It's been so long.

Oh, so long since she had last seen him. So long ago she had surmised he was dead. But oh, he was not, he's here, in the flesh, approaching her little table in the dim light of neon and suffocating stench of sweating dancing bodies.

She had known him from afar from the moment her stars started to ascend to the zenith of influence. Her ears had burned then, to hear that he had wallowed in filth and blood to amass as much gold as he can, that he used his charms to attract innocents to do likewise, that he led them in the practice of the old, infamous arts secretly admired in the Makai.

She had to give credit to the rumormongers for refusing to embellish the stories, but the poor fools; they never saw his lofty purpose. She had known his former protégés and found them far more intelligent, powerful and educated than the children of many of her generals. Not that they, or anyone else still alive, knew of the link she shared with him.

He had sashayed into her sorry excuse of a life the way he did right now towards her. In both instances the sultriness was affected, but now only the most astute observers could sense his tightly corked desire to walk with as little hip movement as possible. But nobody can affect a confidence borne of awareness of one's own beauty, and is he aware! He knows that neon lights' reflections ripple through his long black hair like swirls of liquid sapphire. He knows his hot-coal eyes burn into the thoughts of everyone he meets. He knows clients are wondering if he had skinned infants to wear their hides over his supposedly withered body.

But was he aware of such power that first day? Maybe not. He had swayed his hips in those days, indeed, but only at the crack of a cruel whip. He had quaked at every loud thud of heavy boots headed towards the cell that they shared, and like her, maintained the fearful silence in the dark world they shared with him whose name she'd rather fling away as far away as she can, and as the handcuffs are close to her wrists, because he had arrived at her table, seated himself, and asked for her name.

Why hadn't he invented a name for her now just as he did during the first day that they met? He had named her Hoshi, for, as he said, meeting her "was the only nice thing that happened to me so far, like seeing a bit of dawn at midnight." She, nameless save for the endearment of "slut", and having no idea what dawn and midnight are, had laughed at the strange speech...

Why was she expecting him to name her tonight? Only the ones who bought their names with blood and gold can afford this place. Of course he expects her to have a name. To tell him, though, would distract him from her purpose.

What about him? She saw the hunger in his eyes and knew that he only recognizes the faces of money and lust. For now.

As she measured out her night with him in ounces of precious metals, she pulled the hood of her hood further down her face, a face that he would not recognize from his past, a face he would not attach a name to until she unveils herself.

She insisted to him that no candles be lit in their room. His ears drooped slightly at her request. She could not blame him. She had wanted to cradle his face as he moved in her, wanted to see his expression in an amber glow as his being rose from the bed to the stars with her.

But no, she had said. Because, she privately reasoned, you and I would sink into the hell of regret the moment you see my face, without us even touching clouds for a few seconds together. Let's fly first. Then we can crash back to reality.

Is he as skilled as he was in her memory, as skilled as word of mouth had portrayed him? Oh, yes yes yes! No wonder he remained in this trade, he was a natural fucking engine, even when he still had a dearth of experience. She, seasoned cunt at twelve, thought she had taken all of the torture and degradation anyone could derive from sex. She had become complacent that her unwilling fellow slave, who had been forced to rape her under his watchful eye, could not make her feel anything new.

She should have known how far greater than everything that she had known was the pain of ascending the peaks of satiation. She remembers seeing how lost he had been while hiking such dangerous territory, just as lost as she was too, but now they were learned navigators, and he had even become an expert. But oh, how worthy of this pain was the glorious blossoming inside once it was reached! These were the flowers from the few seeds of hope pushing through the barren landscape of their young fantasies.

But not only did they tend to these flowers, they went so far as to build a sand castle of love and freedom. Freedom was, to her, seeing the sky outside as purple as his robes, inhaling the air fragrant with freshly-cut stalks of newly-harvested rice, and touch the velvet flowers, ki blasts of the fertility gods. She would do all this as he caresses her hand with his own, while caressing her ears with his soft-spoken words, and that would be love.

Had their promise to love each other as long as they could been so pathetic in the eyes of the gods that they decided to play a prank on them? Or had they been interested to see how she would look like with half her body burned away? It was a blessing at first when the citadel, that fiend's citadel, surrendered to a great fire that, somehow, her love had been able to summon at the weakest and most ill-used she had seen him. His pent-up rage was ignited, he said, by the sight of her first tear.

She realized, when a drop escaped from her lids as she came with him, that the first and second times she had cried were separated by all the centuries they were apart. But she had not flown as high as she wanted. Where were those times, she wondered as a gasp let slip from her lips, and he worried enough to light a lamp by the bed.

"H-Hoshi?!"

The dam of her silent feelings finally cracked with that gasp, and she simply had to let everything pour out. How she had sprouted wings as she danced and sang with him on dewy grass. How those wings were torn off her when they were recaptured, with his battered body hurled off a cliff in a bloody burlap sack. How she knew her heart was thrown in the same trajectory the sack traveled. How she used to believe that her blood, and the blood of every demon in her path, would bring him back. She actually started laughing amid her tears at how naïve she had been, naïve enough not to know that a throne was waiting for her all those years.

What she had expected waiting for her was him.

He tentatively asks him how he should call her.

Name me, she said playfully. She was anything but.

Silence from him. He sits still for a few seconds, and then starts awkwardly. "I-if you're wondering about your hired hand... he's here, he's now working for me. You haven't paid him yet, right? Um, I think you should forget about him, because... Kurama defeated him, and now he wants revenge. He's training hard... under me, and if you want him to try again don't let him. Hired killers should be cold, not hot with anger."

I have to agree, she said. But you're changing the subject. I asked you to name me.

Why didn't he name her that way? She thought he knew her.

You should know by now that you're not her anymore, he said. You were looking backward all this time and did not see how much you've changed. No, I'm not disgusted with you --- I actually think you've grown more beautiful --- but I can't name a stranger, you see. Why don't you introduce her to us?

So now you break a promise, she snarled. Fucking whore, gods-damned half youko, I've seen too many treaties crumble and now this! You promised to love me for as long as you can, and I did love you, moron, I waited and killed and bled all this time. How could you be so glib about this? Why can't it be like it used to be? You were as good as I remember but you lost something in all the years we were apart... Damn I feel so cold after all that faked heat...

I did, he said softly. But I can't love a memory and a memory can't love me back. I had to move on and love someone tangible. And I did, several times, and made almost as many mistakes. I do now. I surmised you had done the same, and it turns out you hadn't.

With this her sand castle crashed with a tsunami of her sobs.

She tried to avoid his embrace, but he managed to ensnare her with his warmth. He stroked her back with one hand as she unwillingly leaned on his shoulder, while fingering her shackled wrists in another. "A female like you can still find love. Not just from me, in the way you wanted me to. I can love you as a friend. Your generals can love you. Your subjects. Anyone else you may not have known yet. But introduce yourself first. Forgive me please? And those who hurt you too."

She lifted her head from his shoulder slightly. The dawn was introducing herself to everyone through the thin gaps between the draperies. Its rays hovered around her white wrists and the puddle of melted metal that once covered it.