Human Nature

The air was thick around them as they continued silently out of the building. Ashleen wrapped her arms around herself as her jaw clenched. The sound of their feet was the only thing breaking the night.

She wasn't sure if she wanted to smack him or herself more. This whole night had just turned....

Maybe Feliks was right. She was a tease- she didn't know why she cared about those words so much. She had heard much worse in the past year. She had never been afriad to flirt for what she needed.... People just assumed that meant she would go... further as well.

She wouldn't though. Ashleen had more self respect then that.

As she looked at Tre her hands balled up into fists. This was his fault. If he wasn't so-so-so....

The silence was getting to her. Driving her mental. Wasn't he going to say ... something?! Anything? This was always they damn way with him. He'd play stupid games then pretend that they never happened, that nothing had just happened that they weren't...

"Did you have a nice time? You looked like you were having a nice time?" her voice was flat, devoid of emotion as she looked out into the night.

Tre walked along, completely blind to his companions emotions. His mind was on Faye. She was getting worse, and he hadn't even taken the time to heal her. He felt terrible about that, the thought making him want to race back up to the party before they left.

"Hmm?" he asked, still lost in thought. "Oh, it was fun. Me and Faye danced a bit." he gave a noncommittal shrug and kept walking, his mind returning to his ward, not that it had ever strayed. He really should go back and heal her. What if she got worse? He was her Angel. He couldn't allow her to...

Ashleen growled slightly and rolled her eyes. And that was all she go. The boy was insufferable. She wasn't even sure why she even bothered half the time.

"Well thats nice I supposed, really cut up a rug did you... you and... Tinkerbell?" she continued her voice losing its blank tone to an increasingly more irked one. She swallowed it back down and glared ahead of her. When she spoke again, she was back to her first tone, empty, emotionless, "She's cute you know... in that little... fairy sort of way. I bet she's got a personality to match. Sweet, and innocent - the adorable sort that everyone loves."

Ash could have been like that too, she thought. If she hadn't lived the life she had, seen the things she did, done the things she's done. She could have been... cute, loved....

Now she was just the damn tease that nobody bothered with.

Tre paused in his thoughts of Faye long enough to actually hear what she was saying, but rather than comprehend it, he did what he usually did when distracted. He spewed the information back at her, repeating her.

"You think Bonita looks like Tinkerbell?" He mused, still elsewhere in his mind. "I suppose she does look kinda cute, doesn't she? Everyone does seem to just gravitate toward..." He stopped talking, looking straight ahead and frowning slightly. "Oh." He said, his walk gently slowing to a stop. "I've upset you somehow, haven't I?" He looked over at her, his eyes confused, half his mind on the girl before him, and the other half trying to figure out how exactly he'd screwed up this time. "What have I done?"

Ashleen rolled her eyes as he first started talking. Great, he wasn't even listening to her. As if she didn't know what he did when he was only half listening? He was probably thinking about - you know what she didn't care about what he was thinking about. He could thinking about whatever or whoever he wanted.

"Oh no," she said her voice dripping with sarcasm. "No, no no, don't falter yourself. Whoever said it was something you did. You know I do have a life outside of you that I like to engage in from time to time."

Though the problem was she wasn't sure she really did. And that thought was only serving to get on her nevres even more.

Tre frowned at her. Well, now she had his full attention. "Wings." He said firmly. "I know when you're lying." He took her hand, and pulled her against him. He folded her into his arms, looking down at her worriedly. "What has gotten you so upset?"

His golden irises swirled as they caught on hers, and he brought them nose to nose without really meaning to. His eyes swept her face, trying his best to read her. It was like returning to a favorite book ages after you'd last picked it up; everything seemed fresher, newer, harder to understand. But it was still the same story.

Ash tried to wiggle out of his grasp, resist his pull forward, but found herself trapped by his hold none the less.

She scowled as she looked up at him, meeting his probing gaze with a mutinous one. She didn't care what he said. There was nothing he could say that could fix....

Fix what exactly?

Growling a little to herself - sounding not unlike Heaven if you cross the dog - turned her head to stop looking at him, and began to wiggle, leaning against his arms putting force back, attempting to break the grasp so she could stalk off.

"Let me go."

"Ash..." His gaze softened, and his grip tightened. "I... I just...." He let go of her, his arms dropping to his sides. "Fine." He said, his face falling into its emotionless mask. "We have a job to do." Brushing past her, he moved toward their point of escape, not even bothering to look back at her. He rolled his shoulders, adjusting the leather jacket over his form. He clenched his jaw and kept moving, his hands clenched into fists.

He'd survived a year without her. She probably just needed...

Space?

The thought made him growl, low in the back of his throat.

Tre no longer believed in space.

"Good," Ash spat after him, her jaw clenching and unclenching as she let him walk away, still standing in the same place. The sudden lonely feeling she got just surved to make her more upset. At herself, at the world, at Tre...

She was just a whole being of upset. Growling, to herself, she stomped her feet, figuring the snow was probably going to ruin her boots. She'd have to find some spell to fix them later.

Ash moved to take a step after him, but stopped as she glanced at her foot print, an idea forming in her head. Smirking slightly she reached down, feeling her fingers go numb shortly after contact with the icy substence. She didn't care. All she needed was one good...

Glaring at Tre's retreating form, she wined back her arm, and let her creation fly. She smiled to see unless the boy moved, her aim had been true and her snowball should hit him square on the back.

Tre stopped walking. He tensed, sensing what she was doing before he had even realized what he was doing. Of their own accord, his hands rose in a sudden upward motion, and a wall of snow separated them, the snowball hitting the wall uselessly. His feet pivoted, and he shoved his hands forward, the wall deteriorating as it flew at her.

He blinked.

Then he was in front of her, hugging her against his chest and ducking his head as the pounds of snow slammed painfully against his back. When it had gone and was over, he let her go, turning away from her once more and walking again. The tenseness in his shoulders belied the pain of newly-forming bruises, yet to heal. It had hurt. It had hurt a lot.

He'd almost hurt her.

Turning suddenly, he punched the trunk of the nearest tree, watching disinterestedly as the bark cracked under the impact. That could be Ash one day. Or Iva. Or even Pieter.

His other fist made contact with the bark, and soon he was punching it, over and over. Was that him grunting as his fists made contact? Was that pain spreading up his arms the faster he punched?

He no longer knew.

Ashleens eyes widened as the snow swirled in front of her, but before her brain could get any real sense of danger, it was gone, and all she could see was the dark material of Tre's shirt. No sooner had that been there though it seemed like it was gone again, and Ash was left to stumble forward, very confused by what happened.

"Tre..." her former anger seemed to disappate with her confusion, "What just-" her words of confusion died, as the boy started to punch the tree. "Tre! What the hell?!"

She pounded across the space he had added, biting her lip as she went. She wanted to just go pull his arm away from the tree now, but she figured it would be dangerous to get near.

"Tre, stop it," she whispered softly at first, hesitantly resting a hand on his back. "Tre please..." she flinched as his arm hit the tree again. "Tre! You`re hurting yourself! Stop it!" her voice got increasingly lounder until she was close to an angry shriek. "Treshawn Beneparte stop hitting that tree!!"

Tre froze.

He was breathing hard, his knuckles stung, and his golden irises swirled into a dark goldenrod. He let out all of his breath in a sigh, his eyes zeroing in on the fact that frost appeared on the tree in that spot, slowly freezing it from the outside in. He tore his eyes away from it, turning on his heel.

"We have business to do." He grunted, flexing his fingers and allowing his body's defenses to heal him. His back was still bruised, however. They wouldn't heal. It was like water was the only thing that could permanently hurt him.

How ironic.

He turned away from her, stalking past toward the point of their escape once more.

Buisness.

Ashleen blinked.

And there it was. They always had buisness. Maybe that was what was wrong - what she hated most. Why she got so worked up over the girl, over.... everything.

Why it was easier to move away from him.

Cause when it boiled down to it - that was all they ever seemed to have. Business.

Sighing, she bit her lip and followed. Watching his back closely as he moved in the distance, and knew if she let him keep going they would never talk about this again. She wasn't even sure if she said something they'd talk about it now.

It was business, business, business. It was time she got use to that.

"No," she dug her heals into the ground just at their exit point. Just beyond the line of now and then. "What if I... just say no."

He stopped. If he could do this mission without her, he would, but Papa was very specific about needing both of them. He turned and looked at her, his eyes dead. "No what?" He grunted through his teeth, his voice emotionless.

He wanted to reach out and touch her. He wanted to pull her into his arms and apologize, but he didn't. What if he accidentally did something? Breathed the wrong way and froze her?

Inside she flinched a bit at her tone, but years of practice kept the emotion from showing across her face, in her body language.

Instead she just stared back.

"No to this - to the mission, to papa, to everything," her voice was soft, almost inaudiable in normal cases, but it carried in the silent evening. "If... I just... refused, stayed here... said no."

Tre closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Then you die, and I get a new partner." He said simply, sounding drained. "Then I don't even get to avenge your death, because you threw your life away. Is that what you want?"

He refused to look at her. "Can't we just get this over with? Then you can go back to throwing things at me and dancing with-" His voice cut off, and he distantly wondered where in hell that had came from, but they were different now, and he could break her.

Just like he did his sculptures.

"Sometimes," Ash shrugged, her voice flat, but her feet already moving, moving towards him... past him, "Sometimes I think maybe - I could run, I could... I know how they work I could..."

She paused infront of him, careful to keep the distance, "Then I remember this is all I know - all I'll ever be good at. Sad isn't it?"

Sighing, she made a move to keep walking past him. Her eyebrow raised slightly as he meantioned before, but... what would have sent her into exstantics only a few minutes ago, now seemed chidlish.

"I didn't even know his name; maybe what they say about me is true," she shrugged. "But, you're right; enough chit-chat. Its time for buisness."

He listened, his eyes downcast. "It's all any of us are good at." He said bitterly. "Papa made sure of it. That way, we can't ever leave."

"Business." He repeated, relieved. He stepped into the small invisible circle that was their escape. He slipped his hand into hers as he walked past her, muttering the passwords and pass-codes flawlessly though they weaved through many different languages and many different words and numbers that made barely any sense at all.

When the circle began to glow, he turned to her, making sure her hand was still firmly in his before he raised it to his lips and kissed it. "No matter what happens..." He whispered. "You will always be my Wings."

The light flashed, and the both of them were gone.