When our captors felt they had had enough fun, the surviving women, the doctor and I were taken out. The rest of the men were all dead. We were locked in a warehouse building with other prisoners of war, among which were a few City Agents. There weren't many and those that were still alive were in a bad shape. Shigure was among them. He was covered in blood and his left eye was missing.
Shigure had been the one to turn the tide in the last war. This time, it looked like they had specifically targeted him and took him out of action. For that to have happened, someone must have betrayed him. Who was it? Where were they? I was going to kill them.
Shigure was devoted to the safety of our city and people. He was so devoted that he had risked his life in the last war. He was ready to die if that was what it would take to protect our city and people again this time.
Who was the traitor? I wanted to kill him. Kill him dead. I'd take out his eye, shoot him in the chest and rip his brains out.
The doctor got busy with whatever supplies we had on hand. The enemy threw him a few spares they had stolen from a pharmacy.
Who had injured Shigure? He was covered in injuries. He'd obviously been tortured. His hair was matted with blood and dirt. The silver shine was missing and didn't stick up at all.
Who had dared to touch my favourite person? Let them step forward. I wouldn't hurt them too much before they died. It could be considered a light sentence.
Favourite person? Shigure? Hmm. I guess he was. He wasn't perfect but he was the person I liked the most of all the people I knew.
I hadn't seen him for such a long time. Now I had seen him and he had been hurt like this. Who dared touch my man?
Come forth and show yourself. I promise I won't be too harsh. A bullet to the brain or heart wouldn't hurt as much as you hurt my Kimi Shigure.
Sometimes I felt like I could do so much more and that there was something bubbling away inside of me, but I didn know how to let it out. How to control it to do what I felt I possibly could. It was frustrating. So frustrating.
I lay by Shigure's side holding his hand and watering it with tears, willing him to survive. I could do nothing else. I had a thought that I had never had before. I wanted him. I wanted to make him mine.
Of all the people I had met, Shigure had been the kindest and most reliable. He wasn't perfect but he did have a one-of-a-kind face. I wasn't averse to it. If he didn't cover it up, he would have had lines of women and possibly some men swooning for him. His face mask had been torn, but he was still trying to wear it in order to hide his facial features. I guessed the enemy might have done some things to him when they had torn his face mask. I had to protect him and not let them touch him again. If I had been a little better or stronger, surely I might have been able to help spare Shigure the pain.
Shigure was the most suitable person for me to have a baby with. He'd make a good father. He was warm, responsible and thoughtful. Meticulous, kind and loyal. He was the person I admired and trusted the most out of all the people I knew.
I toyed with this idea and wondered whether it was wrong of me to think this way. So many men had been with me so far but I had not allowed my body to get pregnant. I was glad that I had sealed my womb to prevent it from being fertilised while I still had access to my abilities. Would it be possible for me to undo that now I couldn't use my abilities?
How should I get a hold of Shigure's sperm so that I could get pregnant with his baby? Would he reject me? Hate me? Think me disgusting? Would he abandon me?
It was just that the thought of Shigure possibly dying shook me hard. I wanted to keep at least a part of him alive in the world whether he was here or not. The best way to do that was to have his baby. Right?
Was there something very wrong with my thinking or was I just imagining it?
Was this true love? What was love? There was something about my new thoughts regarding Shigure that didn't seem quite right but I couldn't put my finger on it. Had being around twisted people twisted me all wrong too?
I was too weak to do anything, and so I could only imagine what doing it with Shigure would be like. He'd surely be gentle and considerate. He would surely not take me for granted and consider my feelings and emotions. It wouldn't be a one sided relationship.
With a scrap of material off the bottom of my ragged clothes and a cup of water from the bathrooms that Doc had gotten for me, I carefully washed the blood and grime out of Shigure's hair, one bloody clump at a time. One lock of hair at a time.
It took patience. It took days. Even then, I still hadn't gotten all the blood out. To keep myself occupied, I just kept cleaning Shigure slowly, bit by bit. Centimetre by centimetre. Lock by lock. Wound by wound.
Shigure was a clean person. He loved cleanliness and keeping clean. He wasn't as excessive as someone with OCD or a germaphobe, but neither was he your average guy. I had seen him some mornings talking himself up in the bathroom, arranging his hair to look exactly so, although I believed it looked the same as usual once the wind had blown it, but he didn't know that and I wasn't about to tell him.
Some days, he would walk along a path or corridor in the office with his head held exactly so, just how he practiced in the mirror. Showing off his good side or something. Apparently it was also important to know how to make cool poses and gestures and make sure you never missed your mark. Those too, were practiced in the bathroom mirror.
There had even been times where he asked me what hand positioning would look cooler for a pose. At first, I had looked at him like he was an idiot, but then I realised he was serious. Sometimes City Agents needed to learn a series of 'habitual' gestures for a character and I supposed that was what the poses were for. After all, Shigure still went on a lot of solo missions without me. Perhaps all that time in the bathroom was him doing his homework.
Or perhaps not.
That's one thing I liked about him. He kept me guessing. I would never completely know and he would likely never tell me unless I one day managed to obtain as much security clearance as him.
With Doc's help, I got his shirt off to wash and hang over my knees to dry. It took two days for the shirt to dry and gave me enough time to thoroughly clean his torso. Front and back. Getting his shirt back on had been a trouble though. We had accidentally torn open a wound in his side, resulting in the shirt getting dirty again.
Doing his trousers had been tricky, but Doc managed to get one of the guards to help us hang it up to dry in a window somewhere. Whenever it came to cleaning him down there though, Doc wouldn't let me do it. He had two of our soldiers carry Shigure into a bathroom where they helped him. They also helped many of the other people who could barely move.
A pair of our female soldiers helped me with my personal care too. They carried me to the toilet and back every day. They also helped wipe me down in the bathroom. It gave them something to do and kept their mind busy, Doc told me.
But I didn't find my comfort as important as Shigure's. Sometimes, I felt his hand or face seemed too cold and then I'd cover him with my jacket for a bit. Usually until Doc returned to find me in a shivering ball.
More often than not, Doc would find me passed out on or beside Shigure, still clutching the little cloth rag.