Desire's Daughter Ch 2

[warmskies]

"So they're like Romario?" Tsuna asks her quietly, watching as Ken carefully digs through every little inch and cranny of his home. The blond had acquiesced to pants and little else, save for the cloak of fur that's draped over his shoulders. Chikusa isn't far off, properly clothed along with his own cloak of dark feathers, and he too watches his partner with those dark eyes of his. One would think that a raven would be more curious, but they're intelligent creatures, too. There's no need for him to move even an inch so long as Ken is within his sight, digging through containers and moving things off of shelves.

Chrome considers his words carefully, leaning against Tsuna ever so slightly with her fingers wrapped around a small clay cup. "I suppose so," she says, only very faintly familiar with the horse. Those are the creatures of Dino's domain, apparently, and Romario the exemplar of them all. All she knows of him is what he looks like, with the rest told to her through Tsuna. "Did he find Romario and make him like he is, too?"

Across the room, Ken takes a small pouch and brings it close to his nose. A couple of sniffs, and he recoils, making a face, and tosses it to the side. Tsuna sighs quietly. By the time the wolf is done investigating everything, his home will no doubt be a mess. Chrome isn't particularly apologetic about it. Isn't it only in an animal's nature to explore? "I don't know," Tsuna admits, not bothering to clean up while Ken is still searching about. "He might have done it all on his own, just from being with Dino. I didn't know we could do it on our own with animals."

"They're not animals."

Pausing, Tsuna blinks at her, befuddled. "Huh?"

Chrome stares back at him. "They're not animals," she repeats carefully. "They're mine."

"...Oh." Perhaps it doesn't make complete sense to him. Chrome feels that's probably true, considering the way his brows furrow together and his wide eyes blink at her. However, it's the plain and simple truth of it. Chikusa and Ken are hers, before anything else. They were hers even before her and Tsuna stepped into that forest and laid eyes upon them. Hibari, she thinks, would perhaps understand what she meant. Tsuna... doesn't have it so easily, although by no fault of his own.

That's alright. So abruptly as to startle him, she gets up suddenly to her feet, and the water in her cup sloshes dangerously close to the edge. "Chikusa," she says quietly, and both raven and wolf look over to her. "Ken. Let's go." Immediately, Ken drops the cup that was in his hand, although fortunately it only has an inch or two to go. By the time the wolf lopes his way to her side, Chikusa is still getting up to his feet and stands with a faint sway. He doesn't like being tall, she thinks as he draws himself into a truly atrocious slouch like none other she's ever seen before. It makes sense, in more way than one. At his core, he's a bird. This is a little odd for him, although he walks better than Ken does, the latter always only a slight nudge from going on all fours again. With both of them by her side, she wraps her fingers around their arms and glances back over at Tsuna. "Ah.... Bye." And she vanishes, straight to her home.

It's a lonely, dark place, her little realm. Carved into the side of a harsh cliff face of pure rock, it looks out to a sea that's far too calm, and its depths twine deep into earth. Chrome has never looked out to see where the rest of the land leads, if it leads anywhere at all. She's content as she is, looking out to the ocean and where her many nets are spread out against its surface. There, the various pearls rest in their connected strings, not even bobbing. How could they, with nothing to disturb the water? It's not homey, like Tsuna's is, but it's home.

Used to landscapes just as barren in the cold of winter, neither Ken or Chikusa seem particularly bothered. In fact, the former detaches immediately from her side to crouch at the edge of the platform where the water dwells only a few inches below it. "Aaaah, there's so many!" Without any sense of propriety, he reaches down to flick the tips of his fingers through the water's surface. Ripples spread out, a sight that seems so strange on what was formerly so motionless, and Chrome watches the pearls ride the little waves. Even in the wake of such disturbance, they stay afloat. She could berate him for touching something so valuable, sure, but she doesn't. It's not harming anyone or anything.

Instead, she turns her eyes upwards to watch Chikusa. Instead of looking outward onto the endless expanse of water or the mist which rests upon it far out enough, he's turned to look further back into where the cave closes in and goes ever further downward. It's a narrow passageway, and so dark that it almost doesn't seem real where its entrance starts. One wouldn't assume that a bird would have an interest in such things, but Chikusa continues to play with that which should otherwise define him. "Where does that go?"

Chrome stares at it for a long quiet moment. "To dark places," she says at last, and doesn't explain further. Chikusa in turn asks no more questions. Then again, with Ken suddenly bounding back to join them, it's not as if he really gets a chance to.

"A nest!" he barks, his fists curled up. "You dumb bird, this place doesn't have a tree for you to make a nest!"

A certain sort of opaqueness glazes over Chikusa's eyes. It's the kind that comes about with exasperation, and having to answer a question that isn't worth even half of the energy it would take to answer it. Chikusa does anyway. "Only recent parents or young need nests, you dumb wolf... I'm not either of those."

"Everyone needs a den!" Ken stomps his foot on the ground, teeth bared in his aggravation and practically bristling despite the fact that the only hair which can manage so well is the hair on his head. "Say I'm right, Chrome!"

"Ah..." When she'd first taken both of them, Chrome isn't entirely sure what she was expecting, or if she was expecting anything at all. She'd touched both raven and wolf because something about them had touched her, first. There'd been no real planning involved at any step in the whole thing. Still, she wasn't expecting this, a pair looking at her in expectation to settle a silly argument. Honestly, it's not a position she'd ever expected to be in. Fingers curling around one another, she shifts awkwardly as she looks from wolf to raven. What is she supposed to say here? "Do... you want this to be more like a den?" It fits partially, at least, being a cave and mostly shielded from the elements, although no such thing really exists here near her realm.

Chikusa blinks slowly, tilting his head with about as much speed to the side. "...He'll complain if there isn't much." After a little more consideration, he gives something of a one shouldered shrug. "And.... I guess it won't be particularly comfortable sitting around here..." Besides him, Ken about wiggles his whole body in lieu of a tail, and grins victoriously.

Well, that solves that, then. Now there's only one more question that needs to be asked. "Then... Do you want to make one like ravens and wolves do... or like humans do?" Pointedly, she looks down at their bodies, mostly human save for the furs or feathers that they now wear as clothing instead of as bodily a part of them.

That actually has both of them pause, blinking at the proposition. Immediately, without even needing to think about it, Ken turns to look at Chikusa. "Have you ever been in a human den?" he asks, more curious than accusing.

"....I've always lived in the forest with you..." Chikusa raises an eyebrow. "I've only seen what they look like from the outside..."

Maybe that was a useless question, then, with both of them still seeing the world with such new eyes. At least the solution is easy. "Then... You can both come with me." Her fingers rub at the strings inbetween the pearls she wears, practically a cloak of her own, although nothing like what a normal human wears, or what the pair before her do. "I still have to do so much..." She's still always doing so much. Humans are fragile, and many. That's not even going into the rest of life which exists in the world. Sometimes, she wonders how the other gods can do it, and if it's easier to be a god of humans such as Tsuna , or a god of the wilds as Hibari.

Maybe that's her problem, in the end.

Fussing about her problems is something that will have to wait for another day. Today is the day that Ken perks up, excited, and even Chikusa gains a little bit of interest in his dull eyes. "Let's go already!" Ken says, grabbing her arm and not needing to think twice about it. That latter part is for Chikusa to do, but even he says nothing in protest. All he does is stick close to Ken, following him and thus Chrome by extension as they return to the world of mortal lives.

It's a world both of them should be more than familiar with. Chrome can understand herself, a young god newly born into the world, but surely Chikusa and Ken would be different. At least, that's what she assumes up until they step into the first human village and Ken zooms off immediately. No one sees him, when he's with her. Chrome realizes that fairly quickly, following after him helplessly to get him to stop from making off with something, or shoving over a small child, or any number of things a wolf might not realize he's not supposed to do. She's persuading him from shoving his nose up against a small baby held in his mother's grasp when she realizes that Chikusa is now out of her sight.

Needless to say, it takes the better part of the afternoon wrangling both of them into proper behavior, although fortunately Chikusa is too lazy for most troublemaking.

"Sorry," she says for lack of anything better to say, watching Ken pace impatient circles around Chikusa in the center of the little settlement. Every few seconds, he pauses as some other new thing catches his attention, and his stare is almost longing as he watches the person or animal or thing pass him by.

Ken doesn't respond, only whines, and it's Chikusa who gives a long sigh. He's apparently resigned himself to being the metaphorical lease; his hand reaches out to snag the back of Ken's fur cloak whenever the blond starts to wander too far. "He's always like this," Chikusa mutters, fingers slipping out of warm fur. "This is why we've never been able to sneak into human groups before."

A certain level of accusation is layered over his words, and Ken notices immediately. Even while Chrome is staring at them, Ken whirls around to glower at his partner. "Everyone else always said it was a bad idea!" he says loudly, fists curled at his sides. "Don't blame it on me!"

"...I could've gone into these places before. I'm subtle."

"I can be subtle!"

"No you can't."

"Yes I can!"

"Um," Chrome says, interjecting more because it seems like something she should do than anything else. "It's alright to be curious... but do you remember why we're here?" Judging by the way Ken freezes up, looking aggravated and panicked all at once, she's certain he doesn't. Chikusa, if she had to guess, probably does, but there's no telling when she looks at his face and finds bird blankness instead. He did wander off and steal a bunch of beads for reasons she's not entirely sure she understands... Let alone if he understands it himself. Birds are strange, Chrome decides. "We've been taking too long," she adds after a few moments of awkward silence, where Ken is clearly trying to come up with an excuse for himself and Chikusa is staunchly silent.

"I was going to come back," Ken whines at her back as he follows along, his face not sure if it wants to crumple into a scowl or a look of despair. If he still had his tail, it's doubtful it would know what position to take either. "I was only looking!"

Chikusa's voice slips in from the back. "He would have stolen a baby."

"Shut up you stupid bird-brain!"

Staying out of this particular argument seems like the wisest course for now, at least until Chrome can really figure out if Ken would have stolen a baby out of sheer curiosity , accidentally bit it, or simply left snot all over it from how much he would be sniffing. Instead, she focuses on what's ahead of her: a small building where smoke curls lazily from a hole within its roof. When she pauses by its entrance, she takes in the charms which have been left there to hang. One is a rough wooden carving of a fire, no doubt mean to feed the tiny little torch of a shrine that she knows must be nearby. Tangled up around it is a delicate little net, something a doll would use rather than any real person. There's no god of health, not yet. There's only Tsuna, burdened so much by the weaknesses of people and held up by their strengths, and herself. Chrome isn't a god of that sort. Sometimes, looking at such a charm, she half wonders if it's more meant to ward her away or curry her favor than any belief that she will bring any kindness.

In that aspect, they're wrong on both accounts. The charms, whatever their purpose, do nothing... and she does carry with her kindness. It's simply not the kind that mortal people want.

At least the building smells nice when she enters into it, full of a herbal scent to mask any signs of sickness, injury, or even death. It's a common thing, she's noticed. So long as the settlement is near enough such plants, they try to hide the ugliness of living with plants. Sometimes they're there for their beauty, but often times it's for this sort of purpose. Behind her, a sneeze knocks her out of her thoughts. Blinking, she looks over her shoulder and is greeted by the sight of Ken furiously shaking his head and rubbing at his nose. "There's too much plants in here," he grumbles, making a face. "What are they trying to do in here?"

Somehow, she has a feeling that explaining the whole thing in depth would go over Ken's head, at worst, or he'd merely address it as stupid, if he did understand enough of it. With her hands curled up at her chest, Chrome tries for the most simplistic option she has available. "It.... makes mortals feel better, when they're sick or hurting."

Taking another deep inhale through his nose and sneezing again for his trouble, Ken crumples up his nose in distaste. "If we help you with this, does that mean we're going to have to deal with this sort of thing all the time?" he asks, sticking out his tongue. She nods. Ken whines some more. From behind him, Chikusa heaves out a sigh.

"It doesn't bug me at all..."

"Then you do it!"

"I guess someone is going to have to..." Shoving past Ken and ignoring his almost literal bark of annoyance, Chikusa slouches further into the abode. "Which one is it....?" It's fitting that he'd want to get things done with as soon as possible, she supposes, considering that more effort is required the longer this goes on. With both of their attention on her again, Chrome turns away from them and steps towards one cot in particular. The person on it is a woman, one ankle bandaged and her skin having gone pale from sweat and pain. Hair sticks to her neck and face, a mess from having been ignored in attempts to help her. Chrome is no healer, not a person wise in how to mend a body, but she recognizes that which inflicts death easily enough. The wounds laying behind those bandages aren't the dangerous thing which ails her. That would be the venom which entered that way, and which fills her body even now. She's shivering, faint of breath, and Chrome already knows that her heart is wearing itself out into pieces. The only thing keeping her left in the world is Chrome's own time in getting to her. That's all it will take.

What should she say? Should she say anything? Chrome decides otherwise as she stops before the cot. Slowly, she crouches down for easier reach, and takes a quiet breath. Chikusa and Ken are already watching her so intently; she can feel their gazes on her. There's no need to say anything. All she does, as she's done so many times before, is to reach over to press her fingertips to the woman's lips, and pluck out a soft blue pearl that shimmers in the dim light that filters in from the building's opening.

The woman takes a final breath, rattling and soft, before going still.

"That's it?" Ken asks after a beat of silence.

Getting up to her feet, Chrome slips the pearl onto one of the many threads of her net. "That's it," she says quietly, watching as the pearl phases through thread and rests until it's suspended right in the middle.

"So simple that even you can't mess it up," Chikusa says, and only wobbles a little when Ken kicks his thigh.

Turning back to her, Ken wraps his fingers around one of her arms and presses close. "Let me do the next one!" he says roughly, fired up by something to prove. Well, it's not as if she wants to protest. If they can do this, too, then it'll make things easier. Even she has to admit that this is depressing work. So she takes the two of them away from that village, before the local healer can discover the trace of them, and to elsewhere. To a field, wide and dull green, where the few bodies littered in the grass are more than visible with how they disrupt the monotony. Two different groups watch each other warily from opposite sides, the corpses present serving as warning for how bad this can get, and Chrome pays no mind to them. It doesn't matter if this event was born from a valid reason, from self defense, from senseless murder, from an accident- it's all the same to her.

People are dead. Thus, she's here.

Well, her and Chikusa and Ken, the last of which immediately bolts out into the field with reckless abandon. No doubt it would be more troublesome if anyone could see the wild haired boy with his cloak of wolf fur and his wide fanged smile. Chrome hurries after, suddenly feeling a small bubble of concern. Behind her, Chikusa takes his time. She's not sure if it's because he's unconcerned, or doesn't have the energy for that kind of feeling. As long as he's not causing any undue trouble, it doesn't really matter to her. Instead, Chrome slows down to stand besides Ken as he crouches down on all fours to the first body in the grass. An arrow has pierced through his torso neatly, blood blossoming out against cloth and sinking deep into the dirt beneath his body. He's right there before her, ready to be taken away. All he needs is a little help to be taken from the wet, shuddering breaths that leave his lips.

Ken has fingers. He could do exactly as she did. Yet even as Chrome is standing there, watching him, he ducks his head with the hood falling over and past blond hair, and there's a wolf sticking what almost looks like his entire muzzle into the man's mouth.

Very quietly, she makes a small distressed noise. Something that almost sounds like a breath of a laugh flutters out from Chikusa's throat.

Ears perking up, Ken pulls his head away with a small indigo pearl held awkwardly inbetween his teeth. "What?" he asks, able to speak with a mouth entirely unrelated to the one holding the pearl. "Didn't I do it right?"

Chrome doesn't say anything, not right away. She keeps her hands curled up close to her chest, looking helplessly towards Chikusa in silence. When he offers nothing besides his own dull stare right back, she glances back down to Ken. "You.... did," she admits, finally, because it's not wrong. He was able to draw out a person's soul. That's really all that matters. Carefully, she crouches down and presses her fingertips past the wolf's lips where they push against hard and wet teeth. The pearl is slippery in her hand but she doesn't lose her grip on it. She merely draws it free, and inspects it where it looks so small in her palm. Even at the slight distance, it smells of blood.

When Chikusa does it, despite his differences to Ken, he does it in very much the same way. All it takes is a flurry of feathers, his head pulled upwards and the cloak fluttering around his legs, and there's a raven where a tall man used to be. All that's different is how he uses a beak instead of a muzzle and fangs. "Why do you do that?" she asks, watching while the raven rolls the pearl in his mouth and Ken crouches down besides him with a squint. "You have fingers, now..."

Ken blinks up at her, tongue poking out from the corner of his mouth. "You said it was important," he responds, huffy in his worried defensiveness. "It's easier for me to use my mouth.... Or at least that's how I know best." Pausing, he goes back to squinting at Chikusa. "I'm not sure what this birdbrain goes with."

The raven shifts subtly from foot to foot, and keeps the glimmering red pearl held firmly in his beak. "Beaks are more reliable than fingers," he answers quietly. "Things are always slipping in fingers. I don't trust them."

Well. She suppose it makes a sort of logic, one she can't truly refuse. So Chrome says nothing more on it. Instead, she leaves them be, glad for the extra bodies in her work. Time passes quickly with Ken and Chikusa at her side, bringing home with them more than pearls. Ken brings the largest things, as a simple habit. Sometimes it's entire animal carcasses, their pearls strung all along his hip, and he practices constantly on how to skin them properly as humans do. Soon, her little cave abode by the sea is no longer so cold, hard, and empty. Instead, furs and leather give it warmth, and make it comfortable for her bare feet to tread. In perfect contrast to his partner, Chikusa has smaller things to offer, so unassuming that Chrome almost doesn't realize that they exist in their home before there's practically a trove gathered. String begins to loop from the walls and ceilings, colorless sometimes, and almost always blue when he bothers, although she notes brilliant cheery yellows on occasion. Little beads can be found in more variety, and just about everywhere, too. It seems as if whenever she moves something, a stray bead or six can be found beneath it. They seem a lot more beautiful looped through the strings, which Chikusa gets to on the days where he has only enough energy for little things like that. Shiny rocks, dried plants, bits and pieces of humanity that have been left abandoned or forgotten.... Chikusa fills up their home with all sorts of carefully organized clutter.

The water begins to be filled up too, pearls soon masking the sight of her ocean from view.

"It looks like an ocean of pearls instead of an ocean of water," Ken mutters, squinting out to the horizon. Before him, Chrome stays kneeling, her fingers digging into her clothing gently. "What do we do with all of them?"

A good question: what do they do with all of them? While her ocean may seem endless, Chrome herself is merely a god. She has her limits, however greater they may be than those of mortals. If she were an Arcobaleno, perhaps this would be a different story, and she wouldn't have to worry about anything at all... But that is her parent, that is Reborn and any of the others. To do right by the many souls which lay before her...

There is a solution, she thinks, although she's admittedly not sure how much of one. It's in the hands of someone else, after all. Still, it's all she can think of with the pearls cluttering together so thickly. Letting out a slow breath, she gets up to her feet, her hand brushing against Ken's. Ignoring the way he jolts a little, or how his face flushes faintly pink, she nods to him. "I'm.... going to see someone, okay, Ken?" From a small cluttered corner of the cave, surrounded by strings heavy with glittering beads and soft warm furs, Chikusa raises his head and Chrome nods to him too. For the past hour or so, he's been fiddling with a slicker hide than most, and she can only wonder what he's been planning to do with it. "You and Chikusa... keep working, alright? I'll be back soon." At least, she doesn't plan otherwise. Her only problem... is that she's not quite sure where to start looking.

At first, for lack of any better ideas, she goes to his realm and waits things out, patiently, for a little while. Surely, her very presence would let him know that there is a visitor searching for him. Yet in the end, she waits for quite some time before she gives up, and ventures out elsewhere. Even as she sits and does nothing, she can feel her realm, her self, filling up as if being slowly drowned. The problem with her quarry is that he is everywhere, and nowhere at the same time. He's in so many little things which keeps the world turning, and a great few bigger ones too. To wander would get her nothing at all but what else can she do? Nothing.

So she keeps searching, lost but not aimless.

In the end, where she finds him... It's almost laughable how obvious it should have been from the start. Clouds thicker than sun's light and darker than moonless nights fill the sky. Vicious wind whips her hair around her. Wherever she steps, her feet sink into earth that's become wet and bloated from rain. All it takes is a turn of her head, fingers raking into her hair to push it away from her face, and she sees him.

Dark, dark eyes crinkle in the way he smiles, and the world's catalysts offers her a hand up to the rocks he's comfortably seated on. "So you're Mammon's daughter, then, are you?" he asks, pleasant enough.

Calluses are all over the palm she accepts, and Chrome grunts as she hauls herself up. The rocks are sharp, slippery, and certainly not comfortable. That's saying something, considering her own home and how it was before Chikusa and Ken decided to decorate it. "And you're Catalyst," she says quietly, curling her fingers down against the rocks in case she threatens to fall off.

"Is that the only way Mammon introduced me?" Offense is utterly absent from his tone. Instead, he laughs softly, a sound that somehow makes its way past the crash of thunder. "They continue to not change at all. You may call me Fon, instead." Folding his hands together onto one knee, he continues to smile down at her. "But pleasant introductions aren't the only reason that you came to find me, are they?"

Of course he would know. Mammon can follow the threads of desire, feel their tugs. So, too, must he sense the trembling sensation of change that's close to occurring. There's no point in lying most of the time, but that's especially true when someone already knows the truth. "I want to change," she tells him simply, no dancing around the bush. "As death is now... There's not enough room. I can't do anything more as I am... even with Ken and Chikusa's help. So..."

"Do you think I could help?" he asks, amused as he rests his chin upon one hand. Around him, the wind plays with his long black braid. "Mammon doesn't like me enough as it is. I think this would only make things worse."

Pausing, Chrome shifts one hand to her lap where it kneads awkwardly at her clothing. "Isn't," she says, starting a sentence before stopping with an awkward tilt of her head. It takes a moment before she tries again. "Isn't.... that what you want anyway?"

Somehow, against all the clanging thunder and rattling wind, a beat of silence falls between them before Fon starts to laugh, ducking his face into his hand. "Is that what I want?" he asks, genuinely delighted, and Chrome feels her own face heating up for reasons she can't entirely articulate.

"I don't know," she murmurs, glancing away to the view stretched out before them. At the heights of a mountain, the world seems all the smaller than it normally does. "But... you want their attention, I think." This would be something that her parent would know better than anyone else. Chrome isn't Mammon, however. She isn't pure Desire. She's only an offshoot of it, born from a different kind of want from a different kind of source. Still, she knows it when she sees it, and she sees it coiled around Fon and through the braids of his hair.

At least he doesn't seem offended. Shifting his face only enough so that he can glance at her from beneath his bangs, his smile curves out from behind his palm. "You're as forthright as they are," he chuckles. "That is one of their best qualities. Well, I'll gladly help the child of a friend, in this case." Slowly, in no particular rush despite what his entire self might make people believe, he reaches over to lightly touch the skin directly underneath her right eye. "I can't help you, Chrome. Not directly. If you want to change what you and your domain are as they are... then you'll have to use your own body for it. This is something only you can do, after all. Try to remember that."

Ignoring the light touch against her cheek, Chrome blinks at him. "Do you mean metaphorically...?"

All that answers her is a crack of lightning, and the following roar of thunder, both which blind and deafen her respectively. When her vision clears, the rock besides her is completely empty save for its slick covering of rain. Pursing her lips together, Chrome furrows her brows and glances upwards towards the sky that's still so heavy and tumultuous with the current raging storm.

"I think," she informs it quietly, "that I understand why Mammon doesn't like you very much." Somehow, the wind flowing against the rocks and through the trees almost sounds like laughter.

Regardless, it's clear that she'll receive no further information from Fon. With the words resting in her head, waiting to blossom into an idea, she returns to her dwelling by its endless sea and harvest of pearls. There's no reason to hide what she's been told from Chikusa and Ken, so she tells them plainly what Fon had said. Afterwards, there's a beat of silence, with Ken resting his arms and head against her knees and Chikusa sprawled crosslegged besides him.

"So," Chikusa says fist, the word leaving his mouth with careful slowness. "Did he mean metaphorically...?"

Ken blows his tongue, the crude and rough sound ruining whatever somberness had been within the cave to start with. "He probably meant literally!" Ken announces, so certain in his decisions. Perhaps, to him, it really is clear cut, and they're the only things making it so complicated. "But how do you even do that? Do you just..." Frowning, he looks back over his shoulder to where the pearls bob, shimmering and myriad, in the sea. "...lay in the water?"

Heaving out a much put upon sigh, Chikusa nudges the wolf with one foot. "Ken... That's stupid."

Chrome doesn't say anything to agree with him. Instead, she follows to where Ken's gaze had been before he'd torn it away to bare his teeth at Chikusa. She, too, stares out into the long sea of pearls that is most of her domain. Perhaps he's not wrong, although she cannot give up her entire body without giving up her entire sense of self.

...But she can give up other things.

Carefully, she rises up to her feet from the pile of furs that she had been lounging on, and Ken shifts off of her legs without needing to be told. There are many things in her abode, thanks to Chikusa's bird-like fascination with whatever has been forgotten or left behind. Now, it's helpful. Her bare feet step carefully around scattered beads, and avoid a long strand of rough rope. Her eyes are on a particular gathering of items, organized so carefully in a naturally made shelf in the rock walls. There, bones lie there all neatly lined up in rows after rows. It's never been a particular statement towards her, Chrome knows that. Chikusa is simply being what he is whenever he brings home a cracked off rib or picked clean skull. No matter what human form he takes, a raven's soul is what waits in him, resting in place of his heart. Standing on the tips of her toes, Chrome peruses the selection carefully for something in particular. She has no interest for long blunt femurs, or dull teeth. Instead, after a few moments of careful thought, she reaches up to slide her fingers around a long claw with a curved point meant for digging into flesh so neatly. When she runs her skin along its underside, waiting sharpness tells her that it has sliced through flesh just as easily. It's exactly what she's looking for.

Their eyes follow her carefully as she turns away from the collection with claw in hand and walks over to the edge where water meets stone, her footsteps echoing throughout their home. When they stop, she's stopped, and draws herself carefully down to the ground. "Ken," she says quietly, her voice an echo in a cave. "Chikusa." There's no need to say anything else. Ken's own bare feet slap quickly against the stone, settling on her left side with no further questioning, and he leans around her curiously with his tongue still sticking out from his mouth. Chikusa is a softer presence, barely noticeable in the length of time it takes for him to go from the furs to her right side. With both of them besides her, Chrome reaches up and begins to slide the clothing from her shoulders, down her chest.

Nudity has meant nothing to her, ever since she was first brought into existence. While her parent's shadowy and billowing garb would make others think otherwise, Chrome knows them to be much the same. There is nothing innately desirable about a body in its entirety, in plain view with nothing to hide it. Ravens and wolves should be very much the same, having even less desires for clothing than even the most relaxed humans would do. Chikusa sticks to that view easily. As Chrome disrobes, her clothing pooling around her waist, he watches her hands more than anything and spares no attention to her bare chest. At least, he spares none than what his eyes give him automatically. So it takes her a moment, with one half acting like she would expect, to notice that Ken isn't reacting nearly as smoothly. Pausing with one arm out of a sleeve that's now laying limply at her side, Chrome blinks at him and watches. Ken isn't very subtle, after all. Now that she's properly paying attention, it's easy to see the way he's fidgeting with his eyes flicking to her and then away, only to come back again to repeat the process.

"...Ken?" At the sound of her voice, he gives a jolt. "Are you alright...?"

"Yes!" he says, far too loudly, his face far too pink considering he's done very little at all in the last half hour.

For some reason, Chrome isn't convinced at all. Chikusa clearly isn't either, considering how he deadpans, "Just say it's your instincts at work, Ken."

"Shut up, shut up, shut up!" Jerking upright so hard that he threatens to fall into the water, Ken points an accusing finger at his partner, before swinging it down towards Chrome herself. "Just do whatever it is you were going to do, or say, or whatever it is!"

Chrome ducks her head and, over her, she hears Chikuksa let out a long sigh. Still, Ken's right. She can't let herself get distracted. Focusing on the claw in her hand, Chrome turns it over and over for a moment. She's not sure if this will work... but she has to try. She has to follow her own idea of what the answer could be to Fon's cryptic advice. Carefully, she presses her free hand to her middle and stretches out her fingers, smoothing out her skin where it bunches up loosely. When she slides the tip of the claw into her flesh, blood welling up to drip down, a soft hiss slips out of Chikusa's mouth. Ken is a lot more verbal, his hand going to her shoulder before stuttering off.

"Hey-!" The heat of him presses up against her arm, voice full of worry. "What are you doing!?"

She doesn't offer an answer for him, not immediately. Instead, she continues to carefully drag the claw through skin and muscle, cutting open flesh until she can peel it away. The blood's pouring down her side, staining her pooled together clothes, and she ignores it. Ken bit her, once, in a time that feels a very long time ago. That wound had healed. Why wouldn't it, in the face of an injury that was only mortal in origin? But from herself, her own fingers digging in through it all? That's a different matter... A different source. With her fingers so deep in, blood staining all the way up to her wrist, she carefully feels past bone and veins. It takes a little bit, her fingers fumbling past the hard lump of her heart.... but soon enough she finds what she's looking for. She finds the firm swelling of her lung as she takes in a deep breath, feeling it deflate with her exhale. There... and, following the curve of it, there's the spot that connects to the rest of her.

So deep in concentration, she doesn't notice how closely Chikusa has come until his chest is brushing directly at her back, along the other shoulder Ken hasn't yet claimed. Blinking back into awareness, she looks up at him. An unusual sight is resting upon his face: lips pressed thin, brows drawn low and tight, and something swims behind the normally dull color of his eyes. As much as Chrome doesn't know how to handle it, Chikusa doesn't seem to know what to do about it. Perhaps he sees the strangeness of himself in her own gaze, reflected right back, because the fingers which had been lightly resting against her shoulder remove themselves. Such an odd occurrence is more than enough of a pause for Ken to burst out once more.

"You're hurting yourself!" His nails, near sharpened into the claws of a proper wolf, dig lightly into her other shoulder. Unlike his partner, Ken isn't keen on letting go anytime soon. "I thought you said you couldn't get hurt, so what are you doing now!?"

Looking away from Chikusa, allowing him some amount of respite, Chrome leans closer against Ken's touch. Both of her hands are too occupied to do touch him in any other way, after all. "I said... you couldn't hurt me, Ken," she reminds him quietly, finally recalling to speak her own thoughts instead of assuming anyone else can read her mind. "But.... I can hurt myself. A god can hurt another god."

Ken bares his teeth, as sharp as his claws and able to do a lot more damage. It's a good thing he would never think to hurt her, even if the damage wouldn't be permanent. "Is this because of what that Arcobaleno said!?"

She blinks. "Ken... Didn't you say to take him literally?"

"Not like this!!"

Well, that much is true. His idea of the answer to Fon's advice was definitely quite a bit different. At the very least, it was less gory. Still, she shakes her head. "It'll be alright." Looking down, she ignores the keening noise that rises up out of his chest when she carefully slides the claw further into herself. "In the end... I think it will be fine."

At long last, Chikusa speaks up with that quiet voice of his. "You think."

She can understand his incredulity, she really can. Yet she's too far now. With her hands bumping against one another, Chrome finds the part of her lung that connects to the rest of her body. She takes one last deep breath before exhaling slowly, making less of a target for the makeshift blade inbetween her fingers... and then begins to saw straight through.

It hurts- it actually and truly hurts. A gasp tears its way out of her throat, a lung trembling against her fingers, and she crumples in on herself while more blood gushes out from the wound in her body. The entire front of her stomach is slick with blood now, and red is smeared against her chest where her hands shudder and jerk. Besides her, both Chikusa and Ken grab onto her shoulders, alarm electric through their touch, but she doesn't stop. Instead, trembling so violent as to fall apart, she continues to saw until finally it slices right through. Something in her insides gets snagged, a little sting, and that doesn't matter so much as the part of her body that she can feel fall loose of its moorings. To say that nothing hurts anymore would be a lie, of course, and it would be just as much of one to say it hurts as intensely as it first did. The pain is there.... Only now it is dulled and pulsing. Distant. With great care, she slides the claw out before it can damage anything else in her body that it's not meant to, and her other hand soon follows suit.

Her lung feels... soft in her grip. There's a weight to it, heavy and solid in her hand, just not as solid as she thinks it could be. Softness is the sensation which instead reigns supreme. It feels as though, if she's not careful, her fingers will plunge straight through it. Even stranger... is that she thinks she can feel her fingers, pressing down, and the cool breath of the sea's breeze against an organ that has only ever been nestled safely within her body. The outpouring of blood from her chest slowly shifts into a trickle, and then into an even slower growing stain. Her body will heal, eventually.... but not until it is certain that there is nothing which is meant to return to it.

Around her, Ken's clawed hand slowly edges up from her ribs and up to where the blood dries stickily against her stomach. Comprehension is lacking in the way he stares at her, brows scrunched up and his tongue poking out the corner of his mouth again. Her smile seems to do nothing for his comfort. If anything, it only draws a quiet whine from the depths of his throat before his hand presses against her a little more insistently. Her self-inflicted wound gives a pang as he pushes her, forcing her onto her back where her hair splays out against the rocky floor. For a second, she's unable to understand, and only able to blink up at him... which soon becomes her blinking down at him, watching as he lowers himself closer to the ground on all fours with one arm on her other side. From her wound, the blood begins to slip backwards in accordance with gravity and no incentive to leave her again. Apparently, that's fine for Ken. There's still plenty that is smeared against her chest and gathering in the dip of her stomach. It's there, where the blood has threatened to soak into her clothing, that Ken begins to work.

Where his tongue slides, it tickles, and Chrome's body jolts a little from the electricity of it. A part of her wants to press up onto her elbows to watch him better. The moment she tries? A low growl rumbles out of him, shuddering into her waist, and she relaxes her limbs against stone once more. He eases up where he's pressed against her, a low breath that makes wet skin tremble, and laps up the blood some more. It's truly a thorough cleaning where not an inch of skin is left abandoned. He even makes sure to suck at particularly troublesome spots, mouth wrapped close into her skin, and Chrome shivers, heat fluttering through her stomach. It's slow going as he tends to her, nose nuzzling into skin, and he only pauses when his mouth is near to her chest where the wound still lays jagged and sore. Gently, he flicks his tongue out, running it along the first bit of open wound, and looks up to her. His chin grazes against her with the action, and he's half on top of her now with his chest bumping into her knees. As their eyes lock, he freezes up... and begins to very quickly go red.

Chikusa breaks the silence. "Ken... Seriously?"

Bristling at the none too subtle and exasperated judgment, Ken jolts upwards onto his knees. "That's how you fix injuries!" he yells, voice hitting a little too higher- higher than the ceiling of their home, even. "You have to clean them, to make the blood stop!"

His attempt at defense only earns a dull blink from Chikusa, who reaches up to graze his fingers against the side of his temple and into his hair. "Sure," he says quietly, with the tone of someone who is very plainly not actually agreeing. "Having Chrome lay against the ground while you get on top of her... is helpful."

As if realizing what position he's still technically in, Ken almost trips over himself in his haste to get onto his feet. Down on the ground, Chrome finally pushes herself back up into a sitting position as well. Only then does she realize how close Chikusa had been to the whole thing, directly on her other side where he'd barely had to move so that she could lay down. Somehow, that is what begin to make her blush, too. Even as she's caught up in her own thoughts, Ken is still yelling. "You're making it sound bad!"

"...I don't have to 'make' it sound bad... because it was all on its own."

"Shut up, shut up!"

"No."

A fight is two seconds away from breaking out, at this rate. Carefully placing her still warm lung onto her lap, Chrome glances over the palm of her hand. Blood is still smeared all over it, from the wrist down to where it coats her fingernails. Despite the amount of time Ken had taken into cleaning her, it hasn't dried too much, with plenty of it as wet as when she'd first pulled her hand out. Looking up, she reaches towards Chikusa's face before the two of them can make their silly argument any worse than it already is, and both fall silent at around the same time. Tearing his eyes away from Ken, Chikusa blinks at her quietly even as she leaves red fingerprints along the curve of his jaw. Silence wraps around the two of them for a moment, the air having gone almost completely still. She is the one to break their frozen states, leaving streaks up to the corner of his mouth where her fingers stop. "You can do it too," she tells him quietly, aware of how anxiously Ken's eyes are flicking from him to her in something almost like anticipation.

As he so often does, Chikusa gives no answer immediately, whether through his words or through his expression. All he does is stare back at her, eyes as deep and unreadable as oceans. It takes a good few seconds, perhaps even a full minute, before he finally shifts his head to the side. His lips are so soft and full against her fingertips, able to be dug into even as she does nothing at all. Slowly, he parts them, taking her fingers into his mouth. His tongue curls around the very tips first, cleaning them in a way entirely different than how Ken had done it. Certainly, Ken had attended to her with care. Chrome would never suggest otherwise, knowing that he had gone slow where he usually preferred to rush. Yet, still, Chikusa is different. As much as he's slow, and methodical, he also only uses the very tip of his tongue to flick blood up from against her skin. Centimeter by centimeter, he takes in more of her fingers, until he has nearly the entirety of her first two pressing into his throat. How he doesn't choke on them, Chrome can't say. It's only when he's apparently satisfied with the work he's done that he pulls back, lips pressing down to roll over her knuckles. With her fingers shiny and slick now with his saliva, he tilts his head to the side to focus on other parts. Mouth held wide open, he presses his tongue out to clean her palm in very much the same way as he had done her fingers, only with less of it pressing completely into his mouth. Even his hand rises up, fingers delicately bracing her wrist. How long it takes for him to be satisfied.... It's hard to say. eventually, he finishes, pulling away with his lids half shut and his eyes dark.

Suddenly, his gaze flicks to the side, and Chikusa gives the faintest of snorts. "Ken.... Seriously." Blinking, Chrome turns her head to look at the wolf, and finds him with his legs crossed, his face brilliant red, and his hands shoved inbetween his legs as if to block the sight of something. Well.... 'Something'. She has a pretty good guess of what it is. Being called out only has Ken go all the redder.

"I don't want to hear it from you, you dumb bird! You were just as bad. I saw what you were doing to her fingers!!"

"....Didn't you start it first... with how you were shoving your face against her...?"

With the way the two of them are, Chrome has no doubt that they'll be bickering for ages. That's alright. If anything, that will let her work undisturbed, and Chrome turns her attention away from the petty arguing they're indulging in. Instead, she looks down to the lung on her lap, and readjusts her grip on the claw she'd used to force open her chest. In contrast to that, carving a jagged split down the middle of her lung is far easier. The pangs of pain are a lot more distant than when she had severed the organ from her innards, and her hand doesn't falter in cutting it in two. At some point in the midst of her work, her wolf and raven fall quiet, and their eyes watch her carefully as she severs the last clinging bits of the lung so that it can be separated completely. The claw truly is a bloody mess when she finally allows it to clatter down onto the stone floor. Far more messy than her fingers had been even fresh out of her own body, in fact. Taking each half of her lung in hand, she looks up at them both. "Here," she says quietly, holding the parts of herself up to them. "These are for you."

For a second, neither of them move, and their eyes stay locked on her hands, on what she's offering. It's no surprise to her that Ken is the first to move this time, either, his claws brushing against her skin when he accepts the chunk of flesh. Chikusa soon follows, his touch as faint as a breeze. There's no turning into wolves or ravens this time around. No. They stay as they are before her, human in form even if not in spirit or in mind, as their mouths fold over the soft, pliant meat. They partake of her in the same way as they'd partook of her blood, soft, almost reverent, even when Ken digs his teeth in harder to tear a part of it away. Soon, all that's left of her lung is the smears of blood on their palms, and the fading ache in her chest. Slowly, her skin begins to knit itself back together again, and Chrome has to insert a finger into the hole to keep it from closing completely.

Softly, Ken makes another nose of distress in the back of his throat. "We weren't enough?" Chikusa asks, his eyes dark and the faintest smudges of a frown turning down the corner of his lips. Even for him, quiet and seemingly dull as he is, there is some pride in her raven.

"It was enough for you," she tells him and Ken both. "Now, for the things that happen in the future... You'll be enough for whatever happens." If she's weak, or overworked, or just doesn't want to do anything, her raven's wings can soar even farther and her wolf's fangs can dig all the deeper. But for her? There's more she has to do.

There's an offering she has to make to the source of strength at a time of weakness, when one's own power is not enough.

When she arrives in the gently burning fields of Tsuna's realm, her clothing has been pulled up to her shoulders once again, and her chest aches underneath it from yet another thing that has been plucked from its proper moorings. For Chikusa and Ken, a lung split evenly between them had been the exact right amount to go into their stomachs. Perhaps if she had given them anything more, they would have twisted and changed, no longer themselves at the core. For herself, she needs something far more substantial, far more meaningful. So it's wrapped tightly in a leather bundle, which is tied within another string of leather, and wrapped up tightly. She can only hope that is enough to keep all the blood still drenching it from leaking out.

Perhaps Tsuna smells something in the air, however. He comes out to meet her, halfway through the fields, his burnt hands kneading at the sides of his clothing. "How've you been doing?" he asks after a moment of fumbling the words under his breath. "Chikusa and Ken have been taking care of you alright, haven't they? Or is it the other way around..."

Mouth twisting a little in a way that's not entirely a smile, Chrome ducks her head down. "I think it's probably both," she says. As much as she's been the one to teach them how to function in the world beyond the one they once knew, they've in turn been the ones to keep closer to her, and she thinks of Ken's lips against her stomach or Chikusa's breath at her knuckles. They'd both been so concerned when she had parted her own flesh... so that means that if she's open about what it is that she plans to do, then Tsuna would have a worse reaction. Hadn't her own stoic raven even reached out to her in worry? Chikusa is possibly one of the most quiet types she knows, with his emotions locked away deep within his chest... and Tsuna is the exact opposite. Even before her feet had set foot on soft soil, she'd already come to her decision.

So she doesn't tell him what it is that she holds in her hands. All she does is look up again and say simply, "I have something I'd like you to burn. Please."

His brows finally give into his natural state, crumpling together as he stares at her. "What is it?"

"Something that needs to be burned."

Exasperation, this time, is what washes over his face even as he tries to smile. "That... doesn't tell me what it actually is..."

In a way, Chrome's been hoping that he wouldn't press so much, but maybe that's been foolish of her. Tsuna cares so much, and is so incredulous of things that seem even a little unbelievable to him. It is, perhaps, in his nature to question even when he'd rather turn his back to the matter. Chrome would rather not lie to him, if she could get away with it. Perhaps she doesn't need to. "A sacrifice," she says at last after musing over the problem in her head, under his warm eyes. "I... asked one of the Arcobaleno for advice."

Tsuna interrupts almost immediately, jolting forward with his hands raised up in worry. "It wasn't Reborn, right?"

"No...." She knows better than to deal with Chaos, at least for a matter outside of his self. Still, that has her blink. "Did.... you ask him for advice once?"

His smile is still weighed down with exasperation, but now there's an edge of sheepishness to it as well. "It was how to swim... So he put me in the deep end of a pond..."

"...Did you learn to swim?"

"I mean... I guess..." Shaking his head rapidly, messy hair flopping all over the place, he leans in closer. His hands are still as scarred and warm as ever when he lays them atop hers and the parcel she carries. "Anyway, that's not important. What did you need advice about?"

"...The souls of everything.... There's too many of them." Her thumb worries at the twine which wraps her package so securely. "My realm can't hold all of them.... So I have to make it a little stronger... Somehow. I asked Fon, and he said this is what I should do." At least, his words taken literally are what she thinks she's to do, and she can only hope that they have been heard the right way. "So..... Burn it, please."

As her fingers worry over leather and twine, Tsuna's own worry over her hands in turn. "I mean," he says after a moment, uncertain and small before her, "I can try. But, I mean, are you sure it's just a sacrifice that will work?"

No, not just a sacrifice... One of the most important kinds. If she tells him that, he'll definitely say no, however. "Let's try anyway," she says quietly. "If only to see." Perhaps that is enough to convince him in the end, her own desperate attempts, and Tsuna bites at his own lip. It takes him a second before his fingers slip under hers, wrapping around the small, soft object that's only as large as one of her small fists. It's not much, and yet the most important kind of thing.

"You'll want to stand back a little bit," he warns, taking a few steps away himself. "I mean... Just in case." Born of fire, born of water, the two of them could truly hurt one another if they aren't careful. It's never bothered Chrome, regardless. She thinks she could survive a stray lick of Tsuna's flame. The ache of her chest says she could, and a whole lot more. Still, she cares for him and the eager way he's been with her. More than that, she respects him. If he asks her to not be so near to him as he does this favor to her, well, it's the very least she could do. A distant feeling of swelling fondness goes through her when his expression softens in relief. Yes, a few meager steps is nothing compared to that. With her no longer in any danger, he turns away from her and takes a long deep breath.

Behind the cracks of his hands, ruined by the depths of his care for people, light begins to flicker into existence before bursting out so wildly. From above his brows, dead center in the middle of his forehead, a small and almost trivial-looking scar parts just as easily to allow his burning crown to grace him. Rarely has Chrome seen him like this. Rarely has there been any reason for him to be like this. She's awestruck, honestly, at the way his eyes turn hot amber, and almost his entire demeanor changes into something almost not befitting such bright flames. They lick the edges of the package she had given to him, aching to take it, but Tsuna doesn't rush things. Instead, he slowly parts his hands from it, and the fire stays, curling around it in shapes so dancing and beautiful that one could be forgiven if they thought they were harmless. That, in the end, is Tsuna's fire: soft and beautiful. Captivated, Chrome watches as he tilts his head back with the package rising ever higher as his hands stretch out to the sky. For a moment, the package stays there, warm and untouched and whole...

And then it devours everything.

Chrome watches, and her heart burns away.

When there is finally nothing more for the fire to eat, everything turned into ash that's carried away by the wind, the fire ebbs away from Tsuna's forehead and hands. He lets out the same breath that he'd taken in not a moment before. His eyes are back to being normal brown when he looks at her. "Alright, uh... I guess that's done with...?"

Nodding her head, she starts to take a step forward. "Yes, that's..." Chrome doesn't finish her meager sentence. Instead, the world swims and she goes pitching forward. Distantly, she hears Tsuna's alarmed shout, and, the next thing she knows, she's being cradled in his arms.

"Chrome!" Blinking her vision back into clarity, Chrome looks up at him. At some point when she couldn't pay attention, she's ended up being carried away. When did Tsuna start moving? It's impossible for her to tell. "What happened!? What as in that sacrifice!?"

Kindly, she waits until he's back in his home and he's put her on his bed. "A part of me," she says once Tsuna has removed his hands from her. Unsurprisingly, he makes a high distressed noise that warbles out from the back of his throat. "It's alright. I already gave parts to Chikusa and Ken."

"It's not alright!" he bursts out, once he's gotten control of his voice once again. "Aren't you hurt?!"

Sometimes, his concern can feel so overwhelming. Chrome doesn't know how to handle it when he gets like this. Mammon's care is distant, trusting her to do what she wants or what she needs to. With Chikusa and Ken, they're much quieter. Tsuna is all flames down to his toenails, however. He doesn't know, she thinks, how to do anything without a lot of fire to it, whether that is being anxious or being caring or being protective. Even as she doesn't know how to deal with it, her head ducking down a little, Chrome can't say it's a bad thing.

It's why her heart had to be set afire by him, and no one else.

"I'd be hurt anyway," she finally murmurs down to her lap, "if I didn't do something to improve my domain." Carefully, she reaches over to nudge her fingers to where his hands are curled up tightly in the sheets. They're so dry, leather-like instead of soft. "Sometimes you have to do that."

A moment of silence passes between them before Tsuna sinks down against the bed with a moan, his forehead bumping into her legs as he buries his face into the sheets. "You still should have told me!" he whines, voice muffled.

"But... you would have held yourself back."

"Still!" Raising his head upwards again, enough so that he can look at her with those large brown eyes of his, he says, "I always want to know if I'm doing something that intimate or painful to you. I want to know in case things go bad. It's not right to keep me in the dark..."

Maybe... he's right. Maybe this wasn't fair on him, even if it was easier on her. Chrome rubs at his skin idly, thinking about it. She is Desire's daughter and so the wants and longings of people are something she knows even if her domain is in darker areas. In the grand scheme of thing, no desire is really equal to the others.... But this isn't part of the grand scheme of things. It's important to her, and was important to Tsuna, and is important to Chikusa and Ken, too. In the small scheme of things... Their desires are just as important as hers were.

The moments pass in silence, for a while, his head resting against her leg, before she speaks. "I'm.... I'm sorry." Finally, she shifts her gaze to peer past her hanging hair, and meets his own surprised stare. "...You're right... I should have told you."

Something about his expression, raised eyebrows and befuddled blinking, hints that he wasn't expecting her to agree so easily, or so soon. "Oh," he says, still a little stunned and unsure of what to say in return. "Yeah. You should have." A second's pause, and he uncertainly adds, "Thank you?"

That's exactly like Tsuna... thanking her for something, for simple acknowledgment. Chrome's mouth twists a little, as unsure of what to do with it as much as he is with his words. "Thank you," she says in return, because she has more to thank him for. For a moment, they only sit there, staring blankly and awkwardly at each other.... before laughter begins to bubble up lightly in the air between them. What else can they do, the two of them? They can only laugh at each other, and at themselves, for all that which they fumble through.

It's okay. Fumbling is fine, she thinks, so long as they stay by one another's side while doing so.

Tsuna doesn't let her leave for a long while after that, fussing too much over her and keening at the rapidly healing scar that splits her chest right in half. Only when she's completely healed, not even a trace of marred skin, does he finally ease up a little. There's no wiping away the concern from his expression as he escorts her to the field outside his house again. "Is that the end of it?" he asks, fingers still wrapped daintily around her wrist. If she tugged, surely he would let go of her. Chrome is sure of this.

She doesn't tug, and she doesn't hide. Instead, staring back at him, she answers honestly, "No.... There's still one more thing I have to do." Tsuna opens his mouth, but she cuts him off before his feelings can be voiced. "Chikusa and Ken will be there with me.... So you don't have to be. You shouldn't... since you'd only get more upset."

"You don't think I'd be just as upset waiting here....?"

Chrome shakes her head. "You'd be working yourself up," she says quietly. "But if you saw it happen.... I think it would overflow. And... you'd be upset even worse." Possibly traumatized, she thinks, especially with Chikusa and Ken as they are. If Tsuna had been there to see Ken licking blood off of her....

Yes. Definitely traumatized.

Regardless of her good intent, there's no telling what will come from Tsuna's fidgeting frame.... so a breath of relief eases through her when he finally sighs and slumps in place. "Then... When you're done, and when you're feeling well enough to do it.... Can you come see me? Just so that I can see for myself that you're okay."

"....Yes. I can do that." With what she's asking of him, it's in fact the least she can do.

When she returns home at long last, flowing over her seas of pearl, Chikusa and Ken are sitting on the cave floor hard at work. They're not the only things sitting on the floor, either. On the hard stone, away from the nice leathers and furs, something peeled and bloody lays there. Even as she sets a bare foot onto the edge of her home, she can hear her two companions bickering.

"I told you to hang it up so that the meat would drain, Ken...."

"Aaaaaah, shut up, you dumb bird! I want to see you finish that, first!"

"If you're going to watch, can't you at least finish stringing the pearls together while you do it..."

"That's too finicky, and boring!!"

"But this is more interesting to you..."

"Yeah, because it's for me!" Ken barely has those last words out of his mouth before he's straightening up from where he's been settled in front of Chikusa, twisting around to see her. If he had his hood pulled up over his head, his ears would be perking up. "Chrome!" He scrambles up onto his feet, racing towards her eagerly. Even as he almost stumbles to a stop, she's peering around him to see what exactly it is that the two of them have been working on. Sprawled there on Chikusa's lap is a long stretch of short, smooth fur that Chrome can recognize as belong to that of a seal. On one side of him is a knife, sharpened so much so that it could cut through almost anything. In his hands is a needle which is still carefully strung through a part of the skin. In the shape it's in, it takes Chrome a moment to realize exactly what it is he's holding. Ken's cheerful voice is only confirmation when he says, "Do you like it? Kakipi figured out he could make another cloak for me, so that I can be something different than a wolf!"

Well, there's a mystery even stranger than what Chikusa is doing. "Kaki...pi?" Chrome asks, tilting her head to the other side with a few wide eyed blinks. Chikusa sighs.

"...It's... some sort of nickname that he's come up with for me... I don't know how.... Wolves never make any sense."

"It makes perfect sense," Ken dismisses easily before looking to her again with an expectant grin. "So did you go do what you said you needed to do? We're done now, right?"

Now there's the question she was never going to be able to run from... And one she shouldn't run from. Not answering her wolf right away, Chrome ventures around him until she can sink down onto the rugs where Chikusa is had at work. Ken follows, ever loyal, and exchanges a puzzled glance with his partner. "You can keep working," she softly tells the very same.

"I'd rather not." Despite his deadpan response, Chikusa continues right where he left off to form a proper hood for his partner to wear. His knife cuts, his needle connects, and Chrome watches his fingers do what they do best for a little while.

After a while, she finds it within herself to speak. "There's one more part of me I have to give up," she says, watching as Chikusa's hands go immediately still. At her side, she feels more than anything how Ken leans in close. Her imagination can easily provide an idea of how his face must look, twisted into displeasure and anxiety. She keeps talking, because she must. "I gave a part of myself to you two... So you could keep gathering souls without me. I had to give a part of myself to Tsuna, so that I could be a little stronger... And I had to get a little stronger for this, I think." Turning her head to look over her shoulder, Chrome surveys her seas and how thoroughly the pearls of the dead clutter it. "I have to give a part of me.... to here."

"But aren't you here?" Ken growls, a whine hitching it a little higher. "I thought that's how it worked!" Nearly falling over with how fast he goes, he turns his attention to Chikusa again. "That's what you said!"

No answer comes from Chikusa, too preoccupied as he is with frowning at her instead. His silence is as much of a demand as anything else that could possibly leave his mouth. "There's different parts of me," she says quietly. "A hand isn't the same as a foot, and those aren't the same as an ear. So.... Even if 'here' is 'me', it's still not the same." Her fingers twist in her clothing. "If... that makes sense..."

"No," Ken answer immediately. The way he says it so fast almost makes Chrome smile. "But...." Huffing with his shoulders drawn up to his ears, Ken looks away from both of them. "...You're probably just going to do it anyway... No matter what we say." Across from her, Chikusa ducks his head down and resumes his work. It's an agreement in its own right.

Considering how she plunged a claw into her own chest before their eyes, Chrome knows why they think this way. It's not a thought without foundation. Once more, she thinks of Tsuna's words to her. "If you weren't there with me," she answers slowly, aware of how neither is looking at her still, "then... I don't think I would." From her side, Ken finally turns his head to peek back at her. Chikusa isn't so easy; he continues working on the hooded cloak for Ken with only a brief second's worth of a pause. That's alright. As long as he's still there, listening to her, then that's the most she can ask for. "But.... If I don't do this... Then I don't think I'll last long as I am." What is a god that cannot do their duty? Is there a place in the world for such a place? The Arcobaleno are the ones who can simply exist as they are, doing nothing. She isn't like that. With the thoughts of the dying and prayers of those still living cluttered together so thickly in her head, Chrome isn't sure she can even afford to do something like ignore her duty, or what she needs to do. "I'd just... rather do it with you two."

Even with his head only partially turned, that's more than enough for Chrome to watch how the back of his neck and tips of his ears begin to nearly glow a brilliant burning red. Chikusa isn't nearly so easy to read. He only stays quiet for a while longer, so it's a surprise to her when he's the one to break the silence this time around instead of Ken. "How will you give a part of yourself like that?" Letting the needle fall loose, he inspects a part of the cloak a little more closely. "Or.... where, rather."

Well, it's a good question, at least. Near them, the hole in the cavern wall that leads into the depths still beckons with its dark shadows, but she ignores it. Her gaze ventures back instead to the softly lapping waves that stretch out behind her. "I think," she says, "where the problem lies would be best." To her ocean of souls, too full, too close to bursting.

Perhaps Chikusa isn't surprised, because all he does is sigh and mumble under his breath. "Then I guess I should finish this..." With one last snip of thread, he drops the needle into a pile of clutter before recklessly flinging the cloak right at Ken's face. Ignoring his partner's startled yell, muffled only slightly behind the cloak, Chikusa leans back on his hands. "There. Done."

"You could have given me a little warning, you stupid raven!" If there's really any aggravation in Ken, it certainly doesn't show in the gleeful bounce of his voice or the way he excitedly scrambles up to his feet once the cloak has been pulled away from his face. The wolf's hide that he had been born with, carried with him into even this life of gods and spirits, is slid from his shoulders. As it pools around his feet, warm and earthy, he's already tugging the seal's fur up and over his head. It's a little darker, this new skin of his, and yet it fits him perfectly as he squints up at Chikusa with an excited wiggle. "It fits!" he announces proudly, although it doesn't sit properly on his head- more from his own fault than any of Chikusa's. Eagerly, he drops down to his feet and hands again, crawling over his wolf's skin until he's nearly nose to nose with the other. "I didn't think a bird like you could actually do it. You've never had any reason to sew things before."

Blinking slowly, Chikusa moves his hand to sharply tug the hood down into its proper place, and a seal is practically on his lap then, with his thumb on top of its nose. Ignoring Ken's startled bark of a noise, he says, "I'm not you. I pay attention. Of course I could do it."

Perhaps it's time for her to intervene. "If you two are ready..." Rising to her own feet, she watches as Ken awkwardly flops over one of Chikusa's long legs so that he can maneuver himself roughly back to the rest of the cave that isn't Chikusa's lap. With the quiet exasperation of someone who has had to live with this for a much longer time than he's probably been alive, the raven weathers it. Chrome wishes she could be a little more detached herself instead of awkwardly clasping her hands to watch the seal flap along. "Do.... you need help...?"

"No!" His flippers hit the stone particularly hard, now that he's reached it. "I can do it on my own!"

"Just ignore him..." Rising to his own feet now that he's free of a large animal on his legs, Chikusa shakes his head. "That's what I do when he gets stubborn like this..." With those words said, he slides his hood over his head, and raven wings extend to take flight. Both of them follow after her as she steps off the edge of their cavern home. For her, here, the rules bend and break to her desire, and her desire is to walk on air unhindered. Chikusa needs no such allowances, his wings lifting him up neatly, and the pearls part for Ken's new body as he slides past them down into watery depths. On the surface, the pearls ripple from his movement, trailing after her loyally.

When she comes to a stop, it's a great deal away from the only solid land that exists here, where the cave and its meager warmth are only a dot on the horizon. High up in the air, Chikuksa circles patiently. Dark eyes peer from inbetween the pearls below her, much more anxious and aggravated than his partner could ever show. "It'll be alright," she tells Ken, although she knows that it must not look it as she raises the sharp claw up higher. It's still as keen as when she first used it to dig out her lung, and then her heart. Her torso and all the flesh there has given more than enough in her pursuit of strength, however. There is no need to plunder that place any longer. No, it goes higher than her stomach, higher than her chest, and she would be a liar if she said her hand isn't trembling when she presses the claw's tip near her eye where her eyelid parts. Yet no matter if it is the truth, it still can't be allowed. She'll need a steady hand for this, steadier than anything, and so Chrome breathes deeply in and out. In and out. In.... and out. All the while, there is a point pressing into where her eye rests against its socket, and she cannot dare to close it to hide the fact from herself. Greedily, selfishly, she looks inside of herself for the bit of burning strength that rests, steaming, inside her water-born self.

This is the only reason she can do this. It is the only reason, she is fairly sure, that she will survive it.

She can't let her nerve fail her now, nor can she let that flame in her go out. So, steeling herself-

Chrome plunges the claw in.

For a second, the world burns white, burns red, and she ceases to exist. There is nothing but blankness, nothing but pain, and she doesn't know how she returns to herself there atop the sea. She doesn't know when she's crumpled into herself, gasping, face wet with blood and tears both. Beneath her, a pearl becomes pink with her blood splattering onto it, only to become more and more crimson with every drop. Her tears aren't enough to dilute it. For a moment, she wobbles, the world all out of order with one eye blinded- but she can't stop here. Even with the pain. Even with Ken keening in the water, in the pearls. She can't stop. So, gritting her teeth, Chrome continues, carving through vein and flesh and whatever else is in her way. With pain so electrifying, rattling her entire world in red and white, Chrome doesn't notice when the last tenuous bond is severed. All she notices is the wet weight of something falling into her waiting cupped hand.

Breath rattling throughout her chest, body swaying, Chrome looks down at it. It is a disgusting sight, wrong in how it has been pried from her even worse than lung or heart. Blood is still pouring from her socket, staining her arms, her dress, and that one single pearl beneath her out of hundreds. How this is, how she notices, such thoughts have no place in her head. All she can think of is turning her hand to the side, watching her own eye roll and fall. In the water, with the pearls, it fits right in.

She's done.

She should go home, Chrome blearily thinks. She should return to her home, with Ken against her and Chikusa besides her. Yet no matter how much she wills her legs to move, demands her body carry her to where she needs to go, it does not listen to her. All she does is stand there, swaying and with the world awash in white and shades of red.... and she collapses.

The last thing she feels before slipping into unconsciousness is the feel of arms wrapping tightly around her before she hits the water.







Fingers, soft as feathers, trace along her forehead and down to her cheeks, dragging her back into distant awareness. Chrome doesn't realize she's awake, at first. It doesn't feel as though she's awake. Sounds, voices, fade in and out of clarity, and there is only bleary darkness even when her eyes peer open between the heavy weight of her lashes. Still against her cheek is that soft touch; it takes her some time to realize she's being stroked. Not a bad thing, certainly. It feels rather nice, if she's being honest, and Chrome finds herself in no hurry to rush into awakeness. Instead, she allows it to come to her, in bits and pieces. Smell comes first, of all things, telling her of dark dank places where the water's scent gathers thickly, and it reminds her faintly of the ocean only watered down. Next comes her hearing, filtering in stronger and stronger. Ken's voice, fittingly, is what breaches through first.

"-even smell like her, down to all the parts."

Someone else, a voice she's never head, laughs low and soft. It's a funny little sound, coming from deep within the chest but popping upwards into the air like a bubble. "So I take it you're this invasive with everyone you meet, then," the stranger says. "I suppose I'm not the special exception."

Chikusa's voice is sudden and as quiet as ever, only it's a lot louder so close to her face. "You're too loud. You're going to wake her."

That laugh again. "Your fussing won't, Chikusa?" it says, playful. "Will you ever fuss over me like that?"

A kind of embarrassed silence floats from Chikusa's direction, and Ken barks out a laugh. Judging by the direction, he must be right near the stranger. "He smells like her, Kakipi!" he teases. "Don't you want to check?"

At long last, Chrome finds enough strength in her to open her eyes. At least, that's what she thinks up until she opens her left one, and her right side remains completely and utterly black. Only then does she realize there's pressure wrapped around her head, pressing against one temple and into her cheek. That's right. She can't open her eyes, plural, because she no longer has two to spare. There's only the one, seeing the world through bleary vision that slowly clears up. Chikusa is only a blob at first from where he's leaning in so close to her, and she watches as his hair sways when he turns to look at her again. A blink, and all the details come back into focus: the ruffled mess of his dark hair, the sore redness which underlies his eyes. "I told you," he says quietly, although he doesn't look at anyone but her. "You woke her." His fingers stroke down the side of her face again, the half that isn't half covered in bandages, and curl along the curve of her jaw.

It's a quiet moment, intimate and sweet, and immediately ruined by Ken propelling himself into her other side. "Chrome!" His cry is pressed straight into the side of her throat as he buries his face there, fingers curling against the many furs and blankets layered over her.

Chikusa makes an annoyed sound on her other side. "Be careful, Ken..."

His warnings seem to go mostly ignored, although Ken isn't being rough. He's simply insistent, his nose nudging against her skin and into her hair. "You're so dumb! That wasn't anything like how it happened with us! You went falling!"

Making words happen in her throat and on her tongue... It seems as if she's forgotten how to do all that for a moment. The act of merely talking requires a moment for her to remember, and she slides one arm around Ken as she does so. He needs some sort of comfort, she thinks, although she's not particularly good at giving it. "I'm okay," she says, when the whole process finally comes back to her. After all, isn't it true? Isn't she there with them?

Judging by the way Ken pulls away a little so that she can see his bared teeth, he obviously disagrees. "There was blood everywhere!" he yells, bristling. "That's not okay!"

"It's not," Chikusa agrees, murmuring still.

"I'm here," she reminds them, looking from wolf to raven. "And you were there with me."

It's only five words, and yet it's five words enough to draw up a vivid crimson flush all across Ken's face and up to the tips of his ears. Chikusa is a lot more subtle, tipping his chin down against his chest. His gaze flicks to the side. "We weren't," he mutters, "the only ones there with you." That's enough of a prompt for Chrome to finally look past Ken, and towards the stranger who has been waiting so patiently through all of this.

Her own eye, in another's face, stares back at her.

A man sits there, sprawled sideways with one hand propping himself up, and he is very nearly her double. He seems a bit taller than her- well perhaps a great deal taller- and the structure of his face is somewhat different, and his hair is a bit more blue, blue as the sea.... But he is still an image of hers, down to his body. His hair is longer than hers, draped lazily over his shoulders, and frames a lazy smirk upon his lips. Perhaps what is most striking isn't that his left eye is that of her right, but that his other eye is deep, blood red.

That, too, she knows is from herself.

Carefully, Chrome begins to push herself up so that she's sitting. Around her, the world spins a little, and then is stabilized by two presences on her sides. Ken nudges her carefully upright, more gentle than his rough demeanor might ever betray. Opposite of him, Chikusa stays steady and still so that she can lean against him. Ignoring the not-a-stranger in their midsts, Chrome looks around for a better idea of where she is. It's similar to the part of her home that she's most familiar with: a cavern with sturdy dark rock. Unlike what she's familiar with, however, there is no opening leading out to open sea and shimmering pearls. Instead, there is only one exit that can barely be seen past the array of torches that have been gathered.

It is a single large hole, with stone steps leading upwards.

Besides that, and the torches, there is nothing else. Everything she has been laying in must surely have been brought from upwards. So with nothing else to distract her, Chrome looks to the not-a-stranger. "Who are you?" she asks plainly, blinking and then marveling at the fact that she can only truly feel the movement with one side of her face.

There's that laugh again. It's quite distinct. "Shouldn't you know?" he asks, scooting closer until his and Ken's shoulders are brushing. The wolf doesn't seem to much mind.

"Not really," she replies, no hesitation holding her back. He's close to her too, now, but she minds perhaps even less than Ken ever might. "I know what you are.... but 'who' is something different."

A long low hum this time. As far as Chrome can tell from the glint in his eyes and the smirk on his face, he's pleased with the answer. That doesn't stop him from saying, "Aren't they the same thing in the end? You can't know who you are if you don't know what you are, and what you are relies greatly on who you are."

Chrome blinks at him, unimpressed. Although she knows it's probably not quite true, she can't help but wonder if the red of his eye is symbolic of another person who likes to speak in roundabout ways. "Even if a seed grows into a tree, it's still not a tree when it's a seed." A pause, and then she says decisively, "Mukuro."

Finally, that smirk flickers away from his face, and he raises his eyebrows. "What?"

"That's who you are. Mukuro." Ducking her head a little, she peers up from beneath her bangs and smiles faintly. "If you want to be." Names aren't things that can be forced, or, at least, they shouldn't be. Even when Mammon had desired her to have two names, one a secret for the two of them to covert, it had been with the understanding that it was how it was- a secret for both of them. For something like that, it could only work with her consent too, although she had been too young, perhaps, to truly put to words what it all was. It's just as important that he, too, makes the decision to accept the name she is offering to him.

Only a brief pause goes between them before he huffs out another low laugh, just one all on its own, and glances away with a flip of his hair. "Well, one name is as good as any other," he says breezily, which isn't quite true. "I suppose I'll accept it." Pressing his hand down against the stone, he pushes himself up onto his feet and rises smoothly upright. "Well, since you're awake, these two can stop fussing. If you need me, I'll be up above." With that said, he turns away from the three of them and begins to walk away, disappearing from the light of the torches and into the shadowy hole in the wall.

"I like him," Ken announces after not even a minute has passed, and Chikusa heaves out a quiet sigh.

"You've known him for four hours... if that..." Adjusting Chrome tentatively, she can feel him adjust his chin against her hair so that he's staring right at his partner. "This is because he fed you some food, isn't it..."

The heat radiating from Ken's face could probably be felt all the way back on mortal earth. "Shut up! You liked him because he gave you food too, you dumb bird!"

"Did I ever say that...?"

"You blushed." On the side opposite of Ken's furious blushing, Chrome can feel Chikusa jolt lightly against her at the accusation. As if sensing that he's on the right trail, Ken leans around her so that he can stare up into her face. "He blushed!" he repeats again, as if he has something to prove to her in particular. "Mukuro touched his hair and complimented how well he was taking care of you, and so he let him carry you down here and he blushed!"

"Ken," Chikusa says tightly. "Shut up."

"Not when I'm winning!" Something suddenly occurs to Ken, however, and Chrome can almost imagine his ears pressing flat against his head as he looks at Chikusa with mingled concern and aggravation. "Wait, you never blush when I do anything!"

Chrome has a sneaking suspicion that if this conversation is permitted to go on, Chikusa might die from the awkwardness of it all, and that's assuming that he doesn't take flight to somewhere far away until Ken stops. Considering she's seen how far Ken will go, leaving a trail of his own blood behind him, Chrome knows it would be a doomed effort. So she speaks up instead. "I'm glad... that you both like him."

Ken's gaze shifts away from Chikusa once again, and he falls lightly onto her covered legs with a grunt. "Yeah. He smells like you, even if I think he's not anything like you."

Slowly easing up at her side, Chikusa gives a slight nod. "He's... a very different person from you." A pause, and Chikusa asks, "You said you know what he is." It's probably a question that he's been wondering for a long while. Chrome can't be sure if he asked Mukuro himself, but it couldn't have been a very satisfying conversation if he did. After all, he's already shown himself for having a flair for the dramatics and dancing around an upfront answer. For someone as bluntly honest as Chikusa, that must be quite annoying.

There's no point in hiding it, not when she's decided to be more honest in turn with them. "He's a part of me," she answers simply. "And... the other kind of death." For a second, she pauses as she tries to decide how to describe his exact function in the world. "Death isn't... bad. It's not an enemy for anyone to fight." She's not an enemy for anyone to fight. "It just... is. But... There are different kinds of deaths. Slow ones... or painful ones." Chrome tilts her head to the side. "Some would think that just dying is both of those things.... so I guess he represents that sort of fear, too, even if people know that there's something waiting for them past their life." Then again, she supposes, lives left slumbering within pearls that bob on the water, day in and day out.. Perhaps that's not a kind of life at all.

Hopefully, this solution of hers will be exactly what they all need.

Quiet moments pass the three of them by, thoughts churning in her companions' heads, before Ken speaks up. "So he is you," he says simply, and she can hear Chikusa's quiet sigh. "So we were right not to worry about him."

It's simplifying the issue a whole lot, and cutting out even more of it, but he's not wrong, either. She nods. "That's right." Digging her fingers into Chikusa's shoulder, she braces herself and rises up to her feet. Her knees tremble as the furs crumple past them, an ache she can't ignore, but this time she stays upright. "We should go see him," she says quietly, tossing her head to the side a little so that she can try to get rid of the hair that is hanging uncomfortably past her face. Before, she'd never had any problem with it, but that's changed. With the bandage around her head, now everything seems out of place and uncomfortable.

"No," Chikusa says plainly, rising up onto his own feet as well. Her fingers slip from his shoulders, instead going to dig into the feathers of his cloak. "You aren't recovered yet..."

"We'll carry you!" Ken announces simply, cheeks a little rosy even as his arms wrap around her waist. Before she can offer her thoughts, let alone any protests, he's heaving her up and away from Chikusa's side to be cradled in his steady arms. Alarmed, she wraps her own about his neck, even though there's no danger of her slipping out of his grasp. His cheeks only grow all the pinker. "This way!" he says, ducking his head down and forging off towards the stairs. Behind them, Chrome can see Chikusa slowly shaking his head before he begins to shuffle off after them.

When they emerge upwards to the home that Chrome knows, light temporarily blinds her. All she has is the feel of Ken against her body, inbetween her arms, and she holds on tight with no other option but to trust him. When her vision finally clears, she's being settled down besides a more-than-familiar face at the edge of the waters. She barely notices how Ken hurries off to get some blankets and furs for her. Instead, she looks out again to the sea of pearls- as untouched and still full as when she'd started all of this.

"It's still the same," she tells Mukuro, plopping against his side. It makes things a little difficult of Chikusa who sighs before just dropping a fur onto her shoulder. It would be a little much to ask him to do things completely, she supposes. "All of the pearls are still here..." Pausing, she glances up at him from the corner of her one good eye. "Most of them."

His own, burning red still, crinkles in amusement. "They can't all vanish," he drawls, adjusting his arm so that Ken can shove his way up against his side all the easier. "They're still here, and they've still needed to be collected."

Folding his way down to her own side, Chikusa nods slightly. "While you've been asleep... We've been getting them."

Well, that won't work at all, and she frowns down at the pearls. What is she to do now? She has three other pairs of hands to help her... Surely there has to be some sort of answer. Her and Mukuro make two, two sides of death, two ideas of it, and there has to be an answer there somewhere. What is it, what is it, what is it... She didn't do something wrong by bringing Mukuro into the world, she thinks. Certainly she feels stronger, in some way, by having given up parts of herself to strengthen what remains. There's another answer that she's not seeing...

Kind deaths. Painful deaths. Two sides of the same thing. Is there another aspect, another half, that she's not paying mind to...?

It finally hits her after a moment of staring down at the pearls, her toes brushing against them, and she sighs. "Oh," she murmurs. "Maybe it was that obvious."

Mukuro laughs gently at her, although maybe that's merely is way. Does he understand because he's born of a part of her, or because it really was so obvious all along? "I would think so," he says, although that explains nothing. She's quickly learning that there's no such thing as a stated fact with Mukuro. "So then..." Getting up onto his feet, he extends his hand to her. "Shall we?"

Ken peers around his waist, cheek pressing into his hip, and squints as Chrome pulls herself up. This time, she's a little steadier. "Wait, what are you doing? Are we going somewhere?" Chikusa rises almost right after Chrome, and she can tell in his silence that he's asking very much the same questions.

"Cleaning up," Chrome says quietly. "Chikusa, Ken.... We need your help getting all of it done."

In all the time that she's been existing, the pearls truly have gathered up to a frightening amount. They weigh heavy in her hands when she pulls them up from the waters, bright and shimmering with the lives they hold. Across from her, distant, she can tell Mukuro is the same. Is it heavier for him, or exactly the same? While they are of death, of desire, they are still their own people. For all she knows, perhaps it's even lighter in his hands. To her right, Chikusa's feathers only make up the tiniest speck against the darkness of the night sky as he flaps his wings to raise the pearls higher. All that leaves is Ken. There's no rising above the water's surface with wings, or divinity, not for him in his seal fur cloak. Instead, she can tell how he takes the strings of pearl inbetween his teeth just by the tug against her hands, and he leads them all across the sea. At some point, the divine becomes the natural, the mundane, and it's no longer her waters that they carry the trailing net of pearls. It's merely the waters of the world, where all sorts of lives dwell in, so unlike her own home. Ken swims tirelessly for them, diving through the waves while his teeth never once let go. Through seas, through rivers, past all sorts of places until the water begins to grow thin and his fins dig through mud for a while. It takes some time until the water becomes deep again, and by then it's in the form of a lake where a waterfall gushes and trickles from high atop a mountain.

This seems like good enough a place to stop. "Ken," she calls, the pearls bunched up tightly against one another for the journey inland. "You can stop now. We can-"

Predictably, Ken doesn't listen to her. In fact, instead of listening to her, all he does is waggle his hindquarters excitedly in the face of the sheer ragged surface of the waterfall... and propels himself out of the water to dig himself into rock so that he can scramble upwards. Chikusa's exasperated sigh can be heard even over the sound of Mukuro's laughter.

Ken lasts about a third of the way up the mountain, doing admirably especially once he's past the parts of it which are completely vertical or completely slick with water and ice. It's as the sound of his scrabbling body can be heard from probably even the base that Chikusa sighs again, and Chrome feels the weight of the net fall against the ground. Only a few seconds later, and a raven is flying inbetween her and Mukuro, navigating the mountain air as if it's nothing. She can't entirely be sure what it is that he tells Ken, only that there's a bark of protest, some grumbling, and then the part of the net from further up lifts all the higher. A second after that, and something is shuffling beneath the pearls, a little lump that sniffs and growls. It doesn't take long for Ken to pick up where Chikusa had been a moment before. Craning her head back, she can see the shift from seal to humanoid, and Mukuro laughs some more across from her. "I can see this is going to be an interesting existence," he says, eyes glittering.

With Chikusa at the helm this time around, proceeding up the mountain becomes a much smoother process. There's no difficulties of the ground for a creature with wings, and there's no difficulties of the earth for a creature that's since moved past a mortal existence. He takes them all the way to the peak, where it feels as though she could reach upwards only a little bit and brush her fingers against the night sky...

That kind of indulgence, if it ever has any place, will have to come later. Allowing Ken and Chikusa to drop their share of the net, she waits patiently for Mukuro to come take his place besides her. Between them, the sides of the net that aren't being held seem to spill off endlessly off the two sides of the mountain, bright against the snow and glimmering against dull rock. In the dark of night, against what should be common sense, they all seem to glow. It's the highest she's ever been in the mortal world, in a place she's never ventured to with Tsuna or Mammon. There's only herself, and Mukuro at her back, Chikusa against her shoulder, Ken at her feet....

It feels as it should be.

There's no need to talk about what comes next. Not with her and Mukuro. Instead, with the net firmly in their hands, they toss it up, toss it skywards, and it nearly floats off of the mountain and all the ground connected to it. They rise up, up, up into the sky where they almost hang for long beautiful moment... and then, finally, the string gives way. After so long of bearing the weight of all the lives that have held onto it, it allows them to go. At first, it's only one- a single solitary pearl streaking down through the sky and leaving a trail of blazing color behind it. Then another, and another, dozens at a time that light up the sky with their hue instead of quiet darkness.

Atop the mountain, Chrome watches souls return to earth where they belong, and smiles.









"What," Mammon deadpans, their gaze focused over Chrome's head, "is that."

For a second, Chrome isn't entirely sure what's being asked of her. There's a few things that have changed since Mammon took their eyes off of her, letting her explore her divinity and self with casual carelessness. They could be referring to Chikusa lazily sprawled out against the variety of furs that have gathered up so warmly in the cavern opening, turning some strange white and long splinters inbetween his fingers. Maybe it's Ken, leg twisted about so that he's able to scratch at the back of his neck with his toe claws even though he's not in the form of a wolf.

Eventually, however, she realizes that sharp bright indigo eyes are focused right over the top of Chrome's head and towards Mukuro's smug presence leaning against her back. Oh. "He's..."

Mukuro interrupts her, speaking directly towards the tiny petite figure that's staring up at him with such disdain. "Are you to tell me that one of the great Arcobaleno is aware of nothing that has gone on with their daughter's life?" If Mammon is disdainful, then Mukuro is surely mocking in his own vicious little way. Chrome isn't entirely sure where he gained such spitefulness; she can say for a fact that it wasn't from her.

Lips curling, Mammon turns their nose up at him as if they're much taller than they actually are. "I know more than you," they say, voice as cold as the depths Chrome can remember awakening to. "I've been more than aware of the pets she's collected-"

"Hey!" Ken objects, his foot falling from his neck. Chikusa doesn't even bother to look up.

"-and I've been more than aware of how much she's wanted." With only a hint of teeth showing from inbetween their lips, Mammon crosses their arms. "That doesn't explain what you are."

Mukuro flips his hair over his shoulder imperiously. "I'm a god, obviously."

"Not likely." His eyes narrow at the immediate and blunt dismissal. "More like a parasite."

"That's quite an insult coming from someone as small as one." From the corner of her eye, Chrome is aware of Chikusa finally raising his head to keep a proper eye on the proceedings. When she flicks her gaze to the other side, Ken's claws are braced against the stone floor as if to propel himself forwards. As for her? She's more than aware of how chilly the air has gotten, thick with tension as it is. Perhaps it shouldn't be surprising that both her other half and her parent clash in such a way. Arcobaleno are the very fabric of the world as it exists, and yet, at the same time, she knows the strength that her and Mukuro both benefit from. Regardless who would win if a fight broke out, so many people would lose- gods and mortals and probably even a couple of the Arcobaleno alike.

There's only one thing to do.

Stepping away from Mukuro's weight, Chrome steps forward to take Mammon's hand and just.... walks away. There's no explanation on her hand, no words, just her hand around Mammon's as she guides the Arcobaleno away from the cavern. Even without looking, she can imagine well enough the befuddled, almost offended look on Mukuro's face. The way Mammon looks back at him with a small satisfied smirk admittedly helps with the mental image. "Where are you going?" Yes, definitely a trace of being offended somewhere on his face. She can tell by his tone.

"To talk," is all she says, walking over the edge of her cavern and over clear water. For the first time in ages, it's more water than pearls, with only a few of them dotting the waves here and there with pale strings connecting them to shore. Her shore. It's a much better look for it.

"Okay," Chikusa says dully, the direction of his voice hinting that he hasn't moved even the slightest bit from where he is against the floor. "Bye." He'll be able to keep things calm while she's gone for only a few moments, she thinks. Chikusa has always had a much cooler head than his partner, and even cooler than Mukuro although her other half tries so hard to seem distant and implacable. So she can walk out to the distant waters until home is a good distance away.

Mammon seems to have cooled off with the distance and time taken to move, although there's still contempt in the curve of their mouth when they look back to her cavern home. "Honestly," they grumble. "Why couldn't you have just gotten another pet to fill up that home instead of desecrating the body that I crafted for you?"

Oh, so that's why they don't like him with the intensity that they do. Following their gaze, Chrome presses the side of their head onto Mammon's shoulder. They really were made mirror to their parent. Her head doesn't have to fall far at all to rest their against them. "If it was only me, whole," she muses aloud, "then I don't think.... I'd be unaffected anyway. I'd be far worse than this." Now there's only a little bit of emptiness in her torso, and a bandage wrapped around to hide the empty socket that once held an eye. It's a small price to pay in comparison to the things that she got in return.

Surely Mammon has to know this too. She can tell that they do, glowering in sullen silence. Funny that they have nothing against Chikusa and Ken, who ate of her body, but instead Mukuro. Chrome isn't entirely sure she understands the whole reasoning herself. "Still," Mammon says. "It had to be a creature like that."

"Yes," Chrome says simply. It had to be someone like Mukuro. She wouldn't have had it any other way. After a few awkward seconds, Chrome tilts her head to look back up at Mammon. "...I don't think he knows my other name."

Sure enough, she watches sharp tension begin to lose all its edges, starting from Mammon's shoulders and flowing down the rest of her body like mist slipping down inbetween cliffs and crags of a mountain. "Of course he wouldn't," they say dismissively, tossing their head to the side sharply. Within the depths of their hood, Chrome thinks she can see her parent's hair flip back a little further behind their neck. Perhaps it only slid. In the darkness of desire, where things sometimes get murky, it can be hard to say. "He was only born of your eye, not your ear." Even if only a little bit, Chrome can't help the smile which flickers onto her face for a brief moment. If they're in a good enough mood to make jokes, then Mammon surely has to be in a good enough mood to not try and murder Chrome's other half, no matter how much they might not like him. "Still, no doubt when he even faintly learns of its existence, he'll become insufferable in trying to learn it. I know his type."

As far as Chrome can tell, Mukuro's type seems to be almost Mammon's type exactly: greedy, dramatic, and self-centered. That probably explains a lot of things. Yet knowing better than to say such a truth out loud, Chrome merely shrugs. "He might," she says, not particularly willing to put any bets on the future when she herself would never have foreseen gathering up beasts of the wild for company or carving up her own flesh to be offered up. Just because it's more likely to happen than not means nothing. "I guess.... We'll have to see." Pausing for a moment, she tilts her head to the side as if that can possibly help her see a little better into Mammon's shadows. "....Are you angry?"

Silence is Mammon's only answer for a long moment. Chrome isn't sure they'll answer at all when, at last, they heave out a sigh and the combative way they've crossed their arm relents, hands swinging back down to their sides. "You did well for yourself under the weight of so many desires pressing under you," they admit, even as their eyes are still narrowed down in the direction where Mukuro dwells so far off. "But more than that, you had a desire of your own that you put forward first and foremost, going after it no matter what. For a daughter of mine, what could I possibly have against that?"

From someone who's been so distant as Mammon has been, the words are quite the praise. Feeling her weak colored skin start to warm up in pleasure, Chrome ducks her head down with her chin to chest and winds her fingers together tightly. No matter how happy she is about it, however... "You do hate him," she points out quietly.

"Oh, absolutely," Mammon answers without hesitation. "Still.... I guess there are unfortunate side effects to all desires." Their lip curls again, even as they twist away on their heel. "Well. I've seen all I've needed to, and you're not dead. I'll be taking my leave, then."

Looking up again, Chrome blinks at their parent's retreating back. "Only this long?"

"Only this long." Without looking back, Mammon raises a single hand in farewell. "Besides, I have to take care of one more thing that you seem to have forgotten to do while you've been preoccupied with the harem that you've been so admirably collecting." In the same instant that Chrome's face lights up intensely with the force of her blush, Mammon disappears in a gust of mist, and she's left to her own devices once more.

Well, that's how they always are. It can't be helped. With her parent having taken their leave, Chrome turns on her own heel, and returns home to where she has no doubt that Chikusa is firmly holding Mukuro back from indulging in his own curiosity.









"-a scumbag who should never have been born, brought into the world by sheer luck-"

In the depths of the tent, kept warm and light only by a single torch, Mammon looks like quite the phantom hovering over the body of a healer in prayer. Their hood hides all but the faintest outline of their nose and lips, and their cloak fades away long before it hits the ground. What makes the whole scene so much more amusing is the befuddled expression on the mortal as they deal with their own divine visit, those brows crumpled over a distant gaze as they try to listen. Fon laughs lightly into his sleeve as he steps further in, not minding when Mammon snaps their head to look over at him. "I thought that Chrome, or one of her companions, would be the ones to herald the arrival of that young new god.... but it looks like you've seized opportunity for yourself, haven't you, Mammon? I didn't think you would be so incensed."

Leaving the mortal thoroughly ignored now, Mammon whirls on him, and he can see the barest hint of their feet touch the ground as their body solidifies in place. "Were you hoping for more?" they snap, not masking their annoyance or slowing their pace in their stomp closer to him. "It's one thing for such a parasite to come into the world, but he has your reek all over him." Coming to a stop before him, they have to tilt back their head to make eye contact. With the fire at their back, it's hard to make out the color of their eyes, but he swears he can see crimson burning in the shadows. "I should have known. Red's always been your color."

"Aren't I allowed to help the daughter of someone I like...?"

"No. And we both know you only do it to jerk me around." Reaching up, they try to snatch his long braid from where it hangs loosely over his shoulder. Before they can even touch so much as a strand, his own snaps out to fold around their fingers. Their hand is so tiny in his; he loves to marvel at it. Mammon clearly doesn't share his sentiments, considering the way their plush lips stick out in a sulky, aggravated pout. "You're insufferable."

Still smiling his same old smile, Fon bows his head down to press his mouth against knuckles that would sooner bury themselves into his jaw. "And you're so cruel, treating me this way."