- it wouldn't be the last. Pale moonlight sifted through the unfamiliar windows and he exhaled a breath, the room cold enough to see it condense in the air before dispersing. Without Salvador or Nineveh, the inn's room seemed intolerably larger than he liked, the bed colder than he preferred; with an irritated noise, he rolled up to a sitting position and wiped the cold sweat off his chest.

Cold air pooled through the open windows as the sinner pushed himself out of bed. The night was still young, and there would be no rest for him tonight. He hastily shrugged on what clothes were near the bed, leaving his trench coat behind as he drifted out of the rented room and made for the remaining tendrils of evening to have a cigarette and control his thoughts.

The cigarette hadn't helped his thoughts any; it only left the scent of cloves stuck to his skin along with the snowflakes that refused to melt on his too-cold flesh. Muddy gray eyes swept across the huddled form of the girl as he stepped back inside and an odd wave of pity hit him like a cold wind. Sin's trench coat, heavy and filled to the brim with a variety of unspoken needs and precautions, was at least warm; normally he'd caution against wearing it, but this time his tongue was mute to the fact.


"You too, huh?" He murmured, too lazy to bar his accent from his speech. The Spaniard watched the way she moved by default, perhaps curious about the odd tentative mannerisms she seemed to have -- before he abruptly found arms around himself. With the girl tight against him, she likely missed the surprised jerked of eyebrows before his arms wrapped around her. His skin was cool to the touch, but comfort came with contact all the same.


"Makes two of us." Sinjin lingered close by when the girl stepped back, gray eyes falling to the letter he was given earlier that evening. It wasn't the strangest circumstance of business he received -- although Sin could barely register it as 'business' since he didn't ask for any compensation.


He observed her for another moment, his head canted to one side and his eyes heavy with thought, before he slipped aside and went to shut the window. "So, Spider," he began as the wind receded and he closed the window, drawing the blinds. "Tell me about yourself."


His eyes briefly swung back toward her, settling for a moment before he went toward the small wood stove that heated the room, which he began to stock with wood. The chill might be fine and well with the sinner, but he might as well accommodate his unexpected company.

He listened in silence, attempting to encourage the tentative flames that were beginning to brew within the stove. For a man who seemed familiar with fire, burn scars pockmarking a good portion of his skin, Sinjin moved with a hesitance of his own around the flames.


"Pin," he finally murmured, repeating the name and dedicating it to memory. He was about to query further when he caught her offering out of the corner of one eye; the Spaniard canted his head in her direction, looking between her and her offering before he turned away to address the flames again. "Keep it." Gideon could lecture him on good business practices later; he wasn't taking a handful of money and a bag of coke from a girl who needed something better.


When the fire burned a little brighter and warmer, Sinjin leaned away again, his crouch crumpling down into a lethargic repose as he basked in the heat like a snake. "Do you deal?" He asked curiously, tipping his chin in gesture toward her little package when he looked back at her again.

The scarwork was intricate, some deliberate, but most obviously received through injury: old burns, starbursts from where bullets met flesh, or where a knife tore through muscle and sinew, leaving a kiss of lighter colored tissue behind. He knew the stories for each and every one, treasured them like a well-taught lesson.


"I'm involved in many things; drugs and their dealings are something I don't delve into. Better left for others." The sun began its slow creep into the sky as he spoke, the first tendrils of muddy light crawling across the floor and towards them; Sinjin paid daylight no mind.


"But when I was younger, I was in a similar position. My father was a courier for the mafia, and there were times where I walked with him. I wouldn't do it again." The Spaniard came onto his own path, his own odd enterprise, and never turned back. He stirred from his thoughts when he heard the familiar shifting of his trench coat, glancing aside at the girl; he accepted the return of his position with a tug of a smile. "It's all right. If you had looked, I would have known." Who knew how, and who knew what was within the coat. Letting it rest on his shoulders for the time being, he further considered the girl and the proper course of action.


"Well," he began with a weighted sigh, "protection isn't a problem. I have more hiding places in Rhy'din than I know what to do with. But I'll have to look further into this.. situation, I think." Muddy gray eyes settled on the girl for the time being. "If you sincerely want to repay the favor, I'm sure I can think of-- something."


He reached into his trench coat, idly pulling free his pack of clove cigarettes and a small metal flask. "What are you good at, Spider?"

"That all depends," he murmured, trailing off with no real answer. He took a moment's breath to light his cigarette, a brief smell of sulfur taking to the air before it was replaced by the milder scent of cloves. He pulled a drag from the cigarette, the herb crackling as he inhaled and Sinjin considered his options.


"Are you human, Spider?" Sin asked, his eyes remaining set on her.

Her answer made a faint curl of a frown trace his mouth, there and gone again; humans were a liability in Sinjin's line of business, if not a liability within Rhy'din as a whole. He rolled that sad fact over in his mind for another moment, tasting the smoke on his tongue while she made her case.


"All right." When he sighed, his breath was laced with smoke. "You'll stick around me for now. You can come along on some of my business affairs, see how I work, and we'll go from there. Sound fair?" He asked, lifting a brow as he returned his eyes to her once again.


Her next question was on the receiving end of a low bark of laughter, hoarse. "Go ahead. Don't need you stinking up the place." His tone was dry enough to be joking as he rose to his feet, trench coat falling off his shoulders to pool oddly on the ground. Something in his pockets moved, but it was brief.

Whether he knew about her emotional state, heard the tears past the white noise of the shower, it was hard to say. When Spider stepped back out, he was pre-occupied with a small leatherbound black notebook, which he tucked away in his trench coat as she spoke, gray sunlight pressing glumly past the shades.


"--hm?" He looked back toward her, one eyebrow raising. In his mind, she was something akin to a young feral horse: easily startled, pawing at the dirt with a perpetual anxiety. "Ready for what?" He asked and suddenly grinned.


"I don't know about you, but I haven't slept all damn night and I plan on catching up with it." The sinner, always content to waste daylight, began creeping back towards the bed, though he sent the girl a rakish grin over his shoulder. "You can stay here and try to grab a few hours of sleep, or you can hang around the area as long as you keep your damned neck out of trouble. Our business begins tonight." The Spaniard was not a daylight creature, after all.


Pausing, he reached down to snag the dress slacks that were on the floor, digging through his pockets as he spoke. "Here," he murmured. "If you run into any trouble, use this." Sin offered his hand toward her, fingers curled around something that looked distinctly unlike a weapon. It looked like a small zippo lighter, its plain silver exterior dulled by lack of care. "Just flick the gear lie you're lighting it -- but don't use it unless you need it."


And once she took it, the sinner -- quite simply -- was collapsing across the bed to sprawl out like a spoiled feline without further explanation of the item or its abilities. "Just be back here by midnight," he informed her, words partially muted by pillows.

Stepping over to him she took the silvery item and held it up, turning it over and over, looking for anything that denoted it as more than a simple lighter.

"I'm gonna take a walk..", she said distractedly, still trying to figure the thing out, before tucking it to join the coke in her pocket.

She smiled as he fell over the bed, clearly exhausted, and the expression on his face and the manner with which he fell, like a dead snake on its last slither, made her laugh out loud. With a shake of her head and a fading grin she turned and wandered back to the bathroom to tie the thin long sleeved shirt around her waist and twist her hair loosely into a ponytail. Closing the door with a passing glance at the mirror, she frowned; she looked dead tired herself.

"I'll be back soon, Sinjin", she said quietly, though she assumed he was passed out.

As she headed for the door she stopped, looked back and found a smile, creeping across to pull the quilt over him. She stood there a moment, deciding whether he was slumbering or not, watching his face as it flinched or rested still in the gray dense dark, and then glanced up to the blinds, and the unraveling morning just peeking through.

With a lean over, she left a light kiss on his cheek, and then shuffled for the trench and pulled it on hoping he wouldn't mind if she wore it for her walk. And so in that jingle and jangle she slipped out the door.

"Be back soon, I'll be back soon", she whispered, and the door clicked.