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NOW
"You know what will make you happy, right?" Needle says. "You want to be there with your sister, so go be with her. Go raise her and protect her and be happy."
Scythe tilts his head slightly, enough to stare at her sideways. He huffs out a breath, then flashes forward at inhuman speed into the snow.
She curses behind him and then she's with him, running alongside him. They can run faster than any human, than any hurricane wind. It hurts, cutting through the air with their bodies like this, but they run because they'd gone into the Deathbox as humans, but come out as the weapons Needle and Scythe.
BEFORE
Her hair is brown, dirty; it's in her eyes, along with an unhealthy spattering of mud and blood. She glares at him like he's personally done her wrong by being her newly assigned partner.
He just stares at her. He doesn't care what she thinks and he never will.
"Why did you stay?" she demands.
Most of the graduates didn't. They were modified, screamed their way into a glorious new form of humanity if they didn't die, accepted their payout, and went home.
Scythe blows out a breath and scrapes his boot across the floor. It lights the training area aflame.
Needle curses and leaps backward into the air, throwing a hundred poison needles his way, only to have all of them repulsed. She doesn't dodge the bloody things. Why should she? She's immune.
"Why did you?" he asks at the last, when they're stripping out of their ruined armored vests and pants and boots in the communal showers and washing every disgusting thing out of their hair.
Needle shrugs, willing to offer if he's willing to hear. "Not like I had somewhere to go."
NOW
There's blood spattered on the snow, bones crushed into mud.
"You hate killing," Needle points out. She's gathering the weapons of their slaughtered targets, rooting out their identification papers and other potentially valuable effects.
Neither of them have ever asked their higher ups what the enemies of the state have done wrong. What's the point?
Needle gives Scythe a sideways look of her own, as if trying to read him. "You could just walk away. Any time."
"You done yet?" he asks, harsh in the cold air. His breath makes steam.
Needle tosses him one of the bags she's gathered and shoulders the other. They do their work together; they leave together. For all their reasons are somewhat private, the Deathbox made them together, so together they remain.
Scythe breathes outside the apartment door, glowing faintly blue, before he finally opens it and makes a sharp echolocative cry. He waits then waves Needle in.
It's clear.
She dumps her gear in the entryway, peels out of the worst of it, and stalks into the kitchen to pour a cup of hot tea from the scheduled brewer. It sweats in the chill of the apartment. Scythe flips on the heat and takes shower first. It gives her a minute to remember she hates killing too.
There are ten messages on the machine. He hasn't cleared the ones from last week and Needle never does. He lets them run while he showers, listens to them from a room away through running water because he can do that with his enhanced capabilities. Two of them are in the warm, steady voice of a woman who took over caring for two unwanted children years ago. Except now, there's only one. The bubbly little voice fills the rest of the messages:
"When are you coming home?" his little sister demands, sassy and bossy despite seven other unanswered messages full of news and cheerfulness and love.
They're done by the time he's dressed and Needle's claiming the shower. He doesn't call them back. He goes in the kitchen, helps himself to a pre-boxed meal because neither Scythe nor Needle can cook, and sets up a movie on the couch. He doesn't even like movies, but Needle does, so he lets the opening credits roll and waits for Needle to lie down over his legs like she owns him.
"Why don't you ever talk to them?" Needle asks, digging in his wounds with her words and her icy eyes and that sneer of disbelief that he'll never do anything to help himself.
But he doesn't bother answering.
He doesn't have to work for the Deathbox, but he doesn't think he'll ever leave them until he's leaving their bloody carcasses in flames over the snow. And he doesn't answer the phone calls to Kiran, because they all come care of Scythe.
Needle's fingers dig into his neck. She's staring at him, not her movie, nails sharp and poison turning his skin numb. This is self-harm, he thinks. They're part of each other now. The Deathbox carved them into weapons, but they made themselves wolves.
He doesn't love her but she loves him and both of them know it. Neither of them care.
"Are you happy?" he finally asks her, waiting for her eyes to flit away.
She isn't happy. She wants happiness the same as he does, but denies herself. There are bigger things at stake than their own happiness.
"Shut up," she says. She pulls her hand back and leans her head on his shoulder. They watch the movie, just like a pack.