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Thus I heard. On one occasion the Blessed One was living at Gaya, at Gayasisa, together with a thousand bhikkhus [monks]. There he addressed the bhikkhus.

"Bhikkhus, all is burning. And what is the all that is burning?

"The eye is burning, forms are burning, eye-consciousness is burning, eye-contact is burning, also whatever is felt as pleasant or painful or neither-painful-nor-pleasant that arises with eye-contact for its indispensable condition, that too is burning. Burning with what? Burning with the fire of lust, with the fire of hate, with the fire of delusion. I say it is burning with birth, aging and death, with sorrows, with lamentations, with pains, with griefs, with despairs[...]"

— The Adittapariyaya Sutra: The Fire Sermon, tl. by Ñanamoli Thera (1993) 

It is fortunate that Fowler and Mizu arrive at their uneasy armistice in the shadow of the shogunate's burning palace. In the vast confusion of that conflagration, they come away with enough coin and valuables to make the cost of travel an insignificant expenditure—in theory.

Logistics and discretion are another matter entirely.

The main roads are congested with refugees from the burning city of Edo, and brigands and opportunists harangue the ragtag travelers and their meager encampments along the road like carrion crows. 

Mizu has always avoided the main roads when she could—the better to elude the attention of the authorities, forfend the unwanted possibility of companionship, and avoid any inconvenient questions.

But they had at least been an option, before.

The dark glasses which conceal her hollow eyes helped preempt the stares and screams. But glasses would not conceal the heritage she had hidden so meticulously for her entire life—not when one of its exemplars traveled beside her with undeniable stature, Western facial features, and bright, eye-catching hair the color of a healthy fire, streaked with ashen age.

And so by avoidance more imperative than usual, Mizu and Fowler are not caught in the worst of the congestion out of Edo. But from the cliffside overhang a short walk from their campsite, she can see it clearly.

She returns to the fire to find Fowler reclining against the tree she had tied him to—leisurely, as if he is not a captive in ransom for knowledge.

"Welcome back," he says casually, as if Mizu has just returned home from the market. "See anything interesting?"

Mizu stands at the edge of the clearing, taking the measure of the Irishman. There is a tiger-like ease in the loose slope of his shoulders. "Droves of Edo refugees," she answers, as if it is no less remarkable than running water. She can't imagine why he bothered asking.

Fowler gets a pensive look about him. "Lucky for them it's spring, I suppose..." He grins slyly. "Is that what took you so long? Admiring your handiwork?"

Mizu's lip twitches toward a sneer, but she masters her reaction to avoid giving him the satisfaction of seeing it. "Trying to figure out how we'll make it to port without being seen."

Fowler pushes his tongue between his teeth, like he's searching for a crumb caught between them. He is crass, but Mizu recognizes it for the deliberate affectation of disinterest it is. "If you hadn't burned the city to the ground, we could have chartered a vessel straight out of Edo..."

Mizu shakes her head and starts to approach the fire—but Fowler watches her movements too keenly, and her eyes narrow with suspicion as she stops in her tracks.

"Show me your hands," Mizu commands.

Fowler smiles ruefully and reveals his hands in a gesture of lighthearted surrender—frayed rope hanging in loose loops over rubbed-raw wrists. Mizu sighs through her nose, almost resigned to this.

"Waste of good rope, if you ask me," Fowler blithely remarks, shaking off the frayed bindings so they tumble to the forest floor.

"You're right," Mizu agrees, approaching the fire pit and sitting on the felled log she'd made into a seat to tend it. Their campfire had banked somewhat, in her absence. "I should just cut off your hands and save myself the trouble."

"How ruthless," Fowler chuckles with warm approval that makes her hair stand on end. "Maybe you are mine, after all."

Mizu conceals a shiver of revulsion. Fowler knows their similarities repel her, and is using that to discourage her from maiming him. As intimately as she knows that—she cannot deny it is an effective deterrent. It throws her soul of roiling hatred into confusion, struck with indecision on the point of how best to deny their connection by defying his expectations.

In her conflicted state, any answer she could give would be far too revealing. So she makes none—only stoking the fire, and even that not very convincingly. Her blinding hatred for the man she's deigned to travel with is damnably distracting, and the fire sifts and hisses uncooperatively.

Fowler slaps his hands on his thighs and rises from the base of the tree she'd tried in vain to tie him to. Mizu stills, her grip subtly shifting on the stick she's using to prod the fire. It could serve as a weapon, if needs must.

But his injuries make him slow enough that she finds no cause for concern. He traipses, limping, around the clearing, leaning down with quiet groans and hisses as he gathers sticks and leaf litter. When he straightens again, Mizu has taken the measure of his injuries. He had been much more spry on their way out of the city—but the rush of battle had still been singing in their veins, every pain reduced to a footnote in the saga they had written in blood.

Mizu can feel her own injuries begin to weigh on her more heavily, now that things have calmed down. Her ribs ache fiercely from the way Fowler had crushed her in his arms.

Her chest bindings certainly aren't helping.

As Fowler approaches the fire, Mizu grows alert again. He reaches up absently, breaking a narrow branch from a looming tree easily with his considerable height. He plucks off the stems as he comes closer, still favoring his left leg as he shuffles over the leaf litter.

Fowler clambers down into a seated position across the fire from her, groaning quietly as the movement agitates his injuries. He settles in at last with a wince, the colorful mottled bruises on his beaten-in face twitching with discomfort.

As the fire wavers between them, Mizu decides there's no harm in admiring her handiwork in this particular instance.

She keeps careful watch of his dominant hand, though he only uses that long branch to stoke the fire.

"I could be useful to you for more than just my knowledge, you know," Fowler volunteers. He lifts his gaze to hers, the verdant green of his eyes aflame with a forest fire. "Provided you weren't determined to treat me like a rather cumbersome war trophy, of course."

"That's an apt description," Mizu coldly praises. The fire crackles, and her eyes dart to his other hand, which slowly feeds his gathered kindling to the flame.

"Oh," Fowler says softly, as if she has just told him something very interesting. "And when should I expect my brutish captor to take his spoils of war, hm?"

Mizu stands abruptly. She wants to throw a thousand imprecations in his face. Accusation and castigation rise to the tip of her tongue like bile.

But Fowler smiles with warm expectation in the face of her ire. He is waiting for her anger to flare into senseless rage.

She clenches her fists, and imagines all her violence gathering there. She cannot trust herself not to leap across the fire and set upon him like a rabid animal if she has to look at his smug face a moment longer.

"Wait here," she gruffly commands, and turns on her heel to march out of the clearing.

"Going for a bath?" Fowler calls, taking an educated guess based on the direction she's walking in. "Am I invited?"

The fire cracks at the same moment Mizu does.

She spins on her heel and fixes him with the full ferocity of her glare. "No," she snaps. "Stay here, or else..."

Fowler's brows lift with idle interest over his unbothered smile. Mizu is not in the habit of making idle threats—and as she grapples with murderous intent and inarguable necessity for the knowledge Fowler withholds, she recognizes that continuing to threaten him will only dull the edge of her words.

She shakes her head and scoffs in disgust. "Just stay here," she says, and turns once more into the cover of the trees.

He won't get far on his own. Mizu's legs are not as injured as his, and she can track him if he tries to escape.

The natural hot spring they had discovered as they made to set up camp quietly burbles in the quiet of night. Stones line the largest pool, as if travelers or frequent visitors had tended it once upon a time. Tonight, its only custodians are the dense forest surrounding it, and the moonlight shining upon it between the trees.

Mizu breathes in the warm, humid air. Anticipatory relief makes her body grow lax as she approaches the lip of the pool. She kneels, cupping the water and letting it spill between her fingers. Fortunately it is hot, but not scalding. She settles in by the bank and loosens the sash around her shirt.

A twig snaps behind her.

Mizu seizes a loose stone and rises to her feet, spinning on her heel with a quickness that dizzies her.

Fowler stops just inside the shadow of the treeline, lifting his hands in a gesture of peace.

She might have known.

Mizu hastily closes her shirt over her chest, holding the stone hidden in her other hand. "I told you to wait by the fire."

Abijah spreads his arms and surveys the pools and drifting steam with a guileless smile. "But it's so much warmer out here!" His smile turns sly. "You wouldn't want your one and only traveling companion to catch his death and keel over, now... Would you?"

Fowler's eyes dart down to her chest, and Mizu realizes that her defensive posture discredits her here. They are both too injured to survive another fight. She isn't foolish enough to let her guard down because of that, because there is the ever-present possibility of treachery—but she refuses to cower, either. She straightens, re-tying her shirt around her waist with sharp economy of movement. 

She considers correcting him—but pointing out that keeling over is exactly what she wants him to do will only invite him to flaunt his trump card: that she needs him alive to find the others.

"You could have added fuel to the fire," she dryly reasons.

"Ah, but what fire can compete with the warmth of the company of one's fellow man?" he inquires with a melodramatic air. Like a play-actor—or a uniquely emphatic reciting poet.

Mizu sneers. "We may be allies of circumstance, Abijah Fowler... but you can't possibly think I trust you enough to bathe with you."

Fowler shrugs as he steps clear of the trees. "Trust is a funny thing... it's all a matter of expectations, isn't it?"

Mizu's eyes narrow as she waits for him to continue.

"If I know someone will sell me out at the first opportunity... Then in a sense, I can trust them to act according to those expectations. Barely even feels like a betrayal, at that point, when they've done exactly what you expected, hm?"

"Preparing for the worst," Mizu concludes. "What do you think I'm doing?"

Fowler shakes his head. "It's not pessimism I'm advocating. It's knowing thine enemy." He takes a step closer, and Mizu's shoulders wind up tight—making her upper back twinge from the earlier crushing injury of her enemy's embrace. It comes on so quickly that she can't quite stifle a faint animal sound of pain.

Fowler steps closer in her moment of inattention, casting her in his broad shadow. Mizu's fist tightens around the stone, and she inhales sharply, preparing to move—but the sudden expansion of her lungs causes a stabbing pain in her ribs, making her tremble, making her weak—  

Fowler gently takes her chin between his thumb and forefinger, tilting her head up to meet his gaze.

"For example... You can trust that I will take advantage of any weakness I see in you." Yet his hand caresses her face like a lover's, and Mizu's brow furrows, uncomprehending, even as her vision swims from the pain. "But it's not my violence you should fear... We both know you can endure that by now, I think."

Fowler leans forward, and Mizu feels ice spill down her spine as she thinks, for a moment, he's angling for—

Not a kiss—but his lips brush her ear all the same as he whispers, "What you should fear... is my boredom."

Mizu shivers with revulsion. "I'm not here to entertain you, like some—pleasure district courtesan," she snarls, lifting a trembling hand to slap his grasp away at last. Even if she's too weak to manage it, she'll never be able to live with herself if she doesn't at least try to fight back—

But Fowler releases her without a fight—his arm retreating with all the effortless ease of a toy sailboat on a breeze.

He lets himself be fended off.

Mizu glares at her enemy with bewildered hostility.

"You mistake me," Fowler assures her, as gracious as a gentleman. "You company alone is enough to banish my boredom."

Mizu notices that this assurance offers precious few actual guarantees that he'll keep his hands to himself. "So you can't even entertain yourself alone for half an hour?"

Something irate, deep-seated and dark, twitches onto Fowler's calm countenance. Then he smiles, and the shadow passes. "I've been entertaining myself alone for the past ten years in that bloody castle," he confides with a soft laugh. "It gets old."

Mizu considers this. Isolation never bothered her—but that's probably because she had the promise of revenge as her constant companion. 

"... And I'm tired of the smell of smoke," Fowler goes on, sounding suddenly as weary as he looks with all those bruises on his face. Mizu searches his eyes for a sign he's being sincere—and immediately regrets it. When she finds it there plain as day, she has no idea what to do with it. "Have a heart, hm?"

"... You're clingy," Mizu observes, as best she can when her ribs smart fiercely each time she draws breath, "for a man who tried to kill all his bastard children."

Fowler snorts. "Ah, well... I suppose I had to see something of myself in one of the little bastards before paternal instinct kicked in."

Mizu scoffs with disgust. "Keep your paternal instinct to yourself. That's not what I want from you."

"Little miss," Fowler calls for her attention as she turns back toward the pool. "We nearly killed each other this morning."

"What's your point?" Mizu demands over her shoulder. 

"That we nearly succeeded," Fowler continues, stepping closer still and placing a hand on her shoulder. His hand is rough, red, covered in hair. He's as beastly as a giant ape. Yet his touch is gentler than she thought him capable of. Even still, with the ache of recent injury, that softest touch still imparts only pain. "And that if we're to make it to London in one piece, surrounded by enemies on all sides... It behooves us to do more than tolerate each other."

He leans down—not close enough to whisper in her ear again, but enough for his orange hair to tumble over her shoulder like it's her own. The very sight repels her. 

In a low, slow rumble, Fowler continues, "We'll have to be able to fight... back to back."

In point of fact, she has already given him her back—albeit out of more disregard and weariness than trust. "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," Mizu answers, postponing consideration of that odious eventuality. She rolls her shoulder to shake him off, but he doesn't take the hint. She grits her teeth. "You're hurting me."

Fowler squeezes her shoulder gently before he releases it, making her hiss.

"My humblest apologies," he murmurs insincerely—but he does pull away. His hair slides up and off her shoulder as he goes, like a silk scarf slipping away. Gooseflesh rises to the surface of her bruise-mottled skin at that ticklish whisper of touch. "Do you want daddy to kiss it better?"

Mizu makes good use of his proximity to elbow Fowler in his unprotected gut. He doubles over with a pained grunt, and she smiles, not minding so much the second time when his hair tumbles over her in a curtain.

"Try it," she flatly invites, "if you want to lose your tongue."

"Feisty thing," Fowler groans, his voice thick with pain and pride. Mizu steps away and unties the fastenings of her shirt again, dropping it onto the shore of the spring.

She plucks at her chest wrappings, wincing as even that minor movement puts strain on her injuries. She's certain she broke a few ribs.

"... Don't tell me you beat me with a handicap," Fowler pipes up. "Were you already injured, when we went toe-to-toe?"

Mizu sighs. She supposes she will have to keep him occupied with conversation if she wants to discourage him from finding other ways to alleviate his boredom. "Revenge misses no opportunity," she opines, "but this isn't an injury." She turns back toward him, revealing the symmetry of her bindings, the absence of old blood. Recognition shines in his pale green eyes in the moonlight. "... Unless you count being born a woman an injury."

Fowler exhales abruptly in muted laughter. "Some might," he says. "You certainly seem to."

"Being born a monster was the injury," Mizu replies. "Being born a woman was a minor inconvenience, compared to that."

Fowler hums as he steps closer, his brow furrowing as he examines her handiwork. He reaches out a finger to pluck the top of those bindings, making her sway. She hisses, slapping his hand away with a sneer. "They're on tight," he says thoughtfully, stroking the stubble of his chin. "It's a wonder you can even breathe."

"... I manage," Mizu mutters.

To her surprise, Fowler kneels before her with a sigh—wincing as his weight rests on the knee she kicked out during their brawl. "Must be a chore," he says simply. "Where have you got it tucked in?"

Mizu has been wrapping her chest alone for her entire life. No one has ever helped her with this before—or anything, save for the rare exception of her blind master in her youth, and Ringo and Taigen more recently. But no one has ever helped her with this. She would rather slit Fowler's throat and toss him in the pool beside them to bathe in his blood than permit him to touch her any more than he already has, to accept the help he has inexplicably offered to the detriment of her pride. 

But he kneels before her, holding her gaze patiently with eyes as green and secret as the depths of a foreign forest.

She untucks the wrappings and places the trailing end in his open hand.

Fowler's eyes narrow in a crow's feet smile as he rubs the fabric between his thumb and forefinger. "That's a good girl."

Mizu sneers. "Watch it." She jabs his knee with the heel of her foot, and Fowler grunts, his grip reflexively tightening in pain response. There isn't much slack in her chest wrappings, and his tightening grip tugs her, makes her stumble forward, her feet landing between his thighs. In the tumult of pain and searching for purchase, she drops her precious stone as her hands fall to his broad shoulders to regain her balance. He grunts, but doesn't protest at the touch, as she had.

"Careful, sweetheart," Fowler chuckles, glancing at the water-smoothed stone as it tumbles away from them and into the pool. "You can't keep taking pot shots at me when we're tied together like this."

Mizu gets the distinct impression he is not only referring to her chest wrappings. She forces her hands to fall from his shoulders—though the lack of support makes her waver on her feet. "Just get on with it," she commands, and Fowler, inexplicably, obliges.

Fowler beckons for her to lift her arms, and to her chagrin, she is forced to rest her hands on his shoulders again as he gently unwinds the length of cloth compressing and concealing her breasts. The removal of her chest bindings is always a painful process, but it is, at least, a familiar one. She winces as the pressure incrementally releases with each fallen loop, folded tidily into Fowler's loose fist. Her breathing quickens, and then labors, as each band comes away, bringing the pain of binding and the evidence of her injuries to the fore.

Mizu's hands tighten on Fowler's shoulders, occasionally making him grunt with pain of his own—but he endures it all with saintly patience. Even as her ribs throb, and she cannot restrain her shameful sounds of pain, and she digs her nails with punitive agony into shoulder muscles, Fowler offers neither complaint nor rebuke.

"Why... are you helping me?" Mizu demands, unwilling to listen to her own litany of pathetic animal sounds. 

Fowler hums. "Apart from the fact that this is something I never tire of seeing...?"

Mizu scowls—but focusing on loathing is preferable to the pain, and so she seizes the conversational thread enthusiastically, when she would otherwise discard it in disgust. "A woman's body?" she asks through gritted teeth. "Or the suffering of another?"

Fowler rumbles out a pensive and pleased sound. "How could I possibly choose between the two...?"

Mizu shudders with revulsion, and takes refuge in her burning hatred. It instills her with higher purpose—makes it possible to endure every agony Fowler so solicitously imparts.

"You're twisted," Mizu says, soft and vehement.

"One finds ways to while away the hours," Fowler breezily replies. "Though torture eventually loses its luster. Haven't really indulged in years... I picked up other hobbies."

"Is that so," Mizu says, latching onto his ramblings like flotsam in a storm. "Like what?"

Fowler never stops carefully unwrapping her chest—but he takes a long, interminable moment of thought, rather than answering.

"Tell me," Mizu insists, feeling desperate enough to come as close as this to begging. She just needs a distraction from the pain.

"Oh, I doubt you'd find it interesting. Just an old man's hobbies..."

"Tell me," she snarls, feels her nails dig into his skin.

Fowler hisses at the touch of her punitive claws. But he bites his lip, too. She wonders if he's enjoying this. She wonders if he likes the pain.

"... Ceramic," he volunteers at length.

"You?" she laughs, derisive—and is cut off by a groan as another bruised expanse of fat is set free by a falling loop of cloth. She has sustained a few bleeding injuries, sweat and blood congealing to make her wrappings stick to her skin. Fowler tugs and plucks the cloth with maddeningly gentle insistence. "Don't be so fucking precious with it," she snaps. "Just—"

"Rip the bandage off?" he asks—and waits for no answer, ripping the wrappings free and making her scream as a cut along her right side reopens, letting hot, inflamed blood trickle free.

"Hush now, little one," Fowler absently soothes, and he leans forward to suck the blood from the cut along the side of her breast. 

Mizu inhales sharply enough to make her chest stab with pain, and her breath wavers from her lungs in a whimper. Her hands fly up to cling to Fowler's cascades of fiery hair, that she might better endure his confounding attentions. He tongues the cut, and she digs her nails into his scalp as her stomach turns. Her veins flood with cool dread and unwilling arousal. 

"What... are you doing," she gasps, her breaths reedy and tremulous with more than just pain.

Fowler pulls away from the wound site with a wet, sucking kiss, and Mizu throws her head back with a plaintive cry at the ferocity of that sting. All told, it is not the worst of all the pains she is enduring. It is almost—clarifying, amidst the dull confusion of every broken bone and aching muscle that ails her.

"If you go in the water with that bleeding cut," Fowler patiently explains, "you might bleed out."

"I've had worse," she argues. "Surely you can just staunch the bleeding with a cloth."

"And get dirt in the wound?" Fowler challenges, lifting a furry eyebrow in skeptical amusement.

Mizu tsks. "As if your mouth is any cleaner than what we're wearing."

Fowler licks her blood from his teeth, clearly savoring it. "Fair point," he concedes. "... But I think you'll agree a little blood is the least I could be taking from you at the moment."

Mizu yanks the hair in her grasp, making Fowler wince and fiercely hiss. "If you even try it," she darkly intones, "I'll unman you."

Fowler's voice is strained when he replies, "If there's anything left to unman after you struck me in the family jewels." He lets out a low, hoarse laugh. "You should be more careful with your inheritance, my dear." Mizu tightens her grip on his hair, and his eyes flutter shut, his mouth falling open in a guttural groan.

"Harder," Fowler desperately whispers, his voice broken with desire.

Mizu releases his hair in a hurry.

Fowler sighs in airy lament. "Spoiling all my fun," he grouses—but he's smiling crookedly, and she cannot help but wonder if his arousal was an act to dissuade her from harming him.

She isn't quite willing to call his bluff on that point. So she supposes if pretending at desire was some sort of mad gambit, it was an effective one.

"Shall I continue, then?" Fowler inquires. "Or are you going to object to my methods at every turn?"

"Your methods are guided solely by your appetite," Mizu wearily accuses.

"True enough," Fowler agrees with a careless shrug, and continues his fastidious work without waiting for her leave.

Mizu feels weak on her feet, but she perseveres in standing. Fowler went to the trouble of lowering himself in a kind of parodic obeisance—likely to put her at ease at the prospect of accepting his assistance—but she shudders to think what liberties he will see fit to take if she were to lower herself to his level.

When the wrappings fall away enough to expose the bottom halves of her breasts, revealing the edges of dusky nipples, Fowler makes a soft, hungry sound. "Oh," he says, "let me just—"

He swoops forward before she can push him away, preempts her no with hedonic entitlement to the delicacy before him. He wraps his full lips around one half-concealed nipple and moans as he coaxes numb flesh to life with his tongue. His facial hair scrapes, bracing and ticklish against her breast as he sucks her hardening nipple hungrily into his mouth. That wet heat overwhelms her, and she gasps as she throws her arms around him and clings to his head and shoulders—like a man storm-tossed upon the sea, clinging to a slippery, algae-coated crag of fickle stone that may just as soon consign her to the crashing waves and perilous rocks.

"Fowler!" she shouts, half rebuke and half something too shameful to name.

He moans in wordless answer around her nipple, flicking the firm bud with a sinfully skillful tongue.

It hurts. Her breasts always ache after she releases them from her bindings—particularly after so long a stretch. But it also feels good, and Mizu doesn't ordinarily care about feeling good, but that faint thread of pleasure is the only reprieve from every other intolerable pain, the only thing redeeming the experience of being alive, having postponed her revenge for the promise of Fowler's connections, capitulating to his dubious treatment, trembling helplessly in the arms of her mortal enemy.

Mizu's chest shudders with inconsolable, tremulous little gasps, quietly whimpering as Fowler continues to unwrap her, like he's a revealing a gift from cloth wrapping.

Or a babe from swaddling clothes.

Fowler delicately plucks the damp fabric from his mouth, without even opening his eyes or relenting in his insistent, sucking kiss. It belies impressive coordination, reveals a borderline meditative capacity to focus on the task at hand. For something so ribald, at that.

Sex is an art, Madame Kaji once told her, throwing into question Mizu's longstanding dismissal of the act as something frivolous, irrelevant. Yet Fowler, who cut a flower stem with the precision of a master, who would through his mastery of strategy have overthrown Edo in a day but for Taigen and Mizu's opposition, seems to approach sex with a similar philosophy.

She is loath to consider that Fowler may well be the same kind of artist she is. 

When the last of her bindings falls away, Mizu cries out as the ache of absent pressure makes her newly-freed breasts sting with shooting pains—which, with novel purpose, shoot toward the bullseye of her nipple as if Fowler is supping away her pain and supplanting its unbearable abundance with equally intolerable pleasure.

Fowler pulls away with a hard suck and a fleeting scrape of teeth, and Mizu lets out a feeble sound of equal relief and protest.

Fowler opens his eyes with leisurely slowness to drink in the sight of her. Mizu can't imagine what her face is doing, but whatever he sees makes him smile.

"Oh... That's a good girl," Fowler whispers enthusiastically. His words of praise ghost over her wet nipple, imparting a shocking chill that makes her shiver. His haggard face gazes up at her with soft, rapt wonder as his tongue peeks out again to flick the puffy peak of her nipple.

"There's something wrong with you," Mizu mutters.

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" Fowler asks, pulling back to cup her breasts in the generous cradle of his palms. His hands are warm, exacerbating the swollen heat of pressure-induced inflammation. "If it were only my pleasure at play, hm?"

Mizu's lip curls, and her nose screws up with disgust.

Her undisguised enmity only makes him laugh. "Oh, you hate the thought that anything I could do to you could possibly be good, don't you?" He kneads her breasts with barest pressure, eliciting a pained whimper, another helpless shiver. Mizu clings to his shoulders for the stability his broad frame offers. "That's alright, little one," Fowler tells her in a hushed voice, like a secret. "You can hate me as much as you like. Lay the blame for your pleasure at my feet, if that's what you need..."

Lowering himself seemed like a kind of concession, at first—but now Mizu recognizes that when they are both injured, his is the more advantageous position between the two of them. Out of dread at what lowering herself to his level might invite, Mizu had remained standing—and now the stamina of her injured body wanes with every passing moment, weakening her resolve to endure each touch with indifference.

The muscles in her back are tense and trembling. Pain from her injuries clouds her senses. When Fowler pinches her nipples, she barely even feels it. He is so gentle that it tantalizes her, maddens her—and in sheer frustration she loses her private conviction to act as if she plays no part in these proceedings, and snarls, "Harder, you bastard!"

Fowler's slyly smiling eyes open wide with wonder. "As you wish, my dear."

He seizes her nipples and twists, and she throws her head back with a ragged cry and a breathless curse. 

Her knees finally give out with the strength of all her competing, dizzying pains. She expects Fowler to set upon her with all the ravenous opportunism of a predator lunging for the throat of wounded prey.

Instead, he catches her as she falls. It is painful, given her injuries, but to Fowler's credit he is gentle as he gathers her in his arms and maneuvers her into his lap.

"You're despicable," Mizu whispers, panting softly into his shirt as she clings to it for support, and her self-loathing grows.

Fowler laughs, soft and satisfied, as he pulls her shoes off her feet. "That I am," he agrees, loosening the belt around her pants and hooking his thumb into her waistband. She is too weary to resist as he undresses her. His gaze crawls down her naked form with unabashed admiration.

"Beautiful," he murmurs.

"Paint a picture," Mizu mutters. "It'll last longer."

"I ought to make you pose for me," Fowler thoughtfully agrees. "Sooner rather than later, I think... I'd hate to see these bruises heal without commemorating them." He finds a particularly nasty patch of discolored skin flowering over her hip to dig his thumb into. Mizu's mouth falls open in a silent cry as her bones grind together. 

"Stop," she chokes out.

Fowler sighs with lighthearted lament, as if her pain only exists to spoil his fun.

"Alright," he relents. "Into the bath with you then, little miss."

"Wait—" Mizu protests, clinging tighter to his shirt in case he has a mind to drop her in the pool.

But again, he surprises her.

"Don't fuss, now," he chides with muted laughter. He sidles over to kneel at the lip of the pool, and with all the equanimity and grace of a noblewoman pouring tea, Fowler tips her forward to dip her toes into the water. Mizu inhales sharply upon contact with the pool's surface.

"Hot enough for you...?" Fowler considerately inquires.

Mizu shoots him a mystified glare. "It's—fine," she mutters.

Fowler hums. "Sit tight." He lowers her onto his lap—removing all doubt as to the state of his arousal, when the firmness of his clothed cock presses unmistakably into her rear. Mizu's feet list in the water as she is forced to sit with that abominable discomfort.

When Fowler shrugs off his upper robe, revealing a broad chest and a bed of tightly curled orange chest hair, she scowls. "You'd better not be getting any ideas."

Fowler chuckles with warm, dark knowing. "I suspect the breadth and depth of my capacity for licentious fantasy would make your ears blush," he boasts. "But I've no designs to throw you down on this bank and take you for mine... If that's what you're so worried about."

"Why should I trust your word?" Mizu demands. She recognizes her desire for assurance comes from a place of disempowerment, which she resents. But if he wants her to trust him so badly—to an extent, at least—then she might as well invite him to try and convince her, in a moment of weakness when she would so dearly like to be convinced.

Fowler discards his shirt atop her pants and turns his attention back to her. There is a proprietary gleam in his eye as he takes his time looking her up and down. His smile grows sharp as his undivided attention makes her hairs stand on end.

"Because you're the most interesting thing to happen to me in ages."

Fowler reaches behind her head to pluck free the string keeping her hair tied up. It snaps—the first careless thing he's done to her—and her hair tumbles over her shoulders, cascading in waves that bely her loathsome mixed heritage.

Fowler cards his thick fingers through her hair and leans in. Mizu quickly turns her head away, certain he means to kiss her. He brushes her hair behind her ear and whispers, "... And if I fucked you now, it'd fucking break you."

Mizu's eyes fall shut as she shudders with fearful revulsion. She should never have let things get this far. She should have subdued him when he first came upon her by the hot spring, and tied him to a tree again. Knocked him out, if she had to.

But she still needs him, she bitterly reasons. She can't afford to be careless with a head injury that might kill him. Not when they are both already so grievously injured.

Fowler cheekily kisses her cheek, wet and matter-of-fact. Mizu's eyes fly open to stare at him in mortified animosity, her lips half-parted, aghast.

Fowler only laughs. "You're too fun to rile up!" She scowls as he recovers his breath. "Alright, alright... In you get, sweetheart."

He leans forward to lower her into the pool, consigning her to the water so carefully that his arms and shoulders are submerged in the process. So that was why he had removed his upper robe.

Mizu's feet slip beneath the water as she searches the stone for purchase. Fowler supports her weight as she finds her balance, and only lets go when she gruffly tells him to unhand her.

As Mizu sinks into the water with a groan of faint relief, that vocalization is echoed by Fowler. When she turns to look, she sees he's come to rest on the seat of his pants, the better to unlace his boots. The right boot he has already discarded, but the left is more stubborn. Fowler hisses as he struggles to pry his swollen foot out of it, and Mizu smiles with cruel remembrance at the way she had turned his own dagger on him in the palace. He had managed to run quite a ways through those venerated corridors after she stabbed his foot—but his bloody red footprints had made him easy to track. 

"Bloody shitting Christ!" Fowler snarls, throwing his hands up and draping his arms, defeated, over his knee and thigh as his chest heaves with his fruitless efforts. Mizu watches his hands tremble. Though he has put up a brave front all evening, it seems his injuries are finally catching up with him.

Fowler clenches and unclenches his fists as he catches his breath, then gusts out a sigh at last. The corners of his eyes are pinched with pain as his gaze drifts toward Mizu. Suddenly, he clasps his hands together and sketches a bow—which looks patently ridiculous, from his loose sprawl on the ground—and smiles a mercantile smile.

"Oh, venerable Lady Mizu—"

She snorts, taken completely aback. "Don't you start," she snaps back, tamping down her untimely amusement to grant her scowl more strength.

"I don't suppose you'd be willing to lend me a hand...?" When Mizu meets his gaze unerringly, and most importantly unimpressed, he goes on, "Seeing as this is your handiwork..."

Mizu gives his foot a considering look. The swelling is much worse than when they started walking, pressed tight into the confines of his ill-fated footwear. "... It might be easier to cut through the leather."

"Spare me the trouble of going barefoot with this injury, won't you?" Fowler complains. "To say nothing of what you've done to my knee—"

If Fowler is going to try and make her answer for every insult and injury paid in the heat of battle, she doesn't want to hear it. Her eyes narrow—and Fowler seems to recognize the flaw in his approach, quickly changing tack. 

"I'm not asking for sympathy," Fowler hastily assures her. "Far be it from me to ask that of one as ruthless as you... Just a bit of assistance." He lifts a hand in a gesture of eloquence. "I'd hate to slow you down, lagging behind that massive population you displaced, only to arrive at the nearest unrazed port and find there are no more ships for us to charter—"

"Fine," Mizu interrupts. "But only because you'll slow me down, otherwise." She drifts back toward Fowler, who sighs with relief.

"Much obliged," he says as she rises from the water and reaches for his booted foot. His eyes land on her breasts as a matter of course—as if his thirst to gaze upon them is eternally unslaked.

"Don't thank me yet," Mizu tells him, turning his foot slightly to inspect the wound site. The swelling looks worse, up close. "This is going to hurt."

"I've had worse," Fowler huffs.

"We'll see," says Mizu.

She seizes the heel and collar of the boot and yanks it hard, eliciting a scream through Fowler's gritted teeth. The boot sticks stubbornly. Mizu sets her jaw and puts her back into it, groaning as it puts a strain on her injuries.

Mizu nearly falls back into the water when her hand slips from Fowler's boot and she stumbles back. She grabs her painfully twinging shoulder.

Fowler drops his head to his chest, spewing a storm of oaths and curses in an ugly blend of English and Japanese.

Mizu straightens and thrusts an open hand toward his foot succinctly. "It's stuck."

Fowler frowns. Sweat beads on his temple. She doesn't think it's from the humidity of the hot spring. "You noticed that, did you?"

"A boot can be mended," Mizu reasons. "We should cut through the leather—"

"Oh, is that all?" Fowler interrupts with a saccharine tone. "And which of us, do you reckon, ought to be the one holding the knife, hm?"

Mizu pauses to consider this. She has no intention of killing Fowler—but she isn't sure she can say the same for him. Putting a knife between them would doubtless spell disaster.

And one could do more with a knife than simply killing. Maiming. Torture. Threats under pain of death.

"Fine," Mizu mutters. "No knives."

"Glad we see eye-to-eye on that," Fowler says with a strained voice. Then he takes a sudden breath, and smiles. "Sorry... That was in poor taste."

Mizu's mouth twists. She marches to the edge of the pool, and is gratified to see Fowler flinch back.

"What're you—?"

Mizu grabs Fowler by the ankle and squeezes, taking advantage of his pain to drag his leg forward and drop his foot into the water.

"Christ!" Fowler swears. "What the blue blazes are you doing, girl?" He tries to reclaim his leg, but lacks the leverage.

"Easing the way," Mizu replies simply, using her hold on his ankle as leverage to lower herself to a seated position in the pool. She works at the leather with aching fingers, prising it methodically from Fowler's swollen ankle, then his foot.

His cries rise in pitch and volume as she makes painstaking headway on removing the ravaged article. His screams are a remarkably accurate metric for her progress—and her triumphant success is marked by a guttural shout that makes the trees tremble. When she releases his ankle, it plunges out of the water, sending droplets soiled with blood and soil flying.

Mizu wipes a pink droplet irately from her cheek as Fowler bites his lip and cradles his foot.

Fowler's pained invective is entirely in English now, which conveniently permits her to disregard every word coming out of his mouth.

Mizu drops his boot on the shore and moves to the opposite end of the pool. He can hardly make tracks with a swollen foot, and the distance—and Fowler's distress—put her at ease. He's unlikely to try her patience further in his current state.

When Fowler shudderingly regains his composure, he finishes undressing with all haste and slips into the pool without preamble.

"Sweet merciful mother," he sighs, his eyes falling shut and his brows drawing together in pained relief. "I've missed your natural hot springs."

Mizu drags her fingers through her hair to begin rinsing out the cloying scent of smoke. The irony that they do not need to source ash to wash with, seeing as they have already been doused with it, is not lost on her.

"Did your castle lack for servants to boil water?" she dryly inquires.

Fowler wearily waves a dismissive hand. "Of course not," he scoffs without heat. "But drawing a bath scarcely compares, when one could be partaking of Mother Nature's miraculous thermal springs." He takes a deep breath, letting his limbs drift in the water. Gradually, his expression of effortful relief grows lax, and he lifts his head to meet Mizu's eyes across the water's surface. "My thanks, for your assistance, little miss."

Mizu does not know what to do with Fowler's gratitude. A day ago, she couldn't have ever imagined receiving it—unless, perhaps, he had harbored an ardent wish to die. A day ago, she would have been all too eager to grant him oblivion.

Now she has to forestall her revenge, or else forever lose her chance to make it complete.

Mizu eyes Fowler mistrustfully, then returns her attention to her hair with a bitter, quiet sigh. 

"You can thank me by keeping your hands to yourself."

Fowler smiles knowingly. "Now, where would be the fun in that?"

Mizu might have guessed he would not be so easily dissuaded.

"You know I'm going to kill you," she tells him, "when this is all over."

Fowler graciously places a hand upon his chest. "And it will be an honor and a privilege, to be the crowning jewel of your revenge." With that said, he leans back, resting his elbows on the lip of the pool. "... But it'd be a shame not to have a bit of fun with you along the way." Mizu has no intention of sparing him, but it is unfortunate that she cannot even bring herself to pretend she might, if he will only quit his constant advances. "We've got a couple of years together, at least... I'd say that's well worth the price of you killing me, at the end of it all."

Mizu uses her callused palm to gently scrub away the grime clinging to her skin—the only evidence on her person of the city she'd destroyed. "... Does it take that long to reach London?" she asks.

"Well," Fowler says thoughtfully, watching her bathe with absent interest, "depends which route we take, I suppose. All manner of dangers on a journey like that—brigands, pirates, the local authorities, you name it." He raises a brow. "No match for us, I reckon. But there could be all manner of delays..."

"If you think you'll postpone your death with excuses like that—"

Fowler lifts his hands in a sign of peace. "Just trying to manage your expectations, little miss. Travel is dangerous, as I'm sure you well know. Sea travel is especially perilous, what with storms, open waters, hostile ships—though making frequent stops to ensure we have ample supplies mitigates the danger, some..."

Mizu sighs. She supposes she has waited her entire life for this. And if her enemies were at the ends of the Earth, it couldn't be helped how long it would take her to get there. "... How many years?"

Fowler folds his arms with a thoughtful look. "At least one—and that's provided everything goes our way. Two or three, if we run into significant hurdles or delays."

Mizu grudgingly considers that Fowler may not have been wrong when he said they would need to learn to trust each other. Three years is a long time to travel with someone in such dangerous conditions. And much as she'd like to, she cannot punish each transgression or offense with anything drastic enough to kill him.

Though he's sturdy enough to take a beating, she will have to restrain herself from maiming or abusing him too recklessly, for fear of infection or building resentment. She needs him to live at least long enough to put her on the path toward Skeffington and Routely. And she needs him cooperative enough not to lead her astray.

"Ah, but we'll burn that bridge when we get to it, won't we?" Fowler slides further into the bath with a groan. "No sense trying to tease out the particulars without even a map to show you..."

"And you have no reservations about helping me kill your former associates?" Mizu asks. "You took exception to my killing Violet."

Fowler sighs. "I told you, didn't I? Those two were the worst of us." He chuckles humorlessly. "I doubt those two bastards would have batted an eye, if they'd heard the news. They've got no principles between the two of 'em at all, save for profit. No compassion—"

"You, compassionate?" Mizu asks. Fowler opens his eyes to calmly meet her gaze. "I find that hard to believe."

Fowler rolls his shoulders and hisses. "I may just be a white devil to you, but I'm afraid I'm only human, little miss."

"We aren't human," Mizu argues. Fowler gives her a queer, confounded look. "We're monsters."

Fowler's brows shoot up, and he laughs—wincing when it puts a strain on his injuries. He brings a hand to his chest beneath the water to soothe that ache, and says, "Ah... You just keep telling yourself that."