(Continuing)
Javi pushed the door open with his shoulder, slipping back inside as his eyes adjusted to the dim warmth of the room. He scanned it out of habit — corners first, then center — and let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.
"Geez." He shook his head, a slow grin spreading across his face. "Never thought we'd actually be doing something like this. Real detective work." He let the words sit in the air for a second, tasting them. "Actual detective work. That's kind of insane."
He glanced at the clock mounted above the wall.
11:45 PM.
He nodded to himself, satisfied.
"Not late," he announced to absolutely no one. "Just prepared. Perfectly, beautifully prepared. I am so responsible it's almost sad."
He slipped quietly into their room and eased the door shut behind him, wincing at the soft click of the latch. The room was dim and still. He crossed to his spot and dropped onto it — the wooden floor is giving a tired creak beneath him — and just sat for a moment, letting the day work its way out of his chest. The kid. The clues. That small, fragile spark of progress. It all churned in him, restless and unresolved.
He looked at the clock.
11:47 PM.
Rukawa wasn't there yet.
Javi leaned back on his palms and smirked at the ceiling. "Hope you're not late, partner. Be a real shame if the most disciplined guy I've ever met couldn't make it to his own meeting."
He waited. The silence stretched. He drummed his fingers on his knee, counted the cracks in the plaster overhead, stared at the clock until the numbers blurred. His eyes grew heavy at the edges — the long day finally catching up — and he surrendered to a jaw-cracking yawn.
"Two minutes," he muttered, scrubbing a hand over his face. "That damn ice-cold partner of mine. Two minutes left and you're nowhere—"
A shadow shifted behind him.
Then came the voice — warm breath against the back of his ear, quiet as a drawn blade:
"Evening, Garcia."
Javi left the bed.
Not jumped. Left. Some deep, prehistoric part of his brain made the executive decision that the floor was no longer a safe place to be, and he was spinning mid-air before conscious thought caught up, landing in a crouch with his heart trying to exit his chest through his sternum.
He clutched it with both hands. "Jesus — you scared the absolute hell out of me!"
Rukawa stood where the darkness had been, still and composed, the barest ghost of amusement haunting one corner of his mouth. For him, it was the equivalent of falling off a chair laughing.
Javi glared daggers, still catching his breath. "You did that on purpose."
,
"11:58," Rukawa said simply, folding his arms. "Not late. You're just..." He considered the word with the gravity of a man choosing a weapon. "...jumpy."
"I wouldn't be jumpy," Javi shot back, straightening up with what remained of his dignity, "if you didn't materialize out of thin air like some kind of shadow-ninja ghost."
"You'll have to get used to it." Rukawa's gaze drifted to the window. Moonlight fell across his face in a clean, pale line — sharpening the angles of it, settling into his expression like something that had always belonged there.
His voice, when he continued, had lost its dry edge and found something quieter beneath it. "For the time being, at least. This is what the work looks like."
Javi studied him for a beat. Then he let the joke go, and with it, the lightness dropped from his face too.
"I found something today," he said.
Rukawa's eyebrow lifted a fraction. "Found? Or stumbled upon and claimed credit?"
"Found," Javi said, with feeling. "Intentionally. On purpose. Using my brain." A pause. "I think."
Rukawa waited exactly one beat. Then: "Well? Out with it, Garcia."
Javi leaned forward, dropping his voice to a low murmur. "Met this kid — Rearth. Nine years old and sharp as a tack, sharper than he has any right to be." He held Rukawa's gaze. "He told me something real. The people here aren't just wary of the poachers. They're not just scared. They're traumatized, Rukawa. These men have hit this place before. Hit it hard." His eyes flickered with the weight of it. "We just don't know what they took yet."
Something moved through Rukawa's expression — a quiet, careful darkening, like water deepening without warning. He'd suspected it from the moment the compass pointed here.
But suspicion and confirmation were two entirely different things, and hearing it spoken plainly in the hush of this room made it land differently than he'd expected.
"That's why," he said, almost to himself. "The moment we said the word — the moment they heard it come out of our mouths — we became the threat."
"Yep." Javi nodded fast. "We didn't just bring up something sensitive. We sounded like we had information. Like we knew things we shouldn't. And to people who've already been hurt—" He grimaced, rubbing the back of his neck. "—that's the same as a warning sign." A beat, quieter. "I feel bad for them, honestly. First night they seemed genuinely nice — real neighborhood-family type of people. The whole thing." He shook his head. "It just sucks. For them and for us."
Rukawa regarded him in silence for a moment — that particular, measuring look that Javi had learned to read as the highest form of attention Rukawa was capable of giving.
Then, quietly: "...You did good." A pause, as though the admission cost something small but real. "Argent?"
Javi leaned back, lifting a shoulder. "Kid confirmed he's everything we thought he is. Leader material, no question — the kind of man a room reorganizes itself around." He tilted his head. "Says he always moves with purpose. Never second-guesses himself once he's decided something."
Rukawa was quiet for a moment. "Like a soldier."
"Like a soldier," Javi agreed, tapping the side of his head. "Maybe actually literally. Rearth called him scary — and coming from a nine-year-old who looked me dead in the eye without blinking, that's saying something."
He paused. "But I think he's exactly who we need. If anyone in this shelter knows the full picture, it's him."
Rukawa tilted his head — that small, precise recalibration. "Did you locate his office? Gather anything further?"
The question landed, and Javi's expression fell cleanly off the edge of his earlier confidence. "No. Didn't get that far. Dinner bell rang and I lost the window."
"What a waste."
Javi's eyes narrowed. "I got good intelligence—"
"I know."
"—which I gathered under real pressure—"
"I know that too."
"—and you could once, just once, lead with that instead of going straight to what I didn't do—"
"You did good," Rukawa said again, with the immovable patience of someone who has already said a thing and sees no reason to dress it up differently. "I meant the opportunity was wasted. Not you."
Javi opened his mouth. Closed it. "...That's... thanks!"
Javi stared at him for a long moment. Then he exhaled — a short, reluctant laugh escaping before he could stop it. "You know, normal people say 'great job, buddy' and leave it there."
"Normal people lie to make each other feel better," Rukawa said. "I don't."
"Yeah, well." Javi shook his head, the laugh fading into something quieter, more genuine. "Sometimes that's exactly what makes you useful." He looked at him. "And surprisingly annoying, it's a gift."
Rukawa said nothing. But his silence had a particular quality to it now — not cold, not dismissive. Something closer to settled.
"You survived the day," he said, after a moment. "Learned something real. Didn't blow your cover." A beat. "That's a win."
"Small," Javi agreed, leaning back. "But I'll take it." A grin, brief and genuine. "I feel like an actual detective. Don't ruin it."
Then he sighed, the grin giving way to something more practical. "But I need to navigate this place better. I can't run surveillance blind — I need to know the layout. Where the blind spots are. Where Argent actually goes."
"Anything else?" Rukawa asked, level.
Javi thought for a moment, lips pressed together. "Blueprint. Floor plan of the whole shelter — rooms, exits, the works. I caught a glimpse of one earlier, would've had it too if that grumpy old geezer hadn't cut me off right at the worst possible—"
Rukawa reached behind him and produced a folded paper from the back of his waistband, holding it out with the quiet ease of someone returning a borrowed pen.
Javi's eyes went wide.
"No." He stared at it. Then at Rukawa. Then back at it. "You stole it."
"People are easy to distract during dinner."
"You—" Javi took the map slowly, like it might be a trap. "You actually stole it." He looked up. "You stood there at dinner, eating whatever it was they gave us, and you pickpocketed a blueprint."
"I didn't pickpocket it. It was on displayed."
"That's worse, somehow." Javi shook his head, a disbelieving laugh pulling free. "I've been trying to be subtle and strategic all day and you just — in twenty minutes at dinner—" He gestured vaguely at the map in his hands. "You know what? Good. I'm glad. This is exactly what we needed and I refuse to feel bad about it."
"You're welcome," Rukawa said, as if this were all very ordinary.
"Sneaky bastard." But Javi was grinning.
Then Rukawa straightened slightly — a subtle shift that meant the business portion of the meeting was reopening. "Now that I've assisted you," he said, "I need something in return."
Javi folded the map and set it aside, raising an eyebrow. "Name it."
A pause. Brief. Deliberate.
"Do I have an appeal?"
Javi blinked. "Appeal — what kind of appeal, like a—"
"Sex appeal." Rukawa's voice was flat. Completely, earnestly matter-of-fact. "Attractiveness. Do I have it."
It wasn't a question so much as a request for data.
The shift was so abrupt, so thoroughly devoid of self-consciousness, that Javi's brain simply stalled — a loading screen where a response should have been. He stared at Rukawa. At the absolute, unironic sincerity in that unreadable face. At the fact that he was clearly waiting for an honest answer the way you wait for a weather report.
Javi opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. "...Yeah," he said finally, because the honest answer came easily enough when he thought about it plainly. "You do. Objectively. Unfortunately for everyone involved, including you."
Rukawa held his gaze. Waiting.
"Why," Javi said slowly, "are you asking me that right now?"
"It isn't random," Rukawa said, with a flat look that suggested he found the implication faintly offensive.
And then it clicked.
Javi blinked. Then he laughed — not mocking, just the bright, clean sound of understanding arriving all at once. "Oh. Oh, it's for Olivia. She's already scared of us — you need to know you're not going to make it worse the moment you open your mouth. You need to know if she'll stay in the room."
Rukawa looked at him for a moment. "...Most likely."
"But Simon and Diana already worked with you on this — showing emotion, letting people in—"
"Showing emotion," Rukawa said, with the careful precision of someone drawing a line, "and being appealing are not the same thing." A beat. "Emotion is internal. Appeal is what the other person receives. I can feel something and still communicate it in a way that makes people want to leave the room."
Javi opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. "...That is," he said slowly, "the most self-aware thing you have ever said to me."
Rukawa didn't respond to that.
"And the saddest," Javi added.
"Garcia."
"Right, sorry—" He straightened up, getting serious. "Okay. Here's what I think." He turned to face Rukawa properly. "Stop thinking about it as performing something. Appealing. Warm. Whatever. The second she feels like you're running a script, she's gone." He paused. "Think about Diana."
Rukawa's eyes sharpened slightly. "I am not—"
"Not like that, you absolute—" Javi pressed two fingers to the bridge of his nose and breathed. "Think about what you're like around Diana. Who are you when she's in the room?"
A silence. Longer this time, and more honest.
"...Quieter," Rukawa said.
"And?"
A pause. "Less—" He stopped. Searched for the word with visible reluctance. "...Less armored."
"There it is." Javi pointed at him. "That's what I'm talking about. You don't have to perform warmth. You just have to remember what it felt like to not need the armor for five minutes." He held his gaze. "Channel that. She's scared. She doesn't need impressive — she needs safe."
Rukawa was quiet for a moment, working it over the way he worked over everything — methodically, without waste, testing the weight of it. "Applying what I've already learned," he said finally. "Not performing. Just... allowing."
"Got that right." Javi's grin broke through again, quieter than usual. "And don't flatten yourself out trying to seem harmless. You're not harmless and she'll know it — so don't pretend. Just let the gentleness be real. It's already in there." A pause. "Somewhere. Buried under about forty layers of 'don't talk to me.' But it's there."
Rukawa looked at him for a long moment. Something moved through his expression — brief, and private, and almost grateful.
"I got you," he said quietly. "Be gentle. Let it be real."
"And yeah," Javi added, leaning back, "that'll make you more appealing. The genuine version always does. Trust me — I'm a very charming person."
"You're a loud person," Rukawa said, already moving toward the door. "They're occasionally the same thing."
"I'm flattered, you're recognizing my best skill."
"You should."
Rukawa rose in one fluid motion and crossed to the door, unhurried and certain. "Thank you. I'll see you in the morning."
"Wait—" Javi sat up sharply. "You're not taking a flashlight? Any kind of light source?"
Rukawa glanced back with something that might, in the right light, qualify as amusement. "What for?"
Javi pressed a hand flat to his forehead. "Vision, Rukawa. Human vision. The thing that requires light to function." He stared at him. "You're telling me you're going out into pitch black darkness with nothing—"
"Moonlight is enough."
"—absolutely nothing to help you—" He stopped. "Moonlight," he repeated. "That's your plan. Moonlight."
"Yes."
"You're joking."
"No."
"You're joking."
"Garcia—"
"Tell me you're joking," Javi said, with the quiet desperation of a man watching someone walk calmly toward a cliff.
"Do you know why pirates wore eyepatches?"
The question arrived so completely out of nowhere that Javi's argument simply ceased to exist for a moment, replaced by blankness.
"This is not—" he started.
"One eye kept beneath the patch," Rukawa continued, with the unhurried tone of a man who has already decided this conversation is going the way he planned, "adapted continuously to the dark. When they moved below deck — complete darkness — that eye could see immediately. No adjustment. No delay." He settled his hand on the door handle. "I've been keeping one eye half-closed since dinner."
Javi stared at him.
"So to be precise," Rukawa added, almost pleasantly, "I'm not relying on moonlight. I'm relying on preparation."
"You—" Javi searched for words. Found none adequate. "You've been walking around all evening with one eye half-shut preparing for this—"
"I also have excellent night vision naturally."
"RUKAWA—"
"I'm not planning on getting caught." He said it with the absolute, infuriating calm of someone reading a fact off a page.
Javi exhaled — long, tortured, helpless. "Just don't die in the dark," he called after him, his voice caught somewhere between a desperate whisper and a plea. "I'm serious. I will be so annoyed if you die in the dark."
Rukawa paused at the threshold. One last glance back — and there was something in it, something that had nothing to do with tactics or preparation. Something steady, and warm, and completely unguarded for exactly one second.
"I'll be back before you know it," he said.
Then he stepped through the doorway and the darkness took him whole.
Javi stared at the empty space where his partner had been.
Five full seconds.
Then he fell backward onto his mattress with a groan that came from somewhere ancient and long-suffering and very, very tired.
He stared at the ceiling. The silence of the room pressed in around him, suddenly more pronounced for the absence in it.
"...You better do your task right," he said quietly, to no one. "Mr. Ice Cold."
A beat.
Then, softer — almost fond, in the grudging way that only genuine worry can sound fond: "Gosh. I'm going to have gray hair by the time we get out of this town. And it'll be entirely your fault."
The shelter breathed slowly in the dark.
Rukawa moved through it like he was part of the architecture — patient, deliberate, each footfall placed with a care that left no trace. The halls were thick with sleep and quiet, the only light coming from the pale, silver pour of the moon through high windows. He let it wash over him and moved through it, unhurried.
Unhurriable.
His eyes swept each corridor in a single pass. Shadows catalogued. Movements assessed. Risks filed and ranked before his conscious mind had finished forming the thought. There was a particular quality to how he inhabited space in moments like these — a contradiction that shouldn't have worked but did. He was never fully at rest, and never fully urgent. Every step was its own decision.
He found the room.
He pressed himself to the wall outside it and went absolutely still, listening. Through the door came the slow, layered rhythm of multiple people deep in sleep — overlapping, unguarded, the particular sound of a room that felt safe enough to let its guard down. He counted the bodies by breath. Six. Maybe seven.
Too many.
He looked up.
In one fluid, practiced motion — no hesitation, no wasted movement — he was on the ceiling. His fingers found purchase in the aged beams with the silent certainty of someone for whom the impossible had long since become routine. He folded himself into the dark above the doorframe and went motionless.
He was good at waiting. He'd had a long time to get good at it.
His gaze settled on Olivia.
She was asleep on her side, one arm tucked beneath her head, her breathing slow and even. Sleep had smoothed her face into something younger — something less defended than the careful wariness she wore during waking hours. He noted the tension still present in her shoulders even now, the particular set of someone who no longer slept fully, who kept one part of themselves alert even in rest. He recognized it without naming it.
She hasn't felt safe in a long time, he thought. Not a judgment. Just a fact, observed and filed.
He closed his eyes. Murmured something in Japanese — low and shapeless, barely a breath, more intention than sound — and after a moment, Olivia's body gave the smallest, involuntary shiver. A gentle disruption at the edge of sleep. Just enough.
He waited.
Her breathing changed. Shallowed. Her eyes moved beneath their lids, chasing something in the dark behind them. Then, gradually — a stirring. A slow push upright. The purposeful, half-conscious look of someone following an urge they couldn't name.
She stood. Moved toward the door.
Rukawa descended from the ceiling in absolute silence and landed in a low crouch behind her as she crossed the threshold into the corridor. Three steps — enough to feel free, not enough to be free — and then he moved.
His hand covered her mouth gently but completely. His other arm guided her sideways — controlled, careful, not a single motion wasted — into the narrow storage room beside the corridor. The door clicked shut behind them, swallowing the sound.
He released her immediately and stepped back.
Her eyes were enormous in the dim room — shock and fear and something sharp-edged beneath both — and she pressed herself against the nearest shelf, chest heaving.
"Mmm—" The muffled sound dissolved as his hand left her. "What the hell?! Rukawa—" Her whisper came out ragged and furious, barely contained. "You scared the crap out of me—"
"I know." His voice was low and even — not an apology, not a dismissal. Just an acknowledgment. "There wasn't another way to do this without waking everyone."
She stared at him. "That's your explanation?!"
"Yes."
"Yes?!"
"Yes."
Olivia opened her mouth. Closed it. The fury was still there — but underneath it, threading through it, something else. Something that recognized the logic of what he'd said even while resenting it.
"What do you want," she said tightly, "that couldn't wait until morning?"
He held her gaze steadily. "You would have made sure I didn't get near you by morning. We both know that."
Silence.
She looked away first. Which was, he noted, its own kind of answer.
"You've been avoiding us," he said.
"You mentioned them." Her voice dropped, fast and defensive. "What was I supposed to do — act like it was nothing? I have people here. People who—" She stopped. Caught herself.
"Who've already been hurt by them," Rukawa said quietly.
Her jaw tightened. She didn't confirm it. She didn't have to.
"It was you," he continued, keeping his voice even. "You're the reason the shelter turned on us. You heard us talking last night, and by morning, you'd made sure everyone understood we were a threat."
The silence that followed was a different kind of silence — compressed, airless, like the moment before something breaks.
Olivia stared at him. Her mouth opened. Closed. The careful, composed surface of her face developed a fracture, hairline and spreading.
"...How did you know?" she breathed.
"Because," Rukawa said, "you looked at us differently from the moment it started. Not afraid of us — guilty. It changes, and most people don't know how to look for it." A pause. "I do."
She pressed her lips together. Her eyes had gone glassy at the edges — not yet tears, but close. "What do you want from me, Rukawa?" Her voice had gone quiet. Not defeated. Not yet. But quieter. "Why does it have to be tonight? Why does it have to be now?"
"Because we don't have time." He kept his voice steady, but let something honest into it — something that wasn't strategy. "The people in this shelter are in danger. More danger than you've told anyone. And the longer we wait, the less chance there is of stopping it." He held her gaze. "I need you to take me to Argent. And I need you to tell me everything you know about what they did to this place."
She let out a breath — sharp and humorless. "Why would I do that? Why should I trust two boys who showed up out of nowhere and know things they shouldn't?" Her voice cracked, just slightly, at the edges. "You don't know what they took from us. You don't know what it cost."
"Then tell me," he said. "Help me understand what I'm walking into. Help me understand what I'm actually trying to stop."
Something moved through her face — a tremor, quickly controlled.
"I can't just—" She turned. Her body made the decision before her mind did, and she moved for the far end of the room.
Rukawa stepped into her path.
Not fast. Not aggressive. Just — there. Calm and immovable, the way a wall is immovable. His hands came up gently, barely touching her shoulders, just enough to stop the momentum.
"Olivia." Her name in his mouth — quiet, deliberate, unhurried. "Stop."
She froze. Stared up at him, chest rising and falling too fast, eyes bright with something that had nothing left to hide behind.
"I'll scream," she said. It came out smaller than she'd meant it to.
"You won't." Not threatening — just honest. "You don't want to wake them. And you know I can easily dissapear afterwards, you can't embarrass yourself." A pause. "If you did, they will think that they are in danger."
She stared at him. Her breath hitched.
"Let me go," she said. Quieter still.
Rukawa's hands moved from her shoulders to her wrist — gently, just enough. "You've been carrying this alone," he said. "Whatever they took. Whatever they did."
His voice was lower now, the careful distance of it narrowing slightly. "That's not protection. That's just a different kind of trapped."
"You don't—" Her voice broke. "You don't know anything about what I've been carrying—"
"I know what it looks like from the outside," he said. "I know what it costs. I know that the people you're protecting can feel it even when you don't say a word." He paused. "And I know you're exhausted."
"I'm not—" She shook her head, eyes bright and furious and brimming. "I'm not running, I'm just—"
Suddenly her voice dissolved.
And Rukawa — moving from somewhere quieter than strategy, somewhere that didn't have a name in any language he knew — closed the small remaining distance between them and pressed his lips to hers.
It was brief. Barely a breath. Gentle in the way that only something completely unplanned can be gentle — not a tactic, not a calculation, not even a conscious decision.
Just the simplest, most honest thing he could think to offer in the face of someone coming apart at the seams.
The room went absolutely still.
When he pulled back, his eyes found hers immediately — open, steady, searching, undefended in a way his face almost never was.
"Did it calm you down?" he asked. His voice was quieter than usual. Just slightly rougher at the edges.
Olivia stood with her fingers pressed to her lips. Her whole expression was suspended — balanced on the narrow edge between a dozen things she couldn't name, none of them having a clean place to land.
The shaking had stopped.
"Why did you do that?" she whispered.
Rukawa held her gaze. There was no deflection in it. "You were unraveling," he said quietly. "I didn't know how else to reach you."
She let out a breath — barely a sound, caught somewhere between a laugh and something that might have been a sob if she'd let it. "So you just— kissed me. You kissed me to calm me down."
"Yes." He didn't look away. "Because it was something I could do. Something real — not a script, not a tactic." A pause. "Just—" He searched for the word. Found only the honest one. "—present."
Olivia looked at him for a long moment. Really looked at him — past the composure, past the stillness — and whatever she found there was apparently enough, because something in her simply... released.
The long, careful tension of it. The held breath that had been held for longer than tonight. Her legs gave out slowly, and she slid down the wall until she was sitting on the floor, knees drawn up, eyes unfocused. She sat in the silence of the storage room and let the night press in around her, and for the first time in what felt like a very long time, she didn't fight it.
Then she exhaled — long, and slow, and final, like setting down something very heavy.
"Fine," she said, quietly. "I'll tell you everything."
Rukawa crouched down beside her — unhurried, bringing himself to her level — and waited.
"Okay," he said. "Take your time. Start from the beginning."
[To be continued)