Suikoden V (Oboro, Sagiri) [week 1 - prompt 2]
Title: Faintly Hopeful Author: Laylah Rating: G Warnings: spoilers for the detectives' backstory Word Count: 200 Summary: "You can stop," he says gently.
"It's all right, Sagiri," Oboro says. He's mostly accustomed to his own new name, and he trusts that his apprentice is adjusting quickly, but he knows the girl less well, and tries to call her by the name she picked out frequently.
"Sir?" she says. Her smile is fixed, polite, faintly hopeful. The expression makes it hard to be certain -- even when he was small, Shigure rarely smiled, and now that he's reached the awkward years of becoming a man, solar eclipses are more common -- but Oboro suspects that before Nether Gate, they were siblings, and the memory of that bond made Shigure insist on bringing her when they fled the crumbling guild.
He lays on hand on her shoulder; she tenses first, then relaxes deliberately. He wonders which of the masters taught her that. "You can stop smiling," he says gently. "You won't need to anymore."
"I'm fine, sir," Sagiri says. She meets his eyes easily. Hers give away nothing. "It doesn't hurt at all."
Did it, at first? It must have. She smiles now even in her sleep. "Still," he says. "You can stop now."
"No, sir." Sagiri smiles, but not with her eyes. "I can't remember how."