better days [p, io, nk]

Kohana sat with her back to the sun, hands clasped snugly over the warm mug in her hands. It was coffee, surprising for someone of her palette, but the bitter drink was swirled with cream and caramel to the point it was near enough to ice cream; suddenly, a bit less surprising.

The coffee shop was busier that day, more so than usual, and it might have been due to the sudden cold wave striking Kirigakure, but it might also have been the sale. Kohana wasn't sure, but in the end, she didn't much care, either. The room was warm, the air was spices, and the background noise was at just the level for comfortable concentration. In a way, she was at peace.

And yet... And yet, she couldn't shake the feeling...

Kohana shook her head, a ribbon of chocolate hair falling from her messy bun. She sipped her coffee gently, before returning to the sketch at hand. It was just a feeling. She was being paranoid, as usual, and it was just a feeling. The day was normal. Nothing was about to happen.

...And yet...

Altar was strolling through the village roads, hand shoved firmly into the pockets of his overcoat, the tattered tail blowing behind him as another gust of cold wind blew against him. A cold wave was currently hitting Kirigakure, which Altar thought was the main reason the streets - normally filled with the typical hustle and bustle of two villages population - were silent and empty as death itself. Altar, however, payed no mind to the chilly outdoors. He had spent a long time traversing ice, snow and temperatures much below this.

He was currently making his way through the streets, navigating himself to a quiet, modest, and normally sparsely occupied coffee shop. As he turned the corner and seamlessly passed through the door, he noticed that the little store was anything but sparsely occupied today. People were filling almost every seat, some people even standing. Anything to get away from the bitter cold, it seemed. Altar would shrug and make his way to the counter and order a simple black coffee, pushing money across the counter before taking it and turning to scan the small shop for somewhere to seat himself.

He would've normally taken the coffee and left, but the bitter cold and an odd feeling kept him from leaving. It almost felt like Nekoda was trying to speak to him, but there was no voice echoing in his head. Shaking his head lightly to clear the feeling, Altar would make his way over to the nearest unoccupied seat, one directly across from a brown haired girl with her back to the morning light. She seemed concentrated on some sort of drawing strewn out in front of her. The boy was hesitant to interrupt her, but there really nowhere else to sit.

"Hi, I don't mean to interrupt, but would you mind if I take a seat here?" the boy would say, doing his best to soften his voice and put on a genuine smile that would, hopefully, offset his mismatched eyes and tattered overcoat.

Kohana squinted at her page as the eyes on the figure came to life. They were big, dark, with heavy lashes and a bright gleam made sad by a stroke of her charcoal. Longing eyes. Familiar. The girl moved back to the lips on the figure, plumping them and drawing out highlights with the thin eraser she'd brought along as well. However, Kohana's attention was drawn away from her piece as a man approached. That odd feeling tripled in its magnitude, and for a moment, just a brief moment, the woman couldn't understand why.

"Hi, I don't mean to interrupt, but would you mind if I take a seat here?"

"Huh? Oh, sure, yeah. Go ahead." Kohana met the man's mismatched eyes - unsettling, due to their probable origins, but not too uncommon in the world nevertheless - and forced herself not to fidget in her seat, all of which a practice she'd adopted no matter how skittish she felt within. It gave the appearance of confidence to a person, and with this feeling weighing her down, Kohana felt she needed all the strength she could get in the moment. Already, all of her alarms were ringing in her brain, but she fought to control them. So far, this was just a man wanting to sit for coffee. If anything happened, if he tried anything at all, well... It was a crowded atmosphere, and Xyxer was harsh with crime. Everything would probably be fine, feeling or otherwise... Right?

Nevertheless, Kohana found herself studying those eyes again - briefly, mind you - for they were... familiar. Strange and foreign, but familiar, in an odd sort of way. There was a question here that neither person was picking up on, that much Kohana knew, but the content of that question...

The man's entire face came into focus, and Kohana's eyes widened as suddenly, everything clicked.

"Shit. Al... Altar, right? Is that you?" Kohana said, shocked (but not unpleasantly). It'd been... How long had it been since that night? Since that meeting in the alleys of Tengakure, the stories, the empty coffeehouse, so similar to this, at 2AM? A year, nearly two? But was it really him...?

The boy would keep his smile as the girl gave him permission to take a seat. He would slide into the seat, an odd feeling of deja vu overcoming him. This girl seemed familiar, almost too familiar considering his history. Shrugging nonchalantly to himself, Altar chocked it up to his mind playing tricks on him. Considering the two entities that took residence in his mind, that happened all too often. Still, it felt...different, somehow.

The boy would look out a nearby window at the sunrise, the light cast upon his face as he took small sips of the liquid caffeine. He caught the girl taking glimpses of his face every now and again, small quick glances at him before she returned to her drawing. As he raised the cup once more, he caught the eyes of the girl widening in what appeared to be shock. The boy was about to turn around to see what she had seen, when she spoke.

"Shit. Al... Altar, right? Is that you?"

The boy would cock an eyebrow at the girl, his mind cycling like the chamber of a revolver to try to identify the girl. It wasn't that odd that someone knew him, but judging by the tone of her voice, they had met under special circumstances. Brown hair, brown eyes...wholly...unremarka-

Wait. No way.

"...Kohana? Holy hell, what are the odds?" The boy would say, his smile replaced by an uneasy grin as he took another sip of coffee. Brief flashes of the girl went through the back if his mind. He'd found her in a...less than desirable place. Tengakure, nearly, what, two years ago? How did she recognize him? They'd went to a coffee shop, much alike this one, but it was deserted at two in the morning. They'd traded histories and stories, and without words, hopes of better times. He'd walked away from her at morning light that day, and she had escaped his mind afterwards. He'd left her to her life, as bad as she told it was. He didn't help her, not that he could've at the time. He just prayed she didn't hold it against him this long time later.

"It's been...a year and a half? Two years?" the boy would say, his voice remaining unsteady as he set the cup in his hand down and turned his full attention to the girl in front of him.

Kohana's lips broke into a grin - crooked, unsure, but kind. Kind, definitely. However insignificant it was to Altar, their short meeting so long ago had helped Kohana in ways she still could hardly understand. It wasn't so much as the boy himself as it had been the realization that, yes, good people did exist in the world. If not good, than good enough so as not to be cruel, good enough so as to have some shred of morality left. She'd been in a bad place, all that time ago, and he'd bought her a coffee. Gave some conversation, instead of walking past and leaving her to her business with another rotten man. Kohana was nervous, but excited. Excited, because she'd come such a long way from the resigned girl of two years ago. Excited, because she'd grown, things had gotten better, and she hoped they had for Altar as well.

Her grin grew as he spoke, and her expression held tenderness. "Two years, yeah," she said, almost nostalgic, "I hardly recognized you. How've you been?" It was simple, and she sipped her coffee again. Kohana could hear the unsteadiness in the other's voice, and she supposed she understood. She'd been in a bad situation, back when they first met. He was probably remembering those times, she thought, but je needn't. Kohana wouldn't have known what to do with help even if he'd tried, and it was alright. She'd built herself up with her own hands since those days, and despite her usual reserve, she felt the need to tell him how she'd risen from that old station in life.

Altar could hear the wavering in her voice, something that conveyed an emotion that was well hidden by the girl, somewhat betrayed by her grin. She felt uneasy, unsure. Somehow, that knowledge diffused the tense atmosphere entirely. Altar felt...better, knowing he wasn't the only one unsteady with how to approach this situation. It gave him comfort to know that, somehow, he wasn't alone. In feeling or otherwise.

When asked how he had been over the years, Altar would open his mouth, before images spun through his head, forcing it closed. His parents, bloody and not breathing, his home demolished with the rest of Tengakure, a silver haired girl with a natural smile left in flames, the body of a distant relative over his shoulder for miles, a blonde haired girl looking deep into his eyes with anguish and disbelief in her wet eyes. All these horrid memories, things he should've been ashamed of, things that no person would ever dare speak of to another soul. Loss so horrendous that he-

"I've been alright, I suppose. How have you been?"

Why did he say that? Why in the hell did he say that? What supernatural force threw those words from his mouth? His voice easily would betray that he was lying, not that he'd truly meant to. Before him was a girl that, two years ago, he'd spilled his entire history to without so much as a second thought. That warranted a modicum of mutual respect and trust. He could tell her anything that happened, right? Right?

But this girl was equally troubled, if not more. Before, he had spilled everything to her to assure the girl that there were people like her in the world. To prove that you could survive anything if you willed it, and that people could still be kind. But now? She sat in front of him changed, for the better. She carried herself well, her face no longer desperately held back sadness or disgust. And who was he to rip that from her by weighing on her shoulders with his own sob stories? He'd carried them so far himself.