He’s not sure what he expects, coming out to Sunny Island when he could spend his spare time catching up on lost sleep. There’s no need for him to patronize a place full of lights and noise, where he can’t relax the hard-earned instincts beaten into him over the years.
A promise is a promise, though; he doesn’t try to wiggle out of the coupon he gives Teuta. She deserves this much from him, though he doesn’t know where they currently stand after their last conversation. Or why she would even want something from him.
He has nothing to offer that the others couldn’t give her.
Shu still remembers that sudden shout.
“That’s just wrong!”
Hell of a woman, that one. To look him in the eye, aware of his profession, and exclaim that accepting his death as one of the many nameless killers in New Sieg would be wrong.
He hasn’t weighed life in the context of rights and wrongs, he doesn’t have that privilege.
Revenge isn’t a morally correct call to make.
He’s far past caring.
He has to be.
“Oh, it looks more beautiful than I expected. When you called it a pop-up amusement park, I expected something cheaper.”
“Lemme guess. You’re regretting that you didn’t bring a girl with you, huh.”
“That’s a-mazing , Scarecrow. You’re absolutely correct.”
But the warm festive lights, the unceasing sounds of chatter, and the idiots he’s been lumped with beckon to him and don’t make him feel like he’s not wanted.
“Hey, time out. There’s a girl right here. And you’re looking at her!”
He is looking at her, but he doesn’t know if the other idiots are.
A heart-to-heart in a noisy amusement park isn’t what he had in mind, but Teuta has a talent for subverting his vague expectations. He also doesn’t expect shooting with a fake gun to be one of the more meaningful social interactions he’s had in his life, but here he is.
Must be some shitty marksmanship lessons she had though if his instructions were all it took for her to get results.
Shu stares at the fake gun in her arms. Feels a momentary shiver go down his spine.
He knows it’s fake, but it reminds him of what he does, what the Fixers do. Thinking of this odd girl’s life before she meets them? She’s unprepared, fancy-ass power that she has or not. Maybe he could impart something useful here that the others couldn’t.
The look she gives him with those big green eyes of hers makes him reconsider the benefits. Up this close, they dominate her face and it strikes him, just how expressive they are. Too expressive, even.
Shu doesn’t want to dwell on what lingers in them as she looks up at him.
“Stop giving me the stink eye,” the hitman mutters down at her. For his or her sake, whichever, they need to get this over with.
“I-I’m not.”
He lets Teach’s instruction come to the surface, and drags it back up despite the memory that anchors it. “When you hold a gun, only look at your prey. Let the prey enter your sights, and all that’s left after that is timing how to fire.”
It’s easy to figure out the moment she begins to hesitate.
He can empathize, though shooting for him is a matter of steeling his nerves and his gut. Reminding himself of why he kills. The weight of a life taken, in exchange for stopping killing that lacks love and hatred.
Each and every time he’s won against the part of him that flinches before a hit, he has the song that he’s grown up humming.
“You can count down from three, but it’s easy to lose your sense of time, so Teach told me to hum a familiar melody instead.”
What would Teach think, that the boy she raised would someday be guiding a girl to sing Yellow Rose of Texas for firing a carnival gun? She’s not here to see it, not here to raise an incredulous brow at the lass between his arms.
“Whoa! I did it!”
The blonde in front of him cheers as her shot successfully lands, and he can’t help the chuckle that escapes him then. Hah, he really was better than those prissy instructors of her police academy.
But really, it’s because of this bright young thing.
He’s successfully taught her something that he knows, and for once, his specialty doesn’t end up with blood spilled. This moment could stand to last longer, him basking in the surreal feeling of having done something nice with these hands of his.
… What the hell, he’s having fun.
Shu even lets himself go along and fire a few times for Teuta. He’s not showing off, he’s just showing her how a professional does it.
The knot in his chest loosens as he watches Teuta toss back her favorite Corona. There’s a smile that she’s probably unaware of on her lips, a visible satisfaction that somehow seeps into Shu, along with the heat from a carnival packed with more people than he should be comfortable with.
He doesn’t dislike it, for now.
Shu takes a long draught of beer, leaning back against the bench they found.
“The shooting range was fun,” Teuta begins, and he turns towards her to listen. “My brother was good at shooting. He’d hit all the targets with a revolver. It was cool.”
Her immediate pause afterward, the realization in her eyes, and the subtle way her enthusiasm begins to dim make him move.
“So what else?”
Teuta blinks those green eyes at him, and he relaxes as he watches the self-consciousness recede from her gaze. “What else?”
“There’s more to this pop-up than just the shooting range, right?” He nudges her with his shoulder. “Where else did you go? With your brother, I mean.”
The girl lights up like someone who’s been overlooked for a long time, launching into chatter that he doesn’t mind listening to. Even if it could take a while.
She looks like she needs it.
Her face is soft with reminiscence, relaxing into a look he’s worn himself many times. Does she not get this chance a lot?
They’re like two peas in a pod in this regard.
He feels the smile on his face mirror hers. Remembering his mentor is a tired old rodeo that he’s done alone, one that he doesn’t mind. But it’s even more fun to talk to someone on the same level.
So he allows himself to be pulled into the easy conversation.
With Teuta, the memories of Teach are softer, dull, and hazy around the edges. When he touches them, he isn’t cut anew, but holding a fuzzy blanket worn soft from years of love. Viewing them is like staring at the dreamy watercolor paintings that cost too much and Scarecrow is all too happy to overspend to decorate his mansion, with no pain in the worlds they portray.
They just had to lose sight of the others, huh.
He goes through all this effort to give Teuta a good time on Sunny Island, and she’s left with Shu and his bumbling attempts to let her enjoy herself.
Not a half-bad job, until they remember what they argued about.
He can’t allow the frown to stay on her face, not when they almost had a good thing going earlier.
Maybe a ride on the Ferris wheel would be a good start, and place, to talk. Wait, she had a miserable time here in her past reminiscence, what was he doing?
Well, they’re here now.
He takes a look at the pout on her lips after she gracefully slams her head on the ceiling, and can’t help but crack a bit. He laughs, a little. It’s not on him that Teuta makes it so easy to smile, she does this to everyone.
All he has is the honesty to offer her his thoughts and the hope that they won’t leave her sad.
“Sorry for making you mad.” Shu gives her another gentle pat, rustling her hair and watching her frown waver.
“But I seriously don’t understand why you’re mad. I’m not just teasing you or anything.”
Her answer is equal parts frustrating and amusing to him.
I don’t really know, myself . Hmm.
“If a friend you lived with just out of the blue said ‘Hey, just so you know, I could wind up dead,’ wouldn’t that make you mad, too?”
Well, for one thing. Shu doesn’t have many friends, and this kind of talk just doesn’t have a place in the relationships he has with the rest of the Fixers.
For another… Maybe part of him doesn’t want to know what looks they would wear, should he go in the fashion he expects himself to go.
… He shouldn’t be smiling this easily. “Dunno. Should it make me mad?”
“You’d get mad if your family said ‘I’m probably gonna die, but it’s no biggie,’ wouldn’t you?”
Right from the mouths of babes. His chest feels tight, but it’s not a bad feeling. It’s the tightness that comes from the laugh that threatens to bubble out of your throat.
“We’re family?”
He wants to hear her say it herself.
Her eyes are so, so green as she peeks up at him through her fringe, that Shu has to shut his own. There’s no way for him to avoid the longing that creeps up and catches him unaware, otherwise. Him, a hitman, of all people.
He can’t keep staring back or he might do something stupid. Maybe he already has.
“We’re family… ish.”
That does have a nice ring to it. This realization catches him off-guard when he thinks of how he didn’t notice until now.
This… Family-ish feeling. It extends to the other guys who are currently having a grand old time without them.
And all it took was the entrance of this sunny young woman into a mansion full of hot messes.
What could he even do with this information?
How many breakfasts prepared by Mozu’s hand, dollars in Crow’s respect jar, audacious stunts from Limbo, and petty jabs exchanged with Helvetica would it have taken for him to acknowledge this?
“We’re not family just because we live together,” Teuta continues, unaware of how her words are tenderly picking him apart and making him whole at the same time. “But I think we’re family-ish. You’re all important to me.”
This girl. He looks down at her, and the pout on her face, and doesn’t fight the fondness that comes, overwhelming and freeing. He can’t, even if he wants to.
“Being a family can be a catch-22, you know? Familial bonds can’t be broken unilaterally.” Dark hair and even darker eyes, a thin wisp of a smile, flash in his mind.
Oh. He really is a fucking idiot, isn’t he?
He pushes on. “So us being family-ish is also a catch-22, isn’t it?”
She shouldn’t be sad for someone like him. But Shu doesn’t want to stop it.
What he wants shouldn’t matter, though.
The reminder of why comes soon enough. He shouldn’t have mentioned Yang. The name is a portent of what could come after things that, all of a sudden, are too important to lose.
Damn.
This scent in the air that he could have caught if the gentle atmosphere hadn’t lulled him into complacency.
His sibling.
The sound of their voice, slick with the satisfaction he’s learned to loathe, rips a gasp from him.
It hits him like the slash of a knife to the artery, like a shot to the head, like waking up after he’s sobbed himself dry, Teach’s body gone cold in his arms. The killing intent that follows narrows his world down into two people, and everything surrounding them slows down, cold clarity in his head and cold everything in his chest. Teuta really shouldn’t see him like this, but he’s drawn the knife out before he could think, and he’s ready.
Ready for what?
It’s only Teuta’s uncertain voice and the tremble in it that pulls him from the brink. Barely.
He can’t risk her.
But hearing Yang’s voice after their time together plunges Shu back into the icy river that he’s familiar with, and he needs this ice more than he needs her warmth.
He needs the ice, if he wants to be the one to put an end to this stupid, painful, wild goose chase that Yang has led him on for years. He needs it, if he wants to look his only sibling in the eye and put a bullet or more in them for killing their mother.
He needs to be cold, if he wants to lay Teach’s memory to rest.
Because he’s the only clown in this carnival, chasing after a sibling even as he looks forward to and dreads the loss of one more person in his family.
The truth is, he’s not sure if he can live with himself after he finishes the job.
Not sure if he wants to.
“Shu, is that…”
Don’t talk to him with that voice, Teuta.
Don’t give him the fleeting yet powerful urge to be a man he isn’t, hasn’t ever been, a man who comforts shivering girls who just had guns pressed to their backs. He’s not Crow, who could probably make you laugh even after something so scary. Neither is he Mozu, who would know what to give you when you’re afraid.
He’s not sure if he can justify it when there are still so many targets to hunt, Yang last of all.
Shu can’t look at her as she reaches with a shaking hand for him, can’t take it in his as he clutches a knife.
He feigns deafness to her words and walks away from the first warmth he’s known in a long time.